Bork Slowly Borking

 The "cold" seems to be getting worse. Uh huh. Didn't sleep much yesterday, so was doubly rough for work. I am taking it easy this week at work because of this. Swollen throat is slowly getting less severe, but, it's now started settling on my chest. The asthma meds are helping. But. Stuff sitting on my chest is no bueno. I sorted through a bunch of pictures today. Just weeding out a lot of "spam" of board games from the pub from many years ago into their own folder. Along the way I found many pics of Ares and Athena hidden amongst the boardgames. After a while I stopped sorting. The pictures were lovely and sad. The one thing that comes across in them - pre 2020 bullshit. I am a lot happier. A. Lot. Happier. And. There's a reason I was so strongly tied to my mutts. They are adorable. They are always looking to me. Or snuggling me. Forever interested in what I am doing. Forever good natured. Clingy good natured babies. This is not true of all dogs. At al...

 Over the course of yesterday my swollen throat got better... only for it to once again flare up overnight badly. A closed throat that hurts a lot when swallowing and a stuffed feeling in the back of your throat like something is stuck there. Eh well. I didn't feel too good today, as in, under the weather. In the scale of things it was nothing. I've fared far worse. It layered on top of my exhaustion and other bullshit, but the other bullshit took a backseat. A little calmer. Perhaps. Because the immune system has a genuine target rather than just targetting me in general ? Who knows. Today I have done arse all. Barely left bed. Slept. Watched TV. Got a little food. Spent some time on the computer. I have felt my usual exhausted and also that under the weather tiredness on top. I felt like I could just fold into the bed and never get up again. It crossed my mind to do just that. Just. Don't leave bed. Give up. Stop talking to people. Finally given in to that slow, dozy, unc...

 Blocked ear, blocked nose. I figured I had picked up something of a cold yesterday. No doubt from the pool which has become infested with kids. Kids are always a prime source of disease. It's just how it works. Today I have woken up with a very swollen throat, which is new to me. Difficult to swallow, partly closed up. It is uncomfortable - constant feeling that I have a pillow stuck in my throat, which makes me want to continually swallow. Goes without saying it hurts. Ho hum. I've had worse. Bloody kids. Today browsing imgur, I came across someone posting their loss of a dog. It happens on imgur from time to time. People posting the passing of their dogs. The lady writing it had an outpouring of love. Long, in depth, with many pictures. So much love. Admitted that the loss of her other dog at the end of the last year was brutal. That she had been plodding through life until today. And then she lost her other one. She was distraught. In pieces. More than her best friends she ...

 Follow up appointment with the GP yesterday. The good one. The one that hopefully will become my "regular" GP. We see eye to eye about a "methodical approach" to my problems. It was, he said, his job to do that. If you say so doc. Few others in your profession seem to have got that memo. He has prescribed me some gout meds to see how that goes. If it makes things worse, tell him. If it does nothing. Tell him. And we will see how we do. He asked how experimental I was willing to be. All the way. Do whatever you think is best. So here we are. He admitted trying to discover things via specialists would take a year or more. And possibly get nowhere. Or we could just try stuff. An admission that the system doesn't work, but, lets see what we can do from here. He's a nice guy. And it seems willing to work with me. So. Good. I doubt the gout meds will do much. But. You never know. We both agreed that it could be behind a number of my pain flare ups, and, my dodgy...

Anxiety seems like a permanent thing at the moment. Occasionally it takes a morning off. But it doesn't stick. And I can feel there is something very wrong with my mental state. It is hopeless. Athena of late sticks in my head. 2.5 months since she was here. And now I am finding it harder than ever to get over it ? It is not that it makes me wail into tears anymore. That at least has dulled. Although. I don't push at it. But a deep sense of loss has settled into me. A dozen reminders every day. She is gone. I am alone. It is very heavy. I often catch myself thinking that Athena would have enjoyed something. That Ares didn't see this. That Athena couldn't have experienced that. I miss them greatly. And their zest for life. Their character. Their antics. Their judgement. Dogs have such characters to them, and boxers, are up there as the most characterful. Losing them is terrible. Today as I trudged down the stairs the thought floated across my head that if I am not enjoyi...

 The anxiety stayed with me all day yesterday. It did not shift of the evening, albeit it reduced. I did little to nothing yesterday. Slept. Watched a little. Slept more. A single load of washing. Fragile. Today I am a bit better. Fragile still but head above water. I feel a desire to go out, drive, sit in nature, enjoy the cool evening. But I cannot. Doing it on my own just feels empty. Awful. Lonely. No furry butt in the back with her head over my shoulder snuffling my ear. Or head out the window. And no other soul to enjoy it with. It feels empty. Pointless. That 14 years of muscle memory, always with a dog or two in tow. It's hard. A bit of me that I enjoy, a part of the world I enjoy feels closed off to me now. No more of that. It is another loss. It has been a long while since I have experienced things on my own. And to any extent, even longer than that. I have, by and large, always been around someone.  The evening is cool. Light. Beautiful. It is a perfect evening for ...

 Suffering is the word. My right foot has been painful and on the brink of rendering me immobile, but I have, perhaps stupidly, bulled through it, taken a few precautions, but stubbornly refused to go back to a crutch. My eyes have got a lot worse. On Thurday I woke up to not being able to see properly out of my right eye. No matter what I did with it. Eye drops. Washing it out. Blinking. Wiping. Tears. It was slow to focus, blurry, off. Needless to say the impact on my mood was bad. This is my final red line. I'm not going to go blind from my bullshit. After half a day and another bout of sleep, it came back. All good. Perhaps it was just a one off. I somehow doubt it. I've been wracked by anxiety for most of the backend of this week. It sits with me every morning now. An awful sense of impending doom and twisting of my stomach. A permanent knot down there. Invariable it starts to unwind as the afternoon crawls on, and as evening approaches it starts to release me from its gri...

 Shitty sleep yesterday, noodled through some work, and then decided, despite not feeling great, to take myself off to some games in the evening at the pub. The evening was nice, I didn't crash out - neither did I overstay for too long, and it was good. Except. Today I have paid a heavy price for it. Everything has flared pain wise. And my right foot has fucked up again. I am back to hobbling around on it - I am desperately hoping it doesn't get worse and push me back to crutches. But. I think it's heading that way. To be clear, I felt fine when I came home. I watched a movie after I came home, also felt fine. Went asleep feeling fine. No pains. 5 hours later everything was wrong. As if that 5 hour period of sleep had suddenly done massive damage all over. Uh. Huh. Sigh. I rolled back over to sleep, nursing all my wounds. Please go away. Please go away. They didn't. And my right foot got worse. I dreamed at length of an old work crush. Meeting her and her bazillion kids...

 Mental health continues to bump "up" and down. Wicked anxiety the last two days in the morning. This seems to be something of a haphazard pattern - brutal anxiety in the period of beginning to wake up until fully awake - and then it lingers. It is no doubt down to the cortisol spike you get of a morning to help you wake up - in my case it amps up to a high degree, and proceeds to wreak havoc. Not uncommon. My physical health is definitely in general on a turn for the better. It's not great. But it is mostly, or tolerably, behaving itself. Apart from the shit eyes every morning, bloodshot, stinging, sandy, and of course, the perpetual panda black eyes to go with it. The black eyes in particular are getting worse - now they are black at all times of the day. Perhaps the swimming is helping. Perhaps the closer attention to diet - although that being said I've kinda eaten a fair share of garbage in the last couple of days. Perhaps it's just the time of the year. Or. ...

 A slow malaise this week. I could not bring myself to do work per se. I helped out here and there. But by and large. I did nothing. I wasn't playing games. I wasn't skiving off. I was. Drifting. Sleeping. Zombified. Staring at the walls. Not hopeless. Not.. quite. But also. Just not there. I felt better yesterday, perhaps a bit of a break from work is what I needed. But today. Despite getting up and being active, taking some stuff to the dump. Getting lunch. I have fallen into a hole. Perhaps it was because I dreamed of Ares and Athena last night. They were back. And it was lovely to have them back. But at some point I broke down into tears and asked someone, do you see them ? Yes. They saw them. How are they back ? How are they alive ? I cried. Not wanting to question it. Just. Accept it. They are back for now. I woke up. Their presence lingering. I turned over went back to sleep. Today as part of my being a little active, I pottered around and did the hoovering. Bits of Athe...

 It has to be said, my moods can be a little temperamental at the moment. "Little". This doesn't mean I am flip flopping around screaming at the world before collapsing into tears every five minutes. But it does mean that I am finding they can escalate up and down within a few days to some pretty edgy levels. I am more than half aware they are doing that. I am not blind to my being ... flakey. By and large I keep them within a caged area. Ok. This is what I'm feeling. I'm not sure they need to be out there ripping people to pieces. Letsssss just have them in here. Until we can get some more rational facts turn up. You. Are not 100% reliable. Yes ? Yes. Good. So. Moderate. Easier said than done. I am finding I am sensitive towards people, and, my stupid hyper vigilant always good at reading people bullshit means, I am sensitive to any ripple they exhibit. Which if you know people is normal . People often go through a bunch of less than stellar responses or thoughts...

 Yesterday and today I've been catching up on sleep. Which is all round problematic as fucky things happen in my sleep. In general I get worse when I sleep. My eyes get punchy. Irritated. Bloodshot. Things fall asleep. Things swell up. Aches magnify. Yada. Which. Perhaps. Is the apnea just giving the pot of shit a stir.  Nevertheless, I need sleep. Catching up on sleep is a daunting prospect. Which makes sense if you think about it - you need to sleep longer, which also means, you need to be oxygen deprived for longer. Oh. Rock and a hard place. There is I think a bit of a pattern there. The longer deeper sleep tends to be the shittiest of all. And when I come out of that I can be truly awful. The more recuperative sleep tends to be - but isn't always - when I've had a longer sleep, and am now short sleeping for an hour or two at a time. Perhaps this is the sweet spot between rest, and oxygen starved. But who knows. Yesterday I caught up with Hazel. She needed a few things...

 A few slightly better days. Not much. At times shit. At times passable. I think honestly my brain is doing an even harder job of scrubbing the bad bits. When I am slumped in bed. It's kind of. Glossing over it. Uh huh. I am slowly getting used to mooching around the house on my own and the place being empty. Athena still haunts me. But it's fading. It's been nearly two months since I lost her. If I dwell on it for longer than a blip it starts to eat me alive. So. I tend not to do that. I miss her terribly. I think I will miss the both of them terribly forever more. But. It's getting easier to get by. Part of me hates that. Part of me also realises it's necessary for me to have a chance of surviving. I still feel lost. But. I'm just drifting. It has to be said one of my friends has done an outstanding job in keeping me busy, distracted, and rarely without his company. It's hard to quantify how much help that has been. I think it has made a huge difference, a...

 Slowly. So slowly. The anxiety comes down a notch. Still sketchy today. That swivel eyed mad horse malarkey just beneath the surface. A constant hand required to stop it from bolting. Ssshhh. Calm. Calm. It's ok. Don't think on stuff. Calm. Eeesh. Today I slept quite a bit, as, my anxiety wasn't terrible in the morning. It was there. For sure. Twisting up my guts. But it wasn't terrible terrible. So I got up mooched around then went back to sleep. Still catching up on my abysmal lost nights sleep with the CPAP. Slept until swimming time, then went out for a swim, not enthused. But. It's a good distraction and filler. If I stop for very long at all, the walls of darkness around crash on top of me. Uh huh. What a lovely existence. I'm on a bit of a restricted diet for the next 24 hours. Got to redo my SIBO test, which means nothing but plain chicken and rice for today, and tomorrow, nada. I think the SIBO test is probably a waste of time at this point as I suspec...