Words are inadequate

In my experience, the usual pattern for the beginning of summer in Vancouver is for the long weekend to be sunny and Pleasant and feel like summer is here! and then for the temps to drop and the clouds to return and "Juneuary" to take hold. Then summer proper gets into gear just before Canada Day.

In the event, it was Too Warm a few weekends ago; last weekend was the long weekend and my understanding is that it was rainy and chilly. (I was up north, where it was also a bit rainy and chilly.) It's been clear and warming up the last day or so, though. Yesterday I was vaguely irritable and lethargic all day, which has an obvious source that I didn't even consider. I was, of course, Too Warm. I didn't realise this until I woke up at 12:30 in an absolutely stifling room. Set up and turned on the fan, and that was enough to get me back to sleep until 4:30, and after a bit more tossing and turning until 6:30ish. So, that's like eight hours of sleep, which should have been plenty but due to interruptions left me feeling grumpy and, well, tired. But not the "falling back asleep" kind of tired.

So I grumbled and got up and did an hour of yoga for the second time this week, and ... that seems to have helped. Most exercise doesn't. Sunlight reliably helps my mood, but exercise as such does nothing for me. Except, for whatever reason, for yoga, when I can manage it.

I am also reminded that my body likes to do physical things, and likes to get better at them. On Wednesday I biked from Joyce Station to the optometrist, about half an hour, and then from the optometrist all the way back home. No trouble at all. (I also got to stop and read my book under a tree for half an hour or so, which was entirely lovely.) Tuesday morning I did a round of yoga; Tuesday night my muscles and joints ached from being stretched weirdly, but it was the kind of ache that I knew would go away if I just did that a few more times. My breathing's improving, at least when there's not a ton of smoke in the air.

I used to land somewhere between hating my body unerservedly and thinking about it as little as possible. Since Erin and yoga, I've been able to come to more of a detente, off and on. It's complicated. But it's nice that it's complicated, instead of straight-up loathing.

Anyway, the cold robot is active today, which is good because it's been up around 27 our there, and things are mostly alright. It's nice.

Power went mostly out last night at 9:30. I say "mostly" because I still had:

• The two overhead light fixtures, though at about half strength
  
• The clock on the stove, though NOT the clock on the microwave
  
• The light for the smoke alarm, which is wired into the electric, fading in and out
  
• The 'standby' light for my CPAP, though that faded out after awhile
  
• The lights on the other side of the building hallway, though not on my side

Wifi was obviously down but the cell towers stayed up. Eventually the strata sent out an email saying in part "Branch Broke, shorted power wire. Knocked out transformers. Building @ 1/3 power. DO NOT USE ELEVATOR!"

In the event it did come back on at around seven this morning. So I am not terribly rested but at least I don't have to worry about the food in the freezer thawing out and going bad.

Off to the north for a week. Ex-roomie Mya is coming by daily to check on Mr Tuppert and spend some time hanging out with him, which I greatly appreciate. One hopes he will forgive me sooner than later for abandoning him.

I am still alive.

I am not doing well and I don't know why. I'm not sleeping well, haven't been for weeks, and I don't know if that's down to my CPAP threatening to give up the ghost, my lungs being generally crap, my lungs being specifically crap post-covid, my entire body finally rebelling at the amount of weight I've gained in the last four years, or what. Or it might just be that it's been too warm lately. Turns out that the furnace is on this floor, so anytime anyone needs hot water all the pipes heat up, which heats up the hallway. Which is fine when it's fairly coolish outside but if it's over about twenty the heat just percolates through until it's an unbearable-for-me 25ish. And there's no natural breeze through the unit, there's one large screen door to the balcony and one nigh-unusable window in the bedroom. Bleh.

Anyway. The 'not doing well' had mostly been isolated to being generally low-energy and somewhat low-brain, until today when it smacked me with what I guess is a depressive episode. I blame the cloudygrey weather at least in part but this does not bode well for, you know, literally any time after about September. I held it together long enough to have brunch with ex-roommate Mya and then it's just been a lot of brain-bleh.

Mostly I have watched TV, replayed Hades, and read very little. Oh, and fixed my car to the tune of just under $2k, which has put paid to any thought of going back east until next year sometime. Stupid money. (I am not actually hurting for money, but I am also failing to replenish my savings after going down to essentially zero in the process of first buying the condo, then paying rent-plus-mortgage for a few months, and then moving.)

I am cranky and tired and I do not like this.

Perhaps next week will be better.

The transformer for my CPAP died at five AM on Sunday, so I've not slept particularly well since then. A new one should get here by mail sometime next week. Good thing I took all this week and half of next off work.

Also it has been Really Cold the last week-plus, down around -30 in the evenings, with lots of snow. I do appreciate the snow up here: it's light and dry and doesn't stick to much of anything. I haven't had to chisel out my windshield at all. It's quite pretty, too.

To do today:

• Make another round of frozen egg sammiches for workday breakfasts
  
• Eat breakfast
  
• Do a bunch of dishes Shoulda done these before starting the challah; ran out of room in the drying rack.
  
• Make challah for french toast for tomorrow breakfast
  
• Email the strata[1] in an ongoing effort to sort out things like "how do i pay strata fees, which are due tomorrow"
  
• Eat lunch
  
• Write up Pyramids
  
• Finish reading The Fortunate Fall, dammit
  
• Collect UPS package (Red Flag Over Paris, a boardgame about the Paris Commune)
  
• Pack up various foodstuffs and go to Erin's for the new year

I am really looking forward to seeing in the new year with Erin and cats and woodstove and various tasty foods.

---

[1] "Strata" is Canadian for, roughly, "condo HOA," the governing body that tells you you can't rent out your condo, smoke anything anywhere in the building, or hang laundry on your balcony, and also handles maintenance for everything that isn't inside your unit.

Some months ago my bathroom fan started leaking, a steady stream of water. I called the super[1] and he took a look. Turned out the tub in the upstairs apartment had a leak in the overflow drain. They patched that up and all was well.

[1] Terry refers to himself as the "landlord" but he doesn't own the place, so it feels weird to refer to him as such. He's the guy who handles rent and the maintenance guy, but I pay my rent by bank draft, so I only interact with him for maintenance things. So he feels more like a superintendent from a mid-century book about NYC.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when (shortly after someone moved back in to the upstairs apartment, after it had been vacant for a while) there was a rhythmic thudding coming from the bathroom. It took me longer than it should have to realise that it was water dripping from the ceiling into the tub.

Long story short, Terry had to tear down my entire bathroom ceiling (because it was a sheet of plywood, so cutting a hole in it was Not On) so that the plumber could get at the drain for the bathtub, because he couldn't reach it from its apartment. Still needs to be painted and sealed, and then the bathroom walls need to be repainted because "there's no way we can get a match for that, it's ancient." On the bright side he also replaced my bathroom fan so it no longer sounds like an aircraft carrier.

Meanwhile the bathroom and front hall are full of dust &c and there's a fan going to dry things out, and the smell of paint/plaster faintly permeates everything.

I spent today at Erin's because now that winter's over and it won't matter for my heating bill they've replaced the antique single-pane windows. Erin's making marmalade, with my occasional assistance, and her house is full of the smell of cooking citrus. Or, not a smell exactly, if I had to guess I'd say it's the aerosolized oil from the peel. Sharp and bitter on the back of my nose and throat.

And I've moved things around so they could get at the windows, and taken down the blackout blinds, and I need to fix that, but it just doesn't feel like home at the moment. I hate that. Like, places rarely feel like home but there are degrees, and this is off enough to upset my balance.

I should eat dinner. I have chicken in the fridge but slicing chicken seems like Work so I'll eat it tomorrow. Cereal, I think, unless the milk's gone off, or maybe freezer-waffles.

Bah. I've not been sleeping well since the time change, which corresponds to when the family down the hall moved into the upstairs apartment. I had plenty of complaints about the place in Coal Harbour and in New West, but those were solidly built concrete monstrosities and there was no neighbour noise.

Just reread Robert Asprin's two Phule's Company books, which he describes as "F-Troop In Space". They are not as good as I remember them being (I read them to death in junior high and high school), but they're certainly better than I expected. I am now about to start a reread of Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World, which I read several times in Blacksburg and haven't cracked open since. It's I think the first book that I picked up from the Tech bookstore English section: it had been assigned for a class I wasn't taking, and it looked interesting. Very curious to see what I think of it.

Dinner.

Christmas is two posts: Christmas and sick, and I only feel competent to write about one of those at the moment.

( physically unwell: sinuses, fever )

It's been a rough couple of weeks. I'm not sleeping well again, primarily I think due to stress. Vicious cycle.

I've been listening to "Who's Gonna Help Me" by Salt Thief, the folk-rockish viola duo James and I went to see a few weeks ago. They're good, and I'm looking forward to the new album in November.

she said i've troubles of my own and no time to help you

I still have no dishwasher and a concrete floor in my entry hall.

Emily's understandably unwilling to float me a loan to buy her out of the condo. Depending on how much she's looking for I may (may) be able to scrape up the amount. Not having to find another place to live has a certain appeal to it.

... just heard back from the mortgage broker. The process of buying Emily out may turn out more complicated than she'll want to deal with anyway. Though I suspect that a lot of that complication will come up if we sell the place, regardless.

To the extent that I was "dating" the really neat person I met a month ago, I got dumped on Wednesday. Still processing that.

Things with Erin are strained. (Understatement, I think.) I may be going north tomorrow, or I may not. I have no idea at this point.

I am out of maple syrup. This is not the worst of calamities, merely insult to injury.

Onward.

First night with the CPAP last night. Went to sleep around ten-thirty, woke around two, slept again until the alarm went off at five-thirty. No particular problems with the machine or the nose-mask, but I can't tell if it's actually doing any good either. That is, I don't know if I'm breathing through my nose or mouth when I sleep, and if I'm breathing through my mouth the nose-mask is unlikely to have much effect. Which would mean having to go to a full face mask, which I am even less in favour of. We Shall See.

I'm more tired than usual today, but I blame that on having been woken up by the alarm. The point of the light-alarm is to wake me up slowly and gently, but I guess I was out enough that that wasn't an option. I'd forgotten how much I hate hate hate the alarm sound. Especially when it's the first thing I hear in the morning.

I also mentioned my traitor lungs to the sleepdoc, and she suggested it might be vocal cord dysfunction (and why do I always want those to be vocal chords?). Worth looking into when I go back to talk to my main doc. Assuming the inhaler doesn't do me any good.

As for sinuses, who knows. I'll try the steroid and see what ends up happening.