A slight change of plans

So because of last week's post, I've moved this stuff here. Just link over there and follow if you enjoy my adventures!

New Feb Goals

New goals, just like the old goals.

Go to bed earlier and try to get more sleep.

Make a Dr. appointment for myself and one for Andromeda because she needs some shots and before I take her in I need to get her immunization record together blargh.

Take more showers. It's been like once a week lately. I'm like the opposite of Superman, here, so I'll start with trying to make it twice a week. The opposite of Superman...? Unexceptional Woman? That cracks me up. I'm going to rename this blog "The Adventures of Unexceptional Woman!"

Today on the Adventures of Unexceptional Woman, Pheeb attempts to improve her life through self-care! Watch her fail to meditate because her posture is bad, or at least she's convinced it is! See her take a shower, wow, everybody else does that, too! Now she's eating a whole bag of cookies! Wow! Everything can stop.....Unexceptional Woman!!!!

I'm laughing so hard at my own joke right now I'm going to pass out.

Drink more water!

Take more walks!

Keep trying to meditate! It's hilarious! Pheeb can't stop yawning!

Of to bed, now, peepls. I'll be back next week if not sooner.

Tired ramblings. Pay it no mind.

Hello, peeples.

I am exhausted right now. Andromeda woke up at 6 crying and didn't go back to sleep. I woke up at 6 and didn't go back to sleep. I was in a pretty good way this morning, because I had to put on jeans to do laundry. I'm always more productive when I put on jeans instead of jammy pants. I did laundry.

Then I was falling asleep by one and I did stuff to try to stay awake. I made crepes. I folded laundry. Then the repair guy came to unclog our bathroom sink and I sat with Andromeda wishing I could take a nap. Then the sun went down and I felt more alert.

Now I'm arguing with myself about taking a shower. I need a shower. I'll take one. Right now. Then I'll come back to this. I did it. Yay!

I did not make my sleep goals this week. The first night I went to bed before midnight, but the rest of the week I didn't. I guess I'll try again this next week. The pillow doesn't seem to be working anymore. I keep waking up on my back and a pillow behind me just slides over. I'm going to try drinking more water, too, and eventually walking. I used to walk all the time. Lately I hardly ever do. Today I did, though, I walked to the corner market, like 15 minutes. I could do that every day, to start. Not so hard.

Bye for now peeples.

Sleep progress

I have made a tiny bit of progress on my goal to adjust my sleep. I have been using a sleep tracking app on my phone to record my progress. I've haven't been to bed before midnight all week, and once I stayed up past one. So my goal for this week is just to bring that down a little bit. My app adds 15 minutes to my starting time, because on average that's how long it takes people to fall asleep. So I want to start my sleep timer before 11:45 because that will get my recorded bedtime back before midnight. It's a tiny goal but tiny goals are what I need right now.

On a more positive note, sleeping with a body pillow between my knees and ankles seems to be helping a little bit with my back issues. Not 100%, but some improvement. Sometimes I wake up on my back, though, so I'm considering putting a pillow behind me, too, so I stay on my side while I sleep.

As for fatigue and depression, I've been managing. Not well, but ok. I manage to clean up and get dinner on. The girls and I walked to the library yesterday. It was a bitch but fun enough, and I'm not sore today though I was tired.

I want to get into some kind of routine, because that will make it easier to do what I need to even if I don't feel like it, and it will be good for Andromeda who's stuck at home with my sad butt all day. So far it looks like I wake at 6:30, go back to sleep til 7, leap out of bed so I can see Simone for five minutes before she goes to school, do whatever all day until Simone comes home, then I do a load of laundry, clean up the kitchen and make dinner, and we all eat dinner together as a family, Simone cleans up while I get Andromeda ready for bed. After that I do whatever until I go to bed. Usually a lot of aimless footling on the interweb, though sometimes I play video games or try to write.

It needs improvement, to say the least. My theory is that maybe folk being up is waking me up at 6:30 in the morning. Part of the evidence being that on the weekends it's easier to sleep in, since only Ollin is up and he's not loud unless he has someone to talk to, like Simone, who sleeps in on the weekends. I need to push my bedtime earlier until that 6:30 wake-up time works, however much sleep that ends up being. I do want some night time to myself, but what's the point if it's just internet footling time?

Blah blah blah. Enough mumbling for now. Catch you all laters.

New Year's Resolutions

Yeah, right. Since when have I ever been remotely resolute?

I need to prioritize my health. Over the last year and a half or so, I've been feeling worse and worse. I walk less, my cardio and strength are way down, I don't get enough sleep and I'm tired all the time. I hesitate to say I've been depressed, although...I've felt all kinds of bad. Sometimes I cry for no reason, and I mean I'm crying, just sobbing my eyes out, but inside, my heart is bland. Sometimes I just sit and don't do anything, and it's like I'm melting into the floor. Simile, not psychosis. It's not all the time, or even most of the time (except it has been for certain periods, for days at a time, and then I'm "fine" for a week or two). My heart randomly pounds. My body aches in places. My hips. My ankles sometimes. My neck and shoulders. My lower back, especially when I wake up in the morning, which is part of why I haven't been getting enough sleep, because I wake up after five or six hours in pain and I can't lay down anymore. My right second thumb knuckle often hurts bad when I try to use it, especially in the morning.

So my goals, for the month of January, are:

 1) go to bed earlier. I've been going to bed after midnight all vacation, but it wasn't much better than that before. This week I will try going to bed at 11:30 instead. I also intend to experiment with pillows and see if I can't make a more comfy nest for myself.

2) Make an appointment with a doctor and dump all these symptoms on her, see what she says. I had my thyroid checked last year and it was normal. Problem is the nurse I usually see isn't there anymore so I'll have to find a new doctor over at the clinic. I worry that the new doc will blame my fat for all of my problems when I know that's not it. I've always been big. I haven't always had these problems. I also have this HUGE resistance to making phone calls and going to places where I can't ignore strangers looking at me and might have to let one touch me.

Aaaaaaaaaand that's it for now.

Where did all the old posts go?

Hello Readers!

Some of you are probably wondering where all the posts have gone. Well, for the last bit of the year, I've been changing my blog around. I'm not 100% done, but I will now link you to the other blogs I've set up.

Phoebe Ophelia Writing Things - This will be my main-ish blog for now, about my writing progress and books I'm reading.

Phoeb's Fiction Archive - For older stories I published on here before. Some new stories will go on my writing blog for a while, then I'll move them as they age.

Phoeb's Recipes - Obviously, I will put recipes here from time to time. I'm moving the recipes I previously posted here, and I hope to update them as some of them are pretty old.

This blog, Phoeb's Quest, will become solely a friends-and-family blog while the others are public. I will post here now and then with family updates and some boring self-care quest goals and progress.

Feel free to hit me up with any questions or requests!

Otters, not Orcas

So, we heard about the Orcas that were seen in the Sound near Vashon Island. We happen to live just across the channel from Vashon Island; here's the northern-most part of it as seen from Seahurst Park:


The Orcas were seen on October 28, a day we had considered going to the park, but hadn't gotten around to it. I wonder if we would have seen the whales from our side if we had gone? We decided that it couldn't hurt to go down to the park on whatever sunny days we could, so we went on Saturday. We didn't see any whales, but we had a great time.

Simone near the creek that runs down the hill onto the beach and into the Sound.

These were weird bubbles in the sand at the waters edge. We had no idea what they were, whether they were some critter beneath the sand or some other natural phenomenon.

Ollin digging, trying to see if there are any critters.

All throughout this, I was looking out in the water to see if I could see any whales, but all I could see were what I thought were birds floating on the water and then diving down underneath the surface to catch fish. On the way back, I saw something moving by a log on the beach. It was this little guy:

He had caught a fish and was eating it among the rocks.

He looked at us, and decided he didn't like our look.

So he dropped off into the sea and swam away. He surfaced again, too far away to get any good pics, but then I saw him float for a bit, and then dive. All this time I thought I'd been looking at birds, they were really otters!