Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I'd been thinking about organizing social stuff this weekend, and cancelled it today in favor of some serious doing nothing. I need the rest, and maybe to try to scare off this congestion and remnant muscle ache. A chunk of the latter is almost certainly tension. Yes, my new boss likes me. Yes, I can do the work. It's still a new job, learning some new stuff--both in terms of software, and what they actually want me to do (and how much of it). Plus, probably, various other new stuff. So, source of stress--even desired job changes are somewhat stressful for most people.

I will leave the house tomorrow, at least briefly, during the day--that's part of basic redbird maintenance. I will try to avoid anything physically or emotionally strenuous, and remind myself that it's okay for me to do almost nothing.

I'm dealing with a large amount of unfocused/unidentified tension, at least some of which is probably worrying about the previous symptoms. By yesterday evening, the belly-ache had produced a lower-back muscle ache, probably from trying to support sore abs. I got a bit of a backrub from cattitude before bed, and that plus a good night's sleep had me wake up fine, with happy muscles.

I've been up long enough to shower and make tea (but not yet drink any), and I'm feeling a bit of stress in my abs again, and in my throat.

I find myself wishing I was still storing stress in my calf muscles; it would be easier to cope with.

It's not a digestive thing (though it seems to be consequent to one from late last week): not only do salad and fresh fruit not make it worse, chocolate helps.

I got back to the gym after work today, still not sure I was well--after an extended period of being short of breath even from walking any distance--but feeling tense and realizing I needed to lift weights.

So I did a whole 6.5 minutes of cardio as warmup, but got my heart rate up to 150, then did XpressLine.

I mostly left the weights where they were, but did 370 on the leg press, not 380 (I'd managed 8 reps at 380 at one point), and took the lat pulldown down five pounds after 4 reps, because I didn't have the lung capacity to do it at that weight. But I got through them all, even the biceps (10 to 12 on everything, I think 11 on biceps), with the trainer giving me advice and telling me that it had been a good workout. I had trouble starting with the triceps machine--when I first pulled it with my left arm, nothing happened--and then at the end the trainer, Omar, pointed out that I'd been putting more energy/strength on the left. I suspect I was (over)compensating for the initial difficulty.

I did three sets of 20 crunches, and 2 sets of 17 back arches--one effect of the move out of the office into the cubicle is that I don't have a good place to do floor exercises at work anymore--and finished with stretches.

Part of the tension is from not knowing how much longer I'll have a job, both in terms of whether it will continue to be available and in terms of what I can handle, physically. I'm getting up in the dark, and pretty soon will be leaving in the dark. (This morning doesn't count, it was rain-dark even after dawn.) That they still haven't set up my outgoing phone line in the cubicle is not a good sign, however--and is somewhat annoying on a practical level. This week, I can borrow Brenna's phone if I need to, because she's on vacation, but that's not a long-term solution. Neither is making all calls after 3 p.m. so I can use JuJu's phone. I don't need to make many calls, but it's useful to check in with cattitude sometimes, and I called my doctor's office today. (No results from the mammogram yet; call back Thursday.)

It's the commute. It's getting up in the dark. It's not getting to bed on time last night, because I was hunting for my unlimited-ride Metrocard [which eventually turned up in the pocket of the jeans I'd worn the previous day], and waking at 3ish and being up for a bit. It's having had my glasses slanchwise for most of a workday. It's a sore knee.

Whatever the cause, the result was that I didn't feel up to going to Sahadi, or even ducking into K-mart to look for a new knapsack, never mind working out. And I'm perfectly happy writing, and reading LJ, but I don't want to decide on anything much larger than what to drink with dinner.

Also, I actively do not want to listen to the presidential "debate" this evening. So we won't. It'll be music or nothing, not radio, by nine (though cattitude is listening to pre-debate conversation while he cooks).

If it's not one thing, it's another.

Having basically recovered from the cold-related vertigo that was causing me trouble this past weekend (to the point that I called in sick on Friday), I had one of the nose pads fall off my glasses this morning. We recovered the pad itself, but the teeny-tiny screw vanished in a gray-on-gray pattern carpet, one of those designs intended to hide dirt.

So I spent most of the day with my glasses at a slight tilt. This meant that my vision was very slightly off. I wear progressive lenses, meaning that the prescription varies from top to bottom, so tilting the glasses changes their effect. (As a side problem, the bit of metal where that nose pad should have been seems to have irritated my nose slightly.) I picked up a basic eyeglass repair kit at lunchtime, and the dedicated efforts of two of my co-workers led to the conclusion that none of the screws provided were small enough. (I had to ask help, because I can't see well enough without glasses to do fine work.)

Fortunately, there's an optometrist two doors from the Port Washington railroad station, and they cheerfully did the repair for me in about four minutes. (I'd made sure it was a quick job before giving the man my glasses, because I'd have preferred getting the fix done in the city to missing the train and waiting an hour for the next one.)

Still, I am tenser than I would like, in part because I spent several hours today doing close work with my glasses off-kilter. (And in part, I'm sure, because of the ongoing annoyances of the commute.)

The problem with getting a relaxing massage at work is that the relaxation only lasted an hour or two. In fact, the specific area I asked the massage therapist to work on--my left arm--was tense again within a couple of hours.

This despite having spoken briefly with the now-back-from-maternity-leave manager, who came into my office to (re)introduce herself, and make sure I know where to find her if I need to talk to her about anything. No promises, but that at least suggests that she wants to keep me around for a few more days.

I realized this morning that part of why I keep brooding about finances is that almost all the copy I proofread is money-related, either "win lots of money" or "Save! Buy this thing [that nobody needs] for less than the [horribly inflated] "value/MSRP/future price". If I were working on medical copy, I might be developing hypochondria.