Let us eat cake

I’ve been working my current job (as a temp) for somewhere in the area of two months. It says something about the atmosphere of the workplace then, that in that time period we’ve had three or four cakes, sweets, and three free lunches.

The lunches come with the lunch-and-learn meetings I (a temp) have been taking part in. The cakes and sweets, well there are more to come next week. A cake is eaten for every birthday, of course. But there’s an office rule that anyone buying something new and expensive has to also buy a cake for the office. (We’ve gone through one new car so far. The new house, new bike and wedding are yet to come).

While I appreciate the goodies, it honestly does wreak havoc on me the days my lingering stress issues kick into full gear. I still don’t fully believe the doctor who keeps telling me it’s merely stress. Stress and anxiety are lifelong companions of mine and they’ve done this before; especially not for this long – going on month five now.

My most recent ‘prescription’ has been 40 minutes of running every day - this from the same clinic (read: overworked) doctor who leaves me feeling like I’m part of a patient assembly-line and told me to take iron supplements without testing me, or even asking the rudimentary questions. I’m cutting that down to 20-30 minutes most days in light of my other activities and the havoc that promises to wreak on my feet. I have three more weeks to see if this works, in which I need to get on the ball.

I’ve been trying to at least exercise every day, but I’ve been experiencing chills and fatigue all week so I’m trying to give my body a rest to fight whatever is threatening my health. Perhaps the gym tonight and a quick run tomorrow.

I’ll start getting up early to work out again when eight hours of sleep goes back to feeling restful instead of woefully inadequate.

Other than health (I really, really just want to feel healthy again) I’ve been back dancing, which does put me in much better spirits. I’ve also found time to dye some more roving, and just spun up the singles. Plying should be done tonight, while I watch..something. Hopefully the most recent episode of Bones (I love campy TV) will find its way to my macbook.

I should also reinstall my copy of adobes CS3 and get some time in playing with the photoshop ideas in my head. I lost all of that during a recent hd failure (next time, backups). Hopefully I can still get some of the data recovered.

I’d toss in some pictures of what else I’ve been up to (A new knit vest and a scarf) but alas I have yet to get pictures.

Surreal Skating

I had a surreal experience last night. I was out on the canal with friend after a party (worlds longest ice rink, right here in Ottawa). After getting comfortable enough on my skates to tone down the near panic and explaining to said friends that grabbing and pulling me (especially behind a bike, on the ice) is out of the question due to how uncomfortable I am on skates, we set out for the lake, planning on walking home for there.

As an aside, I know. I'm an embarrassment to Canadians everywhere with my poor skating ability. It's not just that I skate badly (many of my friends claim that they do as well) but that I skate badly by Vancouver Island standards, which are much lower in that respect than the rest of the country. Growing up on the Wet Coast, skating was for hockey players and figure skaters, the rest of us learned little aside from going in circles and hitting walls.

Since moving to Ottawa I've learned how to turn and stop.

Moving on from that digression, we skated a ways down the canal, and dropped our friend with the bike off at his exit to ride home (yes, in the snow), and continued on. That's where it got surreal.

As we skated, at 3 a.m. we passed a succession of guys, dressed in black and holding hoses spraying the canal down with streams of water. The way they worked, it was as if we were invisible - they didn't stop, didn't acknowledge us, simply avoided spraying where we were until we'd passed.

3 a.m. skating outdoors, through clouds of mist, with black-clad figures hosing down the ice. The water froze quickly, but left the surface with an odd, dragging feeling, like skating through a layer of butter.

There is, of course, an explanation. The canal is plowed regularly and on cold nights the NCC (National Capital Commission) sends workers out to flood the canal. This fill sin the smaller divots (though not the larger cracks) and keeps the surface from being destroyed over the skating season.

Still, it was awesome.

It's been a rough week.

My parents came in from the West Coast for Christmas and it was, as always, a blast. Unfortunately, seeing them never fails to remind me how much I miss my family, living here.
I've spent the past few days wanting nothing more than to return to BC and cheer up. I can't leave Ontario for that reason though - not because I think moving across the country (again) will solve my problems.

One day I'll return home. Hopefully before the nephews are too grown and under my own will, because it's the right time to do it, not because I've crashed back into a level of depression I haven't felt since I was 16 (Not that I'm depressed, just that I'm depressed this week).

Part of my trouble, and the reason I've been an emotional wreck today, is a visit to the doctor yesterday. I rarely go to the doctor, as I'm generally in good health, but yesterday I went to ask about stomach problems I've been having for a few weeks. All the symptoms of reflux (minus pain), including nausea after eating. Include, when I lie down, a feeling that I can only describe as being the same as a head-rush, but in my stomach, and I've been losing out on a fair amount of sleep.

I've been feeling better, but went to a doctor to get it checked out, and see if my ongoing anxiety (unreasonable, reason-less anxiety) could be effecting this discomfort.

So again, I rarely go to a doctor, but when I do I expect to be treated patiently, and with as much care as health-interest.
Instead, I had a doctor who told me outright "You cant feel like that, describe it differently," a couple times, insisted I had to have a reason for crying (I always feel like crying at the doctors, no, I don't know why). She gave me pills and told me to come back in two weeks (a good point for her, actually..more than I expected from a clinic) but ignored my concerns about anxiety.

That was the kicker..I was already distraught, talking about feeling anxious always makes me feel horrible, and upon it finally getting bad enough that I talked to a doctor, it was brushed aside.
I left feeling like suppressing symptoms and getting me back out the door was more important that my actual well-being.

I'm trying not to blame the doctor, even if she did lack a degree of bedside manner I'm also well aware of my own tendency to overreact to negative social cues (and completely miss the positive ones. Yey).

As it stands, if I don't feel better either stomach wise (as the visit to the doctor actually made it much worse) or emotionally, I'm going to wander to another clinic and speak with someone else, which I hate to do as it will just tie up resources for other people. I take the new surge in stomach unhappiness to mean this is stress-related, so I plan on doubling up on cod liver oil and getting as much exercise as I can, ie. daily.

It's upsetting. The majority of experiences I've had with doctors have been good..but the few bad ones have been absolutely horrible.