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Friday, December 16

Forced Pause & Tea Towels

Adding to the medical issues I've mentioned before, I occasionally get migraines.  I used to get them about every 8 weeks or so, not often enough for preventative medication, but enough to be pretty annoying.  I never did figure out my triggers so there wasn't much I could do to prevent them.  Regular massage helped, but I stopped going when I switched jobs and for whatever reason, the migraines reduced significantly.  So my old job probably was a factor to some extent, but not the only trigger.  They started before I was working there and haven't gone completely.  Now it's months instead of weeks.

I get auras with my migraines.  The aura is not painful, but it means I have what looks like shifting shards of broken glass blocking my vision prior to the migraine pain settling in.  I actually went to the eye doctor before going to my family doctor.  The aura gives you the heads up that things are going to hurt a lot soon, but I can't see so I'm not comfortable driving until the aura clears.  Of course then I'm in pain so it's a bit of a lose-lose situation.  I wanted to include a picture for this, but google image aura migraine isn't cutting it.  Now mine seriously look like a kaleidoscope of broken glass with prisms of light, so picture more movement than just the flickering, but this guy nailed it.  Mine rarely go to a full circle, usually being a growing crescent shape that slide to the side out of my field of vision. 

Stress does seem to be a factor, and sometimes I think it is how my body says enough is enough, you need to rest.  It's not to say every time I'm stretched thin or stressed out I get migraines, but it's certainly a factor when I do.  Sometimes it seems to be the removal of stress.  Like, post-wedding.  I had 3 migraines over the course of my week long honeymoon.  We were taking possession of our house two weeks after the wedding, so I picked a low key honeymoon.  We rented a cottage near Haliburton for a week.  No planes, no passports, no foreign currency, very few restaurants so I didn't have to stress about what allergens were in my food.  Very low key.  And I spent much of it sleeping off a migraine.

So Wednesday night, I was working on a wall sized mapping project that's driving me a little crazy.  It needs to be done before year end to claim the revenue and technically, I should only be working on it on Mondays because it's an ad-hoc project, not my usual clients.  At that rate it's going to be done in February so I'm working on it on my other client time and evenings when I can.  Well, my body decided that I needed to stop this insanity and rest.  So yesterday was a day of dim rooms, soft noises and very minimal screen time.  We have very, very, few plans this weekend and I'm so thankful for that. 

I did get to make some progress on the tea towels later in the day when I had better concentration.  I have one set a little over half done and I'm pretty pleased.  I didn't trust myself to cut/sew, but I ironed up the red tea towelling that was going to be two sets, but sadly it will not.  There is a flaw and a few threads are pulling out in the middle about 50cm from the cut edge.  Pout.  So I'll get two good sized tea towels, but not 4.  So I was off to Fabricland this afternoon to buy more (yay early close!  oh wait, now I need to finish work at home... sigh).  I bought blue edging so now the three sets are different colours (and still 50% off, so $5/m).  Green for Mom, red for Scot (his wife loves red) and blue for Clone.  I'll do something with the flawed fabric for myself.  I don't care if I patch a hole, but I can't give that as a present.  Oh and these green ones are not the same width.  I bought this as a remnant and it was not cut straight.  I really wanted to keep what width I could so one is wider than the other.  Eh, Mom will understand.


Mr. Lina is well, worried about me.  He wants to see me happy again.  Poor guy only sees the crappy moods because I don't feel obligated to hide things from him.  The good and bad of being in a relationship.  Today he sent me an MLS listing for a house.  He hasn't done that in a while.  We talk about moving to a smaller community closer to his work, I lived out that way for my post-grad years.  Likely something with a bit of property to it, room to store a small fishing boat, kids to play.  After being in a semi with somewhat noisy neighbours and postage stamp yards, a little distance from the neighbours would be most welcome.  It's dreaming, but dreams are a good thing, I find it frames up a conversation on where we want to go and what we want our life to look like.  It feels good for him to send me the listing.  And the amusing part to me is that I looked at the same listing about a month ago.  It is a lovely house, problem is I'd need to quit my job to live there so you can see it's big domino to tip.  Whattdaya think?  Take a severe pay cut and work at Fabricland?  My current workload is making that seem pretty attractive actually.

2 comments:

  1. As someone who has been out of the workforce for over 13 years now, it can seem attractive to leave but it may be very hard to reenter later. I would suggest that you continue working -- perhaps part-time or at home? -- as long as you are able. I don't even qualify for Social Security at this point, which is pretty bad. On the other hand, quality of life is important too so if your job is making you sick, then that needs to change.

    I'm afraid to work at a fabric or craft store -- I think I would either overuse the discount and run out of money, or get sick of being in there and stop crafting altogether!

    I have never had migraines, for which I am grateful but the Hubs, Oldest and now it seems Youngest are prone to allergy-based headaches that can be just as bad. Picture sinus pain so intense that you're curled up in agony....yeah. It has to be knocked out with a combination of decongestant and strong pain killer; I must say that our life with Oldest has gotten much easier since he became old enough to take the adult medications. We've got a few years to go with Youngest, but his headaches aren't that bad yet so I'm crossing my fingers.

    The tea towels are lovely! I made my mom some a couple years back and she really enjoys them. They were white with boy/girl teapots embroidered on them.

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  2. Yeah, it's not time for me to leave yet. That's a post kid hope for me. And if we did move, I would have options other than Fabricland. Either take time to find something in my current field (this would take a while, it's pretty niche) or go back to support work. I am also pretty sure I'd spend my money before I got it working for Fabricland.

    Oh poor kiddos. Sinus pain is pretty brutal. I know I often end up with a sinus infection if I'm not careful in the fall, it's got to be brutal going through that with any kind of frequency.

    Thanks! I made a little more progress on the tea towels tonight. Just the centre one to do on the green set. Then onto blue I think, they just came out of the wash. I have a better idea of what I want on their set. Teapots would be adorable. Hmm... that actually might be appropriate for my SIL, the red set. Food for thought..

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Thanks for your comments, I love to have a two way conversation. I seem to be getting a lot of spam from anonymous users and am turning off the ability to comment that way. I really would like to hear from you so if you do want to add your two cents without an OpenId, email me at seraphinalina at gmail dot com.