late February check-in

I'm into my second week on my newly-lowered thyroid medication dose, 88 mcg/day.  This is astonishingly small, since I've also dropped the 5 mcg/day of T3 I was taking... essentially half of the dose I had been on for, oh, about 15 years.

Biggest problem so far: gastroparesis, big time.  Small meals without too much fat or protein aren't too bad, but just about every dinner has me reaching for my crystallized ginger in the hope of getting my stomach working again.  Fortunately I haven't noticed any reflux but the bloated, nothing's-moving feeling is yucky.   And I'm still trying to get my intestines to function properly, too, but that at least seems to be getting better? Who knows.

Parent-teacher conferences were last week so the week was a blur, but it was overall really positive.  I got a lot of great responses to the science fair.   If it was brought up, it was in a complimentary way, which was just awesome.  Still glad it's over.

Chem labs started today and I'm exhausted with all the extra running around campus!  Of course it's my week to clean the teacher's lounge, too -- timing is everything.  Perhaps with all the extra running around and having absolutely no appetite, I can finally lose the weight I piled on over the last few months of 2019...

Admin requested a blurb describing our proposed electives classes, requested by Friday.  This is really a shame since we were hoping to dodge this particular bullet.  I had the thought, What if I just don't do it? 

I've already decided I want to stay, so I'm doing my best not to get too spun-up about it.  We'll see how it goes.  We're using a Robotics curriculum for our spring meetings, and I'll just adapt that, but I am a bit cranky about this.  I would much rather do other things!

Lent starts on Wednesday, and Saturday is Leap Day.  I can't believe how quickly this year is flying by.

babies

My baby turned 19 years old today.  One more year with a teen-aged offspring!  How odd.

I feel surrounded by babies these days.  One of my co-workers just announced she's expecting.  Another has an absolutely charming 3-year-old at our preschool, and I get to see her practically every day.  This afternoon, one of the school moms stopped by for something or other and she had her own adorable infant hanging off her arm.  He was such a sweetie, ready to smile at everyone (well, me, anyway!).

There are no babies in my personal immediate future but I do enjoy being baby-adjacent.  I get a tiny bit wistful hoping my own kids will have families of their own some day, but since not one of them has any kind of significant other on the horizon, who knows? 

They all have plenty of time for that, anyway.  I'll have to stick with vicarious grandbaby experiences for now.

checking in, again

I came down with a slight cold over the weekend, of course.  Lack of sleep and too much stress will do that to a person. I won't say anything more about that for (superstitious) fear of making it worse.  The real reason I'm writing is because my hands were really bothering me today, and this is the first time I can remember them feeling like this in a very long time. 

I had a hard time putting on my rings this morning, and even had to wear my wedding and engagement rings on my pinkie finger for a while before the swelling went down enough so I could move them over to the proper finger. 

As far as I know, the only bad stuff I ate yesterday was a very tiny bite of a brownie from the tasting station at Trader Joe's.  I did a lot of driving in the afternoon, and then made dinner, but nothing else involved wheat, so I have no idea what's going on.

I'm also keeping an eye on my digestion.  It's been dysfunctional for long enough that I finally broke down over the weekend and bought Imodium and a super-strength probiotic.   I'm glad I did because the best cold medicine by far I've found is Mucinex, and that stuff also does a number  on my intestines.  I hate being on so many meds but I do have to be able to stand around a classroom and talk most of the day, and I'm grateful the meds make that possible.

I've been off the T3 for a few weeks now, so of course I'm wondering if that has something to do with the arthritic-feeling hands.  Also, it rained like crazy last night and today was cold and blustery, which, if I actually had arthritis, could be enough to explain my bad hands and other creaky joints.  But as far as I know, I don't have arthritis!  I mean, I thought I did, for years, but then that diagnosis was amended to "allergic reaction to wheat."   Plus, we've had numerous cold and blustery days this winter and none of them involved my hands feeling as bad as they do now.  They've really bothered me all day.  Harumph.

I had a blood test Monday afternoon and am waiting for the doctor to call in my new dosage.  I missed a call from her today, but I hope I'll be able to take it when she calls tomorrow.  I'd like to know what's going on.  I don't feel particularly tired or brain-fogged or any of the typical hypothyroid symptoms, so I'm not going to worry about further dose-tinkering. 

In other news, a long-time online friend has recently been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.  Cancer sucks. 

at last!

It's always an odd feeling when a long-anticipated event draws near: the processes that brought this day about have been in progress since the apparent Dawn of Time, and now, suddenly, here it is!  Weird.

I'm talking, of course, about the science fair, which kicks off in approximately 8 hours, give or take a few minutes. 

I've been managing my students' work on their projects since August.  It really is quite a long time! 

I'm in good shape for the day, I think -- I have a map, and a key, and I've sorted out which projects the judges should look at, and I've actually graded everything except the students' log books.   That in itself is a testimony to my determination, because I just didn't want to have to do any grading on the day of the fair itself!  (At least not project grading... I have a couple of assignments to plow through before next week's end-of-term deadline.)

There are 64 projects this year, a full 50% increase over last year.  Now I finally see why I keep getting crunched by my grading!  It's a lot easier to manage the process when there are only 40-odd projects to keep track of.

I am up too late again after checking the map, typing it up, and creating the key... but mostly because I fell asleep on the couch and didn't wake up until after 10, so I got a solid 2 hours in there.  Off to bed now, though.  It's going to be a very long day! 

It will be lovely to have it over with, that's for sure.

(Apologies for all the exclamation marks in this post. They are unnecessarily ubiquitous these days but I do feel they're appropriate here!)