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I keep adding to this entry and not finishing. Just babbling to babble, I guess, but I can't seem to move on until I bleed it off. Inconsequential things feel symbolic. Generally a sign I have stuff percolating but I haven't given it enough time to bake in the ol' brain oven. New years is a weird time of year.

1) So, I'm getting over from being sick. I read an article on CNN on how to distinguish from a cold, the flu, or covid, and naturally it was as definitive and helpful as you would expect a news organization of CNN's caliber to be, so I can say I was definitely sick with something. Booster shot? Covid? Random winter crud? No idea. Spouse has been marinating in collective red hat germs so anything is possible. All his classmates are vaccinated, because they have to be, but they go out on the weekends into the wild and basically roll around in filth as far as I can tell.

It wasn't that terrible, I just took nyquil and drank hot tea and slept a lot, but it keeps fading and resurging in annoying ways. At the start of last week I had a constricted sore throat that felt like laryngitis and an occasional wet cough. Then the sore throat has eased up and I felt pretty bright eyed and healthy for a half day. Then I got that nagging headache you get when you've overslept, but then the headache mushroomed into sinus pressure and I've been sneezing my head off and chained to a kleenex box for the past few days with snotty sinus problems and headache on and off. First time I have gotten sick since the pandemic started where I feel like I truly may have caught covid. No fever, not much coughing, sense of smell is fine, nothing outside a normal winter cold. I'd blame it on the booster but the effects went on too long. I wouldn't be shocked if spouse got exposed at hogwarts and brought it home for christmas. Good thing we didn't go see the matrix or WE might have been the nasty germ spreaders in the theater. I have kept myself home, no grocery shopping, don't want to be the germ spreader. Spouse wanted to come home for new year's weekend and I told him there's no food in the fridge and I have no food mojo, so you will be responsible for food. Then he got home and he's like, there's no food. Told you. Your job now. The joke is that spouse makes orc food. He goes in the pantry and he's like, there's canned green beans, canned pumpkin and ramen in here, we will feast. I'm not eating canned green beans with pumpkin and ramen. That's disgusting. Go get us proper food, or order us takeout. You're the orc cook, you decide. We had this discussion at the start of the pandemic, when you insisted on buying canned green beans. Unless I am starving for reals, no green beans, and even then I may choose to eat bugs instead (I've had cricket flour, I am now brave).

So he went out and got some packaged frozen stuff so we kinda had food. Kinda. Then later we ordered pizza. It was all carby stuff and now I feel like I'm putting the Oh in Obese. Pretty standard to shake yourself awake after the holidays and be like, shit, too much indulging, time to sober up. Capricorn and all, ruled by saturn, 'tis the season of Getting Serious. Plus the carbs definitely didn't help shorten the sinus headaches. I've been doing really well with the headaches the past couple months and this was just a reminder of how shitty I can feel. Headaches and bloat, awesome. Welcome to the horrible part of adulthood where you start seriously saying stuff like, "Oh I can't eat that it will aggravate my (old person ailment)." When I was a kid I thought adulthood was going to be great because I could buy ice cream whenever I wanted, and now I can't even eat ice cream without realizing it makes me feel fat and gives me headaches and gas. The indignity.

2) Spouse passed his fit test last week, even with the crud. So he's in a sassy mood. The fit test has been his boogeyman for months. He says it feels like it's all downhill from here. I'm so proud of him, just because I get that it was a huge mental block making him feel like he didn't deserve to accomplish this life goal for himself. Whatever one thinks about spouse's career path (one person's bastion of justice is another's jackbooted authority figure), the road to getting here was really hard for him and took a lot of grit. I'm proud of him for sticking to his goals and putting himself where he thinks he can do the most good for others. There's a lot of different kinds of work he could get assigned to and some of it is thankless and hard and absolutely critical for certain vulnerable individuals. And Alaska isn't exactly a sexy ladder climbing assignment where one goes to vault himself into the upper ranks. I am proud of spouse for being the sort of person who would pick the unwanted work in unwanted places.

3) Spouse put in our notice with apartment management so we have until the end of Feb. Guess we have to move now. Whenever I start thinking about the actual moving process it makes me super anxious. Spouse seems to be hellbent on getting us out ASAP, but he's not thinking about things from my POV. Pack the stuff up, sure, but that's all my art supplies and projects? I wanted to do things and you're taking everything away for possibly a 90 day transit time? Plus you're not allowing time to be available to help me, so you're going to stick me with all the cleaning and grunt work all by myself while you're at hogwarts? He doesn't get it. He doesn't get how hard the last move was - it was so much work. He wasn't around. I may have to sit him down and have a serious "come to jesus" because this is exactly how I get stuck having a nervous breakdown and freaking out. I tell him exactly what's up and he doesn't listen - he's doing it again. This is like the time right before the pandemic when we went on vacation to Disneyworld and I flat told him I was tired and needed some chill time to rest and he proceeded to drive us straight to Epcot and expected me to spend the day walking around with the in-laws when we'd just gotten off the plane. I ended up dehydrated and miserable, crying in the rental car, ruined the first day of the vacation. I told him I needed to rest - I was very clear - and he's like, oh, we'll just go in and find my brothers and that was a pack of LIES. I'd better lay down the law or he's going to do it again. Listen, buddy, do you want me to freak out? Because this is how I end up freaking right the fuck out. You're going to dump all the work on me and triple my stress by not giving me time to make careful decisions and it's going to be a fucking shitshow. So I'm anxious about the whole thing. Yup.

4) I started the grey project on phase 2 and it seems to be going nicely. It is really fascinating to observe. I am quite surprised at how accessible this project is. It doesn't need much space and it's easy to conceal. The materials are cheap. The knowledge is comprehensive and freely available. It's such a bummer I am going to have to keep my trap shut, because I wish I could discuss with certain people, spouse being at the very top of that list. But it's not a bad thing to do something completely for yourself, to keep to yourself. If you want to get all mystical about yourself, privacy is the way to go. These days, something that must be kept to oneself is an anomaly. Like a stone in a river, the water flows over it but the stone is still there.

5) No headaches the past couple lunar holidays. Maybe the vitamins are working. I've been feeling really stable and generally good (current sickness aside). I polished off that whole pound of potassium powder and I don't seem to need as much lately. I dunno if I'm just more tuned into my body signals that it is needed, or if I made up a genuine deficit, but lately I just take one of the 99mg supplement pills in the morning and that seems to do it. I'm on a good multivitamin, the allithiamine, "hormone balancing" supplements like evening primrose and chasteberry/vitex, and extra magnesium & potassium. Generally feeling pretty good - I don't seem to be having the noticeable wonky hormonal rollercoaster that I did in previous months. Couldn't point my finger at any one thing, but together they seem to be doing the trick. Fingers crossed.

6) I bought a used copy of a bellydance DVD that my dance partner in anchorage had. It had a particularly good warmup section that we both really liked, plus some killer exercises for the psoas. A truly good warmup is gold - this one is worth the whole dvd cost. This is Zoe Jakes' "From A to Zoe". I don't particularly care for her dance style (it is perhaps too modern & solo focused and I prefer more group folkloric) but she is a good teacher and she put a lot of great info in this DVD set. It's geared for the intermediate/advanced student. I am out of practice and I don't think I can even do her warmup anymore, but it is something to work up to again.

7) "The Outside" by twenty one pilots is my song of the moment.

8) I cut my hair on the solstice, and redid the henna. Typically I need spouse to buzz the sides for me, but he hasn't been around and they don't look good when they grow out to a certain length. Then I look like a slob in the mirror and I'm sick of it. So I changed my haircut to something I can do myself. My hair was down to mid back and I cut it into a shoulder length bob. I still buzz the sides, just a smaller area so I can do it all myself without risking an unfortunate clipper accident. The shorter bits are growing out and they look dorky but this is the perfect time for that awkward grow out stage. It's not exactly the haircut I want, but it's the haircut I can give myself.

9) I'm muddling around with the idea of making my own oil paints. Rationally, this is a dumb thing, but I keep thinking about it. I've picked acrylics over oils because oils will make the apartment smell like a garage, but acrylics aren't perfect either in terms of workability. I ran across this guy who supposedly researched ways to prepare linseed oil like Rembrandt and I am intrigued with the idea of painting like they did hundreds of years ago, before you could order a tube off Dick Blick. You can buy dry pigments and make your own paint. It's not the money saving workaround you would think, good pigments are still expensive, and there's the extra work. I am still very intrigued, though. I want to buy this guy's ebook and some dry pigments and see what's up. His website is crude and the ebook is probably a mess, but somehow that only adds to his credibility.

-> http://www.calcitesunoil.com/BOOK.html Calcite sun oil.

My paints might get ruined in this move if everything freezes. I am not sure there is any way to spare them from winter temp exposure, given that I can only bring so much baggage on a plane flight. On the last move I kept them physically with me, in the car and lugged into hotel rooms and wherever I was staying. I don't think spouse gets that I may lose hundreds of dollars worth of art supplies here. I'm not happy about it.