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Man, fuck this heat
Aug. 18th, 2023 01:55 pmI haven't been in my office all week, because it has been unreasonably hot over here in Portland. I'm not even in the city. I'm out in the woods, away from all the concrete and the buildings and the traffic, and our weather station's outdoor sensor still peaked at 104 at the worst of it. Because our apartment is on the top floor, on a southwest corner, the front room especially gets dangerously hot so we took the air conditioner out of my office and put it in the kitchen so we had the power of two air conditioners cooling down the front. Then we just closed off the back of the apartment and didn't come back here at all except to sleep. It's a bit mad to do it that way, but it keeps the bedroom extra cool for my husband to sleep during the day, and then when he wakes up at the hottest part of the day, we don't die, basically. But later today when he gets up, we'll be able to put my AC back here in my office where it belongs. I put it in here once on my own, and I'm not making that mistake again.
This electric bill is going to be a bastard, but equally this is also PNW, so like. Bastard electric bills are relative. I'm guessing about $130, as opposed to the usual $80 or whatever it is we pay. I think most of our power comes from Bonneville, but I think some also comes from Swift and Yale and a few other sources. Either way, our electric bill is reliably cheap out here, which is the only nice thing when it gets this way. We don't have to balance bankrupting ourselves by running all three AC units or risking death because the medication I'm on will literally kill me in this kind of weather if I'm not careful.
But being kicked out of my office wasn't really the end of the world either, because even if it had been reasonable on the weather front, my brain is full of cotton wool anyway. Monday I have to go in for some testing, and I've been on a low-fibre diet in advance of that, and it has absolutely fucked me up. I haven't been able to exercise right, and this diet has completely wrecked my stomach, which is ironic given stomach problems were the initial complaint in the first place, so I've spent this entire week on the sofa in front of the air conditioner watching all the Channel 4 series of Taskmaster and trying to work on the blanket I'm making without actually covering up with said blanket.
This whole thing has been really obnoxious though, because for years I've been fairly certain that I have IBS or something in that area. I know it's not coeliac or Crohn's, just because there are some pretty obvious symptoms and triggers that don't line up for either of them. But I wanted to pin down exactly what it is to get it properly documented and, if possible, medicated. Even though years of not having insurance have led to being able to more or less being able to just watch what I eat and not eat the things that actively make it worse. When I first saw the doctor about it earlier this year, I even told him that I'm fairly certain I have IBS, detailed exactly what my symptoms were, my diet, what triggers it. And he immediately agreed with me.
The first point of obnoxiousness came when I mentioned that I'd lost a significant amount of weight over the last year, and he seemed absolutely shocked at this admission. He asked, "Why?" like this weight loss was sudden and unexplained. I'd only mentioned it because the jeans I was wearing were massively too big and were awkward to get around when he wanted to get a feel at my stomach. But the way he said it was so forceful and weird that it caught me off-guard that it took me a moment to answer, and all I could manage was, "It seemed like a good idea?" And then he didn't seem to know what to do with that, so we wound up staring at one another awkwardly for far too long, because I guess god forbid someone lose weight on their own without being told to? But then he gave me this awful elimination diet, basically to check for coeliac and other allergies and whatnot, and also made a remark about how it would make it easier to lose weight and whatnot. Which was odd, but also massively frustrating, because I have been stalled since the moment I stepped into that room and had my diet fucked with. Because first, for six weeks, I was not allowed to eat anything that might be even a little bit upsetting to my stomach. No gluten. No dairy. No green vegetables. No soy. No mushrooms. No beans. No spicy things. No garlic. No onions. It was keto on crack and I lost my goddamn mind, but those last three I avoided to begin with anyway because they were 100% the problem. Six weeks of this shit, before I was allowed to slowly start introducing things one by one. I got about a month back on real food, and then had to go back to basically that stupid diet on Monday, only I am allowed things like bread and pasta and rice as long as it's not whole wheat. Tomorrow night I need to go to a clear liquid diet, which is going to absolutely suck. We've got it all in advance, two different flavours of jell-o (lemon and lime) so I don't get bored, but I still will, chicken broth, ginger ale, lemonade, and plenty of tea. I am going to lose my mind. I've given up on the idea of getting any exercise in for the rest of the week. It's not happening. I'm out of energy already. We've already made plans to order Szechuan on Monday when I get home, because there's a place nearby that does non-spicy options. I'm gonna eat until I'm sick, and then I'm going to go grocery shopping and actually buy some goddamn vegetables.
This electric bill is going to be a bastard, but equally this is also PNW, so like. Bastard electric bills are relative. I'm guessing about $130, as opposed to the usual $80 or whatever it is we pay. I think most of our power comes from Bonneville, but I think some also comes from Swift and Yale and a few other sources. Either way, our electric bill is reliably cheap out here, which is the only nice thing when it gets this way. We don't have to balance bankrupting ourselves by running all three AC units or risking death because the medication I'm on will literally kill me in this kind of weather if I'm not careful.
But being kicked out of my office wasn't really the end of the world either, because even if it had been reasonable on the weather front, my brain is full of cotton wool anyway. Monday I have to go in for some testing, and I've been on a low-fibre diet in advance of that, and it has absolutely fucked me up. I haven't been able to exercise right, and this diet has completely wrecked my stomach, which is ironic given stomach problems were the initial complaint in the first place, so I've spent this entire week on the sofa in front of the air conditioner watching all the Channel 4 series of Taskmaster and trying to work on the blanket I'm making without actually covering up with said blanket.
This whole thing has been really obnoxious though, because for years I've been fairly certain that I have IBS or something in that area. I know it's not coeliac or Crohn's, just because there are some pretty obvious symptoms and triggers that don't line up for either of them. But I wanted to pin down exactly what it is to get it properly documented and, if possible, medicated. Even though years of not having insurance have led to being able to more or less being able to just watch what I eat and not eat the things that actively make it worse. When I first saw the doctor about it earlier this year, I even told him that I'm fairly certain I have IBS, detailed exactly what my symptoms were, my diet, what triggers it. And he immediately agreed with me.
The first point of obnoxiousness came when I mentioned that I'd lost a significant amount of weight over the last year, and he seemed absolutely shocked at this admission. He asked, "Why?" like this weight loss was sudden and unexplained. I'd only mentioned it because the jeans I was wearing were massively too big and were awkward to get around when he wanted to get a feel at my stomach. But the way he said it was so forceful and weird that it caught me off-guard that it took me a moment to answer, and all I could manage was, "It seemed like a good idea?" And then he didn't seem to know what to do with that, so we wound up staring at one another awkwardly for far too long, because I guess god forbid someone lose weight on their own without being told to? But then he gave me this awful elimination diet, basically to check for coeliac and other allergies and whatnot, and also made a remark about how it would make it easier to lose weight and whatnot. Which was odd, but also massively frustrating, because I have been stalled since the moment I stepped into that room and had my diet fucked with. Because first, for six weeks, I was not allowed to eat anything that might be even a little bit upsetting to my stomach. No gluten. No dairy. No green vegetables. No soy. No mushrooms. No beans. No spicy things. No garlic. No onions. It was keto on crack and I lost my goddamn mind, but those last three I avoided to begin with anyway because they were 100% the problem. Six weeks of this shit, before I was allowed to slowly start introducing things one by one. I got about a month back on real food, and then had to go back to basically that stupid diet on Monday, only I am allowed things like bread and pasta and rice as long as it's not whole wheat. Tomorrow night I need to go to a clear liquid diet, which is going to absolutely suck. We've got it all in advance, two different flavours of jell-o (lemon and lime) so I don't get bored, but I still will, chicken broth, ginger ale, lemonade, and plenty of tea. I am going to lose my mind. I've given up on the idea of getting any exercise in for the rest of the week. It's not happening. I'm out of energy already. We've already made plans to order Szechuan on Monday when I get home, because there's a place nearby that does non-spicy options. I'm gonna eat until I'm sick, and then I'm going to go grocery shopping and actually buy some goddamn vegetables.
