Sleep...

Another night spent sleeping my life away. I prepared but detoured to my bed for what I thought would be two hours. It ended up being ten and a half. Blissful sleep. I'm clearly not getting enough of it since naps keep turning into bedtime. I have an observation to discuss for later.

There's a cap on my world

I always find it strange that I seem to have such strong emotions for the things I appreciate. I mean I know I like it, but I'm also acutely aware of my possible overuse of the word love. It just happens to be the best representation of my emotions about things that surround me. As I've been told before, I have a tendency to overcommit.

So what is it that I love now? The weather. Well, the fog to be more specific. Today was the first time that I've experienced an entire day of fog. Where I live, if fog is in the forecast, it's around when you wake up and a distant memory by lunch time. Since it isn't a common thing, that's probably why I find it fascinating.

To me fog is the sky closing in a little. A cap or ceiling to my outdoors. It reminds me of a wall you might find in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. There in front of you blocking your view but not matter how far you walk you can never reach out and touch it, let alone lean against it. The tops of buildings are cut off and thoroughfares are turned into dead ends. The world changes around you with the isolation of the landscape. As I write this it dawns on me that I am painting a nightmare for the claustrophobic, though that isn't how I mean it. It's just one of those things that the weather gives me to stare at for a while.

Insert crummy picture that doesn't do it justice.

I did say I could do it

I took on a work load that I thought could turn out to be more than I could handle. On top of working full time at job 1 I quadrupled the amount of hours I worked at job 2. This turned my wonderful little 46 hour work week into a 60+ hour work week. It took me about three hours of borderline hyperventilating just to convince myself that I could do it. Needless to say I had a lot on my plate.

When approached with the opportunity I jumped on it. I have a bit of a thing for owning things and more hours equals more pay equals potential to own more things. It was a no-brainer. I'm always down to pick up more hours when I can. The thing is, I've never worked this much. Ever. I've done the full work load for school and I've done a smathering of overtime over the years. I'm not afraid to stretch myself a little thin at times. I've just never committed to 60 hour weeks for months at a time. All that being said, I did commit myself to working a lot and now I've completed it.

It was a bittersweet moment when I finished tonight. I was done, I succeeded... ish. I showed myself that I can handle a littl more work. I also showed myself that my level of commitment gets harder to fake when I'm tired. Now I get to reintroduce myself to an old friend, sleep. I'm not sure how this meeting is going to go, but I have an inkling that the dialogue will sound something like this:

Me: Whoa! Sleep! Dude, how have you..? It's so good to see you.... Wow, umm. I don't know if you remember me. We met before a long time ago.
Sleep: Yeah, hey. I remember.
Me: Dude, I didn't realize you still hung out around here.
Sleep: I've always been here. You kind of fell off the grid... Busy, right?
Me: It's been nuts for me. But that's all behind me. You and I have a lot of catching up to do.
Sleep: Uh, yeah sure. You know I'm free when you are...
Me: How about right now?!? I have so much to tell you.

The scene ends with me happily tucked in bed for more hours than are necessarily healthy. I can't wait. This work week isn't quite over for me.

Due to scheduling conflicts and God loving me, for the first time in three or four months I have two days off in a row. My only thoughts are of me running around in circles pretending to be an airplane as I try to fanthom what on earth I'll do with myself for two days. I may not get out of bed at all on day one. Then again, I may as my life is seriously backed up.

Oh, sleep...

It must be stress

Guess who has a rash that likes to pop up whenever it likes?

Still me.

I've put a lot of thought into the fact that this thing seems to be selective of when it rears it's ugly head. I tried to figure out what change may be causing it. I tried to retrace my steps to see to what I could have exposed myself. Nothing is adding up. Except... I remember thinking that it felt like my conscious thought was triggering it. As if the more I dwelled on it the more often it popped up and worse it got. I also made note of the fact that twice I started to break out and decided to go to sleep without treating it, only to be completely clear when I woke up again.

I may have been closer to the truth when I suspected my conscious thoughts to be the trigger. I think this thing is brought on by stress. Before I'm written off as crazy, I'll explain:

My first breakout occured when I was running late getting to work. My knees started to itch as I was driving. Once I got there I was then reprimanded for my tardiness. Words like losing and write-up were tossed around. All the while, the itch on my knees spread up my legs and to my arms. The worst occurrence happened when I was worried I'd be late to my other job and was rushing to get there. While in the car, I was watching the thing spread across my skin while eyeing the clock to make sure I made it to work (that time I did). That occurrence was probably strongest because I was freaking out at the many possibilities of what this rash could be.

It's simple, I wake up fine. It's when I am going to work (usu. rushing) or dealing with some situation whilst at work where it starts. Basically, the more on my plate the more bumps across my skin.

I've known for years that I get stress headaches. I once had a situation where I had a person who only needed to say two words before I had a headache. Just recently I have noticed that my stress headaches are making a comeback. The likes of which I'd rather not see. This is a first for me breaking out from stress. I know it isn't diagnosed but I'm willing to believe it. I'd be more worried if everytime I went to sleep it didn't clear up just to come back again when I fussing over something.

All of that being mulled over, I'm currently trying to wain myself off of antihistamines. There's no way taking two every two hours is healthy. I've even stopped freaking out when I break out. I believe that may be part of the reason the outbreaks aren't as bad as they were. That or maybe something to do with the medication that was prescribed to me. Who's to say at this point? I'm just glad it's weakening. Hopefully I don't eat my words tomorrow.

I love to sleep

Coming home and going straight to bed is a best practice to me. It's better than anything else I can think of for shaking off the day and calming the nerves. Or for dealing with the adverse affects of too many antihistamines. Either way, I love it. Like I said yesterday, it isn't conducive towards achieving certain goals, but it'll make them less stressful.

I'm sure it can be gathered that I am still dealing with this rash/breakout/random-skin-issue. I still don't know what it is. I'm not even sure, with the cocktail of OTC and prescription drugs I am taking, what is treating it. I came home and slept. It's the best thing I could do. I felt slightly woozy all day. Almost as if I was on the border of losing my bearings and passing out. As I cannot say when I have ever passed out before, it would be a big deal if I did.

Back to sleep. There are definitely times when it is better than others to sleep off your problems. I'll go on record to say that today probably wasn't the best day for me to ignore my life for the better part of this evening. I probably shouldn't sleep my day away when I have laundry climbing the wall, or trash that needs to be thrown out. Maybe this is the time to wash my bed clothes in order to make sure that I'm not breaking out from something I'm laying in. Maybe. I could be organizing my media, or filing my paperwork, or doing a million other things to make my living situation more manageable. Nope. I'd rather sleep.

Call me lazy, but at least I'm not freaking out over my life back up due to a lack of sleep on top of everything else. My weeks will be normal here soon. I'll be able to have a day off again. A day that I can devote to keeping my home life in check. Finding time to deal with these things now is apparently too much work for me. Or maybe I should just call it...

Lazy.

So many things working against me

It appears that a 60-hour work week, continuous doses of diphenhydramine and an old computer is not conducive to blogging everyday. I come home and turn on my computer and as I'm waiting for things to get ready I fall asleep.

I'm feeling fairly ridiculous. Every time this thing pops up it seems to get worse.Yesterday was really bad. This whole thing started with me breaking out around the knees and up the back of my legs. That was day one. Now it's popping up on the soles of my feet, my hands, wrists and stomach as well.

It's nuts. I was on my way to work when it really hit. Imagine me desperately trying not to crash my car as I bathed in cortisone. I just wish that I knew what it was. I don't know if I am continuously exposing my self to the same thing everyday, or there is something coursing through my system that I am barely fending off. Either way, I would love to quash it because it is a terrible sensation. Fortunately I remembered that the doctor said that I should be taking diphenhydramine every two hours. That helped a lot. The only problem is that I can't keep up that regimen while I'm sleeping. My alarm clock is now an itching sensation all over. I hope I can figure this thing out.

Everything is coming back, so I'm going to try to sleep through it. Hopefully the diphenhydramine will have kicked in by the time I wake up again. Please, dear goodness, let the itching be gone.

A one day thing? Not on my life

Soooooooo. Here I was just thinking that my little rash was something that would pop up, convince me to see a doctor and then go away without a trace. Do all of that in the course of a day and convince me that I was just crazy.

At least I'm not crazy, about that anyway.

My breakout started to come back seemingly immediately after the diphenhydramine wore off. I wasn't thrilled. I partially expected when I went to sleep that I'd wake up covered in the ever growing rash. However when I awoke this morning, I wasn't completely covered and could still breathe. Good right? Not quite. It didn't take me over while I slept. I thought I would be just fine because it had run it's course. Then I was awake, not coming out a sleep, just awake and the itching started. It was as if my conscious thought was triggering the outbreak. Basically being told that this would take a few days at least to clear up.

I wasn't going to fill the prescription. I'm notorious for not doing so. I have been to the doctor several times where they tell me what I already know and write a prescription that I never fill. I usually get irritated at how much the visit costs and refuse to spend anymore money on what I can be self medicating. I never said I was always practical. Anyway, I got over that when the itching started again. I filled my prescription and decided to trust this expensive doctor.

It appears that I will be on meds for at least thirty days. This should be fun. Here's hoping for no further adverse reactions.