A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #97 Keep Calm and Carry On
The ADHD is strong today!
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
Dear Internet,
I was nearly blinded by the sun this morning when I took the pug out for her constitutionals. It’s cold out there; good thing I bundled up. 36F in Louisville, KY is -10 in Michigan. True facts.
Sleeping has been my enemy for months now. I can get to sleep but it’s the insomnia that happens when I wake up at 2:30A to go pee. Insomnia attacks and I toss and turn, often for hours, until sleep claims me again. It has fucked up my sleep pattern to the point I’ve called in sick to work because I could not function, and the lack of sleep was giving me painful headaches.
I’ve tried 10mg of melatonin; a product from Davinci Labs called Sleep Complete, as well as Trazadone and Seroquel prescribed from my psych med APRN. The Seroquel is a mood stabilizer and it’s intense. I’m on the lowest dosage and one pill had me down for the count for 14 hours. A half pill easily eight hours. I cannot imagine having mania so bad that I would need Seroquel. My psych med APRN warned me that the Seroquel was the big guns. If I couldn’t sleep on it, then something serious is going on. Oh, Seroquel works–just too well.
(To be sure, most nights I spin which pill to take depending on what my needs are for the night. Melatonin? Sleep Complete? Full or half dosage of Seroquel? May a bit of Trazadone? Let’s rumble.)
When I was sick with COVID, and when I could breathe, I slept with my CPAP on to make sure I was getting oxygen. This shouldn’t sound something terribly interesting to say–let’s be honest, it really isn’t–but last spring word broke that Philips, the maker of my machine, discovered a carcinogen in the backing used in some specific machines. Some obscenely low number of people were getting cancer (< .03% I think) and Philips decided to pull the machines off the market and recommend to not use them. Also, call your doctor. My and TEH’s machines were affected so we immediately stopped using them. I emailed my doctor’s office for advice, per Philips’ instructions, and was told they couldn’t give me advice based on legal reasons. My CPAP supplier has a hotline where they recommend not getting a new machine from your doctor but to sit tight and wait until Philips sent a replacement which could take up to a year. (It’s been nine months since we filed with Philips and no word yet on the replacement machines.)
Since wearing my CPAP seemed to help when I was sick, could it too help with my insomnia? The answers turns out to be yes it could. TEH as not a fan of this because cancer but hell, I smoked for 20 years so what’s a few more months of another carcinogen? Plus, I can sleep!
My ADHD is strong today. Since I’ve started this missive, I’ve:
Made hot cocoa twice
Ate a banana (may end up making banana bread this weekend)
Ate a beef stick and cheese
Waxed the stray hairs off my neck, chin, and face
Shaped my eyebrows
Put on and washed off a charcoal face mask
Posted to IG twice
Check social media multiple times
Change the bed sheets and made the bed
Start laundry
Running update: TEH and I are a bit leery on going to the gym due to *points to world around us* and especially since we’ve had COVID already. Our immune systems are good for three months? Is that right? We’re also vaxxed and boosted but people gonna people. With that being said, he’s taking over my training. As I posted on FB the other day:
We've done a version HIIT a few times: walk 1/2 mile to the park (warm up), go up and down a long set of stairs until I get huffy, walk around to cool down. Rinse, later, and repeat. Walk home. The problem with this is not my ankle or my knees but I get muscles spasms around the L4 on my left side of my body after the first set. PT therapist said it was due to overcompensation for my arthritic right ankle all these years.
Old age sucks.
I'm in PT twice a week and on the other days I do my big ole stack of exercise (she's added more omg). She wants me to not do our HIIT until my back is in a better place. Back feels fine on day to day living so won't really know until I try our HIIT exercises again. Probably in a few weeks. In the interim it's the big ole stack of stretches, yoga a few times a week, walk on the treadmill a few times a week (this doesn't seem to trigger my back pain), and have TEH teach me how to use weights so I can open pickle jars.
Thankfully, we have a gym on the first floor of our building. It's not much but it has the basics. I've also been following more fat athletes, runners of all shapes and sizes, and other people all shapes and sizes who are lifting, roller skating, arial work, and pole dancing on IG. It fucking blows my mind to see bigger bodies just bend around with ease because my bigger body doesn't do that, and I want it to.
Two goals are on the table: run a 5K and get certified to teach yoga. (The last one is super important to me because while it may be "my practice," most yoga instructors I've worked with have no idea how to work with bigger bodies, so I feel frustrated and annoyed during practice.)
I’m a work in progress. Forever.
Things I Recently Wrote
What I’m Reading
FINISH A FUCKING BOOK LISA BEFORE STARTING A NEW ONE.
The 7/12 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle An Agatha Christie-esque locked room mystery
Time’s Convert The prequel/sequel in the A Discovery of Witches universe
Changeless Book #2 in the Parasol Protectorate series
Reputation Mean girls with Jane Austen thrown in
Bridgerton Volume 1 You’ve watched the series on Netflix, time to get steamy between the pages
Dissolution Lawyer turned sleuth in Tudor England
Intuitive Eating Eating should not be about weighing or calculating your food
Wonderful Thing
Thursday the pug. She turns 10 in December.
I love her.
Interesting Things (or things to buy)
Not a thing to buy but I couldn’t post this week without a nod to the Super Bowl Half-time Show of 2022.
GenX forever! I will die on this hill.
Links to Read That Are Not (Terribly) Depressing
Nothing new this week.
Get vaccinated and mask up! There is a pandemic going on.
lisa x
(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)
You've just finished reading A Most Unreliable Narrator: the slice of life newsletter from the GenXer about town, Lisa Rabey. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky if you're so inclined. I am everywhere. Copyright © 1996 - 2025 by Lisa Rabey