This week began roughly as I was still clearing the bad med from my system at the start of it, so I was quite tired. Overall, I was hopeful for better days ahead.
ADHD Update
My biggest priority this week was to get my meds situation sorted out. On Saturday, I had left a message asking for an appointment with my psychiatrist. They called on Monday and booked me in for the afternoon. The new plan was to try a different stimulant type. Vyvanse is an amphetamine type, and that was very bad. Next up was Concerta, which is methylphenidate based like Ritalin, but lasts longer. I started it on Wednesday at the lowest dosage.
Early on, I felt like I was reasonably able to get back to my life. My head did feel a bit odd, but not like it did with Vyvanse. It was milder. It's normal to have some odd feelings up there as it helps fix the dopamine issue. I didn't want to get my hopes up though as I had felt OK very early on with Vyvanse.
Dose one had some of the same side effects, but at such a muted level in comparison. My mood was improved too, but also at a reasonable level. Rather than euphoria, I felt level. I also wasn't particularly hungry, but I didn't feel it to the degree that I felt it on Vyvanse, where I couldn't even recall what foods I like to eat. And I noticed I would get bursts of energy and focus rather than all or nothing, so it was a bit like a sine wave rather than the jagged peaks and valleys of a triangular one. My cognitive function was doing decent with it as well. I felt like I might just be able to get back to my goals and that was excellent.
By the end of the week, I was feeling really good about Concerta at the low dose I am on. I was having some dizziness, but not all that pronounced. And I was starting to eat more normally. I do notice when I'm feeling like I need a break from something and I wasn't noticing that soon enough before.
Crafting
Some work was done on my goth quilt. The other fat quarters I had ordered had come in during all the chaos of November, but I hadn't gotten further than washing them. I started and finished cutting off the selvage edges.
After relearning how to make yarn balls with my ball maker, I'm ready to finish Lez Scarf. Years ago, my dumbass put my black yarn on a large wire spool and it was annoying and slow to knit with. I'm not sure what I'll knit next, but I reached out to a friend to find out who sells more natural fibre yarns in the Ottawa area. I brought my knitting to curling since I was there earlier than usual due to a car thing. More on that next week.
Curling
My physio appointment had to be postponed twice this week because my physiotherapist wasn't feeling well, so I just kept doing the strengthening exercises until our next appointment. Hopefully she didn't catch Covid. So many people have been lately.
At GSL, we played a game. We got three ends in. It should be 6 or more, but we usually only finish two.
This week was the beginning of Round 2 at Rainbow. I was able to get a ride from a league member there. I did some knitting while I watched the sheet I was playing on. I also checked to see how several friends were doing on their sheets. Our opponents forfeited, which has given us our first win. We made use of the ice time with a team practice and I think it was helpful to improve our communication.
Declutter
So far, I've added more things to the list than I've taken off, but I have been making progress.
I have gathered clothing items that are way too big for me now for donation. I'm close to caught up on laundry and I've made progress on dishes. I'm also doing better at meals. I took Saturday off since the week was a lot with the med stuff and some work stress.
Gaming
My stream went smoothly and I opened up more of the initial map in Diablo IV. I played a bit more on Saturday. I'm trying to find more of the waypoints and I've been doing some of the side quests. I noticed a quirk in that if cross-play is off, you can't message friends. Well, you can, but you won't see their response in your game. It'll only be in the chat app. There should be an option that is like, "My friends are cool. I just don't want to share the world with a bunch of strangers because the lag is too ridiculous."
Lately, I've been playing Trove with some friends. It has some similarity to Minecraft, but it's a cute MMORPG dungeon crawler and it's free. It's also quite addictive.
Learning
A life thing I learned was that fridge light bulbs last more than 10 years and fridges don't look so good without light.
Of the three languages I'm dabbling in on Duolingo, French and Japanese were the most useful this week. Latin helps me understand French a bit better somehow. Perhaps it's just helping me get little things I wasn't before.
Reading/Watching
I'm not done it yet, but thoroughly enjoying The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield, a local author. I love seeing how her career is progressing. It is a dark and queer tale from a historical fantasy lens: https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780008567859/the-chatelaine/
I watched Bottoms on Prime and it's hilarious. It was recommended to me by a friend who happens to be one of my former scriptwriting teachers that recently won a short film screenplay contest. He described it as, "teen lesbian fight club with the cult quality of Heathers," and I agree. Here is the trailer.
I also watched Gordon Ramsay's Shark Bait. I'm really thankful he made it though I was quite sad after seeing it. Hopefully, even more restaurants have stopped selling shark fin soup since 2011. I was especially sad to learn that they've been using small thresher sharks as bait for bigger sharks. Threshers are my favourite shark. They're smaller sharks and they flamboyantly stun their prey with a tail whip that is wonderfully resourceful.
Writing
When am I getting back to my writing? Your guess is as good as mine. Work is quite a bit right now as I put my first MSA in place and there is so much to get done before we have a period of not putting new contracts in place. And I'll soon be massively emailing purchase orders out to my sites and the suppliers that service them on top of the regular work. Knowing all that, I'm preferring to rest when I can and do the things I need to around my home. I've been taking lots of notes as I think up tweaks though. I'm often thinking about ways to improve certain scenes. I also think a lot about whether or not to foreshadow and where to do so along with whether or not to have easter eggs for the rest of the series. Yeah, there's a lot going on in my head all the time.