What's been going on

Sorry, it's not entertaining....

I keep meaning to post here, and then I keep running out of … me, before I do.

Of course, I haven't been exactly well for several months. I realized yesterday that I still haven't opened and read the Christmas cards people sent us. I've also only cleaned I think 4 times since October, not the normal weekly cleaning.

So, why?

Well, when we landed I was very ill with pneumonia. That took me to the beginning of November to beat.

And then my thyroid went sideways, partly because of the stress leading up to the illness and, doubtless, the illness itself.

So that took till January to start getting treated. I'm now on the lowest dose, and the hypothyroidism symptoms have resolved somewhat (yes, I had thyroid problems before, but this is a different and more obvious type) I was due for a follow up early March, but I was very ill and coughing a lot, so it's been postponed till May.

Then I was okay by the end of March... And I got ill again, and that's been the last three weeks. A little better, much worse, almost well and it does a u-turn.

Now, this might be ALL the thyroid, because hypothyroidism messes with your immune system, or it might be... who knows?

It's probably not cancer, just to get that out of the way. My tests all came back clean. This is particularly important because my brother has lung cancer, so of course my parents are convinced I must too, because they think in narrativium.

However, the hypothyroidism does things like make my mouth very dry, which means I wake up several times in the night, which also leaves me susceptible.

Again, this is by way of explaining why you haven't yet seen the book finished in October. (Okay, there's another thing there, which is that HOW to revise it beyond minor tweaks, actually hit me only a month ago, and I did about 1/4 before I got sick. I'm probably just about well enough to resume that, and release e-arcs and put the first volume of that book (well, it's too large to BIND) on pre-order.

The voice remains too wonky to do readings. I don't know if it's the cold or the thyroid or yes.

There have been other things, mostly under life disruption and work, but honestly, the recurring illness is mostly what's messing me up.

Older son has suggested -- not ordered, which is rare enough -- that perhaps I need a vacation. Perhaps all the dislocations, extra work, etc. of the last three years have taken their toll, and I just need a week of not doing much.

Which in theory is an excellent idea, except it requires us to GO somewhere, because if I'm in the house, that's half of my work, and my husband doesn't have the vacation days he can take and... well...

Anyway. If you're on my substacks, I am better, or at least in one of the upper plateaus of whatever the heck this is, and I'll resume feeding them, I SWEAR. I might figure out an alternate to the fiction substack for next year. Like, a subscription on the blog, now that wordpress allows it. Let me investigate it. Just because I like the interaction here (or on discord, even) better than on substack. That would also make it easier, since it reduces the number of things I have to keep track of.

The decision hasn't been made yet. And I might keep all of it. We'll see.

Anyway, I'm giving myself to the end of April and trying to take things easy, but I promise posting on the substacks will resume and the edits will get done. Because enough is enough. And I feel like I'm letting all the subscribers and the people waiting for the book down.

And I'll try to post like a normal human being on my blog, too, instead of letting things slip. A measure of how weird it's gotten, my friend Charlie gives me a post a month for Mad Genius Club. Last week I cued his post up, made some edits, put an image up. Well, I thought I had. When he told me he couldn't find it to link, I went to MGC....

Either I posted it on someone else's blog (Look, who knows?) or I did all that and then closed the window without posting.

That's how weird things have gotten. Particularly at night, when I am tired. Reminds me of the bad year in 2015 when I'd find myself waking up in bed without any memory of having come up from my (then) basement office. I'd go downstairs and find out that I'd left the computer on, or sometimes a manuscript on the stand, with changes to be entered (Which often meant the cats had spread it all over the floor.) I called it "the veil of darkness" in the sense that my mind blanked out, and my body went on and did things.

It's not QUITE so bad. It's mostly the things I don't do that I thought I did. (Particularly annoying is when I DREAM of doing things, because then I have the work TWICE.)

I've also learned to stop and go to bed when I start feeling "fuzzy". If you miss me at the aggregator blog, that's why.

Oh, I should say I'm not losing my mind, in the sense that I'm not forgetting things, beyond the usual ADHD. It's more that I have very little energy and am at least a little tired at all times. Which means that I do basic triage (which is why I haven't managed to READ the Christmas cards, yet. ) When I'm well, I'm trying to overdue work. And when I'm not well, I'm trying to do the minimum to not have it all collapse on me. Stuff like doctor's appointments, vets appointments (one of our cats is terminal and getting much worse, so that takes up a high priority bit of time, too. Not quite at the point of our helping him over the bridge, but he requires medicine and such.)

Also to be fair, this last cold-like-substance got both sons, healthy men in the prime of their lives, and they both still have residual cough. It even managed to get Dan sick for three days, and Dan NEVER gets sick. So this was some kind of serious illness. Not the flu, no. Not Covid, either. Just a cold, but a heck of a cold.

Look, this will resolve itself. I have an endocrinologist appointment first week of May. That should give us some answers.

I have an appointment with my regular doctor next week. I think what I have going (beyond stress and tiredness, which I admit might be part of it, since last year was awful) is a synergy between real viruses and my auto-immune. Like, my asthma gets spun up and that makes my colds much worse. So I might need new meds to keep the auto-immune under control. (I can't take montelucast, it makes me suicidal. It's a rare side effect, and it hit me. One of the daily inhalers makes me permanently hoarse to the point I can't make myself heard. And the newest supposedly best one I can't have because my insurance refuses to pay for it and it's a ridiculous price.)

Anyway, let me have the rest of this week to be a bit of a flake, and I will do my best to be back in the saddle next Monday, okay?