Here's another thing (or five) dragging me down...

This isn't a good time of the month for me.

I'm heading into the week-long screaming hell that some euphemistically call PMS week.

(Because women in a murderous rage need an innocuous acronym... and because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.)

So I'm less rational than usual anyway, but damn.

I'm really down again.

You know... feeling hopeless, sad, grumpy, disgruntled, out of sorts, bad-tempered, sullen, cantankerous, truculent, crabby, sulky, crotchety, dissatisfied, grouchy, peevish, grumbling, petulant, cross, querulous, surly, testy, irritable... I could come up with more, but I think you get it.

(If you don't, email me and I'll try to help you understand.)

First, the refinance thing. Jesus. What a pain in the ass. I talked to our guy on Friday, and I'm hopeful we can resolve all the shit this week, but it's been awfully stressful for me. I don't need more stress. It makes me edgy. Keeps me awake at night. Wakes me UP at night, too.

I'm tired of sleep deprivation. (no pun intended)

Between the surgery recovery and my natural need for a little extra sleep and the sleep deficit I ran on from April until last week, I'm still tired.

I didn't have a full night's sleep in that entire time. Before the surgery I woke up five to eleven times every damn night feeling like someone was sticking a hot wire into my knee.

It wasn't the worst pain I've ever had, but it just got so old. Dragged me down a little, I think. Made me feel discouraged.

Now I've done sleep deprivation before, of course. Matt didn't sleep through the night for a whole year, and Lyssa for about three months. But this is different.

I don't seem to have caught up on my rest yet.
I'm actually a little impatient with my progress on that front. It pisses me off that the only guarantee of a full night's sleep is to take some kind of medication.

I am officially off the pain pills. Don't want to start taking them for sleep. Terrible idea, slippery slope.

But sometimes when I'm awake at eleven, and one and three and four and can't seem to find my way back into dreams, I look longingly at that fat bottle of oblivion pills sitting conveniently next to my bed.

And my knee still hurts. It does not hurt like it did before the surgery, and I feel some improvement every day (except when I first wake up in the morning and ask it to function...) but after I've been on it for any length of time, I have to stop and put it up and let it rest.

I hate being limited in mobility. I can't even go for a walk unless it's to the mailbox and back, or through the grocery store. My knee hurts enough still that it's not a possibility to go hiking or to get down and scrub the bathroom floor or the tub, and just forget things like trying to put the pots and pans away in the low cupboards in the kitchen. I'm not supposed to be kneeling or squatting... and even if the doctor hadn't expressly forbidden it, it wouldn't be possible because
It.
Fucking.
Hurts.

And it pisses me off that I'm not 28 anymore and able to heal overnight. I'm 48 and not getting any younger. Only seven years away from being able to live in an old-people trailer park, if that should be my desire... and by the time I reach that age, I may not be able to afford the trailer and I'll be living in a van down by the river. Or maybe in a rusted out sedan, with flowers growing where the tires used to be.

Who knows?

With a foul black cloud of anticipation hanging over me, I'm dreading the medical bills that (surprisingly enough) weren't already in my mailbox when I got home from the hospital. I know it won't be cheap, and I utterly loathe myself for dragging my family down like this.

Yes, I know it's not like that, and that I didn't mean to hurt myself, and that none of them blame me or anything, but it's how I'm seeing it right now. It's shitty timing for sure.

Speaking of self-loathing, I had lost about 20 lbs with the Yoga that I stopped doing at the end of April when I hurt myself. I found out when they were completing paperwork and made me step on a scale at the hospital that I've gained every single one of them back.

Every.
Single.
Fucking.
Pound.

You hear ignorant people on television or in public say things like, "My god, why doesn't she just stop eating." or "If I looked like that, I'd do something about it."

Of course if the solution was as easy as 'move around more and eat less' we'd all be thin and healthier as a nation.

I don't feel any hope anymore that I'll ever, ever get smaller.

None.

It's almost enough to make one hope for a year's worth of stomach flu or an intestinal parasite.

And in case you were wondering, I do know that my little stuff that's going on isn't all that important in the general scheme of things, and that there are people all around, probably within just a few miles of me who have things a lot worse. A lot.

I get that.

But I still feel crummy and negative today.