Spinning on that dizzy edge

...though from how much today sucked, it might as well have been.

My period continues to harass me; I had to get up twice Sunday night to change supplies and avert a flood (and the second time I failed anyway). Today was only slightly better.

Last night the household had a strange insomnia hour at 3 AM. I woke up with my mind racing about absolutely nothing in particular and couldn't go back to sleep, so I wandered downstairs. My husband was awake from having crashed out super early and slept a normal amount of time. Then my son complained down the stairs about being awake due to a nightmare. I snuggled him for a bit and got him calmed down, then petitioned my husband for a foot rub and finally settled back down to sleep myself. This morning was a killer.

Today I had my annual review with my new boss and old boss in the same room. The best thing that happened was that I got the standard company raise. Everything else ranged from "eh" to "suck". I got "meets expectations" for each and every category. I have never had a review where I didn't get at least one "exceeds expectations" rating, if not a couple or more. The new boss said that I had excellent feedback from everyone she talked to, I did quality work, and everyone liked me, yet she failed to translate any of that into a rating higher than "yup, you did your job." I'm more than a little pissed about this, because it means that no matter how I feel how I did or how hard I work, I can't expect her to notice or care. So she basically just sucked out all the motivation I have to improve myself. Yay.

I think my old boss wasn't comfortable with the ratings, because she spoke up about a couple of points. I'm trying to decide if it's worth the time and awkwardness to talk about it to the old boss in confidence, not even trying to change the review but simply to calibrate my feelings about it.

The timing is especially vicious, considering I'm coming off a month of juggling multiple hard-deadline projects having met each timeline with quality work. I think I'm going to be Tumblring a lot in the upcoming days, because I'm spiteful like that.

...where by "outer space" I mean the vacuous cloud of nothing between my ears.

I was just thinking back to last year, where I was navigating between a bunch of story commitments, and planning Christmas shenanigans, and not having my cabana boy at home, and dealing with the Emperor's hard transition in school.

Now, I defaulted on the only story I've been interested in writing, my husband is home again (did I mention he got laid off a few months back? Yeah. Good times. In the good news/bad news vein, he's making almost as much from unemployment as he did at his job, which points out how grossly underpaid he was) and back to being my alternately surly/smiley cabana boy, and the Emperor is bored with daycare but not in active danger of being kicked out.

At least the Christmas shopping is almost finished. Oh! And the Space Battle Tree is all done, so we can pose the Emperor by it and get this year's holiday card knocked out.

Since I turned 36 this year, which is rather an arbitrary age except that it means I've been out of high school for as many years as my age when I graduated, I decided I really need to start taking better care of myself. I did my doctor visit for a full check-up, got mildly reproved for my cholesterol levels, and was referred to a dermatologist and the sleep clinic for other questions.

So this past weekend I did my sleep study and proved to their satisfaction that I have severe sleep apnea. (I might post my Frankenstein's monster pic of me all wired up.) Let me just say that calling it a sleep clinic is kinda like the misnomer of a speed zone - there was a minimum amount of sleeping involved. Anyways, I'm now waiting for my very own CPAP machine, and hopefully many restful nights will follow.

In other news, Creation is trying to kill me. I have no other explanation for why they scheduled David Hewlett, Joe Flanigan, Jason Momoa, and Rachel Luttrell all for the Vancouver con, and me with the not being able to go. (My TEAM!) I swear, if David Hewlett hadn't agreed to attend the Chicago one next August, I'd be really tempted to go postal. I shall clutch my receipt for my Gold ticket (SQUEEEE) and wait and hope that they add more non-Universe people.

I have been utter crap at following people on DW and LJ. My stalker lists (where I get things emailed so as to avoid the awkward friending dance) are beyond full, and I have no hope of ever catching up on my actual flist. My abject apologies for missing any huge life news and/or chiming in beyond late to your posts. Meanwhile, as a personal challenge to myself, I'm going to try to post more than once a month. Dammit.

Emperor,

You've been babbling in your crib for at least an hour and a half now. You say you want to go on an adventure this afternoon. Then PLEASE. GO. TO. SLEEP.

Right now, yes.

If I could transfer my sleep vibes to you, I totally would. Then I could get things done and you would have a monster nap.

Right now, we are gearing up to have a cranky evening, because even if you fall asleep now, your typical 2-hour nap will have you waking up at 5. And don't think we'll spring you from the crib if you don't nap; you're stuck there until at least 4.

Sleep. SLEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

Love,

Your mom, the Nap Nazi