Author: Nicole

My Birthday

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January birthdays suck, especially when you love nature yet it’s cold outside and you’re dealing with what I’ve come to conclude is central sensitization (although, thankfully, it seems to be getting better, albeit slowly).

That being said, my birthday wasn’t terrible considering it was a milestone one – I turned 50!

Initially I wanted to get eggs benedict takeout from a local restaurant but I was really worried even with it being a five minute drive from the house that it would get too cold. Then I saw the price – $17 – and decided I didn’t want to chance it.

Instead, we decided to try a new coffee shop. It was a whole debacle not knowing where to order (tablet they had setup, or counter), but Joe got an iced coffee and I decided to try a basic iced latte.

Let me tell you, that is the single best iced latte I’ve ever had and there was nothing fancy about it. I didn’t get any flavors and yet it was lightyears better than Starbucks, and cheaper too! Unfortunately the rice krispie treat I also ordered was no good. Flavor wise it was no better than what I’ve made myself, plus it was hard. Like I could possibly chip a tooth trying to eat it hard, yet it didn’t taste stale. I had to heat it up in the microwave to soften it.

We were almost home from our coffee run when I told Joe I wouldn’t mind a breakfast sandwich from Wendy’s, so he turned around so we could head over there. I love their maple bacon chicken croissants and breakfast potato wedges! Luckily they are pretty close to the house so back-tracking wasn’t a big deal.

When we got home with our food we had to park on the street because our neighbors were getting new kitchen appliances and the delivery truck was completely blocking our driveway. Not hanging over, parked entirely in front of the drive making it impossible to get in or out. Joe was so aggravated. They should have attempted to ask us if it was ok (which they couldn’t have, or our doorbell would have recorded them coming to the door) but like I told Joe, at least we weren’t trying to get out of the driveway to go somewhere since they ended up being there at least a half hour past the time we arrived home.

After we ate breakfast, I opened my gifts from Joe:

A wooden Blue Jay to add to my collection
A bird of the day calendar
The Cure’s latest concert release
A coffee table book of photographs of The Cure over the years (all taken by the same photographer and with a forward written by Robert Smith).

The bird on my calendar for my birthday is so cute!

The funny thing is when Joe bought me the same calendar last year, I was like “ugh, don’t really want that”, but grew to love it. When I mentioned at the end of the year I was sad the calendar was finished, he decided to get me another one. I told him next year to get me a dog one similar to it.

Other gifts he got me that aren’t pictured:
A chickadee coffee mug
A purple Brooklyn Nine Nine t-shirt

He also bought me a glucose monitor. I was looking at them months ago but I don’t remember ever adding one to a gift list. Who knows, though – Amazon seems to ignore the default wish list I’ve set up and just adds stuff to other lists. In any case, we just requested a return and dropped it off at the Amazon Fresh store.

After Amazon Fresh we went to TJ Maxx to look around but didn’t find anything good, and then to Costco to pick up a few things.

We killed a little time before heading back out to pick up lunch from a place called Taco Dale, which we took to the arboretum to enjoy in the car. I brought my trusty 80’s E.T. themed TV tray so I didn’t make a mess since I ordered birria.

It was so good! I thought ahead and brought a cooler, ice packs, and containers which proved to be useful since I could only eat half of my food before feeling stuffed.

We drove around the arboretum and ended up seeing a belted kingfisher and two red-headed woodpeckers! I didn’t bring my camera, just binoculars, but it was still fun. We even stopped in the visitor center to get a free blueberry scone (thanks to the points we earn with every visit) and hiked by turtle pond which was frozen over.

After the arboretum we did some shopping at Trader Joe’s before heading home.

Dinner was the previous night’s leftovers – a dish Joe starting making last year, which I love – ground chicken, Hokkien noodles, green beans, and green onions seasoned with sesame oil & coco aminos.

After dinner we watched some TV together and enjoyed a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie.

I was shocked that a Marie Callender’s pie was better than the local pie shop strawberry rhubarb that we picked up from Aldi last year and tried at Thanksgiving. It was more than twice the price and was so awful we threw most of it away. I’m glad there’s an affordable option for when the craving strikes.

Things I Don’t Understand

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Facebook
Why does Facebook work perfectly fine on my devices but takes forever to load on a desktop computer, regardless of the browser being used? Half the time photos or comments won’t even load. Messenger and Instagram on a desktop is crappy too.

My Library
How did I get an email this afternoon from our library to let me know that a hold is in if they’re closed all day? Is there a full day delay between when they actually put the item on the holds shelf and when they email the patron to let them know? Is someone still working there when they are closed to the public? Is it magic, like Joe suggested?

Yelp
I don’t know what is more aggravating – the fact that I cannot search my own reviews on Yelp via the Yelp app or their mobile website (and ONLY via their desktop site), or that I cannot find a way to contact Yelp to ask them to make that an option in their app. Surely I cannot be the only one who has hundreds of reviews and cannot remember the name of a place they went to and wants to search their own reviews to try and find it, right??!?

And what is with companies not wanting any contact with their users? I guess because I’m not a business paying for Yelp I don’t matter? Even though it’s users like me who keep the site going indirectly by engaging with the content???

New Microwave

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Thursday I noticed our microwave was humming when not in use. I thought that didn’t seem normal and found out that it was an indication of something failing internally. It’s 23 years old, purchased back in 2002 at Walmart when we were still in our apartment, so it’s the only microwave we’ve ever owned and it has worked flawlessly. It even looks great after more than two decades of use. The idea we’d have to part with it was bumming us out.

Due to its age many parts are unavailable, but a door sensor still is, so we ordered that from Amazon on the off chance it was the culprit. Joe switched it out on Friday and sadly it did not stop the humming. We came to terms with the fact that we’d need to buy a new one and for the past few days have been unplugging it when not in use since it’s something we use daily and was in fact still working fine, but was now a fire risk.

Normally I would have done a ton of research and plugged all the data into Excel to figure out the best model to get, but with the way I’ve been feeling I just didn’t care that much. I was originally thinking of getting another GE, but I read on Reddit that the Panasonic inverter ones were better so I focused on those. Plus GE pissed me off after we bought our refrigerator and learned they designed it so that only their expensive water filter would work and therefore couldn’t buy third party ones for much cheaper, so I didn’t want to give them my business anymore. I found a Panasonic microwave at Costco that I was considering since the price and features were right, but I wasn’t crazy about how it looked.

This morning we went to Target to pick up a prescription and decided to peek at their microwaves and there was one Panasonic left that was the same style as Costco but with a different color scheme (Costco was black around the door with stainless on the control panel whereas the Target one was stainless around the door and black on the control panel which I liked better due to all the fingerprints you’d see on the stainless). Target’s price was $10 more than Costco but we had just gotten a $10 off coupon at the pharmacy for Joe getting his flu shot, so it ended up being a little less with the Target card 5% discount.

It’s similar is size to the old microwave – about an 8th of an inch shorter in width and slightly taller, but capacity wise it’s slightly larger (1.2 vs 1.1 cubic feet) and a little more powerful (1250 watts vs 1100). I don’t love the split color scheme or the reflectiveness of it, but oh well, I will get used to it like I had to do with our refrigerator. Sound wise I find it to be a little deeper, and it was annoying me this morning, but the old microwave was irritating my ears lately too.

Other things I do not like about the new microwave:

— The keypad is so dark yet reflective it’s difficult to read the text on the buttons.

— Because the door is stainless steel, fingerprints quickly accumulate. We will have to adjust how we handle the door, but using the bottom or top so as to not leave marks. I’m glad we didn’t get the Costco version where the stainless steel was on the buttons (although at least those can be read easier).

— The cooling fan is so powerful you get a cold breeze on you if you’re standing in front of the unit while it’s running. Unlike the old microwave where the vents were on the left side but toward the back of the unit, this one is closer to the front. There must also be fans on the bottom of it because the breeze seems to be coming from the left bottom half of the unit. It’s quite weird. I don’t recall ever feeling any air on me when the old unit was running.

— The unit is very lightweight compare to the old microwave so every time you use it, it shifts on the stand.

— The inside is dark which makes it feel less inviting.

— The bulb is a white-light LED which makes that cold and uninviting feeling more noticeable.

— The running time on the display is shown as a decimal instead of a colon. The colon only appears for the clock.

— After pressing the 30 second button, you still have to press start (old unit would start after a brief delay (to make sure you weren’t going to press the button to add more time)).

— After cooking is complete, a zero remains on the display for a minute before going back to the clock even if you’ve opened the door to remove the food. No one thought to program it to reset once the door has been opened.

It does heat up things more evenly than the old unit, though, so there’s that. I just wish more thought was put into the design. Everyone is trying to make appliances look sleek yet forget about the user experience.

We are slowly going from all white appliances in the kitchen to stainless steel. Personally, I don’t care for stainless due to how easily it is to see fingerprints and other marks on it, but there are more options in stainless appliances than in white these days. In fact, I couldn’t find a Panasonic white microwave with an inverter or I would have considered it.

Oh and in case you weren’t aware – “inverter microwaves offer continuous, graduated power for more even cooking, better preservation of food texture and nutrients, and improved energy efficiency compared to traditional microwaves, which use a full-power, on-and-off cycling system”.

Why I Haven’t Been Posting

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This is a post to let everyone know I am going through a health crisis at the moment. It has disrupted my life greatly and has caused me significant pain and suffering, both mentally and physically. If you’re a long-time reader, you might remember all the health stuff I went through from April 2019 through March 2020. Well this is similar to that but on steroids. It also started in April like last time and then just intensified from there.

Perimenopause is the suspected culprit, but so far hormone replacement therapy (which I started at the end of June) hasn’t “fixed” me. It did help with some out of this world anxiety, body shakes, paranoia, nausea, and ear stuff, but I’ve since developed nerve pain that started in my arms and legs and now include my feet, hands, and various other parts of my body. Sometimes they burn, or tingle, or have a crawling sensation. I’ve had to start taking Gabapentin just to get any sleep at night and I don’t like it. I am taking the least amount possible but I feel off kilter, get dizzy if I stand up too fast, and my ears are starting to be sensitive again, but I’m not sure if that’s from the drug or whatever is causing all this nerve stuff to begin with. It’s been incredibly scary and I wish it would go away. I really hate taking medication and avoid it at all costs but I’ve tried a bunch of different sleep aids prior to the gabapentin because I had completely sleepless nights thanks to the pain. Even with the Gaba I only get 5-6 hours most nights.

I finally saw a neurologist last week who sent me for blood work and tested my reflexes. He doesn’t believe I have actual nerve damage since I can still sense things, including temperature, so we’re looking at thyroid, autoimmune, and possible vitamin deficiencies. He doesn’t think it’s MS or small fiber neuropathy, so I guess that’s good. I don’t think he likes me very much, though. I could tell I was annoying him by asking so many questions. He seemed so nice ten years ago when I saw him about my cold hands and feet, but back then the stakes weren’t as high so I guess I wasn’t as frantic as I was this time around. I came to the appointment with a bunch of health history documented as well as possible causes for my issues. I probably came across as a know-it-all but I simply wanted to be thorough and maximize the time we had. It’s not cheap to see doctors on our high deductible health plan (although the premiums are much lower, so normally it would balance out if you weren’t having major health issues like I am).

I was taking Emergen-C, which has a bunch of vitamins, when all my issues started. I’ve since read that too much B6 can cause toxicity, and there was 10 mg of it in there and I had been taking it on and off for the past five years, and daily for the past 16 months. A lot of my symptoms line up with that, but with my hormones going wonky, it’s hard to pinpoint the true cause of what’s happening to me (and maybe it’s a combination of things). I quit the supplement the second I read about the B6 stuff which was on June 29th, but I didn’t quit drinking a Body Armor electrolyte drink until two weeks later because I didn’t realize they add B6 to that too (as well as most breakfast cereals). I couldn’t persuade my PCP to test my B6 when I saw her about the burning sensations, so by the time I figured out there was a test through Quest that I could pay for out of pocket, I had been off the supplement so long my levels were in the normal range. So now I don’t know if they were abnormal before or not because B6 will leave the bloodstream fairly quickly, but it can get stored in muscles and nerves and cause issues for awhile. It’s the one B vitamin that isn’t truly water soluble. So IF that is my true issue, I won’t feel better for awhile as it can take anywhere from 6 months to well over a year for the nerves to recover.

If this is all hormone related, who knows when it will calm down. I never even knew all the stuff I’ve experienced over the past four months was even possible! As I type this, my lips are burning. I see a lot of perimenopausal women complain of low libido, hot flashes, joint pain, and insomnia, but not as much of what I’ve been dealing with, although there are a few. I guess I’m just “lucky” that I’m getting so many weird and extreme symptoms.

I just hope it’s not autoimmune because that sounds worse than the other possibilities as those will likely improve whereas autoimmune might not. I’ve joked in the past with my best friend that sometimes I think I have Fibromyalgia, but I called it Fibro Light since my issues would be rather mild and go away for years at a time, if not indefinitely, but now it’s not so “funny”. I’ve had so many little things crop up here and there, and even bigger things like Interstitial Cystitis that bothered me for a long time but then just stopped and I never even adhered to the special diet for IC. I guess that’s encouraging that this nerve stuff will also go away in time, but when? It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever had to endure.

My neurologist doesn’t think I even have Fibro, though he did think hormones could be playing a large part. It’s just weird that the issues got worse instead of better by getting onto hormone therapy. So that makes me wonder what’s really going on. Maybe that points more to B6 issues? I read the symptoms can get worse before they get better and I’m only two months into stopping the supplements so I don’t know.

I hope it’s just a vitamin deficiency that I can treat. I bought a DNA test awhile back and I have the MTHFR mutation which makes processing B vitamins harder, so maybe that’s why I’ve had nightly pains that would crop up for a week or two at a time over the years even though I was taking vitamins, and now that I stopped, things are even worse. Low B1, B6, and B12 can cause nerve issues and hormone changes can make those things low even if you’re eating lots of foods with them and taking vitamins. Paradoxically, B6 is a tricky one because too little can cause nerve issues but so can too much.

Strangely enough, since this all started my migraines stopped (and I had one every week back in February) and my acid reflux has pretty much gone away (probably because I cut out all added sugars and minimize carbs and spicy foods). Something similar happened last time I was ill as well. I’ve also lost a lot of weight like last time. First because I was so nauseated I had no desire to eat and now because it’s much harder to get enough calories when you’re avoiding added sugar and high histamine foods like avocados which are full of fat and I love (and I have been having a bit here and there because I’m not fully convinced histamine is a driver of my issues but much like with the other things I don’t know for sure). I guess it’s good I was a little overweight (somewhere around 140+ lbs) when this began since now I’m under 120 lbs.

Some days I can push through the symptoms and do normal things around the house and even go out like last weekend when we went birding (but didn’t see any actual birds, which was frustrating), but other days I sit in my bed or on the couch and feel so scared and depressed. I cry… a lot. I want my life back! We had plans for this spring which included lots of birding since that’s migration season, and then afterwards we were going to adopt a dog because we finally felt ready for one, and then this happens. I hate the uncertainty of all this. If I at least knew how long it would be until I felt better it might be easier to cope, but with ever-changing symptoms and some things getting worse instead of better, I am seeing the world in a different light and I don’t like how this whole experience has changed me.

If/when I get better I am going to be so damn grateful. It’s stuff like this that makes me wish I could believe in a higher power. I just have my doubts because would God really let people suffer like they do? I will admit, I’ve prayed to him anyway just in case. Which makes me sound like an asshole – I don’t fully believe in God but now that I am suffering I will ask for help anyway. Oh well, it is what it is I suppose. I don’t know what else to do. I try to live my life in a way where I treat people well, even if sometimes they don’t necessarily deserve it, and I thought I had earned a lot of good karma for that, but now I’m wondering if it was just luck and there is no such thing as karma, because I will tell you one thing – I absolutely know I don’t deserve what’s happening to me right now. And it’s really hard not to feel bitter about that, especially watching people my age breeze through life, going out and enjoying themselves while I sit here in pain unsure of the cause or whether it will ever go away. It’s really tough.

This experience makes me feel so old and I’m only 49. Had you asked me how old I felt back in February I would have said I didn’t. I had no pain at all (other than the migraines)! I was exercising daily, eating ok (not great, but not terribly either), had added stuff into my daily regimen to keep me healthy – working on my balance, doing crunches throughout the day, and making sure I wouldn’t develop insulin resistance by doing little things like making rice ahead of time and letting it cool to reheat later which helps reduce blood sugar spikes. Physically and mentally I felt great! I want to get back to that. I really really really hope I do. I don’t want to live the next how many years feeling awful all day every day. That’s no life. I’ve already lost interest and joy in most things due to this. We’ve been saving money for years, building up our nest egg for retirement, but without health it’s all meaningless. I mean, sure, it’s great that I can pay for healthcare without going into debt, but I want to enjoy life, and right now I’m just getting by in survival mode.

If you read this far, please keep me in your thoughts and prayers. My mom is very religious so she’s been praying and she called one day to check in on me and when I said I was no better she said “damn, I guess God and I aren’t as tight as I thought” and that was pretty funny. Oh, and speaking of her, she got a hysterectomy and her panic attacks went away. She never needed to take hormones and had no other issues from what she’s told me and this is the woman who has every other sensitivity in the book, so how I ended up in this mess I will never know. Maybe it’s all childhood trauma and anxiety driving this to be worse than it would otherwise be. I just wish I knew how to fix it.

P.S. I should mention how thankful I am for Joe – he has dealt with my crazy mood swings and stepped up to do all the grocery shopping, and 99% of the cooking and dish cleaning since I’ve felt too ill to do it. He also drives me everywhere since I don’t feel well enough to drive right now.

April 2025 Recap

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First week had a killer migraine. Then more issues with my tinnitus.

Did some major birding on the weekend of April 12th and 13th.

On April 19th we saw two Common Loons at Mallard Lake, along with an American Coot and a Pied-billed Grebe. I hadn’t brought my camera so there are no photos, unfortunately.

Visited my beastie on April 26th.

End of the month the crappy next door neighbors who took their dog out 10 times a day and every single time slammed the door on our shared wall moved out! Will not miss them whatsoever.