The mystery of "Himmmm"

Hello from the floor, where I once again find myself.

Lying face-down on the floor as an adult is an experience. I can trace all of the steps I went through to get here, and all of them made perfect sense at the time. But then I end curled up like a pillbug on my bedroom carpet next to the rat cage, flat on my shins and the top of my head, and I have the nagging feeling I'm somehow doing something wrong. The rats are vaguely curious, but that's mostly because they're convinced I only get out of bed to feed and/or love them. They're not really wrong, but they don't understand the idea of an economy, and gloss over a lot of the intermediate steps.

I assumed I was the only one who's been slowly melting into a puddle over the past month or so, but I know a few other people with the one-two Ehlers-Danlos/hay fever punch who have been similarly reduced to primordial sludge, so iunno. Objectively, my seasonal allergies are more annoying than disabling, but anything that stays annoying for long enough will eventually make you hate being conscious. This year I'm having a run at mast cell stabilizers instead of mainlining Benadryl, because I'm already so tired that if I took anything sedating I think my brain might turn to clay. For once, my country is the only one who will let you buy the stuff OTC, which is handy. I'm not in love with the delivery mechanism; the drip is incredibly musty and tastes like something that is definitely not meant for ingestion. (It's fine, there's an oral formulation used for MCAS/IBS. The flavor is just Not Great.) If it keeps my entire face from watering every time I walk outside, I'm willing to put up with it.

On top of that, I thew my back out a couple weeks ago. The original problem fixed itself almost immediately, probably when I stretched that morning and popped everything back in, but I pinched an intercostal nerve somewhere that stayed angry with me for days. 

There's only two things you can do when you fuck your back up:

1. Don't move
2. Don't NOT move

Which is exactly as easy and fun as it sounds. I tried to ignore it like I try to ignore everything else that isn't actively deadly, but I finally had to give up on the idea of going to class when I couldn't wrestle a sports bra on over my head. I went back to bed and cried. 

I get really pissy when my body prevents me from tackling all the things my brain wants to do. I couldn't write anything of any length, because sitting up for that long involved knocking back a lot of the Good Drugs, which all have an adverse effect on my ability to think. I was also in the middle of designing a dress. When it's for me I can do all of that in my head and just drape what I need while I'm making it, but this is for a model who is going to GLOWBALL with me on the 26th. She's sadly not telepathic, so I had to figure out how to sketch out some croquis while lying flat on my back. I got... something done with a laptop on my knees and a drawing tablet propped up on a bunch of pillows, but it was awkward as fuck on my wrist.

This finally ground down to the galling conclusion that, while I can work from bed on the good days, I will have to work from bed on the bad ones. Propping the laptop on my knees doesn't work for very long. I bit the bullet and ordered an overbed table thing, so that I can co-locate all the computers and monitors on the damn bed with me and stop propping myself up in awkward pretzels trying to work off the laptop display or an external monitor set up on one of the window wells. I can't really afford it, but I've given Amazon enough money over the past few years that they let me finance things now, which is better than nothing. It's not the best interest rate I've ever seen, but it's not the worst, and there's no penalty for paying it off early.

I wish there were more exciting things to report. I did manage to perform at the end of March; the video isn't back yet, but here's a write-up of how I made the light-up dress I wore, and will be wearing to GLOWBALL myself. At present I'm spending an awful lot of time asleep, which I'm frankly kind of mad about, but can't really avoid.