I’m doing a little better today. Not perfect, but better. I don’t know if it’s because the St John’s wort is helping, or if the spell would have broken at this point anyway. When it does break, I just hope it’s for months, and not just days or weeks. I’ll take any time off from it I can get, though.

I felt an underlying feeling of anxiety picking up once I got past the halfway point of my day, as usual. So I took half a hydroxyzine but it didn’t seem to do me much good and I felt the anxiety picking up a little more, so I took the other half. That might have done the trick, even though now I’m a little drowsy. But yeah, I do feel calmer.

Damn, I miss Aly! I miss our chats so much and checking in with her and sharing our feelings and what was going on in our lives and everything.

I found a Chrome extension called Thyself. It’s a mood tracker. The idea is to see a micro view of my overall moods. I wanted something a little more detailed than just slapping a letter or an emoji on a calendar, but not so detailed as my journal entries. Something where I can step back and see the big picture. We already know nights are a factor. But what else might there be along with obvious things like dose tweaking?

Thyself gives you different check-in intervals each day in which to track your mood and I opted for the recommended amount of three hours. They’ll check in with me again at 5:19.

I’m still sleeping hotter than usual and waking up a lot. My guess is that I still have too much medication in me. I don’t know if I could get used to this dose or not, but I’m seriously toying with the idea of dropping to two 75s a week, rather than jumping to every other day. I figured I would start with twice a week as I still think one 75 is too much. I have a few days before I decide. Meanwhile, Jessie brought up a good point when she said that being in the “doghouse” was causing me to overheat since I’m kind of enclosed, although I’m not fully enclosed since the side I get in and out of is open.

She did have a point about the air not being able to cross through, though, so since the honker’s out of town and no one’s next door yet, I thought I would try leaving a back panel out. It has three panels and we’re gonna leave the one at the foot of the bed out. Maybe if I got more of a cross-breeze, it would help, although I doubt it. It’s been so cold and I’m still overheating. I go from hot to cold a lot. I mostly sleep hot and then spend the first few hours of my day hot. Then I’m anywhere from comfortable to cold. If I stay bundled up in my robe for too long, I’ll start hot flashing, especially if I’ve had something hot to eat. There’s just no pleasing my body’s thermostat. I was always sensitive to temperature, especially cold, but I miss the days when I was a lot more oblivious to temperature and had no idea what these horrible feelings were like as far as anxiety and depression go. Never had this kind of anxiety until this medication and menopause came along. Or so much random depression. When I’ve been depressed in the past, it was for a reason. I didn’t always have the solution to my problems, but I knew what the cause was. Now I only have theories.

For now, I’m trying to take the medication experts’ advice. I want to be aware of but not dwell on my emotions and feelings. I’m trying so hard to live in the moment! Yesterday can’t be changed, and tomorrow isn’t here yet. So I need to stop worrying that I’m unfixable and I need to stop thinking about death and dying and my fear of it, and what kind of an afterlife may be in store for me if any, and thoughts of one of us being left alone because the other one died. Ugh! I’ve got to try to think of happier and more positive thoughts even if it’s silly stuff like teddy bears licking chocolate lollipops while floating on colorful rainbow clouds.

I’m just glad I don’t have 50 more years to live even if 20 seems a bit much as it is when you don’t feel well, you haven’t for years, and you don’t know that you ever will again for very long. But there is something positive, believe it or not, and that’s that I’ve only had anxiety/depression for less than a third of the year!

Not at all surprisingly, I can’t get into the endo until April. Endos are always booked up. So many people have thyroid issues and diabetes.

I never heard back from the therapist I reached out to, so I reached out to another one.

I’ll schedule the GYN appointment soon. I wonder if they’re booked up as well. I’m guessing they might be as half the population has pussies.

He updated the schedule predicting program, which makes it much easier for me because I can now scroll through a calendar that has each wake-up time embedded in each date. Obviously, the further out the appointment, the harder it is to predict.

I wish I had hot chocolate for this cold weather. The decaf coffee I got is horrible. Not even gourmet creamer can help it.