August 25, 2009:

I keep meaning to start my journal here and other things keep coming up.  I meant to start with something that was more explanatory about what's going on in my life instead of just diving in with the day to day randomness, but I just can't spare the time, so day to day randomness is what you're going to get.  I'll try to use the titled journal entries at the top of my list to get people caught up later on when I have more time or at least am more used to this routine.

I have been wretchedly, miserably tired lately.  Worn out.  Normally the fatigue doesn't bother me that much, but I'm back to not being able to stay awake more than a couple of hours at a time, and when I am awake I'll just sit and stare into space and try to focus.  If you're a person that I normally call and I haven't been calling you, this is why.  I'm sure it will pass... it's probably just allergies or anemia or something, I haven't been eating a very balanced diet lately.  They should add iron to ramen noodles.  I've been taking some iron lately, just in case.

Unfortunately there were some major chores that I had to get done today whether I was fatigued or not.  I've been putting off a lot of house cleaning for too long.  I don't mind if my living space is a little (or a lot, heh) messy, but the animals need a clean place to be, so today I cleaned the aquarium, the chinchilla cages, the litter boxes (that's daily so I'm not sure it matters) and the fox kennel.  The fox has an ear infection (she's prone to them, her ears are so huge) and tends to rub her ear on everything, so I'm trying to get the rest of the apartment disinfected as well.

On top of that I decided that I couldn't put it off even one more day... I went through my wardrobe and bagged up everything that doesn't fit me right now.  I've gained a lot of weight because of cancer meds and steroids and I've never been inclined toward a baggy wardrobe, so a lot of my clothes no longer fit.  The additional weight and water retention and normal arthritis are causing me a lot of joint pain, and I'm not exactly little miss sunshine when I take steroids, so it's truly been frustrating me when I'm in a hurry to get somewhere and I waste an hour struggling to get into things that don't fit me... by the time I leave the house I'm a sore, sweaty, swearing mess.

So... I divided everything into groups: things that fit me now, things that fit me now but are so amazingly ugly or unflattering that I'm never going to wear them, things that would fit me with a reasonable amount of alteration, things that don't fit me but are adorable enough that I should save them until they do fit, and things that don't fit me and aren't really worth hanging onto right now.  The ugly clothes and things that I didn't want to hang onto will get donated to Goodwill, the cute things that didn't fit got bagged up and stuck in my storage closet, the pile of alteration got relegated to the sewing bins, and everything else got put away in the closet, dressers, etc.  I have a bunch of shirts, two pairs of pants, two skirts, and a few hoodies and jackets.

I took my recycling back to the store and walked the resulting ten dollars over to the Goodwill bins where they charge for clothes by the pound, but unfortunately you can't try anything on over there.  I did pick up a couple more pairs of pants and a few more shirts, though.  I think I'll try that again if my starving artist effort here ever brings in any money... I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed that I haven't even made one cent yet.  I'll stick it out as long as I can, though... I'm looking at seeing if some of the local shops will carry my art.