Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
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Friday, March 18, 2011

I'm up in the middle of the night

Having fallen asleep around 11 pm. I came back out to feed the fish, turn of the aquarium light, and take my insulin, so I checked the news while I was up. I thought I'd write a little disjointed post on random things.

One, I searched my headboard pretty thoroughly tonight for spiders. I've been been bitten twice in a week. It's definitely a spider bite, not bedbugs, thank the Gods, but each time it's been my left arm, and I'm thinking its where I put my left arm under the pillow and up against the headboard. Now, I'm not sure what I would have done should I have found said spider, as I have a religious proscription against killing them. Probably I'd have coddled it outside where an arachnophobic friend insists they just come back in, anyway. But I didn't see anything.

Today I received the first of two books to review, one for the Journal of Hospital Librarianship, the other for the Journal of the Medical Library Association. I've done three for the former so far, one of which is still in production but soon to be published, the other two already having been done so. I really enjoy doing book reviews. Both of these are on social media. The one I received today is very short, so I think I can send it in within a week or two, well ahead of the deadline. Book reviews are so much more wieldy than the project I took on last year that I feel utterly a failure about, although the book is out. Also, it's almost time to do my selections and grading for Doody's. So I've got a lot of little personal projects going on.

Tomorrow I have a project at work I need to finish up. We're also starting a weekly jeans day, which is nice. Originally they were going to let us wear jeans Friday to celebrate if the University of Kentucky won against Princeton in the NCAA basketball tournament (it did), but then decided that instead of a monthly jeans day plus special events, we'd have a weekly jeans day, something I've been wanting for a long time. Hey, it's the little things.

I'm not a sports fan, but people's brackets got thrown into utter disarray today with Morehead State's win over the University of Louisville. :) You've got to like it when the little guys get ahead, especially when the big guys have Pitino for a coach. I never liked him, even when he was UK's coach.

I've steadily been working on the house, not majorly, but a little each day. I meant to work on game notes tonight, but that didn't happen. Tomorrow I'm going over to a friend's house, meaning I'll probably be trapped there without a cab if my bad luck with taxis holds, and I'll be doing the notes on Saturday like usual. I'll send in my IRS paperwork tomorrow and do laundry on Saturday, so that will take care of my list from the other day.

I've kind of gotten off track in managing my diabetes. It hasn't been bad, but I sometimes eat at odd times so my blood sugar seems higher when I test because I've had a snack mid-way or so. I don't always remember to take the second dose of insulin because I may eat something very small while I'm still at work to get me through the second half of my day and then eat a main meal at home. I don't know. I just need to pay more attention to the timing. I was testing every single time I was supposed to, now I forget at night a lot. I definitely am not to a point where I should eat snacks between meals or at night--it just raises my blood sugar, really. What I've learned is best is just eat when I'm really, sincerely hungry, and try to space my meals out through the day. But I haven't been eating breakfast since I've been getting up so late and generally eat lunch by 11:30 am. I don't know, I just need to figure out the timing better, and record what I've been testing as. I have an appointment in April and I want to be able to take in some decent readings.

Okay, time to take my insulin and go to bed. I discovered that if you inject too high on the abdomen you get a pretty nasty bruise, which makes sense, since there is muscle there. It's probably the only place on my abdomen with any to speak of.

I also discovered that companies will bend over backwards to make sure you're happy if you make simple enquiries. Where I've been having the rash from injections, I contacted both SanofiAventis (the maker of Apidra and Lantus) and BD (the maker of the pen tips) to see if any of the products had latex in them. They don't. But SanofiAventis was very diligent in following up and made sure I filed an adverse reactions report, and BD sent me a package via UPS the other day of a mail-in sharps container and a coupon worth about $40 for free pen tips since I'd made an enquiry. I've been impressed with both companies.

Okay, I'm yawning. Have a good day tomorrow. We're finally starting to feel like spring, with temperatures in the 60s and 70s. I hope it lasts. Good night.

2 comments:

Bob said...

Is your religious proscription against killing a specific creature, or does it apply also to using pesticides in your house? You've been lucky so far that the bites have apparently been from harmless species, but you don't want to be bitten by a Brown Recluse. Query Google Images for brown recluse spider bites to see what I mean.

Eilir said...

Ooh, trust me, I looked at those when I was trying to determine if it was a spider bite! Ugh! And I've heard horror stories from people who were bitten.

No, I can't squash a spider or spray a spider/nest, but there's no real proscription against the general application of pesticides that happens to get a spider. I guess if it came down to it, I could get someone else to do it, but I'm surrounded by arachnophobes.