Cimorene

As you all are potentially aware, I have an allergy to at least one (unknown id) perfume and am hyper sensitive to other (many, but not all) perfumes and some natural fragrances. Besides one lavender tea incident, the throat swelling has only ever been in response to perfumed products on the lower half of my face for longer than the time it takes to wash it back off (so it's not TOO scary, since I always have time to escape). Hypersensitivity isn't the same as allergy, but when you add the knowledge that some unknown perfume aggressors out there will make my airway swell mostly closed, the hypersensitivity becomes very alarming and hard to deal with. Am I sneezing and feeling like I'm gonna choke because Smell, or am I risking anaphylaxis?

So as you can imagine, I usually buy unscented cosmetics, hygiene products, etc. And that's not always enough! As I was saying to twistedchick recently, sometimes I have to discard unscented products due to the smells of ingredients. Common offenders include burning (how?), ozone (this isn't unbearable but it's very annoying), a vaguely "gone off" smell in some moisturizers (rancid oils? Or some kind of fungal ingredient??), and urine (WHY! I know it's because they use urea in the manufacture but that's an issue I would think they would consider urgent to fix???)

But sometimes I feel compelled to try scented products because there doesn't seem to be a good unscented alternative. If you have any special requirements for shampoo and conditioner - in my case, I have low-porosity hair and lots of common ingredients don't work for me - there tend to be no unscented options, because unscented products are already considered a special requirement. I have decided that I need a new leave in conditioner that's more effective for holding curls and waves without frizz, and maybe a curl cream. (I don't like gel but it's always there if I can't find a good cream solution.)

Well, I tried a John Frieda Frizz Ease "curl revitalizing oil spray" today with great hopes.

My first impression was "this smells like my mother in law". waxjism agrees. It's a perfume, and the product does contain a little patchouli but it's not exactly patchouli that smells like her (but it is musky). The ingredients include "perfume", as usual, which should be illegal anywhere btw, so that's not much help.

Anyway, it's strong enough that I don't like it and will have to give it away, but it's not strong enough that I need to wash it out a day early, as long as my hair is kept back out of my face.

I've been reading the occasional perfume review reblogged by cleolinda and have got the idea it could be oud or some rose-related thing. Or maybe it's the combination of patchouli with one of these other things? I'm medium confident that it's not moringa...

( full ingredients list )

Knitting involves a lot of repetitive motion and can create problems, and comes with frequently recommended stretches, especially for the wrists and hands. And I HAVE experienced some discomfort sometimes in my wrists and taken a break for that. Also I stretch them a lot more. But the problem I have from knitting that I find to be unique is a specific strain - usually cramps I guess actually - under the spine-side edge of my right shoulder blade, if I've been knitting too intensively. In the past I have experimented with different kinds of daily stretches to try to limber it up but these were periods when I was working in daycares and aftercare programs (still the most fun I've had at a work practice, but I'm totally 100% unwilling to go through the professional educations for these fields) and hence moving around my whole body and doing lots of other things with my hands and arms daily - cleaning, dishwashing, and arts and crafts, for example.

So anyway, usually what happens is that I get too excited about knitting, and knit too many hours in a row and too many days in a row, and then I get cramps under the right shoulder blade, and I have to just not knit until they go away - a few days to a week. Actually this happened to me once from drawing too much as well, lol. Not usually one of my problems. ANYWAY though, THIS time...

I finished sewing all the ends in of my newest pink cabled cardigan one week ago last Friday, and I have not knitted or sewn anything since then - a few doodles, but mostly I've just been reading, staring at cats, and playing solitaire when I can't stop myself. I can't start a new knitting project until it stops hurting. So it's been over seven days and it is still uncomfortable!

Don't get me wrong: it isn't like constant cramping. I'm not needing to take painkillers (I think I did the first day maybe). It's just uncomfortable and a bit sore, like maybe there's a knot or something there? But I just don't know enough about it or these body parts. The only thing I know to do, besides gently moving around but not enough to cause pain, is taking anti-inflammatories. And I feel quite silly and annoyed about the idea of having to see a doctor for this! You can't see a physio without a referral from a doctor, so even if they might be more useful, it's doctor first and they are perhaps less likely to send you to a physio for something comparatively mild. My parents, who have both had minor annoyances from things like this in the past, agree that it sounds like the kind of thing you're supposed to treat at home, but I don't know HOW to treat it at home, and I don't even know the right search terms to investigate how (or if): heat or cold? stretches or trying to hold it immobile??? Ibuprofen or not? So maybe I have to call a doctor about this???? As mild as the discomfort now is... I know that I still can't start knitting again while it's here, and it's never stuck around this long before.

My one idea, lying in bed last night, was that I might be able to find tips by looking for posts about stretches and aches and pains specific to knitters. All the ones I've seen before have had to do mostly with the wrists and hands and maybe the neck a little bit? But there's bound to be some SOMEWHERE, right? Another issue: the position and the repetitive movements are somewhat different in continental vs. English/American standard knitting, so are all the English-language results going to be talking about English knitting and useless???

I can't throw myself into researching this at the moment, though. I was thrown into a tizzy this morning with reminders of three things I have been putting off (ADHD tax) but have to fix:

1. signing up for driving lessons,



2. cleaning another 8 months' worth of crud out of my email and trying AGAIN to unsubscribe from everything possible so that my email might be usable, instead of overwhelming me with a wall of unparsable random trash every time I try to open or use it?,



3. apparently my notification settings are messed up on one of the... I think currently SIX SEPARATE Finnish goverment websites that I have to have different accounts on and sign up and alter the settings on SEPARATELY and they DON'T EVEN ALL WORK THE SAME and thinking about dealing with them always makes me want to cry. But I digress, anyway, the last time I was at this one, it seemed to be working fine and I thought 'Oh! This was surprisingly easy!' except this morning I got a call and apparently there was a notification through it sent to me that I NEVER GOT, so somehow I managed to fuck up the notification settings I guess? So I have to go back and try to figure out how? I didn't get in trouble and the call was fine, I'm just stressed about trying to fix the website. I hate government websites. They always give me a headache and not infrequently reduce me to tears.

So this was all before breakfast (because I was sitting hanging out with Tristana in the sunbeam instead of going to eat, even though I was already hungry). And as a result I was unprepared to Cope before breakfast, but then I discovered it's Monday morning which means it's time to refill my pillbox, and I didn't feel up to filling my pillbox before breakfast. But that would mess up my routine (to do it after) so I unwisely - invoking the ADHD tax again - decided to just take the foil packets of the pills today and then fill it after breakfast, but then because I wasn't following my pillbox routine I accidentally took a whole SSRI instead of a half for the first time in over six months. This is ANOTHER ADHD tax, because I've known my old doctor retired since December, and I can't have the monthly phone calls you get to check in on your psych meds until I meet my new doctor in person, but I haven't gotten around to meeting my new doctor in person, so I've just been using up my prescription and taking half pills instead of asking for a new prescription for the smaller dose. This should not be disastrous. I'll probably get those funky sparks when you move your head, perhaps, at worse. However, I briefly panicked about it and took an entire benzo, on top of my ADHD meds, and on top of this double dose. It seems fine so far? I turned on some music and furiously dust mopped and cleaned the vacuum. But I'm still not happy because oh, also, that means:

4. I have to make an appointment with my new doctor whose name I don't know which might mean I have to call and wait in the phone queue instead of using the nice web portal like usual.

4b. This reminds me I was supposed to sign up for some blood tests in February but I was too tired. To contemplate going out of the house to be blood tested. So I didn't. I gotta do that too.

It's too many things. Yes, I took my ADHD medicine, but it doesn't fix that - like, the issue of too many things on the list - it just, as one memorable Tumblr post said, starts the Roomba. It doesn't prevent it from getting stuck under the sofa.

When you search for your issue and it's like: "There exist several promising avenues of treatment for this malady, most notable among which is the solemn practice of Mindfulness, while not to be forgotten is that most ancient India-appropriated religious practice of Yoga!"

(I'm paraphrasing, admittedly.)

Yes, pre-menopause CAN just make you sweat more and simultaneously make your sweat stinkier and also smell like the sweat of a completely different person and/or like urine because there can be so much ammonia in it. And also make your sense of smell more acute at the same time.

Isn't that lovely? And apart from hormone replacement therapy, your options are: wash more, antiperspirant more, or try not to sweat (see also: Mindfulness and Yoga). (I don't think yoga in general seems ideally suited to reduce sweating, but I can't say I'm surprised to see it in the recommended list. Does a woman need to calm down? Why not try yoga!)

Umm so as of just today I keep sneezing, lots and lots. I'd say I've had like ten sneezing spells today, maybe?

This seems like it should be indicative of an allergen, but how could I have got newly exposed to an allergen when I haven't left the house since the 23rd?

I hope I didn't somehow get covid from one of the relatives, although nobody was sick recently... but I can't find any indication of recent variants known to start with sneezing. And I have to admit that that sounds more like an allergy than like an infection of the airways...

I have never had formal allergy testing. I PROBABLY have a dust allergy because I live with post nasal drip all the time and so does my dad and my sister got the testing when she was little and it was dust for her. I definitely am violently allergic to at least one perfume ingredient, as well as hypersensitive to many other perfumes. I am not aware of any hay or pollen or food allergies or anything like that. I know you can suddenly become allergic to something when you weren't before, but... huh.

I went to Turku yesterday and saw my friend and met her cat!

Next we need to make an appointment with the animal behaviorist, for a time we can both do. Wax thinks I should contact the driving school right away to sign up for driving lessons, but I wonder if the fact that it just snowed and stuck for the first time will be bad?

And I have to go to Turku for a mammogram a week from tomorrow. I've never had one before, but my paternal family is high risk, and I had a benign lump in my 20s, and at that time they said to get screened again when I was 40. I am dreading it, though. I think last time I just had an ultrasound.

Eta: these aren't all the things on my list, but it is short and yet still overwhelming. I am lying down so that Sipuli will cuddle me today, because I was gone yesterday and didn't spend much time with her. That means I can't knit, because she doesn't like sitting in chairs but sitting up on the futon is bad for my back.

Cat Divorce (see every post recently tagged "cats") has exiled me most of the time to the dining room and the kitchen, away from all the furniture I know and love. Right now it's even worse because we can't temporarily switch them and let Tristana run up and down the stairs for exercise, because Anubis's balls are back and he's peeing everywhere, and the last time he was in the kitchen while we made dinner he peed on the wall and somehow also INSIDE THE PANTRY. So we don't want to shut him in the kitchen and diningroom as we would like to minimize pee in them.

Anyway, instead of spending time sitting on the sofa and then sleeping in bed, I have been sitting up on a folded-out metal Ikea futon sofa most of the time, or occasinally turning it into a sofa and sitting on it that way - but I think that's not actually much better. They're both terrible for my back. But if I want to use the computer, or watch tv and knit, I kinda need to sit up.

I managed okay for months! But I've been gradually feeling more and more lower back pain and, as Wax wisely pointed out, this is because I never get any exercise (see: our five-year history of plans and resolutions to go walking daily, or regularly, which has never worked even for as much as a three-day-in-a-row streak: we're both completely HORRIBLE and will take any slight setback as an excuse to suggest breaking the routine, after which it vanishes from both of our minds like smoke) and have no stamina or core strength. It's reached the point where my back hurts a lot and I don't want to sit up. Or sit. Except on maybe like... the floor? Or a stool? Because of my back.

I used to do yoga almost daily, and what broke THAT routine was moving to Pargas before the pandemic in 2019, and the subsequent series of disasters. The pandemic hit, everything was 5-alarm emergency at all times, and there was no floor space where you could put a yoga mat, even if I could find it since all our stuff was still packed, for literally over a year, and then the routine was gone. Finally today it hurt enough for me to look up some PT exercises to do, which led to getting my yoga mat out for the first time in YEARS. I had to go dig it out of the attic, then I had to vaccuum it, then I had to scrub it. It is currently drying off.

That was only fifteen minutes of stretching, but it was totally fine - it felt good, but not enough, and also much more uncomfortable than it should've been at several points. I should do more of it. I should also try something else to get us walking again, but I am kinda out of ideas there. We have tried a lot of things. Just in the last month I think either Wax or I has said something about how we should go for a walk now to the other at least ten times, only for the other one to come up with some reason why they didn't want to in every case, leading to us only walking once when we had to go to the grocery store. It's... egregiously, enragingly pathetic, honestly.

Another thing that has changed recently is that I've finally tapered all the way off of Venlafaxine (Effexor), the SSRI I was taking at a very high dose since maybe... 2011ish? I decided to taper off of it after I started taking ADHD medication because of a (so far extremely borne out) suspicion that the ADHD meds would do a way better job at making me feel better than any SSRI ever did. Very gradually, over the course of months, with the help of my psychiatrist, I stopped, and I recently finished my final one month of the tiniest dose available. The last withdrawal effects haven't even gone away yet - the weird sparking things that happen in your head and neck when you move them (hate those!!!!). But I'm already sleeping much more soundly, to the point that it's harder for Snookums to wake me up to feed him in the middle of the night. And I'm also tearing up like five times a day at stuff like... listening to music with a chord progression... but also thinking about upsetting things. Or about how much I love Snookums. Or today, remembering an old work friend I ghosted during the pandemic stress and feeling bad about it. Maybe this will chill out after a while. I hope so, I guess. It's also producing a lot of mild headaches, which happened when reducing the dose as well (they were worse early on actually), but frequent mild headaches are making me irritable and constant back pain is also making me irritable, and I'm not coping well (or at all) with the frustration about the lack of ability to form habits and start to exercise more.

I seem to be good now, although typically, my sinuses are still residually congested. They might be even if I hadn't had a cold, though.

Wax had to call in sick yesterday, and she's back working (from home) today, but she's still very sick and miserable. Hopefully she'll start feeling better tomorrow.

It's been 15-20° this whole week, which is a high of almost 70 F, so it truly feels like summer to most, and there are sundresses and shorts everywhere, along with other people still wearing jackets. A huge number of dresses with calf-length trousers or tights under them, which I think firmly indicates a yearning for it to be even warmer than it is, tempered by a general realism that causes the wearers to realize they won't be comfortable without the trousers. (Of course, there are also capri pants out on the street without dresses over them.) I'm kinda wishing I had some linen culottes.

Oh and also I haven't got around to finding my super expensive high spf face sunscreen (expensive bc it's nearly impossible to find unscented ones that are higher than 15 🙃). I guess I should get on that. It's gotta be somewhere.

Japp is apparently completely back to normal! 🎉 And Snookums seems to be doing fine. He had a checkup for his diabetes and various symptoms two weeks before Japp's scare, and ended up getting dewormed and we bought a new expensive glucometer calibrated specifically for cats that cost like ten times as much as the regular one we were using, and the test strips are also more than twice as expensive. He's still quite sensitive to insulin but the vet thought he didn't need his dose changed yet. Tristana is feeling the call of spring and wants to be out playing more often, but she is Confined in two rooms to keep her away from Anubis (except when they get their places switched). So the wonder twins are both incredibly loud. And we still haven't managed to have enough free time where we're both off to finish the spring cleaning out we planned before Easter. But our new bulbs from last year are coming up and the weather is nice!

Today I went to work, able to be upright and do stuff, without a sore throat and no longer a snot fountain. But still feeling tired and cruddy. The karaoke group was there, so I wore a high filtration mask just to be safe, although I think I shouldn't be contagious anymore.

I went straight to bed when I got home and have opened my eyes only to eat twice, give Snookums his insulin, and do my bedtime pet chores. I'm hoping that the extra rest will enable me to get better a little faster.

I finally got the green trousers I was dying of excitement about (ordered from Freddie's of Pinewood in the UK) on Friday, and so far I've been too sick to feel excited. Still not there. Maybe I'll shoot for Wednesday.

(Not really. I mean,( Read more... ) The spring equinox still feels like a way more interesting and inspiring holiday, but it's not well supported to call it 'Easter'. It's just more clunky to say "The really moving part of the time around the spring equinox".)

We went to the open house at a local sheep farm, Stentorp, for all the new lambs and bought a lot of wool yesterday! I've been wanting to work with more undyed Finnish wool, hopefully for some colorwork, and the wool from Stentorp is especially soft even by finnwool standards. In general finnwool is slightly less smooth than blue-faced Leicester, but very close to it, which is to say, second only to merino. The combed skeins we bought yesterday are just as soft as the blue-faced Leicester sweater Wax recently finished making me, and more lanoliny, which is a big plus because it smells nice, is good for your skin, and helps the wool be more resilient against both physical wear (like pilling) and dirt and microbes.



The Stentorp house, a charming little 1907 villa with adorable rustic Art Deco details, was also open and we got to walk around the downstairs. I was enraptured. The doorways! The windows! The door handles!!



Boulder arena, a great little natural stage where they hold small concerts, and their guest house on the water which they rent in summer. It's also got adorable Art Deco details. (Wax has a knack for taking a picture of me at the absolute most unflattering and awkward-looking moment, but the other picture didn't show the porch.)

The lighting wasn't great inside the barn and it was crowded, so no lamb pictures, but I got to hold one and it peed a little on my jacket sleeve! So cute!

And we both still have two days of vacation left right now, but Wax almost immediately after that sproinged her back out trying to pick up too much cat food at once at the grocery store. That didn't prevent her from making an English chicken mushroom pie and some peanut butter cookies yesterday, but it does put a crimp in our activities and her enjoyment.

I gather becoming oversensitive to just some smells is a fairly common feature of perimenopause, even for people who aren't already oversensitive to some perfumes. But it's really annoying!

Okay, the smells are usually not nearly as bad as the perfumes - the exception being some mildews, like the one in our boatshed that apparently nobody else smells, which makes me feel like I can't breathe. But various human and animal body odors, but apparently not ALL of them - that's a comparatively new sensitivity that I don't appreciate at all, even though they don't make me instinctively hold my breath. They don't feel DANGEROUS, just disgusting.

It's really too bad there's not some temporary way to turn off the ability to smell. If I could take a pill that would just numb it for three hours or so that would be SO useful! Even though it wouldn't help with any potential allergens, it would still contribute greatly to my quality of life. I have regularly recurring encounters with stink that would be much nicer.