Thirty-five

Hello, all.

So here I am, back again with what appears to be my quarterly review of sorts.

Since my last writing, the holidays have come and gone, and with them another birthday. I'm 35 now, a fact that isn't lost on me in the least. Age 35 seems to be some sort of lifetime milestone for me, at least internally. I consider myself middle aged now, simply because, well, I don't expect to live much past 70. I've yet to see the full extent of the longevity of the other men in my family, both on my father's and mother's side -- mainly because most of them are still alive (barring the ones who died young from unnatural causes like drowning and suicide and the like).

Yeah, that's a thing. Blood relatives, anyway, at least. Marrying into my family seems to be curseless, but it's the ones who are all related by blood who have bizarre shit happen to them. Go figure.

Truthfully, as I mentioned in my last update, I've come face to face with mortality a lot over the course of the past year or so, and in between the last update and now, it has only gotten more poignant.

One of the guys I worked with (not one who reported to me, but reported to my colleague), drove himself to the hospital one night after work and dropped dead in the doorway of the ER. We didn't find out until two days later. Needless to say, we were pretty shaken up by the event. No service, no funeral -- straight into the ground ASAP after he died, too. None of us ever heard anything else from his family. I assume they came to get his stuff he left at work and never told anyone else anything.

Another close friend at work, and one who does report to me, found out she had stage 2 breast cancer around the same time. She had it removed and came back to work a month later, but she still has a pretty long road to recovery, interspersed with more time off when she needs to take it for subsequent recovery steps. There's a benefit for her next month that the wife and I -- as well as most other people at work -- will be attending and donating to. Daisy and I have offered our assistance in any way we can as well, even going so far as to offer to cook meals for her and her family and take them over to the house, etc. She's doing well and is incredibly optimistic given her situation, and that's a good thing.

So yes, my 35th birthday came and went, punctuated by little events here and there. Christmas and New Year's came and went, and now it's the long, cold slog to spring with no more holidays to look forward to and no time off work until Memorial Day -- which I will more than likely end up working, as our wedding anniversary doesn't fall over Memorial Day weekend this year.

Daisy's parents always make a big deal out of any of the kids' birthdays (kids including Daisy, her sisters, and their husbands -- including me -- as well as all of their children). This year I requested we not make a big deal of mine, so we didn't -- though it wasn't exactly because I didn't want to, but because of time constraints. Daisy's oldest sister, her husband, and their three boys were in town over Christmas, leaving a few days later, and since they left, Mama has had the flu. Or she thinks it's the flu, we don't know as we have classified their home as a Class III Biohazard area and are staying far away until she's better. After taking time off around my birthday and Christmas I have no more PTO to spare and certainly can't afford to get sick, that's for damn sure.

On my birthday, the wife got me Luke Skywalker's lightsaber and we went to see The Last Jedi. I won't ruin the movie for any of you who haven't seen it yet, but I wasn't exactly a fan, while Daisy loved it and she hates Star Wars. So meh. December 20 was a gorgeous sunny day of almost fifty degrees (it had been in the 60s not even a week prior as well), and we ended it with a dinner at Red Robin.

Over the course of the next few days we got our first measurable snow of the winter, and the temperature dropped dramatically. By Christmas it was in the single digits with howling wind and blowing snow, and between Christmas and the New Year it dropped close to -20, if not colder -- actual temperature. I believe on New Year's Eve (which I took off work) it was snowing and -14 outside. Since then it has snowed more, with more on the way, though the temperature has slowly crept back up into the double digits on the positive side again. This week we could even see highs in the 40s, which is positively balmy compared to the icy tundra we've had to slog through as of late.

We did nothing to celebrate the New Year, by the way, aside from watch Ryan Seacrest drop the ball. It was too cold outside to move, let alone think about leaving the house. I had worked the 26th and 27th, and had taken the 31st on PTO -- I took particular pride in the fact that between December 27 and the night of January 1 (when I returned to work) I hadn't left the house once. I still take pride in that.

Another interesting development since the last time I wrote here is that I am now on testosterone therapy.

Upon our physicals in early November, the wife wanted me to have a testosterone screening done in my normal bloodwork, as I have almost no energy, my body feels like it's falling apart, I can no longer lose weight, my sex drive has plummeted, etc. So, they performed the test and confirmed that I did have low testosterone, but they couldn't prescribe replacement therapy until they did a second test a month later to confirm that it was still low.

So, a month later at the beginning of December, on a cold Friday morning at 7AM, we went back to the doctor to have them do a second blood draw to confirm. This time it was almost off-the-scale low, 40 points lower than the November test. After some finagling with the insurance people that took the better part of a week to sort out, I picked up my first box of testosterone replacement gel.

Yes, gel. It comes in a little pouch about the same size of an eyeglasses wipe, a pouch that I have to tear open and squirt out about a silver-dollar-sized dollop of what feels like and smells like hand sanitizer onto my hand, which I in turn have to rub/massage into my arm/bicep/shoulder once a day (after showering) and immediately wash my hands afterwards. It's clear, it's cold, it's slimy (sometimes so thin that it runs down my arm and I have to scoop it up/catch it/rub it in) and it is an absolute pain in the ass.

Because of this, the wife called the insurance company to see if they would cover the patch, which is like a nicotine patch but with testosterone. They will not. Without insurance the patch is $400-500 a month. The goopy gel shit, with insurance, is $10. You do the math.

I'm a little more than halfway through my first month of it and have noticed no effect whatsoever in how I feel. The literature says anywhere between two weeks and two months and you'll see some effect/will feel it, etc, somesuch bullshit like that. I remain cautiously optimistic, but yeah, overall it just feels like I'm rubbing cold alcohol-smelling jizz on my arm every day. Maybe I'll see if I can get a prescription for HGH next. That's right, human growth hormone. Because fuck it, why not?

To those ends, however, I am beginning to track any weight loss I experience over the course of 2018. So is the wife. We have a chalkboard in the hallway on which we shall write our weight every two weeks from now through the end of the year. I am 376.4 pounds, larger than I've ever been in my life, and while some of it is my metabolism slowing down a great deal because I'm getting older, some of it is also the fact that I quit smoking almost two years ago now, I eat like an asshole, work overnights, and have low testosterone. By the end of the year, my goal is to be below 300 again -- something that I haven't been in close to ten years at this point. The lowest I've ever gone in my adult life is 260 or so. When I met Daisy I was around 290ish. I'll never be a thin dude, but I would like at least to not be a horribly fat one who has trouble moving and wears sweatpants everywhere (spoiler: that's who I've become now). I'd also like to perhaps not die of a heart attack or stroke in the next few years and become a statistic. I also don't want to contract diabetes or start growing fungi in weird places.

By the way, the rest of my bloodwork was fine -- in fact, I'm healthy as a horse if my bloodwork, cholesterol, and blood pressure has anything to say about it, which is frankly shocking. Not even pre-diabetes, nothing of note to share.

Of course, the world keeps getting worse and we could all be killed in a nuclear war in six weeks anyway, so in the grand scheme of things, does any of it matter?

I suppose perhaps the testosterone supplements have done one thing, at least -- I am no longer extremely, cripplingly depressed. Which, if you haven't been paying attention, I have been for about three years now. Off and on, anyway. More on than off. For the most part, the depression has gone away. I am still frustrated and dissatisfied with life, but for the most part it's manageable and fleeting. I also find that I'm way more emotional than I used to be before as well -- I cry at sad/happy parts in movies way more than before, for example. It just hits me someplace and the tears start flowing, as if I cannot control them no matter what. It is bizarre and unexpected.

As for other things going on in life, the wife and I were both able to get on income-based repayment plans for our student loans -- they cut my monthly payments by more than 2/3 and cut hers in half. This means, surprise, we'll have more money to actually save and put to use for the things we need it for. This includes a possible new vehicle for one of us as well as a possible down payment on a house, but we're not getting ahead of ourselves any more than necessary -- first we must pay down some of our credit card debt and create a little more breathing space than we currently have. It's not that what we have now is bad, but it'll help. We've been putting a little money into savings with every paycheck we get, with the intention to continue doing so as much as humanly possible. We may not be able to do it every check, but most times we can and will.

That's about all there is to tell for now. I'm sure I will update again at some point once I have more to share.