You know all those times when you wonder whether your phone is listening to you talk, or one website is eerily aware of what you look at on other sites? It's not in your head. It's all watching you. I think I am currently being punished. I shared an Oatmeal comic on Twitter a few days ago, all about how Facebook demands money to boost posts, so that a small fraction of your friends or followers will see your content. I commented on it how I was not going to pay Facebook to share my free blogs that are my public diary. I linked my Twitter and Facebook long ago, so it posted on both platforms, on both my personal and SFSP pages. Ever since, Facebook has been sulking. Instead of showing my posts to over a hundred people per post, I've been getting fewer than 40 views per day. Way to be mature, creepy AI algorithm. Grow up and accept that not everyone wants to pay you to show their free content.
Twelve weeks ago, I went through a torturous round of Botox shots, to wipe out the months-long migraine aura that had made me feel like I was being electrocuted round the clock. Within a few days, I had given up the daily mega-doses of gabapentin (for nerve pain), and a few days after that I started noticing a lot of other improvements. It all went well until the first prednisone they gave me for my shoulder, six weeks ago. A migraine started behind my right eye, and never went away again. I've had a headache since roughly Thanksgiving. (Yeah, concentration has been impossible for all that time.) Today I got my second treatment of Botox. The needles all around my eyebrows and hairline were harder to handle on the second go-round, but once that was over, I felt fine. By the time we were having lunch two hours later, I could already tell that my headache was fading. I should know in the next few hours whether my temperature swings will moderate again. (For the last week, the frequency and amplitude of my hot flashes and sudden chills has been so violently increased that I haven't slept well yet this calendar year. I need a good night's sleep like nobody's business.) The expectation is that the next eleven weeks are going to be dreamy for me, then a rough week while I wait for my next approved treatment.
While I was at the neurologist's office in Boulder, Mr S-P went for a hike up one of the mountain trails that went up just a few blocks from the clinic. I didn't understand how far he planned to go, and he didn't understand how quick my appointment would be. We agreed to meet in the middle at North Boulder Park. I'm not sure, but I think today might have been the first time I have actually walked through it since we had our wedding rehearsal picnic at the pavilion there, during the first Bush administration. I texted him that I was at the car, and he texted me pictures of his hike. I have to think that some messages got lost in translation, because I sat in the car waiting for him to return for an hour. I had plenty to read, and the longer I sat there, the more my headache faded. What could have been a cranky, resentful moment was instead an extension of a calm, relaxing, contemplative morning. Who would have thought?
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