Thursday, September 15, 2016

Stick It In Your Ear

Oh blog friends...

You know things are just not good in my world when there is nothing here on the 15th. Today is Battle of the Bands and I just cannot do it.

Remember in my last post the explanation about the hurricane, migraines, and the barometer? Well, that is all true, but it turns out that it wasn't the problem. Or the biggest part of the problem. I didn't go into the fact that I was also experiencing occasional dizziness (and I don't mean absentmindedness). It happens sometimes, and I know it's because of my vestibular function loss. If I just lost you, I shall take a moment to explain.

I only have 30% vestibular function in each ear. The doctors don't know how I lost it, but are all pretty certain it's not coming back, and I could lose more (depending on how I lost it in the first place... which remains unclear). It has nothing to do with my hearing. I hear just fine. It has everything to do with finding myself in space. Orientation. Hence the dizziness. When I was first diagnosed I was super dizzy (holding onto walls dizzy, the room was spinning all the time dizzy, a really bad drunk dizzy). After a year of rehab (yep, there's rehab for this), the body learns to compensate for the loss. The rehab mostly consisted of making myself more dizzy in a controlled environment on purpose to make my body learn to deal with it (super fun!). Anyway, pre-hurricane I was experiencing the dizzy again in waves. But, that happens on occasion... especially when the migraines are bad. I guess because it's harder to compensate??? Anyway, I didn't put the puzzle pieces together correctly.

What was actually causing the dizzy, you ask? An inner ear infection. I'd never had one before, so I didn't know the signs. On Monday night (in the middle of the night) my left ear popped, rather painfully, waking me up. I lived in denial about it all day Tuesday hoping it would just miraculously get better. By Wednesday morning, reality set in. I won't relay the horror story of the doctor appointment, but I'm now on antibiotics.

Here's the thing, though... I take my last pill on Saturday morning. That would be ten days worth. I've had plenty of sinus infections, strep throat, bronchitis, and even pneumonia (though I shouldn't count that because ten days of antibiotics didn't knock it out, either). So, with everything but the pneumonia, I was feeling ever so much better around day four. Usually by today (day eight) I'm struggling to remember to take the darn things. I'm still hyper aware of my left ear (and sometimes my right), still struggling with very frequent dizziness, and my spidey sense says that infection is NOT gone. So, I called the doctor's office and was told to come in first thing Monday morning if I still felt that way (which I feel fairly confident I will given the current course).

I tell you all of that to explain why my computer presence has sucked so hard for so long. I'm freakin' dizzy. Scrolling on the computer knocks me down. Writing this post is turning my stomach. I hope that this situation turns around so that I can visit your blogs and vote on your battles. If you would, pray for me. I do believe I need it.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

BoTB Results and IWSG (Or The Longest Time)

Well...
I'm trying to get my blogging turned around, but it's a bit like turning the Titanic. I appreciate all of you who came by and cast a vote here on the 1st. You probably noticed that I didn't vote, comment, nothing for a week now anywhere. Believe me, it wasn't personal. Florida got socked by Hurricane Hermine. Major weather patterns such as that cause the barometer to take a severe dip, which cause my migraine to take a severe dip, and that causes me to lie in bed and not do Anything. It was a really rough week for me. Parts of the state were hit hard (we were lucky and didn't sustain any damage aside from the aforementioned migraine). Anyway, I've discovered that once I get into a bad pain cycle with a migraine it can be hard getting out. Meaning that even with the literal storm passes my migraine doesn't. ::Frustrating::

So, anyway, I'm hoping that things get better soon, but if you don't see me around it isn't that I don't care, it's that I don't feel well.

I appreciate all of you came by and voted on my battle on the first (despite my absence!). The competition was fierce at my last count of the votes. Unless someone votes to change things, Dr. John beat Ella by two votes (with 8 votes, to her 6 votes), which makes him the king of the "sentimental mood."  Even if I threw my one vote at Ella that wouldn't be enough to give her the win, so there it is.


This is also the first Wednesday of the month (and IWSG). Funny how the raining/pouring metaphors could come into play in this post should I care to let them loose. My writing has been on the back burner for such a long time that I'm not sure what to do with my novel. Part of me thinks that maybe this much distance will really give me perspective if I will just pick up my WiP again. Another part of me thinks that maybe it's time to just move on. What is the longest amount of time you've set your writing aside? Do you think it's possible to fall in love with your writing projects all over again or not?

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Battle of the Bands ~ The Finals

If you're following the weather, you're aware that there is a weather system in the Gulf prepared to hit Florida. That is one of the things that has me preoccupied and not keeping up so well with all the things in my life, including this blog. I only realized a few hours ago that today was the 1st (just before walking out the door to attend to last minute things before said storm hit) AND my Battle of the Bands was not ready. I knew what was on the agenda, just that no actual words had been put to the page. No links had been added. You get the idea. And so it's late in the day and here we are.

If you haven't seen anything about this storm, click here.

Fortunately, this is going to be an easy battle for many of you as you've already heard both of the songs in question last battle (one of them here and one over on Stephen T. McCarthy's page). Of course, this may be a difficult battle since both of these versions are excellent. (So, I take back my initial statement about this being an easy battle. This may, in fact, not be an easy battle.) This is the final showdown, as I'm pitting the winner from his last battle against the winner of mine. The song is/was In A Sentimental Mood. Over at his place two jazzy contenders went head to head (Benny Goodman vs. Ella Fitzgerald) and over here two piano/contemporary artists tackled the song (Dr. John vs. Billy Joel). If you followed those battles, you already know that Ella Fitzgerald won at his place and Dr. John won over here, so now it's time to decide the ultimate winner. That means Ella and Dr. John are squaring off for the title of who does sentimental best.



First up is Ella Fitzgerald:


versus

Dr. John:


and for our Canadian listeners, try this link

Please vote for the version of this song you prefer. If you want to get into the Ins and Outs of why you like one better than the other... I LOVE long comments!

For more Battle of the Bands fun, check out the other BOTB bloggers to vote on their battles: