It has been a long time. I took a long break from these forums due to work pressures, health issues, and some personal projects that included a major task moving out of the old big Public Storage unit shared with my former roommate, now a friend, into a smaller unit of my own, and organizing this unit and my apartment, all against a deadline: getting the apartment ready for my son's visit (he lives a bi-coastal life and has a hybrid job). I could not greet my son while my apartment was full of boxes brought from Public Storage.

I am almost done with the Public Storage and home organization project, with a few remaining tasks, such as getting bookshelves to place above my TV to use the space in my unit efficiently. I have bought bookcases for the books I brought from Public Storage unit, but I still have several boxes with books and no more space for bookcases. So my son recommended I place shelves above the TV. I have posted an ASK on my local Buy Nothing group but nobody responded, so I will need to buy. Have not researched the options yet.

Through Buy Nothing, I gifted a lot of things I did not need, including those I brought home from the storage unit.

Some of the discoveries when I was going through boxes in the storage were absolutely delightful. For example, I retrieved my maternal grandmother's linen tea towel! It will soon be 20 years she since passed away, but I still have the tea towel. I do not even remember how and why and when I decided to bring the tea towel with me to America but I did. And its linen is a really tough, high quality material, so I plan to actually use the tea towel for many more years.

For several years, when my stuff and my former roommate's stuff were commingled in a huge garage-size Public Storage unit and only my former roommate, a super busy man, had the key, my stuff was essentially inaccessible. And I was not sure what was there because back when my former roommate and I stopped renting together, I packed under time pressure and did not even think of creating an inventory of stuff.

Now I have a growing inventory of my stuff in a Notion database! It is fun to develop it and if I need something, I can look up where, at home or in the storage unit, my stuff is. I would snap a picture of an item I want to include, upload it to the Notion app on my smartphone, add information and voila!

I have majorly reorganized my kitchenette. I took out ALL the stuff from ALL the cabinets and drawers and organized it logically. It turned out that I actually had extra space! If you put thought into how you arrange everything, it is more efficient and frees up space. And I am still enjoying it, meaning that every day I reach for something I need daily and find it within an easy reach at eye level (and not hidden in a low cabinet), I feel joy and also wonder why it had not occurred to me earlier to apply logic to how I keep the household.

I even added a degree of being less wasteful to all that, bought mesh produce bags to cut down on single use plastic bags, bought special boxes with carbon filters for the fridge to prolong the life of produce, and attached dry erase sheets to the outside of my fridge door on which I keep track of what is in the fridge and what needs to be eaten and cooked next. And I asked my cleaning lady (who comes very occasionally) to clean the fridge and arrange everything in it as she saw fit, and then I took photos of her arrangement (she clearly has a much higher spatial intelligence than I do) and now use these photos as a guide. And, am getting used to always keeping the same arrangement. And it feels far less chaotic this way, and not longer do I fear that some unidentified archeological remains are rotting in the back of my fridge for months .

The next bastion is the freezer.

The best part of the Public Storage project, though, was getting my old clothes. In-between 2017 and now, I gained and then lost of a whole lot of weight. I gained on Zyprexa and now I do not use it anymore. There were other factors besides going off Zyprexa that contributed to losing the weight. And so when I lost weight, I bought new clothes. But it turned out that, forgotten by me, there were clothes at the Public Storage unit purchased before Zyprexa and that now I am back at that weight. It is not my baseline weight, it is still weight after Depokote, Elavil and other weight gaining drugs, but it is the kind of weight where XL and XXL sizes at general clothing stores fit me, whereas on Zyprexa I could only buy clothes from speciality plus size retailers. After I brought those pre-Zyprexa clothes home from Public Storage, washed and dried them, I realized that I basically have two wardrobes. Enough clothes to rarely repeat what I wear to work. And I like them all, so I do not want to part with them. I have never had such a variety of clothes and it has never been so much fun getting dressed for work.

So these are my positive changes.

On the negative side, I have been having episodes with lighthheadedness lasting for half a day at time (starting typically in the morning) and after almost 18 months of having them, I have recently finally been diagnosed. It is a migrainous vertigo. It is a completely safe condition and a quality of life issue which does not endanger anything, but for me it is more than just quality of life because I simply do not have access to enough working hours during my week. The manager is really supportive and for now tolerates my sick days, but these episodes continue, I probably will go on a partial disability (say, work 80% time, receive disability from the private disability insurance through work for 20% of the time). It will be less income but I won't feel obligated to make up for sick days.

Also on the negative side, my attempts to return to donating platelets have not been very successful. Even though a platelets donation does not involve the loss of a lot of red blood cells, my ferritin still drops. So for now there is an embargo on donations, both from the internist and the hematologist.

Sleepwise, I am getting better in that I need, overall, less sleep. Both the sleep medicine nurse practitioner and the sleep psychologist (a CBT-I practitioner) think that my troubles which began instantly upon catching COVID more than 2 years ago were Long Covid and that I would continue getting better, as Long Covid, from what little is known, resolves after 2-3 years. Also, my CPAP therapy report shows less than 1 event per hour, so I am getting good therapy results despite leaks. With leaks, the Sleep Medicine NP gave me many recommendations and referred me to be fitted for a new mask by a sleep tech, something I will do soon. She herself has diabetes and sleep apnea and uses a CPAP and she shared some of her own tips, such as taping Nexcare sensitive skin tape to keep the mouth shut, literally. I have added it to my Amazon Subscribe and Save bundle which will arrive in early Nov and then I will start experimenting. And there are other things to try, so I feel hopeful that I will solve the problem with leaks but also very reassured that even now, while having this problem, I get good results in terms of the low count of apnea events per hour.

My sleep schedule can clearly be better, but I am taking it one day at a time and not aim for perfection.

It has been several months already since I last took Zyprexa. Now, it is just Seroquel for sleep. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but only Seroquel. And I am really happy not to be dependent on Zyprexa anymore.

I missed you guys while I was away form the forums and am so glad to be back! My sleep psychologist knows that I have the forum with friends and she was really happy that I I had found like-minded people and a sense of community.