On Pain and Being WoWidowed

Argleblargh!  First my left shoulder randomly seizing up and sending shooting spikes of pain through me at certain (and apparently randomly-decided) points of the joint's rotation, for like a week.  Now that's finally slacked off, although certain angles continue to feel tense and problematic, just in time for my right shoulder to declare war.  War of the "You spend too much time hunched over your computer, and now I'm going to make it impossible for you to do so.  And also impossible for you to sleep." variety.  This one is a constant feeling of muscle ache, throughout the joint and across the shoulder blade and collarbone areas too.  I can't sleep on my right side right now or else it feels worse the next day - which SUCKS, as my usual falling-asleep position is curled up on my right side - but it hurts anyway, no matter how I lay.  It got so bad last night that I took an Excedrin PM to help me sleep, even knowing the slightly hung-over feeling I would have this morning from it.  (This can be, and was, cured by liberal application of $4bucks mocha and breakfast sandwiches.)

I am trying to help it ease, by not even opening my computer until around 2 PM today (for someone who normally is on and online by 9 AM at the latest, that's quite the cutting-back) and by cleaning my desk so I can pull the computer close and scoot my chair up so my arm is in a better position when I'm using my mouse.  I may crack and take another PM tonight.  I have a final tomorrow, and I can't afford to be too light on sleep from the pain during it.

Also, I want to vent about something.  So either click the happy little "x" and go find something more productive to do than listen to my grievances, or settle in, because I mean VENT.

The past week or so, I have been a goddamn WoWidow.  That is, a woman whose male significant other spends enough time on WoW in the course of a day that she might as well be living alone.  I figured something like this would happen once our landlord got the wireless sorted for us and he could get online regularly, but I really didn't expect it to be this bad.  But this week he's easily spent 90% of the time he's been at home, on WoW.  Today, he got on WoW pretty much as soon as we'd finished breakfast at 10ish, and finally came out around 5 to ask if I wanted to watch a movie with him - problem being, he hadn't set his watch for the time change yet, thought it was 4, and that we'd have time for that.  I said, "What about the raid you told me about at 6?"  He realized the time change had thrown him off and kinda sighed, and went back to WoW.  Not like we could have, I dunno, spent the remaining hour together?  Not watching a movie, but we could have watched an episode of B5 or something, or read together, or played some Gears of War 2, or SOMETHING other than "Oh, we only have an hour?  Then I guess I'll squander that hour getting back on WoW."  With this raid, he will have spent the ENTIRE FUCKING DAY on that stupid fucking video game.  I complained, on Twitter yesterday, about being WoWidowed, and my ex was oh-so-sympathetic.  His response?  "Well, maybe you should get on WoW and play with him!"  He meant well, I think, but it honestly pissed me off.  Frankly, I actually do intend to get an account once my computer's hard drive is fixed.  But my ability to get my fiance to spend some fucking time with me during his off-hours should NOT be dependent on my willingness and ability to play his fucking video game of choice!  ARGLEBLARGH!

Lip Balm!

So my Aromaleigh lip balms got in today.  I bought 8 of the damn things, plus two samples, because they were discontinued right before I bought, and when the stock on hand was gone, that would be it, no more Aromaleigh balm.  Since I'd heard everyone and their mother in the beauty blogosphere rave about these balms, I decided to gamble and stock up before they were gone.  I bought two Italian Blood Orange scent/flavor, two java, two cocoa-orange, one teaberry, and one yuzu (some kind of Asian citrus, which actually smells way awesome, more than I thought it would.  Wish I'd bought two yuzu and only one java, cause I don't much like how the coffee one turned out.)  I placed my order about a week ago, and they got in yesterday to my mom's, where I picked them up today.

I'm starting with one of the blood orange ones.  On first application, the texture of the stick itself was a bit gritty, and it still feels slightly rough when I swipe it over my lips.  However, the product itself, once on the lips, resolves to a smooth emollient feel.  Kristen (Aromaleigh's founder and proprietress) calls them aromatherapy balms, and I seem to recall reading somewhere that the essential oils are added just for scent, not flavor, but I feel like I can taste the blood orange when I lick my lips while wearing it.  I'm still waiting to see if it turns into that kind of whitish "rind" effect I get with some other balms, where it collects in the corners of my lips and toward the inside, where my lips actually rest against one another.  If it does, then stocked-up or no, I'm not using them.

Before this, my holy grail balm was Yes To Carrots C Me Smile Lip Butter, in berry or citrus scent/flavor.  Aromaleigh's balm compares favorably to YTC.  It feels...less intrusive, I guess?  I don't notice it's there as much as I did the YTC balm.  I used and love the YTC balms because they lack the waxy feel of Chapstick and other lip products, because I *hate* that wax-layer-feel with a flaming passion; I hadn't realized I could find a balm that was even LESS waxish than YTC, but I think I may have. 

So that's my first impression of Aromaleigh balm; I'll update this in a couple days with my over-time impressions.

Wherein I Get All Meta About Blogging. Again.

I haven't been posting much, lately, on either of my blogs.  Depression has this nasty habit of sneaking up and nomming on my ability to motivate myself and get shit done, and this past week has been bad for that.

But on a whim, since my ability to focus and work seems to be coming back today, I posted something to Witch.Words, and then meandered over to check my Analytics for W.W.  I was bracing myself for low statistics, and rightfully so; you can expect visitor stats to remain high if you blog about timeless topics, like personal development or spiritual paths or whatever, the kind of things for which people will always be searching anew, but if you blog on current events and cultural issues, it's an up-to-the-minute thing, and if your content goes stale, so does your visitor count.

Hmm.  I may have just broken some kind of regulation on the number of parenthetical clauses one may have in a single sentence. My apologies.

Anyway.  I got on my Analytics, and looked, and sure enough, it had fallen to a low but steady spot.  I moused over the graph to see the exact visit count per day, though, and guess what?  I was consistently in double-digits, even when I hadn't posted for a full week and then some!  Not by much, it was all in the teens, but still!  And then I clicked to the absolute unique visitor count, and saw that the number was 434 - and mind you, that's only counting from after the template change, because when I changed the template I had to reinstall my tracker code, and that reset my count.  So in the past, what, month or two?  I've had 434 people visit my site.  434 people have read my words. 

Frankly, that both delights me, and scares the shit out of me!  To put it in perspective, how would I do if I were faced with a crowd of 434 people gathered to hear me speak?  I'd be fucking terrified.  I've taken public speaking, and I've been told I have a knack for it, but ye gods, 434 people at once?  Guh.  Wouldn't happen. 

So it's a sobering reminder of the power of the internet, that one young college student, one woman on her laptop in her studio apartment with a big damn mouth and some strident opinions, can carve out the kind of niche that garners at least a dozen visitors every day, and which has reached literally hundreds of people.  Damn.