My wife and I have teen talking about her sobriety journey and trying to do something together on the shared journey; it’s an attractive idea, and we are sympatico for the radio show, so the broad general idea is we’re going to stop doing the radio show and focus on a new project called Dry and Mighty, a blog/podcast about sobriety and couplehood.

We even have a theme song:

The current idea is I might wrap up Jerkpod at the 100th episode to focus on this with her. So Jerkpod will continue, but in a different format, with more substance and jokes and less a daily project where I complain about things.

Today is deck day! We moved a lot of stuff around so we could really focus on the deck today. So as soon as this posted I’m putting on sunblock and heading outside to GET THINGS DONE.

We’re not building a deck, just making modifications to the current one, but it’s still A Project, and will boost my spirits (ideally) to get something practical done at the end of the weekend that I can look back on and say “hey, we did a thing!”.

I’m still prioritizing sleep over exercise, which I actually know at this point is counter-productive for the Grand Funk. Working outside today will be exercise, though, of a sort, and I don’t want to tucker myself out if I’m going to be spending most of my post-radio day mounting fences.

The doctor says “exercise”. That’s… pretty much it, actually. So I should get back to exercise. I should’ve today, but I was crazy tired, so I headed back to bed.

Not super conclusive, and I can’t say I’m thrilled, but I also don’t know what I was expecting. So: exercise tomorrow. Something short but blood-pumping. We’ll see how she goes!

Up early to take my wife to work, and now back to bed for a quick nap, then… off to the GP! The Grand Funk has been abating this week, but I’m still keen to get the “medical” part of this out of the way.

That’s about it for today, really. Keen to get this underway.

My wife’s been very inspiring lately. Despite my being in the doldrums, she’s been relentlessly helpful and supportive, really working to help me cover daily life stuff and being a champion of, well, me at home.

She’s out for a run now, which I should be doing; I’m still in the Grand Funk (but I think it’s been better for the last couple of days).

She’s doing sobriety better than I did, despite being more invested in booze as a writer and podcaster before she started. In fact, in the time we’ve been married she’s led a lot of transformations: veganism, fitness, cat fostering (although we wound up adopting the cats), and a lot more.

In short, she’s pretty amazing and I’m proud of myself for somehow convincing her to hang out with me for the rest of our lives.

We’re into the “hot sleep” days of summer; these are rough. We wound up moving downstairs to the guest bedroom, which is easy a 2-3 degree difference (Celsius), but then the cats found out and went bonkers, so it’s been a rough night all round.

Giving my wife a lift to work with the Temporary Car as it’s raining; then back to bed, I think. Knocking this out now so I can head right to sleep when I return.

Yesterday was our fifth anniversary in Kingston; the city/move has given us a lot, and even with the Grand Funk, I’m grateful. We went out and ate too much, then felt gross, which may also have contributed to the lack of sleep.

Now that I’m thinking about kidney stones again, it’s hard to stop thinking about kidney stones; a wibbly stomach again and I can’t stop wondering if it’s just something I ate, or… the lurking doom.

All’s I can do is keep drinking water, I guess. And keep that morphine around.

I haven’t gotten rid of the Grand Funk yet, which as stated the other day is tiresome. Hopefully soon? Maybe lingering kidney stones are causing the Grand Funk? Who knows at this point…

A friend of mine who has spent considerably more time than me at the kidney stone rodeo gave me a dire warning yesterday that a complete cessation of pain for a week or more may not mean the stone has passed! It may still be lurking. So there’s something for me to think about. Good motivation for me to chug water like a warthog, assuming warthogs chug a lot of water.

The Grand Funk seems to be lifting a bit; I’m cautiously optimistic, and a bout of forcing myself to clean the house for two hours last night was helpful. Tidying is a good panacea for my brain, for whatever reason.

The irony of these things is I know exercise helps, but the last thing I want to do is exercise. Maybe more paddling today? That definitely seems to help.

Made an appointment to see my GP a while back; if there isn’t a song called “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” there should be.

Quick Googling says no song, but a fairly famous speech by a civil rights activist in 1964, and actually kind of an awesome person, at a glance.

At any rate, I can’t wait to turn the corner on this thing. It’s bugging me.

Another rough night / back to bed scenario; the Grand Funk continues, which is not only brutal in the personal sense, but is making this super uninteresting. It’s a bit hard to articulate what “crushing apathy” feels like, and frankly I’m not quite sure what reservoir I’m drawing on to keep this up rather than “habit,” but I’m just not feeling it.

I’m persisting, though! This might be just the right kind of self-therapy to keep processing this stuff every morning and work through it.