Category: Real Life

Danni

Week 35 Review

Autism, Danni, Gaming, M.E., Physical Disability, Real Life, Week in Review, World of Warcraft
A box with a picture of a woman wearing an eye mask with ear muffs, titled Hibermate, saying, "Luxury Eye Mask with Ear Muffs for Sleeping", Below in smaller letters, "The world's first soft ear muffs for sleeping. Generation 6" There is a sticker saying navy blue.
The only photo I took this week. My new eye mask!

You’ll never guess what I got up to this week. It definitely didn’t involve a massive multiplayer online role playing game that I’m a bit obsessed with, honest 😛

Yeah, another WoW week. Last week I did the Jaina storyline, but had stop before the end as to finish it you needed to go into a mythic only dungeon (which is the hardest standard difficulty level). On Tuesday some people in my guild talked me into healing said mythic dungeon, so I managed to get to the end but also learnt I’m really not well enough to heal mythics. If it hadn’t been a guild group I would have been kicked really early on as I kept dying and wiping the group as I just didn’t have the concentration needed to heal and remember the mechanics at the same time.

It did mean I completed the Jaina storyline completely though. Will put the last spoilers below in a spoiler thingy, but I got very emotional again finishing it.

After the Siege of Boralus

Once I completed the questline, I mostly concentrated on doing side quests and working on my reputations, especially the war campaign. I also went back and cleared Firelands on 25 heroic as it’s trivial content now, and it’s annoying me that I don’t have the reputation at exalted. I got lucky and won the mount from Alysrazor which made me happy. I also managed to complete the achievement Ready for War which was the end of another, less emotional storyline (though petable baby dinosaurs were involved afterwards).

I didn’t go on my computer everyday though. Thursday and Friday I ended up feeling rather rotten, and became really moody (and not as a response to anything). Based on the cramping pain I then got, we’re pretty sure that it was hormones, which was reassuring as it meant we knew it would be temporary. I had to ask Johan to send the carers away Friday night as I just couldn’t cope and was worried if they touched me then I’d end up hitting them. Panic attacks, paranoia and hallucinations are not fun. (I’m feeling better now.) Once it calmed down a bit I was able to go back on puter and play WoW as a distraction, which helped. I also listened to the song Daughter of the Sea from Warbringers: Jaina, the story of how Jaina became a traitor (from the Kul Tiran point of view), on repeat a lot. The first video is the animated story version, the second is just the song.

Beware, beware, the daughter of the sea…
  • Overall mood – Mix of awesome, good and poor on Friday. High symptoms because of hormones and weather changes. 
  • Average daily sleep – 10 hours 43 minutes
  • Longest sleep – 17 hours 49 minutes, from Sunday morning to Sunday night.
  • Clothes changed – 0
  • Wipe wash – 0
  • Water wash – 0
  • Hair wash – 0
  • Books read – 0
  • TV watched  – 0
  • Streams watched – 0
  • Youtube watched – Jessica Kellgren-Fozard (I actually looked up how to spell her name this time)
  • Music listened to – Warbringers: Jaina (about 50 times) and A Turtle Made It To The Water! (about 15 times)
  • Podcasts listened to – Episodes 46 to 50 of Welcome to Night Vale
  • Blog posts written – 0
  • Penguins cuddled – Definitely
  • Johan hand holds – Indeed
  • Johan hugs – Nope, too ill
  • Time on Twitter – 10 hours 18 minutes (average 1 hour 28 minutes a day)
  • Time on Reddit – 19 hours 32 minutes (average 2 hours 47 minutes a day)
  • Time on Facebook – 1 hour 7 minutes (average 9 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • I am so grateful I don’t go through the hormonal premenstrual stuff monthly now. I don’t think either of us could cope.
    • I found out how to see what percentage of my time I spend on things. For this week, it was 45% sleeping, 17% on social media, 15% on World of Warcraft, 6% on other games (mostly Animal Crossing) and the rest was most other stuff. Only problem is my tracker can’t deal properly when I’m doing two things at once (such as on World of Warcraft on my computer and twitter on my tablet).
    • I had been planning on changing my clothes and having a wash at the weekend. That didn’t happen.
    • I’m so glad I had Johan while I wasn’t coping. He helps a lot. 
    • My new eye mask is awesome. I’m hoping to do a full review at some point, but that might be a while.

Game Stuff

  • Games played – 5
    • Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
    • Cross Stitch
    • Neko Atsume
    • Godville
    • World of Warcraft
  • AC: Pocket Camp Level – 120
  • Godville Heroine Level – 58 (69% done)
  • Godville wood for ark – 39.5%
  • Godville savings – 1 million, 686 thousand
  • Cross stitch completed – 2
  • Most played game – Animal Crossing Pocket Camp (17 hours 2 minutes, average 2 hours 26 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • New bug catching event in Animal Crossing, this time Bumbledrops.
    • Finished the first part of the bug event in just over a day, thanks to very active friends.
    • Remembered that cross stitch is good, especially when listening to podcasts.
    • WoW is still favourite game.

Danni

Week 34 Review

Blizzard, Danni, Gaming, M.E., Physical Disability, Real Life, Week in Review, World of Warcraft
Danni is in bed wearing a blue t-shirt with Diablo 3 on the front with rainbows and unicorns, a penguin neck cushion, and a maroon scarf on their head. They have a computer keyboard resting on their tummy and is smiling.
I remembered how to take a photo while on my computer!

Shortish post for this week as I made very few notes about it, I’m a week late, and my memory is bad. What I do remember is I spent most of my awake time playing World of Warcraft. 

In World of Warcraft, other than doing world quests and a bit of archeology, I mostly concentrated on the Jaina questline. This is one of the most emotional storylines I’ve ever played through, and I cried. As it’s long and there are major spoilers for an important Alliance questline below, I’ve put them in a couple of spoiler thingies (the first video is from the beginning of the main questline, the second is from near the end, the furthest part I got to this week).


Cinematic at the end of this part of Jaina’s questline.

Jaina’s guilt and feeling she is to blame for everything felt incredibly familiar to me, as that’s how I was when I had severe depression. Even before the events of the questline, it is obvious she has PTSD (as shown in the first cinematic). I had to pause several times while playing through the questline as it brought up some bad memories that I try to keep buried. It’s also why this blog post is nearly 2 weeks late – I need to process the emotions before I could blog about them.

Other than WoW, I mostly spent time on my tablet and slept. I also bought a new monitor, as after Johan swapped them over the oldest one was so heavy it was pulling the overbed table over. Got a cheap 1080p one to replace it and I can now move the overbed table without it tipping, which is good. Johan bought it from the local computer shop and also got a new keyboard there as the backlight on his was dying. Another week where so long as I didn’t move or be touched, I was mostly okay (other than digestive system playing up).

  • Overall mood – Mostly awesome, a couple of good. High symptoms some days due to digestive ebils.
  • Average daily sleep – 9 hours 28 minutes
  • Longest sleep – 15 hours 3 minutes, from Thursday morning to evening.
  • Clothes changed – 1
  • Wipe wash – 1
  • Water wash – 0
  • Hair wash – 0
  • Books read – 0
  • TV watched  – 0
  • Streams watched – 0
  • Youtube videos watched – Jessica Out of the Closet, Tom Scott, vlogbrothers
  • Music listened to – Battle for Azeroth soundtrack
  • Podcasts listened to – 0
  • Blog posts written – 1
  • Penguins cuddled – Yup
  • Johan hand holds – Yes
  • Johan hugs – Yup! I needed one after that storyline.
  • Time on Twitter – 6 hours 33 minutes (average 56 minutes a day)
  • Time on Reddit – 20 hours 6 minutes (average 2 hour 52 minutes a day)
  • Time on Facebook – 1 hour 56 minutes (average 16 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • I really need to either do these on time or actually write things in my diary, as I can’t exactly rely on my memory 😛 
    • The weekend wasn’t quite as good as that’s when my digestive system played up. I hate taking cyclizine but I hate vomiting more.
    • Being on my computer more meant more video chats with Sammie, which is awesome.
    • Johan makes me watch the Jessica videos with him now, as he loves them as much as I do. She’s awesome, and with Claudia they make an adorable couple <3
  • Games played – 5
    • Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
    • Cross Stitch
    • Neko Atsume
    • Godville
    • World of Warcraft
  • AC: Pocket Camp Level – 120
  • Godville Heroine Level – 58 (36% done)
  • Godville wood for ark – 38.0%
  • Godville savings – 1 million, 612 thousand
  • Cross stitch completed – 0
  • Most played game – World of Warcraft (25 hours 28 minutes, average 3 hours 38 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • World of Warcraft is definitely my obsession at the moment. It’ll calm down at some point but I’m really enjoying it right now.
    • I just want to give Jaina a hug 🙁
    • Continued with the Google flower event and the geodoites in Animal Crossing.
    • Mostly logged into other games just for daily bonus, because WoW.
Danni

Week 33 Review

Blizzard, Computers, Danni, Gaming, M.E., Physical Disability, Real Life, Week in Review, World of Warcraft
A metal ornament, which is round and has a lion's face and mane on it, representing the Alliance in World of Warcraft.
For the Alliance!

We’ll ignore that the photo was taken a week late and is rubbish 😛

Monday the 13th was our 8th wedding anniversary. As is normal, I spent most of it sleeping, but before I slept I ordered McDonalds breakfast for us both and we had hugs (which are awesome but very painful).

The launch of the World of Warcraft: Battle For Azeroth expansion was at 11pm UK time, so once I woke up I went into WoW with Johan in preparation, as I had decided to buy digital version of the expansion so I could play at launch. It ended up activating a few minutes early, and it was a mostly smooth experience for us. I managed to get to level 114 and finish the main storyline in Drustvar before having to give in and get more sleep, mostly fueled by caffeine and crisps. Since we both like WoW, it was a pretty decent anniversary 🙂

Tuesday my Collector’s Edition of the expansion arrived, and I looked at the pictures in the novella book and Johan complained about my Alliance metal ornament thingie having the Horde logo on the back, before he put it under the telly on my Tivo box. I tried taking a photo but as it’s far away, dark and my hands are very shaky it is a bit rubbish.

Most of the week consisted of playing WoW, recovering from playing WoW, and sleeping. On Thursday I had an appointment with the CFS team person, where I was told that important people are saying they have to stop home visits. They’re trying to keep them but if they don’t succeed that was my last appointment. It sucks because I found them really helpful and I think I’d be doing worse without their input. If I had more spoons I’d yell at the important people but I don’t.

Playing WoW has brought up a new issue I have – turning my head for more than a couple of minutes causes pain to shoot up my neck and head on the opposite side. I was getting it while turning my head to see my second monitor, and while the CFS team person was here (which confirmed it’s a problem on both sides). It’s really annoying as being in bed it’s hard to keep looking straight forward all the time. Johan did swap my monitors over so my main one is now in front of me which helped a bit, but it’s still annoying. I’m gonna have to see the doctor about it as it’s new and causing me problems. Hopefully it’s something that can be fixed.

I feel really lucky to be well enough to play so much WoW. Johan is super busy with volunteering and running, and my best times tend to be in the evenings or the middle of the night, so I’m restricted in what I’m able to do when well enough. I really missed it when I couldn’t manage it, and hopefully I’ll be able to continue playing for a long time.

  • Overall mood – Awesome all week. Mostly normal symptoms, and playing WoW really helps distract from the blehness. 
  • Average daily sleep – 9 hours 50 minutes
  • Longest sleep – 19 hours 45 minutes, from Saturday morning to Sunday morning.
  • Clothes changed – 2
  • Wipe wash – 1
  • Water wash – 0
  • Hair wash – 0
  • Books read – 0
  • TV watched  – 0
  • Streams watched – Penguin cam
  • Music listened to – World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth soundtrack
  • Podcasts listened to – Episodes 44 and 45 of Welcome to Night Vale
  • Blog posts written – 1
  • Penguins cuddled – Lots
  • Johan hand holds – Daily
  • Johan hugs – Yes!
  • Time on Twitter – 4 hours 27 minutes (average 38 minutes a day)
  • Time on Reddit – 11 hours 6 minutes (average 1 hour 35 minutes a day)
  • Time on Facebook – 1 hour 10 minutes (average 9 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • Desktop computer tracking is working, though I need to work on making my categories easier to use.
    • Caffeine seems to have an overall positive effect on me, making me more alert and less dizzy. I was expecting to crash afterwards but other than needing a long sleep, I’m mostly Danni-normal.
    • Took a couple of days to do a food shop as My Supermarket couldn’t log into my Morrisons account for some reason, so had to manually do the order again. That was not fun.

Game Stuff

  • Games played – 5
    • Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
    • Cross Stitch
    • Neko Atsume
    • Godville
    • World of Warcraft
  • AC: Pocket Camp Level – 118
  • Godville Heroine Level – 58 (11% done)
  • Godville wood for ark – 37.2%
  • Godville savings – 1 million, 585 thousand
  • Cross stitch completed – 1
  • Most played game – World of Warcraft (34 hours 17 minutes, average 4 hours 53 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • I love the new WoW expansion. The storylines are great and there’s so much choice in what to do.
    • Johan also loves it. I paid for his expansion and a month’s subscription so we can play together (or at least talk about it together, as we both play healer priests and have different playstyles)
    • Reached level 120 on Friday. Was awesome!
    • Finished the fishing event in Animal Crossing, so they released another flower event. Starting to be a bit overwhelming.
    • Did I mention I like WoW? 😛
Danni

Week 32 Review

Computers, Danni, Gaming, M.E., Physical Disability, Real Life, Week in Review, World of Warcraft
A screenshot from Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. There is a black faced penguin with crosses for eyes and has blue wings on the left, who is wearing a purple top with a large yellow star. On the right there is a pale skinned human with a beak and purple hair, wearing a purple and white top. They are wearing matching purple caps. The text says, "Cube and I are matching! This isn't weird at all!".
Forgot to take a photo so a screenshot from Animal Crossing instead. Penguins are awesome.

This week has mostly consisted of playing World of Warcraft and sleeping. I am so happy to be able to play WoW again. I’m doing okay so long as I don’t move, and being on my computer requires very little movement. I’m also very happy to be home.

Most of the WoW stuff I played was the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch events. Darkshore being invaded by the Horde was hard emotionally as my main character has always been a Night Elf Priestess, but the destruction of Darnassus made me cry. The quest A Flicker of Hope was heartbreaking, knowing that there was no possible way to save everyone. I might have helped save Azeroth from so many different threats, but I couldn’t save my home. I liked the Silithus quests that explained why my artifact weapon was no longer super powerful, but I wished there had been more to it. I’m looking forward to the new expansion next week. Sylvanas must go.

I also convinced Johan to resubscribe to WoW, after saying he would never do so again 😛 He has a lot more catching up to do than me.

Outside of WoW, I’ve not done much. I wrote a blog post for Severe ME day, which took me so long it ended up being posted the day after. Writing that was a ton more draining than playing WoW, so I had to come off puter afterwards. I’m glad to have written it, and eventually I’ll be linking it as it’s more up to date on how ME affects me.

I ended up with a migraine on Saturday, which almost wrote the weekend off. I’m lucky that so long as we dose me up with all my medication I can sleep through the worst of it. Our new upstairs neighbours have been arguing a lot which isn’t great. I know our other neighbours are just as fed up and we’ve got to keep a record of when it happens. I’m hoping they stop, though preferably without one of them being murdered (which happened to our original noisy upstairs neighbours). 

  • Overall mood –Mixture of good and awesome. Mostly high symptoms, probably because of the care home.
  • Average daily sleep – 10 hours 32 minutes
  • Longest sleep – 15 hours 32 minutes from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning (deep sleep 54%)
  • Clothes changed – 1
  • Wipe wash – 1
  • Water wash –  0
  • Hair wash – 0
  • Books read – 0 (I’ve managed to misplace my Kindle)
  • TV watched – None (playing WoW instead)
  • YouTube videos watched – Some
  • Streams watched – 0
  • Music listened to – 0
  • Podcasts listened to – 0
  • Blog posts written – 1 (Severe ME Day)
  • Penguins cuddled –  Yes!
  • Johan hand holds – Indeed!
  • Johan hugs – 0
  • Time on Twitter – 5 hours 47 minutes (average 49 minutes a day)
  • Time on Reddit – 22 hours 8 minutes (average 3 hours 9 minutes a day)
  • Time on Facebook – None tracked
  • Other –
    • I forgot to set up tracking on my desktop computer so although I did spend time on Facebook, I don’t know how long. I have fixed that.
    • I’ve not been putting much in my daily diary. Too much WoW playing 😛
  • Games played – 5
    • Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
    • Cross Stitch
    • Neko Atsume
    • Godville
    • World of Warcraft
  • AC: Pocket Camp Level – 117
  • Godville Heroine Level – 57 (74%)
  • Godville wood for ark – 35.8%
  • Godville savings – 1 million, 536 thousand
  • Cross stitch completed – 0
  • Most played game – World of Warcraft (27 hours 19 minutes, average 3 hours 54 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • World of Warcraft is definitely my favourite game.
    • I healed some LFR raids. I told them I was rubbish and just pressed random buttons, but a couple responded I was very good at pressing the right ones. Made me feel happy 🙂 Most of the groups were good like that.
    • I also helped try and take over Undercity/Lordaeron. Sylvanas destroyed it as well.
    • Completed the Flutterfly event in Animal Crossing with a day to go.

Danni

Week 31 Review

Autism, Danni, Gaming, M.E., Physical Disability, Real Life, Week in Review, World of Warcraft
Danni is in their wheelchair, wearing a lilac top with a cat on it, a lilac baseball cap, sunglasses and a penguin neck cushion. They are smiling.
Danni back at home, before hoisting into bed

I am glad to be home. Got back on Wednesday 1st August.

Care homes suck. Even good ones. It’s just not the same as being at home, and if you have severe ME, then it’s really not good. There’s too much noise, not enough staff, too many people to try and teach how you need things doing, and for me, constant anxiety over everything. They are not good for me, but at the moment it’s the only form of respite we can get.

Monday Johan got back from Sweden, and as I was running out of essentials (mostly incontinence pads) he came to visit me and bring the stuff I needed. It was fun tracking his flight using an app on my phone, and he had free wifi on the plane so we were chatting at the same time 🙂 He also bought me some Swedish chocolate, which was yummy.

Monday night was not so good. I still had really bad diarrhoea, and the night staff decided to leave me for 4 hours, which meant I had been lying in a dirty pad for about 3 1/2 hours and by the end of it had spread up to my shoulders. Ended up with really bad nappy rash as well as feeling super ill from the washing and changing needed because they weren’t checking on me as often as I needed. It also made a lot of extra work for them because changing my pad takes about 5 minutes for one carer, changing me and the bed takes about half an hour for two carers. I didn’t get to sleep until 4.30am because of that, so slept through to the afternoon.

Tuesday was better, other than being unable to lie on my back due to the nappy rash. Johan came to see me in the afternoon and we talked about what foreign countries we wanted to visit, while looking up the government advice for each country. Determined that we’re not going to quite a few. The night carers were much better than on Monday night, and though they couldn’t manage hourly checks as they were too busy, they did see me every 90 minutes or so which meant it didn’t get as bad as it had been. I’m also grateful for Cavilon as it really helped clear the worst of the nappy rash up.

Wednesday I went home! Before doing so, I put in a complaint about the night staff who were leaving me for hours with the manager. It’ll depend on the response from her as to whether I’ll be going back there again. I was so glad to be back in my own bed.

Thursday I slept most of the day, and felt a bit better for it waking up that evening. Managed to do a food shop and ordered World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth Collector’s Edition (because I missed WoW so much I knew I’d be playing it again). Johan’s computer decided to die, so he ordered some new parts and I offered to pay as an early Christmas present. 

Friday the computer parts were meant to arrive, didn’t, but said they did. That was annoying, but I had a long sleep, waking up Saturday afternoon.

On Saturday the parts actually arrived, so not sure what happened on the Friday. Also on Saturday I went on my desktop computer for the first time since February. After installing a ton of updates, I resubscribed to WoW and after fixing my addons and such, I worked on Argus quests. It’s a great distraction from feeling yukky. Sunday was more WoW until about midday, where I fell asleep before the carers arrived.

Johan is happy with his new computer parts. They have LED lights in them that he can change the colours on. I think he’s changed his mind on RGB computer stuff since he’s seen how awesome they are 🙂 I want some but there’s no point in getting them in my actual computer as I can’t see it from where I am in bed, and the keyboards are too heavy for me. I am going to get the RGB version of the mouse I have when it dies, but it’s being stubborn and continues to work 😛

  • Overall mood – Other than the Monday night which was horrible, I had an awesome week! High symptoms due to care home/travelling/recovery but distraction helped.
  • Average daily sleep – 10 hours 27 minutes
  • Longest sleep – 19 hours 17 minutes from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon (deep sleep 58.5%)
  • Clothes changed – 3
  • Wipe wash – 2
  • Water wash –  0
  • Hair wash – 0
  • Books read – 0
  • TV watched – Doctor Who Series 10 Episodes 9-12, Ultimate Beastmaster on Netflix 
  • YouTube videos watched – Lots, including WoW Cinematics
  • Streams watched – Bob Ross on Twitch
  • Music listened to – Random playlist on Google Play Music while travelling home
  • Podcasts listened to – 0
  • Blog posts written – 1
  • Penguins cuddled –  Lots! Glad to have home ones again
  • Johan hand holds – Lots as he was home!
  • Johan hugs – 1 (worth it)
  • Time on Twitter – 6 hours 17 minutes (average 53 minutes a day)
  • Time on Reddit – 16 hours 58 minutes (average 2 hours 25 minutes a day)
  • Time on Facebook – 1 hour (average 8 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • The difference between the good night staff and the bad night staff was incredibly noticeable.
    • I was just about to contact Johan to phone the care home so they’d come sort me out when they turned up on Monday night/Tuesday morning. My timer showed just over 4 hours.
    • Swedish chocolate is nommy.
    • Home is the best.

Game stuff

  • Games played – 5
    • Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
    • Cross Stitch
    • Neko Atsume
    • Godville
    • World of Warcraft
  • AC: Pocket Camp Level – 117
  • Godville Heroine Level – 57 (45% done)
  • Godville wood for ark – 35.0%
  • Godville savings – 1 million, 473 thousand
  • Cross stitch completed – 0
  • Most played game – Animal Crossing Pocket Camp (8 hours 45 minutes, average 1 hour 15 minutes a day)
  • Other –
    • New flower event in Animal Crossing. This one is catching Flutterflies.
    • I have so much to do in WoW. Luckily I’m still in my guild and I’m so happy to be playing again.
    • Completed the Argus questline in WoW.