I can almost move again since my back was thrown out so that's progress. I'm exhausted from not sleeping well because of it but hopefully tonight I can sleep. Mostly I'm tired of the ups and downs and just want stability so I can work around life as we know it; maybe someday but I'm not really betting on it.

So I basically claimed sick to my family and relied on Seamless to survive from the past 24 hours. Hey, whatever works, right?

I worked all week from home, knowing it was a luxury and knowing that this weekend is my free as a bird sister's birthday party (early since she's traveling to New Zealand). Maybe that's why I just threw up everything I had in but more likely because of the amount of alcohol in me and that I bothered to try to eat.

I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this.

I'm tired, despite having made an effort for weeks to be rested. I also have managed to survive nonetheless while realizing how futile surviving is. I see the same requests come in over and over while having bankers complain time and again that we're not doing it right but they never send in the actual instructions. I work back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn with no benefits for doing so.

On the plus side I made a meatloaf again so I actually ate and basically threw everything but the kitchen sink at it with scallions, onion, parsley, and garlic, and didn't cut myself this time. Someday I might learn to do this right. It just requires me to be healthy and functional, you know, those things  I can't do.

For the first time this year I had a good weekend. Everything went very pleasantly, the Botanical Garden's show has expanded even more with incredibly wonderful craftsmanship, and I had today off to sleep and recover. Between the holidays, the funeral, year end league table updates and healthcare conference prep it's been non-stop and I was worried that I was entering this year too exhausted to last very long.

Yesterday I felt ok, today I felt better. I think I'm ready to start again. Plus: no erroneous missile alerts! Sorry Hawaii, that really must have sucked.

Tomorrow I'm heading to the Botanical Garden with my parents for the last weekend of the train show they hold every year. We've been once before as a family and really enjoyed it. The trains are cute and nice to watch going around, but the real attractions are the incredibly detailed replications of iconic New York buildings made entirely from plant materials!

We're talking Macy's, Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, TWA terminal at JFK, etc, all exact down to the smallest detail. They even have replicas of famous landmarks that have sadly been torn down like the old Penn Station and a few of the magnates NYC homes like the Vanderbilt mansion. (Side note, the amazing iron gates at the Conservatory Garden in Central Park at 105th St are the ones from that mansion.)

Family may stress me out, but the history and classic architecture of New York excites me. The Museum of the City of New York and the New-York Historical Society have had fantastic exhibits that gave you a window into the planning, past and present, that have led to the current city. If being a museum curator/archivist/docent didn't pay little to nothing I would have considered that as a career.

As it is, when I was in grad school I got to archive and index all of the historical pictures of their library school as part of my research assistant job. When I worked for a nursing journal I did the same for their archives which were in large boxes containing some materials dating back 100 years! I also relocated that collection to a university with a nursing library so it could be properly maintained, since I knew when I left it was almost a certainty that it would be "lost" (aka thrown out) somewhere along the way. That's something I'm very proud of to this day even though I did that eleven years ago.

In short, I love history and I regret that it is such a low-paying field since otherwise I might have entered it. But I really need to revive that interest, read more outside my job, and keep that intellectual side alive since, as I learned by losing the ability to play viola, if you don't use it you really do lose it.

So tomorrow I'll get to revisit one of the more creative historic exhibits that the city has to offer and it should be a good day to take in more NYC trivia.

The deep freeze seems to be over for the moment, so it's nice to go out without feeling like I'm in upstate NY. My shrink's putting me back on Chantix so I'll try quitting smoking again. I just hope it sticks, and doesn't cause worse nightmares than I already have.

The last time I tried making changes a year ago I was in constant pain and exhausted. Getting healthy is supposed to pay some rewards back, and the lack of any tangible progress in how I felt was a major reason I relapsed. So I'll try again. I'm not dead yet, and maybe I can keep it that way.

It's always funny to me how NYC treats any significant snow as an impending disaster. Most of us have lived in the Northeast long enough to have the boots, coat, gloves, hat, etc to handle just about any weather since a temperature difference of over 100 degrees per year is normal, yet the subway, streets, Grand Central Station, and office were almost empty today.

Yes, it requires some caution and particularly for the elderly the last thing you want is to risk a fall, especially since the slipperiest places are usually the subway stairs, which are iron, and street corners, neither of which you can usually avoid. But you just suck it up and get where you're supposed to be. Maybe it's because I went to school at Cornell and no matter what the weather you got your butt to class (and then fell asleep in the lecture, but that was just me :) ).

And once I got to the office I got to observe a minor blizzard from the 37th floor and see the snow blowing by at an impressive clip. I never get tired of the view from there and today was a refreshing, beautiful change. Call me crazy, but give me winter any day.

Today was better, and I'm somewhat looking forward to the snow tomorrow, although not the wind since the zipper on my heaviest coat broke Monday, so I'll be cold even with layering. I also got some extra sleep this morning which definitely helps since I was emotionally exhausted from the past few weeks.

January and February can be difficult months for me so I'll just keep on going and get through it. I can do this.

I've been going through the motions. But I sobbed in my shrink's office this morning. I've been staving off the grief I felt, which objectively, due to his circumstances really did make it better off that he died. Subjectively I miss him and will continue to do so.

So I guess it's good I'm starting to deal with this? The only problem is that I go directly to work after our session so I look like there's something wrong since I've never been a pretty crier. It feels like once thing breaks it's a cascade, but I have hope. I'm not suicidally depressed and believe in time that will make missing him bearable.

I'll just try to show up without crying in the morning. And sadly, not allow my family into this if possible.