Judith's thought-provoking soul-searching journal

Because some friend of mine - sorry, I no longer remember who! - subscribes to it, I took  a look at brutal_honesty and signed up. I thought it would be a good place to reveal some of the dark things about me. I have discovered that it's a mean group, ready to go on the attack at the slightest provocation. I have to admit that in contrast to feminist, where every other word is "triggering" (as in "the following piece may be triggering, so I put it behind a cut..."), I prefer the bluntness of brutes to the hypersensitivity of this particular group of feminists. Perhaps I should be posting this to brutal_honesty, now that I think about it...

The secrets revealed in brutal_honesty draw me in. Some are truly mundane, others are simply confessions of some sort of racism or other type of intolerance. Then there are the really honest and seriously private posts, which are rare. It isn't an open community. You have to sign your life away to join, and promise forever not to reveal what you've read there. I am not revealing anything specific here, of course.

What gets interesting is that everyone responds. There are frequently responses heading toward double digits, and not all are mean, of course. One poster confessed that being a part of the community has made him or her meaner in real life, which made me think and laugh. Perhaps that's the real attraction. It makes me laugh.

I think I have a sinus headache. It isn't the same as a migraine. For one thing, it is on the right side of my head rather than the left, which is where my migraines ...migrate...It also includes a slight swelling of the area just above the eye. I can feel it. I looked up sinus headaches online and most of the sources said they were associated with bad colds and so I wondered if it were one. But they also come from allergies, and I think that's what we have here.

I swam in spite of the headache, knowing it might make it worse, and it did. I went right home after the swim and drank some theraflu-type decongestant and tried to sleep. Bullet accommodatingly lay next to me and purred, which is comforting, but it didn't get me to sleep and it didn't lessen the pain. So I got up finally and took some excedrin migraine. No reason that should work if it's sinus but what the hell, at this point.I looked at the little bottles of leftover vicodin I had in my medicine box and thought about it. But that stuff tends to make me nauseous. It also has a way of not actually getting rid of headaches, but simply blocking them for a time. Then they come back.

If it isn't one thing it's another.

Swim stuff. Odds and ends.  I have been practicing new stroke techniques and my left hand hurts. I think I'm moving the arm just differently enough to bring in a different set of muscles.

Flip turns are going better but hardly expert yet.

Today I "relaxed" a bit while swimming. I wasn't working that hard on form, just reminding myself to try to swim straight and to kick reasonably straight, and I wasn't trying to push myself.

I think I felt better just because there were fewer people in the pool. Last Monday it was competition time and I had a swim partner in my lane for a bit - until I accidentally rammed her when she tried to pass me...heh...she found another lane...really, I didn't mean it!

I'm wondering if I might  want to use decongestants before swimming.