It’s been 101 days since my last migraine.

Wow.

I’ve had a bunch of headaches the last couple of weeks. Very few of them were bad enough to affect the writing. They’re mainly caused by heat. I don’t do well in this sort of really hot weather. And where we are is hotter than Seattle by 5-10 degrees.

Of course, this is the time when my sweetie and I decided to re-do the roof on the pump house. At least we were pretty smart about it and did it in stages. One day, take off the old shingles and tar paper. Next day, remove and replace half the wood deck. Take a day off (mainly due to social obligations.) Next day, remove and replace the other half of the wood deck. Today, put back down tar paper and shingles.

Because we started early in the morning, most days we were finished before it got stupid hot. Plus, the pump house is in the shade. Today was the longest day, but we’re done.

For those of you playing at home, one of the medications that I regularly take are hormones. Both estrogen and progesterone. They’re the human equivalents variety.

I was already aware that a lack of estrogen affects my confidence.

Being up on a roof, screwing down decking, calls for confidence.

I’d been trying to stick to a lower dose of the estrogen. However, I discovered that I really need just a little more than I’d been taking. The difference was actually pretty dramatic. I was having difficulty with the impact drill, couldn’t get the screws to take, was slightly shaky, etc.

Went and took my hormones. Within 15 minutes I’m setting screws easily, first try, and cursing at my previous limitations.

It always surprises me how a single drop of a medication can change me so much. But it does.

Last week, because we were working in the mornings, I didn’t get as many words done as I would have liked. However, I still managed 16K words. I’m a little behind pace for the month. On the 15th, I had 40K words for the month. I need to have closer to 43K to be on pace.

We’ll see if I can get back on pace before the end of the month. I’m busy again this week, and next week we start the new project. 

While I’d like to make my goal of 85K words for the month, I will still be happy with just getting close to that. 

And I’ll leave you with a picture. This morning, we had four deer hanging out on the property–four point, two point, Mama, and a fawn. (Side note–did you know that fawns race around like cats? My cat regularly races around like a crazy thing. This morning, so did the fawn. Kind of awesome and made me giggle a lot.)

This afternoon, four point decided to hang out right next to the back door. Then two point joined him. And there were high-fives from the kitty, as well as nose touches through the glass.