Carbonite Backup

Most of the products or services I recommend on my blog have to do with living gluten free (although I do have a link to Simon Haynes’ yWriter free novel writing software under my “Stuff I Recommend” header on my sidebar).

I’m going to step out of my usual blogging topics for this post, however, and recommend Carbonite Online Backup.

I first signed up to try it at work, oh, I’m not sure how many months ago, now, after a coworker told me he’d heard good things about it.  You get a free trial period to make sure you like it before deciding whether to purchase it for $54.95 a year.  It works in the background, backing up changed files while you work on your computer.  (Depending on your computer’s speed, you may choose to pause it while you work; I do.  The right-click menu on the taskbar icon offers various lengths of time to pause, and it will resume automatically after that time has passed – no worrying about forgetting to un-pause.)

You can customize the settings for which files you want it to back up, or if you leave it set with the default settings, it will backup pretty much everything except your programs.  On their web site (under the Security tab, if you follow that link), they say, “Carbonite takes data privacy and security very seriously. We encrypt your files twice before backing them up securely offsite, using the same encryption techniques that banks use. Files remain encrypted at our secure data centers, so only you can see them.”

I suspect that Carbonite may be especially valuable to others with Adult ADD, as it is to me, specifically because I don’t have to worry about forgetting to back up my files.  I’ve always been pretty good about backing up, but have not been as on-top-of-it as I like to be, and most of my prior backup methods wound up causing me to have multiple copies of files (on CD’s, flash drives, portable hard drives, etc.) that I later hesitate to delete because “Uh oh, which copy is the most recent one?”, and that leads to feeling overwhelmed and becoming further disorganized.  For me, anyway.  And maybe for some others, as well.  (And how about that.  This post does fit in with one of the categories I blog about, after all!)

The initial backup takes several days (or longer, if you have a slow dial-up connection like the one I had at home when I set it up on my own computer . . . it was backing up for weeks, until I switched to cable internet, and then it was completed within a couple days).  Once the initial backup is completed, the changed-file backups go much more quickly.

I have found, a couple times already, that it’s very easy to recover one or two files, if something is accidentally deleted, or if, like I did last weekend, you just plain screw something up beyond easy repair and want to go back to where you started.  I was working at home on a web site for one of my little handful of web site clients, and I messed it up badly enough that Undo wasn’t even an option.  I went to my backup files and pulled my backup copy of that page and started again.  Lots of headaches avoided!

And now, I recently had an opportunity to learn how easy it is to recover with Carbonite, after a major data loss.

I realized last week that I had a browser hijacker on my computer at work.  Every time I did a search, no matter which browser I used or what search engine, if I clicked on the link results, I would be directed to some fake link-list site.  I could see the real URL on the search results screen, and could even copy and paste and go there the slow way, but I couldn’t click the links.  I ran an extra anti-virus scan, even though my anti-virus scans nightly, ran SpyBot, downloaded a couple other well-known spy ware and malware detection programs and ran them, and could not get that hijacker out.  Finally, I started to have freezing-up issues and had to resort to shutting down with the power switch several times, and everything just got worse as I was probably damaging Windows files.

Finally, I decided to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything.  When it came time to restore my data files, I logged into the Carbonite web site, re-downloaded the application, and started recover mode.  It took me through a wizard and mapped which user name to restore to (I used a different user name when I set up Windows this time because I didn’t care for the way I’d had it set up before), and started putting everything back.  It takes some time for everything to be restored, and patience has never been my strongest asset, but it went very smoothly.

I decided to recommend Carbonite on my blog because they have a refer-a-friend deal.  If a current user refers someone, and that someone signs up for a paid subscription, the someone receives a free extra month and the referrer receives three free extra months!  Of course, if you are interested, you can sign up by going directly to their site, but if you would like me to refer you so that we could both receive free extra time added on to our subscriptions, just email me at the address at the bottom of my About / Cast page and I’ll be happy to refer you.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled blogging about gluten, therapy, Adult ADD, new relationship stuff, etc., etc. . . .

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My Inner Critic Speaks

I wrote this post back in September, and I’ve had it in my drafts folder ever since.  I guess I was planning to add to it at the time, but I kind of like it just as it is, now.

I mentioned in a recent post that my inner critic has been quieter lately, and weaker in attempts to knock me off-kilter.  When I wrote this post, good-old IC was still trying, desperately, to regain the footing that was slipping away, and was finally beginning to realize that I was taking charge, was no longer so influenced by all the negativity, and that I was winning the fight.

And so, here is that post:

My inner critic is a little confused right now.  The dialog that has run in the background for about as long as I can remember is sounding quieter, further away, for a larger percentage of the time.  He (I tend to see my inner critic as a mean, grumpy old man; I don’t know why, but for whatever reason, the image works for me) doesn’t like to be ignored.  He liked that he pretty much had free reign for the last several years.

This is what he’s been saying lately:

What the hell is wrong with you?  You’ve suddenly changed from a curmodgeony, negative disbeliever-in-love to a goofy, giddy freaking romantic.  You used to be able to see that all that soulmate-romance crap was just a bunch of B.S. and that all those people who spend so much time and energy looking for it are fools who are doomed to be disappointed over and over again until they finally realize they’re chasing something that doesn’t exist.  What happened, to make you lose sight of that?

Me: I fell in love, and I wasn’t even looking for it.  I didn’t see it coming.

You mean you fell for love.  You fell for the B.S.  You took leave of your senses.  You . . .

Me: Oh, shut up.  Really.
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More Mystery Glutenings Solved, And A New Challenge

Mystery # 1: What Companies Can You Really Trust?

In late October or early November, SS ordered a copy of Triumph Dining’s Gluten-Free Grocery Guide, and it has been so very eye-opening. I had considered ordering the book in the past, but always said, “Oh, it’s ok; I have a pretty good handle on label-reading and calling companies from the grocery store aisle.”  Now I’m firmly on the bandwagon to recommend this book.  The amount of research and information in it is impressive.  I’m equal parts enlightened, very impressed with some companies, and very disappointed in others.

In the book, there are five icons used to indicate special information about product manufacturers and the information they provide about their ingredients and policies and procedures to avoid cross contamination in production.

1. There is one that indicates that the company has gluten free lines or is a gluten free facility, with no chance of cross-contamination.
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2. There is one that indicates that gluten testing is performed.
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3. There is one that indicates that no gluten free list was provided by the company but that, based on the ingredient label, the item appears to be gluten free.  (If an item has this symbol and is manufactured by a company that has adopted exemplary labeling practices*, you can feel safe.  For instance, A-1 Steak Sauce has that symbol in the book and it is made by Kraft Foods.  Kraft Foods is one of those companies that has a special place in my heart, due to their labeling policy, I must say.)
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4. There is a symbol that says that procedures are in place, to avoid cross-contamination, but that there are shared facilities or equipment.
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5. And there is a symbol that says that cross-contamination is possible, or that the item is made with gluten free ingredients but that the company would not provide information on whether the manufacturing process is gluten free.  Sometimes the company’s legal departments are the ones who want disclaimers or refuse to say a product is safe for gluten intolerant people because they don’t want to be sued.  This could mean that the product may, in fact, be safe, but there is really no way to know, and it could also mean it is not safe.  I avoid anything with this symbol.

*The reason that these labeling policies are so important is that current FDA rules require disclosing ingredients that contain any of the eight main allergens: cow’s milk, soy, egg, peanut, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish, and wheat.  Not barley, or rye, or oats.  Not “gluten”, which includes wheat, barley, rye, and oats.  Only wheat.  Barley can potentially show up on a label as anything from malt to caramel color (though not all caramel color is made from barley), and lots in-between.  A label may state that the product was made in a facility that is also used to produce products containing wheat, and this is information that someone with Celiac Disease or gluten intolerance needs to know, but a label that warns about only, say, soy and milk, isn’t necessarily safe, as the company may produce something containing barley (or rye, or oats) on the same lines.  This is why companies like Kraft and Unilever and Con-Agra (and others) are so helpful.  They will disclose other gluten ingredients as well, either within their ingredient statement or as a separate warning.

When SS received the book and began reading it, she mentioned to me in an email that V8 juice is listed with the 4th symbol.  I had been drinking V-8 almost every day for quite a while, and having gluten reactions I couldn’t explain for a long time.  The V-8 could be fine, or maybe not.  I chose to stop drinking it, just to be safe.

Then, she discovered that every Publix brand product listed (Publix is a grocery store chain in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee) has the 5th symbol next to it.  I was surprised, because Publix presents themselves as being very knowledgeable about gluten, with information on their web site, but there you go.  Right there in the book, in black and white.  And red.  (The 5th symbol is red.)

I went through my kitchen and gave away everything that was the Publix brand and replaced it with brands that were listed as safe in the book.  The majority of my mystery glutenings stopped, after that, and that could be due to a combination of factors, which is what this post is about, but I feel certain that avoiding Publix products has had a significant positive effect.

A month or two before SS found this information, I had become concerned that the Publix brand acidophilus I had bought may not be gluten free, even though none of the ingredients listed on the label should have raised any red flags.  It has always bothered me that there is no telephone number listed on the Publix brand products, to call and ask, but because they have all the information about gluten on their web site, I trusted them.  (A funny aside: when I mentioned the acidophilus in my email reply to SS, gmail flagged the word “acidophilus” as being misspelled.  I right-clicked it to see what suggestions the spell checker might have.  It suggested ”pedophile”.)

I gave away the unopened box I had at home and went back to the brand I used prior, that I knew was gluten free. I wrote a post in March where I recommended Publix because of their gluten free products list and all the information about gluten on their web site.  If, in a future edition of the Grocery Guide, they receive a more favorable symbol next to their listings, I will post about the change and consider recommending them again, but for now, because there is such unsettling uncertainty about them in my mind, I can’t.

I will still, however, continue to recommend Walmart brand products that are marked gluten free.  If you have been using their gluten free products for a while, though, please be careful to note that since they changed their labeling in the last six months or so, many items that used to include the words “gluten free” on the labels don’t, anymore.  I’m not sure if this is because they have changed their manufacturing process on those items or if they are simply being more careful, but it’s something to be aware of and to remember to check, when shopping.  And I will repeat my warning, here, to be careful when looking for items on the Walmart website’s gluten free products list, as I have found definite non-gluten-free items on the list.  It may simply be an error in how the items are coded in their data base, but always use caution.  Carrying the Grocery Guide into the store helps, as well.  It has become my grocery shopping Bible.  (SS brought the book when she came to visit in December, and she left it with me.  I keep it in the car all the time, so that I have it with me any time I go shopping.)

I hope that future editions will include membership-type stores like Sam’s Club, BJ’s and Costco, as well as more stores from the Northeast.  I am sure they probably expand on their information with each edition.

There is also another grocery guide available, published by someone else, that SS purchased as well.  It includes some over-the-counter medications and toiletry items in addition to food items, which is nice.  I will probably blog about that book at another time, as I have a chance to read more and learn more about it.  They don’t have the symbols that warn of potential cross-contamination, though, and I did find items listed that I know are not to be considered gluten free, either from having spoken with the manufacturers already or from seeing them listed with the red symbol in the Triumph guide.  This other book’s authors list updates on their web site, though, so that users can add or cross out information in the book as it is clarified, or if it changes.  They also ask for readers to let them know of items that are listed that are not gluten free.  Because I haven’t read all the updates, I don’t want to say who publishes the book yet, because I don’t want to be blogging negatively about them without having all my facts straight first.  More on that in a future post . . .

Mystery # 2: The Cat Food Conundrum

She looks so innocent, doesn’t she?  Oh, she is; this isn’t her fault.  I just wanted to share this picture. But her food is another story.

As I’ve mentioned here before, gluten intolerant people must also ensure that the food their pets eat is gluten free.  Not only might you touch their food and their bowls, but little crumbs manage to get tracked around your house when they stick to your or your pet’s feet.  Your pet lies on the carpet and you touch your pet.  The more direct route, of course, is if your pet eats and then kisses you, especially in that enthusiastic kiss-on-the-mouth way that so many dogs can’t resist.  And with cats, they eat, then bathe right after eating, depositing gluteny saliva all over their fur, and then their people kiss and pet them and pick it up.

In this post, I am concentrating on dry cat food only; I’ll write about canned food in the future, after a little more research.

I had been under the impression, for quite some time, that Science Diet was gluten free.  I don’t remember anymore whether I called the company or read online that it was gluten free, but since it’s the food her vet recommends as well, and I thought it was gluten free, Emily was eating it for a long time.

SS began researching pet foods at around the same time I got rid of all the Publix brand foods in my kitchen.  She has a cat, who I will refer to as Mr. Man Cat in my blog, and she wanted to start converting his food and treats, as well as her own food and grooming products and, well, her whole house, because I’ll be visiting in a couple weeks and we’ll be taking turns visiting each other through this year as we work toward our eventual plan for me to move up there.  She called several companies, looking not only for gluten free cat food, but also a specific type that Mr. Man Cat needs.  When she spoke with the people at Science Diet, they said that none of their food is gluten free, except for one of the prescription formulas.

In talking with several cat food companies, SS discovered what I had suspected after looking at several companies’ web sites: most cat food manufacturers interpret the question, “Is this food gluten free?” to mean “Is this food wheat-gluten free?”  Many of them don’t seem to know that barley is a gluten ingredient or realize that a pet owner may call with this question not because their pet can’t eat wheat gluten, but because the owner(s) can’t have gluten in their home. She spoke with representatives of several companies.  Some of them checked into their ingredients further and called her back, and some were able to answer her questions right then, once they understood that she was asking about more than just wheat gluten.  One person she spoke with has a relative with Celiac Disease and understood better than most.  And sadly, some gave answers that turned out to be partly correct.

Here are some of the results of those phone conversations and some internet research, in case this information will help any other gluten free cat-owners out there:

• Iams said that all their dry cat foods were gluten free.  (Be careful, though, the Iams Healthy Naturals lists barley in the ingredients!  We discovered it when we read the labels in the pet store!)
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• Iams owns Eukanuba, and said that all their dry cat foods were gluten free.  (Be careful, though, the Eukanuba Wholesome Naturals contains barley, too!  We also discovered that when we read the labels in the pet store!)
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• Authority said their dry cat foods are gluten free.
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• Many of Royal Canin’s dry cat foods contain gluten, but the Oral Sensitive 30 (good for dental health, and is in larger kibbles, which both of our cats like) is one that is gluten free.  Be careful, though; the veterinary formula Dental DD is not gluten free.
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• Emily likes Evo Wild Cravings Herring & Salmon Formula cat treats, but Mr. Man Cat wasn’t crazy about them.  I like the philosophy behind Evo’s food and why they make it grain-free.  I purchased a small package of another brand of grain-free cat food as well (I can’t seem to find it online, to include a link), and Emily likes, it, but because the grain-free foods are much more expensive and my budget is limited, I’m using them as treats for her.

So, as far as we know (fingers crossed!), both of our cats are gluten free now.  We’ll eventually have them both eating the same food and the same treats, so that if they eat out of one another’s dishes they won’t have stomach upset from too much variety.  Emily currently eats Iams ProActive Health Active Maturity Hairball Care as her main food, and her treat jar consists of a mixture of everything else we tried, until it’s used up, and eventually I think she’ll mostly have the Oral Sensitive 30 as her treats.

Mystery # 3: Stirring Up Old Junk

My big decluttering project has done so much more for me than simply opening up my living space and making my home environment feel more “normal”.  It has also allowed me to clean and vacuum in areas I couldn’t reach, before, where there were likely still crumbs hanging around from my pre-gluten-free days.  Even though I hadn’t been able to walk around in areas piled with old stuff, Emily has, and she has been able to carry potential leftover gluten crumbs and residue on her feet.

I spent months moving things around and getting rid of junk, and as I made more room, then cleaned the areas.  In the weeks just prior to SS’s first visit in December, I was rewashing old towels and blankets and stirring up a whole lot more stuff in the apartment.  This very well could have added to some of the mystery gluten reactions I was having at the time.

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So, of course, I don’t know what percentage of my gluten reactions was due to the Publix brand products, or to the V-8, or to Emily’s food, or to the process of decluttering and cleaning the apartment, but I have had far fewer reactions since mid-December, thanks mostly to SS and her hard work and research, and also to the folks at Triumph.

And I now have a whole new challenge before me.

It seems as though Ritalin gives me gas.  Since going gluten free, gas has been a very rare thing for me, unless I was glutened.  In fact, this was always my first indication of a glutening, gas and abdominal pain, within hours.  Now, I can’t tell whether I’ve been glutened unless I wait for the other gluten symptoms to arrive.  By the second day, there is a worsening of my ADD and PMDD symptoms, along with constipation and increased fatigue, and those symptoms last for several days.  By about the third day, there is bleeding.

If I am glutened now, however, with the gas reaction I have almost every day to (apparently) the Ritalin, I won’t know for sure until the second day, when I know how I feel, and I won’t be absolutely certain until the third day, when I don’t bleed, since other things can also cause worsening of the ADD and the PMDD and increased fatigue.  By the third day, I’ve forgotten a good deal of the small details of what I’ve eaten or been in contact with.

I’ll ask my doctor what alternatives I have, medication wise.  We’ll see what happens . . .

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First Lines Meme

Ok, well, I saw this meme on David’s blog and thought it looked really fun and interesting.  You list the first line of the first post from each month of 2009.

The problem?  I think I really need to work on making my first lines more interesting this year.  David’s was much more entertaining, and I remember most of his posts just by reading those first lines again.

Ok, here are mine:

January: I saw my nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office last Monday morning to go over the results of the Holter monitor and echocardiogram, and it is mild MVP, which I already knew was not a big deal as long as it’s mild.

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February: In the reading I’ve been doing about strategies for dealing with ADD, I found a list of tips for organization.

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March: So, I spent this past weekend alternately grieving what I thought was about to be a much-too-soon ending of something important, and being grateful that I had my online buddies to talk to and a forum setup to work on.

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April: Well, here it is, April 1st.

(Yawn.)

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May: I decided to give NaBloPoMo another try.

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June: This first scene is one that I had been looking for when I posted my entry of TBBT clips, but I couldn’t find it.

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July: Well, I did it.

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August: Continuing on with my list of songs and entire CD’s that have moved me over the years, here is another.

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September: Kerro inspired me to try this again.

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October: I think I have actually been drunk maybe three or four times in my life.

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November: Ah, music.

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December: Wow.

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Funny ADD Moments

I get some hits from web searches for phrases like “ADHD Humor”, and on my more frustrating days, I say to myself, “There really isn’t anything funny about having ADD.”

When I  say that, though, I’m thinking only of the hard struggles, but you know . . . yeah.  There are moments when it’s funny.  Maybe it isn’t funny to everyone who has someone with ADD/ADHD in their life, but to someone who “gets it”, it can be pretty funny.

Thank God SS gets it.  She has pretty much been surrounded by people with ADD all her life, and she recognizes those traits.  I thought I might share a few of the funnier moments of late.  (I may even come back and add to the list over time, if any other good ones come up.)

• There was the night, back in, oh, October or November, I think, when we were talking on the phone and she was telling me she thinks I am beautiful.  This was a pretty heavy conversation for us, as I have never seen myself as even remotely attractive,  let alone been able to wrap my head around someone else perceiving me as beautiful.  I was lying on my bed, in the dark, listening to her, with tears in my eyes, in the middle of this serious moment, when I suddenly said, “Oh, I have to remember to put another tape in the VCR for tomorrow.”
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  “Yeah.  No ADD here,” SS said, and we both cracked up.
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• When SS was here in December, there was one night when we were looking something up on the computer.  I keep thinking it was on the abc web site and probably had something to do with All My Children.  I remember going to the web site around that time to read about the upcoming 40th Anniversary episode(s), or maybe it was to read about which actors would be moving with the show to its new studios in California.
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  I have this . . . quirk, I guess . . . where I will sometimes repeat a word or sound I hear from something that is going on around me; whether it’s a conversation or TV show or something on the radio.  I seem to do this more with commercials than anything else.  Usually, I’m not paying attention to whatever it is, and sometimes I’m engaged in conversation with someone else.  But when I hear whatever word or sound that suddenly grabs my attention, I often repeat it, if I don’t catch myself first.

  Anyway, SS and I started making out and temporarily lost interest in whatever was on the computer.  Some trailer came on, on whatever web site we were on, either for a TV show or a movie, I don’t know.  The only thing I remember about it was that a male narrator said something like, “His name is legendary,” and then a woman said, “Guido!”
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  I stopped, mid-kiss, and imitated, “Guido!”
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  SS looked at me for a beat, and then said, “Juan!”
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  ‘Course, now we have some new nicknames for each other.
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• -Last night, we were talking on Skype after watching All My Children together.  (We both record our favorite shows that we like to watch together and then watch them at the same time, while seeing and talking to each other on Skype.  It’s the next best thing to being there, watching TV together in person.)
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  Well, I was sitting there, fidgeting with whatever was in front of me, and I picked up two petals that had fallen off of one of the gorgeous tulips she surprised me with last weekend when she was here (I know, she found tulips in January!).  I proceeded to place the petals under my nose, one under each nostril, and breathe in, suctioning them to my nose, and then stick my tongue out.  Just playing, being silly.  She cracked up and said, “Oh my God, you so have ADD!”
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  In that case, though, I really was simply being silly, and I wanted to make her laugh.
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Turning Points, Part IV: Allowing Love In

. . . And here we are, at Part Four of the series of entries that began here.  This is the one about my first visit with Someone Special.

SS gave me this print for Christmas, partly because the artist is one of my favorites, and partly because it reminded her of the intimacy between us, and of the shared experience of going through NaNoWriMo together, when I would read portions of my novel to her as I wrote.

It was beyond amazing.  It was relaxed and easy and familiar, and fun and exciting and passionate, and a mixture of exactly how I knew it would be and yet so much, much more.  There were tears and fears and reassurance and comfort, and laughing until we cried and our stomachs hurt.  There were busy days and quiet days and sharing and planning and looking back and looking forward.  Consistently, there was connection; that connection we have felt and nurtured all along.  It was really a wonderful 10 days.

I met her at the airport on the evening of December 11th.

The apartment was as good as it was going to be at that point, and I was content and ok with that.  I had done everything I could do at work to make my vacation time as easy for my coworkers as possible.  (I hadn’t taken actual time off in several years, and I had a phobia that in trying to find some information they needed and I had in my backlog of paperwork, one of my coworkers might start digging through my desk, and somehow, imagining that felt, to me, a violation, even though they would need to have access to the information.  I made sure one coworker in particular knew where everything was, just in case, and trusted him with the knowledge of just how far behind I was/am in some areas of my work.  Turns out, nobody needed to look anything up, and they apparently had a quiet week at work.  And I am making excellent progress in getting that work caught up, now, so I won’t have those fears next time I’m away.)

It felt as if everything I had been working on for weeks (months) beforehand, especially the escalated pace of the several days prior to the eleventh, had been leading up to that one moment: that moment when we would first see one another at the airport.  Of course, we had plans for each day of her visit, and I had a concept of what was going to happen in the next several days, even weeks, given Christmas week followed her visit, but as I was driving to the airport, I could focus on nothing beyond that moment.

Apparently, not even my plans to stop for gas on the way.

I left early enough.  I made good time.  The drive is just under an hour.  Yet, every time I said to myself, “I need to take the next exit and get some gas,” another part of myself said, “Yeah, yeah, soon.  I just want to get closer to the airport first, in case anything happens to knock me off-schedule.”

I learned that I can go exactly 25 miles after my low-fuel warning light comes on.

Fortunately, the airport is exactly 25 miles from the place I was when the light came on.  I arrived, I parked, still aware I hadn’t stopped for gas but promising myself to make that the first stop as soon as we left.

I arrived at the spot where I would meet her coming off of the tram-thing that brings passengers over from the airside, and I paced.  I wasn’t nervous; just excited.  We texted each other.  The plane was on the ground.  I paced some more.  Finally, the tram door opened and there she was.  We threw our arms around each other and held on.  I cried, because that’s what I do and I can’t help it, but I gathered myself together fairly quickly.  As we went to baggage claim and then to the car, I kept looking at her and holding her hand and being in awe of the fact that she was right there, next to me, in 3-D.

On the way to the car, I told her we’d need to stop for gas as soon as we got out of the airport because I was on E.  When we were in the car and I tried to start it, it wouldn’t start.

Yep, out of gas right there in the airport parking garage.  Exactly 25 miles from the spot I was when the light came on.

Even though I knew SS well enough by then to know that she wouldn’t react badly, a part of me still expected . . . or, rather, felt I deserved . . . her to be angry.  To yell.  To ask me how I could be so stupid.  But she laughed.  She took my hand and looked into my eyes and she said she got it.  I quietly said, feeling my explanation was lame, “I couldn’t think of anything but to get here,” and she got it.  She said “And now we have a funny story we can tell for years.”  I just asked her that we not tell everybody, though.  And now I’m posting it on the internet.  How brave am I?

I called the roadside assistance number from the plan I have through my auto insurance company, and they had some trouble finding a wrecker service with a truck that would fit into the parking garage, due to the very low ceilings on the level where I parked.  Finally, someone came out, and it turned out his wrecker was too tall as well, and he had to park at the entrance to the garage and walk up.  To level 4.  We tipped him well and gave him a ride back to his truck, and later laughed at the fact that he went to the trouble to open the back window of the car so that the gas can in his lap wouldn’t cause too much of an odor in the car, when the cigar in his mouth smelled about ten times worse.

We made a couple stops on the way home (one at a gas stati0n!) and then relaxed into being in the same zip code.  Being with her in person was just as easy and comfortable as it has always been over the telephone and on Skype.  I found that touching her, and feeling her touch, were simultaneously just as I had imagined they would be, and magnetically and tinglingly amazing.  Her energy feels like a part of me that I hadn’t realized was missing all those years.  I’ve used the description once or twice, in fiction writing, that to the two characters, being together feels like going home after having been away, but I actually experienced what that feels like.  It felt right.

Now, I need to deviate from writing about the visit, just a little bit, to add some additional background information, since it applies later in this post.

I have spent most of my life afraid.  I didn’t realize it, for many years, but I lived in fear in so many ways.  As time went on, many of my fears became paralyzing ones.  The oddest thing, to me, about that, is the fact that I didn’t recognize the basis of so many of my obstacles as fear, until therapy.  And even then, not for about a year.  I adamantely denied it, any time my therapist would suggest that I might possibly be afraid of something.

Back in around 2003 or so, I went to a guided group meditation that was held at a metaphysical store where I used to buy rocks and crystals.  The meditation was guided by the woman who owned the store.  She used crystal bowls to create the chakra tones, which felt very emotional for me, and then she guided us to go within and hear a message from our higher selves.  I saw all sorts of beautiful imagry and found the meditation to be relaxing and interesting, but I more or less lost it when I heard my message from my higher self: “It’s ok to stop being afraid.”  I cried, and I was confused.  Why would my message be about fear?  I wasn’t a fearful person.  And why would that message touch such a nerve and make me cry like that?  (This was back in the years when I didn’t cry at the drop of a hat, the way I do now, thanks to . . . I don’t know, menopause and hormones maybe?)

I wondered about that message for the years that followed, and still, when my therapist would tell me she saw fear behind my behaviors, I would say no; not fear.  Something else.  Anger, disdain, skepticism, lack of interest, even complete absense of feeling, but not fear.  No no no.  Not fear.  Only the weak and foolish are afraid, my inner critic would remind me.  I would even feel silently offended (mixed with a feeling of being comforted at the same time – strange) when my therapist would make reference to my having “relationship terror”.

But.  (Isn’t there always a “but”?  Or a “But then”.)  Ok, here it is:

But, then, once I began to tentatively acknowledge that perhaps there was fear, it was like opening a flood gate, and I recognized more fear, and more, and more, and more.  And then I began to slowly turn and face my fears.  One at at time.  One, then another, and another.  And my life began to snowball with change.  Amazing change.  Rapid change.  Scary change.  I (the person who was never going to have another relationship again, ever-ever-ever) fell in love.  Predictably, this scared the crap out of me, and I tried to run away more than once.  My therapist said to me, in an email, the first time I panicked and tried to bail, “You were enjoying your feelings . . . and for once you let your good/happy/emotionally close feelings not get squashed by your scared/constricted/avoidant feelings.  This isnt a calamity.  It’s just two people getting closer.”

SS and I are both natural communicators, and we talked (and still talk) everything out; fears, feelings, and all.  In past relationships, I hadn’t felt as able or as free to talk about things, and I didn’t know myself well enough to be able to even verbalize certain things.  Much of what I had to say back then was met with argument, or a deaf ear, or an inability to understand, and I wasn’t drawn to the healthiest of relationships then, either.  The comfort and ease and level of trust I feel with SS is completely new to me in a relationship.

For a time, though, whenever I peeled back another layer and shared another piece of my embarrassing or shameful stuff with her, I wondered, “Is this the thing that will make her want to run, screaming, away from me?”

She never ran, and despite my halting attempts, I didn’t either, and we made it to the place where we are now, through all the hard work and change and fear-facing.  We have both been going through big changes in our lives, mine mostly being about the other turning points I’ve been blogging about lately.

My therapist commented, when she met SS (I took her with me to two sessions; one planned and one a surprise, which I will write about later in this post), that she believed I wouldn’t have done all this changing (she meant mostly the decluttering but it’s true for all of it)  if not for SS.  That is very true, and although I didn’t know this until recently, this is what it took for me to change; loving someone enough to want it that badly, wanting to get my own shit together so that I could allow myself this new, fully-lived life.

And, so, our first visit was incredible.  Simple things like watching TV and cooking meals were so much fun, together.  The quiet moments and the silly moments were our favorites, and are what we talk about the most when we talk about the visit.  We had a family day at Sister’s, and SS got to meet Mom and Dad and Sister and Brother-In-Law, as well as my two adult nephews (my niece had to work) and their wives and kids.  We had dinner another evening at the restaurant where niece works, so she and SS could meet.  We had lunch another day with my friend RB and her boyfriend.  SS went to my work Christmas party with me and met my boss and coworkers and their wives.  We had some professional photos taken, which was actually quite fun, despite my dislike of having my picture taken.  The photos turned out very nice and we each gave a dual-frame with a photo of ourself alone and one of the two of us together to our respective parents.  They loved them.  We had a “girl’s day” one day, where we went to visit with an acquaintance who is an artist and who showed us some of her work, then went to have pedicures, and had dinner out at PF Chang’s (they have a gluten free menu and the food was wonderful), followed by some shopping.  We did some miscellaneous Christmas shopping, wrapped gifts, watched movies, and did some projects around the apartment.  Emily fell immediately in love with her Mama-SS and attached herself to her side, acting like a typical jealous child by inserting herself between us any time we were close to one another.  I had made an extra appointment with my therapist for that week so that she and SS could meet one another, and that was a really good (and fun) session.  Everyone who met SS unanimously liked her, and many commented to me later about what a good impression they had.

There were also some difficult moments.  Not difficult as in “difficulties between us”, but difficult as in I was hormonal and more than a little overwhelmed by all the changes in my life of late.  This new, fully-lived life is great, and is absolutely what I want, but it’s a big thing to get used to.  In the space of four months, I had gone from being an almost-hermit who lived behind a clutter wall I’d built around myself, with pretty much zero reason to believe I would ever be capable of doing any better at work (and was still employed only due to the kindness of a boss who thinks of me like a younger sister), to someone who was actually living life again, rather than coasting along, feeling feelings again, rather than “dialing down” emotion that was too much to bear, taking medication that made it possible to function at a level resembling “normal”, overwriting the repetitive grooves of faulty belief about my worthiness as a human being, wrapping my head around the concept that “I can”, digging my way out from under the clutter and feeling that giddy freedom of letting go of that which suffocates me, and allowing love in.  This felt almost as if I’d been transported to some parallel universe and was suddenly thrust into living someone else’s life.  As much as I love this life, the adjustment phase had me off kilter . . . ok, unglued . . . for a while.

This led to some intense and unexpected crying jags (the difficult moments mentioned above).  Ok, not so much crying jags as completely out-of-control, hysterical sobbing that went on and on.  I literally could not stop.  The absolute lack of control scared me as much as the unexpectedness of it.  SS held me, and rocked me, and spoke calming words to me, and pretty much understood and explained to me what was happening and why I shouldn’t beat myself up over it.  It was to be expected, she said, and it was a releasing of so many emotions I’d kept inside for so long.  This happened several times over the ten-day visit.  One time, I vacillated, just as uncontrollably, between hysterical crying and hysterical laughter.  I was convinced that if the neighbors heard me, they would call the people in the white coats and have me taken away, but SS convinced me she would not let that happen, and that they would have to peel her off of me first.  To my knowledge, no one besides SS or Emily heard.

When we saw my therapist, we talked about these episodes and she said that with all the changes I’d been going through, she would be worried if I didn’t react in a way similar to that.  I felt a lot better after she said that, and eventually, those episodes began to subside.

SS says I am a fighter, which kind of floored me the first time she said it, because I had always seen myself more as a roller-over-and-dyer.  I have, however, always had this “thing” about having that one-more-idea on the horizon that I can try, after whatever I am currently trying, to improve my (fill in the blank: depression, hormone problems, focus at work, level of physical pain, etc.), if the current thing doesn’t work or doesn’t work well enough.  So I guess that means that I don’t give up; not really.

We went back to the airport on the 20th, which was the day she was scheduled to fly home, but after our tearful goodbye, we learned that because of the severe weather in the northeast and scheduling delays with the airline, her flight out would be changed to early the morning of the 22nd.  I called my boss and asked if I could take one more day off, the Monday, and he said yes.

That extra day was awesome.  It truly felt like a gift.  I had been crossing my fingers that something like that would happen when we first heard about the bad weather earlier that weekend, but I wasn’t 100% sure my wish would be granted.

The only thing that was scheduled for that day was my therapy session, and SS went with me for the second time.  It was quite productive and I was able to open the door to discussing some things I’d had extreme difficulty discussing before, because SS was there to hold my hand.

Other than to my therapist’s, though, we didn’t go anywhere else and the other 23 hours and ten minutes of that day were purely ours.  We will probably always smile when we think of how special that day felt to us.

She flew home the morning of the 22nd, and it was hard to say goodbye, but we’d had our “rehearsal” on Sunday, so it was slightly easier than the first run-through had been.

When I saw my therapist on January 4th, my first session after SS’s visit, we talked quite a bit about the visit and the relationship.  I told her some qualities of SS’s that impress me and make me so proud and amazed to be the one she loves, out of all the people in the world, and then, with watery eyes and my now-common goofy grin, I said something to the effect of, “I’m not the only one who sees how amazing she is, either, am I?  Other people see it, too, right?”

She responded in agreement by listing a long string of SS’s impressive characteristics (I don’t remember the whole list verbatim, but it included her intelligence, her being a good conversationalist, her sense of humor, and her beauty).  And then she said that now we need to work on getting me to believe that I deserve this.

The philosophical / spiritual part of me believes that SS and I would not have crossed paths if we didn’t both deserve this relationship; that things (and connections with others) happen for a reason and those connections happen when we are ready for them.  I’ve been feeling all along, and especially since I stopped trying to run away, that this relationship is somehow a reward for the hard work I’ve done in my life and in therapy.

My inner critic, who has been much quieter lately (I think I sent IC into a tailspin of confusion, actually, not sure how to respond to all the changes of late), still works in the background, with now-weaker attempts in my weaker moments, to convince me that I have no business dragging SS into my messed-upedness and that she’ll eventually tire of my emotional ups and (melt)downs and be finished with me.

But the rest of me, which is now the majority, knows better, knows myself, knows SS, sees my capabilities in a clearer light, is aware of how well and how thoroughly we communicate and the fact that I truly trust her in ways I have never trusted anyone else . . . and actually believes in love.

Update: I didn’t get this post finished and published when I first intended to, and we’ve had a second visit now.  More about that in a future post, but I just wanted to note that I did not run out of gas this time.  ;-)

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Turning Points, Part III: Decluttering

Continuing on with the series of entries that began here, this one is about the decluttering and cleaning of my apartment, and about some repairs that were long overdo to be made.

My apologies in advance; this is a long post.

Remember these puzzles?  The kind where you have to move one tile in one direction or another to make room for another to slide into its place?  You may have to move one particular tile numerous times in order to get it, and all the others, where you want them.

Decluttering after years of cluttering / hoarding can be like that.  Having ADD can really wreak further havoc with that.

I had made lists, before, several times, of what I needed to do to clean up and organize in each room.  I’m good at making lists.  The difficulty, at least for me, is in getting started, and in implementing the lists without being sidetracked and bouncing like a pinball from one thing to another and not ever accomplishing any of them.

For a long time, I was making my lists by room, intending to do all of a room before moving on to another one, but I found that just added to the where-do-I-start confusion, because there were always things in each room that depended on other things being done in other rooms first.

For example, I moved a large bookcase from the living room to my office room and another large bookcase from my bedroom to my office room, so that eventually I will keep all books except for cookbooks in the office.  I had a small bookcase in the office that needed to be moved to the living room, and I’m now using it for CD’s, DVD’s and old VHS tapes that I intend to keep or make DVD copies of.  There were things in the way of each of those three bookcases, and I needed a place to put the stuff temporarily so I could get them out, as well as a place to keep each bookcase temporarily until I cleared the place it would go to, and a place to keep the books while I moved the bookcases.  That’s one example of the way several steps in my reorganizing went, and so it was a constant thinking-ahead to plan for each move, while working hard to not let anything else pull me off course in the process.

Well, after I finished NaNo, I had ten days to finish getting ready for SS’s visit.  I’d been working on decluttering and cleaning in spots for a few months, but with so much other stuff going on and other things I had to do, my progress was slow.  That was helpful in ways, though, because it gave me time to adjust to each small change as it occurred so that it wasn’t an overwhelming change all at once.  “Overwhelm” is something I have had a big problem with for a long time, though it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve been realizing it and recognizing it so clearly.  The fact remained, though, that there was still going to be a lot left to do and very little time left to do it, and I knew that back in November.

My parents and sister had been offering to come over and help for a couple years, but I kept declining, feeling that my decluttering was something I needed to do by myself; that it was important in my own processing and dealing with the problem to have the experience of doing all the work myself.  That was physically difficult, though, and logistically not as wise as accepting help, and then there was the part about how equally important it was for me, mentally and emotionally, not only to allow them to help me, but to allow them to come in and see just how bad things were and to trust them not to be scared away or to judge me.  Not that I ever thought they would judge me; I know my family well enough to know they wouldn’t do that, but my hermitting and hiding myself away included an element of fear of judgment, among many other fears that I could write a completely separate post about.

I got to thinking about how Sister had suggested that she could do dumpster runs for me, as I went through things and set bags and boxes by the door.  My weight and physical lack-of-fitness make multiple trips up and down my apartment stairs difficult, and I had not-long-before identified the difficulty I have with taking multiple bags and boxes to the dumpster, so Sister’s suggestion was looking better and better to me.

At this point, I need to share some more embarrassing and hard-to-admit disclosure stuff:

Dad and I had spoken several times about him coming over and looking at my dryer, which hadn’t had heat for a long time but I was too ashamed to let even him into my apartment in the condition it was in.  I had been drying all my clothes on an accordion rack and on hangers hanging from door frames and over-door hooks all over the apartment, for months and months.  I’m not even sure exactly how long it was, but it was close to a year.

Dad and I had also spoken about him replacing the ballast in my kitchen light fixture, which, again, was something I’d been putting off because of the shame I felt in letting him see the place as it was.

The light fixture stopped working in 2006.  Yeah, I know. . .

I tried replacing the bulbs and that didn’t work.  I could have (and should have, according to the rules) let my landlady know and she would have sent someone to replace the ballast way back then.  But the condition of the apartment prevented me from doing that and I used a floor lamp in my kitchen for over three years.

The flapper valve in my master bedroom toilet started leaking a few years ago, and somewhere between when it was a slight trickle and when it became a wouldn’t-even-fill-up leak, I turned off the water going to the toilet and stopped using that toilet (fortunately, I have two bathrooms).  I didn’t use it for months and months.

There is an awful lot of anxiety that can come from feeling unable to let anyone in.  Yeah, I do see how that statement can apply both to my apartment and my heart, and it does, but for right now, I’m talking about not letting anyone into the apartment, particularly the maintenance man at my apartment complex.  As things began not working, one by one (including, in addition to the items listed above, a broken dishwasher and garbage disposal and a missing spring in one of the louvered doors that closes off my laundry area from the hallway), I adjusted to life without each thing and lived in fear that something would eventually break that I couldn’t live without.  Like the air conditioner.  Or that a water pipe would break and I’d have a flood, and would have no choice but to let them in to fix it.  Sometimes these paranoid scenarios would just interject themselves into my thoughts at the most unexpected times and I would feel sick and start to shake inside.  This source of anxiety, added to several others that I’ll write about in a separate entry some day, caused a pretty-much constant level of tension that I lived with, for years.  I was so used to it that I didn’t even realize how bad it was.  It was just always there.

Deviating slightly from the direction of this post again, but still on the topic of embarrassing things to admit, I not only hadn’t had my friends or family over for at least a few years, and hadn’t called the landlady about repairs that were needed because of not wanting to let anyone in; I also had been putting notes on the door every month when the exterminator was due, asking them to skip my apartment that month.  Occasionally during that three-or-so-year time, I would forget to put the note up and they would come in and spray, and there were a few times when I’d gotten the place to a point where I could (cringingly) allow them to come in but I closed off the bedrooms, but most months, the note went out.  I have no way of knowing whether they came in anyway and just didn’t leave their little calling card on the kitchen counter as usual, or if they truly didn’t come in, but I was able to believe in my head that no one had seen my shameful mess.

One day, I had stopped home during my lunch hour to pick something up, and as I was leaving, I passed the exterminator as he was arriving.  I was shocked when he waved.  He’s the same exterminator who treats our office where I work, and is an old friend of my boss’ for years!  Oh my God, of all the exterminators in our local area, why did he have to be somebody who actually knows me?  I thought I might die of the embarrassment.  It turns out, he seems to be a pretty good ally, and without my ever having to explain myself, he seems to somehow “get” my clutter / hoarding issues.  He also understands that my landlady can be a very intimidating woman (lots of people are afraid of her) and that she wouldn’t be happy at all to know I was putting those notes on my door every month.  He helped me devise a “code”.  We agreed that I would just put a piece of tape up, with a little piece of paper, so it would look like there was something there that didn’t all get taken down.  That was how I would let him know I wasn’t ready for him to come in.  After the month when someone else “helped” me out by removing that pesky piece of tape before he saw it (but I was saved by the fact that his key wouldn’t work in my door because my lock was in need of some WD-40 and he couldn’t get in anyway), he gave me his cell phone number and I would call him the morning he was due to be out each month.  So, while it was extremely helpful that he seemed to understand and never judged me that I know of, it was still very shameful for me, in my own head, to keep putting him off.

Ok.  After all this background information, I can finally write about the progress, now.  I spoke with my parents and my Sister in November and asked them if they could come over the weekend before SS’s arrival, and they said they would.  We made our plans for December 6th and I worked from the 1st through the 5th, getting as much done on my own as I could and getting things into place so that we could do what needed done when we were all there (that “slide-puzzle” thing again).

My therapist and SS feel that my allowing my family to help is as big, progress-wise, as getting the apartment decluttered itself.  It was hard, letting them see how bad things were, but it wasn’t like they hadn’t known; I’d been telling them all along.  I was just too ashamed to let them see it until then.

We had a great day, actually.  Sister arrived first and we finished moving the big bookcases, dragged several boxes of stuff out of the living room and put them in the office room to be sorted later (I’m far from finished, even though I’m able to use the rest of my apartment normally now), and rearranged the living room furniture into an arrangement that works better for creating more space and also enables me to reach the windows without leaning over furniture.  I can open the windows again, and have fresh air when the weather is nice.

Mom and Dad arrived and Dad helped me take apart the exercise thingy that Sister got for me at a thrift store a few years ago.  It’s an off-brand version of the Gazelle, which Sister has and loves.  I was interested in having something like that so I could exercise while watching TV.  The only problem was that this one had a tension problem and we could never get it adjusted to have even tension.  It was always much harder on one side than the other, which made using it very difficult, and created images in my mind of me in a year or so, with one leg so much stronger than the other one that I would be able to walk only in circles.  Anyway, it was in the way and had become the proverbial catch-all-slash-coat-rack, and we took it apart and carried the pieces down to the dumpster.

Dad also fixed the dryer (it was the thermostat) and changed out the ballast in the kitchen light.  I had fixed the toilet a few weeks earlier, actually (SS sent the flapper valve to me in one of her care packages.  It was a source for some humor, for us).

Sister made those dumpster runs for me as Mom and I went through a lot of stuff and sorted it out, and we all dusted and vacuumed and cleaned.  Dad put up some new curtain rods I’d bought so we could hang my valances with the gorgeous pink panel curtains that SS ordered for me when I mentioned that my blinds don’t close well enough to make me feel secure that people can’t see in at night.

At one point, I asked Sister if I seem to work better since I’ve been taking the ADD meds, and she said yes.  She has helped me move in the past, and we’ve worked together on organizing projects before, and I was always very scattered and all over the place.  She confirmed that my perception was right, though, that now I’m much more effective and can get a whole lot more accomplished.

And now, my apartment looks warm and inviting and . . . dare I say it . . . normal.  And I’ve been having company.  Not lots of company; Mom and Dad have been over, and of course SS visited, and Sister was over this past Saturday night and we had one of our Sister Slumber Parties, which are always lots of fun and always involve rented movies, ice cream, and laughing til we cry about something or other.  Emily has been so happy, both to have the space to run and play and also to have company.  She is such a people-cat and she loves company.  She’s been playing with her toys a lot more lately, acting almost like a kitten instead of an almost-11-year-old cat.

I didn’t call or leave a note for the exterminator in December, and he came in and treated the apartment and left his calling card on the counter.  The way it’s supposed to work when things are normal.

I can dry my clothes in my dryer now (I let the maintenance man in to clear out the vent, although there still seems to be a plug that I need to talk with the landlady about and it takes more than one cycle to dry a load of clothes, but at least I can dry them).  I have my choice of which bathroom to use, and I can turn my kitchen light on with the wall switch again.  I can walk through a room without turning sideways, stepping over things, or zig-zagging around things, and now a simple walk through a room no longer has to feel like an obstacle-course workout.

I still have the “before” pictures I took in April (I didn’t take new pictures every week, as I had planned, because my progress was much too slow for that).  I told my therapist I would show them to her when I have the corresponding “after” pictures to go with them, so she asked me if I have new pictures yet.  I will be taking them, after I get a few more things done.  I’m planning to get a photo album that has two picture slots for every page, and I’ll put the before pictures on the top row and the after pictures on the bottom row, taking one for each of the before pics, from the same angle and showing the same portion of the room.  I still haven’t decided yet whether I will post any here.  I might.

I still have the office room to tackle, now.  It resembles a storage unit, with boxes stacked pretty high, but I put things in there in a somewhat organized fashion, with walkway paths, even (for the most part), so it won’t be as hard to go through, box by box, as it would have been to go through the same stuff when it was sprawled all over the apartment, and a good percentage of the trash has already been sorted out of it and thrown away.  I have a few other areas that need to be organized, too, but they aren’t going to be the job that the office room will be, and I can tackle them one at a time.  I’m taking this somewhat slowly and methodically, to allow myself to adjust to and get used to the changes that have already been made.

It might be odd to imagine a person needing time to get used to being able to walk through rooms without doing the obstacle course thing, or to feeling space and comfort and warm invitingness, or to being able to invite people over.  It’s probably really odd to imagine the sheer joy of standing in front of the sink, washing dishes, and looking around to see a “normal” kitchen.  But this is something I hadn’t had in a very long time, and there are elements of stepping into a different life.  Of course, it’s a life that I want, but it takes some adjustment, all the same.

SS commented last week that it had been about a month since the big cleanup weekend, and that I’m keeping up with things really well.  I’ve been automatically keeping the dishes washed and taking the trash out and neatening up in the evenings.  It hasn’t felt like something I’ve really had to remind myself to do, and of course it’s easier to do because it’s not out of control and I have plenty of room to move.  (And putting things away is much easier when they have a place where they belong, again.)  This is one of the really good things about giving myself time to adjust: allowing myself to fall into a daily routine of keeping things together.  And I’m adjusting to a lowered level of anxiety, no longer having to fear that catastrophe that looms just around the corner and will surely mean strangers will have to come into my apartment and see my mess.

Adjusting to normal.

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Turning Points, Part II: NaNoWriMo

As I said in my last post, in the past two months or so (a little less, actually), there have been some huge, major turning points in my life, including but not limited to:

1. Getting started on ADD meds
2. My second NaNoWriMo win
3. Decluttering and repairs at home
4. . . . And my visit with my Someone Special

This post is about # 2, my second NaNoWriMo win.

I spent part of October seriously struggling with my decision over whether to attempt NaNo this year.  I had been trying (and feeling as if I were largely spinning my wheels) to get the apartment in order for Someone Special’s impending visit as well as working a little bit of overtime at work, trying to catch up on things I’d fallen behind in.  That alone was a lot to put on my plate, I felt, without adding NaNo to the mix.

I also felt a little bit of self-imposed pressure that, because I won last year for the first time, I had to win this year too.  As if a failed attempt after a win would be the equivalent of going backwards.  As if I wouldn’t be allowed to give myself some slack for dealing with the apartment and extra work hours at the same time.  (For anyone reading this blog for the first time, last year’s win symbolized a whole lot more for me than simply winning NaNo; it was all about teaching myself that I’m able to do things I set out to do; a concept I’m still wrapping my head around, and getting my apartment in order hasn’t been a simple matter of organizing and cleaning; I’m [still] working to undo a lifetime of compulsive clutter/hoarding and almost five years of having that out of control.  There will be more on that in my Part III post.)

But I couldn’t forget the fact that I’ve participated in NaNo since 2004 or the way it has become such a big part of every fall that I look forward to.  It was hard to imagine a November without participating.  I asked myself what I would want to write about if I did decide to do it.  I felt I wanted to start a whole new project, rather than starting the next novel in the series I’ve been working on the last several years.  I tossed around some ideas, brainstormed with Sister and with SS, and finally landed on an idea I liked a whole lot.

I decided to go for it.  I did pretty well the first 9 days or so.  I compared my word-count bar-graph from the NaNo site to the one from last year (screen shots below – I love the way they included the goal mark for each day, too, this year) and I was so pleased to see how much more smoothly I was sticking to daily word count goals.

Then, on the 10th, SS and I video-chatted for the first time.  Neither of us knows why we didn’t think to do that earlier.  The night of the 10th, we were talking on the phone and I was feeling a little sad and weepy, wishing she could be here, and I said, “I want to watch your mouth move when you talk and see your facial expressions change.”  My next thought was that I had an old web cam, somewhere, and when I brought it up she said she did, too.  Somewhere.  We both got up and went looking, and both found our web cams fairly quickly.  Our first video chat was in gmail chat.  When I saw her, I burst into tears.  None of us really realizes, I don’t think, how much we take certain things for granted in face-to-face relationships, like watching another’s expressions change, the subtle unspoken communication in the tilt of the head or the movement of an eyebrow.

I was so glad we decided to use video chat, for a lot of reasons, but initially because once I saw how much I cried, I knew that would have happened at the airport when she arrived.  As it was, I cried at the airport anyway, but I didn’t lose control, and I know now that I would have.  But I’ll write more about that in Part IV.

We moved from gmail chat to Skype within a few days, and SS got us better cameras.  I found that I really wanted to spend long stretches of time staring into one another’s eyes, but I learned to incorporate it into my writing schedule so that I could minimize the Skype window and write, checking in every so often to talk with her.

Not long after we started video chatting, I went into Hormone Hell.  That was when I came apart.  I continued writing, but very few words each day.  I started doing better after beginning the Ritalin, but by then I was so far behind it seemed hopeless.

I was still hormonal, feeling stressed, and had been glutened again (SS and I finally figured out a lot of my serial mystery glutenings; more about that in a future entry) – all things that exacerbate my depression.  Added to that was the fact that each time the Ritalin would wear off (the regular Ritalin seems to last about 3 to 3.25 hours in my system), it seemed I was even more irritable and depressed than I had been before I took it.  I blamed the Ritalin, for a little while.  I decided it was an evil drug and only made everything worse, until SS and I talked about it and she reminded me of the glutenings I’d experienced, and about the added stress I was feeling due to trying to handle so many things at once (this also being a new behavior for me, recently; dealing with things rather than going to sleep and avoiding them).

The turning point came when there were three days left before NaNo ended.  It was on the Saturday, November 28th.  The day before, Friday, I had the day off (it was the day after Thanksgiving) and I went out in the afternoon to run some errands.  My morning dose of Ritalin was wearing off, but I decided to wait until I got home to take the next dose.  I felt I didn’t want to “waste” a good portion of that 3 to 3.25 hour window with something as unimportant as errands.  That was actually a time when I could have used the effects of the meds (partly because they make it easier to deal with frustration), but I didn’t realize it at that point.  I was in Target, walking around with a few things in my cart and looking for something else, and I felt the anxiety beginning to swell in my chest.  I reached a point where I felt I needed to get out of there and retreat to the safety of home, and I went and put everything back that was in my cart, and left without buying anything.  I was only barely keeping my anxiety in check at that point, a very thin thread keeping me from completely falling apart.  On the drive home, the depression hit with force, and I felt it was just hopeless to continue any of the things I had been trying so hard to accomplish, including NaNo.  I felt that by expending the time and effort I had already put into it, I was cheating SS and me of that time that I could have been using to work on the apartment, for her visit.  I felt I had been foolish and selfish to attempt NaNo in a year when there were other things that really needed my attention.  I told SS that I was going to stop taking the Ritalin (that was the point where I’d decided it was evil), and that I was giving up on NaNo, and I cried.  All evening.  Into the night.  I woke up Saturday morning and started crying again.  I cried with a deep grief in my heart, as if I’d lost a good friend who I loved very much.

SS listened and let me talk and vent and cry, and then she asked me how I’d feel if I went ahead and pushed and finished NaNo.  I was 20,589 words from the 50K mark with less than three full days left.  That would have meant writing an average of 6863 words a day for those three days.  The highest word count I’d hit in one day prior to that (since I’ve been keeping track) was 5697, and that was a rarity.  I didn’t know if I could do it, or especially if I could do it three days in a row.  But I stopped crying when I thought about it, and I knew I wanted it really, really badly.  SS told me she would be there for me no matter what I decided, and that she understood how important NaNo was to me and all that it symbolized to me, and she told me she believed I could do it, even if I didn’t believe it yet.

As a test, I made some coffee, took my medication, and sat down to write for one hour.  I decided to base my decision on how many words I could write in that hour, using that to figure out how many hours it would take on average to write 20,589.  I didn’t write down what that word count was that first hour, but it was around 1000.  Then I went for another hour, and another, and wound up writing 4623 by the time I went to bed that night.  Sunday, the 29th, between 10 am and 2 am Monday, I wrote 12,528, with breaks for bathroom visits, meals, walking around, and stretching, and on Monday night after work, I wrote the other 3461 that took me to 50,023.

I effectively overwrote the part of my brain that couldn’t fathom writing 12,528 words in 16 hours, and the experience reinforced that still-new knowledge from last year that, “I can”.

It felt exciting, and exhilarating, and exhausting (in a really good way).  I loved that SS was right there with me through the whole time, also.  She was working on some legal paperwork on her computer that weekend and we kept Skype open so that we could look up at one another every so often.  It felt like we were in the same room, each doing her own thing but still being together.  Because of that, it becomes not just my own memory of an amazing few days and of pushing myself beyond the limits I’d thought possible; it’s a shared memory of something we both put long hours into, together.  She stayed awake with me until 2 am that Monday, and we both went to work on less sleep and then met in front of our computers that night, to finish.

Something that made me even more excited was that I felt the writing was better than it’s been in the past.  Obviously, there are many rough spots, as there always are with first draft stuff and especially marathon-writing, but overall, there were many more times that I sat back and smiled and said, “Wow, that came out of me!” than in past Novembers.  The story was wrapped up by the time I finished, as well, which I also liked.  I have ideas of what I might add if/when I go back and polish it and expand it to a full-length novel, but it can actually be read as it is, if the reader understands about the rough spots.

2009:

2008:

So, to sum up the whole experience in SS’s words . . . Holy Crap!

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Turning Points, Part I: ADD Meds

Wow.  Ok.  Where do I start?

Since I wrote my last post, when I was only 1733 words into NaNo and being distracted by music, there have been some huge, major turning points in my life, including but not limited to:

1. Getting started on ADD meds
2. My second NaNoWriMo win
3. Decluttering and repairs at home
4. . . . And my visit with my Someone Special

I think I may need to do this in multiple posts.  I’ll start with number 1.

Well,  after being terrified to try ADD medication for such a long time, for varying reasons (some of them based in logic and some not), I decided in September to make an appointment with my GP’s Nurse Practitioner to talk about it.  The appointment was in October and it didn’t go so well.  For a little while, I allowed that to be my excuse to drop the whole idea and not pursue it any further.  The thing is, though, the focus issues have been a big problem at work, and after making a lot of progress through therapy, and adopting new habits and new ways of doing things and keeping track of what I need to do and when, and paying attention to the need for proper sleep, and taking vitamins and supplements that are helpful, I still had a big problem.   A smaller problem than I had before, but still a big problem.  I talked at length with someone who has been surrounded by people with ADD all her life and has followed several of them through the medication experience, and I learned a lot about how some of the medications work and what I might be able to expect.  I spoke about it further with my therapist as well, and finally, I asked her to recommend a psychiatrist.  She did, one local and two about an hour away.  I made an appointment with the local doc and I saw him November 19th.  He started me on a very low dose of Ritalin, which didn’t do much but I was able to clearly tell when it wore off.  He let me increase it after about a week when I called him, and then I saw some results.  One more increase about a week and a half after that, and I’m seeing much better results.  The current dosage I’m on right now seems to be pretty good on normal days, but during my PMDD times and the three or four days following a glutening, it’s not as effective.  That’s something we’ll probably work on adjusting for, but for now, I’ve been going through a real learning transformation.

I’ve been learning all kinds of things, like:

• The fatigue and always-sleepy state I’ve been in since I was a teenager may just have more to do with ADD than with the other stuff I deal with.  I was amazed, that first day, when I climbed the stairs to my apartment and my legs didn’t ache.  That fatigue is physically painful, and any exertion often causes muscle pain that feels like I’ve been doing hard exercise.  When I’ve taken the medication, I still get winded when I exert, because of course I’m overweight and out of shape, but it doesn’t hurt.  It’s amazing.  Really amazing.
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  The always-sleepy state was something I had a lot of trouble explaining so that others could really understand it.  I think most people were under the impression that I gave into my desire to sleep much too easily and that I could have stopped if I’d wanted to.  (I’ve got the Inattentive type of ADD, not the Hyperactive type, so physical energy of any sort has always felt elusive to me.)  For years, literally years, I would come home from work exhausted to the point that sometimes I would sway on my feet as if I were drunk.  I would eat dinner, or sometimes not even eat until later, and go lay down for a “nap”, which usually meant I could not wake up for three to four hours.  (As my therapist said to me once, “That’s not a nap, that’s sleep”.)  It felt like I’d overdosed on sleeping pills and there was no alternative but to sleep.  But guess what.  Since I’ve been taking ADD meds, I no longer have that need to nap.  I am able to stay up until a normal bedtime and get a normal night’s sleep.  When I used to “nap”, I would be up until the wee hours because it took several hours before I was able to go back to bed.  I often did not get four hours and then another four hours, which would have totaled an 8-hour night, but even if I had, split sleep is still not as beneficial as a solid night’s sleep.  I often feel as if I’ve stepped into someone else’s life, lately.  Someone normal.  The absence of those symptoms I struggled with for, well, pretty much my whole life, is . . . I just can’t think of appropriate descriptive words other than “amazing” and “incredible”. Please excuse my over-use of those words.
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• The weird “feeling cold” thing I’ve been doing for about five years is better with the medication.  I’ve thought it was extremely unusual that I sit at work with a sweater when my coworkers, AC guys who work out in the summer heat on roofs and in stifling attics, don’t feel chilly when walking into the air conditioned office at the temperature I keep it set at.  Usually, the overweight person in a room is warmer than everyone else, but I sit with my sweater pulled around me.  Apparently, it’s a metabolism thing, and the medication corrects it.  I can tell when it wears off, too, without even checking a clock, because besides finding it more difficult to concentrate or follow a conversation, I become cold, sleepy, and hungry.  And sometimes cranky, which leads us to the next point.
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• My anxiety levels are dramatically better on the meds.  I handle frustration so much better, and my temper, which has always been a part of who I am whether I like that fact or not, is so much easier to keep in check.  Another thing that surprised me is that the palpitations I’ve been having, which I finally came to the conclusion must be anxiety-related after going through all the medical tests last year and having everything come back good, are almost gone once the meds kick in.  They still happen sometimes, but they’re less severe, and they come back when the medication wears off, which is another way I know it’s worn off, just in case the shivering, yawning, starving, and crankiness don’t tip me off.
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• Appetite suppressant.  Need I say more?
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• I once read a blog post by someone with ADD and she wrote about having taken her first dose of medication.  She remarked about how it became *quiet* in her head.  I remember sighing and thinking wistfully, “I want that.”  And guess what.  I can have it, now.  Instead of having a hundred or more thoughts rambling through my head at any given time, making it difficult or impossible to focus on or remember the ones I really need to be paying attention to at the moment, it’s quiet.  It’s orderly, inside my head.  I can think of other things and make either mental or paper notes (or make a note in the Palm) about them and stay on task with whatever it is that is the priority.  That is completely new to me.
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• I can read again!  That was one of the things I was most sad to see declining over the last several years.  I used to love to read for pleasure.  I always had difficulty reading for knowledge, going way back to my grammar school days.  I depended on classroom discussios of what we’d read for homework the night before, in order to process and understand, and to learn.  But I had been a big pleasure-reader.  As time progressed, I found myself taking forever to finish reading a simple novel, and I had to go back constantly and re-read sections in order to remember who the characters were and what had happened.  I’ve been pretty busy these last two months, so I didn’t try to read until last week, but I picked up a James Patterson novel (which I had tried to start a couple times before) and got sucked right into it.
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• And finally . . . most days, when the PMDD symptoms aren’t raging and I haven’t been glutened and I’ve slept enough the night before, I can get SO much done at work.  Absolutely incredible.  I feel almost like a different person.  I told the psychiatrist what an amazing learning experience this has been for me, to experience firsthand the concept of being able to decide to do something and then really do it.  (I became a little emotional and my eyes got misty, and he was visibly uncomfortable, so I made a mental note to remember not to do the “feelings” thing in front of him again.)  This is something many people probably take for granted, though, I’m sure.  After years of thinking of what I’d like to do, but being all too aware that I probably wouldn’t be able to, or wouldn’t do it right, or would start and never finish, and ending up feeling like “Why bother anyway”, I – ME – am able to set a goal and reach it.  Granted, my goals have been small so far in comparison to those of many other people, but I’ve been reaching them.  And oh, my God.  What a feeling.

More to follow in Part II . . .

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Boots

Ah, music.  How just the sound of a song can take you back to a particular time and place.

Yesterday, SS and I were talking about . . . something . . . and it reminded her of the song, These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, and I started to sing the song.  I could hear it so clearly in my head, and I was four or five years old again, in my memory.  I had to smile, and then I downloaded the album, Boots, by Nancy Sinatra.  Go ahead; listen to some of the samples of some of the songs.  If you’re close to my age, that sixties sound will be familiar and I hope will take you back to pleasant memories.  If you’re quite a bit younger than I am, or young enough that your parents are close to my age, you’ll probably be rolling your eyes and laughing.  My sister showed this picture to her husband this morning after I emailed it to her and he made a joke about her stylish clothes.  She said to him, “Hey, don’t talk.  All your childhood pictures have people with beehive hairdos!”

But man, what great memories that album brings back for me.  Sister had it and played it fairly often.  The Amazon page I linked to above says it was originally released in 1966.  This picture is from 1968.  Sister had just turned 11 and I was 4 1/2.  See her boots?  Aren’t they cool?  I grew up following her around like a puppy, adoring her and thinking she was just the coolest human being ever.  She’s still one of my very favorite people.

After I downloaded the album, I played some of the songs and couldn’t stop grinning and dancing in my chair.  I remember, especially when hearing the music at the end of These Boots, after she says “Are you ready, boots?  Start walkin’”, standing in our living room with Sister and doing The Pony and The Swim.  Anybody remember those dances?

I especially remember the part of The Swim, where you hold your nose and raise your other arm above your head and “go under the water”.  I loved that part.  I could really wiggle those hips when I was little.  Or at least I thought I could.

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And in other news, I wrote my first 1733 words of NaNo this morning between midnight and 1:10 am.  Woot!  Woot!

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