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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Wready To Wrimo

I am Wready to Wrimo!

I have a murder (both method and motive), a person living under an assumed identity, a love story, a breakup, a child with questionable paternity, and a lot of other exciting stuff.

I have my yWriter file set up with chapters and scenes ready to write, as well as notes and character bios created.

I have my NaNoWriMo 2009 t-shirt, my NaNoWriMo mugs, and my hat that says, “Oh, this is SO going into my next novel.”

I have lots of Dunkin Donuts coffee (the kind you make at home), and my this-year’s-writing-snack (I’m having Johnsonville Beddar with Cheddar this year (gluten free – SS checked them out online the other night when I was in the grocery store and we were on the phone).

I’m inspired, I’m excited, I’m as prepared as I’m going to be, and I’ll be well-rested after the nap I’m going to take tonight, waking up at about 11:30 to make coffee and get prepared to start writing at midnight.  (I like to get my first couple hours in right after midnight.  Just a fun tradition, especially when November 1st falls on a weekend.)

When I was looking for a file on the computer earlier, I came across some NaNo-related graphics I made in 2005 and 2006 for my old diary.

The web site I used for my old diary was set up so users could make banner ads and run them on the user’s section of the site so that other users could click them and read each other’s diaries.  I made some ads for my NaNoWriMo entries, including some that I ran in the days leading up to the start of NaNo.

P.S. I’m adding NaNoWriMo to my Bliss List.

Counting down . . .

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Gluten Free Recommendation: More Maybelline Products, and a Cover Girl Product

Wow!  SS surprised me, in the care package I received yesterday, with some lip liners and eyeliners!  After finding out that the Maybelline mascara I always liked is gluten free, she did some more checking when I said the only thing I had left to find, now, was lip liners and eyeliners.  And guess what.  Maybelline COLORsenstaional lip liners, Define-A-Line eyeliner, and Line Express eyeliner are all gluten free!  I’m so happy about being able to go into a drug store and buy makeup products I can use.

Sister calls SS the Gluten Nazi.  She means it as a compliment, of course.  They know each other; we do conference calls where we all three talk to each other.  That always makes me laugh, when she says that, because SS does go above and beyond.  She makes me feel so cared for and so loved.  She’s in the process of going completely gluten free herself, so that I won’t ever have to worry about cross-contamination being with her or in her house.

And for anyone who is looking for gluten free mascara who would like more choice, SS also found out that her favorite kind, Cover Girl Volume Exact, is gluten free as well (but not the waterproof type; be careful).

I really hope that companies who produce not only food but also items like cosmetics, toiletries, household cleaners, etc., will begin adding “gluten free” to their labels when it applies.  That would not only be very helpful for those of us who are gluten intolerant, but it would also reduce their incoming phone calls, inquiring, and would help them to gain a larger part of the market among people like me (and celiacs are a loyal bunch if you make a product that doesn’t make us sick; we’ll tell everyone we know!)

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More About Structure, And Another Gluten Warning

As hesitant as I was to attempt to add structure to my life, it’s turning out to not be as difficult as I feared it would be.  I think the key is to add new things one at a time, with some time in between to adjust.  Well, there seem to be several keys, but that’s a big one.

Someone recently gave me a Palm Pilot.  I resisted initially, thinking that if I can’t seem to make a paper organizer or an online task list work, I wouldn’t be any more likely to make proper use of a Palm.  I was wrong!  It’s amazing.  It fits right into the way my mind works, somehow.  It syncs with the software on my computer and fits right into my purse.  I keep my task list on it (a very long end ever-growing list of every little thing I would otherwise forget to do).  I look at the “Today” view of my task list so that it isn’t overwhelming, seeing all those things I have to do, and it feels like those things I have to do in the day in question are in more manageable chunks.  I’ve been learning how easily overwhelmed I am, and now that I realize that about myself, I can structure (there’s that word again) things so that I don’t shut down when contemplating the enormity of everything.

I keep my shopping list on the Palm, too, with items divided by store, and I just delete them from the list as I go, and then add new items as I think of them.  No little scraps of paper in my purse, and no need to carry a little spiral notebook or start new lists as the old ones get all scratched out, anymore.  I have items in my Office Documents like my list of the supplements I take, which includes brand names, dosages, and prices, so that when I need to buy more I remember which ones to buy; and various gluten-free product, company, and ingredient lists.

I have the little folding keyboard that goes with it, too, and I can use that to work on my NaNoWriMo novel if my laptop doesn’t work and I’m at a write-in.  I won’t be able to write on it in the program I usually use (though I did message the software’s author to ask if he would write a version for Palm for next year), but I could write in Word and then transfer it when I get home.  (My laptop is very old and cantankerous and I’m not sure how much I can count on it to work on any given day.)  The Palm has wifi, and that is awesome, since the wifi on my laptop hasn’t worked for a long time.  I’ll be able to update my NaNo word counts even if I’m not home.

End of commercial for Palm.  For now. 

And other news in the Tampalama Adds Structure To Her Life Saga:

When trying to figure out a glutening not long ago, SS said maybe I should keep a food diary.  I groaned.  I hate keeping food diaries.  But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how it could have come in handy, had I been keeping one during the last few glutenings.

Yesterday morning, we were talking about the last time I was glutened and neither of us could remember what had caused it, even though I’d figured it out at the time it happened.  I finally remembered.  It was the WalMart Great Value brand corn tortillas I’d bought a few months ago.  The package says “gluten free” on it, but I noticed the day I bought it that it was the last of the old packaging design, and all the packages with the new design had a shared equipment warning.  I debated about buying it, wondering if they changed the gluten info when they switched to the new packaging because they had discovered it was mislabeled earlier due to the shared equipment situation or if they actually had changed where and  how they were made at the same time they changed the labels.  I took the chance and bought them and used them a few times.  That was during a time when I was being glutened in more than one way (also, a store brand acidophilus I was using at the time seems to not be gluten free).  I hung onto the tortillas, though, and gave them a try again Sunday night, just to test, and I reacted.  That was the glutening we couldn’t remember the source of, yesterday.  And that was what convinced me to start a food log.

I created a new blog and made it private (the whole world doesn’t care or need to know what I eat).  I’m keeping the entries simple, with a list of what I eat each day.  I don’t bother with measurements and such because it isn’t a weight loss food diary.  I make notes about things that might or might not be pertinent later, like which Dunkin Donuts location I got my coffee from the last two mornings.  I made categories for the two major reactions I have to gluten (abdominal pain/gas, and bleeding, usually two to three days later).  I made categories for the types of foods I’m eating, as well, just in case that might spotlight any other trends (i.e. I’ve suspected for some time that I also have a problem with dairy, but I’m not ready to come completely out of denial about it.  Many gluten intolerant people also cannot digest casein, a protein in milk.  I generally only react with digestive symptoms to dairy products when I’ve been glutened, but I always seem to become congested and sinusy after I eat cheese.)  I had to laugh this morning when, just beginning today’s entry, my category cloud showed “coffee” in huge letters.  At that point, it was the only category that had more than one entry in it.

I’m including a section in each day’s entry for soaps, lotions, detergents, etc., which I’ll just paste in from the day before and only change when I change brands.  I’ll make notes of anything unusual that happens, like the times I have opened a file folder of paperwork from Boss and had a half-cup of bread crumbs fall out onto me (I spoke with him about it, explaining what crumbs can do and asking for his help since I was trying to rule out as much as possible in my attempt to figure out how I was being glutened, and he said he will be more careful about eating lunch near the paperwork he is working on).  I have a section in every entry where I’ll go back in and make a note if I have any reaction, and I’ll put it into the appropriate reaction category.  Eventually, I should be able to pin down what causes the mystery reactions I have sometimes.

Speaking of mystery glutenings, I have another entry in my drafts folder that will be published soon . . .

And speaking of WalMart (as in the mention of the Great Value brand corn tortillas, above), I was looking at their gluten free products on their web site (a search feature I had touted in a previous entry) and was still very impressed with it . . . until I got several pages into the list and saw Goldfish crackers, fudge brownie ice cream, and bread.  Wheat bread, yes.  In the gluten free search results.  So, I have to add a warning here, to anyone who took my advice and went to look at the list: Be careful!  Take nothing for granted!  And always read labels before you buy, because even if something was gluten free last time  you bought it, it may not be anymore.

More soon.

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One Year Blogiversary

Wow.  It’s been a year already.  It sure doesn’t seem that long, and yet so much has changed . . .

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Wanting To Be Better

“You make me want to be a better man.” – Jack Nickolson, As Good As It Gets

Love can be like that.

Just as the Jack Nicholson character was willing to take the medication for his OCD, in spite of his hatred of pills, to try to become better, I’ve been working on my clutter/hoarding problem and have been making headway in the decluttering department.  I have a bigger reason to want to be better than I had before, because if I stayed rooted in the small, constricted life I’d constructed for myself, which felt safe for the time I needed it to but began to become suffocating, there would have continued to be no room to allow a relationship into my life.  As my therapist pointed out yesterday, as my level of trusting SS has grown, my level of anxiety (and the need to continue living my hoarding/cluttering/hermitting type of life) has been shrinking.

And it’s true.  As I’ve worked on the decluttering, I have found that the feeling that it must all be perfect for SS has toned down to something much more realistic and attainable.  I’m content with how my progress is going.  It’s going to be ok.

I commented to Sister the other night about how amazed I am that there is only one of SS, and she’s mine.  Out of all the people in the whole world.  Sometimes I feel the flip-side of that.  Something she will do or say will make me so proud to be the one she loves, and I feel like announcing, “She loves me!  Of all the people in the world . . . me!”

How does that happen?  How does it happen that anyone ever meets that One who constantly amazes them and makes them feel like the luckiest person alive?  And how does it happen that both people feel that way about each other?  The odds against that must be astronomical, and yet it happens.  Regularly.  Look around you.  I think there are way more couples than single people out there, and granted, they aren’t all happy together and many don’t feel that sense of awe and wonder with each other, but it happens very often.  Against all those odds.  Even sometimes against our own fighting not to allow it to happen.

Amazing.

Simply amazing.

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Long Distance Relationships

Someone Special lives 1060 miles away from me.  I don’t think I mentioned that before, here.

A long-distance relationship isn’t something that is all that new to me.  I’ve done it twice before, although I wasn’t looking specifically for a long-distance relationship in any of the three cases (wasn’t looking for a relationship at all when I began having feelings for SS or the person my prior relationship was with).  It just seems I tend to meet people that way (twice online and once through a mutual friend who gave us each other’s phone numbers).

Because it feels more natural to me to live in my head than in the physical world, it stands to reason that I would find it easy to feel drawn to a person by connecting mentally first.  (Of my four closest local friends, one is my sister and the other three I met online, on varying types of message boards or networking web sites.)

For a romantic relationship to develop, some people’s brains are wired to need that face-to-face initial contact, and some people need a physical attraction to happen before emotional feelings can develop, but I’ve never been either way.  For me, the connection always begins at an intellectual place and then goes from there.  I really don’t feel physically attracted to someone until some level of mental connection or feeling has already begun.  This time was no different in that respect, but is very different in many other respects.

I’ve been happy to find that the reactions of others, with regard to the whole long-distance aspect, are much more positive now than in years past.  I suppose, rather than “more positive”, I should say that people seem “less baffled”.  It’s so much more common now to meet a significant other online than it was ten years ago, and it was 19 years ago when I met someone through a mutual friend and carried on a long-distance telephone relationship before finally meeting face-to-face.  People seemed to find that really weird, back then.

I don’t think people are as baffled after the initial meeting has taken place, but when there are strong feelings and even future plans being discussed before that point, that’s what seems to throw those who aren’t inclined themselves to connect with someone that way.

My parents met in a long-distance relationship sort of way, back in the mid-1950’s.  My dad was in the Air Force and mutual friends introduced them through the mail and they became pen-pals.  I hadn’t consciously realized, however, until just recently, that they met face-to-face a total of three times before their wedding day.  That blows even me away.  They just celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary and they are still the very best of friends.

But, in spite of my parents’ obvious success and the acceptance and encouragement of others around me, one of the biggest hurdles for me to get over in the early stages of this relationship has been the long-distance thing and what I’ve done with it in my head.

This is the healthiest relationship I have ever had.  Some might argue it’s the first healthy relationship I’ve had.  The communication is amazing, as is the ease with which we can talk about anything.  Seriously.  Anything.  I so often hear myself saying something and mentally acknowledge that in X or Y relationship, I could never have said that, or if I had, I’d have been criticized.  I’m sure that over time I won’t compare this relationship with past ones so much.  I have already begun to not do that as much as I did earlier, and I’m completely enjoying it for what it is, and for who we are, individually and as “us”.  But the fact that two of the three most serious relationships I had before SS began as long-distance relationships, even though the reasons those relationships didn’t work had nothing to do with the distance and they wouldn’t have worked no matter how we’d met, doesn’t escape my notice.  Illogical as it may be, I have that connection in my head, and I’ve been working hard to overcome it.

Still, I’ll feel better after we’ve had our first face-to-face.  It isn’t that I need that to prove anything to myself; it’s just that I think it will be easier to talk to others about it once they know that yes, we have met in person.  And of course, there is the fact that we miss each other and are just really looking forward to being in the same space.

This will happen in December.  We began acknowledging our feelings for each other back in August, but decided to set the date of our first visit in December for a few reasons, the biggest being that I need time to prepare.  My hoarding / clutter problem has been out of control since sometime in 2005, and even though I’ve been making some very good progress, it’s a time-consuming project and I have a lot of work yet to do.  I feel good about it, though.  That’s the coolest part.  At some point, I’m not sure exactly when, I relaxed from my tense-to-the-point-of-nausea state, panicking every time I looked around and thought, “I’ll never have this done in time,” to suddenly looking around calmly and knowing that, as I told my therapist, “I’ll be ready enough.”  I may not have every single thing perfect, but life isn’t perfect.  Life is a continually ongoing and evolving process, so nothing could be or remain perfect anyway.  The best we can hope to achieve, I believe, is a state that feels right to us.  This relationship feels right to me, and each weekend, I take another giant step toward my living space feeling right as well.

And this seems like a good time to share some Tips For Feeling Closer And Remaining Connected While Miles Apart.  These tips would be good for folks like us, who met and have been getting to know one another from a distance, as well as for couples who are temporarily separated physically due to work, military, or other obligations.

• Utilize every form of communication you have at your disposal, whether you use a telephone, email, postal mail, chat, texting, what-have-you.  SS and I talk every evening, sometimes engaged in active conversation and sometimes just hanging out and doing what we individually need to do in our homes while spending time together and talking about whatever.  (Bluetooth is our friend.)The connection we feel is so strong that we sometimes forget we haven’t been face-to-face yet.  Once in a while, I forget she isn’t local and hasn’t been here.  I’ll refer to a particular intersection or town and forget that she has no conceptual idea of it yet.  One day, she mentioned that she was going to go mow her lawn and I opened my mouth to say, “But it’s raining outside,” before I remembered that it was only raining here.It’s amazing, how, when you have spent hours at a time talking with someone, you reach a point where you learn their auditory cues and know how they are feeling based on vocal tones or how they sigh.  You can “hear” facial expressions, especially if you share photos often.
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• Share photos or video often.  As often as possible, anyway.  Even photos that may seem silly can make your partner feel closer and more included in what you are doing.  A pretty flower that you see while you’re out doing your errands, or a photo of something cute your pet did, or pictures of the progress you made organizing a particular room or section of your home . . . they all make it feel a little more like being there.  Make the virtual visual.  SS made some video clips of the rooms in her house this past weekend, and I enjoyed them immensely.  It gave me so much more of an idea what it might like to actually be there.  I’m planning to make some video also, but I’m still a bit hesitant to do it right now, before I’ve accomplished more in my de-cluttering, although SS has seen several photos I took in April, and she is the only person besides me who has seen that many of those pictures.  My therapist hasn’t even seen them yet.  She will.  In time.
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• Watch TV or movies together.  SS and I have movie night, usually one night a week unless we’re really busy with other stuff, as we have been lately.  We take turns choosing a movie and then both order it from Netflix, and watch it together over the phone.  It’s easy enough to sync up by saying, “One, two, three, go” and pressing Play at the same time.  We have regular TV shows that we record and watch every week, also.  It’s still a shared experience, even if we aren’t able to be sitting in the same room.
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• Send care packages whenever possible.  Surprise each other.  Pick out romantic greeting cards that describe how you feel and write a note inside.  The surprising-each-other thing keeps reminding me of All My Children, back when Ryan and Greenlee were married and they’d made a vow to surprise each other every day.  Of course, every day is most likely impossible, but it’s so much fun to surprise your partner with something you’ve put a lot of thought into, and it’s also a whole lot of fun to receive that surprise and to be reminded that your partner was thinking of you.  The care package before last that I opened from SS contained gluten free cookies and muffins that she had baked for me.  Talk about feeling loved!  That was awesome.  In my last care package to her, I sent some printed items I’d made up (hat, note paper, calendar) with a quote about wine (she makes wine) and some neat wine images.  I also sent some framed note cards that match the decor in one of her rooms.  I’d had the note cards for quite some time, in a drawer, because I loved them, and now they can be displayed on her wall.  She is always sending me practical items that I need, as well . . . I believe the next package is the one that will contain new guts for my toilet . . . should I explain that one in more detail?  If the definition of romantic is “thoughtful”, it actually does fit.

More in a future entry . . .

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Possible Gluten Warning

I previously mentioned OreIda Easy Fries in an entry from July, and although I didn’t specifically say in that entry that they were gluten free, I’m concerned that anyone who must eat gluten free may have read that entry and trusted me that they were gluten free, since I mentioned really liking them.  I’ve been eating them off and on (when I’m not being careful to watch my IF ratings; white potatoes are inflammatory) for a while now.  Well, it turns out, they may not be gluten free, and I didn’t know that.  I don’t know what to think, really, now.

• According to the ingredients list (Potatoes, Vegetable Oils [Sunflower, Cottonseed, Soybean, Palm, Canola, and/Or Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil], Salt, Dextrose, Disodium Dihydrogen Pyrophosphate, Annatto [Vegetable Color]), there doesn’t seem to be anything in them that would raise any red flags for me.  It even contains a soybean warning, but no other allergen warnings.
• They show up in WalMart’s list of gluten free items.
• I can’t time my own consumption of them with the glutenings I’ve gone through.  The thing that further muddies my ability to figure it out is that I often buy and eat these fries when I’m going through a time of craving comfort food, and one of the things that happens when I’ve been glutened is that I crave comfort food because I feel so awful.  If they do contain gluten, I may not know, if I’m mostly eating them after I’ve already been glutened.  But I do recall eating them when I hadn’t been glutened, and I don’t remember ever making any sort of connection between them and any gluten reaction.

However, when trying to figure out a recent mystery glutening (twice over a period of weeks), I went back over everything I could remember having eaten, and when I checked the list of gluten free items on the OreIda web site, these fries weren’t on the list.  I called, and the girl I spoke with said they weren’t on her list either.

I’m going to contact OreIda and ask them to look at the ingredients and manufacturing process and either add them to the gluten free list if they are in fact gluten free, or put something on the label that explains why they aren’t, such as that maybe they are made in a shared facility that also produces products containing wheat, or something, if that is the case.  It could possibly be that they are produced in a facility that produces products containing barley, rather than wheat, and since US companies are not (yet?) legally bound to disclose barley on their labels, that could explain why it would not be on the gluten free list and also not have anything on the label that would cause concern to a gluten intolerant person.

It’s just very odd, though, because I am so hyper-sensitive to gluten, even in items that are simply made in shared facilities, even if they don’t contain gluten in their ingredients, and I can’t say I’ve ever reacted to the fries.

I will update when I know more, but I wanted to be sure and clarify this, just in case.

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Desiderata

I was organizing some of my links today, and I came across this post in Beyond Meds’ blog.  It’s Desiderata.  I first heard it spoken on an old Leonard Nimoy album I had as a kid, called Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy. The track was called Spock Thoughts.

My sister used to have a framed copy of Desiderata hanging on the wall of the house where she lived with her first husband, and she could quote it in its entirety.  It’s been something I was aware of for years, and grew up with, but I’d never really realized just how powerful and amazing and profound it is until today, reading it again, after so many years.

I sat down and started to organize my links while taking a bit of a break from my apartment decrapulation (borrowing a word from My Pre-Blog, who I am so hoping will start posting again soon!).  It’s going pretty well and making me feel more and more hopeful that I can truly dig myself out from under my clutter issues.

I think, once I have things the way I want them in my apartment, I will print and frame a copy of Desiderata to hang on my office wall, and I’m adding it to my Bliss List as well:

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.  Especially do not feign affection.  Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.  But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.  Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.  You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.

And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.  Strive to be happy.

- by Max Ehrmann

Feeling Crappy, Screwups, and Decisions

1.  Feeling Crappy

Turns out, I didn’t have a hangover the other day.  It was the beginning of my PMDD/Migraine/Depression/Misery Days.  At least they don’t drag on for as long as they used to.  There’s that.  It was particularly rough this time, though, and the inner critic really capitalized on the opportunity to run rampant.  I remind myself that it has been far worse in the past, but it’s still so hard to get through when it’s happening in the moment.  Things are getting back to normal now, since some time Thursday.  Phew.

I have noticed that during Hormone Hell Week (hereafter to be affectionately known as HHW), I am far more likely to misunderstand things people say, or to misread their energy.  It occurred to me the other day that a situation with my therapist that happened back in August, where I completely misread and misunderstood her and more or less mentally “checked out” from the whole process for a little while, probably happened during HHW.  I looked back on my calendar this morning, and sure enough, it was smack-dab at the beginning of HHW for that month.  Going back through emails to my therapist in the few days around that time, I can really see how I was melting down.

So, I have added a recurring reminder to myself in my calendar, to appear every fourth Monday: “HHW – Don’t let it get to you.”

*  *  *

2. Screwups

So, I went to the doctor’s office Wednesday (my GP’s office), intending to talk to the nurse practitioner about trying some ADD medication.  I’d already spoken with my therapist about it, signed a release, and she’d faxed the information to the doctor’s office last week.

When the nurse (or medical assistant?  I’m not sure) called me back (almost a half hour after my appointment time, although it’s common for that office to be running behind), I noticed she was new and I took an immediate (and at first, unexplained) dislike to her.  I smiled anyway and tried not to let it show, aware that I’ve been tense and hormonal for days.

I got on the scale, and while I was standing there waiting for her to move the little slidey-things and find out my weight, she was reading a note on my record.

I see you called in recently asking for a prescription for Yaz.”

“Yes, that was taken care of.”

“The doctor isn’t going to prescribe Yaz for you.”

“He already did.  It’s taken care of.”

(This was almost four weeks ago, when my prescription had run out and I’d had to cancel my annual gynecologist appointments a few times because of other issues, and the gynecologist wouldn’t call in another refill because she hadn’t seen me.  I asked my GP to call it in once, which he did, and then I saw the gynecologist last week.)

“He won’t do it again.”

“It’s ok.  I don’t need him to.”

“Yaz is dangerous.  There are problems with it.”

“L (who has worked there for years and years) called me last week and we talked about it.  I’m aware of the issues.”

“The doctor won’t prescribe that for you.”

“I don’t need him to!”

Why wouldn’t she mind her own business?

Then we went into the exam room and did the whole checking-blood-pressure and going-over-my-records thing.

“Is this a follow-up?”

“It was supposed to be, but I didn’t do my blood work yet.  I kept the appointment because I want to talk to her about ADD medications.  My therapist faxed over the information on Friday.”

Nurse-Or-Medical-Assistant rolled her eyes and said, sardonically, “She probably didn’t do it.”

“She did.”

Don’t'choo be talking bad about my therapist.  My hackles were up.

She searched my record on the laptop.

“Who was supposed to fax it?”

“My therapist.”

I told her my therapist’s name, and spelled it.  Twice.

“The cardiologist?”

“No.”

Seriously?  Did she really ask me that?

“Who was supposed to send it?”

“My therapist.”

I spelled her name again.

“And what was she supposed to send?”

“An ADD assessment and the release I signed.”

There’s nothing here.  She didn’t send it.”

“She sent it.  But if you don’t have it, there really is no need for me to stay today, since I didn’t have the blood work done yet.”

“Well, let me go check.”

She left the room.  I waited, and steamed, and finally decided she had five more minutes and I was going to leave, when she came back in (now more than an hour after my scheduled appointment time) and told me that they had received the fax but didn’t know where it was.

I stood up to leave.

“Wait.  Don’t you want to talk to her anyway?”

“About what?  Without that fax, there’s nothing to talk about.”

“Why don’t you just talk to her anyway?”

She’s not going to prescribe me amphetamines based on my saying I want them!

I left.

Oh well.  I had some reservations, anyway, about ADD medications, because I’ve already had problems with medications that affect neurotransmitter levels, and because of some other possibly illogical “terrors” that have arisen around the whole topic (“What if I don’t really have ADD?  What if I’m just lazy?”, or “What if the things that appear to be ADD symptoms are really just the cognitive symptoms of Fibromyalgia / Chronic Fatigue?”, and, “What if the meds make me feel crazy or out of control?”)  So it wasn’t terribly difficult for me to just walk way and drop the whole idea of meds anyway.

I do feel a little sad, though.  I had begun to imagine less noise in my head.  Being able to grasp and focus on what is important and needs my attention at the moment, rather than ruminating about things that just aren’t important right then and don’t necessarily even serve a useful purpose at all.  I’d begun imagining what it might be like to be able to stay on task more easily at work.  My job isn’t ideal for someone with ADD.  There are a lot of interruptions, often layering over one other, and while I multi task pretty well during the higher-intensity moments of being interrupted by more than one person who thinks their problem or issue is the most important thing in the world at the time, it’s the getting-back-to-whatever-I-was-doing-before that is so hard.  And with each new interruption, the getting-back is harder and harder, until I finally just sit and stare.  I had anticipated that becoming easier.

And reading.  I so miss reading for pleasure, and being able to follow the plot of a novel without re-reading the same sentence or paragraph multiple times, and being able to remember which character is which, so that the next time they appear in a scene, I remember how they fit into the story.  I miss that.

I’m leaning toward asking my therapist if she can recommend a psychiatrist.  If there is one she recommends who is also on my insurance plan, I might make an appointment to talk about the meds.  After doing some further research to find out if maybe, by altering the amino acids I take to keep my neurotransmitter levels where they should be, and by not taking ADD meds every single day, I could avoid the sort of neurotransmitter damage I experienced before.  I think the ideal scenario would be to find a psychiatrist who incorporates a bit more of a holistic approach into their work, and perhaps would be willing to order tests to monitor my NT levels once or twice a year.  Other than my PMDD times, I seem to be in a really good place right now, so I would think that whatever my levels are during my non-PMDD weeks would be a good base line to go by.

Just thinking.

*  *  *

3. Decisions

PMDD time is a bad time for me to make decisions, and ironically it’s also a time when I keep ruminating about decisions I shouldn’t be making at the time, but can’t seem to let go of.

One of those is whether or not to do NaNoWriMo this year.

On the one hand, I participated for the past five years.  This will be number six, if I do it.  It’s become such a big part of my fall.  I’ve loved writing for most of my life and it’s fun to prepare for NaNo, making notes and brainstorming with Sister to come up with the framework of a story.  It’s fun to plan what kinds of snacks I’ll have available while I write, and it’s fun to go to write-ins and enjoy the social aspects of the whole thing.

On the other hand, I have a lot of other things going on this year.  My older nephew is getting married in November (my younger nephew just got married in September).  I’ve been working on my clutter problem and preparing for a very special visit in December.  This last week or so, I’ve been pulled away from decluttering because I’ve been working on getting my taxes filed, since the extension I filed for back in April will expire on the 15th, and then I spent a few days in “dialed-down” mode because I didn’t feel capable of much other than dragging myself into work and home again.  In order to completely immerse myself in NaNo, I’d like to have the decluttering done by the end of October, and I’m just not sure I can do that.

I also have this other pressure-feeling this year, that since I finally won last year, I have to win again this year.

I did decide that if I do NaNo this year, though, I’d rather not continue on to the third novel in the series I’ve been working on, simply because without having finished either of the first two, it becomes more and more difficult to keep starting the next ones.  I’d really like to finish one or both of the first two before moving along to the third, even though I have notes and a basic outline and time line for the entire series.

I decided I’d like to do something completely different this time, if I decide to do it.  I thought about it, came up with a couple very loose starter-thoughts, brainstormed with Sister (who, on hearing my first loose starter-thought, said, “And then what?”, and I said, “That’s all I have so far.”), then brainstormed some more with SS, then with Sister again, and then even more by myself, and . . . I think I’ve got it.  It’s an exciting concept, to be done in a somewhat unusual way.  It’s getting more and more exciting, the more I work on my notes and the more thinking I do about the plots and each character’s individual story.

And that, I believe, means I’ve made a decision.

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