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.

–

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.

–

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.

–

Then And Now

This isn’t from my yearbook, but it’s from the year I would have graduated, had I not taken my GED and gotten out of Dodge a year early because I hated high school.  (If the curiosity about whose yearbook it is is too much to bear, feel free to email me at the address on my Passwords page and I’ll tell you.)

But this post isn’t just about high school.  It covers a span from somewhere around 3rd or 4th grade onward, until high school, and with some residual effects even now, although I hadn’t realized how far-reaching it was until fairly recently.

It’s about bullying.

There were several girls who enjoyed humiliating me in different ways.  I had a good friend named Tammy as a kid, and she used to say that the “popular” girls who look down on or humiliate others usually grow up to be fat and ugly.  I always had to laugh when she would say that, and I must admit a very small part of me that never grew up finds great pleasure in imagining these girls looking exactly the way they criticized others for looking.

Fast forward to recent months, when I have been writing on the effects of bullying that still fuel my inner critic to this day, albeit not with as much power as in the not-too-distant past.  I began to wonder whatever happened to those girls.  I joined classmates.com and looked a few of them up, but only found one.  Two others, who were particularly big on the humiliation thing, weren’t there.  The other day, however, I received an email from classmates, asking if I remembered Michelle (I’m leaving last names out).  The next day, I think it was, I got one asking if I remembered Anne.  I had to laugh.  Then I got curious and looked them up on facebook, and found both.  I saw their pictures.  Neither of them is fat, but they both look . . . tired . . . unhealthy . . . and kind of unhappy.  I felt bad for them.

An ex of mine used to say that happiness is the best revenge.  I’ve been experiencing a deeper level of happiness in my life, lately, than I had in a long time, possibly ever, but I no longer feel any need for revenge.  In fact, I wish them happiness, too.

*   *   *

This is a rerun of an old entry that I wrote for my old online diary back in April of 2008.  I had run into another girl who sometimes picked on me, but didn’t leave the same lasting negative effects as some of the things Michelle or Anne or some of the other kids did.  This girl was fun to be around, and she and I were sort of part-time friends, in between our bouts of her turning on me and my disliking her for it.  I see that when I wrote the entry, I was pretty dismissive of my whole bullying experience.  That was before I was able to see so clearly the impact it had on my life all these years, and the role it played in my inner critic gaining the kind of momentum it has had all this time.  I guess I finally had to see it for what it really was before I could start to work on defusing the power of that inner critic.

I also noticed that I told a story that involved Anne and (I believe) Michelle, in that entry.  It’s the pencil-dropping incident.

Here is that entry:

34 years later
Wednesday, Apr. 16, 2008

A couple months ago, I ran into Peggy, a girl I went to school with from about the third grade or so. I think we went to junior high and high school together, too, but I’m actually not sure. I mostly remember her in fourth grade. That was when she made the biggest impact on my life. During that year, we were on-again-off-again “friends”, but she was also friends with some girls who were part of a group that didn’t like me, so I guess it’s safest to say that she was my friend occasionally, until she wasn’t again.

These other girls were catty and bitchy – you know the type. I didn’t have good skills for dealing with kids who picked on me. Mom said “Ignore them and they’ll stop because it won’t be any fun anymore.” I thought “ignore” meant “pretend you don’t hear/see/feel them doing whatever they’re doing.”  Boy, was THAT a misunderstanding of advice, and it didn’t work.

When you’re 43, looking back, it’s eye-rolling childish crap that doesn’t warrant much thought anymore, but when you’re 9, it sucks big time. They did the typical stuff (although it’s really tame compared to things I’ve read about what kids do to each other now) – whisper and laugh while looking at me, pull my hair, call me names (usually having something to do with my wiry hair, my glasses, or my weight), stuff like that. One time, I had a pair of shorts on, and I don’t remember anymore if they were more see-through than I’d realized or if they were too short or if they had a hole in them or just what the problem was, but evidently my underwear showed if I bent over.  So, one of these girls, while accompanied by a few others (I don’t remember if Peggy was one of them or not) dropped a pencil and asked me to pick it up for her. Sure, no problem. It rolled right over here by me. But when I bent over, I guess my underwear showed and they laughed and laughed. Again, when you’re 9 . . . Oh, and that was in the 1970’s, way before thong underwear, back when having your underwear show wasn’t a fashion statement.

But that isn’t the point of this entry.  It’s just backstory, to set the stage.

So, Peggy was fun and cool, and kind of quirky. She was famous in our class for holding her breath until she would pass out. That was always cool. At recess every day, one of us would usually ask her to do it. She’d ask someone to stand behind her and catch her, and someone always did. I could turn my eyelids inside-out, which brought mixed reactions (the boys liked it much better than the girls did), but Peggy could pass out!  Wow.

I went to church once or twice with her and her family.  It was my first experience at a Catholic church, and I thought it was really interesting and different from what I was used to.  I had a dress I wore to church, and once in a while to school, that was grape-bubble-gum-purple with tiny lime green polka dots. It had a belt made of the same fabric as the dress, and the buckle was a huge lime green plastic apple. The fabric the dress was made of was thick and coarse and didn’t move or bend very much.  Peggy called that my “cardboard dress”, and we would laugh about that every time I wore it.

Those are my main memories of her – the passing out, going to her church, my cardboard dress, and her peripheral connection to the girls who picked on me.

And then there is the big memory I have of her.  The one that made such an impact.  She was the first person to ever call me a lesbian.

I still remember her sitting there at her desk, turned sideways so she could look at me, her braids hanging down in front of her shirt. She kept looking at me, and finally, when I asked her, “What?”, she said, “You’re a lesbian.”  I didn’t know what the word meant, but from her tone of voice, I knew it couldn’t be good, so of course I said, “I am not.”

Then I went home and asked Sister, who was 16 and an authority on everything, I believed, “What’s a lesbian?” She said a lesbian is a girl who loves other girls.  Well, that didn’t seem so bad to me.  Not bad at all.  So what was the big deal?

I don’t recall Peggy ever bringing it up again, but a few weeks later, when I was staying over at my friend Cindy’s house, I made the mistake of telling Cindy that when I grew up, I thought I’d be a lesbian.  Cindy told her sister, who told everybody, and I spent the next seven-or-so years learning all about homophobia.  I never experienced negativity from anyone as an adult, when I actually did have relationships with women.  But I experienced a whole lot when I was too young to really even know who I was.

So, I saw Peggy once, several years ago, in a craft supply store, but she was too far away from me to say hello, and I was too nervous anyway.  Then I saw her a couple months ago, and I didn’t even know it was her until she told someone her name (she was picking something up).  I turned to her and said, “Peggy (Last Name)?”  She didn’t recognize me.  I told her we’d gone to school together and then I told her my name.  Her face lit up and she hugged me.  It seemed genuine.  Sometimes adults do the hugging thing to be nice, but it meant a lot to me anyway, since it was something that “those girls” in school would have frowned upon her doing, back then.  It was acceptance.

She quickly blurted out a short bio of her life now – where she works, how many kids she has, etc. – but I didn’t catch most of it because I was lost in my own memories of my cardboard dress and her braids and her being the first to ever call me a lesbian.  I seriously doubt she remembers any of the same stuff I do.  It would be weird if she did.  That isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, anyway.

But she will probably never know what a huge impact she had on my early life.

*   *   *

And on an unrelated note, did you notice I finally succeeded at NaBloPoMo?  Yay!!  What a beautiful thing that is!

–

I Love Fall!

I used to write “I Love Fall” entries in my old online diary every year.  I wait for the first cool day, every year, the same way some people wait for big holidays.  After the long, hot, humid summers here, Fall feels to me like coming out of a cocoon and waking up.

I heard a weather report earlier that we’re getting a cold front.  Today’s high is 88 or 89, but it’s supposed to go down into the 60’s overnight and in the morning.  Tomorrow’s high is something like 85, I heard, but it should be dryer, which feels so much better.  And this means that Fall is officially here again.

I’m looking forward to weather that is good for opening windows.  I especially like open windows while I am cleaning and/or organizing and/or decluttering.  While I am continuing my decluttering of the apartment, there will be a flow of fresh air moving through, blowing out negative energy and stale fears and difficult emotions that are no longer needed.

This is good.

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Rambling Thoughts About Climbing Back On The IF Wagon

I’m working back toward the anti-inflammation diet again.  I’d gotten away from it, after the two or three weeks or so in June and July that I did really well (I don’t actually remember when I let it go by the wayside; I just stopped writing about it at some point, just as I did in January when I was trying to lose weight).  Money was an issue the week I gave up, and I couldn’t afford the right foods to continue properly.  By that time, though, I’d already begun the process of letting go of it gradually, first eating some of the inflammatory foods I’d been craving, justifying it to myself by thinking the anti-inflammatory foods I was still eating would make up for it.  I knew about that tendency in myself, to justify, yet the Inner Enabler (I don’t know if that’s an actual psychological term or not, but it seems to fit) can effectively wipe that knowledge from accessible memory and make it seem like it makes sense in the moment.

“I’ll just have one.”

“I’ll just have a few.”

“Well, half the package is already gone.  I’ll just finish it so I won’t have any more left to tempt me and I’ll start again tomorrow.”

“It could be worse.  I could have eaten (fill in the blank with something worse).”

My sister and I once developed an entire diet plan called the It Could Be Worse Diet.  It works like this: Whatever you want to eat, just think of something worse that you could be eating but aren’t.  (“I want a big bowl of ice cream, but I won’t eat the whole container!”, “I want a second donut, but it could be worse; I could eat the whole dozen.”  ”This burger and fries has to be better than eating an entire pizza.”)  Bingo.  Your Inner Enabler is happy, you get your comfort food, and all feels right with the world.  Granted, you won’t lose much weight,  but it kept us amused for a while.

My food addiction is making it so difficult to eat the way I know I need to.  The other day, while walking through the grocery store and picking out healthy items, I fought tears, facing that I would be giving up my comfort foods again.  It felt something like walking a tight rope without a net, a comparison I have made to the fighting of fears in a few areas of my life.

In the last month or two, I’ve been feeling the effects of the inflammation growing steadily worse again.  The knees, the hip, the back pain (especially after sleeping for any length of time over about five hours).  Then, last week, my left shoulder started to hurt again and got worse every day, and finally my jaw started hurting again by about Thursday.  I was afraid the stabbing headache pains would be next, so that was why I went to the store and bought a supply of some of the easier anti-inflammatory foods to incorporate back into my diet: tuna, sardines, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, salad greens, avocado, V-8 juice, baby carrots.  I still had frozen strawberries, which, along with cantaloupe, I hadn’t actually stopped eating regularly since doing this in June and July.  I still have some frozen Brussels sprouts and some frozen spinach.  I’ll pick up almonds the next time I go to the store, and olive oil for cooking.  Maybe a jar of olives.  According to the book I have, one jumbo green olive is worth 8 IF (Inflammation Factor) points.  Two tablespoons of chopped raw onion is worth 52.  A quarter cup chopped red bell pepper is 45.  So, adding those things (and counting out maybe five jumbo olives) to a salad would add 137 points to a salad eaten with dinner, and will add a whole lot of flavor, as well.  If I include raw kale in the salad, that can really boost the IF ratings even more.  (A quarter cup is worth 128 points, according to nutritiondata.com [the book doesn't list raw kale, only cooked].)

I’ve been in the habit of looking up foods either on the Nutrition Data web site or in the book when certain ones are listed in one place but not the other.  Sometimes I look things up in both places, and sometimes I can’t find specific listings anywhere.  There are a few things I am finding extremely difficult and frustrating.  One is when the web site and the book contradict one another.  Another is when I can’t find something anywhere.  And yet another is not knowing how to figure out packaged foods or gluten-free foods that aren’t on either list or show the IF Rating as N/A on the web site.  So I do the best I can and hope I’m right, and that if I’m wrong, I’ve done well enough with the rest of my day to make up for it.  I’ll just continue to hope that the concept of IF Ratings catches on and becomes something that more people will want to pay attention to, and that that may mean more access to information about more foods in the future.

I think the most astounding thing I noticed last time I did this was that I was suddenly able to sleep through an entire night without waking up with back pain.  For years, I felt I had a choice: either get enough sleep to function on all cylinders or be able to stand upright and walk in the morning.  I’d had no idea that it was any longer an option, at my weight and age and without buying a new bed, to have both.  But eating anti-inflammatorily (I still like that phrase, even if I did make it up) made it possible.  And, of course, it went back to the way it was before, when I stopped.  Because a decent night’s sleep is imperative for so many things, including ADD, fibromyalgia, and depression, and because allowing those things to be any more out of control than they already are (especially the ADD) could very well cost me my job, I’ve come to the conclusion that avoiding inflammatory foods is something I’m going to have to do.  (I’ve decided to talk with my GP about trying ADD medication when I see him in October, but even if I  find a medication I like and it helps a lot, proper sleep is still vital.)

I read an article yesterday that said:

The fatty tissues of the body secrete hormones that regulate the immune system and inflammation, but in the case of an overweight individual this can become out of control. Three of the hormones that play a role in metabolism are leptin, resistin and adiponectin.

• Leptin is involved in appetite control.
• Resistin is a hormone that increases insulin resistance.
• Adiponectin lowers the blood sugar by making your body more insulin sensitive.

The fact that it is the fatty tissue that produces these hormones makes the fat self regulating, as the hormones should act to bring the increased fat under control. Bodies with more fat will produce more leptin bringing the appetite under control. However in cases where the body is inflamed there is often a problem with leptin resistance, and the self regulation of fat does not occur. Leptin resistance is where to body stops responding to the appetite controlling effects of the hormone.

In addition to these metabolism regulating hormones your fatty tissue also produces chemicals that cause inflammation and this can make the problem of leptin resistance worse. This is why obesity can cause an increase of these inflammatory chemicals which in turn inhibit the correct balancing function of the weight controlling hormones. This results in a vicious circle of weight gain causing inflammation which inhibits hormone function thereby causing further weight gain.

And this drives home the point that I not only need to avoid inflammatory foods; I need to lose weight as well.  I suppose that saying “I’m not doing this to lose weight, but to feel better, and the fact that I’ll end up losing weight anyway is just a bonus” is becoming less effective at distracting my fears.  Fooling myself into thinking I can skirt around the Inner Enabler unnoticed isn’t going to work anymore, either.

I suppose it’s wake-up time.

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Cleaning Up The Chaos

I started this entry back in January and it’s been sitting in my drafts since then.  I finally wrote another entry that touched on the topic, so I guess I’ve “broken the ice” of discussing this publicly, although this is still really, really hard to admit.  There are a lot of other things that most people would probably consider far more personal than this that I would be more comfortable writing about on the Internet (and actually have written about in the past, on my old online diary, though those entries are password-protected now).  I’m willing to write about this here for two reasons:  It might help someone else who has similar issues, and it will probably be healthy for me and may even help me to stop feeling so ashamed.

I’ve been feeling for years as if I’m really only capable of either holding down a job or handling the rest of my life.  The last time I was organized in my personal life was in 1994, when I was laid off from the job I had at the time and was out of work for a few months.  Since then, it seems that my energy (physical and mental) has been able to go into only one part of my life or the other, and in the last several years most of it has gone to trying to hold down my job and not screw up.  When my focus is on work, I tend to be clueless when I get home.  I look around me and see things that need to be done, but I just can’t seem to get from the point of recognizing it through the planning stage to the doing stage.  Likewise, if I focus on personal things that need done, they are still on my mind at work and all I can seem to think about at work is what I would be doing if I were at home.

But I’m learning.  One step at a time.

I wrote an entry in my old online diary, back in September of 2003:

One night, I was watching “Oprah After the Show” on Oxygen, and I missed the beginning but she was talking about “the papers” – these papers she has in a room in her house that I guess are all over the floor or something, and she was trying to figure out what was symbolized by her inability to deal with them (they were talking about people’s strange habits and quirks and the underlying reasons for why we do what we do).  She said she would go into the room, all ready to tackle it and take care of it, only to look around and then leave, closing the door behind her.  This made me laugh and also made me feel better.  See, as I was watching this show, I was sitting at my desk in my office at home, surrounded by a sea of papers, boxes, and assorted crap that is never where it’s supposed to be.  For the most part, I am not much of a self-starter.  In fact, the more I have to do, the harder it seems to be to get started.  Once I start, I’m ok (for a while), but I can sit and look around at everything that needs done and whatever synapses have to fire in my brain to make me get off my ass and get started just don’t fire.  The night before last, though, I found the office floor, and I had forgotten what a nice big room it is.  I separated some of the papers into separate boxes based on where they go and what they pertain to, with one box for stuff to shred. What was left, I put into another box to sort through this week.  If doing that removed the intimidation factor, I may actually get them sorted out AND maybe, just maybe, have my files reorganized by the end of September.  I wonder if Oprah ever figured out what the papers mean to her.  I don’t know what mine mean, but it doesn’t matter — I just want to get it together.

I actually never finished that project.  It snowballed into the one I’m dealing with now, six years later.  A few times during 2004 and 2005, I had things looking neater, but they still weren’t organized; I had simply scooped up everything that didn’t belong where it was and shoved it into boxes that I hid away somewhere, so that I could have company over without being ashamed.  Then came 2006 and I haven’t even done the “fake neat” thing since.

It must have been around the end of 2005 or the beginning of 2006 that I began to systematically shut down parts of myself.  2006 was a particularly rough year, during which most of what was wrong in my life reached its peak.  It was the year before I finally figured out my gluten intolerance and those symptoms were at a high point; I was a few years into premenipause; my antidepressants had stopped working after taking them for an extended number of years and not knowing that this could eventually happen over time, and I was still fumbling in my attempts at what to do about it; my PMDD had not yet been diagnosed or treated; I was not in therapy yet, so many older issues I’d been carrying with me for years were still problems I didn’t have clear understanding of or solutions for; and I didn’t know I had ADD.  My physical, emotional, and mental symptoms were all sort of jumbled together and it was impossible, at that time, to determine what was causing which symptoms, and everything I tried seemed to help for a short time and then stop helping, as I was not yet anywhere near close to seeing the full picture.  To top it off, in 2006, I got involved in a relationship I was not healthy enough to begin, and for other reasons, neither was he, but neither of us realized it.  The failure of that relationship felt like a “final straw” to me, and sealed my conviction to never again open myself up like that; to never make myself that vulnerable again or let anyone become that close to me again.

Looking back, I can understand why I shut down.  I don’t actually think I had much choice.

I’m opening up again, though, bit by bit.  It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it started, this re-opening.  I suppose there was a lot of behind-the-scenes changing going on all along, since I started therapy, and since I began to find various answers to the various physical and mental symptoms that have been problematic for so long.  I’m sure it was all leading up to this, but it began to become aparent to me in the last few months.

. . . And it is allowing normal to want to return.

I remember feeling normal.  It feels like part of another lifetime, to me, but I remember it, and occasionally I get hits of it, out of the blue, when something reminds me what it felt like.  In fact, it has been happening more and more lately, as I have opened up in other ways.  I may suddenly remember a day when I had a friend over and I’ll feel how calm I was and how spacious the apartment felt because the clutter and chaos was not there.  Sometimes I get a sudden sensory memory of an unidentified fall day, when I would have had the windows open, and I can feel and smell the cool breeze as I aired out the apartment, and again, I can feel the spaciousness in the apartment.  Memory-moments like that make me want to feel normal again.  I want to feel as if I am in control of my environment.  I realize that in fact I have been all along; it’s just that I’ve been using inaction to control it and keep it small and fortress-like, rather than using action to control it and make it feel welcoming and pleasant and free, so that I can invite friends and family over for something as simple (to most people) as coffee and a visit.

In the last two-plus years of therapy, we’ve gone over this many times, and I’ve tried to figure out the psychological reason(s) for my chaos at home.  I’ve come up with so many plausible reasons, and I think that all of them play a part in it. ADD; ingrained resistance to structure and routine that began with perceptioins gleaned from having been bullied; paralyzing obsessive indecision; hermit-dom and the completely illogical but still strangely irresistible obsessive-type thought that, somehow, if I get everything in order, I’ll have no way to stop the throngs of people from inviting themselves in  (I don’t even think I know throngs of people).  One day a few months ago, I cleared my front hallway, allowing me to walk through without stepping over anything or feeling like I was running an obstacle course, and out of nowhere, I was hit with this halting “Wait a minute” kind of feeling that went with the thought, “What if I forget what it felt like?”  After I thought that, I realized I’d had that same thought a lot of times before, when I’ve made a little bit of progress. I didn’t (and still don’t) understand why it would be so important to me, at that point (just barely clearing one little spot) to worry that I might forget how it felt to have so much stuff in my way all the time.  I can understand feeling that way after cleaning the whole apartment and not wanting to slip back into old ways by forgetting how awful it feels.  But this felt like I was purposely keeping it that way, so I won’t forget what it feels like, and that doesn’t make any sense.  It feels horrible.  Why would I want to keep feeling that way?  And why wouldn’t I remember how it felt, when I’m still perfectly able to remember what “normal(-ish)” felt like, prior to 2006, in its absense?

I recently began to talk with my therapist about obsessive thoughts, and I’m beginning to see how many of the items in the previous paragraph fit into that category.  I’ll write more about that in a future entry.

For now, though, I’m just going to say that opening myself up again has led to the beginnings of a beautiful new relationship and a whole new reason to finally dig myself out of the chaos and allow myself to start feeling normal again . . . this is my project for September, and a good topic to blog about for NaBloPoMo.  It is even fitting that the theme for the month is “beautiful”.

I’m Going To Try This Again

Kerro inspired me to try this again. She blogged every day of August while moving!

I’m going to give it a shot for September.  I do have a few topics I can blog about, as I haven’t blogged very much lately and there have been things happening in my life.

Yes, beautiful things , in addition to regular stuff.

I have a big project to undertake during September as well, and it seems it would be a good idea to blog about my progress.

So, here goes . . .

Bliss List Item # 9

Bliss List Item # 9 . . . When one specific person’s laugh has the power to make you feel hugged . . .

See other Bliss List entries