Category: health

  • absent but busy

    I’ve been quiet because it’s been busy around these parts.

    October 2 was our 21st engagement anniversary. We went to Sutton’s for dinner– yummy pecan chicken fingers! And we went to watch band practice. Jared got me the cutest little bunch of sunflowers, leaving them to surprise me as I walked in the door from my ladies’ group.

    Friday came the sad news that Eats in Atlanta is closing effective October 18. Makes me sad, but then I read a little and found out that the pasta bar– the station that I’d picked up the only thing I’d eat there– pasta with olive oil and garlic– had closed with the pandemic and never re-opened. So, we are not trying to go one last time before they close. It does make me sad, though.

    Late Friday night was preparation for the yard sale that we had Saturday. It was mostly a flop, we made a grand total of $17. But it was still a massive win because we borrowed my Mama’s truck and hauled off every last little bit of the stuff we had out, either to the convenience center or Goodwill. Not a bit of it came back in the house. So our garage can park both cars in it again, which is a massive, massive win. I am thankful. Goal achieved.

    Mostly since Saturday has been recuperating from Saturday.

    But, I am back to having a laundry day! Per Dana at A Slob Comes Clean, you don’t really know how much dirty laundry you have in a week until at least the second week, and that proved true since this is the second week. Mondays are laundry day and I was able to get all our clothes laundry plus all the towels clean today, so massive win. Everything is put away.

    I’ve been making dietary changes, too. My T3 is low– my endocrinologist wants to repeat the labs now that I have stopped drinking Athletic Greens– but I think my body is just not converting T4 to T3 as efficiently anymore, and I don’t know why that is but I’m going to my primary care doc to investigate at my next physical because I don’t know that the endocrinologist is going to be that helpful.

    I’m not waiting for my physical in December, though. I have gone mostly for an anti-inflammatory type diet. Today’s breakfast was a smoothie with a banana (a whole one, and yes! I chopped it in and put it in myself– those of you who know me will know what a big deal that is), a cup of wild blueberries, a cup of almond milk, and a cup of powdered spinach (!) (and yes, I drank the whole thing, really. Those who know will know how big a deal that is, too). And I downed a couple of tablespoons of sunflower seeds with the smoothie.

    Lunch was my beloved almond flour crackers, along with a 1/4 cup serving of walnut pieces.

    Snack was a 1/2 cup of banza pasta with 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

    And dinner was half a container of egg whites, which equates to about 5 egg whites’ worth.

    It’s a far cry from my preferred bread and cheese fare. And I still have goat cheese in the fridge, but it will have to be an occasional treat now.

    Only really two days in (well, Friday and Saturday sort of counted until I threw in a Little Caesar’s Italian Cheese Bread in Saturday night and a strawberry banana smoothie from Costco which sounds good but has 25g added sugar), but I am feeling pretty good. It’s not going to be able to be an all-or nothing kind of diet– I cannot do this forever without little treats occasionally. But progress counts, right?

    So that’s where I am….still fantasizing about sugar and cheese. But much less grumpy and for once, not depressed.

    Also, the hell-beast cats have been released from their captivity and Nancy seems none-the-worse for wear.

    Anybody want a cat or two? For real?

  • my house is my self-esteem

    I trimmed back the hedges in the bed in front of our front porch this morning. Prior to trimming, they hedges were taller than the porch railing– that whole brush pile in the walkway is what I cut back. I even toted the brush pile to the street for pickup by myself!

    It’s for sure becoming apparent that the state of my self-esteem can absolutely be measured by how well I am tending to my house, or how interested I am in tending to my house.

    This morning, despite a late night waiting for Liam to get home, I managed to get Oliver to school, started towels (towels and sheets don’t count toward laundry day), have kept towels going all day so far. I did my morning meditation with my Calm app and did 20 minutes on my stationary bike (20 minutes instead of 30 because I haven’t done it in at least a month and a half and am really out of shape all over again).

    It’s time for some serious yard attention now that it is Fall. My goal yet this afternoon is still to get out and mow a section of the yard. But this morning, I managed to trim back those bushes you see in the photo above all by myself. That’s kind of a thing because I normally leave that sort of yard work to Jared– getting me to mow or blow off the driveway is usually cause for celebration enough.

    But I care about how our house looks and feels again, and the whole hedge trimming project took about 30 minutes total. I had to come in and rest after, and so here I am writing while I get up my energy to go mow, after having had a snack for lunch.

    But here’s the thing: Somewhere along the way in 2010 or so, I just utterly snapped. And I have floundered at times and I have done okay at times, and I have mostly been able to be social when out in public all along.

    But inside, I’ve felt defeated. I looked back on my school days both in grade school and high school and undergrad, and I did have quite a bit of academic promise. And then in my early career I had such interesting, impactful employment.

    And then, I had a very public episode and, job after job, the career-type promise went away.

    And I am doing my best to build back. Looking back now I can see for so many years I was grasping for instant repair.

    There is no instant repair for the kinds of trauma and mood issues I’ve dealt with in my life. In fact, I’ve run away from the kinds of healing that would really help, at times.

    So here I am, in late 2025, and I realize now that the next perfect job is not going to fix my heartbreak. The latest camera gear is certainly not going to fix my heart. The best thing I can do for myself is remind myself that I am capable. And there’s no better way to do that than to do what needs to be done– what I have been running from– and that is to tend to my home and family.

    Aside: waking up this morning with the new sheers was amazing. I was in the bed until 7 and the light was just starting to come up, and the uniform light entering the house, growing little by little as the minutes went by, was balm for my soul. That was exactly what I needed, and I am thrilled with the effect. Letting my body work with the sun is also good for my soul and mental health.

    Every day won’t be perfect. I know I have to expect depression to come back with its darkness again.

    But it seems to be true: When I want to run from my house, when I want to start over, it’s not really about the house. It’s about myself.

  • going team bare windows

    Drastic times call for drastic measures.

    We bought our current house in 2021.

    This is the only house we have purchased that I actually picked out.

    And…..I have struggled mightily with my mental health in this house.

    It doesn’t get a great deal of light. Well, I mean, the ginormous living room actually does get great light, but it was outfitted with equally imposing dark royal blue blackout curtains. Here they are, this morning:

    And yes….the blue curtains in the living room perfectly matched the shade of the blue valances (and wallpaper) in the dining room.

    At least the people who designed our 1994 house, which this is all original to, had stellar taste. Everything still looks fabulous 30 years later.

    But….. I struggle mightily with my mental health, which is likely known to you all at this point by now. And when we moved in 2021, we moved from a house that I moderately despised because of its stairs.

    But what I loved about that Holmes Drive house was its light. That house had fantabulous light, in both the kitchen and the main living room.

    So, this happened today:

    The photos are not the greatest representation of how much better the light is in the house– I took them this morning just after taking the curtains down and it was overcast. And I am sort of rebelling against my camera gear at the moment, so all I did was phone photos. I might take better photos once the job is all done.

    The dining room photo above is after the work in there too– there were paper shades over the windows in there prior to about an hour ago.

    If I had my way, we would be team bare windows in the entire house. I am not much worried about privacy.

    But, we are taking down the paper shades throughout the house, in favor of brand new sheers. They arrive tomorrow, so tomorrow’s project will for sure be taking down the eight other shades in the windows of the house.

    The paper shades were my solution to the extremely off-white, very thin metal blinds that came with the house. I hated them and they came down as soon as possible.

    And they have served their purpose, and we certainly got what little money we put into them out of them.

    But many of them in the boys’ rooms (and the ones in the dining room, actually), had been torn by the cats, and Oliver’s in particular are in very bad shape because Mow, his cat’s scratching post is right beside one window and she has gotten it all furry and bent out of shape.

    So, I will not be sorry to see the shades go in favor of sheers.

    And honestly, I’d worry more about security, but our alarm systems, both furry and actual, are fantastic.

    I just desperately need natural light.

    The good news is, taking down the curtains in the living room has made me not feel like the room needs to be painted quite so much. I do love a basic white wall.,

    And we are not taking down the hardware fast, as I am keenly aware that the blackout curtain do actually do quite a lot of insulation in the winter.

    But…that is when I need the light the most.

    Regardless: I feel better about my house, and I feel better about my life. Which makes me more invested in both.

  • not a soul-sucking day

    Just outside Newberg, Iowa last February

    Picture of vastness nothing Iowa cornfields that I took last February because it’s pretty akin to a desert, and I am kind of in that sort of mindset right now. It was a cold day.

    I’m not exactly depressed but not exactly vibrant and bubbly like I prefer to be.

    Nancy is better, and she seems to be eternally grateful to be alive. For once, she is very loving and interactive, which we are taking to mean that she understands that we did quite save her life (or at least her tongue) by getting her to the vet the other night. No more black drool or black crusty stuff around her mouth, and she’s eating and drinking as she should.

    We are not holding our collective breath that Nancy’s change in disposition is at all permanent.

    We put Nancy in Porter’s room, and moved Bess in there too, along with all their litter boxes, and have been feeding them canned food since that is what Nancy needs for at least the next few days. They both seem to appreciate the treat, and probably the respite from chaos of the dogs.

    And, I have gotten beyond my frozen action on cleaning the house: Today I cleaned the entirety of our guest bathroom in our laundry room. I cleaned the floors, baseboards, toilet, corners of the room, and sink and toilet. And dusted off the top of the intercom even though we never use it, and cleaned the top of the trash can even.

    The whole endeavor took me about half an hour.

    If I can spend this kind of dedicated time on even a section of a room in the house each day, then the house will be relatively clean in a few weeks.

    That is encouraging.

    I have also started budgeting more in earnest. Or rather: I am making a concerted effort to not spend money we don’t have right now.

    While Jared and I went on a date to Gallery Row tonight, we are not likely to do that on a regular basis.

    I did try a little photography today. This is a cameo ring I made for myself; I have several of these cameo rings I made. I had planned to post them on Etsy but honestly, I am not feeling it a great deal as far as Etsy stores go right now. I missed focus on the girl in the cameo and had to clean it up with Topaz Photo AI. This was with the GFX camera and the 37.5mm Super Cinelux lens– it’s. a great macro lens.

    I do not know how old this bird is; Sarah Belle gave it to me when I was in third grade but she said then that she had had it since she was a little girl, and she was born in 1920.

    And tonight, I am going to bed with hope for the future. I am almost ready to seek out more regular volunteer opportunities. I am ready to reinvest myself in our home, which I did quite fall in love with in 2021 when we found it.

    And today…..today was a good day.

  • something to say about tylenol and autism

    I have something to say about the stupidity that is going rampant in this country……

    Above is the ultrasound photo of my oldest when I was 16 weeks pregnant with him, in 2006.

    And that now young man is 19 years old. And he is autistic.

    And he is brilliant. And he loves his family. And he loves his dog Trixie. And he loves video games.

    And he happens to be in the honors college at his college. And his grades are stellar. He is majoring in philosophy, and because philosophy is so easy for him he is adding a second major, statistics, likely at the end of the semester.

    He has his driver’s license. He has a strong circle of good guy friends who are very good to him.

    He loves to play D&D. And, I think he likes school.

    And, you know what, he doesn’t just love to look people in the eye. He will do so with me, but I’m pretty sure that’s because at a fairly young age I told him he should do so.

    And his life really does pretty much revolve around video games- the next one coming out, the reviews, all of that. He’s pretty singularly focused.

    And he’s got slight tactile issues that I won’t go into here.

    And you know what else? I’m pretty unconcerned with why Porter is the way he is.

    You know why?

    Because he is literally one of the best men that I have ever met in my entire life. It utterly astounds me that I got so lucky as to be his mom.

    And you know what else? I did not take Tylenol during my pregnancy with him. Except during literally the hour that he was born, because due to my spinal fusion I could not have an epidural.

    But labor was fast, and I’m 99% sure that Tylenol never reached my bloodstream, and certainly not his.

    The whole premise behind the Tylenol and autism thing is that it is yet another way to shame women, to make them question their choices about their bodies.

    Tylenol did not cause my son’s autism. It offends me to even worry about why he has autism.

    But for sure, nothing I did in my pregnancy caused him to be the way he is.

    And even if it had, I’m damn proud to be his mom and if I went back and told that 26-year old version of myself that this beautiful baby she was staring at the ultrasound picture of, that that baby has autism, I’m damn sure she would be through the roof proud when I told her what else that baby is capable of. And that she gets to be the one he calls Mom.