I can already tell that attempting to do this daily won't work. I spent over an hour on the phone working on nonprofit related things, which ate into my time but was good because I really love the people I work with there.
Today I'm taking something of a low hanging fruit topic. I haven't talked much about my food allergies, even though they play a significant role in my life. I got the results of my blood test back in January of 2013, and started cutting food out in February.
I don't really exercise much. I walk a bit, but that's about it. I don't count calories. I went from 176lbs to 143lbs.
First off, it's worth noting that there are different kinds of food allergies. I have what's known as IgG allergies, which means I have an immune system reaction, but do not have a full out reaction that puts me in danger.
Reports vary on the effectiveness of the testing; it's possible to test positive for something, but it won't have an effect on you. What was recommended to me by my doctor was to cut everything out for a few weeks, then try adding stuff back in. I've mostly just left stuff out, because it wasn't hard for me to adjust.
It's worked out really well for me. I'll probably talk more about it later, but for now, I thought I'd just throw out there what the test came up with.
Level 4: cranberry (… sad is me :( )
Level 3: Baker's yeast, brewer's yeast, casein, cheddar cheese, chicken eggs, crab, duck eggs mozzarella cheese, pecans, sesame seeds, sugar cane, yogurt
Level 2: Cottage cheese, milk, whey, coffee beans, amaranth, spelt, spelt, wheat, mushrooms
I mostly cut the 3-4 stuff out, but did go ahead and cut all cow dairy because they were so related. I cut wheat-type stuff for a while, but to tell you the truth, it's one of my lesser allergies in a pretty decent list. I started eating it again, I'm fine, and still losing weight.
But I seriously miss cranberry juice.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Terminally interesting
Going through all the stuff in our house is hard.
Throwing stuff away is easy. I love getting rid of anything I can, giving it away, selling it, throwing it out. I'm not big on keeping a lot of things. The killer is staying on task when there's a whole room full of Potentially Interesting Things. It can be torture on a bad day. While I was cleaning out one of our storage spaces (yes, we have THAT much stuff), I found myself distracted by pictures, old letters, or books. I read almost an entire book from when I was a kid while sitting in the storage space last time. It only took me a half hour because I skimmed it, I only wanted the reminder of what the book was about. That half hour could have been used to get something done, the book brought home to look at later when I wasn't sitting in the storage unit.
Throwing stuff away is easy. I love getting rid of anything I can, giving it away, selling it, throwing it out. I'm not big on keeping a lot of things. The killer is staying on task when there's a whole room full of Potentially Interesting Things. It can be torture on a bad day. While I was cleaning out one of our storage spaces (yes, we have THAT much stuff), I found myself distracted by pictures, old letters, or books. I read almost an entire book from when I was a kid while sitting in the storage space last time. It only took me a half hour because I skimmed it, I only wanted the reminder of what the book was about. That half hour could have been used to get something done, the book brought home to look at later when I wasn't sitting in the storage unit.
The storage unit has
been particularly challenging, as the one I've been dealing with has a lot of my
possessions from when I was younger. There's nostalgia, stories, moments frozen
in time. Horrid letters from my ex talking about things that I don't think I'll
ever repeat (how did I ever think that relationship was going to last?). Or
maybe a toy that I really liked as a kid. Maybe it's a toy I want to keep.
Maybe donate. Maybe it's just broken and it needs to go.
A constant stream of
keeping focused, sorting, taking an item, evaluating, moving on. It's pretty
hellish when everything is so damned interesting.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
The giant internal middle finger
I went to the second appointment with my new psychiatrist (ARNP) today.
I can't stress enough the value of being under good care when struggling with mental disorders. My previous psychiatrist wasn't bad, but I had a series of challenges where he was concerned. It took months before I could get treatment for ADHD, as he had decided within fifteen minutes of talking to me that my issue was that I was bipolar type II, and there was no more discussion. He shot me down for months, to the point that I was in tears after getting in my car because I just felt he wasn't listening.
June 2010. I was on the verge of finding a new doctor when I finally had to tell him, "My job performance is not satisfactory. I could lose my job." I didn't know it then, but those words apparently cause a doctor to listen. At the time, it wasn't my intention. I simply wanted to be honest and I was at the end of my rope. Months on Lamictal and I hadn't gained enough attention span to learn what I needed to in order to keep up with the rest of the team and meet my deliverables.
He started me on Adderall right away. Within a day, in an odd twist, I contracted viral pneumonia. I ended up with a 104 degree temp, eventually in the ER, the whole nine yards. Two days later, I tried working from home. I took the Adderall in the morning, and I started writing code.
Anyone who worked with me years ago could have told you that I didn't code. I couldn't focus enough to buckle down and learn or build a plan. I had never got the hang of it, to the point that I'd had another manager on the team tell a room full of managers that I had "limited potential." That could have been crushing, to say nothing of how unprofessional it is, but I have a tendency to take that sort of thing and prove people wrong.
That first day of working after I started Adderall, I was also on DayQuil and Mucinex. I shouldn't have been working. I shouldn't have been upright.
I wrote code for ten hours straight without breaking a sweat. I kept laughing because I didn't know I could do that. I had never written code for more than two hours straight.
My career has been trending upwards ever since. I was honest with my management and told them exactly what the diagnosis was, and more or less what to expect as I went through medication changes. As it would turn out, my boss's boss had ADD, and he described getting treatment like "putting glasses on for the first time." He told me:
"It's hard to see something in someone and know you can't say anything because it crosses a boundary that you shouldn't cross."
I asked him if he'd already figured it out, then. He confessed that yes, he had already spotted the signs in me, but as a manager it was not his business to broach the topic.
From there, it was just adjusting medication as needed. I went in, I had my 15 minutes with my doctor, and he refilled my prescriptions. Not exactly a personal approach, but it got me by.
In October or November last year, I admitted to my doctor that I was feeling stressed out. I'm sure this is shocking. He decided to explain to me how to not be stressed, how to not worry about decisions, how to be happy.
He told me that I could do this by having faith in God. If I trusted in God, I would know that everything would be fine and wouldn't have to worry.
I thanked him and left, then promptly made an appointment with a new doctor that specializes in ADHD at the same office my husband goes to. I do not go to the doctor to be told what to believe. I need concrete solutions to problems, actions I can take to improve my own life. This is how I tick. I want to combine lifestyle, strategy, good habits, and medication, to build a solid foundation and live an awesome life on it.
My ARNP doesn't rush the appointment. She listens to what is going on and we discuss strategy. Today we discussed that it seems like I'm losing my steam focus-wise between 2-4pm, and that it makes it hard to do anything at home. Rather than just tell me to do what I'm doing and see what happens, she gave me a prescription for short-acting Adderall to take in the afternoon to push past the stuck point. I took a page of notes of thoughts and ideas from our discussions.
If you're struggling with depression, ADD/ADHD, bipolar, whatever, remember: it can get better. You just have to take those first steps, then keep pushing ever onward. Get what you need.
As for the manager that told a room full of people that I had "limited potential", I smile at him every day. A huge smile, almost as huge as the big mental middle finger I give him in my head.
I can't stress enough the value of being under good care when struggling with mental disorders. My previous psychiatrist wasn't bad, but I had a series of challenges where he was concerned. It took months before I could get treatment for ADHD, as he had decided within fifteen minutes of talking to me that my issue was that I was bipolar type II, and there was no more discussion. He shot me down for months, to the point that I was in tears after getting in my car because I just felt he wasn't listening.
June 2010. I was on the verge of finding a new doctor when I finally had to tell him, "My job performance is not satisfactory. I could lose my job." I didn't know it then, but those words apparently cause a doctor to listen. At the time, it wasn't my intention. I simply wanted to be honest and I was at the end of my rope. Months on Lamictal and I hadn't gained enough attention span to learn what I needed to in order to keep up with the rest of the team and meet my deliverables.
He started me on Adderall right away. Within a day, in an odd twist, I contracted viral pneumonia. I ended up with a 104 degree temp, eventually in the ER, the whole nine yards. Two days later, I tried working from home. I took the Adderall in the morning, and I started writing code.
Anyone who worked with me years ago could have told you that I didn't code. I couldn't focus enough to buckle down and learn or build a plan. I had never got the hang of it, to the point that I'd had another manager on the team tell a room full of managers that I had "limited potential." That could have been crushing, to say nothing of how unprofessional it is, but I have a tendency to take that sort of thing and prove people wrong.
That first day of working after I started Adderall, I was also on DayQuil and Mucinex. I shouldn't have been working. I shouldn't have been upright.
I wrote code for ten hours straight without breaking a sweat. I kept laughing because I didn't know I could do that. I had never written code for more than two hours straight.
My career has been trending upwards ever since. I was honest with my management and told them exactly what the diagnosis was, and more or less what to expect as I went through medication changes. As it would turn out, my boss's boss had ADD, and he described getting treatment like "putting glasses on for the first time." He told me:
"It's hard to see something in someone and know you can't say anything because it crosses a boundary that you shouldn't cross."
I asked him if he'd already figured it out, then. He confessed that yes, he had already spotted the signs in me, but as a manager it was not his business to broach the topic.
From there, it was just adjusting medication as needed. I went in, I had my 15 minutes with my doctor, and he refilled my prescriptions. Not exactly a personal approach, but it got me by.
In October or November last year, I admitted to my doctor that I was feeling stressed out. I'm sure this is shocking. He decided to explain to me how to not be stressed, how to not worry about decisions, how to be happy.
He told me that I could do this by having faith in God. If I trusted in God, I would know that everything would be fine and wouldn't have to worry.
I thanked him and left, then promptly made an appointment with a new doctor that specializes in ADHD at the same office my husband goes to. I do not go to the doctor to be told what to believe. I need concrete solutions to problems, actions I can take to improve my own life. This is how I tick. I want to combine lifestyle, strategy, good habits, and medication, to build a solid foundation and live an awesome life on it.
My ARNP doesn't rush the appointment. She listens to what is going on and we discuss strategy. Today we discussed that it seems like I'm losing my steam focus-wise between 2-4pm, and that it makes it hard to do anything at home. Rather than just tell me to do what I'm doing and see what happens, she gave me a prescription for short-acting Adderall to take in the afternoon to push past the stuck point. I took a page of notes of thoughts and ideas from our discussions.
If you're struggling with depression, ADD/ADHD, bipolar, whatever, remember: it can get better. You just have to take those first steps, then keep pushing ever onward. Get what you need.
As for the manager that told a room full of people that I had "limited potential", I smile at him every day. A huge smile, almost as huge as the big mental middle finger I give him in my head.
Monday, January 20, 2014
Wanted: larger pizza to put sardines on
I've been having a hard time with distraction today. We have been trying to get the house in a state where I have a space to stretch out, to write, to get some quiet.
It's getting there, but not quite. There's simply too much stuff in the house, and the sort of housecleaning that needs to be done around here is torture, all the going through items of every variety and deciding what to toss or go. I love throwing things away, to tell you the truth. I am at a point in my life where clutter in my house just makes me feel like my mind is just as cluttered. It's hard to think straight when you're trying to not trip over your laundry.
My stepson has been crashing at our house and sleeps on the futon. His computer is in the office for now. Every other room is over packed and largely unusable. There's only two rooms that can be comfortably used to do anything: the main living area, and the office.
Tonight, the sound of gunshots on my husband's video game is too much to let me focus in the main living area, and my stepson is camped out in the office again. I know I could kick him out, but at the moment I'm just too tired to do it without being a dick. It would go something like this:
"Dude, seriously, do you pay the mortgage or for any utilities? Did you clean some house? Did you even put your dishes in the dishwasher? Please don't tell me that you were baked all weekend and are subsequently going to take two days to get your shit together again. Get out of my office and go find something else to do."
It boils down to me being too frustrated at everything at the moment to ask for the space. The unfortunate fact is that this place is a 2100 sq ft can packed with sardines. I frequently end up with nowhere to go, and I suspect this is a huge factor when it comes to writer's block.
My husband and I are working on it. He's hugely supportive and well aware of how bad the crowding is. We cleaned out a room for my stepson this weekend, and hopefully will get him entirely in there soon. Then the office becomes my domain again, which is going to do a world of good for me in general. I'll get to sit at a really comfortable desk, have nice big monitors, a good chair, ergonomic keyboard, plenty of room to put stuff, and I can get some decent light in the room during the day. It's a flower lei and a palm tree away from paradise as far as I'm concerned.
In the meantime, I'm holed in the disaster bedroom with one of the cats. There's this really weird pile of laundry in front of me, I covered it with a towel to keep the cats from laying on the actual clothes, but it looks like some kind of purple Pac-Man ghost that's been sitting on the couch and eating all of the potato chips. A bit of a dumpy Pac-Man ghost.
It'll get better, if for no other reason than sheer determination, and a refusal to solve the issue by nuking it from orbit.
It's getting there, but not quite. There's simply too much stuff in the house, and the sort of housecleaning that needs to be done around here is torture, all the going through items of every variety and deciding what to toss or go. I love throwing things away, to tell you the truth. I am at a point in my life where clutter in my house just makes me feel like my mind is just as cluttered. It's hard to think straight when you're trying to not trip over your laundry.
My stepson has been crashing at our house and sleeps on the futon. His computer is in the office for now. Every other room is over packed and largely unusable. There's only two rooms that can be comfortably used to do anything: the main living area, and the office.
Tonight, the sound of gunshots on my husband's video game is too much to let me focus in the main living area, and my stepson is camped out in the office again. I know I could kick him out, but at the moment I'm just too tired to do it without being a dick. It would go something like this:
"Dude, seriously, do you pay the mortgage or for any utilities? Did you clean some house? Did you even put your dishes in the dishwasher? Please don't tell me that you were baked all weekend and are subsequently going to take two days to get your shit together again. Get out of my office and go find something else to do."
It boils down to me being too frustrated at everything at the moment to ask for the space. The unfortunate fact is that this place is a 2100 sq ft can packed with sardines. I frequently end up with nowhere to go, and I suspect this is a huge factor when it comes to writer's block.
My husband and I are working on it. He's hugely supportive and well aware of how bad the crowding is. We cleaned out a room for my stepson this weekend, and hopefully will get him entirely in there soon. Then the office becomes my domain again, which is going to do a world of good for me in general. I'll get to sit at a really comfortable desk, have nice big monitors, a good chair, ergonomic keyboard, plenty of room to put stuff, and I can get some decent light in the room during the day. It's a flower lei and a palm tree away from paradise as far as I'm concerned.
In the meantime, I'm holed in the disaster bedroom with one of the cats. There's this really weird pile of laundry in front of me, I covered it with a towel to keep the cats from laying on the actual clothes, but it looks like some kind of purple Pac-Man ghost that's been sitting on the couch and eating all of the potato chips. A bit of a dumpy Pac-Man ghost.
It'll get better, if for no other reason than sheer determination, and a refusal to solve the issue by nuking it from orbit.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
A wild random appears
I love Blogger's
weird random questions. I have finally replaced my old one:
"That can't
really be a fish you're standing on, can it?"
"Actually,
yeah, it is. This is how I show my dominance to the rest of the pack, by
standing on a fish. This fish is my bitch. Never forget that."
I'm going to miss my "fish bitch" line a little, but change is good.
A girl, with cherry Jello
I'm your average girl.
An average girl working a competitive job at a large software company, running a nonprofit, writing scifi, and just trying to get by.
An average girl struggling daily with ADHD, bipolar type II, and a startling number of food allergies. I'm constantly having to rewrite life to make the pieces fit.
My job is extremely challenging and my ADHD has nearly cost me the job twice. I'm overwhelmed by the responsibility with my nonprofit, as it wasn't what I meant to take on. I was the tech girl. I built the website. I didn't plan on being the girl who gets up in front of anyone and gives speeches, or rallies the troops. I didn't plan on being good at it. And I have writer's block like you wouldn't believe.
I've been told that the way to write is to write often. I have been struggling getting my stories, the lives and sagas in my head, out into a form that I can be proud of. I'm stuck. I have to write something.
They say, "write what you know."
I'm in a space right now where I know myself, where I am comfortable with my own strengths and faults. I am not, however, at the place where I can move competently through the world with the efficiency I need. I feel great about me, about who I am, about the things I can do. I am also convinced, deep down, that every person that thinks I'm good at anything is likely under a delusion, and I keep waiting for them to discover the truth, that I'm really not as good at something as I've led them to believe. It's hard to know. With ADHD I may be doing great, or I may be fooling myself and the world.
I'd be lying if I said I knew exactly what I'm doing with this blog. I feel like my life is this mash-up of things. It's been this way as long as I can remember. Never in my life, though, have I found myself juggling so much as I am now. I may talk about life, about the disorders that shake things up constantly, about food that I can eat, about the people that live in my head and complain to me about a decided lack of beef tacos for consumption.
I'm your average girl, who tackles crazy circumstances and a sometimes finds herself with an odd hand of cards, just like everyone else.
Random fact: I am about to go eat black cherry Jello.
An average girl working a competitive job at a large software company, running a nonprofit, writing scifi, and just trying to get by.
An average girl struggling daily with ADHD, bipolar type II, and a startling number of food allergies. I'm constantly having to rewrite life to make the pieces fit.
My job is extremely challenging and my ADHD has nearly cost me the job twice. I'm overwhelmed by the responsibility with my nonprofit, as it wasn't what I meant to take on. I was the tech girl. I built the website. I didn't plan on being the girl who gets up in front of anyone and gives speeches, or rallies the troops. I didn't plan on being good at it. And I have writer's block like you wouldn't believe.
I've been told that the way to write is to write often. I have been struggling getting my stories, the lives and sagas in my head, out into a form that I can be proud of. I'm stuck. I have to write something.
They say, "write what you know."
I'm in a space right now where I know myself, where I am comfortable with my own strengths and faults. I am not, however, at the place where I can move competently through the world with the efficiency I need. I feel great about me, about who I am, about the things I can do. I am also convinced, deep down, that every person that thinks I'm good at anything is likely under a delusion, and I keep waiting for them to discover the truth, that I'm really not as good at something as I've led them to believe. It's hard to know. With ADHD I may be doing great, or I may be fooling myself and the world.
I'd be lying if I said I knew exactly what I'm doing with this blog. I feel like my life is this mash-up of things. It's been this way as long as I can remember. Never in my life, though, have I found myself juggling so much as I am now. I may talk about life, about the disorders that shake things up constantly, about food that I can eat, about the people that live in my head and complain to me about a decided lack of beef tacos for consumption.
I'm your average girl, who tackles crazy circumstances and a sometimes finds herself with an odd hand of cards, just like everyone else.
Random fact: I am about to go eat black cherry Jello.
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