Archives for May 2015

Thursday May 28, 2015Live and Learn, WritingLeave a comment

I really do love the internet. It lets me stay in touch with people I would have otherwise lost contact with, and more importantly it gives me access to research on any topic under the sun, no matter what time of day. Which comes in incredibly handy when you write historical fiction. I can’t imagine writing this same book twenty years ago. Every time I would come across an unknown – like when was the shell game invented, or what kind of undergarments did men wear during the Civil War – I would have to go to a book to look it up. If I were lucky, I would have the book I needed on hand, but if not I would have to wait until I could get in to a library and hope that they would have a book with the required info. If not, I would have to wait until a book from another library could be requested. Something that takes me thirty seconds to look up today, could have feasibly taken weeks to look up twenty years ago. That boggles the imagination. Yes, there is the total junk that you have to weed through, but the amount of knowledge at your fingertips is fantastic!

However, sometimes I think that too much knowledge can actually be a bad thing. I tend to frequent sites like the Mayo Clinic’s on a fairly regular basis. My friend’s husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer, so I did research on prostate cancer so that she wouldn’t have to explain everything to me every time we spoke. I did the same when my aunt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, or a friend with diabetes. All of this is good, but whenever I find myself on a site like that looking up stuff about symptoms for myself I find that the answer is one of two things.

I am clearly deficient in something, take a multi-vitamin.
I HAVE A HORRIBLE, NASTY DISEASE AND I AM GOING TO DIE!

There’s really no in between and when your brain is presented with those two options it is obviously going to focus on option #2. Which leads to a good amount of freaking out, until common sense finally kicks in, I take a multi-vitamin and go on with my day. It really makes me wonder though, how many people experience this same phenomena – it can’t just be me – but don’t have common sense to kick in, so they go rushing to the doctor thinking that they’re dying. I can only imagine that doctors and nurses HATE all of those medical sites. Especially the ones that have the symptom checkers. You know, you enter what symptoms you have and it lists all of the horrible diseases that cause those symptoms. Actual trained medical professionals must cringe every time they hear somebody say that they did some research online, and then suggest what they think they have.

“No ma’am, you do not have Parkinson’s Disease. Your fatigue is caused by only getting three hours of sleep a night, the tremors are caused by the twelve cups of coffee you drink during the day to stay awake, and your malnutrition is due to the fact that your diet consists mainly of Cheetos. Get some sleep, lay off the caffeine, eat some real food every now and then, and you’ll be fine. Oh, and please do not procreate.”

I know that this is what happens every time I go onto one of those sites for myself. I have never once been correct about a diagnosis or explanation for symptoms. Yet I keep going back. Which if you think about it, is pretty crazy. They say that knowledge is power. What they don’t say is that sometimes it’s the power to be a well-educated idiot.

Tuesday May 26, 2015Live and LearnView all 2 comments

For as far back as I can remember, people have made fun of me because of my intense focus on things like organization, cleanliness, etc. Not just my focus, but my enjoyment of a good organizational project. I like things to alphabetized or grouped by height, size, color, type, etc. Everything has a home, and I prefer things to be in their homes. My roommate does not share my, “a home for everything, and everything is returned to its home” compulsion. Therefore, there are baskets all over my apartment. In the bathroom there’s one on the sink for hairpins and such and a larger one for sprays, curling irons, etc. By creating a convenient home for these items, she puts them away 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, I can put them away in under 10 seconds, so it doesn’t bother me. Same goes for shared household items. I established where they go and I replenish them so we never run out. This makes me happy and she enjoys the fact that we never run out of things like toilet paper and dish soap. We both win.

I have done things like this in every place I’ve lived, including my parent’s house. However, over the years I learned to tone down anything more overt because I knew that it either wasn’t sustainable with the people I was around, or that I would be teased. Being late causes me stress. A massive pile of unwashed laundry, causes me stress. Not having a home for papers and mail that need attention, causes me stress. Unfinished work/business, causes me stress. I know this about myself, but since I spent years downplaying and ignoring these needs so that I could fit in and “just relax,” I think that I became accustomed to this underlying constant level of stress. Instead of telling people that reorganizing shelves in my living room was much more relaxing to me than going to the spa, I went to the spa and pretended that my mind wasn’t racing through the items that I could be checking off my to-do list at that very moment. Because that is what normal people did. That is how you avoid getting teased.

I have lived like that for a long time now, and I’ve noticed that recently I have had this overwhelming urge to go through all of my belongings and get rid of almost everything. Downsize and weed out until I have the bare minimums. Not for any reason, other than the fact that I am sick and tired of having stuff around. Which left me thinking that there had to be something underlying this growing need. That’s when it occurred to me; it is much easier to have everything hyper-organized when you only own a handful of belongings. So instead of getting rid of everything I own, I’m going to stop pretending that I’m okay with clutter. I’m going to relax by cleaning and organizing everything that I own to within an inch of its life. I will post my calendars and to-do lists and pre-plan my meals and it will be fabulous. If something doesn’t have a home and I can’t find a suitable home for it, then I will get rid of it; but I’m not getting rid of things just for the sake of getting rid of them. That’s ridiculous and won’t solve the underlying problem.

My name is Kat, I am a hyper-organized, neat-freak and I don’t care who knows or makes fun.

This Makes My Soul Happy

Thursday May 21, 2015Depression, Live and LearnOne comment so far

Everybody says that you find out who your true friends are when you’re down. I definitely have to agree with that. When I hit rock bottom there were people who were there for me, people who ignored me and people who handed me a shovel. It was eye opening. Recently I heard a saying that covers the flip side of that. Pay attention to those who do not clap when you succeed.

I’d never thought of that before, but I have to admit that it’s true. I think we all have, or have had, at least one friend who never seems to be happy if we’re doing well. It is almost as if they prefer, are happier, when your life is a mess. These are the people who do not clap when you succeed. These are the people who do not deserve your time.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the people you surround yourself with plays a huge part in the happiness and success of your life. Obviously, you play the biggest role, and at the end of the day make the decisions about what you do and don’t do in your own life. But I feel that if you spend all of your time with people who are content wasting their gifts and subsisting from day to day, then your life is likely to fall along the same lines. If you spend all your time with people who are constantly working at their gifts and striving for more, you will be more likely to do the same.

By the same token, if you surround yourself with pessimistic people who complain all the time, your mood is going to be pretty shitty compared to if you spend all of your time with people who are happy, find the good in life and laugh a lot. Just a simple shift from focusing on everything that is bad, to focusing on everything that is good – no matter how slight – can make a huge difference.

I had a rough year last year, so for Christmas my roommate bought me a gratitude journal. It has cute pictures, some quotes and spaces for you to write three things that you’re grateful for every day. Being the Type-A person that I am, I immediately counted the pages and realized that there weren’t enough for an entire year, and worse yet, the number didn’t break down into an even denomination like 5 or 6 months. If you used one page per day, like you were supposed to, you would wind up at the end of the book somewhere in the middle of a month, in the middle of a week. *twitch*

Clearly, the hippy-dippy person that created this journal is lacking even a shred of Type-A personality. That being said, it was a really sweet gift, especially since almost all of the drawings were of elephants, my favorite animal. Despite this, I still couldn’t quite get over the loosey-goosey lay out that had a complete disregard for standard delineations of time.

So it has been sitting on my nightstand. Well intentioned, but unused. Until last week. I crashed, have been in a funk, depressed as all hell, whatever you want to call it, and I decided that maybe I could use a little bit of focus on the positive. I started writing in my gratitude journal last week. Let me tell you, there have been a couple of nights where it was hard to get to three things I was grateful for that day. But I did it. I got to three every night. And it has been slowly getting easier. Easier to come up with three things that I’m grateful for, easier to focus on the things that are good and easier to see which people support me on the path to positive vs preferring me to stick around and wallow.

That’s when I realized that the wallowers are the same ones who do not clap when you succeed. I think it’s time to be done with them. I’m in no mood to wallow.

Thursday May 14, 2015Depression, Live and Learn, LossLeave a comment

I was talking to a friend last week and gave them a piece of advice – don’t borrow from future bother. Which, is pretty damn good advice. I’m not patting myself on the back here, because I didn’t come up with that. I’m pretty sure I read it on a meme on Pinterest*, and I told the person that. I’m not gonna take credit where credit isn’t due. That aside, it is damn good advice. Don’t borrow from future bother. I have also come to realize that I need to take my own advice.

I’m not a huge worrier per se. I tend to be pretty good at focusing on solutions and preparations instead of problems. That wasn’t always the case though. In the past, I tended to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was always expecting something bad to happen. I didn’t know what that thing would look like, or whether it would be big or small, but there would be some sort of crisis. I had every faith in myself that I would be able to handle whatever came along though. I’m great in an emergency. The only problem, is that it is exhausting being on ready alert at all times. Especially since, if I got to the end of a day and all had gone well, it’s not like I would let out a huge sigh of relief and pat myself on the back for a job well done. Oh no! I simply figured that I got by with a lucky day, but tomorrow would make up for it. So I had to be ready. It. Was. Exhausting.

You’re probably thinking that this is a conversation that I should really be having with a trained professional, and you are right. I have already had this conversation with two different trained professionals. I know why I did it. During my childhood, a member of my family died every even year of my life from the ages of 8 – 20. Needless to say, those last couple of months of my 22^nd year were a little hair raising. Every time my phone rang, I assumed that someone had died. I didn’t realize that I had been doing this until I woke up on my 23^rd birthday and a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It was almost as if a curse had been broken.

Unfortunately, I have lost people since then, but it hasn’t been on any sort of a schedule and in 12 years it was only three. Huge improvement! Until last December, when my aunt died. I think it was probably the suddenness of everything that rocketed me back into my childhood, but ever since, I have returned to that old feeling of dread. That feeling that disaster is right around the corner. And I am exhausted. I don’t want to be on alert for trouble that isn’t even on the horizon. I don’t want to keep borrowing from future bother. When a crisis crops up I will deal with it, but worrying about it now, will not relieve any of the stress then. So no more shoes dropping, no more dread. The world gets to be a bright, shiny, happy place . . . until it’s not, and when it’s not I’ll deal with it then. For now – bright, shiny, happy.

I will not bother from future bother.

*Okay, I have no idea where I saw that, but it definitely wasn’t a meme on Pinterest, as I just had to make my own because I couldn’t find one!

Tuesday May 12, 2015DepressionOne comment so far

As anyone who has ever dealt with depression for any length of time can attest, there will be days that you just can’t get out of bed. Not that you don’t want to, but that you cannot emotionally get out of bed. The very thought of arising and facing the world is so inconceivable that your body becomes a leaden weight, stuck in its place. Your brain is stuck, your body is stuck, you are stuck. No amount of cajoling or bargaining that you do with yourself will work. You are staying in bed. Hopefully just for the morning, but more likely than not all day. If you do happen to get yourself up and about, Eeyore will seem like a cheerleader in contrast to your energy and motivation. It sucks. It is a part of living with depression, and it sucks.

I had that day yesterday. I was late to work, but I did eventually get myself out of bed. There wasn’t anything in particular that happened to cause this, just a bunch of little things that had all been adding up for a while. I think mother’s day was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back, but who knows. At any rate, I am know working at digging myself back out. Climbing that hill to get back to the top where there’s sunshine. So until I get my writing groove back on, here’s a compilation of dog fails. Because, with the exception of the slide, Bubba has done every one of these, and that makes me smile.

Tuesday May 05, 2015LifeView all 3 comments

Unlike a lot of people who stay away from big bad gluten because they’ve heard how horrible it is for them, I have a legitimate reason to avoid gluten like the plague. I have Celiac disease, which was actually diagnosed by a doctor. Crazy, I know. Celiac is an autoimmune disorder, meaning that every time I eat gluten my body starts to attack itself. Again, crazy, I know. As this concept is pretty foreign to anyone who doesn’t have firsthand experience with auto-immune disorders, I get asked all the time what exactly happens when I do eat gluten. So, since I am just getting over such an incident, I figured I would take the time to lay out what happens when I ingest gluten. Now keep in mind, the symptoms can be different for each person, and mine were exacerbated this time around by the fact that I had dental work done, but you’ll get a pretty good idea why I have absolutely no temptation to ever eat anything with gluten in it. Not even a bite. Or a taste. Therefore, to be clear, I didn’t knowingly eat gluten. I didn’t enjoy a bite of awesome chocolate cake or something similar. Instead, food that I ate had been cross-contaminated with it. Meaning, something that had gluten in it, touched the food I ate and left a residue of gluten behind. That’s all it took. A residue. So here’s the break-down of a gluten reaction.

Day 1 Night – ate food that had been cross contaminated with gluten.
Day 2 Morning – arrived at the dentist for a filling at 6:30. All went as expected, with the dentist following the strict procedures necessary to accommodate my allergies.
Day 2 @ 2:00 – I finally have full feeling back in my face, which is extremely odd, as I’m allergic to Novocain, and the alternative they use wears off much faster. In the past I’ve had to ask for an additional shot in the middle of a procedure because it was wearing off. It has NEVER taken more than an hour to wear off completely. On top of being numb for over 7 hours, my cheek is incredibly inflamed.
Day 2 Night – I don’t feel well, almost flu-like, and go to bed uncharacteristically early.
Day 3 Morning – my face is still swollen from the dental work, and it progressively gets worse as the day goes on. I start to freak out that the dentist used something I’m allergic too and I’m having a reaction.
Day 3 Afternoon – I go back to the dentist. She doesn’t think it’s an allergic reaction, but tells me to take some Benadryl just in case. She can see that I did bite my cheek, which isn’t surprising since I was numb for 7 hours. This baffles her as much as it did me.
Day 3 Night – I again don’t feel well and go to bed uncharacteristically early. As my mouth is still swollen and itchy I take 2 Benadryl.
Day 4 Morning – I wake up and it looks like somebody has punched me in the face. I am swollen all over, and I have now broken out in hives. Joyous! I call in to work and say that I’m going to be late. I also notice that my abdomen is distended by about 4 inches. That’s when the shoe drops. I’m not having an allergic reaction, I’m having a gluten reaction. My autoimmune disorder has kicked in and because of the trauma of the dental work, my entire body is freaking out and reacting to anything foreign as an enemy combatant. Great. At this point, my only recourse is to stay hydrated, rest as much as possible and wait it out, because, like the Benadryl, anything I take to treat symptoms will exacerbate the issue.
Day 4 Afternoon – I can’t stand it anymore and take some Ibuprofen in the hope that it will get the inflammation down in my cheek. It actually works. Whoo-hoo!
Day 5 Afternoon – I realize that my large intestine has stopped working. I’m not entirely sure when this happened, probably at some point while I was asleep the night before.
Day 6 – I’m fatigued and my large intestine still isn’t working. Other than that, feeling pretty normal.
Day 7 Afternoon – my large intestine starts working again . . . with no warning . . . while I’m in Malibu . . . an hour from home . . . CONTENT DELETED FOR THE SAKE OF OUR READERSHIP. I get home, and spend the rest of the day in bed with horrible cramps.
Day 8 Morning – cramps are gone, but now it’s coming out the other end. I’m horribly fatigued and nauseous. Call out from work. Spend the majority of the day in bed.
Day 8 Late Afternoon – I start to feel like myself again.
Day 9 – Nauseous, but so far so good. Still overly cautious, sticking close to a restroom, and hoping that I don’t run into anybody who is sick as my immune system is compromised at the moment. If I could get myself a bubble, I would.

Day 10 – For the most part, back to normal.

So to answer the question that invariably gets asked, no, I never have any desire to cheat and eat some gluten. This is what happens when I get cross-contamination. I’m fairly certain that “just a bite” would send me to the hospital.

Saturday May 02, 2015Top TenLeave a comment

By now we all know that California is in the midst of a really horrible drought. So I have come up with 10 ways that I can help conserve water.

Instead of using water, I will have the dogs pre-rinse all of the dishes.
In fact, I’ll just bypass the dishes completely and start getting take-out.
I will intentionally stop watering the plants – I definitely won’t forget and then realize they are dead a few weeks later.
I will sleep in and skip my shower every other day. This is definitely an intentional choice and not just me sleeping through my alarm.
All bathing, that I am up in time for, will be done in sprinklers from here on out. In fact, in order to avoid being arrested for indecent exposure, this is also how I will be doing my laundry.
To reduce my laundry needs, instead of going out, I will stay in. Fewer clothes to wash.
In fact, I believe I will institute a “No Pants” rule at my house to cut down on laundry further.
Actually, instead of doing any laundry I’ll just buy more clothes.
I will stop washing my car . . . or, continue to not wash my car.
Instead of drinking water, I will be switching to wine and hard cider exclusively.

In all seriousness though, PlanetSave has some great ways that you can actually conserve water.