Slowtime Check-In Day 8 of 14 (Friday): Depression Falls
I've been feeling much better today than yesterday, at least mentally. Physically, I feel awful, sore with achy joints. The depression still lingers, like a cold draft seeping around corners in my mind. It's so hard to stick to schedule, to not be constantly distracted by things. Spent too much time organizing papers; I created a collage of expensive things to buy someday and decorated this post in the corner of my office area. I sorted all my office supplies and, after buying more of the pencils I like, freecycled the other 70+ new pencils of every type and design -- the rejects, if you will. Basically, I added up all the tiny 'someday' items and bought them all at once for about $200 dollars. This includes four magazine subscriptions (Psychology Today, Scientific American Mind, Cooks Illustrated, and Saveur), a bacon chocolate bar, two boxes of the most amazing fennel shortbread cookies, and some gourmet peanut brittle. Extra items went to my Amazon wishlist, like a jar opener, more crazy varieties of chocolate, and organic protein powder for my smoothies. Sure, I got a ton of stuff done, but it wasn't stuff I needed to be doing today. These were things that should have waited until I was more recovered.
Stitches came out no problem, there were four, not three like I'd thought. There's a new dressing which supposedly I can wash and should last another week. No baths allowed, only showers, and after I told her about doing things I probably shouldn't do yet, she told me if the skin pops open just to pack it with gauze and put a new dressing over it. Then, of course, she admonished me for doing physical activities and told me she was surprised none of the stitches had pulled apart. It's healing quite nicely with no infection; the lump tested benign (a lipoma, as suspected).
Once again made an unsuccessful attempt at napping. I don't think I can sleep without chemical aides anymore; though I guess that's better than the alternative which is no sleeping at all. Still, I think I'd have felt a ton better if I had actually slept this afternoon instead of laying in that drowsy half-place with buzzing all through my head, drifting on the wave of sleep but never leaving shore.
Comprehensive List of Tasks
Medication = yes
Sober (no drinking/drugs/cutting) = yes
No Compulsions = fail. I don't feel like the shopping was compulsive, since these were all items I wanted for awhile now and simply hadn't gotten around to buying. However, the organizing.... I'm feeling the obsessive-compulsive disorder kicking into high drive.
No Strenuous Acts = fail, making a collage up one wall was definitely a strenuous act
Plenty of Fluids = yes
TOTAL SCORE = 11/15 = 73%
Today's Revelations
Could I be ADD? It's hard to differentiate between the autism spectrum and attention-deficit disorder, and I have traits of both. It was only recently I discovered that ADD is also characterized by periods of hyper-focus, and anyone who has seen me reading a good book knows how hard it is to distract me. Even when I put the book down, I'm still 'in' it. I wonder if there is a link between the two disorders, since some of their characteristics certainly overlap.
Pinterest is how I naturally shop. AgtOrange just showed it to me today (I'm often resistant to joining the latest and greatest social media sites) and I knew instantly I was doomed. It's going to be great for visually organizing all the stuff I want for this Zen living space/office area I'm decorating. And then we get to clothes.... yup, I'm doomed.
I think my body has adjusted to these new medications. First I get depressed, and then my OCD and compulsive behaviors start to kick back up, when they've been largely dormant the past couple of weeks. I'm also easily distracted and having a hard time staying on task. Of course, I'm taking a pretty fair dose considering how sensitive to medications I am, but there is still room to go up (which will put me in the 'schizophrenic & bipolar' treatment range) without serious side effects.
I have to have a system for everything. It's what made me a good secretary, executive assistant, and events planner, but it can make for a lousy home life. AgtOrange helped me come up with a solution to my spice rack problem that I think will work. Yes, I'm still working on my spice system, I know it has been over a year since I started looking into the most workable solution for me. I'd settled on cylindrical glass jars with plastic lids some time back (even though I have yet to purchase them). Stainless-steel looks nicer, but has the tendency to rust. The triangular jars I'd bought were a great idea, and they even stack, but they are messy to clean and the lids tend to break. My problem was once I got the new jars, what to do with the leftover spices; they come in plastic packets like envelopes for the most part. His solution was to get an accordion file. I can then arrange them like regular envelopes, and the sealed case will help to keep them fresh. So we are trekking to the Container Store tomorrow for a few things.
He says he still regrets ever buying me a label-maker. We're cleaning the fridge tomorrow before the grocery order comes, to include checking all the condiments in the door, and I insist on labeling all the open jars with the date so I know they were already open when we cleaned. That way at the next cleaning, if they didn't have a legible expiration date, I still know to throw them out. (I clean out the door about every three months.) Initially, he offered to clean the fridge because I'm not supposed to do it, but when I told him how I normally label all the contents he told me I was crazy and we could make it a couples project. So I'll be labeling everything that goes back in the fridge after he cleans it. I label all my leftovers too.
Stitches came out no problem, there were four, not three like I'd thought. There's a new dressing which supposedly I can wash and should last another week. No baths allowed, only showers, and after I told her about doing things I probably shouldn't do yet, she told me if the skin pops open just to pack it with gauze and put a new dressing over it. Then, of course, she admonished me for doing physical activities and told me she was surprised none of the stitches had pulled apart. It's healing quite nicely with no infection; the lump tested benign (a lipoma, as suspected).
Once again made an unsuccessful attempt at napping. I don't think I can sleep without chemical aides anymore; though I guess that's better than the alternative which is no sleeping at all. Still, I think I'd have felt a ton better if I had actually slept this afternoon instead of laying in that drowsy half-place with buzzing all through my head, drifting on the wave of sleep but never leaving shore.
Comprehensive List of Tasks
- grooming & wound care = yes, with extra points for going to the doctor
- eat healthy meal = yes, leftover pasta and finished the rest of the leftover Thai
- Spanish = worked on lesson 15
- coping = no, I couldn't it was just too much for my brain to handle right now
- paperwork/emails = tons and tons of it
- Movie review = had to add a Captcha plugin to combat the spammy comments, and am slowly wading through about a thousand comments on the site, 99.9% of which need to be deleted
- fun reading = a little
- meditation = no, and I would like to concentrate on this tomorrow
Medication = yes
Sober (no drinking/drugs/cutting) = yes
No Compulsions = fail. I don't feel like the shopping was compulsive, since these were all items I wanted for awhile now and simply hadn't gotten around to buying. However, the organizing.... I'm feeling the obsessive-compulsive disorder kicking into high drive.
No Strenuous Acts = fail, making a collage up one wall was definitely a strenuous act
Plenty of Fluids = yes
TOTAL SCORE = 11/15 = 73%
Today's Revelations
Could I be ADD? It's hard to differentiate between the autism spectrum and attention-deficit disorder, and I have traits of both. It was only recently I discovered that ADD is also characterized by periods of hyper-focus, and anyone who has seen me reading a good book knows how hard it is to distract me. Even when I put the book down, I'm still 'in' it. I wonder if there is a link between the two disorders, since some of their characteristics certainly overlap.
Pinterest is how I naturally shop. AgtOrange just showed it to me today (I'm often resistant to joining the latest and greatest social media sites) and I knew instantly I was doomed. It's going to be great for visually organizing all the stuff I want for this Zen living space/office area I'm decorating. And then we get to clothes.... yup, I'm doomed.
I think my body has adjusted to these new medications. First I get depressed, and then my OCD and compulsive behaviors start to kick back up, when they've been largely dormant the past couple of weeks. I'm also easily distracted and having a hard time staying on task. Of course, I'm taking a pretty fair dose considering how sensitive to medications I am, but there is still room to go up (which will put me in the 'schizophrenic & bipolar' treatment range) without serious side effects.
I have to have a system for everything. It's what made me a good secretary, executive assistant, and events planner, but it can make for a lousy home life. AgtOrange helped me come up with a solution to my spice rack problem that I think will work. Yes, I'm still working on my spice system, I know it has been over a year since I started looking into the most workable solution for me. I'd settled on cylindrical glass jars with plastic lids some time back (even though I have yet to purchase them). Stainless-steel looks nicer, but has the tendency to rust. The triangular jars I'd bought were a great idea, and they even stack, but they are messy to clean and the lids tend to break. My problem was once I got the new jars, what to do with the leftover spices; they come in plastic packets like envelopes for the most part. His solution was to get an accordion file. I can then arrange them like regular envelopes, and the sealed case will help to keep them fresh. So we are trekking to the Container Store tomorrow for a few things.
He says he still regrets ever buying me a label-maker. We're cleaning the fridge tomorrow before the grocery order comes, to include checking all the condiments in the door, and I insist on labeling all the open jars with the date so I know they were already open when we cleaned. That way at the next cleaning, if they didn't have a legible expiration date, I still know to throw them out. (I clean out the door about every three months.) Initially, he offered to clean the fridge because I'm not supposed to do it, but when I told him how I normally label all the contents he told me I was crazy and we could make it a couples project. So I'll be labeling everything that goes back in the fridge after he cleans it. I label all my leftovers too.