Backed Up Plumbing Brings On the Tears and Other Anecdotes

Well, friends, it’s February and daylight savings is just around the corner (March 8th this year!). I just got back from a lovely Disneyworld vacation and am trying to get back into the swing of healthy living and getting back to those neat-o goals I set at the turn of the year.

As you’re aware, I did an entire Whole30 for January. I managed to stick to it until about 8pm on day 30 when Amber offered to make me a BLT…with cheese (because that’s how she rolls)…on bread. I gladly accepted the offer because whatever. I had made it and needed to pack for our trip to Florida the next day. It was one of the most delicious sandwiches I had ever eaten.

And thus began my descent back into eating whatever I wanted. At the time, this was a freeing exercise, mainly because I so terribly missed Tex-Mex cuisine. I missed cheese, and refried beans, and corn. It felt good to not have to worry about what was in everything, to be able to eat with abandon as my privileged, non-afflicted physiology allows me to do. In Florida, Wes and I split pretty much everything (which was a very good call and we should continue to do this pretty much forever when we go out together), and I drank fruity drinks with funny names and cheap wine at every amusing location.

We came home on Sunday after a Saturday evening of seeing what the Magic Kingdom is like when it’s becoming “on season”. It was crowded and aggravating. Getting anywhere was a battle of wits and agility and finally, when we had had enough, Wes and I had to get out of the park while the (first of the night) electric parade was happening. Jessie, having been back at the room all day nursing an illness, stayed at the park a bit more to go in search of caramel coated apples and to watch the fireworks. Needless to say, I was pretty tired when we got up to get to the airport.

I was tired because I hadn’t slept all that well the entire week and this was likely directly correlated to eating a bunch of things that I hadn’t been eating the month before. I didn’t really notice the effects until Sunday when I was more agitated than I had been in a long time. When we landed in Philly, I was aggravated by how long it took for our bags to get to us. All I wanted to do was get home. I was snapping a bit and Jessie luckily figured out that I was just in a mood and showed me pictures of dogs getting stuck in couches. It was very effective.

We got home and were greeted by two very excited dogs…and the news that our plumbing was completely backed up. The shower in the downstairs bathroom had 4 inches of water in the bottom and the toilet had coffee grounds in there. This had happened once before, three Thanksgiving weekends ago when we were hosting people at the house. It was a nightmare for various reasons (not the least of which because it was my 4th day ever on Zoloft and I was dealing with brain chemistry like whoa) and the memory of this sent me into a panic that felt very much like the all-day anxiety ride I had been on all that time ago. I guess it was a trigger of sorts, not helped by the fact that I hadn’t slept properly or eaten as I should for 7 days. I found myself alone at some point sitting with not only memories of the relatively silly anxiety associated with backed up toilets, but also being once again haunted by everything that has happened. I was remembering how for at least a year of my recent life was spent in an almost constant state of anxiety, sometimes with moments of straight up fear of emotional and verbal battering and, in the end, fear of violence.

The worst part of the entire thing was sitting there having a sort of conversation with myself where I acknowledged all the things I was remembering and how it would take time to not ever think about those things anymore and to be patient with myself while also echoing some opinions of others who thought I should just get over it already and how I should be better than this. After all, no one except for my qualified mental health professional should have to hear about such things and honestly, she probably doesn’t want to hear about it anymore either. These two warring opinions just swirled around in my head until I let the tears come, knowing that this was a temporary moment of remembrance and that I just needed to ride it out. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. I chilled myself out and then within a few minutes, I wasn’t alone anymore, now being sandwiched in a hug from Wes and Amber. Then we all went grocery shopping for vegetables because we all needed some brain food.

While we were out, the plumber came and Jessie showed him where to start searching for the problem. Dude had a metal detector to locate pipes. I can honestly say that this was the first time I had ever seen someone using a handheld metal detector to do an actual job (other than people roaming the beach in search of gold doubloons and…bottle caps more likely). He was a wonderfully nice guy and had the whole mess fixed by 9:30pm.

Relieved, I went a got some laundry started and starting cleaning up the mess and tried to go to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I ended up taking Monday off too in an effort to get life and mind in order before returning to the office. It was a good decision.

This morning I woke up anxious and groggy and once again failed to get out of bed in time for yoga. I did make it to work though, so that is definitely something. In between bouts of organization and communications of all things work related, I contemplated why I still felt crappy.

And it dawned on me that I have been in complete denial (again) of food’s effect on me. Sure, doing the Whole30 was ultimately boring and frustrating near the end of that strict period, but I felt even keel the entire time. My blood sugar was completely stable, never suddenly dropping like it does often when I’m eating “normally”. My mood was stable (I was generally calmer and depression was linked to specific events, not just a state of being). And I had a lot more energy and that energy level was more stable. Getting up for yoga was not generally difficult for me to do and I would go relatively strong throughout the entire day. For a person like me who has never really had any need for dietary restrictions (I don’t have any known allergies or syndromes), I haven’t wanted to own up to the “truth” about how I should be eating. Regardless of whether or not the way I feel eating “off-plan” foods is due to some undiagnosed allergy or whatever else, the evidence is abundantly clear that I feel significantly better when I keep the added sugar, grain consumption, alcohol consumption, even maybe dairy and legume consumption down to minimum. So I think I need to generally follow the Whole30 idea long term, but allow myself to have those off-plan things as treats a couple of times a week.

This fits in well with Wes and I deciding that the money we save cooking at home most of the time is worth finally making a commitment to, well, cooking at home most of the time. I’m a very good cook AND I generally enjoy doing it. We order out or go out a lot though when I’m tired because it didn’t occur to me until recently that a better alternative was to simply say “I don’t feel like cooking. Anyone else want to?” And…someone else has always been willing! So I’m practicing doing that more often because no one declared that it was my responsibility and mine alone to make sure everyone is fed.

Also, no one makes tuna salad as good as Amber’s and no one makes grilled cheese sandwiches as good as Jessie’s and Wes makes a mean pile of bacon and excellent panini, so I am perfectly content to sit down for a delicious plate of any of those.

Trying to eat a specific way helps me stick to not-going-out goals and I was very pleased with the amount of extra cash I had for savings and whatever else during the month of January. So that needs to keep happening.

I’m so far failing at my “read more” goal, but I still have time to remedy that since it’s merely February. Of course, I need to watch how often I say that before I find myself being all “I haven’t really read anything new, but it’s merely December”. I have a pile of books, I just need to choose to read them when I have free time. Sounds easy enough but reading has never been a big hobby of mine. But it’s a hobby I’d like to get more into, so here’s hoping I can get myself to do it. In the Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin often talks about how it’s easier to do something every day rather than every few days, and that might be the approach I need to take here. Read a little every day and it will become a habit.

I started that digital photography class I mentioned before but after 4 classes, I have decided to drop it. I wanted to like it, I really did but to put it simply, the teaching style was way more laid back than I wanted it to be from 6:30pm – 9:30pm on a Thursday night. When I was taking the screen printing classes, I enjoyed having something like that to do on a weeknight because it was such a hands on class. Other than the first one or two classes of my first class, I was basically paying to have a screen studio with much appreciated guidance from a great teacher. I got to play with ink and make screens as I wished and got to just come in a do art for 3 hours. I enjoyed it so much that I am determined to snag a spot in the class for Spring semester.

This photo class was trouble from the start. Though the teacher is very friendly, fun, and knowledgeable, time management and engagement wasn’t a strong suit. They were going through some life circumstances that caused them to be seemingly more distracted than usual, but the lack of focus presented itself in ways that can be really infuriating to me.

In short, because this post is already pretty long, there was no time management or respect of anyone’s time in the class. Class started extremely late every single time. Stuff got repeated constantly for people who either didn’t show up to class before or got there even later than the really late time we started. And we didn’t really do anything until the last hour of class and when the class is for 3 hours after a full day of work, that is painful and not worth it. I also learned what I really needed to learn to go off on my own within the first two classes (more of a refresher for what I used to know when Kelly and I would take pictures with her film camera).

My classmates did not appear to be frustrated with this at all and it was then that I realized that, well, this just wasn’t the class for me. I was so bored that I almost left during the class to go take pictures of something, anything. Or go find a photocopier in the building to scan pictures of my butt or something.

So yeah, I made the decision to not go back because each class I went to made me angrier. So I’m going to go to a different style of yoga class on Thursday nights instead and then come home and mess with my camera. A much better use of time and I don’t have to cross the bridge to do it.

So that’s what’s going on with the progress of Gina’s Goals 2015. I’m learning a lot and figuring out next steps, so I’m pretty happy. Tonight we’re going to see Jupiter Ascending because all the reviews says it’s so bad that it’s amazing. Just my kind of film! Possibly my own review to come!