Tag Archives: health

I want to be open.

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So here’s the thing: bad things are going to keep happening. 2024 was not a great year. I had surgery. Noah had surgery. I was sexually assaulted. Noah had a bursitis issue. My body has been well into melt-down/burn out for some time and my physical pain issues are ridiculously high.

When I felt this bad in California I had to keep working and driving. I saw a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, and a massage therapist nearly every single week in order to function. Now, I don’t function very well. I get the absolute basics done but that’s it and there is no way I would be safe to drive. I had a really intense conversation with myself when my California license was expiring. I had a few options. I could ask a friend to let me lie and change my address so I could get a new California license. Some folks have offered in the past. I could work harder to get a UK license, which would be the correct choice of course.

If I had a license I would feel compelled to use it. I would feel required to make other peoples lives better by using cars more. When I think of how much worse it often got in California because of all the driving? I thank my lucky fucking stars that I have reduced the stress on my life enough that I can control a flare this bad with yoga classes and careful pacing of exercise.

I haven’t seen any kind of physical support person since before my surgery and that was almost half a year ago. I am doing so much better physically than I used to do. I could be doing better if I had more support but that will always be true and I will not have the support so get on with it.

I can only do what I can do from this house. I don’t particularly want to move. The medical care in this city will be limited for the rest of my life. So I can’t drive. I can’t bear the strain.

I gave up having a license after 20 years of having a car meaning freedom and independence. I have lived in cars for a couple of years in non-contiguous spread out periods, never longer than 7 months at a stretch. In a real way giving up my license is giving up my normal Plan B for where I can go in an emergency.

I gave up on getting a license here after not trying very hard to start with.

That means my life will be necessarily small as I won’t ask someone else to do all the travel. That closes a lot of doors all by itself. I want to form relationships with people who live within approximately 5 miles of my house. That’s a significant limit.

I want to be open to the universe, to adventure, to opportunities but it feels like I am being closed down in ever increasing steps and it is weighing heavily on me. In a way the issue of increasing disability dovetailing with a reduction in financial status is convenient. I no longer have to consider how to manage all that disposable income. It’s simple: I don’t have it. I think I did well with it when I had it (paid off debts, built long-lasting wealth) and I think it will be ok to get off that train.

I don’t have to keep working like my life depends on it. Is that fair to embrace when everyone else does have to work in unhealthy ways to survive? There is no fair. There is no deserve. Life is unfair in every fucking way. Me working or Noah working to earn money so that we can justify the capitalist machine grinding people to dust is kinda weird. We can survive without giving our life to companies that make us miserable.

Why in the fuck should we try hard to stay in that? We do need to find ways to be part of community here, but why does it have to involve enriching someone else with our time? Because eat the rich. If we are honest about our life then we sure look like targets. Meh. When have I not been a target?

I want to be open to what comes in life. I don’t want to go forward with a specific size and shape and shopping list of what it needs to look like. I have so many limits. Creating more arbitrarily seems like a recipe for failing at life.

Having a hard time

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I’m upset about the lack of support from the NHS. I talked to someone high up at New Craigs (the psych hospital) and she told me I can’t have therapy until after the trial. I feel like if they won’t support me through the more traumatic period I’d rather set the building on fire than go there for help afterwards. (No I am not going to set anything on fire. I am not a violent person. I will, however, opt out of appointments and treat it like a source of hostility and pain instead of help and healing.)

The GPs won’t diagnose me with EDS or fibromyalgia so I’m unable to qualify for medical cannabis. That leaves me with the black market and a lot of lung damage. I feel humiliated and debased.

I feel like the NHS Scotland wishes I would just die and stop being a problem. Or at least leave the country. They would be happy with either.

My house is down with Norovirus. All three kids have fallen like dominoes day by day and I expect to go any minute.

I’m on a medication break because my usage level has increased times 5 and that’s really bad for my body. I’m not coping well. I’m in a lot of both physical and psychological distress. I believe with my entire soul that the NHS does not give a shit. I’m pretty sure I’m going to develop serious health issues here and I won’t seek care.

Hell, I tried to make an appointment with a for-pay clinic in town. They told me it is obvious I am in significant distress and they will see if they can do anything for me then they didn’t respond again.

This is fucking hilarious because I’m not even asking them to do much. I want them to evaluate me and confirm my original diagnosis information so I can go to a different private clinic with UK records and get cannabis. They won’t do it though.

I feel completely dehumanised and devalued and debased. I feel like dirt.

You are on your own, kid

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I’m trying to figure out how to wrap my head around the next stage I need to move through. I love talking to crazy hippies. They have useful ways of framing issues.

A lot is happening around me and to me and even within me but I am just me in the middle of it. How do I shove these different layers of experiences into different boxes so that I can walk forward with less dragging me down? I won’t be having help from a therapist for this time down this labyrinth.

Rape is spewing out all over the place in ways that are deeply problematic. There are the historical layers of training, response, and even most of the deep suicidality comes down to trying to escape that pain. There is the physical damage and the emotional damage and the psychological.

The physical damage is still present in the forms of pockets of deep scar tissue around old wounds and injuries. When I am extremely emotionally dysregulated this gets worse. Luckily my cunt has been improved dramatically with the lovely process of pelvic floor physical therapy. My back is fucked for the rest of my life–it can’t be fixed. It must be endured.

The emotional damage is in the ways I have shitty behaviour patterns from my life, I am emotionally abusive because I talk about being suicidal. I talk about raging self hatred and how I deserve really over the top punishments to everything. That is emotional abuse towards the people around me and it’s not fair. That’s been an ongoing battle my whole life and I am a lot better than I was, until something happens and I slip. I don’t know that I will ever fully conquer this hurdle.

Psychologically I would say that that the panic attacks and mental confusion and explosiveness (often due to overwhelm) were in a pretty great place as of the start of this summer. I was a little irritable and deep in burn out, but I wasn’t having PTSD abreactions or panic attacks and I wasn’t suddenly screaming from out of control terror. This is the area that I think has the greatest potential for shifting in a meaningful and timely way. I can actually do something about a lot of this, and I just need to get my plan in place. It would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to triage everyone else’s needs. The last week or two have already been a tiny bit of crawling out of the pit.

I’m not ok. I’m sad. I’m anxious. I’m not looking forward to my parents’ birthdays in a few days. I never do. I feel like I am trying desperately to feel connected and love. It is less of a lie sometimes. I know the love is there but I can’t feel it.

I reach for feelings of love and then my brain gets distracted thinking about someone who doesn’t feel able to have a relationship with me anymore. This year I feel my failures so deeply and painfully: the Bonus Mama, the God Mama, and The One Who Got Away are taking up a lot of space in my brain. How did I wreck those relationships? Will I keep wrecking everything in those ways? I don’t know.

I’m scared and I don’t feel very lovable.

My “on repeat” song today is the grudge by Olivia Rodrigo. I couldn’t tell you who I am thinking about. I just know that it takes strength to forgive but I don’t feel strong.

I actually had several better days before today. I hit another bump. Part of me wants to crawl into a hole and never come out again. It is hard to believe I should keep trying since I suck so much. Yesterday was better.

I hope tomorrow is better.

The NHS is going to be a mixed bag for me

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I am experiencing some frustration. This week I learned that the NHS would have denied me the vast majority of the care I received in California because a lot of it ran concurrently. In Scotland one is not allowed to work with multiple therapists and on varying parts of mental and physical health at the same time. It is medical malpractice in this country.

Well, shit.

It was kind of fun recognising that I will have to route around the NHS while in an appointment with a psychiatrist. She got to try and talk me into not giving up on myself. If I come back and beg enough times maybe the NHS will agree to me having more than one form of care over a long period of time where they control all the aspects of deciding what and when.

Oh. It’s like that, is it?

I am going to learn a lot more about private health care in this country and I’m going to get better about lying and denying the care I am receiving. That sucks. I’m not really into lying as a lifestyle.

The NHS will not allow me to have EMDR before the trial. Thing is, I’m not sleeping so good. Flashbacks/abreactions are really bringing me down. My PTSD responses are really dramatic compared to where they have been for years.

The NHS won’t allow me to talk to anyone else while I’m talking to the nice counsellour lady in town. The nice lady who is a student. The nice lady who works for an agency that is supposed to get me help as an overwhelmed mom supporting disabled kids.

That’s what I get.

She’s a nice gal and maybe I am underestimating where I am going to get in the 6 sessions I have with her before I maybe get another 6 sessions through a different charity agency.

Yeah. That’s going to dramatically alter my life trajectory. I’ve been through 34 years of trauma therapy. I’m sure this student will dramatically make progress with my usually “treatment resistant” PTSD in 6 hours. It’s going to miraculous.

I feel very much like I need to settle down and become a wraith. This country favours passivity and non-action in a way that is going to be a problem for me. I am not a person who sits and waits doing nothing. That leads to deep depression and self harming behaviour that I can no longer sustain physically. I can’t. I can’t go back to hurting myself to cope. Too many pieces of me are broken in ways that could be life ending if I keep it up. Too many head injuries.

Is it weird that I am not fucking ok with the idea of accidentally killing myself in a panic attack in a form of self harm that I intend to be a momentary relief of pain going too far?

If I am going to kill myself it is going to be in some way that is absolutely unmistakable. I don’t want to accidentally cause a stroke. Fuck that shit. If I swim out into the North Sea or go to a supervised euthanasia clinic so you fucking know I picked that. I desperately hope that the people who love me will find a piece of comfort in knowing that I waited as long as I possibly could. I know that probably something is just to break on its own and it won’t be my choice and that’s ok too. Then it really isn’t my fault in the same way and it won’t hurt the people who love me in the same way.

I can’t accidentally kill myself by going too far with cutting. That’s not ok. That kind of thing is messy and dramatic and traumatic in a way I don’t want.

Today is not as bad as a lot of days have been this week but I’m still not feeling strongly attached to the idea of being alive. I can’t hasten my death, and in fact I am required to act in ways that will push it away to further in the distance. It’s feeling really hard.

Like most people I don’t love being in pain. It is hard knowing there isn’t a way out. I sure as shit am not going to be asking for much of the NHS. As much as I don’t love being in pain I’d rather just go through my life in pain instead of hearing over and over that I am not good enough for the thing I know will help me. I don’t qualify. I haven’t jumped enough hoops. Why don’t I jump a little higher and wait a little longer?

These are the people who think I shouldn’t be allowed to have the sex life I want or the marriage I want and they probably think I shouldn’t have been allowed to have children. I should have waited until I was all better to go have these normal things. I haven’t done enough time waiting to deserve the things that other people get as table stakes. I’ve heard this story my whole life.

I am allowed to have what those people need. Fuck my needs.

This is where I am an absolute rubbish example of living consent culture. I was told no, I couldn’t have what I asked for. So I went out and found a way to fucking steal it anyway.

Not exactly but it sure feels like it standing where I am in this moment. Really I just found a way to pay for it and I hunted high and low before I found people who would help me on my journey. I’ve done a lot of things to try and be more ok. I’ve been doing really well for a lot of years now with only a fairly normal person amount of range of volatility.

But hey, it doesn’t even count as rape in this country. It shouldn’t bother me so much.

In a major way I feel like I am far more wounded by how this affecting Noah than I am by the assault. My life is different than it was 4 months ago in ways that feel savagely unfair and painful.

I’m not working hard at chasing down Vicki interviews. I can’t focus. I can barely think. My productivity is somewhere between 25% and 50% of my normal and it feels like an enormous stretch goal.

I feel like a wraith who should fade away to mist. The fire and energy that usually propel my survival have abandoned me. I don’t feel like I have enough faith in what I am going to do moving forward to just charge forward blindly with great force. I don’t have the energy for a bunch of false starts. I don’t. I want to curl up under a bush and never come out and let my body go back into the earth.

I feel ineffective. I feel useless. I feel like there is no point to how hard I work because it will always come back to how fucking worthless I am.

It’s hard home educating three autistic kids. They need a lot from me. Most of it I have to repeat many times. It’s exhausting. I feel like depression is covering me like a weighted blanket on top of the burn out I’ve been feeling for a long time.

One of the hardest things about the way we home educate is we don’t have the neat and tidy ways to check and see if you are doing it right. We don’t have marking periods and standardised tests. We are just living and no matter how much I do for them I never feel like I have done enough. I always feel like I am failing to teach them a lot of the things they are going to need to know. I felt like that as a classroom teacher too, even though my students went up by more than one grade level on average after a year with me. Many of my students caught up on four or six years of learning with me because I could tune in to where they needed to be reached. I worked with kids who had a lot of emotional struggles.

My adult life has been spent trying to give children the things I never got and I am feeling like a very empty bucket. I have been doing this work for 24 years now. Hell, I was a nanny and a babysitter before then. Normally I’m pretty ok with taking it in stride that young people need a lot of reminders. Right now it is hurting me desperately.

I don’t think anyone is doing anything wrong in my house. It’s hard when I’m off my game. Noah does a lot of consistency management for our family but I’m usually the motor. I feel like I lost some integral part of my mechanism and the gears are just not going and I don’t know what to do.

No, I don’t want psych meds. They are not going to clear the cobwebs they are going to make my body start feeling like I am trying to kill it. No. I have walked that road. I’ve tried so many drugs that doctors pushed on me.

EMDR would be very helpful. I’m going to look for private. I think that’s a thing I can make happen. Holy shit. Maybe I really fucking should not. I am not a good liar. I’d really like to sleep better.

It’s been hurting so much that this overlapped with getting kicked out of bike stuff. The woman who had invited me into things in the first place no longer wants me there. She asked me to stop coming because I make her uncomfortable. It’s not that “everyone” there dislikes me–she was the person I was there to get to know because I liked her. I never tried hard to get to know anyone else because my assumption was that I would be too weird. I hope they do well in the future. I think it is important work.

It is not the fault of Highland Pride that I was sexually assaulted in any way shape or form. I am going to be scared to step forward with that community in the future anyway. I feel like I am trying to back out of a lot of kink stuff locally because I am obviously making so many people feel uncomfortable.

Hey look, the bitch who was “too much” in California is also too much in small town Scotland. Duh.

Maybe if I hide for a while before coming back some of my spiky edges will be forgotten. Maybe I will figure out some piece of work to do that will buy me a place even though I am so awful.

I don’t really have hope for things feeling better right now. I know they will at some point but in this moment that seems ridiculously impossible. This always/never place is really dark. I feel scared and empty. I don’t know how to keep giving right now without a lot of very bitter and sharp detritus coming out instead of water.

I’m in a bad place. It is what it is. There is no way out other than going through it.

I know Noah is trying to walk it back because this is hurting me, but I am deeply wounded by him saying that I betrayed him in this situation. I feel wrecked by this. I wasn’t a little bit bad I was so bad.

Right now I feel like I don’t know how to be good enough to deserve anything good. All I deserve is pain until I die. I’m not working enough to be a good tool. I do bad things that hurt people. I speak too sharply because my entire consciousness is permeated with pain and it leaks out and then I am even more bad.

I feel like no one should have to deal with someone as awful as me. I feel empty of goodness. If I ever had any it is gone.

All that is left is a haze of inefficient malice.

See, I’m being good. This is not social media where I will have lots of people yell at me that I am bad for saying any of this because it is not fair that I am “triggering them”.

Fuck me. Why don’t I just shut up or die already?

Body data

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My first tracked 3 mile run with this watch was mid December and it took 49:09 for an average of 16:24/mile.

Today I ran 8 miles in 1:50:10 for an average of 13:46/mile. That’s a pretty awesome improvement.

In January I did a bunch of measurements of my body so that I’d be able to see the changes as they happen. I measured myself this morning.

Since then I have lost .5″ off my upper arm, 1″ off my upper chest, 1″ off my bust, 5″ off my waist, 5″ off my hips, 2.5″ off my thigh, and 1″ off my calf for a grand total of 16″ inches taken away. That seems like a lot.

I have dropped 20.5 lbs in 7 months. Even though I do not follow Weight Watchers anymore I keep in mind that they would not encourage losing weight much faster than that.

I have just under 7 weeks to go. I plan to be the laziest git ever in October. I can do as little as humanly possible. Ugh I’m tired.

Another Day In I Am Too Tired For This Shit

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My bed is 7’x7′. How in the hell does a child turn sideways then fall off the bottom?

Yesterday MC had their first visit for assessment to see what sort of neurological testing will help find the correct diagnostic labels so that I can narrow down my research on how to support them better.

It was a good visit but, I think, not what the lady had planned. She had a sheet of questions to ask. Instead of going through those questions MC went through a prepared list of the things they have a hard time with. She flipped her paper over and scribbled like her life depended on it. She scheduled an appointment for me to come back alone and fill out those questions about developmental history. šŸ˜‚

I had talked MC through how I handle appointments as an adult who does not have anyone to report on childhood milestones/attainment. I forgot that MC is not having my life. Whoops. It’ll be fine.

MC is automatically getting 3 separate assessments based on clinical presentation in this appointment and the intake lady hinted about others that might be relevant after we can actually go through developmental history with a fine toothed comb.

This is how seriously Stanford took EC. I was deeply worried I would not find a way to access similar granularity of help for MC/YC. Stanford did *not* take MC seriously. Stanford asked MC 20 yes/no questions and told me I had a perfect little boy I didn’t need to fix. That was really frustrating. This time the lady watched MC almost vibrate off the chair and noticed “Do you find that you are ever able to sit still?” Only if the kid is in a severe dissociated state because they are imploding under the weight of their own anxiety and it is combined with mutism. No. They can’t just hold their body still like a “normal person”. It is not possible for them.

I am feeling a lot less nervous about this process now. The lady also took it very seriously when I said I have two other children who are also clearly neurodivergent. I don’t know what will come of her making notes about my other kids as well. YC isn’t even on a waiting list at this point.

YC’s flavour of neurodiversity is pretty easy to accommodate within our already heavily modified for neurodiversity lifestyle. EC is doing really well with the structure we maintain. MC needs… something I’m not doing and I don’t know what. I am grateful that the NHS is trying so hard to help me figure out what I should do.

The lady looked really pained when I talked about my own history of being beaten up in school after school and how I was not even a tiny bit surprised when people beat up my children in school. Autistic people are magnets for bullying behaviour.

Human beings often want to hurt people who are different. It’s a thing. A really sucky and terrible thing. I was glad that she showed absolutely no sign of believing that it would be best for my children to be in school. *phew*

Stanford Child and Adolescent Development was quite adamant that there is not a better learning environment for EC than what I provide. They had tiny tweaks to suggest, but nothing major. I hope that the NHS can help me find the tweaks that will give MC also the best learning environment for them. Right now there are a couple of areas that concern me and I don’t know how to fix them. I do need outside guidance.

It’s kind of funny that EC doesn’t mostly overlap with my learning difficulties. His troubles are out in front of me and I can study them without feeling emotionally connected. I just need to support. MC and I share some of the same struggles. The ways in which I have never managed to overcome some of my own challenges inhibit my ability to figure out how to help them make progress. I need a more objective view.

But first I need to go run 4 miles. I’d rather eat glue.

I hit the wall this week. I think I was lowkey sick over the weekend when the kids were all very sick. I kept exercising and working the whole time. I don’t feel like I’m still dealing with a fever but my body wants to tell me to go take a long walk off a short pier. I can’t even tell how much this overreach is about physical load and how much is emotional load.

I feel like my soul is hurting. I miss the physicality of all of my California friendships.

It is already getting much colder and I am not feeling great about the change. My body is hurting a lot. I felt like the tiny increase of warmth of spring was a huge massive welcome change and I was going around outside in skimpy clothing because I was overheating. Now the same temperature range is making my bones ache.

I am not sleeping enough. I am rarely laughing and that can’t be good for me. I feel somber and like I have a flat affect. I feel numb. How can you feel numb and pain at the same time?

I really need to go run. I feel like that is an absolutely outrageous ask just now. Oh well. What I want is not important. What matters is what I do.

We’re All Mad Here

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I was reading an article that included the phrase ā€œMad Prideā€ about how mental illness has been perceived by society (mostly the US/Canada/UK) over time. It made me stop and think hard about how much my life has changed. I am in the closet now in a way I was not in California. There were times in my younger years where I would keep some things under wraps (I was militant about limiting sex life conversations with some groups of people) but mostly I didnā€™t hide any aspect of myself to such a degree that anyone and everyone couldnā€™t find out if they tried even a tiny bit.Ā 

There is a big difference between ā€œI donā€™t share personal stories about my sex/romantic life with students or homeschooling parents but I write about it explicitly on my public blogā€ and ā€œI took my writing private so that someone would need at least a basic understanding of the internet archive in order to find out anything about me, I stopped writing about myself publicly on any topic that might be controversial and I no longer bring up or mention most things about my past and I am actively evasive with every person who does not have connections to my former life.ā€

Itā€™s different. I am feeling more comfortable in the community. I feel like I probably do not have to remain quite this guarded permanently but I feel intense gratitude towards myself that I allowed myself this runway of time to have a place in the community where I am already seen as stable and competent and fairly well educated, especially in topics that are not well understood already here. I am starting to have that boost to the ego experience of having people say, ā€œOh Krissy I wanted to ask you about something. I donā€™t understand why ____?ā€ When that something is often related to an aspect of interpersonal communication. Iā€™m also getting more requests than I can take when it comes to organising level responsibility for different community groups or associations. And folks are asking me how I have taught my kids (thing). Thatā€™s definitely one of my sweet spots for feeling like I am not an imposter who should shut the fuck up.

Itā€™s not that I think everyone should do what I doā€¦ that would go poorly. What I really appreciate is when people are interested in the process of how I figured out what was right for me because understanding that process is the bit that can help other people. They will have a different right answer in the end, but maybe seeing how I made decisions that align with my values will help them crystallise what their own values are so they can feel confident in their own choice. I like talking about parenting philosophy, not parenting choices. Because we are going to make different choices and thatā€™s absolutely great. Itā€™s mandatory. Itā€™s as it should be for there to be the delightful variety of folks that this world needs. But the philosophy behind parenting is a place where you can discuss motivation and intentions and you can learn from each other without getting into a pissing match about technique. 

Technique is hard because itā€™s a minefield of traps for not understanding your own privilege when you frame what you do. Noah says that society has as much justice as it can afford. Itā€™s complicated because often a family has as much justice as they can afford. And from family to family that is such a complicated and loaded concept that oh goodness just no. Canā€™t.

Anyway. The article. It goes through who is allowed to be mentally ill in public now. Who benefits from hashtag campaigns and public awareness movements around mental illness? Itā€™s a short article but provocative in a way I agree with. I am so deeply aware of the privilege I enjoy at this point in my life. 

But this privilege comes with costs too. Costs I could not have imagined when I was on the far side of that particular privilege slider. 

Iā€™ve been watching a lot more sci-fi/fantasy shows and movies recently. I am particularly drawn to things that are depicting ways that people live with an understanding of there being completely opposing truths/narrative/existanses existing all at the same time. 

So, I like to talk about money. If you have been here for a while you have seen the arc of that from poverty to (I think) fairly substantial wealth. When you are new to a community you only really exist from the moment they meet you. Your past is invisible and unknowable. Ok fine with google they could look me up but they donā€™t. I write all over the fucking internet. I have one handle I use on every site and I am so trackable it is definitely what a security expert would frown upon and give me a lecture for. I am consistent in part because that is my absolute only talisman against being called a fraud. My story is too whack-job. But I gots receipts, bitch.

I have suppressed so much of that over the past few years. I have been so very silent. It is taking a toll. 

The pendulum is going back and forth on so many different dynamics in my life. In one way I feel like my kids just got out of a big disequilibrium period (or at least some combination of them) and I am slamming my way into one with full force and fury. There are a whole bunch of things that are not working and I need them to change. 

I say over and over that disequilibrium is a necessary feeling for everyone because without it you probably wonā€™t grow. You will get complacent and comfortable and you wonā€™t want to face the terror and uncertainty and pain that comes with change. I have to get angry to have the force to demand change. I have to feel like I will wreck big things if the change doesnā€™t happen.

I am doing a med change. Amitriptyline and Lisdexamfetamine are not working for me anymore. There are enough negative symptoms with using them that I just cannot. Sex just hasnā€™t been happening. Iā€™m not happy. Iā€™ve been intermittently explosively raging for quite a while and itā€™s just not ok. I donā€™t like me. I need Patience, and I donā€™t mean the drink made with a whole lot of bourbon.

It feels silly to say this but I want to drink less. (Itā€™s silly to say because Noah and I both have recently put in MASSIVE orders of alcohol.) I got variety. I got stuff that I want to invite other people over and say ā€œI have x and y for you to taste test.ā€ I want a social gambit, I donā€™t plan to consume much of it myself. I is making friends. 

I have a teeny tiny bit of regret about buying this house because it is huge and has been really rough to repair but I canā€™t tell you all about it because a Shorty has just informed me that there are gingerbread pieces waiting to be made into a house and I am all out of time.

I’m about to fucking explode, y’all.

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I am not ok and it is perseverating in my head and if I don’t set it down somewhere I am going to continue to freak out in my house with my kids and that’s not cool. So let’s start there, shall we?

My kids are acting appropriate for their varying ages. All of these stages are hard at this moment in that awesome way that sometimes cycles pop up. My oldest is a fucking teenager with a fucking rude teenager mouth. I feel like he just has to tell me I’m wrong or express exasperation at my stupidity over and over all day long. Often at times when I am not actually wrong or being stupid. I mean… when I am wrong I tolerate a fair bit of sass but it drives me insane when I’m not wrong. Middle child is not wanting to accept responsibility for some areas of forward progress and I’m struggling with that. Youngest is pushing every button and boundary like it is her job… because it is.

So that’s all fun and the background noise of every single day.

I went back and checked my logs (hi, yes I am incredibly obsessive about tracking all kinds of stupid details) and starting in June I went from sleeping 8 hours a night on average over the course of the month to sleeping 6 hours a night on average. The months since then have hovered around 7 hours a night on average. That’s pretty certainly part of why I have been doing much worse. Why did I start sleeping so much less?

Ah, fucking lockdowns are over and I feel incredibly pressured (mostly internally) to get out and Meet People and Volunteer and Be Part of the Community. Also this summer has been quite energetic with gardening tasks as I’m moving towards the permaculture/low key food forest direction. I’m super tired. Also eldest said, “Let’s go ahead and finish the lounge” and I said, “Oh uhhh ok.” I was kinda hoping to procrastinate the work long enough for the paint to go bad. Then I found out my old buddy was coming and I have some projects I said he could help me with. So I started sprinting to get stuff done before he arrived.

Reader, I fucking failed.

I’ve been very much working beyond what I should be. Oh, and late May was my first trip down to England to see A & P then in June I went back down to England to bring Noah and the kids to see A & P. That is seeming like the best decision I made all year.

Oh, and I averaged 6 hours a sleep a night the month I had fucking covid and I slept through 4 days entirely. THAT’S REALLY FUCKING BAD.

I’m not ok, y’all.

July was a sprint of work I was not physically prepared for. I have never taken time to really fully recover from covid, not really. I certainly haven’t carefully increased exercise over time to get back to the fitness I had.

August was a super sprint of work and it was exhausting. September was a lot of work sprinting plus my birthday which was absolutely fucking exhausting to the extreme and I probably made some foolish choices. I was not physically fit enough to do what I did comfortably and I have paid for it. October has been more and more work and then Noah and EC went off to Helsinki then the morning after they got home I ran off to San Francisco in a last ditch effort to say goodbye to A.

In a way there are shadows of my uncle passing. I was too late. I feel like I failed and I am upset with myself. I did get to help P with one of the thornier parts of handling A’s belongings and I am deeply grateful I could perform this service.

Being in San Francisco involved a ton of driving (ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow) and many hours of work and many different social interactions one right after another and very little sleep. I just couldn’t except for a few times when I passed out in awkward scenarios. Three people said they wanted to make plans then cancelled at the very last minute. Woo. That’s always fantastic.

My buddy is a challenge in many ways. I don’t want to say too much about that but I will say that he is very emotionally needy and he wants me to help him process and understand his entire life and that’s a fucking tall order. I am not a therapist. I feel like I am drowning in his feelings. He also can’t remember a lot of our conversations because of how much he drinks so each conversation has to be repeated a few times and that is really frustrating. I don’t begrudge him the needs but my bucket is so fucking empty.

I feel empty. I feel like I can’t take more shit being dumped on me. I feel like I want to scream and scream and scream until I have destroyed my voice from screaming. I want to sleep for several weeks in a row. I want to stop speaking to people at all and I want to go back to lockdown. I am so far into burn out I feel like a pile of ash.

I know that I am a good person to help people process grief but right now I can’t handle the flood of it. It’s not just the one buddy. I feel absolutely surrounded by loss this year. Grandmother in law, A, my buddy’s parents, other friends have lost family members, a different buddy is dealing with her kid self-harming, a somewhat surprising number of pets have passed recently and folks want to talk to me because I give them comfort. Right now it feels so hard.

Oh, yeah, and it’s been an incredibly stressful year on the money front. I think things have settled down now and while we are not fully “on track” we are in a very reasonable place and I’m no longer worried about bouncing payments. But it’s been a fucking lot.

Err, also my roof just got replaced and the scaffolding and construction fuss have been irritating and challenging because to a large degree it has meant that YC has not been able to play outside unsupervised for over a month. That’s not a great situation.

I’m not exercising enough. I stopped my yoga classes because we need to be contributing more to savings. I’m not eating well enough–I am actually not enjoying the kids cooking 4 nights a week because rarely do they put more than 1 vegetable serving in a meal and it’s not doing great things to my body. I’m sleeping for shit.

It goes on and on and on. I’m sure I’m not remembering all the fuss. My head hurts. I am tired of being tired.

Movement is good for you; I hear.

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I posted most of this on the book of faces. But I should start using this space more.

Neurotic tracking is neurotic.

I wasn’t great about tracking my bike miles for the first few months of 2021 so I am pretty sure my year total is lower than it actually was. Then in 2022 we went to Texas and did way more walking than usual… but I didn’t bring my watch charging cable so I didn’t track any of it and then the watch strap completely broke and took a bit to replace in late July/early August. So numbers are fudged a bit.

That said: in 2021 by Sep 1st I had taken 1,653,242 steps and ridden 883 miles. (By the end of the year 2,300,012 steps and 1,165 bike miles.) In 2022 by Sep 1st I have taken 1,438,755 steps and ridden 908 miles.

If I don’t want to be behind last year’s final totals I’d better get my butt moving. Last year I was under my goals for myself in terms of movement by a fair bit. I don’t shoot for 10,000 steps a day. Personally I try for 7,000 and I have not been hitting it. In a year that adds up to 2,555,000 steps. I missed it by 254,988 last year. That’s over a month of missing steps. Ugh.

This year I am so far waaaaay lower. This is not good. I am already 262,245 down this year. That’s super sucky not good. Ugh. My bike odometer says I have ridden 920 since I got it the week of Christmas, so there wasn’t a lot at the end of December on this bike due to all of the ice on the roads.

I feel like I am very much not close to where I want to be in terms of being able to run (I have not regained fast-twitch muscle activity *at all* since the youngest was born. Ugh.) I know I need to sit down with the training book Blacksheep gave me and make a plan.

I think that the work I get done in the garden this September is going to mean that next year I will not have any big structural jobs and I may even have time to go work in the volunteer gardens in town. I haven’t managed much this year because I’ve been drowning in house/garden work.

My birthday is coming up so of course I am going deep into that funk of “What the hell am I actually doing with my life?” Well this year my hide-from-life birthday retreat will involve a 90 mile round-trip bike ride before camping in the rain. No weekend long binge of The Witcher this year.

In order to catch up on steps I need 9,150 each day between now and the end of the year. *sigh* I don’t have any specific goals about bike miles between now and the end of the year… but I feel better when I ride more and my kids have never regained their full fitness after covid. So. Ugh. Fudge.

I watch this shit like a hawk because if I get too sedentary then I lose strength and then I injure myself then I am stuck in a chair for months and the recovery period is slow and nightmarish. I haven’t had a big injury… in a long time. I can’t remember the last one. I am dancing on the edge of overwork issues with my arms and back right now with all the gardening/painting. Oofta.

Ok. Now that I have reflected it’s time to get off my butt. Daylight is no longer endless and apparently I have a lot of miles to cover. It doesn’t help my sense of impending doom that my birthday is coming. Stupid birthday. I hate you. It’s not that I mind getting older. It’s just that it is usually such a very terrible day. I feel bad that I can’t be present with my kids on my birthdays. But I can’t. That’s just the reality. No sense in denying a thing that is just true. Thanks, mom, for this gift that just keeps on giving. I mean… I know it isn’t her fault at this point. She hasn’t ruined a birthday in over 20 years. But there is a broken piece there. I have tried to fix it and failed. I am putting all of my try into other places; I have none left for something as stupid as my birthday.

Alright. Time to work.

Riding the covid wave

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I like documentation. Documentation is awesome.

On Monday the 20th at about 1:00am our first notice of a problem was middle child waking up to vomit all over the sofa bed and floor of the hotel we were in. Cleaning that up sucked because the hotel didn’t really have cleaning supplies available. Suck.

Because of the railway strikes I already knew that if we waited until the 21st to go home… we couldn’t get home from Edinburgh on the train because of strikes. In retrospect, since we took the bus anyway, we maybe should have done that? I don’t know. I also knew that our hotel was booked for right after us and no other rooms were available anywhere nearby to allow us to wait out illness/strikes.

So we cleaned up and went back to sleep. Later on Monday the 20th we got up and packed up and took a bus to Birmingham (strikes had already cancelled all trains leaving Stratford-upon-Avon). Then we boarded what was supposed to be the first of three trains home. The second train was so delayed we missed the third train. I scrambled and found a bus route home. While we were on the bus Scotrail announced that they were adding one last train to Inverness. Damnit. MC woke up long enough to make transfers and otherwise slept through the ride home.

We arrived home at about 11:45pm on Monday the 20th.

Middle child spent Tuesday the 21st in their room on quarantine after a positive covid test, mostly asleep.

Wednesday the 22nd Youngest child developed a high fever and intense exhaustion and body pain and went to bed. We decided there wasn’t a point in putting MC in quarantine if YC was sick too because she is too little. I got some chores done in a big hurry because I could see that this wasn’t going to go well. I already felt cruddy, but a walking wounded kind of cruddy. In between chores I would end up snuggling YC back to sleep every time she woke up crying. Noah and EC both felt cruddy but not incapacitated. MC was awake for more of the day and happy about lots of computer time.

Thursday YC could not handle having me get out of bed because everytime I moved she cried. She was miserable. I didn’t feel good but I didn’t feel heinously bad. I was pretty happy about the rest even though I was super upset to miss an event I was supposed to freakin host. Whine.

Friday was my day to be flat out in bed mostly asleep. The chest congestion was still minimal. I hurt everywhere and couldn’t stay awake long enough to follow most of the bad movies I had on for company. YC was up and playing and complaining that no one wanted to entertain her. MC was feeling a little better but far from perfect. EC was feeling crummy but not a lot worse. Noah was still feeling cruddy but only a little worse. Noah and EC still test negative at this point.

Saturday I was awake slightly more but the pain was worse and the congestion was starting. Lots more coughing. Very full and disgusting hanky. YC was able to get up and move about but very grumpy and whiny and miserable. Noah felt worse but still able to do stuff. MC and EC both complained about not feeling well but managed to do what they felt like doing. I was barely able to stand and walk to the the toilet. I took a covid test just so I could double check. Yup, positive. YC hates the test so we are just calling her positive.

Today is Sunday the 26th. I can stand and walk more than yesterday but not for long without intense dizziness. I need to lean over the counter and rest if I am up for more than 2-3 minutes or get a chair. I am hacking up half a lung in disgusting productive coughs. It is less prolific as I am awake/closer to sitting for more time. It took a while of hacking to be able to breathe this morning. Today will definitely be a bed day. EC and MC both say they don’t feel good but they are in playing video games. YC is in bed with me because she doesn’t want to be up. Noah says he feels worse than the previous days but he hasn’t come to bed yet.

Being sick with a fitness tracking watch is fascinating. I can watch my resting heart rate climb (over 90 when usually it is in the mid 70’s). It does its best to monitor my oxygen saturation. It is monitoring its opinion of my “stress” rate (higher than it has been through the entire time I have owned the watch). Yesterday it claimed that my stress was skyhigh and it spent the whole day begging me to rest. I was flat out in bed barely moving enough to use the toilet or eat. My “average” for the previous year was a stress level of 37 and yesterday it was up at 81. Hm. My pulse oxygen readings are also lower than normal but probably not low enough to call a doctor yet. Low enough that I am monitoring it.

I knew the chronic bronchitis would be a problem if I caught covid. I’m coughing more than the rest of the house combined. Damnit. Not that I wish they were sicker. I don’t.

This was a very bad week to lose my glasses. I have a super bad headache. Ugh. Typing this was hard. Time for a nap.

Because I am a loser without a baby book…

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Here they don’t do annual well child visits with home educating families so a lot of the normal medical records I have for the older kids won’t be duplicated with Youngest Child. I was talking to someone about car seat/booster needs so I went and checked on where she is in terms of height and weight. This blog (mostly the parts that are now private) are the only place where I have recorded most of this information so I’ll log this today.

She is 108 cm and 18.7kg tall at 4 years and not quite 2 weeks. According to my reading of the charts that means she is around the 95% for height and about 80% for weight. She is a very solid little thing who runs for most of the day so she has barely the tiniest of pudge on her–she’s muscular.

I think that means she is on track to be in between the older two as adults. Oldest Child has past me up at 13 and Middle Child is getting there fast at 11–I think MC will pass me at 12. If the percentages stay true to adulthood MC will be the tallest, then YC, then EC. I get the general impression that EC will resent this for most of their adult lives. Ha.

If my memory is serving (and I’m feeling too lazy to go look it up) MC has stayed around 97-98% for their entire childhood and EC has always been around 85-87%. YC at birth was only in the neighborhood of 75% but has shot up since.

I mean… we’ll see. I have just done such a poor job of record keeping that I feel like I should write it down when I think of it.

More medication changes/observations.

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The last time I posted was 2 days after I lowered the Amitriptyline as an experiment. I am talking to my doctor/psych nurse about all of these changes before I do them. It’s kind of weird having a medical team that I call up and say “Hey I want to try x. I will report back on how it goes.” They respond with, “Cool. Let me know how it goes.” I am not used to American doctors being so chill about someone playing with their medication dosages. In emoji terms: šŸ¤Æ

I had almost three weeks of being on the first step of Amitriptyline dosage. Very quickly I noticed: my mood getting lower (a lot more intrusive obnoxious thoughts during yoga–amusingly), sleep became really hard (the last three weeks I averaged 7.5 hours of sleep when I’ve been otherwise averaging over 8 hours a night for the past few years), I started craving alcohol a lot (back up to probably 8-10 units a week after only 2-4 units/week for the previous month or so), I was more interested in late night snacking, I had several very late night painting sessions because going to sleep just didn’t feel important, I needed more Lorazepam to sleep, my general pain levels were sky high, and I was using more Co-codamol. Oh hey and my blood pressure went from being usually in the 120’s-130’s/80’s to being mostly in the 140’s-150’s/mid-high 90’s.

That’s some forking data. (I mean… sorta anecdata but I have spreadsheets where I’ve been documenting this day by day…) It’s not like I’m trying to apply this population wide or anything.

I talked to my psych nurse two days ago and told her I do not think this is a good time to increase the Lisdexamfetamine because I need my blood pressure under control first; then I talked to my GP yesterday and told her that I think the next step is increasing the Amitriptyline for a month and seeing what happens. They both think my suggestions are dandy and that’s plan A. We will all check in next month and see how things are going.

After another month on the Lisdexamfetamine I am 3.2 pounds lower. That is a very gentle and sustainable amount of weight loss compared to the roughly 10 pounds I lost in the first month. I mean… I’m still 40-ish pounds away from where I feel like my body feels the best in terms of strength and not being limited by chub in the way. I don’t love having to shove a roll of fat out of the way to get into a certain position. I don’t love that it is hard to bend over and tie my damn shoes. But this is way better than the 60-ish pounds I was above that weight for a while.

I have been putting painting progress pictures up on Facebook because that interface is easier for dumping photos. I kind of hope I will get around to putting together pictures on a webpage here sometime soon. It’ll just take a lot more focus and time than I have right now. Erf.

Good thing to notice

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I’ve been going to yoga classes for a little bit now–a couple of months? Something that I notice when I’m there is that I talk to/about my body differently than I used to. I’m not sure when it changed because I don’t write this kind of thing much anymore. It’s noticeable to me because of what the instructors say. They tell you to check in with your body then pause and then tell you to get past the negative vocies.

These days when I check in with my body it’s gratitude. Thank you for being so strong. Thank you for carrying me so far. I am so proud of what you can do. Yeah, you hurt but isn’t it nice that you hurt so much less than you used to? I’m proud of us for learning how to take care of you better. I can feel the expression of love over time in my bones. I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am. I’m happy that I’ve had this kind of support and time.

I suspect that the combination of meds that I’m on at this point is helping. Amitriptyline is both for pain and it increases serotonin so it’s an antidepressant at the same time. The lisdexamfetamine feels like what I wish i could have had since I was a teenager. I genuinely believe I would have made fewer risky/bad choices if I had been on it.

I really wish I could have been properly assessed for ADHD and ASD as a teenager. It would have changed my life. I wonder if I would have accomplished as much? I wonder if I would have accomplished less? Ah well. It is what it is and all I can do is move forward.

It’s a lot better painting on this med combo. I don’t feel the urge to paint all night long “just to get through it”. I know it will make me feel like trash later and that’s not very tempting/alluring. I’ve been painting for a few weeks in a row now. My one short night of sleep (I got over 6 hours… so not a California short night) was when I was trying to clean up after painting. It took 15 hours to put things back in place and clean up the house enough for the cleaners to be able to come in and do actual cleaning instead of just walking around piles. My average for the last four weeks of sleep is about 8 and a half hours. That’s… kind of shocking for me being in a heavy work cycle. That’s just about healthy. Whoa. Balance.

I am finding a bit of appetite suppression from the amfetamine. I am eating smaller portions at meals (2 tacos instead of 3, 2 pancakes instead of 4, 1 bowl of soup instead of 2) and I feel less desire to have a late night dessert. Sometimes I skip lunch because I’m not that hungry but I eat a lot more dinner to make up for it and I think I eat about the same amount of food. I am drinking waaaay less alcohol (I’m probably taking 3-6 units a week down from 10-15) mostly because the amfetamine means you feel the alcohol less so I don’t feel as much desire to consume it. It still tastes good so I have some. And some of the wine I like is multiple units/serving in the glass I use so there you go. I’m flirting around 200. I haven’t seen lower than 203 since I arrived in Scotland and I’ve usually been in the 210’s and 220’s over the past 2 years so I am losing some weight. With the amount I exercise it has felt kind of weird that I keep as much extra padding as I have been. When I was in my 20’s and 30’s this much exercise would have kept me down in the 160’s.

Something that I think I am feeling in my body is I have dramatically fewer spikes of cortisol with this med combo. I really don’t feel anxious. Over the past two years I have noticed that in Scotland I feel dramatically less anxiety than I did in California as a baseline… even with the help that cannabis provided. I don’t have as much hypervigilance here. Prior to trying this med combo I was still feeling anxiety though in that way that I think is about my body being programmed to worry about everything as the natural state of being. That feels like it is stopping now. In California I had to be careful with my cannabis usage because I couldn’t/wouldn’t take it when I had to drive so I had a lot of up and down effect in terms of my experience in my body. I think there was enough break in cortisol production that my body could process food normally and not turn it all into emergency fat rations for later tragedy.

Since moving and being off cannabis entirely (the weight gain started right when I left California–I could tell in how my clothes fit) there has been a slow but gradual ballooning effect. Exercise and eating a balanced diet wasn’t having any impact at all. Despite the comments of ignorant people… I eat a fairly ridiculously healthy diet compared to the average person in the western world. We eat very little that is processed. We cook from scratch for something like 12-15 meals a week. (A lot of the other meals are leftovers.) We eat 4-9 servings of fruit and veg a day. I have cut a lot of the dairy and meat from my diet. (My family eats more than I do but I’m trying to limit inflammation.) My weight creeping up is not about eating too much and moving too little. Yeah yeah it’s anecdata but I have lived in this body for 40 years now and I’ve seen it through a lot of cycles. Cortisol/stress/anxiety.

It’s really dramatic having medications that lower the level of cortisol in my body on a 24/7 basis. I am consistent with the meds. I haven’t skipped many doses since I started so this is a really level sort of experience.

But my blood pressure has creeped up. I’m hoping that losing some weight will have an effect on that so that I can keep the meds. I really like how my brain feels. I have also halved the amitriptyline dosage on the advice of my GP to see if I can keep the positive effects with a lower dosage. She is mildly skeptical because my former dosage was already the “grandma dose” (her words) and she wonders if my body will be able to feel anything with half that. I’m trying it for a few weeks to see. I think it is worth trying. I really don’t want to lose the lisdexamfetamine. I feel like this is doing so much.

It feels like such a blessing that when I quiet down and look inward what I see is liking myself.

Getting old is fun

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I had an appointment with my psychiatric nurse this morning. We agree that I don’t need to adjust the lisdexamfetamine because it is going very well. She is, however, quite worried about my continual high blood pressure. She is also a bit concerned about how much weight I have lost in the last month (around 15 lbs) but not *overly* concerned because I have reduced how much alcohol I am drinking, I am snacking less right at bed, and I did ride almost 300 miles last month. I am going to be monitor my weight and my blood pressure daily for a while. She wants me to send her a text message once a month letting her know how the trends are going.

I am also going to be speaking to my GP about lowering my dosage of amitriptyline or possibly switching meds entirely to see if something else can provide some relief without the blood pressure spike.

I finally feel like I am getting a handle around some pieces of how the NHS functions. That’s good. I’m feeling cheerful about life just at the moment. I’m back to painting. After lunch I am going to go do a few hours of working on the ceiling in the lounge. I never have finished the hall but I need to finish up the bits that require the extremely tall ladders because I need to give them back. I suspect I will be painting through a lot of the winter. Christmas decorations may come out a bit on the late side this year and get put away early because I don’t know how much painting I can do with them out.

Middle kid has been an absolute dear and is letting me store paint in their closet because they don’t use that shelf anyway and keeping the paint away from the extreme temperature cycling will help it last a bit longer. It also makes it easier for me to get it out and put it away reducing how much time I need for support work instead of painting.

Today feels like a very good day.

Lisdexamphetamine

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I should put this here and not facebook for long-term tracking reasons.

I’m a little over 3 weeks into the trial of lisdexamphetamine now.


I would say the main thing that is helping is that I am less willing to attempt multi-tasking to the point of frustration meaning I am blowing up less. I feel less anxious about all the things I “should” be doing at any given point. I have a long to-do list but I always have a long to-do list because I have a chronic need to believe that working is how I earn my right to breathe.
I think I can say with confidence that this is the best-for-me psychiatric medication I have ever tried. I can see how this would have helped me when I was younger and I have really intense feelings around the fact that no one was ever willing to look for a reason other than “trauma” to explain my behaviors as a child.


How different would my life have been if I had been diagnosed with ADHD and ASD as a child? The signs were there but I never stayed in a school long enough for them to see patterns. They just knew I acted inappropriately and assumed it was all because of the family issues.
Can’t change the past. I can can only move forward. I suspect this is going to be a medication I am on for as long as cannabis isn’t legal here. It is the closest to what cannabis gives me of anything I have ever experienced. I love being able to do one thing at a time without my brain constantly jumping between 6 different tracks. This is pretty rad.


I am going to sleep later than I was before starting this trial but I am getting the same number of hours of sleep so I think that’s not so bad?


Also: I have lost 10 lbs in 3 weeks after this weight not budging for the entire time I have been in Scotland. I am eating as much as I feel like I want to eat. (Interestingly I crave snacks more at night when I take amitriptyline earlier than usual…) I think the weight loss is because there are fewer cortisol spikes with the lower anxiety level. Ok… also probably because I am drinking less alcohol because I can’t “feel” it with this medication so it seems kind of silly to have it.

A hysterectomy sounds better all the time.

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My mood is really awful for about 1/3 of the month. It turns on/off like a light switch. When I hit the day my period is actually going to arrive I suddenly have a nose full of snot, I feel like I am about to throw up, and I have vicious diarrhea. I feel like someone is stabbing me in the back with an ice pick. Bending over to pull a clean cup out of the dishwasher is stabbingly painful.

I’ll feel better in a few days. But right now I’m at the peak of bad mood plus bad body and it is a fucking nightmare. I am fairly likely to have ten more years of cycles. With 1/3 of the month being (some of it literally) a shit show.

Bodies are the worst.

Heart racing

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Here’s an Amitriptyline symptom I should note: I’m having noticeable elevated heart rate. My watch buzzes when my heart rate is too high compared to my level of movement. It’s going off almost all day right now. I’m elevated above 120 bpm for hours a day even if I’m barely moving around. That seems kind of problematic. Hm.

Because of the watch I can give specific data about my heart rate compared to exercise over a very long time period. I normally rarely hit 120 unless I’m doing prolonged fairly intense exercise. Now I hit that sitting in a chair over and over all day.

My watch is buzzing enough that the people I live with are noticing and commenting on hearing it. That seems… possibly not good.

Christmas planning

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For a lot of years now I’ve been trying to move towards less gifting. There’s so much emotional baggage around the entire topic of giving shit for Christmas. Almost no one outside our house is getting “stuff” from us this year. My little adopted nieces and Jenny and Noah is doing stuff for his family. We will give baked treats to our youngling friends in town but I’m not worrying about giving stuff to neighbors we have barely spoken to this year.

My big kids asked for a few items to finish their rooms from Santa. Eldest Child wants a box that can lock to keep stuff away from the little siblings and some fake foliage to finish her woods-motif bedroom. Middle Child wants a small table and a tea pot (haven’t found the tea pot yet–gulp) for playing tea party in their room. Other than that they are getting a few books and their stockings are barely half full. Additional presents are a floaty/light weight hippy dress for EC because even in Inverness she is often overheated and she has outgrown most of her clothes and MC got a beautiful hand made wrap in colors that they will love to go with their dressing up fancy obsession.

Last year I got everyone themed night clothes and they asked if we could please do that again so both big kids picked out a style they liked from Etsy. This was not a family tradition before moving here. I am amused that the kids have decided that this is going to be a tradition moving forward. Given that Noah is not usually one for wearing pajamas it may be a little weird for him to have to come along on this one.

Youngest Child is getting a gnome village from Santa and little gnomes in her stocking with some bath toys and hair clips. A couple of books as the only things to unwrap at this point.

It’s seeming a bit hilarious that I’m getting the biggest Santa present because I asked to upgrade the shoe racks as my gift. When we moved in I got a really irritating cheap Ā£20 shoe rack as good enough to last until I knew what I wanted. Now I know what I actually want and Noah ordered it. They are fairly large because with 5 people and actual seasons we have way more shoes than we have ever collectively had before. So my present is a house thing for all of us.

I have a few things for Noah but not a lot and that’s all I can say about that because he reads this. I feel a little guilty about not doing more for him and yet he’s been telling me for years not to get him much. I don’t think he asked for a single thing this year. He doesn’t need any clothing items at all.

We didn’t do the mass Christmas card thing this year. I’m exhausted and sending a card to the US costs Ā£1.70 a pop. We used to send about 100 cards. That adds up, yo.

I’m having a hard time shaking the programming from my youth that giving so little means I don’t love people very much. But we don’t need very much at this point and there isn’t a lot anyone wants. EC genuinely doesn’t want much. She likes having a room that is easy to tidy and she feels like she is mostly past the toys-stage and she’s not a makeup person and she doesn’t use fancy bath stuff and she doesn’t want or need a lot more clothing or shoes. We have all the art supplies we need for quite some time. MC is the sort who would always appreciate more but they have enough toys to keep them busy and they have a bursting wardrobe. They would appreciate being given more things but I can’t think of much they would actually use. YC doesn’t need much more stuff. They have enough to keep my house a constant tripping hazard already. I already rotate baskets of toys in and out of sight because if everything is out it is too overwhelming and just a mess. They would not be impressed by gifts of clothing even though they are the ones who are changing size the most quickly.

I am glad I didn’t get Christmas stuff out super early like I kind of wanted to. YC is breaking a lot of things and that’s feeling stressful. I don’t think things will be up long after Christmas this year. It will be nice to get back to having a lot of empty space in the house. I think I will like Christmas stuff being out more in about three years.

We’ve all been low key sick for the last week and we are all very low energy. It’s a cold, not Covid. Sore throat, barely runny nose, weak ass cough. Mostly just tired. But this year that means absolutely no going to school so EC has been home. After the last few years of starting to shove me away hard for budding independence reasons she has been real cuddly and that’s nice. I get in good snuggles with all three kids a lot these days.

Just plugging along.

On the third day of med trial my body gave to meeeeee

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Very little notice that I am using anything new. I would say that today I felt incredibly close to normal. I feel like I was a little slowed down but in the “I need more sleep and I’m working too hard” sense rather than in the “Holy shit I’m swimming through molasses” sense. I probably feel less of a malaise of depression. Today I was more patient with the kids than I have been on a lot of days lately.

I didn’t do as much exercising as yesterday (only walked 2 miles but I rode my bike almost 5 miles and that didn’t feel hard at all–more than a mile of it was up an extremely steep hill). We went out and picked litter with a group who has been moving around the city trying to help out in different areas every weekend. It was very productive and nice. Gotta meet our local hippie comrades.

I took the pill at 5:30 tonight because 6pm last night didn’t have me feeling sleepy till 9. I also took some pain medication tonight because my back and neck are in full on fuck-you mode and I can’t keep this up.

I don’t know that it is making a big difference in the nerve pain. My hand is still going numb quite easily. My elbow is on fire. My upper arm is numb until you touch it then it tingles and hurts. I can’t reach the wound site to see how tender that is by myself.

Overall I would say that right this minute I think this dosage is not a serious/permanent solution to the problem but the side effect profile is not so bad that I am terrified of upping the dosage to play with it. I am currently taking 10mg and up to 75mg/day is within normal expected range. Apparently it is expected that it might take 6 weeks to be effective as a pain killer. As of this evening I feel very comfortable with being willing to test that long. That’s actually a pretty resounding endorsement from me. Normally 3 days into a drug means I’m already trying to figure out how to get the fuck off it.

So I’d say a C+ or B- right now? I’d like more impact on nerve pain. It could definitely do more for actual depression and anxiety. But it is a start and it’s not a bad start.

And this is all fucking free.

Another day, another chance to record what’s happening

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Med responses are very important to me. I am upset that I have so few written records of my previous drug attempts. Oh, by the way my oldest heard me make a crack about having a hangover from the drug and she flipped out. She thought I was using hard street drugs because I had just run out of cope.

Serves me right for not telling my kids in advance absolutely everything I do with my body I guess?

Today was different. Less exhaustion. I woke up at 4 for a trip to the loo. I didn’t get back to sleep for close to an hour then I was up by 6:30. I took the pill at 7 last night and was asleep by 8:30.

Tonight I took the pill at 6.

Today we had already made plans to go for a walk in the woods with a family who lives about 1.5 miles away from us who are new to home education. They have a 9 year old boy and an 11 year old girl. The two of them both turned up saying that they were hoping for a kid of their gender. I said, “How would a non-binary kid who is not a boy and not a girl who likes to do things regardless of gender fit?” They had about two questions then they both went with it. For the record: that’s where middle kid is at again.

Anyway, I was… more calm than usual? I felt like my brain was slower and on the sluggish side. It was a less pleasant experience than pot but not completely dissimilar? I didn’t have any of the uplift I get from pot but I got a little bit of the “pause” between having a thought and reacting.

My feet are going to sleep ridiculously quickly. If I kneel down to put stuff in a drawer it doesn’t take 2 minutes. Usually I can kneel for 10-15 minutes before my feet fall asleep.

My back has been hurting quite badly all day. Of course I have walked 6.5 miles after it hurt when I woke up. Cause yeah. I carried the littlest home for the final mile because she was utterly wasted.

I’m still having some nerve pain in my arms if I tweak them up to use them in an unusual position. (Putting the baby in the back carrier was a bit festive.) I feel a lot of tightness and general arm unhappiness. I have fairly deliberately not typed much today trying to rest. (Really the last couple of days.)

I have very much wanted to not add more medication to this in the first few days. So I’m not taking anything for the back pain or headache. I want to have a really solid idea of what is coming from the Amitriptyline. Normally I would definitely be medicating for those at this point because it hurts.

I’m having massive time dilation. I can check and see this is the end of the second day. It feels like a lot more than that. I labeled the pill packet with the exact date I am supposed to take each pill because I am worried about taking too much or skipping a day and not noticing.

I am utterly out of patience with the kids but I think that was happening before the meds. Right now it is hard to remember.

In unrelated news: I have 17 books to read in 34 days. Time for some graphic novels (Neil Gaiman’s American Gods 1 & 1). In another day I can finish The Cooking Gene, and I need to sit the kids down and finish Odd Girl Out. That will leave me with 14 books to go. Eep. Maybe my goal was a tad ambitious for this year…