Tag Archives: Wellness

Aug23

Weight Watchers. . .hmmm

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Weight Watchers. . .hmmm

I was really expecting bad news this week.  Disappointed in my weight loss so far, despite sticking to the program assiduously, I happened upon some comments on paxilprogress that a lot of people found that their weight stayed on until they passed the one-year mark post-withdrawal.  I kind of resigned myself to just plugging away and hoping for the best.  And this past week, as I’ve been telling everyone ad nauseam here, my sleep has been shot all to heck, which makes me incredibly hungry, especially for carbs.  I tried, but I really didn’t exercise, and a couple of days I just didn’t even bother to track points, I was so out of control.

Still, I lost a pound this week.  I guess I’m burning off weight through rapid heartbeat.  I wonder if we could market it as the “Scared Silly” weight loss plan?

Aug22

ADD Upside. . .

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ADD Upside. . .

So last night, I decided to take the sleeping pill before lying down, but my busy brain had other plans for me. The thoughts were tumbling all over each other. I tried concentrating on the hum of the A/C unit, but it was like trying to turn on a table fan to cover up the loud party noise in the upstairs apartment. I tried a meditative technique – allow the thought, then let it go. But after I let it go, it called all its brothers and sisters and cousins and told them the grill was fired up and there was free beer in the fridge. Well, at least I’m prepared if I ever get any Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to the door early on a Saturday, I’ve figured out how to draft the pattern for my skirt and hidden purse for the renaissance faire, and remembered which box a particular piece of fabric is in. . .it went on for hours. *sigh*

One of the thoughts that occupied some time, though, was that this busy, busy train of thought that makes connections all over the place has served me well in not only learning things, but teaching what I know to other people. It’s sort of like super-mnemonics (for people who can’t remember anything with mnemonics. Go figure.). I always did well with languages, because they had obvious connections to one another, and in English as well as in Romance languages, I can very often figure out a word or phrase I’ve never seen before because it has connections to words/phrases/etymological roots in the language it’s in, or another I know. I always said I learned more in my German class than I did in my English classes, and now I understand that by taking German and Latin and Spanish and French, I was strengthening my knowledge of all of them by connecting them together. Once I’m teaching Spanish, this will come in very handy. In the beginning, when I started sewing, I did it to save money or to have something specific, like a long pale blue concert dress. It was a functional thing I did. But once I started to teach myself pattern drafting, and researched and learned the way my sewing machine worked, it started to make connections with other things, and even with itself. I never connected why the pattern markings were where they were, but then suddenly – this is where the armscye curves diverge, this marks the front and the back on nearly symmetrical pattern pieces, here’s a good place to alter, here’s a not-so-good place because you need to fool with other pieces, this is where the body curves in, this is where it curves out. . .and once I learned how the sewing machine made a stitch, I could thread any machine you put in front of me, and knew exactly why the take-up lever was the most important part to keep an eye on (stop sewing when it’s down, the next stitch pulls the thread out from the needle. If the thread comes out of the take-up lever during stitching, the thread doesn’t get pulled back up and you end up with a birds-nest of thread under the throat plate that might permanently damage your machine, and definitely messes up whatever you’re sewing!). As a result, I was able to teach my beginning sewing students how to find their bust points and make cup size adjustments, and I always started my classes by taking the machine apart and showing my students how it worked. Everyone who attended all the classes walked out with finished projects that fit, we had very few machine mishaps, and lot of people came back for more classes.

I also understand different learning styles, and being able to make connections meant that if I had a student who needed to do it herself to learn it, I’d see and walk her through as she worked. If a student needed pictures, I drew. If someone needed it explained, I could think of different ways to explain something if the first one didn’t take. And yeah, thinking through this stuff caused a lot of sleep loss, but it served a purpose in the end.

So. . .am I tired? Yes. Am I wishing for that doorbell to ring early on a weekend so I can argue religion? Heck, no. . .but I am looking forward to going to the sewing table today and having everything already worked out in my head so I’m less likely to make mistakes and waste time.

Aug21

Shopping Does Not Help My Mood

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Shopping Does Not Help My Mood

Paxil (known as PaxHell among people who quit taking it) is probably the worst thing in the world to me now. I’d even go back to smoking if it would help the withdrawal. Last night, I decided once again to give sleeping without a pill a try. Bad idea. You see, if I take a sleeping pill before I go to sleep, I can fall asleep despite the heart palpitations. If I fall asleep despite them without a pill, I wake up within 10 minutes with not only the heart palpitations, but rapid heartbeat as well. So that’s what happened last night. So I took a Sonata after I was so rudely awakened, but the palpitations were so bad, I felt like I was going to re-enact William Hurt’s famous chest-popping scene from Alien. Except that my neck, back, and face would also explode along with my chest. I had been lying there wishing for sleep for an hour, hubby was asleep beside me (unlike me, he lies down. He falls asleep. He wakes up the next morning well rested. I don’t know how people do that.), which made it even worse, because my upper torso was still throbbing violently away at about 125 beats per minute, and the sleeping pill had made me more drowsy than I started off, but hadn’t put me to sleep. Damn him for sleeping when I couldn’t! (These thoughts are not uncommon, I’ll betcha, when you’ve been sleep deprived like this every single day for more than eight weeks. . .) I picked up my pillow and retreated to the family room, where the lack of a bedside clock and the white noise of the room a/c unit would surely help.

So, yeah, I did manage to fall asleep in there eventually, got up at 6 to visit the bathroom and take my synthroid (pills. . .grrr.) and went back to the family room to sleep. Hubby calling on the phone woke me around 8 or so, and I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t.

Well, during breakfast, I commenced my usual routine. Take a bite. Sneeze. Go get a tissue and wash hands. Pick up food. Put down food. Sneeze. Go get a handful of tissues and wash my hands. Finally finish breakfast and go take an allergy pill. Suddenly, it occurs to me – my allergies aren’t this bad in the Family Room, only in the rest of the house with central air (which we’ve been keeping on regardless of the weather because my outdoor allergies have been hellish down here. . .) I pull out the filter, after I manage to find it. The 30-plus year old furnace/blower gave me no easy clues as to where it was, and I took off the wrong part, which requires far more muscle than I have to put back, so now it’s kind of hanging there. I measure. 18 by 30 inches. Add to the shopping list.

Finally managed to get the laundry hung up and a new load started, and took Daughter #2 shopping. We hit Target, in the hope of finding her some shoes that would go with her Renaissance Faire outfit. Problem is, she’s very picky and has specific tastes and is not particularly adaptable, and has mixed these things up for quite some time (something that is not her taste will be “uncomfortable”, and she’s not willing to let shoes stretch out, for example. . .) Other problem is, her tastes precluded her from picking any of the half dozen shoes that would have passed for Renaissance-y, and she was instead drawn to the boots and the patent leather pumps. We did finally find a compromise, but not before I was about to let her decide between barefoot or sneakers. I hoped beyond hope that Target would also have furnace filters and high-potency wasp killer, but no go. Fortunately, it’s a brief walk across the parking lot to Lowe’s, where they did have the bug spray, but only one kind of filter that would fit our odd size blower.

Let me tell you about this filter. . .it’s just like the one we have. And it’s so convenient! Cut to fit!!!!! Then all you have to do is unscrew the ancient aluminum frame, open it up, wedge each side of the filter into the little tiny rough open edge of the aluminum, repeating multiple times, as the last side you squeezed in comes out as soon as you start wedging in the next. Then screw it back together, wedge in the parts that came loose while you were screwing it together, remove all items that block the doorway next to the furnace because the filter is just as wide as the space between the furnace and the edge of the door, and try to slide the rough-surfaced aluminum frame into the rough-surfaced aluminum slide and fit the furnace pieces back together!! And as far as filtering out allergens? Well, if I were allergic to small alien spacecraft, this would definitely do the trick. It’ll filter out any allergen you can see with the naked eye. Thank goodness for online shopping. The super anti allergen filter size I need is manufactured, and I could even comparison shop, so in a few days I can put in a filter that filters and doesn’t ruin the last few pristine millimeters of my manicure putting it in.