stepping outside of my head for a moment to ponder rice

I think too much. Therefore I have too many thoughts.  A perpetual frenzy of mostly nonsense sprinkled with smart bits, ping-ponging around in my cranium 100% of my waking time.

So I have decided to lose my mind for awhile, with intent.

This occurred to me recently as I spent a solid hour in one of the most brutal full blown panic episodes I’ve had, while driving home from an enjoyable dinner with former work buddies.  Although I knew it was “just” panic and nothing else, as I always know, I couldn’t rationalize it away, as I never can.  And none the tools in my emergency panic toolbox were working.  I couldn’t take the usual Rx since I’d had a small bit of alcohol.

I did deep slow breathing and cowboyed my way through hell on the freeway.

On the fast downside of the roller coaster, my head chants “It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad, it is really getting very bad …”  Adrenalin rushes in to fight the bully.   I begin to  imagine I cannot feel my legs anymore, I will not be able to accelerate or brake when I need to.   I don’t know for sure if my hands are still on the steering wheel, even when I can see them there, since I know my mind can play tricks of the wickedest order.   I wonder if I am actually still conscious.  I become more terrified, more terrorized.  More adrenalin.  More and stronger physiological symptoms. The bully is growing, bigger and meaner.  More panic.  More adrenalin.  More, more.

,On the slower upside of the roller coaster, I have periods where I can think more clearly, probably just from exhaustion, a mental time-out.  Tears come.  I’m still in panic but the bully has backed off momentarily, no doubt gathering strength for the next round.

During these sort of “quiet terror”  periods, I search the day’s events for potential triggers.  Still driving, not quite sure I’m still driving.

The workday preceding dinner that evening had been normal, non-stressful, even fun. I am working in a great job in a great company. Nothing there to rev up the anxiety motor to a 50,000 RPM attack, probably.  Unless it had something to do with the foos-ball games that happen twice daily, at noon and 5:00 pm, right next to my cube.  (I kid you not. Foos-ball, vintage machine even.  I like listening to the flipping of the plastic men, the banging of the metal poles that bayonet through the plastic men and make them flip and spin, and the slamming of the ball that has to get wherever it is supposed to go to earn whoever a point,  and the good-natured, competitive but mostly curse-less banter of my co-worker players.  I have even brought in my portable sound system to give them a soundtrack for the game from time to time.  If they get to make noise in the office, I get to play Tower of Power. What Is Hip.  Live Version).

Aside:  I have asked the company owners to add a ping-pong table and a vintage Pac-Man machine to round out the Arcade Department of our open-floor-plan office.  Next I will volunteer to be Arcade Department Head.

Another aside:  At our company, there is beer on tap and wine in the break room, and a liquor bar in one owner’s office.  This is a small company in California on the 2nd floor of an inconspicuous office building in mid-town Sacramento.  The first floor of the building is occupied by a real estate agency, no doubt perturbed by the foos ball banging around while they are trying to do escrows or whatever they do down there.  Which may explain why the real estate agency people keep stealing our parking spaces out back.  Out of spite.  Out back, incidentally, is an alley, and on the other side of that, directly behind our building, someone is building a Beer Garden restaurant.  A Beer Garden that we can overlook, while holding beers we got from our break room.  So we can be drinking beer at work for free while watching the Beer Garden customers pay for their beer and look up at our building in annoyance,  wondering what the f is all of that banging around on the 2nd floor in the building across the alley and why do the people up there get to have Beer in their cubes.  Maybe they will want to come  and contribute to our profit sharing by buying beer from us.  Maybe even play us in a foos ball tournament.  And Pac Man and ping-pong as well , if I get the promotion to Arcade Department Head.

Back to the panic — dinner after work had been in a well-known, around-for-ages downtown Sacramento icon of a beautiful old Chinese restaurant, featuring fabulous food, half of an adult beverage, and energetic and interesting conversation with known-quantity, non-scary people in a non-scary quantity of four including me.

…. fabulous food was Chinese chicken salad, walnut something shrimp, kung pao chicken, sweet and sour something, soup maybe?  , and brown rice. Remember the rice part even if you don’t remember the rest of the menu.

… the half of an adult beverage was half of a mai tai.  Against my personal company medication policy, yes,  but i let it get very watered down and i nursed the half drink for the entire evening.

… conversation was with women i had worked with and admired and enjoyed for various reasons.

So later, in my car, an interminable one hour drive home, on the upside of the roller coaster, full terror subsiding just enough so I can reflect.  Fabulous food included some sweet stuff and rice.  The Mai Tai was, although watered down, sweet, and alcoholic. The conversation was animated and stimulating.  About 30 minutes before we left the restaurant, I began to feel the jitterbugging in my toes, the start of the weirdness — soon after, on the freeway on-ramp, heart racing, limbs tingling, shallow breathing, minor vertigo.

So here is where the panic started I’m pretty sure:  the rice.  Overload of carbs against insulin resistance.  Heart races in response to my little tiny insulin supply trying to beat up the big grizzly bear rice.  Tiny bit of alcohol, but enough to light a flambe on the panic sauce.  Sensory overload – my neurotransmitters encountering about 30 minutes more of stimulating conversation than they can normally handle.

All of this == physiology.  My psyche was the responder, not the instigator. This realization has set me on a new course — absolutely minimal sugar, no starches of any kind whatsoever — limiting refined sugar to my first oh so good and necessary cup of coffee in the morning.  lotsa lotsa water.  salad/veggies and protein for lunch, same for dinner if I have any.  protein smoothes with unsweetened almond milk.  all that stuff they have told me to do to lose weight on a low carb plan, coincidentally.

Followed this for a few days and felt pretty good for me.  Then test drove the concept and deliberately relapsed — had a half Subway sandwich a few days ago.  Did not have a very strong reaction but I definitely felt uncomfortable, with a twinkling of anxiety following soon after I ate.  I went directly to Clonazepam.

Flicker of an Ah-hah, maybe.  So I’m continuing the experiment. — not focused at all on the weight loss aspect,  just on the keeping the motor running, well hydrated and without spikes in blood glucose.

But also keeping Clonazepam close by..

btw, I am off all SSRIs completely — no Paxil for over a year.  Tried Pristiq, no.  Tried Celexa, no.  So I know my serotonin levels are going haywire but the water and diet thing seems to be enough stabilization to pursue.

The moral to this story — eat rice, go crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

I love science. except when it is gooey and smelly.

I have my very own Museum of Natural History right here in my home.
Normal people might call it a refrigerator.
I discovered the Museum when I started to clean the fridge, after I came home this afternoon with brand spanking new groceries. And found an ancient Museum artifact taking up the space where I wanted the brand spanking new eggs to go.
The complete evolution of food —
1. Real food = future expiration date. Or, I’m sure it’s still food because I just put it in there yesterday.
2. Questionable food = past expiration date but not quite ancient history. Yet. This category includes what might be considered real food except it is elk meat, or fish with heads/eyeballs intact. Expiration date notwithstanding. Whatsoever.
3. Produce that has composted. Inside the fridge. Which is a phenomenon worthy of a museum, since normal planets require heat to make compost.
4. Ancient history food = still looks something like food but only because it is petrified. Expiration date > 3 yrs ago.
5. Bug corpses. I count them as food since there are lizards in the kitchen who would consider them food.
6. Unrecognizable congealed globs of brown, mossy green and black liquid. Or, basically, the lowest form of food. Or, basically, how all living things end up.

remedecorating part 1

this is sort of like remedial decorating — or me-redecorating — or something.

for the past few months i have been working on my cosmetic fixer of a home.  well, it was advertised as a cosmetic fixer when I bought it 17 years ago.  since then,  in the entire 17 years, i have pretty much done nothing toward any fixing, cosmetic or otherwise, except paint a few walls and replace two rooms-worth of crawly-thing-and-dirt-haven carpet with laminate.

so now, a real estate ad for my home would probably describe it as cosmetic fixer of a house-corpse-in-full-rigor, laid out on the autopsy table badly in need of removal and/or rearrangement of its smelly and crawly insides.

i am determined to keep this house until I myself am beyond life as we know it.   so something must be done before i get so fed up with the beyond-shabby (and sans chic)  ambience that i will skip the house autopsy altogether and go straight to cremation.

part of the reason for not doing much with the house is that i am afraid of tools and hardware.  aka “not mechanically-inclined”.   or, more accurately, mechanically-a-danger-to-myself-and-any-nearby-misfortunates …

… so much so that it takes an Act of God for me to replace a burnt out lightbulb.   it takes a whole separate Act of God for me to buy new lightbulbs to replace the burnt-out ones.   which happens after yet another whole separate A of  G  – cowboying me to the grocery store.

these Acts must be way low on God’s priority list considering the state of my home’s present light bulb operational readiness.  which is Not.  which is OK.  because too much light hurts my eyes. and i have a miner’s headlamp when i need to see something.

i kid you not.  meet my favorite light source.

i console myself for this lack of mechanical/hardware skill by reminding myself of my nice penmanship, which requires knowledge and application of pens and inks.  which are sort of tools, and i am not afraid of them.

and i can use a sewing machine.  i am not afraid of fabric or thread.  as long as I just have to sew straight lines, like for quilts.  Quilts don’t scare me either, unless I am trying to finish one as a gift in a hurry, like two months after its birthday deadline.

Jan’s Waterfall – for my mommy

next up … part 2

more Autumn … to-do lists can be fun, too

… as long as they don’t contain too much to actually do.

I am a gifted to-do list-maker.   I write to-do lists that list the to-do lists that I need to write.

Lately I am spending a lot of time looking around my farm and writing conceptual to-do lists of all the maintenance that [1]  I should be thinking about and [2]  that I should be writing the actual executable to-do lists for, that will list the actual to-dos needed to prep the farm for winter.      Usually, nothing actually comes from all of this looking and thinking and writing, but I give myself brownie points for walking around and looking at possible future when-I-am-good-and-ready farm chores.   I also give myself brownie points for having nice handwriting.

The problem is that I am a bit dyslexic when it comes to accurately writing down what I am actually seeing.

what my eyes see:  (barn needs cleaning and repair)

what I write down:

seen:  (horse-bent gate needs to be put back on its hinges)  (and turkey needs to be put in the freezer for Thanksgiving)

written:

I don’t know what it  is about autumn.   Perhaps my maternal instinct, which has never wanted anything What-So-Ev-Er to do with any actual human children, foresees the cold and wet and mud involved with winter caretaking of large outdoor-style creatures, and prefers to ignore them and care for some little indoor-style creatures inside, where it will be slightly warmer and/or not quite as wet and muddy as outside.

winter chore things

Or, more likely, my version of maternal instinct does not even wish to care for little indoor creatures as much as just to pile them in furry stacks on the bed to serve as extra pillows.  (Aside:  I don’t need them for warmth.  I am and always have been, change of life notwithstanding, Way Too Hot.   I  build a fire in my woodstove just to add cozy visual ambience to my knitting/reading nest in the living room.  The rest of my house stays at the same comfortable temperature as the one in the magic ice cube-making compartment in my fridge.)

Or my maternal instinct does desire the pitter patter of tiny feet.  Galloping in fours at top puppy- or kitten-speed away from me when I am trying to catch them to show them Pee Pee Outside or Pee Pee In The Box, depending on the young’un’s Genus.  After they have Pee Peed Inside Anywhere They Feel Like for the third time inside of 30  minutes.

Cuatro and some kitten or other

Reminds me to add something to the fall chore to-do-someday list.

There was a time a few years ago when there were usually not less than 5 animals in my bed at bedtime.  Not counting me.

I kid you not.  Meet my bed.

this is why German Shepherd Dogs are considered one of the smartest canine breeds.   the Febreze was Cuatro’s idea.

I slept so well then.  Now, with only one dog with the athletic ability to jump on my bed without assistance, and one cat who graces the very foot of my bed only now and then, and only when that dog, her favorite,  is snoring comatose nearby, I don’t sleep well at all.

So, I’m thinking  two or three kittens and a puppy should do it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cisco, the best dog that ever graced my planet, with yet another some kitten or other.

welcome Autumn! or not.

I live on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, north central California.   Near Sacramento but far enough away that I can tell people I live ” in the Sierra foothills”  or perhaps the more historically exotic-sounding “near Coloma,  you know, Sutter’s Mill, where the California Gold Rush got started.”

It is the beginning of October, which means Autumn is just around the corner.   But not here.   Here,  it could be four more weeks of Too Freaking Hot Still, followed by Skipping Autumn Altogether,  directly to the Mother Of All Storms that will launch our Winter (aka Just Rain), leaving me without power and water for a few days and having me daydreaming about living in a tidy little condo with a garage and prefab landscaping maintained by someone not named Carol,  that has year round electricity and running water, and fewer opportunities for field rodent corpse pieces to find their way into my shoes.  And fewer games of lizard soccer played in my kitchen by some of my outdoor barn cats who sneak  indoors somehow during the wee hours with a soon-to-be-soccer-ball lizard buddy (scratch scramble scramble *thud*  scratch scramble scramble *thud*).  And fewer skunks following my barn cats into the kitchen to watch the game and help themselves to the inside cats’  leftovers.

I kid you not.  Meet Flower.

what’s one more cat?

Which brings me to my upcoming annual one week Autumn (or not) vacation from my day job.   This vacation will be spent cleaning house (scrubbing the kitchen floor of lizard remains-stains), doing farm prep for winter, riding a lot, working on The Book,  and of course, working incognito at my day job, since I have to take vacation to get time away from work so that I can caught up on my work.

home, when there is Autumn

Weird Math #1: Hell * 6 = Xanax + Bailey’s

Hell #1.  The Grocery Store, after work, after the Hell that is my typical Monday at work.

Hell #2.  The line with three persons ahead of me at the Pharmacy Counter, Person #1 of which having ten I-kid-you-not prescriptions to pick up, nine for himself and one for his mother.

Hell #3.  Slow, cranky Pharmacy Tech who, after pacing in front of the fax for six minutes, still can’t find Person #1’s Mother’s Rx that was supposedly faxed over from her MD’s office three hours ago.  Until she finally decides to ask the PharmD, who tells her the Rx has already been filled and it is “… right where it is supposed to be, didn’t you check the status?”  No.  She was busy at the fax.

Hell #4.  Person #3, who can’t speak English.  Fortunately, my Spanish is now good enough to make me an okay translater.  Unfortunately, Hell #3 is now even slower and crankier, and pretends not to understand any English either.   Me:   “He just wants to know how long it will take to fill his prescription.  Should he leave it and come back for it later, or should he wait here?”   Hell #3:  “What do you mean?”

Me to Person #3:  “Lo siento, pero pienso que tal vez debe llevar su prescripcion a otra farmacia.”

Hell #5.  Me now at the Pharmacy Counter for my own Rxs, starting to get The Symptoms after being asked by Hell #3 for my last name for the second time.    Fortunately, one of the Rxs I have been waiting in line for will be in my bloodstream very shortly, I remind myself, over and over, while my right foot’s big toe is doing the jitterbuggy thing it starts doing when it’s time for it to start warning me that doom is just around the corner.

Hell #6.  The grocery store cashier who, not his fault that I’m way Way past the point of no return now, asks me not once but three I-kid-you-not times while ringing up my groceries “Would you like help out?”  On Time #3, I respond  “No, thank you.  No help, just OUT.  And if you ask me once more if I want help out, you are the one who is going to need help.”