SNL

So I'm Not Nuts

I saw the shrink yesterday and told him, "I may be out of my mind, but when I take Mucinex DM, I feel FANTASTIC! It's amazing! Am I nuts?" He explained that no, I wasn't nuts. The (hang on, gotta look it up...) Dextromethorphan (yeah, that was a TOTAL copy & paste there) drives up the levels of Prozac and Strattera in my system and takes priority over the enzymes in my liver. What that means is my liver concentrates on metabolizing (breaking down) the Dextromethorphan (copy & paste again), and leaves my Prozac and Strattera alone in the meantime. More Prozac and Strattera in my systems equals happy happy and focused focused. So lest I have to take cough medicine every day, he increased my Prozac and Strattera. And I must say that today, I feel fan-fucking-TASTIC!

He doubled my Strattera to 240 mg, which surprised me because he said a typical adult dose is between 60-80 mg. He's a very "let's do this tiny bit by tiny bit so you're not taking more than you need" kind of doctor. But hey, I feel fan-fucking-TASTIC, so I DON'T CARE!!

He gave me beaucoup samples and a new drug (Nuvigil) that's supposed to help with alertness and concentration. We're only going to test that one out if I can't get the concentration levels I want with the 240 mg of Strattera. So that's something to think about.

All in all, it was a good visit. I hadn't seen him in 2 years. I talked to him for an hour. It was like catching up with an old friend. I <3 my shrink.

Good Enough

I've been in a funk for the past week. Lots of stress. Wee, fun. But I had also begun to become optimistic about something I've wanted for a long long time, and decided to go for it. Then, of course, something happened and it left me wondering if I'd be good enough for what I wanted. I wondered if I ever had been before or ever would be.

I know I'm fabulous. Or at least that's what I tell myself. I do it in the hopes hearing it often enough will make me think it's actually true. I'm going to have to start saying it a lot more.

I've started to withdraw again, spend a lot of time alone. Of course, in doing that, I have nobody else telling me how fabulous I am. I have to rely on me, and I lie a lot.

I suppose I need to scoot to the shrink and get my meds adjusted and force myself to go out more often. I'm even back to considering a part-time job again. It'll give me something to do, something to keep me busy. And give me money, too. The only downside is the ones I want to do start out at minimum wage. Nothing builds your self-esteem than someone saying, "A monkey can do this job, so we're only going to pay you as little as we can get away with."

In any case, I'll just keep plugging along.

The Memory of a Goldfish

They say the memory of a goldfish is 30 seconds. So, if it's in pain, it feels like it's been in pain its entire life. If it's hungry, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think my brain is that retentive.

So, I'm thinking about starting a chart, detailing my day - what I ate, how I felt, what was going on - so I can sit back later and look for patterns. I said the same thing about tracking my poops, and that lasted exactly 3 days. All I had to do was color a box in a spreadsheet. This 'track everything' thing? Doesn't look good from the outset. But it's a nice 30 second thought.

Just a Second

I found myself looking through my blog the other day. Not quite sure why, but I was struck by the length of the entries. Ever since I got on that time sucker (although I do love it) Facebook, I've kept my writing to 420 characters or less - the maximum you can have in a status update. I refuse to join Twitter, because then I'd be down to 140, or whatever it is.

I'm not sure if I like that sort of fast food writing or not. It's fun to keep up with people, but it's a dangerous habit to slip into. And all that time it's sucked? It could be spent doing more fruitful things.

When I stopped reading books for awhile and kept my reading limited to magazines and the back of cereal boxes, my attention span changed. It took forever to get through a book when I started picking them up again. I could only read a page or two at a time before I had to put it down for a break. I had to cut myself off from the 'junk food' material and learn to enjoy a full course meal all over again.

Now I find myself wanting to write something that will take a bit of space and a bit of wording to do right. I'm not writing the novel I'll spend years and years trying to get published like 90% of other 'writers' online (although I have profound respect for people who can take the time and have the persistence for that). I want to write something personal and not easily explained. I need to get in the habit of drawing out the details so I can say to someone, "This is how I feel. This is what it means to me," and not have to worry about what I've left out or glossed over.

Another issue is the grammar. Good grief, the grammar. I don't know what was so different about the school system I was put through - it was public school in a middle class area - but oh, the things that drive me crazy! "They're" for "their", "your" for "you're" - they're NOT interchangeable. They each have their own meaning and deserve to be used properly. Call me a language snob, I don't care, but I need to get back to reading and writing intelligent things.

I have my own 'daily' version of the English language. I have my own way of saying things that are hick and not proper. But at least I know it when I do it. The other day, I caught myself saying something, and I honestly did not know if it was grammatically correct. It terrified me.

So, in addition to changing my eating habits (more on that on my Weighing In blog), I'm going to try and change my writing habits, as well. I won't give up the junk food communication, but I will enrich my life more.

She's Baaaack...

I'm starting a new blog, www.nickifranceshome.blogspot.com. It's about the rehab of my childhood home, and will have pictures. Pretty pictures to go along with pretty words!!! OK, actually, the first pictures won't be pretty at all, but they get better.