Thirty-seven
I have a vague recollection I posted something about new year goals being to clean the toilets more often last year? Which I've done; having a toddler who doesn't *always* follow one into the bathroom helps there. (Independent play is a marvelous thing! Now she needs more friends...)
Slightly more ambitious goals for this year. After slow/sporadic decline** and months of me saying I really needed to go talk to my doctor about brain chemistry issues, I actually did that. And she said that did sound rather as if I'd run out of my reserves, which is a thing that happens to people sometimes, and here are some options for how to get back to feeling like me. ("and that's not you," she agreed, and asked if it really *was* only a few days a month. And then my brain helpfully started noting all my coping mechanisms as they occurred for the next week...)
**Ridiculous stereotypical PMS for 5-6 months & then I lost the chocolate cravings, but continued to have sporadic & much less tied to hormone cycles bouts of crankiness/depression/crying jags, and failure to deal with other parties in the house being depressive. Not the Megatherium. She remains the happiest of toddlers (when not sick, which she has been for most of the last two weeks, poor kid.) Anyway, there has been too little cope for rather too long.
I may yet schedule some counseling sessions; I have coping mechanisms that work mostly but more are good, however, scheduling & weekdays, ugh. (It did take me an entire month to *get* to the doctor in the first place b/c grauwulf's free days kept being full of dentist & eye doctor appointments, and one of my failure modes is leaving too much time for everything; in the end I cancelled on my scientific monitoring day because I could change out my own conflicts.) For the moment I've gone with meds-- the prescription sort, on the grounds that between that and St John's Wort I'd rather avoid the thing with extreme sun sensitivity in the side effects. Mucking about with brain chemistry is weird & scary (my brain does not work quite like other peoples' in mostly unlabeled ways and that's ok) and I've always been delighted not to have long-term meds, but the main antidepressant is a thing called fluoxetine which slows the rate of serotonin decay rather than adding anything new, and most of the really scary rare side effects are listed as relating to teens or early twenties. It's pretty well studied (it's the thing in Prozac, so not exactly new) and they recommend taking it about nine months & then tapering dosage to prevent recurrence. (I'm a mother; I can do 9 months...) So far if I've had any reactions to the first few days of super-low starter dosage, it has been indistinguishable from the end of this cold the Megatherium gave me.
So, goals!
*Exercise more consistently. I'm not sure what this looks like yet, but have some ideas to try.
*Post here, ideally at least once a week or so? I miss journaling.
*Write at least 3 sentences of fiction, at least any day I don't journal. This may go up if I get back into the swing of things, but this was working pretty well at the beginning of December, so we start back there.
*Have friends. (Correspond, get together with people, possibly find a knitting group or something?? I mean, not that I ever knit. Maybe quilters...? Anyway, I want to have craft days! And tea parties! And go to cons with writer-friends! There has got to be some way to make a little of this happen, even if it's only a few times a year. Sitting here wanting is not it.)
*Enjoy parenting more. We tried co-playing Boom Blocks a couple weeks back, which would have worked better if the Megatherium's hands had been big enough to hold the wiimote & press buttons at the same time, but then I coaxed her outside for a walk the next day by saying we could wander around the neighborhood scouting for things that, were we playing Boom Blocks, we could knock over with the bowling ball. (She wanted to throw pretend bombs at people's houses, but that seemed like a bad idea.) So, this kind of thing: co-operative world exploration & inventing silly games. (also, if anyone has suggestions for toddler-friendly wii games-- I made her a wii fit profile, & lied about her age to get her on, since you can't play if you're under 3, and she liked the balance board, but so far the ordinary controller is just not quite there yet. Maybe something where she can steer with the nunchuck while I point & click at things?)
*Accomplish at least one ridiculously overdue task a week. (Perhaps starting with passports for me & the Megatherium; also wills, though I admit I still have no one even to ask about literary executorship, so I'll theoretically have to do that again later. But making sure that if horrible things happen to grauwulf & me the Megatherium goes to her "and Grandma is my third parent!" rather than the side of the family that doesn't believe in education is something we should have done years ago.) Things of a less bureaucratic and monumental nature are also fair game.
Xposty from dreamwidth.
Slightly more ambitious goals for this year. After slow/sporadic decline** and months of me saying I really needed to go talk to my doctor about brain chemistry issues, I actually did that. And she said that did sound rather as if I'd run out of my reserves, which is a thing that happens to people sometimes, and here are some options for how to get back to feeling like me. ("and that's not you," she agreed, and asked if it really *was* only a few days a month. And then my brain helpfully started noting all my coping mechanisms as they occurred for the next week...)
**Ridiculous stereotypical PMS for 5-6 months & then I lost the chocolate cravings, but continued to have sporadic & much less tied to hormone cycles bouts of crankiness/depression/crying jags, and failure to deal with other parties in the house being depressive. Not the Megatherium. She remains the happiest of toddlers (when not sick, which she has been for most of the last two weeks, poor kid.) Anyway, there has been too little cope for rather too long.
I may yet schedule some counseling sessions; I have coping mechanisms that work mostly but more are good, however, scheduling & weekdays, ugh. (It did take me an entire month to *get* to the doctor in the first place b/c grauwulf's free days kept being full of dentist & eye doctor appointments, and one of my failure modes is leaving too much time for everything; in the end I cancelled on my scientific monitoring day because I could change out my own conflicts.) For the moment I've gone with meds-- the prescription sort, on the grounds that between that and St John's Wort I'd rather avoid the thing with extreme sun sensitivity in the side effects. Mucking about with brain chemistry is weird & scary (my brain does not work quite like other peoples' in mostly unlabeled ways and that's ok) and I've always been delighted not to have long-term meds, but the main antidepressant is a thing called fluoxetine which slows the rate of serotonin decay rather than adding anything new, and most of the really scary rare side effects are listed as relating to teens or early twenties. It's pretty well studied (it's the thing in Prozac, so not exactly new) and they recommend taking it about nine months & then tapering dosage to prevent recurrence. (I'm a mother; I can do 9 months...) So far if I've had any reactions to the first few days of super-low starter dosage, it has been indistinguishable from the end of this cold the Megatherium gave me.
So, goals!
*Exercise more consistently. I'm not sure what this looks like yet, but have some ideas to try.
*Post here, ideally at least once a week or so? I miss journaling.
*Write at least 3 sentences of fiction, at least any day I don't journal. This may go up if I get back into the swing of things, but this was working pretty well at the beginning of December, so we start back there.
*Have friends. (Correspond, get together with people, possibly find a knitting group or something?? I mean, not that I ever knit. Maybe quilters...? Anyway, I want to have craft days! And tea parties! And go to cons with writer-friends! There has got to be some way to make a little of this happen, even if it's only a few times a year. Sitting here wanting is not it.)
*Enjoy parenting more. We tried co-playing Boom Blocks a couple weeks back, which would have worked better if the Megatherium's hands had been big enough to hold the wiimote & press buttons at the same time, but then I coaxed her outside for a walk the next day by saying we could wander around the neighborhood scouting for things that, were we playing Boom Blocks, we could knock over with the bowling ball. (She wanted to throw pretend bombs at people's houses, but that seemed like a bad idea.) So, this kind of thing: co-operative world exploration & inventing silly games. (also, if anyone has suggestions for toddler-friendly wii games-- I made her a wii fit profile, & lied about her age to get her on, since you can't play if you're under 3, and she liked the balance board, but so far the ordinary controller is just not quite there yet. Maybe something where she can steer with the nunchuck while I point & click at things?)
*Accomplish at least one ridiculously overdue task a week. (Perhaps starting with passports for me & the Megatherium; also wills, though I admit I still have no one even to ask about literary executorship, so I'll theoretically have to do that again later. But making sure that if horrible things happen to grauwulf & me the Megatherium goes to her "and Grandma is my third parent!" rather than the side of the family that doesn't believe in education is something we should have done years ago.) Things of a less bureaucratic and monumental nature are also fair game.
Xposty from dreamwidth.