Restorative Weekend at Home

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve had a weekend at home with just me and my Scout-a-Roo.

Even though the Bitch Face Bestie and the Hubby in Law took excellent care of my baby girl while I was gone on vacation, Scout’s been a bit clingy since I’ve gotten home, so I’m sure she’s been appreciating the extra cuddle time.

I meant to get my yard cleaned up a bit for fall, but it’s been cold and drizzly, so I didn’t get any of that done.  Hahaha….ooopsy!  Maybe tomorrow night, the dried up veggie plants can go out with the garbage.

I did however get my kitchen and bathroom scrubbed down and cleaned up!!  It’s amazing…it’s not like it really takes that long once you get down to it, but I just can’t seem to ever motivate myself to do it during the week after I get home from work.  When Momma was here a few weekends ago she was vacuuming for me and declared that I needed to scrub my baseboards.  I don’t ever recall ever scrubbing baseboards at home growing up, but mine are dark and I suppose the dust shows more……..  So, in an effort to be a responsible home owner, I scrubbed all my baseboards and dusted!  Someone should be proud of me!

Friday night was a Halloween housewarming party at BFB and Hubby in Law’s new house!  I was a vodka bottle for the…..second, maybe third……year in a row!  I mean, if the $20 dress still fits you might as well wear it right?!  I decided this year that I would amp up the makeup a bit.  I found an inspiration video online that was a fortune teller…..and I decided to make myself a glamazon of a Svedka bottle!  I’ve included the link because @alyssamarieartistry is amazeballs, and everyone should watch her Halloween look!

Instagram video by Anastasia Beverly Hills • Oct 27, 2016 at 4:01am UTCSee this Instagram video by @anastasiabeverlyhills • 7,942 likesinstagram.com

 

First, you gotta practice…….

Then you just gotta commit and go for it!

The party was so fun, and it was great to get out and see everyone!  Even though I got put to work finishing up decorating when I got there and had to ditch my 5 inch heels…..I’m easily appeased with yummy snacks and some of BFB’s homemade cake!

 

These are my people…..and I love them!

(Also, I’m barefoot in all these pics…..I have a collection of miniature friends!)

I didn’t get any landscaping done this weekend, but I did get dinner made for BFB and the Hubby in Law last night.  I cleaned and workout out yesterday, and then took dinner over to their house so we could all watch Game 4 together with all the fur babies!  I have yet to turn on my heat, so I’ve been relying primarily on my oven to keep the house at a cozy-ish temperature.

Plus, if you wanna talk about restoring your soul, there is nothing better than fresh outta the oven buns with butter.  Life doesn’t get any better than that!  Warm buns will make you happier than anything else ever could!  Buns, corn chowder, grilled cheeses, and bloody marys made for a pretty excellent Saturday night if I do say so!  I’m excited that the weather has started to change so that soup and fresh bread can start making a comeback into my life!

Today has been yoga, coffee, snuggles, and laundry.  It’s been nice to just chillax at home, relax, and recharge.  After vacation is always a stressful time at work because the samples don’t stop arriving because I leave for a few days.  After running around like a headless chicken in the lab all week, relaxing with mugs of coffee and tea while candles burn and Scout snores has been just what the doctor ordered I think!

Hope everyone has been having an excellent, and safe, Halloween weekend!

Slight Delay

No blog this week, I’m on a family vacation with my sister and Momma Mishappenings.

We are enjoying the historical capital of Virginia in Williamsburg, and I’m literally spending all my money in the historic shops!!

Reguarly scheduled blogs will return next week!

The Thing You’re Maybe Not Supposed to Talk About….but I’m Going To!

Since Monday the 10th was World Mental Health Day, I thought I’d talk about something that you maybe aren’t supposed to broadcast to the world……

I, like a ton of people I know, struggle with my mental health.

I don’t mean that I struggle in that…..things don’t always go my way and it makes me sad.

I mean I struggled to the point that it started effecting my ability to function in my everyday life.

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ll know that my family and I have been through our share of struggles.  Beyond the struggles I’ve written about, there are other struggles I’ve dealt with that I’m choosing to keep private for the time being.  As my Momma said the other day, in reference to someone else’s blog, “You don’t have to broadcast everything.”

I know that this is an issue that many people would keep private.  I’m choosing to share because talking to other people is what finally convinced me that the way I was feeling wasn’t normal, it wasn’t ok, and I didn’t have to keep doing it.  If I hadn’t opened up, or had someone tell me I could do something about it, I don’t really know what would have happened.  I don’t mean that cryptically, I just needed some reassurance to take the steps I needed to to help myself feel ‘normal’.

The people who know me best would probably describe me as high strung.  I tend to operate best under a slight veil of panic, sometimes of my own creation because of laziness, but other times because it helps me focus.  My panic/anxiety used to be a tool I used to get things done.  It was what allowed me to power through all night study sessions and essay writing nights in college.  It helped me focus when times got stressful, and I was always the girl you could count on to be standing tough no matter what was happening around me.  I remember my ex being almost stunned when I sat through my father’s funeral dry eyed and stoic.

It’s just how I was…..I wore my panic like a badge of pride.  No matter what was going on around me or how I felt inside I could focus my anxiety into something and that felt like it made everything ok.

Eventually, and slowly, the panic and anxiety started to become something different.  It started to become something that made me fixate on problems and grind away at solutions that were never going to be found.  It made me irritable, and even the smallest inconveniences or issues became the causes of explosive fights or full on melt downs.  I had had phases like this before, so I didn’t think much of it, and just waited for things to get better.  They always had before, so it made sense to wait and that they would again.

Except that this time, they didn’t get better, they got worse.

My panic and anxiety got so bad that it was literally every once of my mental strength everyday to get through the work day without screaming or curling up in a ball and crying. Most of my time spent at home was spent being totally exhausted and drained, and it got to the point that I was having at least one full blown panic attack a day.  I would often cry so hard I would hyperventilate and pass out.  I usually woke up with poor, little Scout standing next to me or licking me, looking very concerned that her momma was being a huge pile of snot and tears all the time.

Food sounded disgusting, so I basically quit eating, or ate very little.  This isn’t at all normal for me….I LOVE ME SOME FOOD!  My rational self knew I needed to eat, but a couple bites of something was all I could stomach at a time.  I kept working out…..at a manic pace…..because that’s what they tell you to do when you have anxiety.  Workout, release the good endorphins, channel your stress into lifting…….we’ve all heard this sort of advice, and generally I’m a bit fan.  Sometimes though, that isn’t enough.

I finally went to my family practice doctor after several conversations with the Chemistry Bestie about my symptoms and the way I had been feeling.  Apparently, my symptoms were classic panic and anxiety….which can be brought on by a number of things.  In my case, they don’t really know why…..and that’s ok.  I was checked for thyroid issues, which can sometimes be the cause of anxiety and weight loss, but everything came back normal.  Apparently, panic and anxiety disorders can reach their apex when people are in their mid to late twenties…..it’s just a thing that can happen to people.

I was put on a low dose of Lexapro, and I have to say that I’m feeling much better.  I feel more like myself, only maybe a better version of myself.  Things don’t stress me out they way they would have before.  I don’t mean that I’m wandering around like a drugged up zombie…..I still have feelings.  I still get sad, happy, angry, frustrated, ecstatic…..everything you want to feel, and somethings you don’t want to feel, about life….I still feel.  I just feel like my lows don’t take me as low, and I feel like I recover from things faster.  When I get annoyed or frustrated with something I still feel it, but it doesn’t ruin my whole day.  Also, because I’m a bit calmer in general, I’m better able to respond to the things that make me frustrated.  I work through challenges better because I’m not always so worked up.

The moral of this story is that admitting you need help, and then getting that help don’t make you a failure as a person nor does it make you any less yourself!  You don’t need to feel like you have to just suffer through things.  You might be surprised who around you is working through their own struggles with mental health, and how much talking about these things can help you.  There’s no reason to hide your feelings.  Who knows, maybe you’ll discover that talking out your feelings and issues is enough, and if it’s not….always remember there are other options to get you back to feeling like yourself!

A Series of Unfortunate Failures

It hasn’t been a great week here at Casa Mishappenings.  For a whole plethora of reasons, this week has just kicked my ass.  Scout was sick, like really quite sick, I’m sick, work was…..challenging.

Here’s a numerical ranking of the ways in which this week has been less than ideal.

• Piles of puppy puke cleaned – 8

• Hours spent reanalyzing and recalculating data at work that the customer decided they didn’t want anyway – 7

• Hours spent in pointless meetings at work when I could have been doing my actual work – 6

• Hours spent upside down….on my head….with a cold….installing baseboard in my bathroom – 5 (Mostly due to the fact that I’m quite sure it would have been faster to remove my toilet and then reinstall it than try to piece together moldings in the tiny toilet nook.)

• Pots of tea made in an attempt to destuff my nose – 4

• Doses of cold medicine taken – 3

• Misfired nails needing to be removed from woodwork – 2

• Drill bits broken off in woodwork never to be seen again – 1

It’s been like the 12 Days of Christmas around here….only with failures!

Some weeks I guess you just can’t win.

Chapter 14 : Naked Burrito Dude

Now that I’m a single twenty something again, I can return to writing about all my dating adventures.  Apparently……this is something that’s frowned upon in relationships.  I’m not sure why, because my past relationships are what shaped me into who am I and brought me to this point in my life.  But, I suppose on the other hand I can understand how being confronted with your person’s past all the time could be awkward.  When you get to be this age, we all know everyone has dated someone else before……we just collectively don’t acknowledge this fact and pretend it’s not a thing that’s happened.  It’s just one of the unwritten laws of being a single twenty something.

 

For this particular chapter, we are going way back on the dating scale.  Back many moons ago when I was merely a middle aged twenty something in search of a quality drunk weekend with friends.  Ok, so I’m still generally in favor of a good old fashioned drinking weekend…..but the point is I was younger and life generally seemed better!

I mean, would you just look at us?!?  Babies!  Infants!  

Blissfully still unaware of how much being an adult can suck.  I had strings of pink tinsel in my hair!!!  So, there I was all done up with a fresh hair cut, dye job, and tinsel……in a silver mini dress….wearing spanx and two bras (to shove the girls way up there fake boob style)…….and 5 inch silver heels.  I’m going to be honest when I saw that plenty of guys talked to me that night, but all of them were short and not really all that great.  I was also the subject of a fight between a married couple at one point because he was sure my boobs were fake, and she was sure they were real.  I’m not sure what happened to them, or how the fight ended….it was sorta weird and I mostly just exited their area.  Things were going along as they do most party nights at a bar, and then up walked Burrito Dude.

I remember taking off my heels and standing in the sawdust at the Saloon 10 to verify the fact that Burrito Dude was taller than me.  I tend to put people through this check before I invest any sorta energy into them…..does that make me shallow?!  It probably does, but to be fair I don’t think it’s changing anytime soon.

I was fairly drunk that night and I don’t remember a ton of details, but I do know that in trying to dance with me, he unzipped my wristlet and sent my poor little slider phone flying across the dance floor where it landed and broke apart.  The phone and I survived the night….barely, and the night ended with Bitch Faced Bestie yelling at Lil B about being a lady because she was sitting on the sawdust covered floor trying to find us a ride home.  We did get a safe ride home, but we still haven’t let her live down “the sawdust event”.

Next day, in the middle of hangover lounging with the BFB, Burrito Dude sent a text asking if I wanted to go to dinner.  I didn’t really want to, as the hangover was becoming pretty real, but I did eventually agree to go with him.  He ate steak tips and I sipped a Diet Coke….I’m sure I was a great date….although I think I probably did munch a couple of his fries.  He went home, I passed out to sleep off the weekend, and drove home the next day not really thinking much of it honestly.

A few weeks come and go and Burrito Dude decides that he wants to come see me.  He does, but I don’t even know what we really did.  I do recall that before he left town we went to Ihop and I had cheesecake pancakes.  I think it must say something about my priorities in life that I remember that I had cheesecake pancakes, but I can’t honestly tell you what he and I even did other than that.

They have chunks of cheesecake in them…..who wouldn’t want these!?!?!

I did end up making a trip back out to the hills Valentine’s Day weekend.  Now, don’t get any ultra mushy, romantic ideas.  I mean I did see him, but mostly I went because The Girls and I had planned to go to a fancy masquerade party.  I don’t think we went…..I think we instead ended up drinking downtown again, as we usually do.  He was in town with his parents for some fundraiser activity, and he ended up driving me and my car back to his house in Rapid City.  I’m pretty sure I passed out in the passenger seat.  (Don’t judge me…I was younger and partied harder back in the day!)

Once again, I don’t think we did anything all that exciting, but at some point he decided we needed food and we went to Qdoba.  Just as I was getting all ready to show my chicken burrito who was boss, he chirped in with the fun fact that if I had gotten a naked burrito bowl I would have saved myself 300 calories.  In response to my dismay at why he would even know that sort of information he replied,

It’s just more calories to work off at the gym.

That was really the beginning of the end for us!  I also ended up making him taco casserole…..which is amazing, and he said it would be better if it had less cheese and sour cream…….(cue cricket noise of shock)…….

The actual end was when he basically kicked me out of his house later that weekend so that he could go skiing.  Nothing says, “I’m into you” like waking a girl up and kicking her out of your house so you can go hit the slopes.  I went to Philly Ted’s, picked up my traditional order of cajun chicken sandwiches to bring home, hit the road, and basically never looked back!

Shortly after me, he met a girl that he still is currently dating.  Actually, I saw them the other weekend when I was out in the hills for the concert weekend with the besties.  I was pretty sure that he didn’t know who I was, but BFB was pretty sure that he did.  Who knows really, but it wouldn’t have worked out anyway.  The only things I remember about hanging out with him was what I ate….and probably he was secretly judging me the entire time.  

……Plus, he’s a cat person….and I’m sure you’ve all figured out by now that I am not a cat person.