This one is brutal.

I feel like this post needs a disclaimer. I'm having a bad day. I've been having a bad week, maybe. I've got a ton of negativity building up in my head and I need to get it the hell out of there. This is the kind of shit that goes on in my head when I'm feeling low. I haven't edited my thoughts or feelings in the slightest. This is how I choose to go to therapy. Maybe if I spew it all out some of it won't come back. Don't be concerned for my well being, it's not like that. Welcome to the inner sanctum. It's a weird place.

I have to get some of this garbage out of my head. It's just rattling around in there. It's making me bonkers. And lately everything has been making me bonkers. My interactions with people annoy me and tire me. Functioning as a normal human being takes IMMENSE effort. The only thing I REALLY want to do is stay at home and snuggle my cats. I can't find motivation to do much of anything and that's starting to be a bummer because I have a ton to do. And then at work today one of the pharmacists checking my work questioned what I did and in this case I KNOW I was right, but suddenly three other pharmacists ganged up on me and started a diatribe of questions designed to render my argument invalid and when they couldn't do that they claimed they'd never heard of what I was referring to. Not that they WOULD because  they don't ever actually HANDLE the drugs and therefore wouldn't know how to properly prepare it. Trust me, you'd be surprised. And this has left me in a funk. Replaying the scene over and over again in my head. Questioning myself, thinking of what else I could have said to prove my case and feeling like they were all snickering at me behind my back or at least thinking me out of place for arguing my point and defending my choice. As though I should have conceded to them because they have the higher degree, so by default they're always right.

And now I'm pissed off because my brain is wired this way. I desperately want things not to bother me. I desperately want not to feel so incredibly mortified and humiliated all the time.


I think I must have always felt like an outsider. I've always felt hideously misunderstood. I can't think back to a time where I didn't feel that way. I can remember instances as far back as first grade when I felt odd or had it pointed out to me by my classmates that I was different. Weird. That did go away for awhile in my late teens and early twenties. I found a group of people that seemed to really like me and understand me and all of a sudden I was on the inside. Years of being on the outside looking in and finally I was on the inside. Then the inside started to feel....claustrophobic. Something shifted and suddenly, I wasn't on the inside anymore. I lost that fearless, happy feeling. Maybe I'm remembering it with too much nostalgia, but I do remember being confident and afraid of very little. I also remember some histrionic personality, quirks, but whatever. Those have either mellowed out or I have learned how to better deal with them. Ever since I lost that feeling, I feel like I've reverted back to my childhood. I feel like people don't take me seriously as an adult. I feel insecure and scared a lot.

I had the unfortunate experience of being a very sensitive child raised in a time when such things were not considered important to address. It was REALLY easy to hurt my feelings. I don't feel like I ever learned how to interact with people on a normal, casual level. Everything was a slight or had a hidden meaning. In the 80's people didn't really do much for people with personality issues, I think a lot of kids I knew would have been considered to be on the autism spectrum if that had been a thing back then, but as it was you were basically told to get your shit together and behave or suffer the consequences. I think I could have benefited from talk therapy at an early age. Maybe if I had dealt with my feelings of loneliness and misunderstanding at an early age I wouldn't be in the head space I'm in now. Which is:

Disagreements with people torment me.
My unintended bad actions and words haunt me for months.
When I feel like people either don't like me, or I've made a mistake somehow, I avoid people for months.
I always think people are saying nasty things about me behind my back.
It takes an abnormally long time for me to be able to trust people.
I feel like my closest family members don't really understand me.
I don't think people genuinely like me. I feel like they think I'm difficult.
I don't feel like I can actually change the way my brain works or better my life.
I'm always lonely, but I don't have the energy to make plans and being around too many people is exhausting.
I feel like I spend my whole life skating on thin ice and getting by by the skin of my teeth.
I feel like I'll never find anyone that really loves me and I don't deserve to.
I feel too tired to do anything about it.


I know this is my head being a douche bag, I get it. Brain weasels are a bitch. Mine have burrowed pretty deep. I mean, I guess I'm depressed. I should probably see a therapist, but I don't believe that will help and I don't want to take drugs that alter my brain chemistry. It's also expensive and I don't really trust people, so I imagine myself sitting there being asked inane questions with my arms crossed, saying nothing.

There. I Think that's everything.

My day in Photos

So, I was tooling around blogspace on Tuesday morning and stumbled across a blog in which occasionally the writer decided to share her day with her readers in black and white photos taken once an hour. I thought it was a really cute idea. I also thought some of my far away friends might enjoy seeing what I'm up to these days, so last Tuesday I took a picture every hour (well, almost) that I was awake. This is a typical Tuesday for me this semester. 

8:00 wake up. I spend a smidgen of time in bed, with my heated mattress pad surfing the internet. It's where I wish I could stay all day. Having stuff to do is bullshit.

9:00 am: Searching the interwebs for Christmas gift ideas, coffee cup in hand. The one good thing the cleanse did for me was wean me off the MASSIVE quantities of caffeine I was drinking. I adore the taste and find the act of drinking it comforting, so it's never going away, but the heart palpitations stopped. I consider that a win. 

10:00 am. Loki, my little buddy. Loves his Mama and would sit on my lap all damn day if he could. He basically meows at me until I make room for him.

11:00 am. Finally getting around to breakfast, poached eggs are my new favorite thing to make. 

12:00 pm. Getting in a little bit of studying before I have to run off to class. Aerosol medication delivery. Fascinating.

1:00 pm. Getting dressed for class. You get a selfie. Lucky people. 

2:00 pm. So freaking cold outside. The bus is strangely empty today, although after this TWO people in rascals got on the bus. I was kind of hoping a third rascal driver would try to get on, just to see how that would work out. 

3:00 pm. Respiratory lab. Today we'll be learning how to give nebulizer treatments. 

4:00 pm. Taking notes. There's a quiz in lecture tonight. 

5:00 - 7:00 pm. This is my sorry I was too busy to take a photo face. Lab/Lecture. Completely forgot. Which, I guess is a good thing. I was paying very close attention.

8:00pm I remembered to take a photo while I listened to lecture. I forget what NIV is....guess I'm going to have to go look that up. Whoopsy. 

9:00pm. Making the VERY chilly trek home. Gots my Irish hat on. Bought that one in Ireland.

10:00 The view on my street. It'd be a lovely night if it wasn't so cold. I really like this picture. 

10:00 pm, still. Hey! It's a freebie photo of me watching youtube videos before bed. Love Jenna Marbles. 

11:00. Bed time. Finally. Did I mention I have a heated mattress pad? It's pretty much the best ever. Did I mention I never wanted to get out of it? Right. Sorry. It's just REALLY great. 

Welp, there you have it. Every Tuesday, I do the same thing. I just wish I didn't have that whole pesky class thing. I'd love to spend a few days at home doing absolutely nothing, but watching Netflix and drinking coffee. Being an adult can be SUCH bullshit sometimes. Booo. I hope you liked! Until next time....

Cleansing...Why am I doing this again?

This might be one of the worst ideas I ever had. No, seriously. Day 1 I tried to prep all my stuff. I was so good. I ate only vegetables. I developed a terrible headache. The worst one I've ever had. Then I made it 3/4 through the day on Wednesday only to completely lose my shit at dinner. I fell off the wagon HARD. Let's be realistic, I threw myself from that wagon. I decided to get back on, so I modified the cleanse. I added hummus and beans and more chicken than I was supposed to be allowed to eat. That was much easier to adhere to. Then last night and this morning I've been wondering why I'm torturing myself like this because it feels like torture. All these delicious foods SO CLOSE to me and yet, I can't consume them. Then I got on the scale this morning and I'm down 2.7 pounds. My heart palpitations from too much caffeine have stopped. I'm not sure if I feel more energized because all I think about is food. I guess SOMETHING good is happening. It's supposed to be 7 days, but I think I can stick it out until dinner on Sunday night. My job is having an early holiday dinner thingey. I really don't want to be doing this into next week anyway. Ok, off to drink my warm lemon water, my fiber, and my aloe. Yeccchhhh. Really questioning my sanity here. 

It's The Cleanse! Day 1!!!

Why hello.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would be doing a cleanse and the day has arrived. The cleanse lasts 7 days. I'm aiming for 7, but we'll see how long I make it. I purchased a nutriclean 7 day cleanse detox and balance kit. It comes with various tablets and the most foul tasting fiber supplement I ever drank. I also drank warm water with half a lemon in it. I also drank some aloe. All these things were completely unpalatable. Not going to lie. Super gross. Coffee is out of the question, so I treated myself to some fancy green tea, which tastes pretty good. I have cut back on the coffee consumption recently and realized that the heart palpitations I was having were directly related to my massive caffeine consumption. Whoops. It just....it's so tasty. For me, coffee isn't only a delicious tasty beverage, it's also a psychological crutch I need to use less often. I then made up a veggie and egg white scramble with green peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, red onions, tomatoes, garlic, dill, celtic sea salt and egg whites. It isn't bacon, eggs, and toast, but it is tasty.

I have to prep vegan chili, cauliflower soup, beet chips, banana chips and zucchini fritters today, so I have something to eat over the next bunch of days. Fortunately, I don't have class today, so I can laze about this morning and work on it later.

I think this is going to be mostly psychological. The wholesome, healthy side of me really wants to make it. The naughty foodie wants to go bonkers and eat whatever. However, I did just spend too much money on a shitload of produce, so I'm going to eat it.

Here's the link to my Pinterest board that has all my cleanse recipes on it. They're pretty delicious looking.

Cleanse Recipes!!!

Ugh. I already miss dairy. Dairy is my life. I don't know how I'm going to survive 7 days without milk and cheese. Send me your good juju interweb people. I need all the positive thinking I can get,

Cleaning up messes

Aloha. Greetings from dark, dank and rainy Connecticut. It's very fitting for my mood. So, I'm not talking about literal messes. I'm talking about the messes we make in our relations with other humans. First, a story. It's a true one, too.

In the before time, the not quite so long ago, there was a falling out. I would like to say it was a falling out between friends, but the fact of the matter is that only one side of the many sides in the falling out was honest and true. Like all things, the honest and true side wound up being hit the hardest. Not only by the lies she uncovered, but by the attack the dark side forged upon her as a means to save their own skins. She realized that it was impossible to fight the dark side because she would not fight like they fought and when you refuse to hurt other people to save your own skin, sometimes you lose. So she (I?) retreated and let them win and let them tarnish her name to save herself and the people she cared about from further pain. People thought she was holding on to petty grudges and she let them think it even though the truth was that they had done some pretty cruel things in order to try to break her spirit. Some serious shit that was seriously unforgivable. They almost succeeded. Fortunately they weren't as tricky as they thought and some people, other people they hurt, were wise to their shenanigans. Other people fell hook, line, and sinker for them and were lost to her. And that fucking sucked because she really liked some of the people she lost. And time passed and when she was still unwilling to subject herself to their bullshit she found she had to speak up because people were starting to think that she was acting like a child and an asshole.

So, what's the deal with the story? Well, recently I had to make some very carefully crafted confessions and let people know that in fact, I am not being a petty child, I am preserving my mental health (and possibly my physical health) and that my reluctance to participate in certain things is because these people are some of the best liars I've ever met and some of the downright blackest souls I have ever encountered. And all that is born out of crippling insecurity and feelings of self loathing, so they break people in order to make themselves feel like they're worth something. Cruel fucking trick because if they just acted like decent human beings, I'm 99% positive that people would really like them and everyone could live in peace and harmony, but I digress. I wanted more than ANYTHING not to say a word, but the time had come when I had to speak up or else become okay with the fact that people were going to think I was a childish bitch who held onto grudges. So,   I told and I felt better. Like, a million times better. It was unbelievable how good I felt. And I did it without embarassing anyone or calling anyone out. I'm a confessing champ! And I felt such a weight lifted that I was inspired to explain to someone else because I also owed them a bit of an apology. So I crafted a thoughtful e-mail, explained, apologized, wished them well and that felt....less great. It felt kind of shitty, actually. That person, instead of saying, ' Oh man, thanks! I understand! I'm sorry too!' Said 'I appreciate that. Did you talk to anyone else about it?'....o_O....not an unfair response, but not what I was hoping for,

Hmmmm....That was weird. I expected to feel better. I feel....crummier. Maybe that's because this person is a known consort of the dark side. Perhaps this person has fallen victim to their shiny outsides. Now I fear retribution from them. I shouldn't, but they destroy people for sport. Sounds ridiculous and dramatic, but as someone who has been on the receiving end of it, believe me. It's an accurate statement.

The moral of the story? It's a good thing to admit when you're wrong and try to mend fences, but you have to be prepared for the fact that the other person may not want to mend fences with you. As someone said to me today, though, at least you've cleared your conscience. Being an adult. Weird and kind of depressing. You should still make the effort. It's good to wipe the dirty spots off your soul.

A post about health and not shopping.

Hello there people in blog reading land.

Recently, I have been too often eating my feelings and feeling garbage-y and tired and like I need 8 gallons of coffee to survive. Working full time and taking 10 credits worth of classes is no dang joke. So, what's a girl to do? Well, through a friend I know on The Book of Face, I am embarking on a 7 day cleanse next month. I've taken cleansing products before, but now I am combining it with an appropriate diet. What's this mean for me?

For 7 days:
~ ALL THE VEGETABLES
~ No dairy
~ No gluten or starches
~ No alcohol whatsoever (gulp)
~ Severely reduced coffee consumption (double gulp)
~ Severely upticked green tea and herbal tea consumption
~ ALL THE WATER
~ Hot water with lemon every morning
~ No red meat
~ enough protein to survive my day, so chicken, tofu, egg whites, fishes
~ No artificial sugars
~ no more than 3 fruits per day
~ Serious meal planning
~ extreme organization
~ Making yoga an every day thing. Akin to eating.


I hope that after 7 days I will

~ Feel lighter inside
~ Have more energy (My biggest hope)
~ Have better skin
~ Crave less garbage food
~ Crave less sugar
~ Have fewer GI issues
~ Kickstart a healthier lifestyle
~ Do yoga every damn day forever and ever
~ Have less anxiety


The good news is that I have the support of a coach whom I like and who has done this before. There are also other people in the group who will be doing this at the same time as I will and we will be commiserating and sharing recipes and such and generally supporting each other through the 7 days. Weight loss is a secondary concern to me. Energy levels, skin issues and GI issues are my number one concern. If I should drop a few pounds, that's extra credit. I also want to shock my system off artificial sugars and artificial chemically flavoring badness in general. If I understand things correctly, the less you consume this garbage, the less your brain wants to eat it. This will be VERY hard for me as I love dairy, coffee, booze, and carbs. I mean, an unhealthy, all-consuming, bodice-ripping love of these things. My coach is already kicking ass and telling me that she did not fully quit coffee when she cleansed and that I shouldn't beat myself up if I can't do it. There are a bunch of recipes and tips already up on the FB group from previous cleansers. I'm *kind of* looking forward to it. I feel like it's been a long time coming and that it will only be good for me in the end.

Imma need your encouragement. I'll try to find time to chronicle my experiences here. I'm sure it'll be interesting.

The Stitch Fix Saga of misery continues

Hey there. How's it going? I'm still annoyed. Yup. Still. Something about feeling like I was cheated by a company that I publicly supported really pisses me off. Weird, huh? So, you all may remember a few weeks ago when I got my last "Fix" from Stitch Fix and it was clear to me that they put zero effort into what they sent me and basically sent some random crap in a box on the off chance that I might like any of it. I waited a few weeks  to see if I got any response from the company based on the very negative feedback I sent them. I haven't heard a peep from them. So, I figured it was time to contact them myself and let them know that they cheated me out of $20 and that I was irate and wanted my money back. They did not hold up their end of the bargain. They did not do what they say their company does. If you blatantly ignore every preference that YOU, the company ask your customers for and then take their money anyway, then you should refund that money because promising something, taking money and then not following up on said promise is tantamount to stealing. I'm not having it. All would have been forgiven if I had heard from them prior to this point and they made some attempt at reconciliation, but since that did not happen, I'm now going to escalate my complaint. We'll see what happens.