Self-Help – The UnderToad

2016: Hooray!

It is the first Sunday of the New Year. You know what this means.

A clean calendar. A new planner. A renewed sense of energy for tackling my mundane stay-at-home-mom first world problem projects!

I’m organizing.

I just like to organize, organizing’s my favorite.

But first, a little review.

Top Three for 2015:

The number one best part of this year has been my private celebration of the end of pregnancy and nursing. Even though we knew Avery was the final lego to come down my personal baby factory assembly line, I wasn’t sure how I would actually respond to closing this chapter of my life forever. Turns out, it came with an overwhelmingly positive sense of relief. John and I both agree that our friendship and connectedness has never been better, which I’m also happy to say has been an unintended byproduct of something neither of us was actively working on.

The second best part of 2015 didn’t technically begin this year, but certainly steadily rose on my gratitude scale, and that is living in our current neighborhood. I don’t really need to write it here to let the Rustinburg Rowdies know how much I love them, because I feel like it is said and implied by all of us every time we hang out (and possibly more frequently on group texts filled with bitmojis). I actually mentioned the current strength of my marriage in church this morning, and it was weird to admit it had very little to do with the current state of my spiritual life, but almost everything to do with our social life. And our social life is currently hinged on a rickedy little picket gate connecting my back yard to Rustinburg Road.

The third best part of 2015 has been our transition to public school. You can only imagine the kind of discussion that ensues between two highly nerdy former school teachers when it comes to the education of our spawn. Sending our firstborn to kindergarten was a decision that was not taken lightly. As it became increasingly obvious that our original decision was not working in the best interest of our children, it was pretty stressful. I’m not writing here to say that public school in Clemmons, North Carolina has been the academic experience of a lifetime and one that we have no complaints about. But I am saying this: I’m not sure our children have been socially healthier than they are right now, and for that, I’ll take a potentially inferior academic milieu.

2015 Regrets and Non-Accomplishments:

I only read 17 of my 20 book goal this year.

I still haven’t found a dentist I love.

I let a few friendships fall off my radar this year, a natural result of growing babies and changing neighborhoods and complicated schedules. I like that these are universal excuses and I feel confident that these friendships haven’t suffered even a bit for the lack of time and energy put into them this year.

Looking Forward to 2016:

Not necessarily looking forward to reading more books, but to continue in my pursuit of reading good books. My 1st grader is beginning to dabble in chapter books and I’m giddy at the thought of the increased literacy in my house.

Connecting and re-connecting with some of the better women in my life. It never hurts my feelings when a cup of coffee ends with more than just a physical sense of satisfaction.

Trite and materialistic as it is going to sound, I look forward to starting the year with a plan for home and family maintenance. Last year I resolved to spend less time doing laundry by choosing two days a week in which the chore had to be started and fully finished before going to bed.

I fully accomplished my goal.

This year I have created a similar plan to maximize my OCD need for order while minimizing the time I put into it. I look forward to less clutter in every sense of the word.

Not-Irrational Fear, Pregnancy, Self-Help

What Alicia Silverstone, January Jones, Kim Kardashian and I Have In Common

Or, that time I ate my placenta and lived to talk about it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. Did she just say placenta?

Okay I know what you are thinking. This is why I’m giving you ample warning before you continue reading. Here’s the short story: after Avery was born, I was afraid of getting postpartum depression again, so I had my placenta encapsulated and have been taking it in the form of pills for the last seven weeks.

Yes.

Really.

And here’s the end of the story: it totally worked. I feel better now than I’ve ever felt after having a baby before. I feel so good, in fact, that I’m encouraging everyone I know to do this. Seriously. And it isn’t just me. John totally agrees that I’m a different person than the usual post-birth-hormone-crazed-psycho-wife who takes out all her baby frustration on him.

We were both totally grossed out by the idea at first. This is how desperate I was to stay off antidepressants. So, in an effort not to offend or totally gross out all my friends, family, and readers, I’m not writing all about the experience here.

If you are interested, you can read all about my personal experience here.

If you are further interested, read about my placenta’s transformation into magic pills (with pictures!) here.

And if you now think I’m a complete freak and want nothing to do with me ever again, well, okay. I guess that’s the risk I run.

General, Lessons, Mommy Advice, Self-Help, Sick

How to Recover from “Springing Forward”

I think I can safely say that this is the first year in, perhaps my entire life, that I’ve looked forward to, and then celebrated, setting my clocks an hour ahead. This is most likely due to the fact that, in North Carolina anyway, the average temperature for the past eight weeks has been around 61 degrees. In anticipation of high nineties, mosquitoes, and likely a drought, come July, I have been trying to make the most of our outdoor time while it is ripe.

Unfortunately, I am not currently a morning person.

Combine the weather with a few other timely circumstances and what I’ve discovered is the 5-step recipe to preparation for, and a quick recovery from Springing Forward. I will share the following, which is probably advice I should have shared a few months ago. Always next year…

Continue reading “How to Recover from “Springing Forward”” →

Self-Help

TWC Week 2: Midweek Review

Assignments for the week:

STRESS: Learn to “use your body to calm down your mind” and do one stress-reducing technique daily.
SEROTONIN: Start taking B vitamins and fish oil.
HORMONES: Start taking St. John’s Wort and 5HTP (if needed).

Progress:

Using my body to calm down my mind: My first question here was, “Can’t I just have a drink at 5 o’clock?” Basically, this assignment was about as effective as my stress journal was last week. Not that I didn’t attempt some stress relieving activities each day, but come on, when you hear the suggestions in the book, you’ll be on my side. The stress reducing activities include: yoga, t’ai chi, massage, guided imagery, meditation, or acupuncture. It helps that we joined the YMCA today, and I can actually go somewhere and take yoga classes. But so far this week, I’m counting my time spent on the inversion table as my purposeful stress-reducing technique. (More about this, with photos, soon.)

As for “overcoming worry,” my favorite suggestion was to “create a worry time.” This is time scheduled into each day in which I am supposed to unleash all my worry for the next 24 hours. Nevermind leaving the grocery store and realizing I forgot milk, my child hanging from the top of her tree house by three and a half fingertips, the green snot still coming from Carter’s nose, the two weddings (one on the West coast) my children and I are all in this summer and must find appropriate bridal party dresses for, Wait-Law and our finances, John looking for a new office building, the possibility of cracking the screen on my iPhone, the two high school graduations I feel compelled to attend but secretly fear offending someone who I might see there, the broken heater/air conditioner part in our attic, the fact that we still haven’t found a church we love, the fact that we still haven’t sold our condo, and of course, making it through yet another summer as a stay-at-home-mom with two children under the age of 5. I’m supposed to consciously not think about any of these things until my scheduled time. He suggests between 8 and 8:30pm. I suggest at the very minute I crack open my first Corona this evening.

Truth be told, a few major worries were actually dispelled of this week. My first big point of anxiety (as I mentioned a little while ago) was the fact that pre-school is over and what the heck am I going to do all summer to maintain my sanity with two children. Solution number one comes in the form of Eliott’s teacher at school, with whom I have scheduled a mandatory weekly pool date. She has a pool and two older daughters who come with the promise that “they will LOVE your children.” And then there was mention of margaritas. Solution number two comes in the form of biting the bullet and joining the YMCA. I’ve been a little hesitant to write about the financial assistance we are receiving for this, but the bottom line is that about a week ago I told Eliott to start praying for “a gym we can afford.” She actually suggested an exact price, which I agreed, would be fine, as it was about the price we were paying for Gold’s Gym in Burlington.

But it was during that conversation (in the car) that I finally decided I didn’t really a membership at the YMCA. It seems to me, like cable, to be a luxury that we could live without. (Funny, we once justified the gym membership based on the fact that it was cheaper than cable.) So I told God, “It’s okay. If you don’t want to give us the gym. We don’t need it. I could figure out other free methods of entertainment for the girls all summer, and I could sacrifice some morning me-time and actually get down on the floor and play with my children, and in the end, I could just change my attitude about the whole thing and be fine. And, to be honest God, I’m feeling very strongly that we’re not going to get this scholarship and that you are going to take care of my sanity this summer anyway.” No lie. I had a rare moment of genuine humility. Just me and God and Eliott in the backseat praying. But as it turns out, my daughter prophetically predicted the exact price we would be approved for. We got an email that evening and she was only off by $1.40 a month. A price I can not only live with, but one that was and will continue to be celebrated. Lesson learned: if I really want something from God, I need to tell Eliott to ask Him. (*Side note: though my personal problems are being mostly answered through my 4 year old right now, I happen to be on a role with conception prayer requests. If you or anyone you know is or has been trying to get pregnant and you are about to give up hope, let me know. I’ve put two through in the last 8 weeks that have not returned void, if you know what I’m saying.)

B-Vitamins, Fish Oil, and St. John’s Wort: I’m starting with my trip to CVS to purchase all these new vitamins. Of course I came fully prepared with coupons, and as my luck would have it, Fish Oil was buy one get one free at almost every drugstore this week. Sparing you the annoying “how to coupon” details, I’m going to make a long story short by saying I had enough coupons to make two bottles of fish oil completely free, and then some leftover that actually had the potential to make me money. All I had to do was find something by NatureMade that cost $3 or less, which I found on a clearance rack, and grabbed as many as I had coupons for. I’m not generally a proponent of this kind of shopping for things I don’t need, just because they are free or a good deal. But understand here that in this case, I was going to make about $1.50 on each bottle, thereby reducing the cost of the St. John’s Wort which was not even on sale. At the end of the day I think I walked out paying $7 for over $30 worth of vitamins (none of which, by the way, was that 5HTP stuff, which is like $40 for a bottle of 30). So I was feeling pretty excited by my savvy shopping for mood enhancers and went home to Google exactly what all those bottles of money-making vitamins were good for. According to WebMD, they are used for the natural treatment and maintenance of herpes. Awesome.

As for the results of the pills so far, the effects aren’t necessarily immediate. I’ll tell you what is though: constipation and sardine burps. To solve this I increased my fiber and froze the fish oil pills. I was already taking Vitamin B with regularity and if I feel any happier or calmer this week (which I definitely do) I can’t say with certainty whether it is the new pills, the cheap gym membership, or hanging upside down for 15 minutes a day.

Self-Help

TWC Week 1: Midweek Review

Assignments for the week:

STRESS: Begin recording a stress journal. (This came with very specific instructions, including folding pages and making columns and what to write down and when.)
SEROTONIN: Take a brisk walk in the sunshine (without sunglasses) for 20 minutes every day.
HORMONES: Focus on a healthy diet. Key words: reduce, increase, replace.

Progress:

The Stress Journal: I have to admit, I’m not actually doing this with any sort of regularity. For one thing, with the amount of self-surveying and writing I currently do, I should be fairly well aware of my “stress triggers” and responses. Rather than keeping a list of the things that stress me out, it would probably be more healthy to make note of the exact times of day I am short tempered, tired, or generally grumpy. As John has been saying all along, my moods have far more to do with my sugar levels than anything else.

20-minute Brisk Walk in the Sunshine: You know it is amazing how actually good this is making me feel. I’m not sure if I can credit just the walking and the sunshine, however. I like to think that Madonna and Michael Jackson on my iPod are playing key roles in boosting my mood. It isn’t as if I was ignorant to the fact that exercise is a mood booster. Need I remind you I’ve run two marathons and spent three successive summers in college basically living on my bike? The thing is, since having Carter, I simply haven’t taken working-out all that seriously. In large part, this is due to a steadily growing back pain that I finally broke down and saw a chiropractor about when I was still teaching. John had back surgery on some ruptured discs in his lower back the summer before taking the bar exam. Describing the kind of pain I’m in, he’s all too familiar with what is probably going on. The chiropractor confirmed that I have terrible posture, some bulging discs, and moderate to severe scoliosis. Awesome! Unfortunately, at $40 a pop (literally), I just couldn’t justify a potential life-time investment in something that was likely helping, but possibly not curing my problem. When I stopped going, I also stopped working out. Training for and running the Mud Run was the first real physical challenge I’ve put my body through in almost 2 years, and my back has been screaming at me ever since. Even these easy little sunshine walks aggravate it. My solution is arriving with my parents this Friday. (You think I’m joking. Get excited.)

Eating: Originally, this seemed even sillier to me than the stress-journal. Honestly, I think my family is above average in how healthy we eat. I’ve always been of the mindset that a meal isn’t complete without at least one fresh fruit or vegetable. Certainly, once the girls were done with daycare food, there was a noticeable difference in their attitudes, sleep, and overall health. It also has helped that I recently discovered how much I like Brussels sprouts. We probably eat them twice a week. I’ve also begun adding Kale to our meals once or twice a week, in things like enchiladas, soup, and hot salads. (I read somewhere that it’s a “Super Food” and decided I needed to be a part of that club.) John has always been a big fan of red beans and rice, and last winter it seemed like Bon Apetite published a “meatless Monday” recipe every month that included slow cooked beans of some sort. So we’ve been somewhat hooked on variations of this poor man’s meal. All in all, I’ve been telling myself I eat healthy. And getting on the scale every so often has been (wrongly) confirming that.

This was until John pointed out how many of the chocolates on top of the fridge had been eaten in three days, and announced that he hadn’t had any yet. Uhhh… *On a side note, I’d like to say that if I were choosing my religion based on holidays and chocolate, I’d still be a Christian. We probably had four times the amount of chocolate in this house following Easter than we did after Halloween. This is where the stress-journal should probably be converted to a sugar-journal. Every single day, at about 10:30 in the morning (with my first uninterrupted cup of coffee), again at about 2 o’clock (when the girls are down for naps), and finally, at 8pm, I like to celebrate my alone time with something sweet. I think this is what Oprah calls “Emotional Eating.” I’m actually pretty embarrassed to admit that I suffer from it. There was one week where the Valentine’s Day candy had finally run out and it wasn’t yet time to crack open the Easter baskets. You would think in my frantic search for something sweet that when I finally dipped a spoon in peanut butter, honey, and chocolate syrup, it might have been a red flag into my sugar addiction. You would be wrong.

So I’ve done my best to cut back on and cut out sugar. I’m not doing very well. The morning after the day I indulged in absolutely no refined sugar was the first morning in a long time I can remember waking up headache free. However, in just three days I’m supposed to replace coffee with something like green tea, and this has me very wound up. One thing at a time people.

Self-Help

I Was Right All Along

Maybe the best thing about reading this book is that it turns out I’m not nuts, not alone, and not too far off on my self-diagnosis. According to this guy, the so-called “Triple Whammy” is the three fold life attack of stress, low serotonin, and hormonal imbalance. According to the “Just How Messed Up Are You Quiz” at the beginning of the book, I’m moderately to severely screwed. I actually received some serious comfort when reading the list of possible symptoms and finding most of mine on there.

To name a few:

Do you feel like you’ve lost control of something recently in your life? Hm. How about my sudden non-contribution to the family finances after having a full time job for the past 5 years? And every once in a while, my inability to speak (and/or interpret) 4-year old.
Have you ever experienced periods of depression? Not until I got married (hah) and then again just after having children. Could it be the birth control, pregnancy, ~~post-pardum~~ postpartum roller coaster, Doc? (Yes, Claire. Yes it could.) Actually I take that back. I had exactly two full blown panic attacks the summer before moving to North Carolina, and one more when I was in the woods. At the time, I blamed Satan. Now that I know he and estrogen are BFF, I’m not recanting my first finger point.
Do you crave carbohydrates, sugar, or chocolate, especially in the days just before your period? What woman on Earth does not, I ask you. Especially always. In fact, just reading the word “chocolate” has me digging through the fridge in search of those leftover brownies from John’s meeting last weekend. No particular monthly cravings, but certainly cravings within 30 minutes of eating a meal. All meals. Always right before bed.
Is the week after your period the week when you feel best during a month? Is that the last time I was happy? Yes. I do seem to remember a day several weeks ago when John came home from work that I was actually happy to see him. It seems so long ago…
If you’ve ever given birth, did you experience depression after delivery? Yes. Both times. But the first time I didn’t know that’s what it was until I called my mother at 2 in the morning one week and confessed that the thought of dying in my sleep actually provided me some emotional relief. She advised me to call my doctor, I got some drugs, and for the next several months even the most unruly classes of high school freshman couldn’t faze me or stimulate a reaction whatsoever. It was when I realized certain favorite foods no longer tasted good, however, that I decided wean myself back off.
Do you experience any of the following and with how much regularity? Fatigue (daily), poor memory (come on, I have kids), unrefreshing sleep (M-F when I have to wake up before 9), overwhelmed (weekly), depressed/anxious (bi-weekly), widespread muscle aches (lower back: I no longer sit down for extended periods of time), brain fog (starts at exactly 4:15 every afternoon), feeling drained (daily), headaches (I wake up with one most mornings), jaw grinding (nightly)...

It wasn’t like I needed a questionnaire to tell me that I’m in a season of physical and emotional unhealthiness, but it has been pretty easy for me to be in denial because my face is not breaking out and I’m not gaining any weight. In the past, these have been the first two reasons for any desire to alter my eating and activity habits. With my face in the pillow last night I said to John, “In three weeks, I’m going to like you again. And I think you’re going to like me. I just wanted to tell you that I’m doing this for you.” His response was, “Are you sure you’re depressed? Depressed people don’t think like that. Depressed people like hating their lives and everything in them because it feels good. I think you’re just saying that.”

Sad. Because, it is sort of true. But lately, I’ve been picturing myself as a tiny version of me, sitting at a set of controls, deep in my brain, looking out of my eyes like two gigantic spaceship windows. It is almost as if I cannot actually feel my fingertips, feet, lips, because I’m controlling all my movements from a cockpit way inside my head. And that miniature little pilot-sized me, is still normal. And sometimes nice. “Don’t you want me to like you again? I mean, not just sometimes. All the time?”

“Yes,” he said, wearily. “That would be nice.”