Annabelle Speaks

I'd Pretty Much Always Rather Be Napping

We had a very, very busy weekend at Casa Annabelle.

 Clearly.

 
Medication withdrawal (me) and never-ending shingles pain (T) meant that the weekend was full of naps and reading (me) and television (T) and more naps and I think maybe another nap or two.  I love weekends.

Speaking of naps, in a little over 48 hours T and I are flying to Minnesota for a weekend of relaxing at The Lake, along with many ACTIVITIES that my mom so loves to plan.  Just this morning she emailed out a fill-in-form/schedule for food requests, and I expect a phone call sometime tomorrow asking about what games I want to play when, and how many puzzles I want to do, and what trees we are going to fell, and how many times we will be going out on the boat, and how she can't wait to show me how good she has gotten at fly-fishing, and what color they are painting the spare room, and what type of crackers we are going to have on hand, and how many bottles of water we need for the car ride and and and and and...I'm already needing another nap just thinking about it.  (Note:  I love my mom, even if I sometimes want to spike her water with Xanax.)  (Additional note:  Pack extra Xanax.)

(By the way, I feel safe announcing to the Internet at large that we are going out of town because the friend who is caring for our apartment and our cats has a second degree black belt and could kill with her bare hands.  She can also ride a unicycle, though I'm pretty sure that is less of a deterrent to would-be-robbers.  Point being, if you want to rob us, you should probably wait until T and I are back in town.  Just saying.)

If we're lucky, I might even return with pictures or something.  Pictorial proof that I can, in fact, bait my own hook when fishing, I can shoot a BB gun at soda cans, and I only panic a little when someone makes me ride the four-wheeler.  Or maybe I'll just read for a while and then take another nap.

Not That Final Four

I've been slowly tapering down my antidepressants for several weeks now (in a doctor-prescribed manner, calm down), and I'm down to my last four days of pills.  Four days!  My old-person pill organizer is emptying out, and I don't have pills to refill it.  So strange!

I'm making an attempt at an antidepressant-free life for a number of reasons, the main one being that I just want to see if I can do it.  Two and a half years into this particular chapter in my particular story and I'm doing pretty damn awesome.  Yesterday I was walking outside in the sun and I noticed I was just...happy.  Not about anything in particular, just a nice, peaceful, comfortable-in-the-moment kind of happy.  It sort of blew my mind.  That is more than I ever thought possible. 

None of the chaos and fear and darkness in my head is actually gone, mind you, but I've found the volume knob and can mostly turn it down to the level of background noise.  And I while I believe I needed the medications to find that volume knob the first time, I don't believe I need them as a daily tool to keep from losing track of it again.  At least not right now.  And so I'm trying to go without.

My only real worry at this point is physical withdrawal, because OF COURSE one of my meds is known to have one of the worst withdrawal periods of any antidepressant (and they all suck royally).  So far I'm managing - just a little dizzy-constant-headache-body-ache-owie sort of thing and difficulty sleeping.  The real test will be next weekend, after my last pills.  Based on the mini withdrawal I had a few months ago when I switched meds around, I fully expect to see little aliens soft-shoeing around the bedroom in the middle of the night, so that should be fun.

Hopefully I'll come out the other side of this okay - and I can head on into the next chapter of my life pill-free.

I've Got A Pocket Full Of Sunshine. Or At Least A Pocket Empty Of Rain.

After listening to a night full of thunder and pouring rain I knew getting to work was going to be a giant pain.  I walk about 3/4 of a mile each way on my commute to work, and while my foot is in a cast that means that if it rains I need 3,247 layers of socks and plastic and whatever else I can wrap around my foot to keep my cast dry.  It is not a fun process, to say the least.  So it was with great joy that I viewed the radar just before embarking on the epic quest of trying to keep my cast dry.

Here's hoping that weather magic works again when it comes time to leave work.

The Pizza Tasted EVEN BETTER Than It Looks, If You Can Believe That

NOM.

 

My recent plan to focus my energies on improving my physical health this year has been going well.  I've cooked food from scratch, vastly reduced my pre-packaged-treats, and have all around been paying more attention to what I'm shoveling into my mouth.  I still sometimes have popcorn for dinner, yes, but popcorn is "whole grain" which totally counts as health food and don't even try to tell me that it doesn't.

 

Exercising has not been going well, because, well...let me just show you.

 

 

Yes.  AGAIN.  Foot-gate 2009 has become Foot-gate 2009/2010.  Last fall I had casts 1.0 through 1.3, and I'm currently on cast 2.1 (2.0 was last week).  This cast will notbe followed by three months of physical therapy, because no matter how much I like my physical therapist my insurance is up, and I am cheap.  Actually, I have most of the equipment I need at home by now, and I can do most of it on my own, but it is a huge pain in the foot (har har).  The cast is just to immobilize everything and get the swelling to go down before I make another go at the various exercises I'm supposed to be doing.

 

I did try a pilates DVD last weekend to see if maybe I could find tolerable exercises that could be done in a cast, but somehow laying on the floor in the living room screamed CUDDLE TIME to the cats and I had a LOT of company there on the rug.  On the plus side, they are warm and fuzzy and who needs exercise?  The DVD lady was annoying anyway.  Exercise is overrated.  Naps are far more important.