The Raven's Roost

It was certainly a big help for a portion of my life, but now I'm glad I've stopped taking that anxiety med. It's remarkable to me how many things it was causing, and how little it was helping.

Obviously I am still going to occasionally have anxiety and worry, I'll get nervous, or have periods of depressive moods. But so much of what I've been suffering from for years now was apparently being caused by the medication, and I find it hard to believe that I had just resigned myself to no longer being happy, at peace, or able to focus for long on any one thing. I guess the most succinct way to sum it up is that I no longer give a fuck about a lot of things.

I don't wake up with my brain already racing ahead, I can easily ignore things that don't matter, and drop worrying about things I have no control over. The obsessive thought spirals I'd get stuck in are either gone, or easy to get myself out of. It was exhausting to get stuck thinking about some made-up or partly-made up scenario and think, "I don't want to be thinking about this, I wish it would stop." I'd try to distract myself, and my brain simply wouldn't leave it alone, leaving me anxious, angry, and depressed. This was especially disheartening as it would often come up when I went to do something I ought to enjoy, like yoga or running. Even meditation wasn't enough to defuse the situation. Now I notice one of those trains of thought starting up and I can consciously dismiss it ... and it actually goes away. My normally vicious and vitriolic self-talk has improved greatly, too. Making a simple mistake was enough to prompt my brain to tell me something ranging from "For someone who's supposed to be smart, you sure are fucking stupid" to "You're literally the worst person in the world, it's a wonder you're still alive."

In unrelated news, it's been a busy week. Jeremy came over Wednesday and we started the tower upgrades. Back a couple of years ago when Hurricane Michael blew a tree down across the guy lines and pulled our old tower down, we were unable to get sections of rohn-20 to repair it, and made do with some old rohn-18. We put those weaker sections at the top so they'd have less strain on them. We started by removing those and replacing them with 20s, so basically we took down two sections and put up six. We're now at about 130 feet, and the top of the tower is easily visible from a lot of different spots around the neighborhood when you're on the ground. And the view from the apex is remarkable - you can easily see much, much further than before. They also mounted new, upgraded radios and other equipment.

That took two full days of work with just me, Fox, and Jeremy. I was sort of a gopher, general helper, and I was normally on the tag line, helping to guide tower sections as they were raised and keep the them from banging into the tower or getting tangled and hung up. Saturday, Fox went up again to replace the grounding wire and get us more or less safe from lightning again, and remounted the weather station. We have several yards of extra copper wire on the bottom, so we're going to just bury it for extra grounding. So, none of this was quite what I expected to do with my week but I'm not mad about it.

And in health news, I have been concerned about my consistently higher than desired blood glucose readings, and I wondered why if I'm low-carb my numbers weren't decreasing. Turns out my meter is one that tends to be outside of the +/- 15% range and may be skewing high. I was reading up on it this morning and it's a model that's not really recommended so ... hmmmm. I've stopped obsessively testing anyway and will just stick with LC-HF and see how things go when my next lab draw is done. If it's still higher than he wants I'll ask to get referred to a sports dietitian, since adaptive glucose sparing is a thing. I might even mention that to him when he orders the bloodwork and see if he'll add a test for circulating insulin.

Hey everyone! Sorry to keep falling silent over here but there's honestly not much going on in my part of the world. We're currently enjoying a late cold snap, so the house windows are still open and I'm still doing my runs outdoors. I'm currently debating with myself whether to keep running outside and just get out a lot earlier to beat the heat, or treadmill it for the summer.

Pros of outside include scenery, variety, uneven terrain that forces small muscles in my feet and legs to adjust and strengthen, and it feels more mentally/emotionally healing.

Cons of outside include dogs, humans, and insects.

Yesterday I had to unload a can of mace on a couple of toy-to-small size terriers of some sort. They were aggro enough to push under their gate and come after me, and smart enough not to get in kicking range. I don't know why people don't work on aggression problems in small dogs - it's not cute or funny. A lucky bite could damage my ankle muscles and even tendons. My neighbor's pit bull is also getting off his chain more routinely and he is seriously aggressive. He's come at me a couple of times and he clearly means business, but I also routinely carry a large stick when I go to the mailbox or to take the trash out. I had to break my stick the other day but now I have a new one. She says she's buying one of those electric fences, but I was kind of hoping she'd say she was rehoming the dog. He dislikes babies, cats, other dogs, and strangers. Why the fuck would you keep a dog like that.

On top of everything else, my long run got cut short when some dude in a truck decided he was going to holler at me about how he wanted to "check me out," then started making u-turns to try to cut me off. It was kind of scary and I spent a lot of yesterday's longer run examining oncoming vehicles because I was just paranoid. Any run over 3.5 miles takes me to the hardtop, which aside from those stupid terriers, is blissfully dog-free. But anyway, scary guy kept laying on the horn and trying to turn to get ahead of me when I'd change direction and run away from him. It was early enough that there wasn't much traffic out so he had the room to do this shit. It's also very weird, like, what did I do to attract attention?

So - pros of the treadmill - it's in my house. Cons - it's boring.

Although at this point "boring" is sounding like more of a pro than a con.

Should I learn to run with a 9 mil? Learn to be bored? Maybe buy an Audible subscription, I dunno. Today's run is 3.5 miles, so I turn around at the hardtop, it takes a little over half an hour. I'll probably get out as soon as Fox is up and moving around.

In another part of my Agony Column, I get my second Moderna jab next week and I'm a little anxious about it. I definitely going to get it, I just have heard that the second one is worse.

And now for something completely unrelated. Have you guys tried butter coffee? I was deeply skeptical but this stuff is terrific. I'm making it with just regular Publix unsalted butter and Folgers 1850 (or whatever year it's meant to be) Pioneer blend and I'm really sold on it now. Next up, gonna try adding MCT oil. It's supposed to be good for your brain and heaven knows my brain needs all the help it can get.

I spent much of yesterday dealing with a massive anxiety attack and then a crash into a brief depression - something I haven't done in a long time and don't miss at all. Considering that it used to be my normal state of being (get anxiety, panic, crash out, be depressed, roused from depressive state by something else fearful and anxious, repeat) I'm not entirely sure how I managed to even survive. It of course mainly has to do with medical issues. I stupidly started testing my blood glucose again, and of course, it's "high" all the time, and I very quickly spiraled into being convinced I was going to have both feet amputated and wind up dying alone in my gangrene-bloated prison of a rotting body. Today my attitude is more like they can put me on a continuous glucose monitor if they want to and see that while I "ride high" I don't spike or crash. My readings are higher than what a medical textbook would say is appropriate for a human being, but they always fall within about a 30 or 40 point range. For example, I ate a bowl of stir fry with white rice, and when I took a two-hour post-food reading, it was up a whole 15 points. I just dread having to be put on insulin, and I'm not sure what else I could possibly do to improve my diet. I certainly can't lose any more weight. Yes, I could probably stop having gels and energy bars on long runs, but they are literally designed to provide quick-access sugars to endurance athletes. I am going to stop my weekly donut when I go out, and I guess this means no more cinnamon rolls or cupcakes at Disney.

But I also should probably stand up for myself a little more. I don't know - all I really want is to get appointments over with and get out. I feel good. Up until yesterday, I felt healthier and happier than I have in a long time, and the notion that I'm actually not healthy at all is rather devastating. I have put so much effort and energy into getting "healthy," and now it feels like I've done everything wrong. Maybe when I get that blood draw it won't show anything abnormal. Looking over lab results for the past three years, each year has seen improvements across the board. I don't know - I just want to be prepared for a fight. When was the last time one of these little twits ran 26 miles? I train like an athlete, fuel like one, and I'd like to be treated like one, even if it's not what I do "for a living."

Anyway, pretty sure no one came here to read about my agony over something that hasn't even happened yet, and potentially might not ever happen. Sorry 'bout that, y'all.

Fox has more or less offered to build me a chin-up bar, and has suggested mounting a climbing rope in the garage. We can run one over the central rafter and I'll just need to find a landing pad to put under it. I never did the rope climb in gym class in school, mostly because our gym classes were garbage and they always wanted us to play team sports. Mostly volleyball, which I've come to despise.

I've got two of the cats sleeping on me right now. It's cool again - 41 when I got up - and we have a little fire burning. They're all freezing to death, of course, so they need to pile up on me. Which would be fine if my foot weren't asleep and I had a fresh cup of coffee. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to disturb some kitties.

I'm somewhat tempted to float the idea of going out next week for Chinese buffet. Barring that I might make a batch of veggie lo mein or something. Since I don't need to pick up the kids, I have the free time to go get some ingredients at Jax Oriental, and a package of enoki 'shrooms and some of those great, chewy, loonnnnng udon noodles they make would be perfect.

Today is not as freezing cold as yesterday so I am playing a bit of catch-up. I'm actually making the lentils and rice, as well as lemon-cornbread muffins. There are yet more lemons to harvest, and I've been juicing them and storing the juice, and will freeze ice cube trays of it when I get enough. I'm also thinking of drying the rinds in the dehydrator to make snacks.

I had some free-floating anxiety yesterday but it passed. Sometimes despite my meds and my best efforts, I'm just anxious for no obvious reason. It's much easier to deal with as an occasional occurrence rather than as the daily default. It's also good to be in a situation where your SO is understanding of these things, rather than someone who thinks it's funny to tell you things that make it worse.

My perception of the year has changed so that I now regard RunDisney marathon weekend as the "end of the year." So my new year starts when we get home from that. I guess that's not the worst way to wind up a year, and time and dates are arbitrary anyway. So it also feels weird that there are winter holidays right now and coming up. But I'm looking forward to post-marathon January when I'll pick up my decluttering and cleaning projects and focusing on new things. For the upcoming year I want to focus more on doing and learning yoga, and may look into lower-level teacher training. I don't know how well that will work out considering I've never done yoga in a group or class situation and am entirely self-taught. I'm not looking so much to teach or open a studio or anything of that sort, but to deepen my own knowledge. We'll see what happens.

Next time I'm out I need some seed-starting supplies. I'm out of soil mix, and my trays have finally started cracking after a couple of years of use. I think the kohlrabi needs to be sown in place but everything else can be started in trays. My experimental "direct compost" bed is looking great and there are a couple of small pepper plants growing near the edge. The almost-dead serrano pepper I rescued from Home Depot is now ... enormous. And covered with big, healthy peppers.

 1. Topping the Random Notes list this weekend, a guide to self-managed abortion. This is a fairly detailed read but a good one, which hopefully none of us will need, but it's always good to have the information available.

2. In much less important news, my treadmill died. Not entirely - it's erroring out when Fox runs, so effectively HE doesn't have a treadmill. Since all of our other efforts at repair have failed, we're going out shortly to look at buying a new one. The motor will be salvaged - it's fine and hey, how often do you come across 2.5 hp electric motors? We think the circuit board is bad, but everything testable by a couple of reasonably electronic-literate people is testing normal.
It seems like a combination of weight and speed. When I weighed the same as Fox, I was not able to run nearly as fast as he can, so I was not pushing it too much. I'd maybe make it up to five mph for a few minutes but that was taxing my heart and lungs more than it was taxing the treadmill. 

3. Recently we both became interested in testing our blood sugar levels. Fox sometimes bonks hard, and a blood glucose meter seemed like a good tool to have for tailoring his fueling needs, pre-run, post-run, and during. We have an assortment of gels, jelly beans, and chewy blocks, along with whatever homemade energy bars I'm making. I feel pretty confident in my own eating and fueling habits, or I did. Because my fasting sugars consistently test in the "diabetic" range. There is little I can do to bring them down, either, so I'm always getting these 120s in the morning, 140s or 50s after eating, and it's stressing me the hell out because the usual advice for bringing glucose down is "lose weight, exercise, and stop drinking sugary sodas." If I lose ten percent of my body weight, I'll end up in the hospital - this is a patently Bad Idea. Exercise more? I mean, I was considering training for a fifty-miler so I guess that counts. And I haven't routinely consumed sodas since the mid-1990s. I don't put sugar in my coffee or tea, I stopped drinking wine, and I normally operate on an "earn my treats" mentality that allows me to have dark chocolate or nice cream if I worked out that day. 
On the other hand, these meters can also have a margin of error that throws readings off by as much as twenty points. 
I started checking on the hour for a while after eating, and rather than spiking, my sugars dip within an hour, then slowly climb back up to fasting levels. This happens pretty consistently. I rarely test out of a sixty point range, even though according to this meter, that range is high. I've decided for my own sanity to stop doing this unless I feel unusually bad and need a reading, because I suspect the meter is way off, and the "high" readings are stressing me out badly. As in panic-attack bad. Fox thinks this is a good idea.
He knows a lot more about diabetes than I do because he attended classes and such along with Kitty. He says since I'm not experiencing rollercoaster highs and lows, spiking into hyperactivity and then crashing out, only to do it again, I'm not diabetic. He thinks the meter is wrong as far as that goes, and it's mainly useful for seeing swings up and down, and that I should ignore the base number and just look at the range of the highs and lows. So, in the interest of not spending any more days losing my shit over this and swinging between trying to find out how to further improve my diet and shopping for prosthetic legs (because that's how bad my Anxiety Brain has been getting with this) I'm going to just drop it for now.

4. This one-shot comic I did. Just FYI, the ravens are mechanical AI constructs. Ruby was programmed (badly) to believe she is a real, living bird. Whirr is a longer-running one that has been "interactively programmed" by watching and responding to the behavior of humans around him, and one of the traits he's picked up, for better or worse, is sarcasm. Partially inspired by Google Home, Alexa, and this. 

5. So Delicious makes a no-sugar-added vanilla frozen dessert from coconut milk that is amazing. It tastes like vanilla and coconuts. That's it. I am all about this stuff right now. 

 I just heard a news report about how a lot of places like Panama City and Pensecola have "pre-Andrew" housing and housing codes. The predicted possibility of Michael making landfall as a cat 4 is really scary - stay safe over there, Gulf Coast. Maybe it will start breaking up some or losing power as it approaches land - you know how some storms come barreling in at a cat 5 and then suddenly drop in strength before hitting land. 

In more personal news, the neighbor lady came by yesterday with her daughter and I showed them around the Cat Situation here. I feel like a total fucking idiot because I got so nervous I was babbling, sweating, and I probably came off like a complete weirdo. But they both seem really nice and I feel confident they'll take good care of the fuzzbutts while I'm gone. Only Nana came out while they were here - Feisal popped his head out when I rattled the treat can but he ducked back into my bedroom. 

In two weeks I will actually literally be in Tokyo, feet on the ground. I think - they're 13 hours ahead of here, so it'll be ... the day before? I don't know, I'm terrible at math and sometimes time zones confuse the hell out of me. I just ask Google what time it is in wherever I need to know about. 

My sister finally got hooked up with Hangouts, and I discovered the "invites" tab, which is conversation invites from other people. I had no idea it was there, and wouldn't have looked except that I was trying to find her text to me. So of course I had several in there, some of which were either obvious spam or thirsty dudes. I have my profile set either to private or to a pretty restricted filter so I don't get tons of random texts from strangers, though I do get some. One I can't figure out was from someone named Linda Gershenson who sometime last year said, "Hello!" then "Meh ..." then sent a "see you later" sticker. Was she from Facebook? Google+? Who was that? Well I guess it doesn't matter much now, does it? Of course searching for her name brought up a FB result, and it then began to pester me to log in. Not today, Satan, not today. Obviously my deletion hasn't gone through yet so there's no way I'm clicking that button, no matter how much I want to know who that lady was.

Wheeee it's Anxiety Day! Although not as bad as some I've had, plus I have plenty of real-world tasks today that will help keep my mind out of the repetitive fearful/negative thought spiral that too often has led to day drinking in the bathroom with the door locked.

So, on a much more interesting subject than my fucked-up brain chemistry. Squatting! SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT EVERYBODY SQUAT okay, I'm done. One of the more fun features of Japan is, I'm told, squat toilets. Like a lot of Westerners I tend to squat balancing on the balls of my feet, which is a highly unstable position. Since I do yoga I have been able to work some on my squat but over the weekend I searched around and found a primal movement site that actually has a good tutorial on exercises and progressions that will get you to a full, ass-to-grass flat footed squat. This is day two for me of working specifically on squatting and while I still fall over backwards without a support, I've been able to identify where my major weakness seems to be - in my upper thighs and, like pretty much every other runner, my hips. I'm also told it can take a couple of weeks of dedicated supported squatting to be able to move to an unsupported squat. So I need to be patient, which is not exactly one of my best qualities. ;)

I know rose gold is the big thing right now but I really want seafoam/mint green and silver to be a big thing. I mean, I like rose gold, but isn't mint and silver great?

I'm just killing a little time before going out. I decided to look for a nice pale green nail polish, and I'm letting my favorite glittery silver dry on one nail so I can do color comparisons. Yes, I sometimes do girly stuff like paint my nails, LOL. I know Essie has a nice light tealish- mint-ish green, but I'm hoping for something warmer. Something that will work with purple, too, because that's another combination I like a lot.

I also had to cut my long run short yesterday due to weather - DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT, WTF! It was pretty scary here for a while - you don't usually see the trees bending that far unless there's a hurricane. We also had a lot of power flickers though - props to Clay County Electric! - it didn't go out altogether. But it was unstable enough to make me leery of using my drawing tablet. As of this morning we'd gotten only 0.46" precip, but it was dark and windy with lots of thunder and lightning all afternoon and evening. I like a good storm, though. Anyway, today I'm adding the 2.14 miles I didn't get to my daily run so everything evens out. I was also in the middle of an episode of Alice Isn't Dead so I'll probably finish that plus one more up today.

There's a novel of that coming out on October 30 - I may preorder it and it'll be waiting for me when I get home. Or I could try hitting up a bookstore in Tokyo ... hmm. It would give me something to read on the flight home. Or I could pull an Oscar Wilde and read my own journal if I really want something shocking.

Just kidding. My diary is kind of boring. :)

Last week I had the dubious pleasure of getting my first ever mammogram! (yaaayyyy) And they need me to come back in. Figures.

The letter was so vaguely worded and so heavy on the "please don't panic" message that I'm honestly not sure if I need to worry or not. On the one hand, their findings were that I have dense tissue, which is pretty common in boob-having people of my age. On the other hand, the request for a diagnostic procedure was sent to my GP's office the next freaking day. I still haven't got my next appointment yet but I'll let y'all know if my tits are going to kill me. Fox says he's impressed by how well I am outwardly handling things, which I guess I am, but as I said, with the little information I have I'm kind of stuck at half-panicked half-calm. Besides, the imaging office is super close to a local sandwich chain called The Sheik (founded by displaced Middle Easterners) and they have this freaking amazing steak and onion grilled pita.

So that news kinda took the shine off New Zox Day. I managed to score a limited band called Tempest and a colorful little number called Fernweh. That second one needs a picture for you to really appreciate how spiffy it is, and "fernweh" is one of those wonderful German words with no direct translation into English, but it basically means "wanderlust." It also strongly implies the need to visit new places and see new sights, rather than visiting a familiar destination.

For the last few days I've been working seriously at getting my studio into a usable condition. I will probably work on comics and 2D art in there as well as making Shrines and miniatures, and Fox may be able to build me an angled box to draw on. Actually, I think I can convince him to help me build a light box, too, which would be handy. I'm mostly sorting through my Shrine materials right now and it's insane. I have so much ... stuff. I have entire boxes of fake flowers and seashells. One is nothing but plastic toy animals. I'm devoting an entire tote box originally designed to carry stuff like nuts and bolts to just jewelry pieces, like pendants, and ... stuff. How did I accumulate all this stuff? But there have been some fun moments when I found things I'd forgotten about, such as:
A set of glow-in-the-dark figures of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
A Mardi Gras dubloon from a funeral home encouraging the recipient to take out a burial policy.
A plastic frog in a bikini. With boobs. Because frogs totally have boobs.
A tiny wooden dollhouse chair.
A tiny wooden monkey necklace. The monkey has a huge boner ...
About a dozen tiny crystal cubes.
Tons of flat-backed glass marbles!

That last one is awesome because I'd been considering making a bee and butterfly water station. You take a shallow pan or the water tray for a flower pot, cover the bottom with those marbles, and then fill it with water until the marbles are not quite submerged. They are then places where insects can light and drink, and they don't fall in the water and drown. Small lizards and birds will also use it.

I'm glad I at least have my anxiety meds again. This would be unbearable otherwise. I'm still having some issues, like this afternoon I decided to Google my own name and make sure there are no arrest warrants out for me. Because anxiety does that to you. I haven't even actually done anything, I just starting getting this idea that the cops were going to come out here for me. Thanks brain. After all I do for you, this is how you repay me.

Anyway, it also occurred to me that you may not have seen any of my art yet, so have a link to my badly disorganized DA gallery!
http://ravens-roost.deviantart.com/