saturday

Hmmm. I suspect I may be fighting off a bug.  All I’ve done today is sleep, pretty much.  Got woken up at 7:30am, asleep by 10:30am.  Woke up at 1pm, asleep by 4pm.  Woke up tonight and it was nearly 8:30pm.  Now, I’ve always loved my sleep, but even that is out of hand.  Still, it is the weekend, and if I don’t do much I suppose it’s not a crime, especially if I do fight off getting sick.  It would be great to know that my poor little immune system is making a comeback.

I had another appt with my pdoc, Dr W, this week.  As usual he was lovely.  He asked how the buspirone was going, and I told him I’m taking about 5×10mg tablets a week at the moment.  However the new reporting arrangements starting next week will put my anxiety to the test.  At this point he said he fully expects me to be taking 3×10mg tablets a day (aka the maximum dosage).  I laughed, then realised he wasn’t joking.  Sigh.

depression, medication, reproduction

It amazes me how many articles on the internet discuss the impact of antidepressant meds during pregnancy and breastfeeding.  Not that it surprises me that expectant mothers get depressed; this seems a perfectly normal reaction.  (Does that make me weird?)  I understand succumbing to depression while pregnant.  What I struggle with, is people with a history of depression, who choose to go on to have children.

Okay, I admit here that I’m not the most maternal of females.  I suspect if I had my own children, that I would very well end up eating my young, for all the maternal feelings I have.  But truly, the thought of choosing to be pregnant and risking coming off/not being able to take antidepressants, and go through depression without that option, scares me.  I struggle to cope on meds; I can’t begin to imagine what life is like off them, especially when pregnant.

And then, you have the baby.  I would definitely need meds to deal with a crying, helpless little baby who can’t let you know what it needs.  Plus the interrupted sleep.  Oh god, just the thought of the bad sleep is enough to scare me off forever.  Tiredness is the number one trigger for me. 

It’s fine if the only real impact is on yourself.  I can be suicidal and know that my darling SO can still feed himself and go to work, and do everything he needs to.  A baby, on the other hand, needs a competent parent to survive.  And when I’m badly depressed, I can’t look after myself, let alone a poor little baby that didn’t ask to be born into this world to a suicidal mother.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not criticising women with a history of depression who choose to have children.  I actually think they’re about as brave as anyone I can think of.  It’s just I couldn’t do it, myself.  I’m just not strong enough.

I suppose the reason I’m thinking about this is because all my friends are pregnant at the moment.  I look at them and marvel.  And in the back of my head is a little voice that says, even if you wanted to go there and try it, you’re a good two years away from even being stable on your new drugs.  Thinking about having kids has been pharmaceutically pushed out by a significant time frame.  This doesn’t particularly worry me, but SO may well find it difficult to cope with when it occurs to him.  Poor darling, he loves kids.

So, yes.  Something else to ponder on.

sleepyhead

So tired.  While I’m feeling better from the viral thing I had all week, I’m just so tired.  I have no idea why, either.  Last time I saw the doctor, he ordered blood tests for various things.  The test came back clear for everything.

At the same time, my depression is rearing its ugly head.  There are a few things going on at the moment which may be exacerbating my stress and causing it to play up.  We’re renovating one unit, and trying to find tenants for another.  Work is beyond belief in terms of how much stuff I have on my plate.  At home, our place is messy, needs a good clean, and it feels like it’s two steps forward, three steps back.  With all this going on, all I want to do is sleep for twenty hours a day.  Mmmm, sleep.

Today I actually felt other depression symptoms happening – mainly anxiety, feeling sick in the stomach from nerves (stress manifestation), and wanting to cry.  Not being able to read, as I couldn’t follow a train of thought.  Not being able to do simple stuff, like get up and take washing off the line.  Feeling overwhelmed.  I did feel better after a long afternoon nap of 4 hours, but I need to keep an eye on things.  Today reminded me how fragile my mental health really is – hanging by a thread.

renos, and a birthday

As per usual, it’s been a busy week.  I’ve managed to catch the first flu bug of the season, according to my doctor.  It’s a bit different to the usual flu – it basically inflames the eustachian tube in the ear, causing it to hurt.  Plus there’s the usual aches and pains, tiredness, swollen glands, etc.  I must confess it’s pretty manageable as a bug, so I shouldn’t complain too much.

That said, I wasn’t delighted that I was sick again.  SO and I had the following exchange on the way to work:

SO:  What’s wrong baby?

Me:  Ugh, I’m sick again!!  I feel like I’m sick all the time.

SO (patting my knee consolingly):  That’s because you are, baby.

It wasn’t funny at the time, but I can see the humour in it now.

The renos are going reasonably well.  The bathroom tiling is finished, and it looks good.  We’re both happy with it, although it’s taken longer than we’d been told.  But as I said to SO, you have to expect both time and money blowouts with renos, and three extra days isn’t a huge amount in the scheme of things.  Next we need to get the cabinetmaker in to measure up for the bathroom cabinet.  I personally can’t wait until there’s a toilet in there again, it makes spending all day there so much easier.

It’s SO’s dad’s birthday tomorrow.  We’re having him and SO’s stepmum over for a cooked breakfast.  I’ve also taken it upon myself to make his favourite thing, date loaf.  I haven’t made it in ages (probably years) but I suddenly remembered today how much he liked it, so I thought I’d make it for him.  He’s done a huge amount for us with renovating both the current and previous projects, and he hasn’t been very well lately.  It seems his chronic fatigue has come back with a vengeance, poor thing.  That said, he’s still doing a lot of stuff to help us out, which we appreciate even while it makes us feel guilty.  So yes, tomorrow we’ll be having bacon, eggs, lightly fried mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, then french toast and pikelets for ‘dessert’.  It’ll be the works, and no one will need lunch.

drugs

That which you see above is what I ingest daily, in the interests of attaining (or maintaining) physical and mental health.

From left to right – the large horsepill is a women’s multivitamin; the small round beige tablet is an iron tablet; the two little white oval pills are my 40mg Lexapro; and the innocuous tiny little one on the far right is the pill.  Yes, the pill.  Specifically, Diane-35 ED, a high-estrogen formulation designed for women with adult acne and ‘hirsute women’.  Luckily, I take it for the adult acne side of things.  I control my moustache through regular shaving.  (Just joking, folks.)

The hideous looking witch’s brew at the top, which I use to skull it all down with, is a Berocca, original flavour.   Oddly enough, when it comes out the other end the colour is remarkably similar to it’s original shade of orange.  It’s interesting, in a gruesome kind of way.

So yes, this is my good start to every day, my breakfast, if you will, of life-giving medicines.  The wonders of modern science, huh?

exhausted

I’m tired.  Very, very tired.  We’ve been flat out with the reno, which is going well.  I’ve been spending every day up a ladder, painstakingly plastering up the settlement cracks.  This is physically tiring, particularly for ‘Ms Desk Job’ here.  At the end of the day, when I start to get so tired I wobble on the ladder, I come down and pick another section of kitchen to disinfect.  Last night, I put in all the new kitchen handles; tonight, it was cleaning our ‘new’ (really, second hand, bought on eBay) fridge.

We go to Bunnings to get different bits and pieces, then head home and have dinner.  We talk about what else needs to be done, what order to do it in, and discussing different options we need to make decisions on.  Not long after that, we hit the sack.  I’d be tired if this was all there was to it; but it’s not. 

I’ve been waking up every night at around 3am, my brain racing and full of stuff that I need to remember.  I’ve tried going back to sleep but it hasn’t been working, so I’ve been getting up and surfing the net for a couple hours, just enough to switch off mentally and go back to bed, to get another couple of hours’ sleep.

Anyhow, as a result of all this, I’m just worn out.  Today I got up, had breakfast and a shower, and sat down to wait for SO to be ready to go to the unit.  SO came out of the bathroom and found me sleeping, sitting upright.  This never happens.  He sent me to bed, where I completely crashed for a couple of hours.  When I woke up, I was worn out, but it was manageable.  I then put in a full day at the reno, doing more patching.

However, things are going well.  I’ve managed to shake off a potential cold, which given how tired I’ve been, is nothing short of a miracle.  The reno is going to plan, and everything seems to be working out there.  SO is well, and he’s enjoying the reno work too.  He dug out a wooden cabinet from the bathroom wall today, which he hasn’t done before, and he did a really neat job.  So yes, it is all going well.  I’m just surprised at how tiring it all is.

sick/reno #4 progress report

<grits teeth and closes eyes tightly, trying not to throw a tantrum>

I’m sick.  Again.  It’s not anything major, by any means – just some kind of bug that isn’t really a cold, but isn’t really a flu.  Sore throat, fever, shivering, aches and pains.  And an increase in the general level of grumpiness.  It’s just frustrating.  I’ve had the last two days off work, and I had to go to the shops this morning.  After wandering around confusedly for about half an hour, I felt like the only thing holding me up was the trolley I was gripping.  Now I can see why old folks hang onto them with a death grip.  (Sorry, no pun intended there.)

In other news, the plans for the current reno are moving along.  We’ve decided to get some quotes for getting the bathroom tiles resurfaced.  This will basically give them a new colour (instead of dirty white wall tiles and, you guessed it, apricot floor tiles) and, as a bonus, it will seal any grout cracks.  This is great, as we do have some damage to the wall on the other side of the shower.  It’s also supposed to be a lot cheaper and a lot faster than getting new tiling done.  Sounds good to me.  SO has also agreed with me that we can get a new toilet.  For some reason, he wanted to hang onto the current apricot-coloured one.  I have no idea why, but he’s come around.

tmi

Warning: this post contains discussion of menstrual issues.  Feel free to pass.

Sigh.  I can see it’s going to be one of those weeks.

I’ve been horribly premenstrual for the last few days, and it came to a head last night.  I was in an evil mood.  Realising this, I decided to say as little as possible (having been there before, I know I tend to be beyond horrible whenever I speak when I’m like this) in order to spare SO from some of the pain.  Unfortunately he saw I wasn’t talking much and asked if anything was wrong.  This, of course, gave me the perfect excuse to snarl, ‘No, everything is fucking fantastic!!‘.  The scene ended up with me in tears and SO with the look of a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights.  Not the best evening for either of us.  I apologised profusely and went to bed early, as I couldn’t stand myself any longer.

Cut to this morning.  I woke up with the kind of cramps that make you wonder if something is actually disembowelling you.  When I worked out this wasn’t the case, I realised that work was not on the cards.  SO very kindly got me a hot water bottle, a glass of milk and a panadeine forte, which helped to zonk me out until about midday.  I’m not feeling the best tonight, but my mood is substantially improved, for which my poor long-suffering husband is grateful.

The only thing I can put all this down to is the problems we’re still having with the unit we’re buying.  Settlement has been delayed a week, and we think the bank have lost our loan application documents for the second time.  It’s getting beyond ridiculous.  To be honest, because it’s been such a drawn out process (we put in our offer in March!), I’ve lost interest.  Still, final pre-settlement inspection is this Friday, so hopefully I’ll get excited again when I see it.

good weekend

Yep, despite my cold-like symptoms, it’s been a great weekend.  SO is in a great mood, too.  He’s a funny bugger.  He got home yesterday from his mammoth bike ride very tired but happy.  He devoured a third of a chicken and a family-sized salad, had a shower, and was chasing me around the place making lewd suggestions.  That is, until he sat down on the couch, where he promptly fell asleep sitting up.  It was so cute.

SO and I are looking at a low GI diet.  We both find that not long after eating, we’re hungry again, so the doctor suggested low GI as sustaining us for longer, and helping to decrease the actual amount of calories we take in.  Anything’s worth a go, right?  SO particularly is looking for the magic solution to not feeling hungry – he gets feral when he is.  So I’ve been doing some research on the intermenets for some possible recipes to try out.  So far I like the look of apricot and muesli sesame balls, beef and borlotti bean stew, dairy-free tuna pasta bake, proscuitto and mushroom spaghetti, and slow-cooked beef with sweet potato mash.  I told SO if he did the food shopping necessary, that I would do the cooking.  I’m looking to try out the apricot balls and the beef and borlotti stew first.  I need to ease myself into cooking generally, and I usually hate trying new recipes.  For some reason they rarely work out the way they’re meant to.

If anyone has any good low GI recipes that are relatively quick and easy, I’d love to know about them.

feeling amazingly good

I have to say, I feel absolutely fantastic today.  I was sitting here trying to work out why, and I think I can pin it down to the 15 hours’ sleep I’ve had in the last 24 hours.  Oh well, it was obviously much needed!  SO and I had our flu injections on Thursday night, and since then I’ve been feeling a bit ordinary – heavy eyed, runny nose, sore throat.  The doc did say that we may feel a bit crap for a few days, even though the injection is inactive, and I guess he’s right.

I forgot to mention that last Sunday, when we had our friends’ wedding, was also our fifth anniversary of our first date.  It just doesn’t seem like five years.  Where on earth has the time gone?!  As with most anniversaries of significant occasions, it got me thinking.  We are so very happy, I can’t think of anything that I’d change.  (Apart from SO cooking, that would be great, but that’s relatively minor in the scheme of things.)  I can’t imagine life without him, and I know he feels the same about me.  We are so very lucky to have found each other.

Anyhow, as it’s not our wedding anniversary, I didn’t do anything, but when SO did the food shopping on Saturday, he bought me flowers:

Awwwww. 

Yes, so things are going well for me at the moment.  Life is good. 

I have the house to myself at the moment.  SO has gone out with a couple of his mates to go bike riding.  He’s getting a bit concerned about his weight lately, so when he found out a couple of guys from work do this every Saturday, he was keen to join in.  As a result, I’ve had some ‘me time’ today.  ‘Me time’ has resulted in both toilets and bathrooms being cleaned, the bedsheets changed and washed, dishes done, and most of the laundry washed and hung out.  On reflection, it sounds more like ‘house time’ than me time, but hey, it’s stuff I like to have done so I can then forget about it.  But yes, it’s half past ten in the morning, and most of my weekend stuff is sorted.  This means I’ll be able to fit in a nap this afternoon – my favourite pastime.  Woohoo!