Tag Archives: anxiety

Centenary World Cruise Day 27-28: Now Sea Here!

February 19, 2023 By in travel Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Day 27:

A couple of days ago, we got a note saying “if you’re doing the city tour of Abu Dhabi, you must observe a strict dress code for entrance to the mosque.” Most of the requirements weren’t surprising: loose-fitting clothing that covers the leg down to the ankle and the arm down to the wrist, nothing transparent, head coverings for women. I was surprised, though, that you’re not allowed to wear white or animal prints. I hadn’t heard that before, and it meant that I had to re-think my original outfit, which involved short sleeves and then an oversized white shirt. It also means that I will spend the day in a hot country wearing all black. What could go wrong?

Today is another Gala evening, this one Roaring 20s themed. We dressed for the first couple of gala evenings, but by the third one, getting dressed up to have our pictures taken and then going to a giant party where 2700 people are competing for 1000 seats lost its allure.

I’ve never been one for parties, especially parties where I don’t know anyone, and sitting in a room with over a thousand other people and trying to have a conversation is more stress than I find enjoyable. I finally realized that this is just like any other party. I can NOT GO! And I don’t even have to feel bad about it! So the Pirate and I had a lovely dinner where we didn’t have to talk to anyone else, then were back in our room by 8.

Day 28:

After Southampton, the ship collected our passports so they could arrange all the customs stuff for us, but not every country will allow us to enter with just our cruise ID. In Egypt, while the customs officials stamped our passports before we got them back the day before, we still had to show them to a customs official as we got off the ship.

Today, we have to collect our passports in advance of being in Abu Dhabi tomorrow. And it’s not just the people getting off the ship who have to show their passports to the officials – every single person on the ship has to get off, show their passport, and then those that don’t have shore excursions booked can get back on.

We also found out that we have to secure our own visas for Singapore, but that you can’t apply for the visa more than 3 days before you arrive. I anticipate that the ship’s limited wifi is going to be strained past its limit in the 3 days leading up to Singapore. We have to get our own visas for Australia too, but at least we can do those any old time.

Centenary World Cruise Day 1 – Embarkation

January 6, 2023 By in travel Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

It was dumping rain when we left our hotel. Back in 2010 when we took my mother to Scotland for three weeks for her birthday, we stayed a night or two in one city, and then moved on to the next city in our itinerary, eventually making a circuit of the entire country. It seemed that it was always raining on the days we traveled from one city to the next. Since then, I’ve just taken it for granted that if it’s a travel day, it’s raining.

My biggest fear once we got on board was that our luggage wouldn’t be there. I’ve never shipped luggage ahead before, so I had no idea what to expect. When we boarded the ship, the queue for the elevators was ridiculous, so the Pirate and I ducked into one of the zillion lounges for a much-needed cup of tea to wait out the crowd. The Pirate took the stairs up to our stateroom to retrieve our keycards (they’re used for paying for things on board), and the luggage wasn’t there. After a tiny, silent panic attack, we reassured ourselves that luggage was still being brought on board, so it wasn’t hopeless.

Tea drunk, we went up to our stateroom (which, I’m going to be honest, is just a really posh way of saying “closet with a bed in it”) and were joyously re-united with our luggage. Because we’d shipped it two weeks ago, and in that two weeks I’d flown to LA to teach a class, my younger sister came out for a brief pre-holiday visit, my daughter and her husband came out from Connecticut, and then there was all the holiday hoopla, I had honestly forgotten all about a lot of the clothes I had packed. It was like Christmas all over again, looking at a bunch of clothes I’d bought specifically for this trip (OMG! Those great flowered cigarette pants!)

After dinner, we took a little stroll around the ship to familiarize ourselves with it. This is by far the largest ship we’ve ever been on, so there’s a whole lot of stuff we haven’t seen yet. I don’t have a good feel for the layout of things, but I have four months to figure it out. One thing we did see was a giant bas relief with scenes from different parts of the world. The very first figure in one of them is a woman wearing some kind of headdress and a sort of drapey skirt thing. No shirt, no artfully-arranged hair, no leaves – just her bare breasts hanging there in midair. EXCEPT: she had no nipples. Because you can’t tell they’re breasts without nipples, right? There are so many things that could be floating around right below a woman’s shoulders, right? Even weirder, a few feet further down are a bunch of topless men, and they all have nipples. They don’t even have a use for them, but they have them.

Yes, it looks like she’s wearing a shirt, but she’s not. And on the right, that’s not a trick of perspective – he really does have a weirdly prominent head and a posture that suggests he’s parading down a catwalk, showing off his nipples.

I keep feeling like I have to do every activity, fill up every minute. And then I remind myself that I have four months. There’s no hurry.

My Big, Fat Geographical Ignorance

January 2, 2023 By in travel Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

This morning, I got up at 3:30am so I could catch one plane to Dallas, then another to New York. It was still dark out as we took off from San Jose, but I couldn’t sleep on the plane. As we flew over some mountains, I looked out the window of the plane and realized it looked like the ocean floor. Peaks and valleys, tiny snatches of green, softened by a blurring layer of sand.

No, it’s not sand, you moron. It’s snow.

I realized this as I recalled the time I flew into Denver one winter night in 1997 and looked out the window as we landed. I thought that Denver must still be building their airport, because they hadn’t paved the runways – they were still rough dirt roads. Except that they weren’t. They were perfectly serviceable tarmac covered in snow.

Don’t blame me. I grew up in Phoenix.

The next time I opened the window shade, we were flying over farm land. But it didn’t look like the lovely farm land above, full of neat squares of different colors of green and brown. This farm land had neat squares, but in the middle of each one was a giant circle, like this is where all the aliens come to practice their crop circles. I have no idea what that’s about. Then again, what I don’t know about agriculture can (and does) fill an entire library.

As we touched down in New York at a little after 5pm, I pulled up the window shade and…it’s dark out. All the hours of sunlight have been spent either in an airport or on a plane.

At least that part of our trip’s done. Next stop – will our luggage be in our stateroom when we arrive? There’s still time to place your bets!

Future Perfect Tense

December 30, 2022 By in travel Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

We leave in just under three days. I say “just under,” because at this point, the time until we leave can be comfortably counted in hours (about 68). I have made my packing lists, I have begun packing up things that I’ll take on the plane. Our clothes left two weeks ago. And yet, my own travel experience tells me that I will forget something. Nothing show-stopping, and nothing that cannot be purchased anywhere in the world, but still, when one has had more than 18 months to plan, forgetting anything is galling.

I was talking to my sister on the phone last night, and telling her about the fight in my OCD brain between trying to be as complete as possible in my listing and also trying to anticipate what I’m going to forget. Because I can’t shake the feeling that I will start unpacking things once we get into our stateroom and I will have forgotten something. (Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved title.) But how do you anticipate what you’re going to forget?

At this point, all the big things are accounted for, which leads me to speculate that the thing I’ll be kicking myself for is something I don’t currently have, but wish I had. That lip mask Sephora sent me a sample of that I’m really liking. A new hat of some description. A full set of professional watercolors and an easel. I have no idea, but there will be something. And then there is the part of my mind that says that because I’m worrying about little stuff, I’ll forget something big. Medication. My passport.

It’s like in fairy tales where the main character is told not to do a certain thing (look in a room, eat something, ask a question), and although they live their whole lives knowing about that proscription, circumstances conspire to force them into doing the very thing they were prohibited from doing, with disastrous consequence. My worrying about forgetting something will force my brain into such a spin that it will, in fact, cause me to forget something.

My only hope is to pack everything now, put on the clothes I plan to fly out in, and just stand by the door for the next two days and two nights until I leave, moving only to add things to my bags as I remember them.

Yeah. That’s a great idea. I think I’ll do that.

Help.

Time for Second Guessing!

December 13, 2022 By in travel Tags: , , Leave a comment

I spent most of a day packing and re-packing my list of stuff, and felt pretty good about it. Smug, almost.

But even before I went to sleep that night, I was already second guessing every choice I had made. Should I have packed more than one black turtleneck? (Although seriously, who do I think I am – Steve Jobs?) Should I have packed those really cute cigarette pants with the roses? And did I pack those walking shoes I had bought specifically for this trip? The problem is that I packed on Sunday so that my husband could clutter up our bedroom with his packing on Monday so that the luggage could be picked up Tuesday.

After he was done with his packing Monday afternoon, my husband came down and announced “Wow, even after I packed a bunch of extra stuff, I’m still not even close to filling up my suitcase.”

Now I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, I am happy to fill that mouth with those cute cigarette pants, the walking shoes that I had not, in fact, packed, and a bunch of other stuff. We weighed our luggage, and what we just shipped is collectively 220 pounds of luggage, clothes, and sundry other stuff. And that’s just what we shipped. See those two little carry-on bags in the corner? Those are coming with us, along with our overnight bags.

Today, that luggage was carted off, and the next time we lay eyes on it, it will be in our stateroom aboard ship. Theoretically. Hopefully.

This is the part where someone says “What could go wrong?”

The Next Step

January 31, 2022 By in health, weight Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

The Lead Up

In thirteen hours, I take the next step in this whole bariatric process. Back in September, I went to a follow-up with my bariatric surgeon and asked when I should think about getting all the extra skin removed, and he said now would be the right time. He said he recommended it as the final step in the journey.

That was the first shock. For some reason, I had gotten it into my mind that skin surgery, the step that would take off a bag of fatty skin from my lower abdomen that’s been there since before I was 20, was something I had to earn. What did “earn” mean, though? I’ve already lost over 100 pounds. My weight has been steady for months without the rebound I’ve heard of from others. What else did I think I needed to do?

Nearly 20 years ago, I tried getting a tummy tuck. I went to a surgeon who first told me I needed to lose another 20 pounds. He said that weight loss for people “my age” was nearly impossible, though.

I was 36.

I lost the weight and paid him far more than I could afford for the surgery, and instead of doing an abdominoplasty, he did liposuction on my inner thighs and under my breasts. It wasn’t what I asked for, it wasn’t what I paid for, and at the time, I didn’t know what to do. I never talked about it, I tried not to think about it, and to this day, I have a hard time thinking about it. Every part of that experience was deeply damaging, starting with this man’s dismissive assertion that I’d never be able to lose weight, and that what I wanted was not just a waste of time, but an outcome I didn’t deserve.

I went into the entire bariatric surgery thing knowing that I’d be facing this scenario at some point. What I have on my side is many more years of life experience, and a good grip on the knowledge that what happened to me the last time should never have happened to anyone. If the statute of limitations on medical malpractice hadn’t long since run out, I would have sued this man for everything he was worth (which would have been a whole lot financially and very little morally).

But this leaves me in such a weird place. In twelve and a half hours, I’m having the surgery I wanted decades ago.

The Next Few Hours

But that’s not the only thing freaking me out. The other thing is the surgery itself.

The doctor came highly recommended, and I’m sure I’m in good hands, but this will be the fourth abdominal surgery I’ve had. I had my tubes tied after my younger daughter was born, I had an emergency gallbladder removal, and then bariatric surgery. After every one of them, I was in a lot of pain. When you can’t use your abs, anything that involves changing position is hard. Standing to sitting, sitting to lying, lying to sitting, sitting to standing, agony to agony. In a perfect world, I’d be able to stand on a step with my back against a soft surface, and the entire thing would gently lean back until I was lying down. Not going to happen.

The anticipation of pain is a punishment all by itself and is the basis of many forms of torture. It’s why I believe most doctors avoid the use of words like “pain” and “hurt.” Most doctors will come at you with a bone saw and tell you that as they take your leg, you’ll feel “discomfort.” But this doctor has told me more than once that this procedure is “very painful.” It wasn’t just the one time he said it during the initial consultation. There was also the several times he said it during the second consultation. And the eight million times it was mentioned in the sheaf of paperwork I had to sign in the pre-op appointment. These people want to make sure I know this is going to hurt. A lot.

Into the Future

This is the final step toward becoming something I’ve never been. As of tomorrow, I will be yet another size and shape. There are certain clothes I haven’t worn because they just don’t look right, and this surgery will remedy that. It will make finding bathings suits and skirts that fit easier. It’ll mean that I won’t be dressing around the one part of my body that’s still out of proportion.

This is it. The last step. The last thing I have to do. Apart from the familiar maintenance of eating right and getting enough exercise, this is the last step toward a goal that I’ve realized is always going to hover on the horizon.

Moving the Needle

September 28, 2021 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

You’ve heard me say it before – the rules regarding diet and exercise are different if you’re fat. How many times did I exercise until I injured myself and diet until I felt faint, only to watch the scale fail to move, or worse, go up? Even my husband, who truly believed the “just make calories in less than calories out” lie, couldn’t believe it when I showed him that at the end of a week, the scale had crept up another two pounds.

Cut to now. For the last few weeks, my weight has settled into a range between 142.5 and 144.5. I weigh myself every day, and on those days I’m toward the top end, I limit my carb intake and when I’m at the lower end, I don’t worry about it. I always keep in mind the advice I received before surgery: Stop eating when you lose interest, not when you’re full.

Then came a day when I realized that I had eaten my normal yogurt breakfast, then a dozen graham crackers between breakfast and my lunch salad, then jellybeans until I had a whacking sugar headache. What the hell was I doing?

I needed to figure out a better way to deal with that cycle, otherwise I’d be right back where I started.

First, I stepped back. What’s going on with me? We’ve had some stressful uncertainty lately, and I realized that the stress was making me eat too much of all the wrong foods.

Second, I talked to someone about my anxiety. I admitted that I was terrified of having to move again, knowing that we would likely move to a place that was smaller and less well-situated. I was losing patience and hope about the rebuild – everything is taking months longer than it should. And also, I need to buy a formal for some upcoming events, and I’m terrified that, given my history, I’ll buy a dress and by the time I need it, it won’t fit.

Third, I took the time to address the sources of the anxiety. I increased my depression medication. I wrote to my county supervisor about the permit situation. I signed a lease for another year on this house, with the understanding that we may leave sooner than a year (but no sooner than 7 months). I know that I am exercising every day, with Sundays off. I acknowledged that I have the support of my family in eating a healthy, balanced diet, so there was no reason for my weight to go up.

Fourth, I took a day off. I have the privilege of not having to work, so I slept in. I took my time over my morning tea. I sat on the couch watching crappy television and doing crochet. I let the mental break sink in and remind me that nothing is on fire, nobody’s bleeding, and we’re not going to be thrown into the street tomorrow. I am fine.

After my day off, I had my normal routine: wake up, weigh myself, hit the stationary bike. When I stepped on the scale, my weight was down half a pound from the day before – down to 143.2 – still in the good range.

Back when I was nearing 250 pounds, this would be about the time that the scale would have started creeping up, not just because I would have been stress eating, but because my metabolism was trying to protect me from the danger by hanging on to every calorie. I would panic, exercise like crazy and stop eating in an effort to lose weight and when it backfired, I’d say “Fuck it, it’s futile, I may as well have some pizza.”

Now, even modest changes will move the scale in the direction I want it to go, and when that happens, I feel encouraged and continue to drink a lot of water, snack on fruit, and get on the bike every morning. I feel that I cannot say it often enough: weight loss works differently for fat people vs. thin people. As of this morning, I’m at 141 even.

A Year in My Head

September 3, 2021 By in autism, health Tags: , , Leave a comment

I was looking through my memories on Facebook and found this from a year ago (two weeks after losing my house in a fire):

“…Everyone, to include my psychiatrist, has remarked on how well I’m doing. How together I have things. How resilient I’m being. Here’s what’s going on inside: When things are apocalyptic (my house is gone, the plague is making a resurgence, Trump has largely dismantled our government) the only solace I have is routine. I make lists. I check things off my list. I pick one task at a time, and do the thing. I take meetings where I focus on the task at hand, because that keeps me from dwelling on things that are out of my control – when we’ll be able to even go and look through the wreckage, what might be left, etc. If I’m not working, that’s all I have – thinking about my nonexistent house.

I am overstimulated to the point of collapse. Everyone eats too loudly. Too much light in my mother’s spare bedroom. The dining room table is too high (why does my tiny little mother have a bar-height dining table??). There isn’t anyplace I can sit comfortably and work. Those things are hard, but moaning about it won’t change them – they are my reality for the next few months. I’m hoping that by then, we’ll have worked out a lot of the kinks and I can feel productive….”

That was the day my therapist basically said to me “of course you’re on the spectrum – what did you think?” For a year now, I have been evaluating things in a very different light. At the time I wrote that, I felt like a raw nerve. When I get stressed, life looks like a fight on the old Batman tv show.

Everything is too bright, too loud, too fast. When I’m stressed, I feel everything in my skin in a way I’ve never tried to describe, but I always think of it as being “negatively charged.” Not only do I not want anything to touch my skin because it’s so hypersensitive that any touch is painful, but even sounds, bright lights, and unpleasant smells create a physical sensation that, because I cannot properly express exactly what’s wrong, makes me go directly to crying. It’s like being an infant in an uncomfortable diaper – I am inconsolable, but unable to communicate the source of my distress.

Six weeks after losing my house, my husband and I moved into a rental about 30 minutes from our old house. It’s on a quiet street in a wealthy suburb, so the houses are on large lots and everything in our neighborhood is quiet and tidy.

And yet, the feeling of discomfort persists. Every time I leave the house, it’s like I can physically feel the neighbors’ eyes on me, and in my mind, they’re judging me for going out so often. And every time, I have to say to myself “I used to have a [whatever I’m going out for], and I need it!” As though I need their approval to buy a new ladle or laundry basket or lamp. I feel defensive, even though in reality, our neighbors have been nothing but wonderful to us.

This is my constant battle: I don’t want to let anyone down. Ever. In any way. Even when they expect nothing from me. I also am constantly on the edge of a complete breakdown.

I keep that breakdown at bay with lists, spreadsheets, and as much routine as I’m capable of creating (another by-product of my brain – I am unable to create habits of any kind). But every interaction with another person puts a little wobble in the balance I’m trying to create. What did they mean by that? Does that wave mean they want me to talk to them, or can I keep walking? How good of an excuse do I need to get out of going to their party/taking their phone call/helping them with their project?

I am often told that I have everything together, that I am someone that people look up to for my ability to organize. I understand that it is always meant as a compliment, but each bit of praise for my ability to keep myself from exploding in a cloud of anger and despair is another expectation I have to meet. To lose my shit, to fail, to be unable to do something would be to let someone down, and that’s the thing I fear more than anything.

This is what it looks like in my head – an immense mountain made of individual grains of fear, anxiety, depression, and confusion being separated into manageable piles with a pair of tweezers.

Planning for the Future

July 28, 2021 By in weight Tags: , , , 1 Comment

My weight has held steady at around 143-144 for the past couple of months, and I have created a nice routine of getting up and hitting the bike, and my eating is generally decent, but I’ve bumped up against a pretty big issue. I know I will have to buy new formals for the inevitable round of holiday parties at the end of this year. I’ve been looking at all the places I used to shop, and every time, it’s the same.

I’m terrified to buy a new formal, because there’s some part of me that says that because I have failed in the past, I will fail again, and if I buy something now, by the time I need it, it will be too small.

Those of you with weight issues know that sometimes, there’s literally nothing you can do. I would pare down my calorie intake to the barest minimum and work out for an hour a day (on top of holding down a job and maintaining a household) and I might still see the scale creep up. When that happened, it was easy to drown my sorrows in pizza, thinking “Fuck it. I can’t lose weight, so why am I making myself miserable?”

These days, when the scale starts creeping up, it does so by ounces, not by pounds. And normally it doesn’t take much to get it back to where it should be – an extra 15 minutes on the bike, skip the toast with my morning yogurt, that sort of thing. Still, I am having real issues overcoming the fear of failure.

Now that the weight loss has stopped, I still don’t have the body I wanted, so it’s hard to feel like it’s been a total success. In my dreams, I would lose weight and immediately become supermodel levels of beautiful, and I’m not even close. Decades of living in a larger body have left their marks not just where you’d expect – my stomach, butt, and upper arms – but in places I didn’t realize would be so affected. I now have deep nasolabial folds (the ones that go from the sides of your nose to the corners of your mouth). My neck looks like a cow’s with folds of loose skin hanging off it. Between the crepey skin on my body and the added wrinkles on my face, I went from looking 10-15 years younger than I was to looking 10-15 years older.

I’m struggling to tell myself that it’s natural to want to feel good about yourself, and that even if I don’t change another thing, I’m still a worthwhile person. But it’s hard. Right about now, I’m very much feeling like I traded one problem for another, and I’m not sure where to look for a solution to this new one.

The Flavor of Anti-Vaxx

October 22, 2014 By in personal Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

I got this email at 4:30pm yesterday from the mother of the boy we drive to school in the mornings:

Hi Monkey,
So yeah, Carpooligan has been tested positive for whooping cough. Just thought you should know. Even the vaccine isn’t protecting kids at Gryffindor, so if the Goddess gets a mild cold and cough, I’d think about getting her tested.
Carpooligan was partially vaccinated, by the way, but did not have the booster. I chose not to get it because I didn’t think it was effective against the strain that goes around…
He’ll be back at functions Saturday and school on Monday, so no carpool buddy the next few days.
Hope you’re all well!

 

The tone of this email infuriates me. “This isn’t a big deal! He was ‘sort of’ vaccinated, so it’s not my fault. Even the vaccine isn’t 100% effective.”

 

I want to break this down just to figure out why it makes me want to sue this woman for everything she’s got, then burn it all, and her along with it.

 

  1. “Carpooligan has been tested positive for whooping cough.” Two weeks ago, she could have sent me an email that said “Carpooligan has been exposed to whooping cough and he’s not vaccinated.” A week ago, she could have said “I think that cough Carpooligan has might be whooping cough.” But she waited until after he tested positive to say anything to anyone. The lack of concern for anyone else is staggering.
  2. “Even the vaccine isn’t protecting kids at Gryffindor…” As I said, there is a small population of parents who opted out of the vaccine, but no vaccine is 100% effective. The pertussis vaccine is more effective in children than in adults, but is still not at 100%.  So, of the ~150 children at my kid’s school, roughly 5% aren’t vaccinated at all (so, about 8 kids), and another 3-6 will get it even if they were vaccinated. That’s 11-14 out of about 150. But that’s just the kids. Every one of those kids has parents, and many of them have siblings. Those people have jobs and friends and come into contact with thousands of people, so it’s not just about my kid having to miss school if she gets sick. It’s about spreading the disease along vectors you never thought about.
  3. “Carpooligan was partially vaccinated, by the way, but did not have the booster.” If he didn’t get the booster, he’s not protected. I don’t know what comfort she’s trying to offer with “partially vaccinated,” but maybe she’s just trying to tell me that she’s not a crazy antivaxxer. But if she’s not opting out on the grounds that vaccines are dangerous or against God’s will, why aren’t her kids vaccinated?
  4. “I chose not to get it because I didn’t think it was effective against the strain that goes around…” Aaaah! With her housewife medical degree, she decided two years ago (when her kid was in seventh grade and legally required to either have his vaccinations updated or provide an opt-out form) that the vaccine against pertussis, which has been shown to protect 98% of children who receive all their boosters, wasn’t the right one for the strain of pertussis that is currently being passed around. So, not only a medical hobbyist, but also a prognosticator. How about this: you chose not to get it because you have four children with four different schedules and signing an opt-out form is WAY easier than making an appointment and taking your kid to the doctor to get his shots updated? Because, having known this woman for 6 years now, I’d bet good money that her logic went “Taking my kid to the doctor is expensive and inconvenient, but signing a form is easy. I’ll do that!” It makes me wonder just how many of these opt-outs are really parents who can’t be bothered to just take their kid to the doctor. It makes me feel that schools should require more than just an easy signature on a form. They should require parents who choose to opt out to either provide a doctor’s note signed within the last week stating that their child has a medical condition that precludes vaccinations, or pay $10 and attend an hour-long lecture about vaccines and why they’re important. Something that would take about as long and cost about as much as just going to the doctor for the shot.
  5. “Hope you’re all well!” Fuck you. We’ve got whooping cough.