Waiting is not my forte.

I know that the meeting happened that decided my licensure status happened on Friday.

I know that it takes time. The rational side of my brain is slapping me in the face right now and being like "COOL IT RYAN. THESE THINGS TAKE TIME."

The irrational side of my brain is battling it out currently. The thing is, one of my mentors from grad school is on the board. I know this. What I also know (rational brain speaking here) is that we are both ethical people. Could he call me and tell me what happened and what was decided? Of course he could. But he's ethical and he won't. Also, because I'm ethical, I would never put him in the position to have to answer if I asked, and I would never, ever even think of exploiting our relationship in that way.

Do I wish that he and I could just both set aside our ethics for one effing second and he would just TELL ME WHAT WAS DECIDED, DAMN IT? Of course I do. But I don't get special privileges just because I know someone on the board, no matter how well I may know them. I have to wait just like everyone else.

Juuuuuuuust like everyone else.

I wonder if anyone else's anxiety level is this high over what everyone is trying to convince me is basically a done deal. In all reality, I'm likely going to be licensed. It's just a matter of getting the letter, writing the check, and getting my license and paperwork to hang in my office.

But the thing is, it's not a done deal. People get denied licensure all the time for reasons that seem weird and entirely out of their control. So, as encouraging as people are trying to be, it's not working. I just need the damn letter, and then I will be a bearable person to be around.

In other news, to bide my time, I tried a new gluten free brownie mix this weekend. King Arthur Flour makes it, and the reason I decided to try it was because I went to a local cafe the other day and had some blueberry bread that didn't taste at all like it was gluten free, but it WAS. I asked them for the recipe (literally, I went up to the counter and said, "What is the sorcery behind you guys being able to make this gluten free without tasting like it?"), and they told me that it was all King Arthur Flour mix. They gushed about it, even.

The brownies TOTALLY lived up to the hype. They weren't grainy, they were soft, they didn't break apart in my hands, it was MAGIC. The entire pan is gone. Rob liked them too. I find it encouraging that people are getting better at gluten-free. I also found a GRRRRRRRREAT recipe this weekend for gluten-free beef stew, so I threw a bunch of shit in the slow cooker and it's ready to eat today. I can't wait to try it.

Also, I'm currently sitting at home waiting for an electrician to come to my house, and I think the awesomeness of the brownies made it happen (being that taking them out of the oven was the first time that it happened), but the stove keeps tripping the circuit breaker. Like, three or four times just yesterday. It just happened out of the blue. Also, our furnace needs repair (to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, so it's not like it's a small deal), so this is going to be an expensive week house-wise. We've been lucky up to this point except when our water heater started having some shenanigans right after we moved in, but it's been right as rain ever since and we've had NO trouble with anything else. So, we're due, I guess one could argue.

So, I continue to wait.

And continue to press the "licensee lookup" button and type in my name on the website for the board.

Compulsively.

My Weird Brain

So, I'm teaching three classes this semester.

If you are thinking, "RYAN YOU ARE CRAZY BECAUSE YOU WORK UPWARDS OF FIFTY HOURS A WEEK AND TEACH THREE CLASSES", you are certainly not wrong. I think that to myself about three times a day.

They're all pretty straightforward though, and they're RIGHT in my wheelhouse as a counselor, so I feel like I've got a good amount of knowledge to impart and it's pretty great.

There is this one class though. It's a full-semester class, and it's taught entirely online. I'm teaching the very first online iteration of this class, and its start was stressful because I had just shy of three weeks to read the entire textbook and develop the entire course, all in my first month of my promotion at work, so it was a stressful time.

Regardless, I do my grading on weekends. That's literally the only time I have to do it. I could do some on Mondays (and I do for my hybrid class), but it's largely weekends. It takes me about six hours total to do all of my grading for these three classes, so it's not a huge time commitment. The reason that I'm thinking about this is that taking on the hybrid class that I am currently teaching started in a similar way (I was asked at the last minute, and had a VERY short amount of time to develop my syllabus and cram an entire textbook into my already largely occupied brain), and I'm noticing a pattern.

I have started to avoid grading for these two classes specifically. For my other class, I'm all over it. But these two classes are difficult for me to get motivated.

It started innocently enough. I was like "eh, all this can wait until Sunday" one week, and while I did it, I stressed about it. a lot. And I stress about it every week. In reflecting on it, I can find no discernable reason - the students are meeting the expectations consistently, they're working in the ways that I want them to - they're bringing their A games, even. But I have the yips about these two classes. So I stress, I procrastinate, I avoid...and then everything's fine when I sit down and actually do the grading. What I have been able to determine is that I'm stressed about grading these two classes because the start was stressful. But knowing that doesn't stop my brain from trying to avoid.

I'm such a weirdo.

What I do when I’m Crispy

Friends, I’m crispy.

Burnt.

Toasty.

That’s a selfie I took earlier.

Anywho, how do I know that I’m crispy? Really, how does anyone know?

That’s a good question. For some, it’s dark humor. I can always take that off the list, because it’s just my general sense of humor. Some people become short-tempered, but mine goes beyond that. The great thing about counselor education is that they teach you to tune into yourself and figure out what burnout looks like. You almost become too self-aware, but it serves a purpose, which is to be able to tell when you’re getting burnt. The burnout rate in my profession is astronomical, especially in the environment in which I work. It’s just the nature of the beast, and burnout isn’t so much a thing to avoid, because it’s inevitable. The trick is to notice it when it happens and have the wherewithal to act, or have colleagues close enough to you that they will be able to tell and have the comfort level to point it out. This is important, because if you get burnt and don’t notice it or act, you can do quite a bit of damage. Every counselor has their own signs of burnout, and I’ve pinpointed several of mine:

My reserve of patience is and has been close to zero without any kind of replenishment for the last couple of weeks. Like, even my dog is annoying, and I never, ever get annoyed at my dog. He isn’t even doing anything different - he’s just being Miles. Also, I have urges to yell at people. Like, legit yell. Like, freak the fuck out, red faced, spittle flying everywhere kind of yelling. I’m also perpetually mad, even after a good day, without any kind of respite.

The thing is, if I’m going to get burnt, this is the time of year when it will happen. The holidays are coming and I hate them so my stress level is high, work is NUTS, and I’m just tired. Mix all that shit together, and it’s burnout city, population Ryan.

So, when I start to get crispy, I double down on the self-care. I knit more, I sleep more, and I give myself opportunities to rest. For instance, tomorrow I have an Invisalign appointment at 945, so I’m taking a half day and sleeping in, and then following my appointment up with some retail therapy before going into work. Also, I’m making my thanksgiving weekend as stress-free as possible and filling it with people that I know will nourish me and allow me to be myself. I also am intentionally eating better and making myself smoothies in the morning again and making sure I take my vitamins. I’m just WAY more intentional about everything that helps me to feel better. Also, increasing my therapy appointments helps, and most importantly, being honest with myself about it. Because I’m such a perfectionist, I have a hard time admitting to myself that I’m feeling burnt, but the grrrrreat thing about this new role of mine is that if I have to give others feedback about it, I damn well be pretty honed into my own tendencies.

Speaking of this new role, I’m starting to fit into it better. I am more decisive than I ever have been in any job, and I’m starting to feel more confident and competent.

Finally.

Ok. I’m going to go knit and drink tea and watch Gilmore girls like the self-care champ that I am.

Tooth Shenanigans

I had a cleaning at the dentist a couple of weeks ago for the first time since I got invisalign. It went very well! My habitual increased toothbrushing habits and daily water pik-ing have paid off, and my gums are healthier than they ever have been!

I also had an invisalign appointment that day to get new trays, and I'm two away from getting new molds and solidifying my treatment plan, and so it got me thinking.

If you'll notice, my top teeth trend to the right. This has driven me crazy since the day I got my braces off at age 13. I was told by my orthodontist that this was not fixable. When I was approving my initial treatment plan for invisalign and I noticed that fixing this was not in the plan, I asked about it and he said, "yeah, it won't even be that noticeable by the end.

Don't mind the droopy eyelids or the luggage under my eyes.
I had a rough week and I just woke up from a nap a little bit ago.
Or something.
Also, look at how much straighter my teeth are getting!

It's VERY noticeable right now, more so than when I started invisalign. SO, I had this appointment, and I asked, since I'm in striking distance to modify my treatment plan - my dentist said that this was the perfect opportunity to fix it, and they'd put it in when I do the molds.

I'm not sure what this is going to look like, but I would imagine that it's going to look like more IPR, which is no big deal, because I'm usually the only one that notices it. Except that time where my dentist apologized for "roughing me up" and created a very noticeable space between two of my teeth.

If that were to happen, I'm envisioning that I'll look like this eventually:

Fun Fact: Jim Carrey's teeth are actually this way - he had an implant of some
kind removed in order to create the space in his teeth!

Obviously, I know this won't be the case, but it's at least comical to think about. I'm pretty excited that this is going to be fixed! :)

It’s Here!

Three years, one month, and 28 days of graduate school. One thesis, 63 credits, countless papers, and reflection until all I could do was basically vomit words. Also, some of the best mentoring anyone could ever ask for.

Two years, one month, and 21 days of supervised clinical work, an exam, stress, tears, and worry. 

It’s been really fucking hard, and my process was easy compared to that of others who have walked the same journey. But you know how much of it I regret? None. I wouldn’t trade a single minute of it.

I apply for licensure tomorrow, and I couldn’t be more excited. It’s legit more exciting than the day my diploma came in the mail.

I can’t WAIT for this process to be done. The last few weeks have been...stressful, I think is the word I’m looking for? And I think that knowing that this has been coming is the reason why. The amount of relief I feel after checking all of my stuff a fifth and final time to make sure I have everything is more than I expected. I’m going to EAT THE SHIT out of a Balboa sub when my license comes in the mail, gluten intolerance be damned. It’s just a necessary part of the tradition. 

After tomorrow, we wait three weeks, give or take. The meeting in which this will be decided takes place on November 17, so hopefully I won’t be waiting too long.

Here we go!

Listening to Myself

I've been struggling lately.

I'm beyond overwhelmed at work, I just took on a third class for reasons passing understanding, I'm working through some really difficult things in therapy, and I'm just...having a hard time.

Lots of different things have happened lately as well, including some shit with my family that is making me question whether they even respect me at all, and I'm finally leaning into the "no" that is resounding in me and responding accordingly. Rob is not doing so great right now as a result of it either, and that's hard for me to sit with as well.

Regardless, I just feel heavy. Everything is hard, and I get overwhelmed really easily, and I'm irritable. I'm not a very easy person to be around at the moment, and knowing that, I'm starting to isolate, which is not an entirely bad thing.

An annual party that one of Rob's awesome coworkers throws every year is happening right now, and instead of going, after a tough therapy session, realizing the utter mountain of work that I have to do, and just being pretty emotionally volatile at the moment, I decided not to go. There's also a family party that is tomorrow that I'm also not going to for the above mentioned reasons AND the respect thing. I just have to listen to my own inner need to be alone when I'm struggling and know that it's only temporary but necessary in order for me to feel better.

I'm trying really hard to just sit with these difficulties that I'm having, which is difficult. I'm facing some decades-old feelings lately, and it's exhausting. The only thing that I can do, if I want to get through this difficulty and feel better on the other side instead of pushing all of these feelings away, is just sit with it. Be alone sometimes if I have to. Also, recognize that I've had this inner turmoil and dissonance before and it will pass and things will be better than they were before once it does. I will be better than I was before once it passes.

In better news, I went to my functional medicine guy last week and my numbers are all closer to where they should be, particularly my thyroid numbers. So, I'm to stay the course and keep eating better. (Also, I cut sugar out again, and that could be why I'm so emotional the past couple of days in particular - cutting out sugar messes with me more than I care to admit, I think.)

It's not my heart!

Woohoo! All of my heart testing came back normal.

Also, my new doctor is AMAZEBALLS.

Friends, if your doctor tries to force you to get a flu shot, even when you don't really need one, they're not a good doctor. Also, if your doctor does not give you their unvarnished opinion about flu shots when you ask for it, they are not a good doctor.

Of course, I could just be thinking this because I got validation on my viewpoint about flu shots when my doctor agreed with me on it without even knowing it.

I'm one of those assholes who thinks that flu shots are pointless and will express my opinion about it to anyone who asks. I have a couple of risk factors for the flu (asthma being chiefly among them) that would make it about eleventy billion times worse if I ever got it, yet I still refuse to get the vaccine. Why? Because it's probably not going to protect me. The vaccine industry takes a WILD stab in the dark and picks the strains they're going to vaccinate against every year and most of the time, they get it wrong. So, why would I get a shot that I don't need?

Am I an anti-vaxxer? NO. I think that tetanus shots are good. MMR vaccines are great. Also, hepatitis B shots are fantastic, as are all of those other ones that we get as babies that protect us and those around us from really terrible diseases. I think that if we know what we are protecting ourselves from and the shot that we are getting stands a good shot of protecting us (pun not intended!), then we should get that vaccine. Flu vaccines do not meet that criteria for me. For others, sure! Why not? If it gives a person even a little bit of peace of mind, then why not? I get peace of mind from alarmingly few things (thanks again, anxiety), so it would not do that for me. So, no flu shots for me.

Also, I'm taking the bull by the horns allergy-wise early this year and starting on a long-acting inhaler, which I think I've needed for a long time but just never got. My new doctor was like "ok, so if you don't have a heart issue, which you clearly don't, then it's probably your asthma." We talked about long-acting and short-acting inhalers, and I have a short-acting one that I never use because it just makes me feel jittery and more anxious and awful. When I told him that, he was like "yeah, I totally get that." DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY DOCTORS HAVE SAID THAT TO ME IN THE PAST WHEN I TELL THEM THAT MY INHALER JUST SERVES TO COLLECT DUST?

ONE. HIM.

All of the rest of them have been like "just get past the side effects. It's not a big deal. Breathing is more important than addressing these side effects and you don't need a long-acting inhaler." So, just telling me that I'm being crazy and invalidating me and not changing anything at all was SUPER effective (as it always is, right? Who doesn't like to be told that they're being ridiculous?), because I just threw it away eventually because it expired anyway after literally years of not being used.

What's great is that I now have this inhaler, and I'm going to use it for three weeks, and then I'm going to try Singulair for another three weeks. Singular is what I take when my allergies are so bad I can't get out of bed. It allows me to at least drag myself out of bed and into the shower three times a day when my allergies get terrible. I'm starting it early this year because SHOCK OF ALL SHOCKS I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T KNOW THIS BEFORE (OH WAIT YES I DID), but my allergies get worse when my lungs aren't working at their full potential! And then my allergies get even worse and my lungs can't work! And this is the pattern that I've been trying to tell doctors for YEARS, and this is the first time anyone has ever listened to me about it. That allergy cycle is what has caused my lifetime of sinus infections and bronchitis, I'm 90% sure at this point.

But I don't need a long-acting inhaler, especially not to start it early, or to prevent the suffering I feel every fall. Of course I don't. I can TOTALLY stand letting it just hit me in the face every year and spend a larger time than necessary totally debilitated every fall and then get a cold that lingers for an entire winter season because my allergies go unaddressed.

It's the best thing ever to be listened to by my doctor. You know what else is the best thing ever? Breathing. Being able to, that is. After one dose, I'm coughing less and I can breathe better. This is promising!

Down with the Sickness

You know what sucks about being gluten free?

Nothing.

Except when I'm sick. Then, everything sucks.

What especially sucks is that cough drops, those industrial-strength-knock-the-cough-out ones, have gluten in them. So does most cold medicine.

Except these:

What's great about these is that they're gluten free. Also I can recognize every single ingredient in them.

What sucks about these is that one package is $9.39.

Also, the one thing I want when I'm sick is soup, and I can't have like 90% of commercially-produced soups. So, I'm left with chicken broth if I want it, or getting creative and making my own chicken soup, which I can easily do when I am not sick and just getting off of the couch isn't like running a marathon.

Speaking of running, I ran most of a 5k yesterday. You know how sometimes, your car might make a noise that is alarming enough to bring into a mechanic to take a look, and as soon as the mechanic pops the hood, the noise stops?

I feel like that might be what my heart was doing. It was being all haywire and then when I got to the doctor, it was all, "never mind. I'll behave now." I say this because my heart rate at no point went too high or feel like it was pounding out of my chest. At no point did I feel like I was going to throw up because my heart was beating too fast. I didn't get too hot, and my face did not turn red outside of what is normal for strenuous exercise.

I should have a heart scare and then get sick and have to take three weeks off from running more often. Also, I got close to a 40-minute time if I didn't sub-40 (which I'm pretty sure I didn't, but that's totally ok!) - I don't know because the race wasn't timed, which took a lot of the pressure off, I think.

Or maybe I just needed to hear from a medical professional that my heart is ok. It's something that I have been pretty scared about in the past (I've had a weird heart something since I was a teenager that has always felt too scary to get checked), so maybe it was reassurance that I needed. I still haven't gotten my echocardiogram back yet, so who knows. All I know is that yesterday was the best run I have had in years, and I feel pretty darn proud of myself for how far I have come.

Also, I have a full draft of my article done. 

Let me say that again.

I have a full first draft of my article done.

I'm ahead of schedule at this point, and after I meet with my research mentor on Wednesday and make my revisions, I'm going to be ready to submit.

That's all I have to say about that right now. I could go on a whole rant about work as self-care, because sometimes it is (especially in this case), but I'll save that for another day. :)

Heart Stuff

Sooooo, I was really cooking along on the couch to 5k. Like, doing great. I was just starting on my second iteration of week 4, I was running outside three times a week, I was getting it done. I was even able to run for the entire time each interval! And, I was starting to feel super ready and excited for three races that I'm running in the next few months.

Then I had a couple of weird things that I started noticing again that have always kind of been these problems when I run: my heart beats fast. Like, up over 190 beats a minute and sometimes dry-heaving kind of fast. My face gets SUPER red, almost purple. Also, my heart rate will stay over 100 for the rest of the day after I run, and I don't quite feel fully recovered from it until the next day. If you think that this isn't alarming, let me put it into context for you by telling you that I had just started to consistently hit the 2-mile mark in my running when these shenanigans started happening full force.

This has always happened, but it has gotten markedly worse over the years. So, while I was on vacation last week, I took advantage of some of my time off and went to the doctor. Then I proceeded to get a bunch of tests - an EKG, a chest x-ray, an echocardiogram, and a stress test.

There are a few things about all of this stuff that I have noticed:

1. In the waiting rooms of cardiac wards in medical centers, I was the youngest person by two or three decades.

2. Electrodes leave marks on me for days. Like, my echo happened on Wednesday and I still have marks.

3. WATCHING YOUR HEART BEAT ON A SONOGRAM IS THE COOLEST THING EVER.

I'm not sure what's going to come out of all of this testing. Aside from the echo, which I don't know the results of yet, all the rest of it has come back normal. So, maybe I'm just perpetually out of shape. To learn that after all of this would suck a lot, but at least I'd know.

Therapy Shenanigans

Friends, I am the worst therapy client ever.

Like, literally the worst. I even no-showed an appointment once inadvertently. My therapist also once texted me a time that she was available, and I didn't get back to her for seven months. If that were me, I would have dropped that person like a bad effing habit. Not her, though. She's a game-day player, my therapist. Also, shit that makes me frustrated because my clients do it? I have NO problem doing those things whatsoever.

The biggest example of this is catastrophizing. BOY, do I do this.ALL.THE.TIME.

As a result, I don't talk about my feelings to people because I'm afraid that if I do, I'm going to blow up my whole life.

In my head, I KNOW this is crazy-pants.

But I can't help it anyway.

Also, whenever I'm in therapy and I just start out either in the beginning or after a long break, things that were acceptable, possibly forever, suddenly become unbearable. I can't take it. I have to tinker. I have to do something to throw the pattern off kilter, because all of a sudden it's bugging me and I can't tolerate it. The clinician inside of me KNOWS this is normal.

The 14-year-old child inside of me that got chided and shamed for expressing her feelings and other utterly normal teenage behavior does not know this is normal and wants the status quo back even though it means sitting in the corner and shutting the hell up, and starts to all-out panic because suddenly people are getting angry and this kid doesn't know what to do. Like, legit panic. Like, caged animal kind of panic.

The long and short of it is that two relationships in my life have been imploding for a while, and it's coming to a head right about now on both fronts. Intellectually, I know that this is not bad or unnecessary, but it's happening. And, it's stressful on top of the huge professional transition that I am currently making. (Of course that's going swimmingly, because it's rarely, if ever, the other way around.)

I was raised to never express my feelings. I was taught that if I do express my feelings or opinions and it makes someone else not feel so great, even for a hot second, then I did something wrong. I would need to explain myself somehow. Don't be too loud. Don't express your feelings. Don't be too much for other people. Apologize when you make someone else feel bad by expressing your feelings, even if you were right. Your feelings are not valid if they make someone else feel bad or uncomfortable. Your feelings are only valid if they serve to stroke the ego of another person.

Yeah, fuck that noise. Guess what? Other people sometimes feel angry or bad about my feelings or what I say when I set boundaries. This does not create a need for me to explain myself in any way, shape, or form. I create that all on my own when I panic. Then I back-pedal. Then I obsess about how I could have approached it differently. Then I give others room to invalidate my feelings, and then I invalidate my own feelings by saying to myself that the other person must be right. UGH WHAT AN EXHAUSTING CYCLE NOW THAT I RECOGNIZE IT.

THIS is the piece of work that I've needed to do for my whole life. I am a person who feels things. This is both healthy and valid. Intellectually, I know this. Shit, I preach it every day of my life lately. Yet I don't practice it. THIS is what doesn't quite line up for me in terms of my actions and my feelings. I consistently push my feelings into a corner to not piss off too many people, and to not make waves. Being invisible is easier, even if it's at the expense of my feelings.

Or rather, it was. Not anymore.

Oh, Family.

So, my dad is moving to Kentucky in a week and a half. I'm super excited for him, and even though I am also sad that he's going, I also know that much isn't going to change between us as a result of this move.

Right.

So there's this whole side of my family that I don't ever mention. Like, to anyone. It's because I usually get weird looks from people who didn't realize that I actually had these people in my life. At first it was because I felt pretty deep resentment toward them. Now, i just feel nothing because they are such a small factor in my life that they don't even enter my radar. They're all on my dad's side, and I'm pretty sure those friends closest to me learned of their existence at my wedding festivities. I remember my in-laws asking why they were so isolated and didn't talk to me or anyone else at my bridal shower, and feeling weird about it, but also knowing that this is just how they are and I didn't really have a choice in inviting them. If I had, I would not have invited them.

My sister's wedding celebration 2 years ago and her baby shower back in February was pretty much the last time I saw any of them, and before that, the last time was my wedding in 2009, and I'm totally ok with that. Historically, these people have treated me like shit for what appears to be sport my entire life, no matter how hard I cared or tried to make them a part of my life. When I told one of them that I had just gotten my masters degree in something other than music, they were disappointed because now they wouldn't hear from their friends about how talented I am and what I was up to with flute playing. That was their response to this huge and positive life event and accomplishment that I had just told them about.

Right.

Now that I'm an adult and can make my own choices, my choice is to keep these people as far away from me as I can. They are the very definition of venomous, in my opinion, and I have done a lot of work in taking away the guilt behind cutting people like this entirely out of my life. They didn't know that I went to grad school, they didn't know that rob and I bought a house - they had no involvement in The Big Stuff or the little stuff, and that is totally fine with me. This is actually the huge positive byproduct of having a whole side of the family that doesn't communicate with each other - it's safer because there is no access to emotional ammunition.

Anywho. Why am I telling you this, readers?

I finally had the choice to decline going to a family event because these people would be there and I took it. I TOOK IT. Do you know how weird that is? And huge and freeing and awesome?

The original plan for next weekend was that my dad, stepmom, sister, nephie, brother in law, me, and Rob were all going to hang at my sister's place on Sunday, also known as The Day Before My Dad Closes On The Sale of His House and Moves to Kentucky. 

Right.

I got a voicemail from my sister yesterday saying that plans had changed, and they were moving the festivities to Saturday so that a whole bunch of people could also come up and also say their goodbyes.

All of these are people I just told you about.

Right.

I said thanks but we can't make it.

HAVING THAT KIND OF POWER FEELS AWESOME.

Do I feel guilty? Historically I have, but this time, No. If things other than geography were changing drastically, maybe. But they're not. Also, I already have a day at my dad's planned for Vacation Extravaganza 2017. We'll wish them safe travels then. And, I like the idea of getting out of dodge for the holidays sometimes, so maybe this is our reason this year or next.

This invitation decline is stuck in my craw for the moment, and I'm sure I'll figure out why, but the overwhelming sense I feel at the moment is sweet, sweet relief. So I'll just focus on that. :) this is a form of self-care that I consistently neglect, but it's what I need the most - to practice shedding that sense of obligation to people who only hurt me is the best feeling ever, and I need to do it way more often than I do so that I can finally tune into that side of me who needs nurturing and give that little kid inside of me what she actually needs instead of what she got. (Yeah, I've been doing a lot a lot a lot of inner child work in therapy. Totally ok with it.)

Three Stages of Invisalign Tightening

Friends, I got my Invisalign tightened last Friday, and in my very short time of having it so far, I have discovered three stages. Keep in mind that I went through these stages ON STEROIDS with my first set of trays and it lasted at least the first week and a half, if not a little longer:

Stage 1: The Holy Shit Is This Tight Stage: This is characterized by feeling like I have a vice grip in my mouth. The trays are tight and loose at the same time, which is pretty confusing, but that's literally the only way I can describe it. Also, it is uncomfortable. In the first two weeks though, this HURT. A LOT. For this second set, though, it mercifully both hurt less and lasted a much shorter length of time - about a day and a half. I don't really want to take the trays out because it hurts, but also it will hurt worse if I take them out because that means putting them back in, which hurts like a BITCH. Like, I have intense, almost blinding pain for about five seconds while I snap the aligners back into my mouth, so I rarely want to touch them or take them out. This takes us to...

Stage Two: The It Hurts Worse When The Trays Aren't In My Mouth Stage: this is actually kind of perpetual, I think. I'm generally very, very careful when I'm eating - the 10 Invisalign buttons pretty much guarantee that. But the other piece of this is that it's uncomfortable to eat, especially if it's anything crunchy. My teeth just low-key hurt all the time whenever I bite down on anything that is harder than the consistency of fresh mozzarella. Also, my bite has already drastically changed, so my teeth hit other teeth when I chew now and when it's unexpected, it hurts. A LOT. Luckily, this does eventually go away, but even brushing my teeth (which happens about four times a day) can get uncomfortable. The best time, interestingly, is in the morning - my trays have been in all night and some kind of wizard voodoo or something makes it so that my mouth is entirely discomfort-free for about two hours every morning. It's pretty nice! The aligners also feel like they fit right eventually in this stage, so that's nice too.

Stage Three: The Rage Stage: So, I haven't hit this one yet for this set, but it will probably happen within the next few days, especially since I'm off to a conference this weekend and that will put a HUGE dent in my dental regimen, and I won't be able to snack as much as I usually do at this particular conference place. (Which is all the time because THE FOOD IS AMAZEBALLS.) What happens is that I just get sick of it. I look at my wear indicators and they are faded enough for me to be like "...I could, y'know, not wear them for a little bit longer today..." and it is SO HARD TO RESIST. Then I remember how much I'm paying to get this done AND the progress I'm already seeing and I pull it together and click the trays back in.

I'm sure there are other nuances, and I have been taking pictures, but I want to wait a few more weeks so there is more progress. I wish I had a copy of that super neat video that my dentist showed me about exactly how my teeth are going to straighten, but alas, I do not. It's a pretty fascinating process, all told.

Seventeen months, one week, and two days until I can snack again. (Yes, I'm still counting.)

BYE, SNACKS.

It has been a rough couple of days teeth-wise. Invisalign HURTS. It wasn't an unexpected pain, but holy shit. I'm finally getting to a place where I feel like my teeth almost don't hurt. It's also hard to stay ahead of the pain, but I think I have it figured out at this point, as well as what to do every two weeks when I have to change trays.

However, I have also discovered that the most significant pain is actually mental.

I can't really snack anymore.

Yeah.

I knew this was coming on some level, but I didn't realize how much I mindlessly snacked throughout the day until this past Friday - my first workday with my trays in.

Dentist's orders, I'm to wear my trays 24/7, except when I'm eating. That first full day was so rough pain-wise that I had my smoothie sitting on my desk and was like "it will hurt too much, so I'm not going to have it." I made the conscious choice to not have breakfast in favor of just leaving my trays out. When lunchtime came, I had to psych myself up for it. My morning routine is going to have to change a little bit, I think. I'm still figuring it out.

But the whole day, I also had a bag of snapea crisps sitting on the edge of my desk, taunting me. I wanted literally nothing more than to bust that bag open and eat them, but I couldn't.

I had looked at this bag for probably the thousandth time in the hour after lunch and came to an alarming realization: this is my reality for the next 18 months. I have to get rid of my snack drawer at work. I can't keep snacky stuff at home. If I'm going to snack, I have to be mindful and planful about it.

In the long run, this is actually healthier. My dentist also told me to not be surprised if I lose a little weight because my calorie intake will be lower. This will regulate my eating patterns in a way that has been necessary for years, and with these diet shenanigans that I'm going through, it will actually probably dovetail nicely. I get it. Truly, I do. But, getting it and liking it are two VERY different things. I'm in the "I really don't like this at all and what do you mean that I have to brush my teeth every time I eat, that sucks a lot especially because NOW I HAVE TO CARRY A PURSE" phase.

These are good changes. I know they are. I'm acting as if I like it and then it will be so. Hopefully.

If not, it's going to be a long 18 months.

17 months, 27 days until I can snack again.

New Fun Things

"So, gluten and soy are out, you say? How are you feeling?"

"GREAT! I just know that I need to exercise more, but it was hard on the diet."

"Yeah, that's really common. Now's a good time to reincorporate exercise, so you should try it."

I should try it.

Snort.

I'm a really sedentary person. Like, really sedentary. It's like this black hole in my self-care. I try running for a bit because that's what I know, but I eventually give up the ghost because who wants to exercise and almost shit their pants running every day?

Not me.

So I'm trying to do it differently this time. The only thing I have ever really, really stuck to was yoga, so I'm going to try to go back to that that regularly sometime soon. BUT, Rob went by a yard sale about a week and a half ago, and found this pretty sweet bike. It was super low-priced, so he picked it up. It's got some wonkiness in the gears, but it's nothing that I can't manage.

Friends, that was the first time I had been on a bike in 20 years. Literally. I got a concussion when I was 13 from falling off of my bike and hitting my head, and I've been kind of scared off from it ever since. I tried for a couple more years, but to no avail. I was done.

We rode for about a half hour, and I went about a mile and a half, and then I almost barfed because I'm so out of shape and it was so hot and I felt so gross from the anxiety of it all. I have never been so close to barfing without actually doing it. It was probably the pile of nachos that I ate before going, so I'm going to have to nix that in the future.

Look at me. Belly full of nachos and anxiety. Yummy combo.

Anywho, after I rested a bit, I tried to get up and it felt like I had vice grips on my ass. Rob calls it a new definition of butthurt, and he's right. I still hurt today and tried to bike around again, but I only lasted about 10 minutes. Frustrating, but I'm trying to look at the bigger gain from this, which is that I am overcoming a BIG piece of my anxiety about being on a bike. HUGE victory. Even if I only last 10 minutes, I'm going to try to bike every day. It turns out that I still really enjoy it and love feeling the wind in my hair! (Through a helmet, of course! If I could have worn wrist guards and knee pads and basically wrapped myself in bubble wrap without smothering myself, I probably would have.)

Also, in equally exciting news, I got the call and made the appointment today - I get fitted for invisalign on Thursday! I'm SO STOKED! I go in that day and get my first set of trays, as well as a shitload of buttons and other shit that anchor my teeth in a way that facilitates them being straighter. Oh, also, he's basically going to sand between my teeth and grind the enamel down enough where I don't have to have any teeth pulled, so that's a totally ideal situation. I didn't even realize that losing any more teeth was a dealbreaker for me until I was walking into the office last Monday to approve my treatment plan and watch a really cool video showing exactly how my teeth are going to be straightened. It's going to take about 18 months. Get prepped for embarrassing pictures that get progressively more awesome over the next 18 months.

Also, I turn 37 in two days. This has been quite a year, and I think about my goals for the next year on my birthday WAY more than the new year. It just seems more achievable that way. I think this is going to be my year to finally get physically fit, and in ways that fully heal my arm that I broke a couple of years ago, which still hasn't fully happened. I'm talking yoga, strength training, and some good, intense cardio, including some possible road races.

Also, today started Amazon Prime Day, and I used it as a PERFECT opportunity to get this:

YES I BOUGHT A UNICORN OUTFIT FOR MYSELF FOR
MY BIRTHDAY BECAUSE IT WAS ALMOST HALF OFF
DON'T JUDGE ME

Happy birthday to me, indeed!

Things I have learned from the Elimination Diet

1. I cannot eat soy.
2. I can probably eat peanuts sometimes.
3. I CANNOT EAT GLUTEN. DEAR GOD, I CANNOT DO IT.
4. Dairy is still my friend!
5. Red meat is on the nice list.
6. So is corn.
7. White sugar is a sometimes.
8. Eggs are great! Fantastic, even!

I also had a big worry that once I started to reincorporate foods, I would start to gain the weight back. It's like I have this fear that I'm going to magically put back on the 15 pounds that I've lost, or the 4 inches around that I have lost. Of course, neither is the case. I was able to maintain both, which felt nice.

The biggest thing, though, is that my relationship with food has completely changed. I mean, completely. Do I still love ice cream? Of course I do. But it was really funny - the day came to incorporate dairy, and I was super excited about it, but when I had the plate of food in front of me and I started eating, I was like "meh." It was DELICIOUS, don't get me wrong, but I could have taken or left it. I suddenly had neutral feelings about dairy. ABOUT CHEESE. DO YOU KNOW HOW WEIRD THAT IS?

I FELT NEUTRAL ABOUT THIS AMAZING BROCCOLI SALAD.

AND, the other day I was at a crossroads - I was out of non-dairy ice cream. I had the option to go dairy-based, AND I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. There has been NOTHING more that I have wanted than to stuff my face with some coffee oreo ice cream. Of course, I couldn't at that point, because oreos have gluten in them, but I had other options, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to take them or stick with what I was used to in that moment!

WHAT THE SHIT IS HAPPENING TO ME.

I also can't eat as much in a sitting, which I think is normal given that I have lost weight and that my gut inflammation has gone down, so I'm assuming pretty safely that my stomach has shrunk back down to its normal size.

Except today, of course. The day after the end of my love affair with gluten.

Sigh.

I had high hopes, friends, even though I knew somewhere deep inside myself that it was going to go badly. After the allergy med incident like three weeks ago and the time or two I'm pretty sure I accidentally ate gluten, I was actually not even sure if I wanted to reincorporate at all, but if I was going to follow the rules of this diet, I had to see what was going to happen.

So, go big or go home, right?

We went to this great pizza place for rob's birthday, and it was delicious.

I got this:

That's right. Mac and Cheese Pizza, baby.

I started having a reaction before we even left the restaurant. My stomach got all wonky, I started to get a headache, and I just went from feeling pretty damn good to feeling pretty damn awful in the span of about two hours. I woke up after a pretty bad night of sleep to the same. Just wonky all over. And swollen. HOLY SHIT am I swollen.

There is a silver lining to this, though - actually several! The first is that I have foods from the elimination diet that I grew to LOVE LOVE LOVE that I can still eat. (I'm looking at you, snapea crisps.) That's the super positive side of it - I think that if I were just told to go gluten free without something like the elimination diet and having to go through that learning curve, I would have been royally screwed. And, it's not entirely that I can't eat gluten - I can, but now I know that this is how I'm going to feel if I do. Is the cost worth the momentary whatever good feelings I might get from eating it? I'll have to weigh that on a case-by-case basis, but I have a feeling that 99 times out of 100, that answer is going to be no. That's how I know that my relationship with food has changed to a healthy one, which was 100% what needed to happen. Through all the frustration and the aimless gazing at the grocery store and being hungry when I didn't know what to pick so I picked something healthy, a positive internal feedback loop has been created that I think has real staying power. I needed more mental change than physical change, and they needed to go together in order for me to feel successful, and I do.

The other big positive is that now I know. I'm not just guessing anymore. I'm pretty sure that this dietary stuff has been an issue for a while, and I'm really glad it's finally getting addressed. I'm now almost positive that gluten was my main migraine trigger, and that it was making my allergies ten times worse (case in point? I can also barely breathe today.). Peanuts sometimes were a trigger also, but gluten is the big problem. I also now know that I'm not actually allergic to rice. I also now know that the thyroid symptoms that I was experiencing were being made considerably worse by soy. This makes sense! Phytoestrogens and GMO shit are actual things that do bad things to your body. Does this mean no more salad dressing? Not necessarily, but I got some scoop from a friend about homemade salad dressings that I'm going to try. Also, friends with thyroid issues, soy bad. Soy very very bad. Like, it's bad in general, but for people with thyroid stuff, it's SUPER bad. I have known this for a longer time than being on this diet, I just never realized how bad until I actually cut it out.

Now that I no longer need to eliminate foods other than the ones that I had a reaction to, I'm ready to have fun with what I can eat on a gluten-free, soy-free diet. There's a bunch of stuff that I want to try (like chocolate quinoa cake!), and I can't wait to figure this out. I am ready to keep feeling amazing. This diet definitely had its frustrations, but I never thought I'd feel this way. I'm kind of bursting at the seams with gratitude about it, actually.

Sticking Up for Myself

"We need to reschedule your appointment with your new doctor and he's scheduling out until August," said the nurse with possibly the worst job ever that day because she had TONS of patients to reschedule (she told me so).

"WELL, I'm afraid that this is not an acceptable scenario for me. I was supposed to see my original doctor in weeks 6-8 of the elimination diet. I'm currently on week 7. Also, I got that letter that my new doctor is transferring fully to the functional medicine practice as of July 1, WHICH IS WHY I CALLED A WEEK AGO TO ENSURE I STILL HAD MY APPOINTMENT. This is terrible patient care, bordering on unethical. I've been told that I need to go on a really restrictive diet with monitoring by my doctor, but the monitoring isn't happening. Please give me another option before I just give up on you guys entirely and find another functional medicine practice that will take my insurance."

BOOM. I got my appointment moved by only two days with the PA in the office. And I made the appointment in August that they were offering, just in case.

I would like THAT to be a bigger aspect of my personality, please.

I get jerked around a lot. It's part of the nature of my job (people want me to see the best sides of themselves, and I to believe what they're telling me, whether it's grounded in reality or not - who am I to say that someone is lying to me?), but it's also part of my nature as a person. People push me around a lot to get what they want and I just give in, in the interest of preserving the relationship. Ironically, that's not what happens, though - I just become resentful of the people who push me around and I don't say anything, and then I just don't want to be around them, and then I blow shit up when it's too late and I feel like I have no other options. It's my way of having control, I suppose, because then I get to decide when enough is enough, not the other person. In all reality, I have this control all the time - no one gets to dictate my experience or my feelings in any way, but I never feel that way until it's time to break a few eggs, y'know?

What's funny is that I can usually do it when it comes to professional stuff. For instance, I was borderline stalking the administrative assistant of the licensure board because I had to switch supervisors, there was a problem with my paperwork that I didn't catch, so it didn't get approved. I had to be SO FAR up this woman's ass that the last time we spoke, she hung up on me. There were a few things she had to do that she hadn't, and I had been waiting literally a month and a half to get my approval paperwork, AND every time we spoke on the phone (which was daily at one point), she acted like she had no idea who I was. Also, if something unacceptable is happening at work (on the administrative side of things), I have NO PROBLEM speaking up, even to people pretty far above me. I'm pretty outspoken. I'm also pretty outspoken with my clients. I have NO PROBLEM naming it if something is going on.

But not in my personal life.

I'm getting better, but I'm nowhere near there yet. I think when it's personal, it's just harder. At work, I'm able to take the personal entirely out of it for the first time ever in my whole working life. It used to be that if someone treated me badly or something happened that I didn't like or I wasn't listened to, I would take it SUPER personally. I don't do that anymore. In my personal life, though, some of those same patterns that don't usually bother me show through and I go THROUGH THE ROOF.

Inside.

No one, save for my husband probably, knows it.

This is something that I'm working on, but it has taken time and will continue to.

In other news, I started over on the Couch to 5k, and the first day was great. I'm running inside right now because my allergies go haywire around this time of the year (and get 10 times worse when it's muggy), but I'll give it another month and see how it goes, maybe start outside. I signed up for a color run in August, and I'm super excited about it.

Also, soy is a no. I waited the requisite three days, and I'm going to reincorporate corn today. I'm excited about this because now I can eat GF bread without worrying about its ingredients. I'll have to check for dairy ingredients (sometimes GF bread has carageenan in it, which is a dairy-based ingredient), but I think I'm on the right track. I also had dairy-free, soy free, gluten free pizza last night, and it was ok. Yeah, just ok. The cheeze (as they called it on the box! SNORT!) didn't melt, and that was strange to me. If it's gonna be cheese, it's gonna have to melt. Though, I did save a piece because I couldn't eat the whole thing, and it is TASTY the next day.

I incorporate dairy on the 30th. I CAN'T WAIT.

Cutting the Cord(s).

Since I deactivated facebook and twitter and instagram, even though it was in a flurry of frustration in the moment, it's the best decision I've made in a long, long time.

You know why?

No more political bullshit.

No more of Donald Trump's tweets.

No more heartbreak that I have to see this shit every day and know that he's President. Do I still have heartbreak? Yes. Of course I do. But I don't need to see it displayed in the form of literally hundreds of facebook posts or reposts every damn day. Do I see it in the news that I follow? Yes. But that's easier to turn off.

No more horrifying videos or pictures of animal abuse that some of my friends like to post because they're shocking. Newsflash and possibly unpopular opinion: Those videos and pictures just make me mad at you, friends who post them. They don't make me want to act. I know that's what you're hoping will happen, but it doesn't work, at least not for me. Heartbreak no longer makes me take out my wallet - knowing that my dollar will make a difference does, even if it's a small one.

No more stories of parents who are abusive to their children or this 12-year-old that died by suicide the other day because they were bullied.

I never realize how much of a toll that stuff takes on my mental health until I walk away from it, even for a few days. I really, truly can't take it anymore.

There was also a time where I deactivated for about six months, and I was asking my husband a lot about what was going on in facebook land.

This time, I don't really care. To be honest, I kind of already know because it's the same shit over and over and over again.

I'm sure I'm feeling this way now, but it may change and I may want to reactivate in the future, but I think that it might be permanent this time. It feels different. I feel so starkly better that it is almost shocking.

Also, I called this morning and canceled my cable service. We've been paying for cable and don't even have the box set up - we solely watch netflix, hulu, and HBO. We can get ALLLLLL of those things on Apple TV. There was -literally- no reason that we were paying as much as we were, so I finally chatted with a very helpful representative (on XFinity! WHO KNEW THEY EXISTED?!) and got it taken care of. They now leech $50 less per month from us. (Now I just need to remember to return the box, which is happening this morning.)

Being less engaged overall has been helpful for me as of late. I have REALLY needed a break from people-ing. I also think I'm going to be taking a vacation sometime this summer (especially since I'm about to max out my earned time and I lose it if I don't use it) because it's looking like some pretty significant plans that I had are going to fall through - nobody's fault, it's just what's happening - and I need to do something with that time.

PHEW. This is how I know I'm an introvert, friends who don't believe me when I tell you that I am one.

Indulging My Nerdy Side

Guys, I'm SUPER excited. 

You're going to think I'm weird.

My mentor took my first draft of the first section of my article and ripped it to effing shreds. There was six pages of material, and like eleventy billion pieces of feedback.

 

I could kiss him on his married mouth.

This is all by way of saying that my article is cooking. Also, I love love LOVE getting feedback on my writing. I am STOKED. What I have also realized is that I have to indulge this nerdy side of myself if I'm going to find fulfillment in my career. I've been blessed with this deep well of curiosity, and I'm finally in the career that might make a great run at filling it. 

I am also fortunate to be going up to my alma mater every Thursday night this summer, and I go with extra time and high hopes about working on my article during that time.

Last week, I napped.

This week, I sat outside and ate chips and didn't pick up a single piece of paper.

I'm not quite in the right mindset, I don't think. It has been a rough week to say the least, and I'm going to make a run at some revisions and some lit reviewing this weekend, I think. We'll see. Self-care is at the front of my mind at the moment, and sometimes that means putting some stuff away for a bit, which is perfectly acceptable.

Getting Signs at the Right Time

So, I deactivated Facebook and unfriended my coworkers on social media earlier than expected - today, in fact.

Sometimes, it's tough when you transition into a new role to see the impact that it has on others, and to remember that not only do they have to adjust, you have to allow for your own adjustment time, too. It's been harder than I've been allowing myself to admit, and today, I finally was able to say that out loud to someone. My sign from the Universe finally came. I had also been doing this strange thing that allowed me to keep more distance from this transition, which was looking at it as my predecessor's old position instead of my new role. I think it has insulated me from the weight of what's about to happen to me and my relationship with every person I work with, because it's going to be painful (if I'm being truthful, it already is), and as a human, I tend to shy away from that.

Yeah, I'm totally at the "I'm still excited, but also I don't entirely like this" phase. It's not a great place, but better than where I was mentally because it's more real. Also, it does not help that I am in this weirdo gray area for what feels like too long (who am I kidding? Any amount of time is too long for my general tolerance level), just waiting for July. Practicing appropriate closure. Wrapping things up but also ramping things up on the other end. Ugh.

Also, on an unrelated note (or maybe not so unrelated even though I've been thinking about it for a while), I'm going back to therapy after taking about seven months off. It's time, and has been for a really long time.

I will weather this transition, as will those around me - I am entirely confident in this. It just won't be entirely smooth, and that's ok. It will be what it is, and while it's super hard sometimes, I just have to let it be that.

Allergy Medication Shenanigans

My allergies have been going haywire this year. Like, bad. Worse than they've ever been. So, when they get bad, like they do at this time every single year, I double down on the allergy meds, take multiple showers every day to flush out the allergens and the gross, and go about my days until I don't have to take meds anymore. Or, likely as not, I just stop taking them because I get sick of it and I hate taking meds. (Snort. This coming from the person who literally downs six pills before leaving the house every morning...but they're vitamins, so I feel like it's more justifiable!)

I've always taken Claritin. It has worked for me since I started taking allergy meds, and it has provided much relief over the years.

Also, my heart rate is historically high. This is relevant, I promise. The resting heart rate of an average person is between 70 and 90 beats per minute, and I range on the high end of that - like mid 80s. I always have. When I'm sick or have allergies, it ranges from 85-95. It doesn't feel like my heart is pounding out of my chest or anything, but it's high.

Right.

So, I started taking Claritin about two weeks ago, or four weeks into the elimination diet. See also: When I started reincorporating stuff.

Right. I started feeling worse IMMEDIATELY. But, because there was so much going on with my diet, I assumed it was what I was reincorporating. Also, my heart rate was high. Like, HIGH. Like, "checked it randomly and it was 120" kind of high. I couldn't figure it out, so I cut out eggs again. At that point, I was starting to feel resigned to eating this way permanently, because every effort I had made up to that point was a disaster. Could I really be intolerant to everything I cut out? It sucked pretty bad. Also, I continued to feel like shit.

Then one day (after I hadn't eaten eggs or peanuts for three days), it dawned on me: the only other change was in my allergy meds. I immediately stopped taking them and then all of a sudden, my average heart rate returned to normal and I felt better within a day or two. So, even though I've been suffering quite a bit, it was well worth it because I had at least a little more energy and felt much better overall. After I had been off of allergy meds for a couple of days, I reincorporated eggs again and it was fine. PHEW. I also reincorporated red meat at the same time, and that went fine too, and continues to. I actually have a pretty good energy level at this point, and I'm still feeling GREAT in spite of having murdery allergies.

Then, I talked to a coworker today who has celiac disease (and has been SUPER helpful in this diet change for me because she went through something remarkably similar to my experience), and she told me something alarming:

SHE HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WITH ALLERGY MEDS BECAUSE CLARITIN HAS GLUTEN IN IT.

GLUTEN.

IN MY EFFING ALLERGY MEDS.

UGH.

It explains EVERYTHING. The difficulty sleeping, the fatigue, the high heart rate, the foggy brain, the digestive issues, the perpetually sour stomach, the beginnings of vitamin malabsorption (just trust me on that one - you don't need to know how I can tell), just all of it. But, this same coworker told me that she takes Zyrtec with no problem, so I'm going to try that starting tomorrow and see if it helps.

So, I think it goes without saying that I'm probably not going to reincorporate gluten at this point. Next up is soy on Thursday, so we'll see how that goes. I'm REALLY digging how I'm feeling so far, and I'm hoping that the rest of the reincorporation goes smoothly. Five types of food to go! It's also worth warning that if I have a reaction to dairy, you may want to watch for any reported maimings in the news in either the area in which I work or the area in which I live. I would kick a baby for some coffee oreo ice cream right now. (Not really. But if the option presented itself, I'd consider it.) If given the choice between some dairy-based ice cream and having a week's vacation without having to take any of my earned time, I'd have to think about it and I would probably choose the ice cream. Giving up gluten for the long term will be no problem whatsoever for me. Dairy is OUT OF THE QUESTION. If I'm lactose intolerant, I'm just going to live with it.

Oh, this day is coming. I can feel it.

Nuts.

This whole reincorporation of food thing is...interesting.

Last night, I tried peanuts. I waited until Rob got home to try them because of my sordid recent history with them, (and I think it might be a good thing that I did). I've also adopted the the mindset that if I'm going to reincorporate something, I'm going to go big or go home. (Not such a great idea, I think, but I'm going with it anyway.) So I ate pad thai for the first time in a really long time. Like, almost-five-years-long time. You see, back in 2013, I had some allergy testing done and peanuts popped up on it. I've been avoiding them ever since, even forgoing Five Guys burgers because they're cooked in peanut oil. I never thought that this allergy was all that bad, because the worst it had gotten was that peanuts were a major migraine trigger. Back when I was doing the cardiometabolic diet, I decided to try eating Five Guys because I was feeling adventurous and hoping that my immune system was calming down a bit, and I did fine! Great, even! No reaction. So, even though I had some doubts, I was ready to incorporate peanuts again when the third day of having eggs had passed.

WHAT A TERRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY SHITTY IDEA.

It should be also noted that since starting the elimination diet, my allergies have been on OVERDRIVE. They're worse than they've ever been, and I've been bedridden twice in the past two weeks because of them. Stupid allergies. Some weird stuff has happened too, like my mouth going numb when I eat beets.

ANYWAY. I ate pad thai last night and savored EVERY SINGLE BIT OF IT because I love pad thai. LOVE IT.

Then my mouth went numb.

Then my throat got a little scratchy.

Then I barely slept last night.

Then I woke up with a migraine against which I am currently fighting a losing battle, and my mouth is still a little scratchy. THANK GOODNESS I took a half-day today anyway because of other circumstances and can rest for a little while before I go up to facilitate a group at 7:00. I feel like I've been hit by an effing truck.

I'm fairly convinced that if I didn't have a double-whammy of allergy medications coursing through my veins because of this allergy bullshit, I would have had to go to the emergency room last night. The reaction that I had last night was WITH allergy medications. Plural.

So, yeah. Peanuts are a no, I'm fairly certain.

Sweet Relief.

"The summer is WAY slower," they said. "The summer will be so much easier and you'll have so much more time!"

Yeah, not my experience thus far in my career. In fact, the summer has been crazier than any other time of year, this spring being the exception. This spring has just been...I don't even know how to describe it, but I'm sure that any gray hair that I've gained has been due to the shenanigans of this spring.

I have also noticed that working on a publication makes everything more stressful. Through teaching and working, it has consistently been in the back of my mind. Sometimes in the front of my mind, though, because my mentor emails me every two weeks or so with patient admonition to set deadlines or get working. He's possibly the most patient person I know, because he's been cajoling me about it for literally over a year and I've been digging my heels in for what looks like absolutely no reason at this point. I kept waiting for things to calm down and then they never did.

What I have to do is accept the chaos. There is always going to be something going on. Things are always going to be hectic. Things are always going to be a mess. I'm always going to have a million case notes or quarterlies that are overdue or other things that demand my attention, professionally or personally. What that means is that I have to be patient with myself and crowbar it in when I can.

I legitimately thought about giving up the ghost on making an article from my thesis about six months ago. I just thought it was never going to happen, and I had accepted it and was ready to move on with my life. My mentor, as he is known to do with me, was a little stern and said, "Ryan, this research is groundbreaking. You HAVE TO do something with it. I'm not going to let you let it just sit there unpublished."

This felt remarkably similar to the "you have to have a more open mind about the population you want to treat" when he asked me if I wanted to do my internship with children and families and I said no. Like, he offered this spot for me, in the current organization and department in which I am working and about to become a supervisor, and I said no. And then about day two of my internship I realized that this was the population with which I wanted to work. Because of course that's how it happens.

Anyway, because these two situations felt so similar and the first conversation had such a good outcome, I have to trust that it's the right decision to move forward. My data will not stay current for a whole lot longer, and I'm at the prime time to get working on it.

So that's what is happening. I just submitted my intro and literature review sections, about which I have been ruminating since early March and wrote in about 5 cumulative hours. Next up is the Methods and Results section, which I can just copy and paste straight from my thesis.

Even though this is just a working copy, I feel like I want to throw up a
little bit every time I highlight or underline or write in it.

I'm SO RELIEVED about submitting these two sections because I had to rewrite them. Neither look at all like what my first two sections of my thesis look like. The reason for this is that I was told when I met with the editor of the publication in which I'm trying to publish (AND YEAH THINGS LIKE THAT HAPPEN AND I ALMOST BARFED ON THIS MAN'S SHOES I WAS SO EXCITED) that any references can't be more than five years old, or there has to be justification for using them. Like five, and that's being charitable, of the references in my thesis' lit review and introduction fit that criteria. So, shit. I had to find almost all new ones. But, I was able to get it together and get it submitted.

I learned two things from this experience:

1. I consistently stress about something to the point of paralysis, but when it gets right down to actually doing it, it takes me SO MUCH LESS time than I expect it to.

2. I need to be more patient with myself if I want to break this pattern. The key to that is going to be breaking these overwhelming parts into smaller bits.

THE SECOND I put that second point into practice, I was able to sit down and write. And write. And write. The other overwhelming thing that I was trying to overcome was the idea that my lit review in my thesis is like....60 pages? or so? Somewhere around there. It's at least a third of my entire thesis, which is 154 pages. As soon as I was able to get myself out of the frame of mind that I was just trying to condense my lit review down to an acceptable number of pages and that I would basically have to start from scratch, I was able to get to that second point, and not a moment before.

Anywho, I'm pretty damn stoked that I've gotten over the hump of actually sitting down and writing, and I'm really stoked to get going on the other sections. My goal is to submit by October, and the turnaround time for this particular journal is 3 months or so, so I'll know in early 2018 if I'll be published, if not sooner.

I've also gotten some loose ends tied up on the teaching end of things, and that's super relieving as well, because it means that I can finally get working on my syllabi. I was also driving home from work today and was really reflecting on how far I've come since I graduated undergrad, and it was almost comical. Seriously. What made me think about this? One of the courses I'm teaching has never been taught online, so I get to develop the course and teach it. I'm being paid extra (double, in fact) to develop the course for online implementation, and I laughed to myself HARD because I said to myself, "wow. I am being paid WAY OVERPAID to do this."

It got me thinking about when I worked in retail, and I was an interim manager for three months at this job. This particular company treated their employees like complete shit, and the people that worked there, myself included, were grateful for the opportunity at the time. I remember when I was offered this interim manager position, I was making pitifully little for the amount of work that I was putting into the job, and they offered me less than a thousand dollars spread over the course of three months for this temporary promotion. When they gave me a raise of $0.32 an hour, I thought it was perfectly fine, whereas the other people around me were like "UH, WHAT? THAT'S A SLAP IN THE FACE" when I told them. They were right. But, the thing is that I didn't believe I was worth more than that at the time. And that same place was where that "I'm being overpaid" feeling came from today when I got the emailed contract. While that was my automatic reaction, I was able to slap it back pretty quickly because the truth is that I am worth that much. My time is that valuable. Moreover, believing that my writing and my research is worthy of publication is where my writing process has to start.

Treat Yo'Self.

"If I'm going to do this, there's going to be a prize at the end," I said at the beginning of the elimination diet.

"YEAH, YOU'RE GOING TO BE HEALTHIER," Rob said.

"YEAH, BUT I NEED SOMETHING MORE TANGIBLE THAN THAT," I retorted.

I was just sitting here and realized with unbridled excitement that TODAY IS THE DAY.

I'm buying myself a Vera Bradley bag. That was what I decided when I set out on this, and when it got hard and I just wanted to bury my face in the half-gallon of ice cream sitting in the freezer, I said to myself, "BUT BUT BUT, VERA BRADLEY. THINK ABOUT THAT CUTE BAG YOU'LL BE TOTING AROUND WITH YOU THAT WILL CARRY ALL OF YOUR THINGS. ALL OF THEM."

I'm not sure if one of those exists, but if it does, I'm gonna find it.

The best part of this is that it's from Parks and Rec, which is hands down one of my favorite shows ever.

Things like this were what fueled me when I lost 55 pounds for my wedding. The big prize was a new pair of Birkenstocks, but I gave myself something small every 10 pounds (except for pound #50, which I just skipped in favor of losing the last five and getting the big one at the end.).

Things like this also got me through grad school. At the end of every term, no matter what my grades looked like, I'd take myself (and sometimes friends, but usually not) to Biederman's and get myself a balboa and a beer. If I got a 4.0, I'd treat myself to something small. I intend to have a balboa and a beer when I'm licensed, and I intend to do the same when I get published. I always have to have a prize at the end.

I'm sure there's something deeper to look into there, but I'm going to let it go, because it's what gets me through hard times. And, I work hard (as we all do), and I deserve a treat sometimes!

In other news, I had eggs a little bit ago and feel wonky.

I'm in denial about it, so that's all I'm going to say about this right now and go do some work and get my mind off of it. I'm hoping it's just a harder landing than what I was expecting, so I'm going with that for now.

Deactivating Facebook and Setting Other Boundaries

Not a super upbeat one, friends. It's been a rough few days. I'm fine and I will be fine, it's just been a rough few days.

As I'm sure everyone who reads this blog does, I have people in my life who hurt me, sometimes as a matter of routine because I accept what they're doing.

I have come to realize that if someone who is close to me hurts me, it's equal parts their fault and mine. It's usually a pattern of behavior that has been long-ingrained, and it takes me setting boundaries in order to get it to stop, which I don't do NEARLY enough of. It is not only a long pattern of this person exhibiting this behavior, but also a long pattern of me accepting and enabling it. Moreover, if someone does or says something that hurts me, it is VERY rare that I'll say anything, and what stops me is fear. It's this silence that keeps the pattern going; but on the other side, these hurts keep me from saying anything because if a person close to me will hurt me, it's highly likely that they'll try to hurt me further by being defensive and attacking and blaming me if I bring up my feelings. (I have some experience with this. It's safer for me to just shut up about it and deal with it on my own 99 times out of 100.)

Because I have learned to set healthy boundaries in my life over the past several years (before that I literally had no clue how to do it), the times that others hurt me are few and far between at this point. But, it almost makes it sting worse now because before it was so routine, I just rolled with it. Now, when I'm shown a glaring example of unhealthy patterns that still exist in my life that I have worked and continue to work on so that they stop happening, it sucks a lot. It's kind of like playing Whack-a-Mole, y'know?

But the good thing is that when these things happen, there are lots of things that I can do to protect myself and I can recognize it as an opportunity to change what I'm doing. What I invariably need to do whenever this happens in order to feel better is to make myself less accessible overall. I go off of social media for a while, or I'll reply less to people's texts - I'll just go a little bit more into my shell.

In lighter (and kind of related) news, I got the promotion that I applied for! I am super excited, and it starts July 1. There are some changes that I have to make to my social media, but I'm going to keep blogging. The biggest thing (and I'm in denial about it currently, so I'm glad I still have three weeks to get this shit figured out) is that I have to unfriend my coworkers. I have been lamenting this since I realized I had to do it, and I looked to The Universe to help make it easier. And like with my broken arm a few years ago*, The Universe delivered.

I got a friend request from someone who should not have found my facebook (and who I took great pains to not allow them to find it) because my profile is not searchable, I don't use my full name on it, and I don't put pictures up of myself, or allow pictures of me to be tagged. What that means is that someone that I know knows this person, which makes it even more uncomfortable because that is literally the only way that they would have or could have found my facebook.

So, in order to take necessary precautions on all fronts both current and future, I'll be deactivating my facebook and possibly twitter for a while, so if you want to keep updated, make sure you bookmark my page, dudes. I always deactivate for at least a little while around my birthday anyway, because getting birthday wishes from people who I don't even talk to outside of that once per year birthday wish (Also, Unpopular Opinion: That's why I don't wish people a happy birthday over facebook - text or phone call only - it's totally disingenuous otherwise, in my opinion) makes me nutsy. So deactivating is what it is, and last time it lasted six months.

June 30 is when it's happening. Get prepped, self.

In other news, tomorrow begins week five of the elimination diet. You know what that means? REINCORPORATION, BABY. I'm starting with eggs.

Yessssss. Hey frands.

I'm actually starting a day early (today) because I've had PUH-LENTY of this bullshit. Am I down twelve pounds and nearly three pant sizes? Yes. Would I do something irrational/outlandish for a burger or some pizza right now? Also yes. Then what I am to do is reincorporate a food every three days....unless I have a reaction. If I have a reaction to a food, I am to cut it back out of my diet and wait another three days before incorporating the next food. I can't remember what the order specifically is, but I wrote it down and got to determine a good three quarters of the order on my own. I know I'm starting with eggs today and then I'll be doing soy on Tuesday so that I can start to reincorporate salad dressing. I do love olive oil, please don't get me wrong, but I'm SUPER sick of it.

Also, the nutritionist said to start slow when I reincorporate, and meant having "one" egg.

Snort.

Who has one egg? Well, actually, I do a lot (one hard-boiled egg is plenty for me, thanks), but when they're scrambled and delicious, YUM-O. I WOULD LIKE ALL OF THEM PLEASE.

I was also told to reincorporate dairy and gluten last, in that order, which will be happening by the end of June if I don't have any reactions to anything else. I may also just not reincorporate gluten because I knew that it was a problem before I even started the elimination diet. We'll see. I just can't wait for peanuts and red meat, because Five Guys.

The only thing that sucks about the next few weeks diet-wise is that I have to start journaling. I need to be more mindful than ever about what I'm putting in my mouth, and I need to account for every bite. I need to pay attention to reactions that I'm having (paying, in my opinion, particular attention to migraines, since I've only had one since April...weird when I used to get them weekly, right?!) and just be really hypervigilant about it. I despise journaling. Like, absolutely despise it. But, I also hated cutting red meat, eggs, dairy, soy, corn, sugar, peanuts, and gluten out of my diet and I did that too. My threshold for doing things that I don't like doing has become higher in the interest of improving my health, and I'm not sure if I like that or not.

Also, my doctor is resigning from the functional medicine practice that I go to! When I went to get in with someone else, they were referring me to a regular doctor. I felt SUPER wonky about it, like "Great. Here we go again!" and decided to advocate for myself and do something about it. So I called back the next day, explained to them that I would need to find a new functional medicine doctor if they can't get me in with the PA in the practice and the conversation that I'd had the previous day (with a few tears mixed in - what? It turns out that these diet changes make people SUPER SENSITIVE.), and they were like "yeah, no. You were told the wrong information. We're going to set you up with this new person who's transitioning over to functional medicine, and 10 days earlier than your original appointment was."

FANTASTIC. :D

So, that's all I have for now. If I get invisalign this week, I'll make sure I take some funny dorky pictures. :) I'll hopefully at least have the consult appointment made by the end of the week if not have the trays in my mouth and my teeth getting all straightened and stuff.

Time to go cook some eggs!

Also, WHO THE SHIT DOES THINGS LIKE THIS. JUST EAT THE DAMN EGG.

*OK. Super fun story. Rewind to final year of grad school. I was asked to audition for a flute choir, but because I was rockin' internship and writing my thesis and collecting my data for said thesis all at the same time, there was no way to do it all. I just couldn't. But I have known the conductor of this flute choir for like two decades, and I couldn't say no. So I asked The Universe for some help, and broke my arm in two places the very next day. Coincidence? I think not.