Monday Menu

day	breakfast	lunch	dinner
M	yogurt granola coffee	veggie tray h2o	hamburgers cheese h2o
Tu	yogurt granola coffee	chicken salad sandwich h2o	tacos roasted chickpeas h20
W	yogurt granola coffee	salad cheese h20	meatloaf mashed potatoes h2o
Th	yogurt granola coffee	veggie tray h20	hotdogs deviled eggs h2o
F	yogurt granola coffee	salad cheese h2o	pasta w/ meatballs h2o
Sa	yogurt granola coffee	chicken salad sandwich h2o	take out h2o
Su	yogurt granola coffee	leftovers h20	TBD

NaBloPoMo: Some whining.

I have stacks and stacks of old mail that I can't file and I can't throw out in the trash. My filing cabinets are full more old receipts, paid bills, and random official paperwork. Ninety nine percent of it is just junk. I feel like I need a paper shredder.

I get twitchy when the apartment is like this. It brings up bad memories and anxiety. Fortunately, I have that magic give zero fucks pill that my psychiatrist prescribed me. I took it a few minutes ago but it'll take a little bit to kick in. The time I spend being anxious and twitchy is not as long as it was before I started taking something for the anxiety.  But the anxiety is a persistent problem, even with medication.

All pervasive dread that something awful is going to happen to myself or my family is nothing fun to live with. Fear that leaving the apartment means someone is going to arbitrarily decide that I'm a danger to myself and others because I have mental illness and I'll be locked away in a dark hole with out any opportunity to see my family again keeps bubbling up. It doesn't help how this administration is running things.

So much of their bluster echoes what I was raised with and the threats that went with it. It makes minor panic attacks pop up like clouds on a sunny day, at a frequent rate and randomly. I have essentially stopped reading the news but it's all inescapable.  It's all over social media. It's the thing that all the neighbors talk about. I try to focus on what I can do and what I can change. But the anxiety and my personal history hit me like a freight train and I just sit and numb out for long periods of time.

NaBloPoMo: What Would Loki Do?

A couple months back, Cuddle Bear got scammed out of all of his savings. (He had a good start on saving for a car.) Then the scammer harassed him for more money and started making threats. I didn't realize how bad things were until yesterday. I sat back and asked myself what would Loki do in this situation? Obviously get even, but how? Then it hit me, troll the scammer until they're back in the stone age.

A few gentle nudges and suggestions and Cuddle Bear was having a grand ol' time messing with the scammer. He was sending messages that were long and nothing but gibberish. By the end of the day, he was snickering and plotting what to do today. The scammer foolishly messaged him first thing in the morning. Maybe they were hoping to get 'normal' responses if they caught him earlier in the day. The fool.

Cuddle Bear was back at the blocks of gibberish messages. By lunchtime, the scammer went silent. Cuddle Bear asked them if they were angry. He told them to hold on to their hats because he was just getting warmed up. The scammer replied 'oh no.' The deluge of insanity resumed with the scammer begging him to stop. He finally said, "I'll stop if you send me my money back." Cuddle Bear got no response to that. He decided it was time to eat and proof read the job application he filled out in between sending blocks of random characters to the scammer.

Right now, Cuddle Bear is dropping off the job application. Somewhere downstate there is a scammer who is trying to decide what to do about Cuddle Bear's shenanigans. We're pretty sure that the scammer's already spent my son's money. Cuddle Bear's decided if he's having a bad day he's going to cheer himself up by messing with scammers.

NaBloPoMo: Exhausted.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is bullshit. The weather's gloomy and cold. My brain says that everything is awful and I should sleep until spring. I confess hearing Bing Crosby caterwauling doesn't help my mood any. I hear Bing Crosby and I want to throw things, like the radio, out the window and destroy it with a baseball bat. The 'traditional' christmas songs all irritate me. If I have to hear 'White Christmas' one more time, I might scream. And we haven't even hit Thanksgiving yet.

I didn't sleep great the last few nights, which is aggravating the SAD mood effects. My hormones are swinging back and forth, which was part of my problem sleeping. I thought PMS was bad, perimenopause is PMS on steroids. I'm pretty sure that my fatigue today is hormonally based too. Ugh.

NaBloPoMo: First Snow Fall (and a little ice)

 Yesterday, we went to visit my Mother-In-Law. The weather all day was gloomy and cold. Somewhere between sundown and when we went to the car, it started to ice. It didn't make the drive home problematic but we did have to be careful on the steps into the building. I figured it was going to continue to ice through the night. I was partially correct in my assessment. Some time in the night, it started to snow. 

When Snuggle Bug was heading out the door for school, I told him to be very careful because underneath that puffy, quarter inch of snow was a glaze of ice over everything. A little later, I went out and threw some salt down on the ice and warned neighbors on their way to their car about how slick it was out there. A light dusting of snow and a very thin glaze of ice made things look kinda pretty. I was glad we didn't get more of either because lots of trees still have leaves on them right now.

We're just to the east of one of the snow belts off of Lake Erie and just south of one of the snow belts off of Lake Ontario. The hills do a pretty good job of sheltering us from the worst of the winter storms that blow through the area. I suspect, however, that the hills are not going to be as successful as they were in past years when the next big storm comes through. It's cold enough that my joints ache and I've been wearing a shawl over my sweater.

My body does not approve of this weather. Fortunately, however, I didn't have a migraine this weekend as the system was moving in to the area. We'll see what happens when it moves out. I can say this for certain that the growing season is done now.