Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Anxiety Update

Ok, so I had an appointment with my doctor last week, and although I felt like she wasn't really listening to me that well, I left the office with a prescription for lexapro. I had been on that in the past, so I thought it was a safe bet, and I asked to start with a really low dose, so I thought I'd be safe with that.

That same day, feeling frustrated with my doctor's lack of interest in listening to me, I made an appointment with my old therapist, Noreen Salzman. I don't know if it's OK to name-check her like that on here, but I love her! And I knew that she would at least listen to me and help me figure out what's going on with my body.

Anyway, so I started taking the lexapro, and it made things WAY worse. I started having full on anxiety attacks almost daily, my worst one woke me up in the middle of the night, lasted 2 hours and ended up with me throwing up. I knew something was wrong. I saw my counselor yesterday and told her about it, she told me what I already thought: something was way off, my body wasn't responding the way it had in the past.

So I called my doctor again, explained about the horrible panic attacks etc, and now she's got me on something called viibryd. We'll see how this goes, but I slept through the night last night which is pretty good!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Dr. Seuss Day!

Yesterday was Dr. Seuss Day at the library, although it's not his birthday until next weekend. But since Buddy will not be with me next weekend, we decided to celebrate it ourselves at home!

We've been reading Dr. Seuss books nonstop for the last few weeks anyway, so this made a good tie-in:
He didn't like getting his hand painted, but...

Thing 1 and Thing 2! You can see the pictures better if you click on them, but this was made with Buddy's hand and thumb prints! I think it turned out adorable :) We've been reading The Cat in The Hat all week, Buddy has recently realized that he can read most of it himself so that's making him really motivated!

 Tonight we're also watching the Cat in The Hat movie, and with it we're eating:
One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish! (I swear, I'm feeding him an orange and some veggies and dip too... the junk food part was just the cute part!)

And we might even have some Hop on Pop(corn) later on too!

Monday, February 20, 2012

Put 2 Introverts in a Room...

Ok, it was my birthday last weekend, and I'm totally going to write a post about going out with my awesome friends (spoiler, we went to a drag show! Hilarious.) but since I'm feeling sick today I'm just gonna give you a short post about being crafty again.

So, since Buddy was gone at his dad's all weekend, I basically spent the whole time with my favorite friend Molly! We went shopping on Saturday morning, and noticed a lot of jewelry that looked like this:
$8 from Forever 21

$14 from Maurices

So clearly, we decided we could make these ourselves! We went home and dug through our various crafting supplies, and came up with some beads and string. First attempt:
I made this one out of beads from a tacky old bracelet, interspersed with some turquoise beads Molly had laying around. It was fine, but we wanted to do more!

So we ran off to Michael's (craft store) and stocked up on some other beads, clasps, and charms (just for fun). Next bracelet made:
The darker green one. See how this time it has nice clasps at the ends? And I like the beads a lot more, but I still used some light turquoise ones so it could match the first bracelet if I wanted to wear them together :)

Finally:

This one was just for fun, since I had found these cute elephant charms on sale and had no clue what to do with them! So I just braided them into 2 bracelets, tied the bracelets together, and added clasps at the ends. I might re-do this one if I get inspired, but for right now it's fine.

Anyway, those 3 bracelets cost me about $6 (since we had some of the supplies at home) and gave us something to do for the better part of an afternoon! Love it.




Tuesday, February 14, 2012

To the one I love

Happy Valentine's Day, my sweet one.

I love you from the morning until the night. 
I love you so much that sometimes I look at you and my heart feels like it might explode. 
I love you when you stumble into my bedroom in the middle of the night with a pillow, blanket, and stuffed animal - then smile sweetly and curl up on my bed without speaking. 
I love you when you are screaming at me and telling me you wish you didn't live with me (all because I told you to wait till after dinner to eat that cupcake!)
I love you when you are concentrating so hard on your drawings that you can't be bothered to put clothes on.
I love you when you are tired and crabby and whiny.

I love you to the ends of the earth, sweet baby boy! Happy Valentine's Day!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Umphrey's, and Soccer, and Rock-Climbing, and Bike Riding, and...

So there has been lots of stuff going on, and I just realized that I haven't filled my faithful blog readers in on it!

Ok. So last weekend we went to Minneapolis for a mini-vacation! I went to an Umphrey's concert with my brother:

Which was awesome and great and all, and I loved dancing and screaming and watching some sick guitar solo's... but I also got super anxious and claustrophobic and we ended up having to leave shortly after the second set started. Which was still OK, because I had a good time and left before I would have had a horrible time, so it all worked out. Still, next time I'm gonna make it through the whole thing!

We also went to a dinner-theatre production of Hairspray, and Buddy had a sleepover with Uncle Dave which sounds like it was super fun! Unfortunately I don't have that many pictures, since my batteries died leaving me with only a crappy camera phone. URGH.

Anyway, this week was kind of good weather, so we did a bunch of playing outside. We drew a road with chalk again, and this time we put buildings on it and made into a city! It was really fun, but of course it snowed heavily the next day so all our hard work washed away.
Soccer has also been going on, this year Buddy is much more focused and has a little more motor control so he's taking it very seriously and is having a pretty good time!
Look at that kick!

Playing defense!
And last but not least, he tried the rock-climbing wall today! I was kind of surprised that he had the guts to do it, because sometimes new things kind of paralyze him... but even though he was nervous he sucked it up! He even climbed up twice :) Uncle Dave, now you know what you can do with him next time we come down to visit!




Thursday, February 2, 2012

Anxiety Anger!

Ok guys, so I've been really vocal recently about my depression. And how aware I am of it, and the ways I'm trying to stop it from taking over my life...

But right now the anxiety part of me is going INSANE! Like, I skipped class today. (Don't worry guys, my teachers stream their classes online. So I watched the classes on my computer in real time, just at home.) It wasn't for any good reason. I woke up on time, I showered, got dressed, Buddy was all cooperative and we got out the door fine. His school is right across from mine.

However, anxiety popped in. Since I'm at a tech college the pace of classes is sort of... slow. And I understand that some students need that, so I'm okay with it. But I'm a fidget-er, and a multi-tasker, so what started out as an obsession with highlighting "key subjects" has basically turned into a 5 page coloring book in the back of my notebook, and I turn to it every time the professors go off on tangents or have to re-explain ideas for the millionth time. I honestly thought about bringing a bona-fide coloring book with me, but I thought if my professors noticed they might be pissed.

So I worry that other students think I'm snooty since I'm not compulsively taking notes. (FYI, I read and highlight the chapters ahead of time too, usually. So I come to class with most of the ideas for the day solidified already. Which I should stop doing, but I also worry that I might get behind for some reason, so I want to get as far ahead as possible.)

I also worry because we get in class time to do "exercises", and as usual it takes me literally 1/4 of the time as all the other students to complete the work. I thought I had gotten used to this at my old college, but at least then I could leave when I was finished! And I feel so condescending being finished with everything and just kind of staring off into nowhere...

Anyways, class isn't so bad. But I get so nervous about what all the other students think of me that I can hardly stand to walk into the classroom! And this is week 2. Providing the teachers continue to stream all their classes live on the computer, maybe I'll only have to really show up for tests...

Dear God. Please help me overcome all my crazy-stupid-paranoid-depressed head garbage. And if not, help me find a great doctor or therapist or whatever who can help! Because try as I might, it's not going that well alone.