Today I Cleaned My Kitchen

Addy — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:48:20 +0000

Well, part of it anyway. But I cleaned that part of it really well.

I’ve been bitching a lot this week about feeling all tired and hibernatey. Low energy, low motivation, blah blah blah. Today I had to get it together because my partner’s coming back from a business trip, and I know from experience that it sucks to come home to this:

The bottle of cleanser is a nice touch, don't you think?

Oh, it’s even worse than it looks. In that pile of crap on the counter are peaches that I separated from the rest of the peaches a few days ago because they were starting to go moldy. I set them on the counter, telling myself I’d take them out to the compost bin later that day. Hah.

A memento mori. For fruit.

There were also some lovely, delicious, and flavorful dry-farmed tomatoes from last week’s farmers’ market. Well, they would have been lovely and delicious, except I forgot about them:

More fruit, casting off their mortal coils.

I really, REALLY wish I didn’t do things like that.

Anyway, I got the dishes into the dishwasher, cleaned the counters, and started on the stove. It was nice and sunny in my kitchen, which is perhaps why I wound up hyperfocusing on the stove top. The stove was new a few years ago. Within a week I had put my stove-top espresso pot on to do its thing, walked away from it, forgotten all about it, and come back to find a cup of espresso baked on to the stove top. I wiped it up at the time, but it seemed baked on for good; and there it remained for years.

It now looks like this:

Shiny, sparkling, and stain-free. Thanks, Big Pharma!

Oh yeah.

Light therapy for ADD?

Addy — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:47:03 +0000

Last year I was trying to carry on without brain meds of any kind. To do this I had to be incredibly careful with my diet — almost no refined sugar and no caffeine, sufficient amounts of protein, and plenty of greens (don’t know why, but they help my concentration). I did great during the Spring, a bit less well in the summer fog, a lot less well once the days started getting shorter, and then I CRASHED COMPLETELY when daylight savings time ended. Losing an hour of daylight played hell with my mood, and with all the effort that was required to barely hold my mood together, I had nothing left for concentration.

So in November I started taking zoloft again. It turned out that I only need 12.5 mgs, which is not that much, to keep my mood at a reasonable* level. I still couldn’t concentrate, so by January I started taking Vyvanse. The anxiety that had bothered me all autumn vanished within half an hour of taking my first dose. Within a few days,I felt pretty much like I did during the previous Spring, when I could set my mind to do something and actually get it done.

Now here it is, autumn once more. My mood is fine, thanks to that tiny dose of zoloft, but my motivation is shot to hell, and in spite of the meds, I just want to eat all the food in the house and hibernate.

I decided to go back to stimulants because the amount of sun that happens is just not up to me. That being said, I know friends and family members who’ve gotten great results for depression by using sun lamps. It’s not the same as a full day of natural sunlight, but it’s enough to get them through the worst of their low winter mood. So this year I’m going to try light therapy for my ADD. I’ll let you know how it goes.

*where “reasonable” is defined as “not bursting into tears because, ya know, my cats are going to die some day.”

Well-Ordered Chaos » light therapy

Today I Cleaned My Kitchen

Well, part of it anyway. But I cleaned that part of it really well.

Light therapy for ADD?