And then depression happened

So, my “get fit and healthy and be AWESOME” blog took a nosedive because I was struggling with anxiety over what I was posting and who was reading it and what they would think, and also my performance at the dojo, my perception of myself and how I was feeling, physically and emotionally… and I completely lost myself in the process. I gained weight instead of losing it, I had so many injuries and nagging physical things like shin splints, shooting pains through my joints, constant headaches from grinding my teeth (which also led to severe damage to my teeth) and everytime I tried to fix one thing, something else came along. Got Orthotics for the shin splints, so naturally my hands started to hurt in the morning. I started a new yoga program – more on that later – and my knees and my hips started to hurt because I was trying to move them. I felt – and still feel – like I’m never going to feel “good”. I take painkillers waaaaay more than I should because sometimes I’ll be walking down the street and suddenly things just hurt. Suddenly I can’t step on part of my foot and have to limp until I get where I’m going, then it mysteriously vanishes. Random, unexplainable pain. How do you explain to people that things hurt for no reason, and then they suddenly don’t? I feel like people would think I was making excuses or lying or trying to get attention. Instead of dealing with that by going to a doctor and getting a diagnosis, I just pretended everything was fine.

So, I let myself slip into an unhealthy cycle of food as a coping mechanism and feeling guilty because of what I was eating. (To an extent, I never feel *that* bad about what I eat.)  This led to weight gain and further internal pressure to do something about it, and that if I started trying to be healthy, then I would feel better and then I wouldn’t feel so awful about everything while trying to pretend I’m fine, and thinking “is this what it is to be an adult? Does everyone feel like this on the inside and then smile through it to trick people into thinking they’re okay? Is this all there is?”

I should mention that I’ve always been depressed. It’s always been there, alongside the anxiety like inseparable twins, and I just never recognized it for what it was. It was the badness I would feel encircling me, and I would push it back, small hands holding back a tidal wave, but it was always, always there. And sometime last year, it pushed too close and latched on, dragging me inside. I was prescribed medication for anxiety but it was so strong that I couldn’t function normally. I was so tired all the time that I didn’t care about anything. It’s hard to feel anxious about things when you’re about to lapse into a coma. It’s hard to feel anything. So I didn’t take it. I went to one counseling session and it was great, but I would have had to call for a 2nd appointment and I didn’t. I don’t know why making appointments for myself is so hard, but that last appointment is almost a year ago and now I feel guilty for not calling. What will the counselor think? Probably that I’m a waste of oxygen, lamenting about how hard my life is when it’s so much better than others and besides, she gave me a ridiculous assignment to come up with 5 things I like about myself and everytime I think about it, I feel like such an idiot. Of course I like things about myself. I feel like I’m placating myself to actually write down 5 things I like about myself, and coming up with 5 specific things just shoved me into a pit-trap of sharp sticks and self-loathing where I was like “I’m pretty smart, I think.” and my brain went “NO YOU AREN’T, YOU’RE SO STUPID, DON’T YOU REMEMBER-” and then a memory-parade of all my stupid moments traipses through my brain until I’m ready to fucking shoot myself to make it stop. So I didn’t make the list. I started identifying that voice in my brain, though. And I started trying to combat it, because I learned from that experience or I wasn’t totally wrong about that, and no one else thought that about me at the time, probably, until my brain feels like this:

Which is not particularly restful. I have to battle myself before I can battle the rest of the world, so while it’s hard for people to get up and go running, I have a stream of evilness going through my head like: peoplewillthinkyou’refat/ifyourunonconcreteit’llmakeyourshinsplintsworse/peoplewillcallyoufat/ifyouleaveyourstuffnearthetrackit’llgetstolen/youneedarunningmatebutnoonewantstorunwithyou/noonewantstobeyourfriend/noonerespectsyou/everyonethinksyou’refat/there’snopointtothis/you’regoingtogethurt/youcan’tdothis/you’reweak/peoplewilllaughwhentheyseeyou…

And on and on and on. Since I like the Harry Potter books, I’ve started thinking about it like it’s a Horcrux talking to me, and it’s just trying to scare me because if I do the thing I’m trying to do, it’ll weaken it and it’s trying to save itself. And that kind of thinking, in case you’re wondering, is a little bit crazy. I am aware. And so while I do actually slog through all that negativity and do the thing and feel good afterward, it’s only once in a while that I win the battle and get through whatever I was trying to do. And I tell Mr. Grumpiface I did the thing and he gives me a high-five and says that’s awesome, but he doesn’t know half the battle I had to fight. How could anyone know what goes on in my brain? Even I barely understand myself and I’ve got a front-row seat to the crazy parade.

So, I hope that sums up my prolonged absence and explains my current status, and why, at 31 years old, I’m starting all over again to get control of my life and reach some measure of peace and maybe even happiness. But today, I’m going out for a belated-birthday dinner & movie with Mr. Grumpiface. And all this stuff can wait for me to worry about tomorrow.

❤

… I’m back, Bitches

… in that I stopped writing my blog because I ran out of things to say, and because things were getting complicated. How so, you ask? (I’m assuming you asked that because I need someone to do so for this narrative to work.)

Well, for starters, I found out that the reason my legs were hurting so badly was because I developed shin splints in both legs. If you’ve never had shin splints, they hurt like a motherfucker, no matter what you’re doing. (Even if you’re sitting. For realz.) I kept training for the run – I tried to let them heal, but to be honest, I’m not sure they’ll ever completely go away. And even though I improved my time by 6 minutes in 4 months, I still failed the run. But given that part of the reason I couldn’t train as hard as I needed to was because my legs were all fucked up, Master Gee allowed me to proceed with the rest of my class with the caveat that I would have to redo – and pass – the run when my legs had healed. They haven’t healed yet, but I’m out of time now and need to get it done. Now I wish I hadn’t taken the time off to let things heal, since they didn’t heal anyway and now I’m back where I started, cardio-wise. (In that my cardio is terrible and I have the lung capacity of a shrimp. “Shrimp don’t have lungs!” the internet cries out to correct me. I KNOW, THAT’S THE JOKE.)

I spend waaaaaaaay too much time thinking about what I suspect other people think about me. I mean, I don’t care, but if I did, it would bother me a lot and prevent me from being able to do things like a normal human. It took me 3 hours to work up the nerve to go outside to run today. I was desperately hoping that the cloudy weather would have kept people inside, but apparently nothing short of torrential rain will keeping people out of MY park.

Anyway, so, at the end of the day, I got my black belt, but this was definitely not how I wanted it to happen. But we can’t all be so lucky to have completely healthy, functioning bodies all the time, right? I mean, the people that are naturally healthy and fit should be unbelievably grateful, but I find that more often than not, they just judge other people to be somehow “lesser” than they are, like they don’t understand that they just won some genetic lottery, they didn’t actually do anything to deserve their fitness level. I mean, they work to maintain it, obviously, but the rest of us have to work just as hard to reach a point of being average. There are exceptions, of course, one of whom is a close friend of mine, but by an large, people who are naturally fit and thin are also fucking dicks to the rest of us. Or maybe I just think that because I’m constantly suspicious that people think as poorly of me as I do myself. Maybe I’m the dick. This is confusing now.

Anyway, in other better news, I GOT A NEW SNAKE. His name is Finn. The vet clinic named him, so we elongated it to Finneas von Serpentine. Or Finnegan O’Wrigglesnoot. I like both. He is a platinum ball python, and he’s a sweetie. He was rescued from an irresponsible breeder who left him in a tiny little Rubbermaid tub with a female snake for an undetermined amount of time. As in, the people who found him couldn’t tell how long he’d been in there, so I’m assuming it was pretty bad. Plus, you can’t house snakes together unless they’re from the same clutch, because THEY WILL TRY TO EAT EACH OTHER. Some people have snakes that can handle it, and they say it’s fine, but I don’t see why you’d take the risk. You can put them together for a while for breeding, but if you leave them for too long… Finn is lucky he didn’t get killed. Anyway, something went wrong while the snakes were breeding and when Finn was found, his man parts were all broken and now he can’t ever breed again. So, they had to make sure that whoever adopted him wanted him as a pet, and not for breeding. Luckily, I know for certain that I can’t be trusted to give away baby snakes, so he’s a gentleman of leisure now.

Anyway, he’s a sweetie. He’s friendly, he’s very chill, and he periscopes, which makes me happy because Francis and Jezebelle don’t. (For non-snek people, that means he sticks his head up like this:)

So, that’s it. Running again. New snek. Binge-watching Prison Break. (Which is fantastic, by the way) and I had my first-ever root canal last week, which sucked a lot. The dentist isn’t my favourite person so far because in spite of telling everyone that I have severe sharp-implements-in-my-mouth-related anxiety, he was not particularly accommodating of my issue and felt the need to give me shit about not being “communicative” while he had his hands in my mouth. Soooo, prior to the next appointment, we’re going to have a little “talk” about a couple things, namely 1) how the fuck he wants me to communicate when he’s working on my teeth and I can’t move, 2) why he feels the need to give me shit about being panicky when I’ve already told him that I wanted to be completely knocked out for the procedure. Oh, and that the oral sedation doesn’t work, particularly when he turns it and the oxygen off 3/4 of the way through the procedure so I couldn’t breathe through my nose OR mouth, which, you know, isn’t a good thing to do to someone who is trying their best to stay calm. And by that, I mean that I’m going to ask for a different dentist, because I cried all the way home because I was so upset and I never want to go through that again.

And with that, we seem to have gone full circle, and it’s time to call it a night. Later, kids.

Adventures with Anxiety: Chapter 1

Today, I was taking out the garbage. It’s not a complicated situation, right? You take the bags to the place and toss them in. Mr. Grumpiface bagged up the garbage before he went out with his brother. I didn’t know what was in it, but we’re not very good about doing recycling stuff so I was worried about people judging me for not recycling, and I heard some people in the hall so I was worried that they’d ask me why I had such a large bag if I was recycling like I should. So I stood by my door and thought about going back inside until the voices went away, but I really wanted to get on with my day, so I just stood there, trying to decide whether to lock the door or go back inside for several minutes.

Then I finally locked the door and went to the elevator and just hoped and hoped that there was no one in it. There wasn’t, which I was absurdly grateful about. I got all the way down to P2, where the garbage room is, and there were people coming out of there and I stared at the ground so they wouldn’t try to talk to me about my very large bag of garbage. Then I tossed it in the dumpster and almost ran out the door to get away from it. Taking out the garbage is not supposed to be this stressful. Intellectually, I know that. I know all these things:

1. I know that people don’t care about my garbage.
2. I know that most people aren’t weird enough to interrogate people they don’t know about their garbage.
3. I know that even if they did, I could easily and reasonably politely talk my way out of it.

But I worry about it all anyway, and I can’t help it. I can’t stop. So, next time you’re talking to an anxious person and you ask them a question, this is what happens in my brain when presented with a potential issue. I can’t make a decision because I’m busy worrying about things that aren’t even problems, they probably aren’t even happening, I have created an issue in my brain for no reason and now I don’t know what to do. I can be decisive when this isn’t happening in my brain, but when it is… I’m fucked. Telling me not to worry is like telling a drug addict to just stop doing meth. It’s not that simple. It dismisses me, my very real concerns about a situation that doesn’t exist (I made it up, but I don’t figure that out until later) and makes me feel alone. Now it’s 1am and I’m reliving all this nonsense because tomorrow is end of RRSP season, so I’m going to have a busy, crazy day, but clearly in my brain, the imaginary situation where people judge me about my garbage is more concerning than reality. What the actual fuck is wrong with me?

Jesus McFuckbuckets

I stopped writing on here because I used to use this as a way to vent frustration about work, but now I’m actually worried that work people will find my blog and not be pleased. I am not worried about losing my job, but I’d rather not take the chance. Work is going fairly well, I like my job and would like to keep it. Work = paycheque, paycheque = tea, tea = life.

Plus, you know, it’s hard to write what I really think about people when they might read this because I put it on the internet and then we’ll have a big fight and there will be blood and I’ll get arrested and there will be no more tea. I’m pretty sure they won’t give you the good stuff in prison. (Can you order David’s Tea online to prison?) Anyway, that seems like an unfavourable conclusion. Though, I’m told that everything I think shows up on my face, so it’s not like I’m Sergent Subtlety to begin with. Mr. Grumpiface actually describes me as “subtle like a sledgehammer”, and it is alarmingly accurate. Do not drop hints. I will not get them.

So! What’s new in my world?  Well, I promoted to Apprentice belt and then to no one’s surprise, I seriously injured myself by slipping on the skytrain platform whilst running for a train and sprained my right knee. I had been going running with my friend Mr. Cheeriface and was feeling over-confident in my ability to move my limbs without hurting myself, and promptly discovered how very flawed that assumption was. It was funny though, because I did manage to catch the train because managed to angle my fall so I fell INTO the train. Then I laid on the floor for a while trying to breathe through the pain while people stared at me like I just erupted out of the floor like a vicious land-shark. Thanks, guys. Totally fine here. I don’t need help. Or the handicapped seat. (Seriously, if you don’t give up the handicapped seat after you just watched someone handicap themselves, you are a fucking bag of dicks. End of story.) No, no, I’ll just lie here on the floor and gasp like a beached water-shark (since we’re doing sharks today) that is exactly what I had planned on doing today. Sometimes I understand why people put bombs on public transit. People are dicks.

Anyway, the fall was bad enough that when I finally managed to get up, I was in so much pain that I didn’t really realize how much pain I was in. So, when I tried to get off the train to go to work, I was basically doing this pathetic little penguin shuffle through the station and up to the office that turned a four minute walk into a fifteen minute torture spectacle-obstacle course, where the obstacles are innocent-looking things like stairs and doors, but when you reach them THEY WOUND YOU. It was awful. After all that, I wasn’t really thinking yet, so I got all the way to the office before the thought occurred to me that this would’ve been a really great reason NOT to go to work. Like, this was a really great reason to go to the motherfucking hospital. And I should have turned around and gotten Mr. Grumpiface to take me to the hospital right away, instead of waiting an hour before realizing that my knee was swelling up. Also that gravity has been remarkably antagonistic toward me lately. When my boss arrived, I told him what happened and he offered to drive me to the hospital in his swanky new Jaguar. It was so smoooooth but that’s all I remember because bouncing up and down would’ve hurt, so I was really grateful that it was such a smooth ride for the like 3 blocks it took to get to the hospital.

So, anyway, the doctor took x-rays and said it wasn’t torn or broken, but that I wouldn’t be able to train for at least a month – no running, no martial arts, and definitely no more falling over. So, I took the time off and didn’t train, and then I came back, like two weeks ago. And Jesus McFuckbuckets, it was really, really awful. I suck at sparring, and this teenager I was fighting punched me in the boob really hard, and I actually couldn’t remember my combos – you know those things that I’ve been doing repetitively for like the last… six to eight months or so? Yeah, I couldn’t remember them. Apparently I lose things very quickly. I did forms in my last Saturday class, and it came back pretty quickly. It helped that the instructor gave us a run-through first. It didn’t help that I was reduced to tears (me! tears! WTF?) by the run because apparently my legs just can’t handle running on things that aren’t just a little bit squishy. We run in the parking garage, and I limped all the way through it. Was barely even winded, so at least my cardio training is improving with the running, but MY FUCKING LEGS DON’T WORK. So, next step is to make a doctor’s appointment to send my body back to the lab for refurbishment because it’s defective.

So, yeah. What else is new? I’m frustrated and I don’t want to do things anymore. Is this being an adult? Even things that I want to do are depressing because it’s having to spend money, or get up early, or talk to people. I decided a year ago that I wanted to be more social. Now I’ve decided that I want to renew my WoW subscription and spend the entire weekend cocooned on the couch and leave my phone turned off. I am jealous that Francis has 3 jobs: eat, sleep & poop. I feel like those are things that I could be responsible for. I could even add in soaking my water dish, even though my derpy snake has only ever done that once in his entire life because he doesn’t seem to know how to snake. Also climbing things and falling off them. I got up to check on him twice the other night because he was making noise in his tank and I was assaulted by the anxiety fairy and couldn’t go to sleep until I was convinced he had not accidentally killed himself (it sounded like he’d managed to knock his log over to pin himself against the glass, and he’d just eaten, so I was afraid he had broken ribs and punctured lungs and was bleeding internally, because that’s what happens when you have anxiety problems, so I had to check on him. Twice. Just to make sure. And he was fine. He didn’t knock over his log. He just fell off of it. Again.) Yeah, I’ll talk to the doctor about the anxiety problems too. Not being able to sleep because you’re worried that you won’t get enough sleep before you have to get up for work is SUPER FUCKING FUN. Trying to figure out if stress is causing your various issues or if your various issues are causing your stress, because that’s a fun little loop you’ll never escape from. Constantly worrying that people don’t like you or are laughing at you, or that you offended that person with that comment like 3 months ago, because why the fuck would you say that? GOD, it’s like I’m fucking autistic or something. Wait, THAT was offensive too!

In case you were wondering, a) no, I know it doesn’t make sense to do this to myself, and b) don’t you think I would stop if I could? and c) yes, I should have gone to see a doctor about this when it started getting bad like last summer, but FUNNY THING when you have anxiety problems about dealing with things like an adult, it makes it very hard for you to deal with things like an adult. For me, when my health problems started, I had 2 really awful doctors. I was having problems digesting food like a human (which continues to be a problem) and when I saw a doctor about it, he told me to just deal with it. I went off dairy a few years later and things got a lot better, but it didn’t go away. I also had migraines when I woke up and first doctor was like “here’s all the T3s, take them and leave me alone” and the second doctor was like “T3s? YOU’RE AN ADDICT! Why would you want painkillers for unexplained pain (which I am making no effort whatsoever to try to figure out) in the control centre of your body? ADDICT! GO AWAY!” I later figured out that the headaches were from grinding my teeth at night, so I have to position my pillows carefully so I don’t do that anymore. But both issues are caused by anxiety, which I can’t talk to a doctor about because doctors can’t be trusted to try to help, they just yell at you and tell you it’s your fault.

Anyway. Yeah. Things. Stuff. Bye.

What’s Happening to Us?

You know, my mom is awesome and when I talk to her about the random shit in my life, she often goes “you know, that was really NOT the case when I was your age. For us, it was different.” and that’s very true on the topic of friendship. When my mom was my age, friendship was important, so people were more likely to forgive each other and also less likely to do things that would push people away, because without friends, there was nothing to do.

Friendship prevented boredom, and that’s basically the magic of humanity – how we entertain ourselves. But we have so many things now, so many new and exciting ways to isolate ourselves so we can not be bored but not have to spend time around people. Most of the time, I’m pretty happy with that, and can go for a surprisingly long time without needing or wanting contact with other humans, which is good because making friends is hard. You know when you’re playing an RPG and you end up with a helper monkey who follows you to help you with your quest? I hate those. They make me feel bad, like I’m wasting their time while I do my other quests, and that makes me angry. STOP FOISTING FRIENDS ON ME, WOW, I PLAY THIS BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH ANYONE RIGHT NOW.

Bitch, I got quests to do. Go away.

So, with video games, Netflix, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, blogs, Youtube, TV shows, movies, the ability to order food online without having to talk to another human being (I love that one particularly) and on and on and on… we don’t really need other people in our lives anymore. All we need is an internet connection and we can be friends with people all over the world that we never have to see. We can be whoever we want on the internet, so the real friends in our real lives, they tell us what we want to hear so we’ll like them. And in some ways, that’s great, because it makes you feel good about things you never really thought you’d feel good about. But on the other hand, it kind of stunts personal growth, because when you do something shitty to another person, they never actually TELL you it was shitty. They just fade away and you continue being an asshole to the next person, with no idea why they’re not in your life anymore. Sometimes friends drift apart, and sometimes friends stop being friends because of actual reasons… and sometimes friends were never really your friends at all. Without all the tech and distractions, people used to have try to be friends with other people, and now, if you don’t bother trying, then it doesn’t matter, because Netflix will always be there for you.

So, I don’t know. I feel like, as a society, we’re getting lazy about how we interact. I think we need to remember that people won’t always be there if we take them for granted, and they really won’t be want to be there if you throw hissy fits about stupid crap. Maybe we need more honesty and less bullshit, or maybe we need to give people time and space and quite possibly a whole new dimension. I don’t know. I don’t understand people. I just want to know why some of the people in my life in the last year or so have turned out to be such unbelievable fuckwads. I’ll probably never know.

So, for my nice friends who are understanding, lovely people who would never treat people in ways they would not wish to be treated – I greatly appreciate all of you for who you are, and that you are not a fuckwit. If you need me, there are many, many ways you can reach me, because that’s the beauty of all an internet connection.

Adventures in Special-People Sports Beverages

I’m not vegan, but I can’t have whey powder because it’s made from milk. So, I use Vega products because they are hemp-based, and that’s supposed to be better for you anyway. I’ve been using (damn, it sounds like I’m talking about drugs, but I’m not. Drugs would probably taste better.) Vega hemp protein shakes for about 10 months? Maybe a year now. And while it tastes better than other hemp products, that’s not saying a lot because other hemp products taste like plant food. Maaaaybe pet food. The kind pets don’t like.

Anyway, it seems to work alright. So, I bought this stuff:

That’s NOT a bag of chips back there. It’s something that looks… similar. Honest.

And I was rather skeptical because I generally assume that anything that says it will make me more energetic is being hopelessly – and rather sadly – optimistic. Not for long periods of time, mind you, just for about an hour or so. You’re supposed to take it 20 minutes before exercise, so I decided to try it before class yesterday.

I’ve found with Vega products that you really, really need to blend them because all the stuff settles at the bottom, so you have 3/4 of a cup of murky, fake-chocolatey-tasting water and then the last 1/4 of the cup is full of what I suspect is actually sand. Even after blending, you have to keep shaking it or it’ll all settle on the bottom. So, I end up drinking mine with a straw so it kind of sucks up the grainy crap all the way through. (You can’t try to drink all the grainy crap at once, you’ll throw up. Okay, I threw up. I don’t recommend it.) So, since I’m a ten-year-old, I require my water bottles to be themed, so this is what I drink my protein shake out of:

So, anyway! The energy-promising liar-thing! I was a little bit hesitant about taking it because I figured that it would be gross. I’ve tried a bunch of their products, which were pretty much awful, and I didn’t think this one would be different. (Stay away from the gels, they taste like regurgitated tropical punch. Pretty sure I threw that up, too.) So, I figured that if I tried to just mix this stuff with a spoon, it would just settle on the bottle and taste like ass. So, I blended it for a while because it had something that looked like seeds in it. I am still not really sure if blending it was the best idea, because this happened:

Ewwwwwwwwww.

It created a layer of foam on top of what looked like alligator urine… and then the foam sort of hardened into an exoskeleton… And you can actually see that, in the time it took me to take this picture, the stuff is already separating. So, I poured it into my BATMAN thermos so that I didn’t have to look at it while I was drinking it, which helped a lot. (And because you can keep shaking it up again.) And the first sip wasn’t too bad, until the aftertaste hit and I had the absurd feeling like an orange had just farted in my mouth. I started making “PLAH. PLAHHHH GET OUT OF MY MOUTH” noises and Mr. Grumpiface started laughing at me because he’s a sympathetic fucker. So I added a fuckton of lemon juice to hide the aftertaste, which worked rather well. So, to complete my review, this stuff is kind of gross but if you add a bunch of lemon juice and don’t look at it, it’s okay. I didn’t notice if it gave me any extra energy, though. Maybe it just made me less tired? I don’t know. I’ll keep using it and see if it’s maybe a cumulative effect.

Or, maybe the execs that market this stuff are sitting there laughing their faces off because people actually pay a lot of money to drink alligator urine.

I Think, Therefore I am…

So, interestingly enough, I’ve been doing all our social media work for the company I work for. This means a couple different things – a) that I am now using Facebook and Twitter for business, and therefore having to constrain myself because apparently I can be rather offensive, b) that I am now arguing with my boss once or twice a week about how social media works and why she should just LET ME DO IT and c) that I’m using a website that is powered by WordPress, and by the end of the day, I’m so bloody annoyed by it that I come home and go “Holy fuck, I am NOT messing around with this shit any longer.”

Wow, that was a super long sentence. It’s not all bad though – frustrating as hell at times, but I’m actually getting to use my writing degree for something other than my trifle of a blog; now, I also use it for my company’s trifle of a blog. Sometimes writing articles on why people should buy insurance is a little bit galling, so I like to focus on why our brokers shouldn’t rely on outdated sales techniques involving manipulation and force. We are pushing client relationships and building trust, and that makes me feel all warm and gooey inside.

Warm and gooey… mmmnomnomnom…

Buuuuuut I do have a couple updates. For one, I missed a term at the dojo because of my stupid leg injury, so I’m trying to make up for it now by doing twice as many classes as normal and double-promoting. I am learning tornado kicks right now, and I’m pretty much terrible at them, but I will learn… eventually… except that I might have reinjured myself on Wednesday. Not sure yet. I kicked, I felt something snap all the way up the back of my left leg (not the same leg I injured before) and then I crumpled to the floor. It was weird, because it didn’t even hurt, but I could feel that it was not good. So, the next thing I know, Master & Mrs Gee are standing around me while I’m sitting on the floor like a dumbass, and all I can think of is not wanting to tell Mr. Grumpiface that I have hurt myself AGAIN.

Luckily, it wasn’t that bad. Mrs Gee put me through her torturous rigor of acupressure and told me that my problem resides in my lower back and I need to do more back stretches before class. So, that could have been a lot worse, and I’m glad it wasn’t. Another distraction I’ve had lately has been that Mr. Grumpiface plays Warmachine and currently has about 4 shelves of mostly unpainted models. We started painting them together and I’ve really taken a liking to it. I was surprised, I thought it would take a lot of artistic skill, but apparently all you need is to be an incredibly determined perfectionist. First we painted a cavalry dude red & gold, and then he gave me some Cygnars (which are these big sorta robot guys) to paint, which he promptly sold to a buddy’s buddy. I wasn’t angry, but I was a little offended. I spent hours on those guys and he just sells them??? But then he told me how much he stood to make, and I was like “God damn, good job. Alright.” Mr. Grumpiface also just bought some models from some other guy, and that guy did a shitty job painting them, so I’ve been cleaning them up. They’re these wolfy things that look like this:  Middle Wolfy is the new guy that I’ve been working on repainting. Wolfy 1 & 3 already belonged to Mr. Grumpiface, so I’m trying to get them all to look as much alike as possible. It’s been very good for the diet, because painting occupies your hands, so you’re not just sitting there snacking for hours on end. Speaking of the diet though… that hasn’t been going so well. Being unprepared is the number one cause of diet failures and it was the cause of this one. We will get back on it on Monday (promise!) after we get some provisions and do food prep. We’ve just been having a lot of bad luck lately, what with us both pulling hamstrings (he was competing against Mr. Laziface doing a jump front kick competition at the Fight for Fun tournament at the dojo and tried a little bit too hard.)

Sproing.

I didn’t go to the tournament because I had been planning on going to a friend’s Goth picnic in Stanley Park, but it was raining so they postponed it, but by the time we saw the message we were dressed & ready to head over, and the tournament would have been mostly over by then. I have been making a bustier out of an old bra and an old satin scarf, and while it wasn’t exactly the way I pictured it – and not quite finished, to be honest – it didn’t look too bad. I wore it out to Sin City that night and had a complete stranger come up to me to tell me that my outfit was amazing. I was pleased, because I worked on it for a long time, it was repurposed clothing I already owned and didn’t pay a gajillion dollars for. I was rather proud of it.

I made that! I’m awesome!

Plus, the rain last weekend caused some kind of back up in our pipes and resulted in our bathroom & kitchen flooding, which, after a great deal of clean up, resulted in pizza for dinner. Oh, and we both came down with colds earlier this month, which meant a week of eating chicken soup and cough drops for me. The hardest thing about dieting actually wanting to put the effort into making something that is ultimately disappointing. If someone else made my food for me, it would be so much easier… But hey, Monday is another chance to try again, because everyone knows that diets can’t start until Monday.

Until next time… peace out, bitches!