Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Millennial Reconciliation

My rent is going up by a ridiculous amount this year. I thought I lived in Boise, but the rent is feeling more like San Francisco. And not only did the rent increase, but they are also starting to charge for water, sewer, and trash above and beyond rent, divided between tenants. A perfectly legal practice that was intended to be used in lieu of rent increases, but lucky me, I get both at once. 

I've had a couple days to be really angry and upset about the whole thing, getting into a big mood. Back when I just knew about the rent increase, I looked around for other places to live, but nothing in my area is any cheaper than what I was being offered. I expanded my search to Nampa and Caldwell, and I still couldn't find anything reasonable. Especially considering I'd then need to commute a long way to work each day. 

I know that I need to find another place to live, and that's likely to mean that I need to leave Boise, probably whole the Treasure Valley. The idea makes me sad. I like where I live, work and workout. But I'm going to be priced out of the privilege of living here. There's not a whole lot that I can do about that. I'm actually hoping that the housing bubble bursts and I can either afford to stay here or afford to get a better place at a better price, but I've been hoping that for a while now, and the bubble just keeps expanding. 

I know that I have a choice, and I chose to stay here despite the egregious terms. Because I believe I can get through one more year before I have to give up on Boise. One more year to say goodbye to the city I've lived in most of my adult life. To get used to the idea of picking everything up and trying somewhere new, which does make me nervous. That's not something I've done very often. 

It's not a waste of time to experience and process these emotions and be moody and a bit broody. It's natural and normal. But I don't want to hold onto that resentment that I feel at the property management company and the owner of the building. It won't serve me to keep being angry, to stress myself out over and over again about something that I can't change. I'm choosing to let go of the emotions that will only poison me and do nothing to hurt the targets of my ire. 

I have a roof over my head, food on my table, a steady job, and enough laid in supplies and savings for a good backpacking season this summer. I have my needs and many of my wants. There are plenty of things that I can focus on instead of bitter anger, and that is what I intend to do. Even if (when) the utility bills are high enough to upset me all over again, I'll let the emotions happen and then move forward, and look forward to opportunities that I might not see if I were focusing in on that anger and frustration. 

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Re-evaluating My IBS

I believe that one of the hardest things to tell people is that they are making themselves sick. 

It's an implication of responsibility where most of us want none. 

It's a condemnation that gets our monsters riled and defensive.

It feels like victim blaming. 

But sometimes, we are making ourselves sick. 

Consider my husband. He was told by several doctors and medical professionals that he would have to be on medication for high blood pressure for the rest of his life. That is only the reality if he didn't stop making himself sick. He has spent the last several years working on reducing his body weight, and he has succeeded in going from 4 medications to one half of one medication. He changed HIMSELF rather than continuing to make himself sick and be dependent on those drugs.

For years, I was told that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and the doctors liked to do a little dance around the fact that I was making myself sick. They never outright said it, but there were lots of questions about my mental health, how much I was exercising, whether I was getting enough sunshine. Those don't seem super relevant to a digestive issue, do they? I always felt they were implying the whole thing was psychosomatic. 

Now, I'm not sure if I have IBS, but there is no definitive test for IBS. There is no way to prove that I have it or don't. So I'm going with a new theory, that the way I was eating was no longer sustainable for my body. 

My weight has been relatively steady, but my cholesterol has been on a steady march upward. What I didn't want to consider was that the food I was eating, the food I most enjoyed eating (because it's designed to be enjoyable), could be part of what was making me sick. And by choosing those foods, I would thus be making myself sick. 

There might also have been an undiscovered food intolerance in there, but I believe the main thing that's helping me regain some control over my digestion is cutting out the literal crap I used to eat. I love Cheetos. They are my favorite chip. And I miss their taste, and licking the damn cheese powder off my fingers. But I haven't eaten them in over a year. (Funnily enough, I might have discovered the food intolerance by trying to find a healthier substitute for Cheetos; I tried a vegan cheese puff and the reaction convinced me to try cutting out yeast.)

I've eaten fast food once in the last year, and even my restaurant trips have declined precipitously to no more than once a month. 

The Food/Industrial Complex is about profit. The only way to profit off of food for people is to make food that is so unsatiating that people don't ever really feel full eating it, and so delicious that people don't notice how much of it you eat. There's no profit in providing proper nutrition in proper quantities. No, they have to make bigger containers (larger people). They have to manipulate flavor and texture so that food becomes as close as possible to addictive. 

And it's all free choice, right? Americans just choose to eat the most aggressively advertised foods, which are chock full of sodium and fat. Freedom! To become a growing waste disposal unit. To end up on a dozen medications for high blood pressure and heart disease and diabetes. To be unable to move functionally. That's freedom. 

I don't always choose the right foods, but I'm making a conscious effort to make those better choices. To improve my eating with more fiber, including what fruits and vegetables I can tolerate. I've even started eating Cheerios, which, while highly processed, are my baby-step towards eating more whole grains. I'm hoping to switch to oatmeal at some point, but I'm still experimenting. 

I'm making a choice to actively try and change how my digestive system functions by eating better food, instead of trying to medicate my way out of a syndrome I might not even have. So far, I've made more progress in 30 days than I had in the last 6+ years since the original IBS diagnosis. I'm going to stay the course and see where these choices lead me. 

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Perspective on Sleep Changes

Ever since the last fall time change, my husband has had issues sleeping through the night. I was pretty worried about it, because sleeping less than 5 hours a night just doesn't seem right to me. I'm the kind of person who can easily sleep 9 hours a night or more, so for him to be fine with 6 is totally foreign to me. But the issues weren't that he was sleeping 6, but less than that. 

I looked at home remedies for sleep, and tried lowering our temperature at night. That seemed to do the trick, to an extent. He was getting up to 7 hours, and most nights more than 6. I wondered what would happen when we got to the spring forward time change. I hoped it would take my husband back to normal sleep patterns. 

I'll admit that my interest in his sleep is partially selfish. I sleep much better when he's in bed with me. Just knowing that he's there helps me sleep more deeply. 

Unfortunately, the spring forward did not bring him back into sleeping longer. If anything, he's been sleeping a bit less since the spring time change. I was starting to get worried and thought about medical intervention until this very morning when we talked about it. 

He mentioned that his sister remembered him always having sleep issues when they were growing up and it just went off like a lightbulb in my head. For most of the years that I've been with Ambrose, he has been on blood pressure medication. He was, at one point, on 4 blood pressure medications. Now he's down to a half dose of 1 bp med. 

Of course he's sleeping differently! He no longer has all those medications swimming in his blood stream and interacting! 

We don't know what his natural sleep patterns are, because they've been mediated for so many years. So unless he feels tired, the short sleep is probably fine. And he'll probably find some kind of equilibrium as his body adjusts to the change in medication. See, I didn't consider that our annual exam, when he dropped a medication, is pretty close to the time change. And he went down from a whole pill to a half pretty close to the spring change. It all makes sense, timing-wise. 

I'll still miss him in the bed when I'm still asleep and he's awake, but I'm not going to be worried about it anymore. It's all part of finding his new normal. 

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Cutting Caffeine

I enjoy coffee. I especially enjoy a nice, strong, black coffee. But I had to start using creamer so my tummy wouldn't complain about the acidity so much. 

And then, my husband noticed my hands were trembling one day. I told him it was likely due to caffeine, because that's the simplest explanation. But I also figured it might be time for a caffeine break, just to see if the trembling persisted.

It wasn't too difficult this time, because I haven't been drinking coffee every day, instead switching between green tea and coffee. So I did one week where I just drank the green tea and then stopped caffeine completely. 

That technique allowed me to avoid the caffeine withdrawal headaches that I typically go through when stopping caffeine. I'll be sure to use it in the future. 

I've now been without caffeine for about two weeks. I haven't noticed trembling continuing, but I'll have to defer to my husband since he pays a lot of attention to things I sometimes don't notice. 

It's always strange when I get off caffeine and realize I don't really need it to wake up. But then, once I start drinking it again, I have that need for my wake up coffee. I'll enjoy being off of it while I'm off, but I also enjoy that flavor. 

And, no, decaf just isn't the same for me.