Couch 192: The Rainbow Cupcake Couch

Doing my sunday overtime lalalalala taking break early cuz my system is updating wheee

I'm going to an open house today. I live 25 minutes from work and this house is similar to mine but 10 minutes from work. It will save me time but I only go into the office 3-4 times a week and I like my current neighbors so I'm ambivalent about moving. I'll see what type of "vibe" the house and neighborhood have and then I'll decide I guess. It is about 400 Sq ft bigger but the kitchen is half the size of mine (I have a huge kitchen, which I love but don't cook in much).

OMG who spiked the coffe pot on the couch...
Don’t mind me... I am just going to sit here and people watch

H just shuffled in with his eyes half closed and said he didn't get home from his job last night until 3am, cuz they gave him 2 more stops while he was still up yonder by a couple hours. Usually on Sundays I work a split shift and we go out to breakfast in the middle but he came in to say let's go out to lunch after you're done instead I'm going back to bed. Works for me! That means I can work all my overtime today in peace while he sleeps, no loud tv! Yay.

Having a hard week--the ICU is not my happy place, and it's 12h/d, 6d/wk. I have today off but I can't really relax because I know I have six more days in a row of this nonsense starting tomorrow.

I'm just so scared that I'm going to make a mistake and cause someone harm.

I am getting crabby about the whole celiac/gluten thing. Not going gluten-free, I have confidence I can do that, but when can I start?

GI appointment is April 1 and as far as I can tell from the Internet the likely first step is more bloodwork, for which I need to be eating gluten to get accurate results. Then an endoscopy, for which, again, it would be ideal to be eating gluten.

I don’t even know if I want an endoscopy, but it’s likely I’d just be diagnosed gluten-sensitive without one instead of celiac. A more specific diagnosis has its advantages.

There’s the option of a gene test if I go off gluten before more tests but that’s not definitive.

I’m just impatient. I have a plan and want to implement it rather than bouncing around medical offices. And I’m starting to look at stuff with gluten and think “poison.”

I totally understand the impatience. Maybe at least try to hold out till the April 1 appointment, since that isn't too far away? I imagine it would be OK to reduce gluten, just not eliminate it completely.

That’s basically where I am, yeah. For instance there’s a granola bar with gluten I take to work for an afternoon snack—I’ll be out by the end of the week and don’t plan to buy any more.

I think so long as I am eating some gluten test results won’t be affected.

Today, I am annoying myself. Is that some kind of achievement? I'm not sure.

It's a beautiful spring day here in the .

Are there gluten-free oreos? Asking for a friend

Well the bedrooms in the house were all too small so that's that. There are some others I am interested in but they would be a stretch financially. So I'm staying put for now.

Lunch was chilaquiles, it was soooo good! The chips were a littler crunchier than I've had in the past, but the flavors were so perfect. So yum. Goooooood stuff, Meynard.

That sounds yummy, Art. I might have to have a go at making them. Good Mexican food is hard to come by here, even though we gave them a lot of our culture.

I've never made this either, but I need to try. I have a couple of friends I should hit up for recipes....

ATAT - I hope you find out soon so you can start to change what you need to change.

I feel so alone for some reason. I am making a schedule for next week. Fighting sadness. Wishing people at work understood, but they don't. I wish the world understood, but most don't. It's all good, but I think the first two paragraphs really state it well.

My T shared this with me off of the site of

This comes from the social anxiety institute
Psychologist/Director, Social Anxiety Institute

I couldn't have written it better. This was very validating for m.e

All day, every day, life is like this. Fear. Apprehension. Avoidance. Pain. Anxiety about what you said. Fear that you said something wrong. Worry about others' disapproval. Afraid of rejection, of not fitting in. Anxious to enter a conversation, afraid you'll have nothing to talk about. Hiding what's wrong with you deep inside, putting up a defensive wall to protect your "secret". You are undergoing the daily, chronic trouble of living with this mental disorder we call social anxiety disorder.

Very few people understand the agonizing and traumatic depth of social anxiety disorder. Social anxiety makes people go inside themselves and try to "protect" this secret. Most people with social anxiety disorder try to hide it from others, especially from family and loved ones. There is fear that family members may find out they suffer from social anxiety, and then view them differently or outright reject them. This is almost never true, but the fear of this happening makes many people with social anxiety stay in their dark closet.

*If you are seeking treatment for social anxiety, start here*

Social anxiety disorder (social phobia) is the third largest psychological problem in the United States today. Millions of people quietly endure this pain every day, believing there is no hope for them getting better.
What is social anxiety like?

A man finds it difficult to walk down the street because he’s self-conscious and feels that people are watching him from their windows. Worse, he may run into a person on the sidewalk and be forced to say hello to them. He’s not sure he can do that. His voice will catch, his "hello" will sound weak, and the other person will know he’s frightened. More than anything else, he doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s afraid. He keeps his eyes safely away from anyone else’s gaze and prays he can make it home without having to talk to anyone.

A woman hates to stand in line in the grocery store because she’s afraid that everyone is watching her. She knows that it’s not really true, but she can’t shake the feeling. While she is shopping, she is conscious of the fact that people might be staring at her from the big mirrors on the inside front of the ceiling. Now, she has to talk to the person who’s checking out the groceries. She tries to smile, but her voice comes out weakly. She’s sure she’s making a fool of herself. Her self-consciousness and her anxiety rise to the roof.

Another person sits in front of the telephone and agonizes because she’s afraid to pick up the receiver and make a call. She’s even afraid to call an unknown person in a business office about the electric bill because she’s afraid she’ll be "putting someone out" and they will be upset with her. It’s very hard for her to take rejection, even over the phone, even from someone she doesn’t know. She’s especially afraid to call people she knows because she feels that she’ll be calling at the wrong time -- the other person will be busy — and they won’t want to talk with her. She feels rejected even before she makes the call. Once the call is made and over, she sits, analyzes, and ruminates about what was said, what tone it was said in, and how she was perceived by the other person....her anxiety and racing thoughts concerning the call prove to her that she "goofed" this conversation up, too, just like she always does. Sometimes she gets embarrassed just thinking about the call.

A thunderstorm just whipped up out of nowhere - I just barely made it home from walking with my dogs in the park when the skies opened up with rain, thunder and lightning.

Tonight's very "My Mom" statement: "You look really pretty--are you wearing makeup?" Because I couldn't just look pretty on my own...I mean, yeah, I was wearing makeup because I'm pretty pale otherwise (with pale lips, too), but still, couldn't she just say, "You look really pretty tonight" and leave it at that?

LT - It's like Throwback Thursday but on a Sunday! And we wonder why we're nuts?! It's a miracle we are as sane as we are!