The shortest day

Today started out strong. I was able to get out of bed close to when I wanted to. I was able to do many parts of my morning routine that I haven't been able to do lately. I got out the door within 5 minutes of when I had intended to get out the door.

 I have a tradition of hiking the Konza on the winter solstice. A few weeks ago, before this episode, I had decided that this year I would hike the 6 mile loop. So a couple times recently I've made a point to go out there and hike the middle loop so it wouldn't be so out of the blue to do the long one.

This is the face I made when I read a text from my friend asking if I wanted to hike later in the day. Oops. Sorry friend. Already well into the back loop when I read that.

I had estimated 3 hours for this hike and it took about 2 hours 20 minutes. I wasn't rushing but I also didn't stop to enjoy the scenery as much as I might have if I were hiking with a friend.

It was nice to accomplish a goal. I may have even felt a tiny bit of pride. But the muted kind. 

it's the lighting, the lighting is very fishy

It was a good day.

Struggle Bus

So three entire days in a row I made time to sit down and think about how I was feeling and then write about it. And then followed that with three days I didn't. I've been fighting with myself about whether doing certain tasks makes me feel better or if feeling better leads to doing those tasks. Not even just writing. I have a whole stack of tasks I usually enjoy doing on a daily basis and I haven't been doing them. I kind of hate not doing the things that I associate with wellness regardless of the cause and effect situation.

Day 2. I had a decent hike at Konza that day.

I was late to the gym this morning. And then when I got home, it took so much longer than I wanted it to for me to get out the door again. I hate it.

A part of me wonders if this is my real life and the part where I'm not dissociated is the episode.

Day 3: a restful day, if I'm being nice to me

Ok, I don't really think that my dissociation is my "real" life and the times when I feel more functional are the episodes. That's just the despair. I really think that it's kind of a side effect of how much healing I have enjoyed. See, the better I feel when I'm not dissociated, the worse it is to be dissociated. I used to slip in and out of it with very little awareness. Now I know what it's like to live more connected to myself and the world around me. It's intolerable to be disconnected again.

Day 4: I managed some parts of my usual schedule and also managed to take a nap.

I did make it to the gym today. And I fed my family. We worked together on some care tasks. I managed to find 4 matching shirts in the right sizes. For our Christmas pjs. We have a tradition and I bought the pants a few weeks ago. I hope the shirts are the right colors, I didn't look at the pants before I went to the store. *sigh* This is me trying to stick to the positive side. I got some good things done. They just weren't necessarily the things I wanted to do or the speed in which I wanted to do them.

Day 4

I'm struggling.

this week's gym update

It's really better if I write my weekly gym update on Wednesday before the leg day results are fully in. But that wasn't in the schedule yesterday. So now it's hurt-y whiny day. I didn't really want to talk about the fact I can't sit comfortably, or stand comfortably, or go up and down any stairs, or even lay in my hammock comfortably. I wanted to talk about lat pulldowns.

I really like doing them. I don't know why. It might be because there's something about lat pulldowns that reminds me of just about every dance or ice skating themed movie I've ever seen. There will almost always be a line about lifting their arms that just doesn't make sense to me. But now I feel like I get it. So I've got a bit of a head start on my future dance career that I wasn't planning to pursue.

Every year I have some kind of mental health episode around the holidays. This year it came early, before Thanksgiving. It makes it harder to "hear" what my body is telling me. So I'm glad that I have a trainer because when I'm at the gym I definitely need someone to supervise me and remind me to take breaks between sets and monitor how much weight I'm trying to lift and otherwise help me to not hurt myself.

In other news: I've decided to capitalize on my hair being way too short for my preferences and learn some new skills, namely, how to make the most of the natural wave and see if I can't get some actual curl with minimal efforts.

In other, other news: It took me a very long time to find an advent calendar for myself. I had too many ideas and really I wonder if sometimes I can't decide what I want because of the dissociation. I finally picked one with stitch markers and it arrived in the mail today. I decided to just start at the top and open one per day. I guess I'm not really counting down to Christmas at this point. I wonder what I'm counting? Which Cherie will I be in 25 days?

So Late I'm Early

I decided to forge ahead and finish up the Advent calendar project. The girls haven't seen all of them as I've finished them so there will still be a surprise element. Pretty soon I'll be looking for a place to put this project where it will be nice and safe. Then forget about it until this time next year when I'll go "where did I put that thing?" It will be so funny.

Every year around this time I start planning the projects I want to do through the year so that I don't get to December and have an overwhelmingly large pile of things to do and not enough time to do them. Maybe this will be the year that I do it. It doesn't seem very likely, but I can dream.

Incidentally, on this day 2013, I taught the girls to crochet a bit....or gave them the first lesson I can remember. I was impressed with how studious Caelie was. As I'm typing this I have this vague memory of having taught Taryn to crochet before this moment. But oh well.

Slowly But Surely

I've been making a bit of progress on my advent project. The 7th ornament in The Cookie Snob's plan was a trumpet and it was very cute, I just didn't feel like doing it though so I went with the candy cane from the Yarnspirations calendar.

Rudolph went pretty straightforward although I played with the antlers on one. The wreath was weird because it was too big, so I took out a lot of stitches. Then I decided I didn't want to spend the time to size the bow appropriately so I just made a long chain and wove it through the spaces. The Christmas orange is so tiny, like more of a cutie orange.

I skipped a camel which I plan to replace with a different ornament and went on to the cardinal. It's so tiny and cute although one has a wonky beak. I'm enjoying making these tiny things. Only 9 days "behind" LOL.

Gift Wrap

One of my more recent challenges has been to give up wrapping paper in favor of reusable options. My purpose is mostly to save money. Wrapping paper is pretty silly, you barely get it on a present before it's ripped off and thrown in the trash. What a weird way to spend money. I have so many scraps of fabric of various sizes and I keep thinking I could even make some patchwork bags if I was extra productive.

 

I used a tutorial from a blog called In Color Order. Then I branched off and made up different sizes of bags. I first made gift bags in April. 

Tonight I made some more Christmasy ones for the girls' gift exchanges this week. I used an old pair of pj pants, and left out some of the fussy parts of the In Color Order pattern. But the picture I took isn't any good so I'm not going to put it here.

Here are some more of the Advent Tree ornaments I've finished yesterday and today. I skipped a tree shaped ornament from the Cookie Snob's plan and replaced it with the hot cocoa mugs from a Yarnspirations Advent Calendar. It just seemed silly to make a tree to hang on a tree. And I made up a different angel by combining some parts from several patterns. 

Light Bulb

Cookie Snob's Angel

Feeling Productive

So today I managed to finish up a couple projects that I've had just sitting around waiting for me. One was a water bottle sling that I made in May, but I needed to confirm that the strap was long enough before I finished.

I finally added the tassel to the scarf I've been working on, I'll try to remember to take a decent picture tomorrow. The other project I've had hanging over my head is a crocheted Advent calendar. I'm mostly using a post from The Cookie Snob, which starts with a tree from River Weaving. I've finished two trees (one for each girl) except I haven't made a way to hang the trees on the wall nor to hang the ornaments on the tree. Last night I finished the first couple ornaments and today a couple more. So now I'm only ten days behind, lol.

Star & Santa

Snowman