Mum is out of town this weekend, so it’s just Gran and I here at the house. So far we’ve done real well, she ate all her dinner last night and all of her breakfast this morning, and has taken her medicines on schedule as directed, so I feel a bit relieved. But Mum will be gone until Tuesday sometime, so there is still a ways to go.
I’m not a very creative cook, and Gran is kind of picky — she likes “country” food — fried catfish, biscuits, gravy, collard greens, and these are all things I can’t really cook well. So rather than giving her options on food I’ve just been cooking simple things and giving them to her, but so far it’s working. She doesn’t eat a whole lot, so getting her nutrition in is a big deal for us. So far she’s been a member of the clean plate club though, so I’m pretty pleased.
Saw my therapist Thursday (finally!) after 3 canceled appointments — 2 on his part and 1 on mine — I was out of town for the weekend he wanted to reschedule, in El Paso. We talked about some good things and made some good strides. I like him a lot, he just seems to have had a bad streak of needing to cancel lately. Car wreck, illness — all of them were totally legit, just in a row, which sucked.
I have a lot of social anxiety. It manifests in various ways, usually withdrawing and being very quiet in social situations — I’m a watcher, not a talker. I don’t introduce myself to strangers, even when they are part of my fraternity and “not really strangers” because yeah they are.
When I went to El Paso for my fraternity annual conference there were about 30 people there, most of whom I didn’t know — and the meeting house had 5 dogs. I am allergic to dogs. One or two is fine, but five is too many and my allergies kicked into hyper drive — I took antihistamines and it helped, but I was kind of doped up on benadryl and not feeling super hot. Meeting when fine, we got everything we needed to to done for the next year without spending too many hours wrangling about it, so it was a success. But there were some awkward and uncomfortable social moments.
My next trip away is the Pennsic war, (late July, early August) where I will be camping for two weeks. That’s a long time to go camping with people, particularly when you don’t know most of them, and the event is large, between 10,000 and 12,000 are expected to attend. Our encampment will have about 150 or so people in it ranging from kids to elders. We have all the amenities — power, shower building, dishwashing sinks, etc in our camping area, so it’s not really all that primitive, but it can be a bit overwhelming when you have social anxiety like I do. There are people I haven’t seen in 20 years, and people who joined since I dropped out for a while (18 years of sabbatical) so I have some serious anxiety about it. I have a feeling I will spend a lot of the event in classes like I did Gulf War, or in my yurt trying to chill out. My close friend from Canada I talk to everyday will be there (with her Dingus husband) so I have that to look forward to, but some people I’m not really looking forward to seeing, even though they have expressed excitement to see me. I just feel dread. Being social takes such a toll on me, it’s not even funny and it’s quite exhausting. It was a lot easier when I was younger.
I have some doctors appointments coming up in July — a visit with my prescribing psychiatrist (yay meds) and a nurse visit at my primary care doctors for a quarterly shot. (yay meds) I’m really pleased with the shot, it’s an anti-psychotic and it really works. I’ve had no breakthrough symptoms at all since I went on the 3 month version. There is still a little time to go, I’m due on July 5th — but so far it’s been great.
On the diet front I’ve been doing well, I’ve lost another couple of pounds, even with the road trip where I strayed off my diet. I still have about 75lbs to go, but I’m making progress slowly but surely. I have drastically cut my caloric intake; I generally have one solid meal a day and the rest of the time it’s meal replacement bars or shakes. The meals are very nutritious, lots of veg and no starches — and usually keep me pretty satisfied. I’m still not going to the gym (anxiety) but it’s coming off.
So that’s it for me this week, taking care of Gran and anxiety about pretty much everything, so not much new is going on. What’s your FP?