Life Update Blog Post of Life

It’s been awhile. I'm not apologizing, just stating a fact, and acknowledging the absence of that extra bit of joy in your life that you've been missing (my blog posts).

People ask me what I've been up to (do they? I had to think about that for a second. Yes, yes they do) and I try to think of what I can say besides “work.” And really when I think about it, what I've been doing is surviving. That is my life: survival of the not-so-fittest.

I made some resolutions for the new year, something I rarely ever do. Most people are all about making resolutions. I just find if I don't make them, then life is a lot less disappointing. Win, win. One of my resolutions was to write more blog posts (I actually just made that up right now, that wasn’t one of them). Another resolution was to go on the Paleo diet. You see, I’ve become obese in the past year and… Just kidding! Psych! It’s not a weight-loss diet, it’s a health diet. I want to figure out once and for all why I am chronically “bunged up” as they say (do they still say that? They shouldn’t). Yes I admit it, unashamedly (I also wrote an entire blog post about it so it probably isn’t news to you, you can read it here: Potty Talk), well, a little ashamedly… Anyway, I started the diet the second week of January and have only cheated twice: once when my dog died...

This is the part where I talk about how my dog died. That was sad. Really, really sad. I'm still mourning her and every day I miss her. She was the best dog I ever had (she was the only dog I ever had) and she was my baby (technically she was given to my brother and I, however she clearly preferred my mom over anyone in the world which made me jealous on many occasions and slightly bitter until I looked into her eyes and CURSE YOU CUTENESS! she relentlessly hypnotized me into forgiving her). Seventeen years of my life were spent loving that dog and I don't regret a minute of it, even if a lot of it was simply procrastinating from doing chores, or anything for that matter, and instead was spent fawning over her and talking to her in that ridiculous voice that you can't help using which is usually accompanied by that intense feeling all over that makes you clench your teeth together to refrain from squishing them to death. You know what I'm talking about. If you don't, I'm sincerely sorry, it's increased my quality of life exponentially. I feel sure I'll see her in heaven, you can't tell me I won't, you would simply be guessing (as am I), whereas all the rational is in my favor (why wouldn't God want all His creatures in heaven? They're all made unique and we know from the Bible that He cares for all of them on earth and that there are animals in heaven. What, so God is going to make new animals just for the sake of having animals in heaven and say no to the amazing animals He already made? What because heaven isn't big enough? Give me a break. Just because your mind can't handle the idea of eternity and a God who makes space out of air doesn't mean you should make the rest of us feel bad. There. I said it.) Anyway, I will always miss her. We called her "boozum spow" as kids (don't ask). I called her muffin and my dad called her Pigmaleon. But mostly I will miss just saying her name: Kezzie. The cutest, nicest, most beloved dog in the world. Me and my old BFF Chelsea used to play a game called "One puppy on the go," which consisted of us running a relay with Kezzie as the baton and said, "One puppy on the go.. two puppy on the go!" etcetera. It's like Count Dracula but with puppies. Yay! Anyway as Kezzie lay dying I whispered in her ear, "One puppy on the go!" and I knew she was going home, to her Creator, where she truly belonged.

And the next time I cheated was at my friend Erin's bachelorette party. Because, how could I not? The cookies were sailor-themed. Sorry, was that a difficult transition? Sometimes I can be insensitive. It was just too sad so out of self-defense my subconscious changed the topic abruptly before I burst into tears. But moving on a little less insensitively, after the loss of my beloved dog cheating on my diet made a lot of sense. So does cheating for sailor cookies. So far the Paleo diet is definitely working. I also wanted to rule out once and for all that my chronic fatigue/sleep problem/LTS (Leg Twitching Syndrome, which is actually called Periodic Limb Movement Disorder) is food-related. Something is making me twitch in my sleep, and the only way to rule out if it is something I’m eating and shouldn’t be is to go to extremes. Hence, the Paleo. It's no crazier than those people who suffered severe back pain for years until they finally decided to go on an elimination diet and found out it was allergy to wheat. What is the Paleo Diet? Well the most succinct explanation is no grains, no dairy (which I'm already allergic to), no sugar and no processed food; basically going back to the hunter and gatherer diet. This is helpful: The Beginner's Guide to Paleo. You may think, “But wait, she’s a vegetarian!” and I would say, “Actually I’m a pescatarian. Like a sectarian but with a "p." " I say I'm a vegetarian because no one knows what a freaking pescatarian is and I always sound like an idiot or a pretentious hippy. Basically, I eat fish. Let me tell you, I tried being a vegan, but heck, that was hard... And that's the end of that story.

But who cares what diet I’m on and whether I am going to the washroom more frequently than I ever have since birth. I mean I do, I care. A lot. But anyway let’s move on and talk about my sad little sleep-deprived life.

Did you know that sleep deprivation is a form of torture used alongside water-boarding? Yeah, that’s right. Every day I am exhausted. I am exhausted right now, and it is incredibly difficult to concentrate, hence, why I haven’t been blogging, or writing my book. Hence why I say my life consists of “surviving.” It is much easier to not-write, to passively take in, which comes to my other resolution. I have dared myself this year to give up TV for X amount of months. Basically I couldn’t say how long, I was afraid to say anything at all, so I dared myself that once I started I was going to do it as long as I possibly could. Unfortunately it didn’t last long as I realized it was quite unnecessary and instead I just needed to give up TV on week nights. Now listen, I am not a TVaholic, but I have a very small amount of time to live in, the rest of that time I am either working, eating or sleeping, so every second counts. Especially now that I switched shifts at work and now work from 11 am - 7 pm. This means I get an extra hour to sleep and will hopefully stop missing work so I don’t, you know, get fired, and so far it has been successful: I am still employed. It has meant I can’t really do much week nights, but hey! I often made plans during week nights in the naïve hope I wouldn’t be too tired to do them and then had to cancel anyway because… I was too tired to do them. And when I say “too tired” I mean I would be a danger on the road. There’s been many times where I have driven when I shouldn’t have because I was so tired. Why? Because it is so hard to miss out all the time, and it is so hard to say no, and I hate disappointing people, so I just say a prayer that I won’t die, or kill anyone, and hope for the best. So far so good!

Anyway, calm down, it’s okay, there are many, many occasions where I do say no (or say yes then decide that's it's not safe and say no), where I do miss out and I do disappoint people. Yaaayyy… On the bright side I have an awesome job, an awesome place to live, awesome friends and family and I recently acquired a good working car for $200. Yeah, that's right. God is blessing me just like I was told He would on the Auxano graduation night by an amazing prayer warrior named Tim Parker.

And I FINALLY got another appointment at the Nanaimo Sleep Clinic. Last year after finding out I had LTS, I mean Periodic Limb Movement Disorder, they gave me a kind of Parkinson’s medication to try and said if it didn’t work there were more options. It didn’t work. (You can read all about my ten years + journery here: Leg Tourrettes or Why I'm So Freaking Tired). Then they changed my next appointment date and, unfortunately, only had my home phone number, whilst I was up at Auxano, not at home, and therefore did not get the message. It meant I drove up to Nanaimo in someone else’s car just to find out that because I had missed my appointment I now had to get a new referral from my doctor, which would mean I would have to wait another x amount of months for an appointment. On top of that my doctor never did send the referral I asked for and I had to force them to get me in sooner. I could get really upset about this, but you can’t live that way. It’s exhausting. And I’m already exhausted.

One night when I was contemplating how sad it is that my life consists mainly of survival instead of growth and prosperity, I remembered, “My grace is sufficient for you.”  And I repeated it over and over in my head until it became a mantra and I wanted it tattooed in giant letters on my body. I'll let you know how that goes.

The End

Leg Tourrette's, or Why I'm So Freaking Tired

As you may or may not know about me, I have serious problems. I mean sleeping problems (I guess I shouldn't go around saying I have serious problems without saying what they are), but no amount of sleep advice or diet advice has helped me figure out what is wrong with me. At first I thought my depression and tiredness were related as they seemed to start at the same time, around the age of 13, but when the depression was treated, the tiredness stayed the same. Doctors called it "chronic fatigue," also known as "we have no idea," and gave me many blood tests which all come back normal. I've been tested for just about everything. Except Lupus. I once asked my doctor if I could get tested for Lupus and she laughed like I was one of those hypochondriacs and said no, don't be silly... Well, look who's got Lupus now, doc! (Not me. I don't have Lupus.) I've tried sleeping pills, melatonin, acupuncture, diet changes, sleep routines and different amounts of exercise. I've taken a summer off for the sole purpose of trying to figure out my sleep. For a very long time I thought that unlike normal people I just needed way more than eight hours of sleep a night and I was constantly getting mad at myself for not going to bed at four o'clock in the afternoon.

My chronic fatigue has put a serious damper on my life. My worst fears have been:

1. I wouldn't get married until I was eighty-two (how can you get married if you never go places to meet boys?)
2. I couldn't have kids (refer to number one, plus, kids = even less sleep)
3. I would never get anywhere with my writing (how can you write novels when you are too tired even to write short stories? That's when I realized maybe I should become a poet who only writes Haikus)
4. I would never have close friends (hermits don't have friends)

On my own I found out about the Nanaimo Sleep Clinic last year (there is a sleep clinic in Victoria but they only deal with sleep apnea) and asked my doctor to refer me to it. She knows that I've had sleeping problems for years and she never thought to mention the one place on the Island that was created specifically to figure out what might be causing it? WTFM? (What the Fudge-Muffin?) After waiting 6 months I got an appointment and they gave me a sleep routine to try. For almost two months I tried that sleep routine. I had to inform my boss what I was doing so he didn't fire me. In theory it made perfect sense: stay up late, get up early, no sleeping in on the weekends and no naps in an attempt to consolidate my sleep. It didn't work. Good news! I found new levels of tired in myself that I didn't even know were humanly possible while still being able to function! At the same time that I decided I couldn't take it anymore, my boss told me I needed to stop. I guess he didn't like that I was falling asleep at my desk every day. Just thinking about how exhausted I was during that time should make me never complain about being tired again. But we all know that's never going to happen.

You see, people who aren't tired all the time don't really understand what it's like. When I tell someone I'm tired, they say, "I know, I'm tired too." Oh, are you? Why? You stayed up late on purpose??? Now imagine that your being tired isn't the consequence of poor decision making. You know that feeling of getting a good night's sleep and waking up feeling good and rested? Isn't that such a relief? I DON'T KNOW, IS IT? Seriously. I'm just saying everyone knows what it feels like to be tired, whether it's their fault or not. It's just that I've known that kind of tired every single day since I was 13. There. That's my pity party. Be sure to drink a lot of the punch - it's spiked. Actually it's whisky... spiked with punch...

Sleeping Beauty: what I would
look like if I got some sleep (obviously).

See? I told you that was never going to happen. In the middle of trying that sleep routine I had my long anticipated pajama party at the sleep clinic. They hooked me up to a bunch of electrodes all over my body and a breathing tube in my nose and then told me to go to sleep while they watched me through a camera. Right. Lucky for me I was so freaking tired from my sleep routine I fell asleep right away. Unlucky for me, I also found out exactly why that sleep routine was not working - in another two months, when I had my next appointment. Apparently I've got Twitchy Leg Syndrome. (I made up that name, the sleep specialist just called it leg twitches). And no it's not the same as Restless Leg Syndrome AKA "Jimmy legs," or as I called it as a kid, "leg sickness," which I also have. This is some wonderful other phenomenon that wakes me up 19 times per hour, or over 150 times per night. I got to watch a two minute clip of me sleeping (not even a little bit creepy, so that's good) and in two minutes I twitched three times, twice making me turn onto my other side. No wonder my dad is always telling me I kick the wall in my sleep. It's like I have leg Tourette's. What was even more unusual about the leg twitches (like that's not unusual enough) was that they were happening even during the deepest part of my sleep cycle when my body is supposed to be paralyzed. Apparently not when you have leg Tourrette's.

Do you know how amazing it feels to find out that there is a real, live, solid reason why you have been chronically tired for over ten years? Do you know how depressing it is to find out that the whole time it was just some weird leg twitches that I would never have known about unless I asked to go to this sleep clinic? The sleep guy said it could be related to back pain or iron store levels (apparently they only check those if they think you are anaemic). If he said anything about needing to eat more meat I was going to punch him. Lucky for him he was a vegetarian too and said he preferred getting his iron first-hand rather than through a cow. He gave me a prescription for a small dose of Parkinson's medication to take before bed and then assured me I was not in fact developing Parkinson's at the age of 24. When I asked about the side-effects he said, "Do you ever have schizophrenic episodes?" "No." "Do you have a gambling addiction?" "No." "Then you're good to go." So hopefully my Parkinson's medication cures my TLS/leg Tourette's, without giving me hallucinations or a sudden desire to go to the Casino, thereby changing my life forever. Seriously? Couldn't it have just been something normal that was disturbing my sleep? No. Because that would make for a boring blog post.

My List of Frees

I am very pleased that Canada Post is finally off their strike. I regret that the children at the Post factory had to be forced back to work by their parents, but I am thankful that the result means that my free Fruit Loops t-shirt from my cereal box codes will finally be in the mail. Like a cruel twist of fate, however, I did not get my t-shirt in time to actually eat Fruit Loops while wearing my special mail-order Fruit Loops t-shirt because I've just started a new wheat-free, sugar-free diet.

But I did find these awesome pictures of Kellogg's old-school cereal "Sugar Smacks" over the years. This is probably the creepest cereal known to man. Notice the frog in the picture says, "Gimme a smack!" which obviously means the cereal is laced with smack, and after a couple days of eating a bowl for breakfast, I'm sure the marketers thought putting a picture of Spock pointing a gun at the children consuming their sugar-coated cocaine was a great idea. And freakish clowns, of course, are always a safe option. But why am I starting a new wheat-free, sugar-free diet? You know what? That's private.