zeptember

Good news and bad news.

The good news:

October 16 (starting weight): 154lbs (70kg)
October 23: 153lbs (69kg)
October 30: 152lbs (69kg)
A pound a week! All because I am severely limiting refined sugar intake. Most of the stuff I’m eating is sugar free. I’m barely even touching sugar substitutes, cuz it tends to mess with my emotions. I do eat natural sugars found in Organic Food Bar (in the form of dried fruits), and I eat organic cane juice as found in my gluten free breakfast cereal (Peanut Butter Panda Puffs! - which I don’t eat every day).

The bad news is that I’m back to anxiety dreams about work, wherein it’s 2am and I need to be up by 5:30am.
Only, in reality, I went to bed like a good girl at 10pm.
*sigh*

Time to finish getting ready for work.

Friday at work turned out to be all right. When I got home, I was so happy that I had an entire weekend, finally. We watched Sean of The Dead that night.

Saturday was jam-packed with fun!
I put some clothes on hold at Mervyns (forgot my department store card), I bought new Dickies pants at the army surplus store, some friends met us and we went to the local specialty Halloween store, and from there, we drove over 40 miles just to go have sushi! Well, two reasons for that: it’s my favourite sushi joint and I wanted to celebrate the new job and first paycheck, AND we had tickets to tour through the Winchester Mystery House by flashlight! There were seven of us friends, but we were stuck having to tour with a group numbering a total of 25. That meant we were stuck with teenagers. Blech. Not only that, the tour guide was herself either a teen or in her early twenties, and sounded like a valley girl, and dressed something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Xena Warrior Princess. As a matter of fact, lots of people felt the need to dress in Halloween costumes to tour the mansion by flashlight. I have no idea if it’s just because it’s so close to Halloween, or if people do this every time there’s a scheduled flashlight tour. In either case, I found them to be retarded.
But I still enjoyed touring the house with my friends! I’m happy to know that I’m still creeped out by the same spaces in that house, no matter day or night when I tour the place (I’ve toured it three times now). This makes me want to research the house and its hauntings further.

We got home around midnight, but then realised we had to set our clocks back an hour to end Daylight Savings Time.

I was so tired, but then, for some reason, I got a burst of energy. Weird. So I started tidying up and planning for what the house altar will look like. That finished me off for the night, and I slept soundly.
While I had weird dreams, I’ll have you know I did NOT dream of work!!!
Woohoo!!

Today I spent most of the day doing laundry and cleaning house and putting up more of our spo0ky décor. I’d call it Halloween déor, but we keep it up year ’round. :p

While I went about my day, I started hearing a scrub jay outside, and I remembered that I’d been wanting to update you on what sort of critters we have near the new place. We moved to our new abode in early July, and since that time, I’ve been hearing scrub jays as well as the familiar mourning dove that I used to hear back at the old apartment.
We also have black squirrels in the neighborhood, but not near our house, cuz our house has a plethora of cats roaming in and around it. Of the six units in this old Victorian, at least four are occupied by cats, and of those four units, three of them have indoor-outdoor cats. Ours is the only unit to have indoor-only cats.

My legs are SO sore from all the walking and standing I’ve done over the last two days. Clearly I do not get enough exercise through the week, what with all the commuting and sitting at a desk at work all day. I’m going to have to hook my bike up on the trainer in the Kitchen to get some winter exercise.

I don’t mean to ruin my own fun, but I realised today that my need to clean and organise is a precursor to george. He’ll be here around November 8th. So I’m 11 days out. Gotta start takin’ better care of my diet and health from now til then. Although I was good to myself last week and popped lots of Vitamin C and Zinc tabs as soon as I started getting a sore throat after all that overtime work and exhaustion.

Oh and as of yesterday, we’re officially in Mercury Retrograde. I need to watch my tongue and my attitude, my spending habits, and my tendency to overshare during Mercury retrograde. Pay attention, zept!!!

Getting back to the subject of Halloween for a moment… this year I WANT to stay close to home. I think it’s the first time ever that I don’t feel the need to be at some big party somewhere. We have the option to hang out at a nearby friend’s house and pass candy out to the kids, so I may do that. Afterwards, I’m content to be at home and focus on the coming year and what I expect of myself.

Although I no longer believe in deities, I do still celebrate Halloween Pagan-style, which is to say that Halloween is my New Year’s Eve.
So tonight was rather relaxing for me to finally set up our house altar. It needs some finishing touches by my boyfriend, as it’s a shared altar.

And with that, it’s time to curl up with a good book.

I wonder how long it will be before I snap on this job, too.

I wonder if I’ll just stop working and trying all together.

The past 11 days have been very stressful on me. I’ve:

* Started a new job - this was stressful from a social viewpoint because I’m so afraid of people.

* Cashed the loan my dad gave me because I hit financial crisis again. I’ve already discussed why taking money from my father creates panic for me.

* Started omitting sugar again - this caused me to become agitated, but I felt I had no choice - I had to do this with starting the new job, in another effort to see if I can reduce my monthly pain before my next period - my first period on this new job. I cannot afford to be out of work for up to three days in a row on this new job. They are not understanding like my last job was.

* Had to adjust to a much earlier bedtime and rising time - I’ve already gone on at length about this one. And no, I’ve still not adjusted to the hours.

* Had to prove my technical abilities to untrusting co-workers because I’m female. In getting some help with a customer issue, two of my male co-workers asked me to look at my screen resolution to replicate the problem. One guy asked, “Do you know how to do that? Go to your desktop…”
I wanted to kill him. I silently went through the procedure though, showing him I knew what I was doing.
My bf said to not chalk it up to sexism, that perhaps my teammate was just trying to guage my abilities. On THAT?!? The most basic of things? Why would I be hired for tech support if I didn’t know how to do that?
So the next day, the same co-worker was being moved to a new cube to sit with the team he’s actually on. He declared that there was too much estrogen in our cube (shared by four people total, three of whom are women).
Point. Proven.

* Been terrified of being fired because I can’t seem to remember basic tech support techniques when they’re called for. Mostly because my brain forgets so much, which I honestly believe is brain damage from my car accident in 1994 where my head bowed out the windshield. I am smart. I am technical. But I do have brain injury which impedes things. Give me a minute, I’ll remember. I can look it up - I know this.
Will the workplace be patient with me, not knowing about this condition, which hasn’t even been proven cuz I still have yet to see a neurologist?

* Had nightmares nearly every night since starting the new job, with the last three nights’ worth being dreams of me working tech support all night long. I wake up trying to figure out how to help the latest customer on the phone…in my head.

I want to know when I can relax. I want to know when I will feel confident on this job and not feel afraid of being fired for incompetence because I feel I’m not ramping up quick enough.

I want to know if I’ll make it through okay.

You know how sometimes you just want a fast meal? And you go and buy something frozen or you go to a drive-through “restaurant”?

Last night, I just wanted something fast. I had bought two small frozen quiches earlier yesterday to have at work for a late breakfast, but never had the chance to eat them (and I’d brought other food for lunch).

So when I got home, I was dead tired, and I popped the quiches in the microwave.

I peeled off the yeast-ladden crust and dug out the egg/cheese portion, ate, and went to bed.

Well, apparently peeling off the pie crust is not good enough.
I still somehow ingested pie crust, and within a few hours, was awoken by intestinal pain that made me whimper, and an immediacy to get to the toilet.
I’m glad it was only one round of painful intestinal madness which also drove me to nausea.

I’d love to update you on other stuff, including the job, but I have no time. Gotta go to work, now.

One week weigh-in: 153lbs

I lost 1lb.

I’ve not been abstaining from sugar or booze very well. But, at least trying!