Sunday Selections

 Elephant’s Child is where I heard of this, where each Sunday you post photos you haven’t posted (or in my case, I’m pretty sure I have not).   These are my three favorite pictures of me with my childhood dog Queenie. I would guess the years as being 1983, 1987, and 1990. She lived 1983-1996. 

My mom bought this new reclining chair about two years ago. One night I came home from a date with Kevin at about 2:00 am, and Alex was just like this. My mother has always been huge on pets not being allowed in furniture. She made some exceptions for Alex, but this was a brand new chair. The only time I remember Queenie on furniture was when OJ Simpson was being chased in the white Branco. She was allowed on my parents’ bed to watch that. In fact. All four of us were on the bed watching that. 

Below is the first time in several years that I got out my sewing machine once I started feeling ok from panic attacks and loosing interest in things I loved doing. Alex was extremely worried about it. This was his face each time I sewed something. 

These are the two cats of one of my childhood friends. I think they are so photogenic. She posted this on their birthday (they’re from the same litter), BUT this was the first time she posted their baby pic. Look at those little floof balls!  

Side Hustle Woes

I have a couple of favorite side hustles (side jobs), and one of them is taking pictures of landscaping at LDS or Mormon churches on about a month rotation. This was especially lucrative when I used to visit Arizona, because being that it borders Utah, there was practitically one on each corner. I had several days that I made $70-$75 per hour there doing these. Here are two pictures of interesting Sonoran desert plants I took on the properties of Mormon churches. 

And here is the one closest to my mother’s house- this particular bush just reminds me of a butt plug. Nonetheless, it’s a very nice, pretty and peaceful job to be doing. You’re allowed to do it Monday through Saturday. Sometimes you might run into missionaries, but they know who we are and what we’re doing. 

Once, a man was working on a car in a garage across from the Mormon church I was taking landscaping pics at. He walked across the street to approach me, and as I saw him approaching me I started to walk elsewhere but he skirted behind a tree in order to corner me. Basically, he assumed I was LDS and was trying to make me into a “real Christian”. I told him that I was not a member of this church and I was just working for a third party who the church paid for landscaping pictures. He asked me something to the effect of, well if you’re a real Christian why would you do business with them?  I simply asked in response, “Why would you live across the street?” He told me it was his parent’s house. I should have said something about him living with his parents but the truth was, I also was living with mine at the time, so. I just said look dude I tried to avoid you when I saw you approaching me and that it wasn’t really smart to approach women by themselves. He mumbled something about me being “lost” and went back to his mom’s garage. 

That was a couple years ago. A couple days ago, I took landscaping pics at another LDS church in a very small rural town here in Texas. Next door was a house that appeared to be someone’s house they lived in but also a home day care center. I could tell by the playground equipment and the type of fence they had- I know the state of Texas requires home daycares to have at least that type of fence. A woman came out and started yelling at me and I couldn’t understand her except for the word “fuck” and the word “devil”. Must be hard for her to run a daycare next to the devil’s house I’m sure! (Sarcasm). Luckily I was done and just got in my car and left. 

A good idea is just not to harass people for what religion they are or what you assume them to be. My mother is Greek Orthodox, and while she doesn’t cover her head, a lot of Greek Orthodox (Christian) women do and often are the targets of Islamophobia. I spent nine years of my most formative years living in the third most Mormon populous state in the country. I have Mormon friends and ex Mormon friends and I love them all. I think I pretty much have friends of all backgrounds now that I live in Houston. This is a very diverse city, even though everyone on the internet wants to hate it because it’s Texas. Let’s just all get along!! 

 

Pics Lately

Alex got shots. He looks so dramatic in his medical record picture!  

I love my kid, but this is the truth!  They do be like this! I was like this too, can’t blame my kid that much!

What kind of perversion is this?  Who invented this? Is that the happiest cat they could find? Who is buying this?  

Denim seams hot pad or potholder. Hmmm. 

 

Action Figure

 I tried to make a ChatGPT action figure of myself- a lot of people are doing this, but they have items having to do with their interests that are on the side of the pictures. I asked it to give me black jeans and a navy blue polo shirt, because that’s what I have to wear to work. Then I added a calculator around my waist, because that’s what we do inventory with. It has no scanner, but that’s ok. And why did I automatically get a smile once I got my waist calculator?  Also wish I could have gotten a sewing machine and the book I’m writing, which is called The Child Advocate. 

And speaking of black jeans for work. I get to shop today for smaller ones. My diet works! 

Kids are a Blessing

Do you believe that children are more of a blessing or a burden?  There are new articles everywhere now with new increased costs of raising them until 18 (which I’m not linking-they’re Googleable). They make it seems like they’re trying to talk people out of it. But if you’ve ever taken economics, you know about Utils

Now I had undiagnosed ADHD until I was 43, so maybe Utils has nothing to do with childrearing. Money or not, I do have regret that I can’t, or probably “shouldn’t” have more kids. I’m 46, daycare costs have skyrocketed since my daughter was a a baby, and my husband is almost 60. Imagine being a college kid and your dad is 80. Nonetheless, this is what AI said my kid would look like with Kevin:

It looks more like me than Kevin, and actually looks more like if I’d had a kid with my ex boyfriend in Arizona. His kids were also a blessing. His daughter is 15 now and almost an Eagle Scout!

His son is 13 and also down the path to eventually become one.  I’ve never met this dog, as she was adopted after I dumped him for Kevin. 

I think not having more kids is my only regret in my whole life. But everything happens for a reason. Ecclesiastes says this about it. 

Fur babies can be a blessing but don’t t bring you the same joy that human kids bring. Here are my fur babies enjoying fresh catnip from the seed ball matrix:

And here are some of my favorite old pictures of my one and only biological daughter who turns 18 in 8 weeks. 

This was the first time I brought her on a Houston city bus. She started pole dancing on that pole. I told her that those are for when all seats are taken and people have to stand and to “please don’t dance like that.”  Of course, not knowing what pole dancing was, she said “Why mommy?”  I had to think fast. “Because it’s just not nice dancing.”  Can you see the lady in the back with the green coat?  She was cracking up. 

And at one day old, we said she looked like the old “glow worms” from the 1980’s. 

 

Rainbow Dress + Doctor

 

I ordered this dress from SHEIN for only $12!  It’s good for  lounging around the house, or a gay pride parade. I look just like my deceased cousin Kathy here, when she was my age. 

Today I also had my first Pap smear in 10 and a half years. 

It was a male gynecologist. I know a lot of people don’t want to see male OBGYN’s, but he seemed to be trying really hard because he knows no one wants to see male OBGYN’s. That helped my anxiety a lot. (The fact that he seemed to be trying really hard, that is).  I am also not using the most effective contraception in the world due to mine and my husband’s ages, and he didn’t lecture me about that at all. I feel like a woman would have. I’m not really worried about having cervical cancer tho-  I’m just trying to get all the routine stuff out of the way. My biggest fear is dying from the cancers they never screen for. Even though I have not been for a decade, I went yearly before 2014, and always had normal results. 

I asked ChatGPT to make my three cats human

And this is what happened:

Then my friend asked me to make her dog human and this is what happened:

 

 

Happy Liver

 

Before I start writing this story, I want to make clear that I absolutely don’t want to hear anyone’s horror stories about anyone they may know that is living with the same condition or possibly passed away from it. I would be truly sorry for your loss, but for the sake of my extreme panic attacks, I would rather just know about my own personal experience with it. 

Trigger warning for liver disease: 

Back in 2022, I went to the ER because that was the first time in my life that I experienced palpitations as a result of the panic attacks I had since 2014. Nothing was wrong with my heart, but they did some imaging and told me that I had a “fatty liver”. I had absolutely no idea what that meant. At first it felt like they were making fun of me and calling me “fatty”, but told me that I needed to see a gastroenterologist. They asked me if I drink alcohol, and since I do not, my official diagnosis was “Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease” or NAFLD.  The level of anxiety I suffered from at the time absolutely prevented me from seeking out a gastroenterologist. Finally in November of 2022, I did go to an inner city clinic and told them about it. They drew blood and tested me for all kind of stuff. All the hepatitises, lupus, aids, diabetes, I mean you name it I was tested. They ordered imaging and a consult the following day with a doctor. I remember freaking out so bad and not wanting to go, but my ex boyfriend convinced me to- although he convinced me from a place of seeming to believe I was terminally ill. 

The doctor at the inner city clinic in November of 2022 concluded that it was caused by high cholesterol and prescribed me atorvastatin. I’ve been taking it daily ever since. 

Fast forward 2.5 years later, about two months ago, I googled what were the best foods to eat for NAFLD.  I wrote them all down and went to the store and stocked up on all of them. A lot of the advice I was getting that I was actually able to listen to was “change your diet”, but no one ever seems to tell you how. On another hand, our society is jam packed with people who say that nothing ever works for trying to lose weight. A lot of people like that are in my family. It’s scientifically proven that a calorie deficit causes weight loss- but there are still just people literally everywhere who say calorie deficit doesn’t work for them. And I hate to say it but a lot of people in my family are in a sort of “fat pride” mentality. I’m all for believing you are beautiful no matter what, (and I do know many people who look better fat) however, sometimes that comes with extreme vitriol and hatred towards women who are slender. I was very slim as a kid, and got so much hate and verbal abuse for it. I was constantly told over and over to eat fattening things and so I did. Thinking back, that all really must have caused me to develop NAFLD in the first place. 

This whole experience has just been one aspect of unlearning things that were taught to me that were false and relearning. Before I finally had the courage to google best foods for NAFLD back in February, I was doing calorie counting and deficit which helped a little. But once I started eating mostly things on the NAFLD green light list, none of the things on the red light list, and some on the yellow light list, the weight has been Falling Off. I’m losing weight probably 2-3 times faster than I did when I was just doing “calorie deficit no matter what the food was”. 

My experience on the teledoc app was a nightmare. I had hoped to see a therapist to help me go to specialists to see if I had cancer or anything else that might kill me. It actually worked in the opposite way. That therapist left me so depressed that I didn’t care if I died.  So I called the gastroenterologist back and said yeah maybe I do want an appointment with him. We’ll call him Dr. HH, since he goes by Dr. first name and his last name has about six syllables and 20 something letters. I figured I’d just go tell him the entire NAFLD story. 

Dr. HH was SUPER NICE. He seemed kind of like a gym bro, and gym bros usually hate fat chics so I was nervous but he was a very nice gym bro. He told me I was doing everything right. But he wanted blood work and a certain type of imaging that wasn’t the same as what I had in 2022. This was like an ultrasound, but with a vibrator (held up against my upper right abdomen where livers are). . Idk it was weird. I went for the bloodwork afterwards. His office staff scheduled me for a follow up in mid June and said if there was something serious then Dr. HH would call, but if I was normal then I would just talk to him at my follow up in June. The vibrator ultrasound was Thursday the 10th. He has not called yet. I’m hoping he won’t of course. And yes he also consulted me about a colonoscopy. But I’m putting it off till June. 

If you’re wondering what the best foods for NAFLD are, then here’s my list.  Literally no one ever told me this condition existed. As I mentioned, I was raised harshly to eat a lot of bad things because they all hated that I was thin at the time. They tell you smoking causes cancer and they tell you having sex causes std’s, but they don’t educate you about much else. 

For oils, the best oil is avocado oil and olive oil comes in a close second. 

Nuts: almonds and walnuts

Fruits: apples, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, passion fruit and dragon fruit. Bananas are on the yellow light list- not “the Best” but I can have them. 

Any vegetable of course. No diet is ever going to be against vegetables.  Spinach is a plus  

Avocados all the way. 

Fatty fish: salmon, trout, tuna, and mackerel. Yellow light fish is said, flounder, and shrimp. 

No sugar, no grains!!!

Dairy: low fat dairy. I’ve been getting skim milk and almond milk for smoothies, “triple zero” Greek yogurt, fresh little mozzarella balls and string cheese sticks with skim milk in them. Feta cheese is on the yellow light list  

No peanuts and  or peanut butter  I use almond butter in some of the smoothies  

If I get a sweet tooth, I get the Atkins treats which have little to no sugar.  

Olives are a huge plus.  I make olives medley ziplocks to take to work.

Garlic is a huge green light, and the best drink is green tea 🍵  It’s just that it has caffeine, which tends to give me palpitations, but I do need to wake up somehow sometimes.  

That’s all I can think of right now.  

In 2022, I weighed about 215 at those appointments.  In January of 2024, I was 227 just like the old tv show.  “Calories deficit no matter what the food was” put me back down to 210, but I plateaued at 210  the morning of my appointment with Dr. HH, I weighed in at 197.4 (same scale since 1/2024). So switching to nothing but the good foods for my condition made me lose 12 and a half pounds. My goal is 165. 

My breakfast is usually my smoothies.  They cut the craving for ice cream. I do bananas, skim milk, triple zero Greek yogurt, and any medley of the fruits mentioned above and sometimes almond butter.  When I work, I bring ziplocks with almonds, walnuts, mozzarella balls, and olives of different kinds.  For dinner, I’ll oil a pan with avocado oil, chop up any veggies I have, and fry a fish with it, season it with Cajun spice, and right before I turn the heat off I’ll either mix in a whole avocado for some creaminess or I’ll have the single serve plain guacamoles since avocados are so hard to keep.  No more pasta or bread.  I no longer have sandwiches because of the bread.  I did have a cheat day when I traveled with my job. We stopped at Burger King and I had the impossible whopper- which is vegetarian but I ate the bun as well.  If I want to make salsa or guacamole, I look for baked Tostitos, no fried.  

That’s about it.  I hope I helped educate someone about this condition.  I told Dr. HH’s nurse that I was scared he was going to tell me I had a month to live. She glanced at my chart and said, “Well probably not, since he wants to see you in two months.”  I could see myself telling someone the same thing. 

What’s in a Name?

 I wanted to log here some of the problems I’m having changing my last name since I got married on March 19. 

When I was born, my parents didn’t give me a middle name. They claim they “forgot”. 

When I married my first husband 20 years ago, I took his last name and simply made my maiden name my middle name. No hyphen. It just became a middle name. There were no problems at the time except for the fact that the woman at the DMV thought I was age 16 instead of 26.  She looked at my birth year and just did the math wrong. She asked me with anger in her voice, “Did your parents LET you get married?”  I said, “Yes?” With an obvious confused look on my face. When it became clear that she mistook me for ten years younger than I was, I corrected her and said, “It’s ok, the change of centuries kind of makes it hard to do math” or something to that effect.  She stayed mad and told me, “Get against the blue screen so I can take your picture!”  In that ID card, my face was like this: 😒 

After that, it was simply a matter of calling around to report it. I had no problems whatsoever. 

This time, I’m running into problems. I’ve had two female phone operators simply say they couldn’t help me and couldn’t change my name. In both instances, I freaked out for a few hours, started to come up with a plan in case I was ever pulled over by a cop and had to explain why I have two names. Then I called each entity back and spoke to someone else, and neither person the second times around gave me hassle. 

One of my friends told me that there’s actually a bill being introduced by the Trump administration that would prevent you from voting if your legal name differs from your birth certificate. She said those women were trying to do me a favor. I looked this bullshit up.  It’s one of those things that has a snowball’s chance of passing, and opponents of it are turning into extremists themselves. Especially when you won’t ALLOW a person to change their name upon getting married. Do me a favor?  Get over yourselves. 

At least now I know why it just seems impossible and like I’m running into roadblock after roadblock. Their attempts to save my right to vote would be in vain anyway, since this is my second marriage and my legal name won’t match my birth certificate anyway. Or, my choice to make my maiden name my middle name would have saved my right to vote. So maybe it was my parents who “did me a favor” by forgetting my middle name. (How on earth can you forget to give a kid a middle name though?). 

In case you’re wondering, my middle name would have been Marina. It’s the Greek Orthodox saint whose patron day is the day I was born, July 17th. The icons of her show her holding satan by an ankle and beating him in the head with a hammer. It definitely would have been appropriate for me. 

Two Months to Go!

 Exactly two months from today my daughter turns 18. Here’s a picture I took of her on this day in 2008 when it was only two months till she turned 1.  I used to love putting her in those tie dye rompers. 

Thank you for all of the support regarding that god awful therapist. I remember there used to be this subreddit called r/roastme, where people would give their personal situations and/or post pictures of themselves and ask to be roasted. By that, they meant they wanted people to basically verbally abuse and insult them. That’s actually what seeing this therapist felt like. She claimed to be mad that I pointed out the lack of bio markers for psychological conditions, but she also didn’t like that I regret college and that I am married to an older man who was my boss. 

It’s proving harder than it was 20 years ago to change my last name. I’ve encountered two entities that were like “nope can’t help you”. But all I had to do in the end was wait a few hours, call back and get someone else, and get the name change done successfully. 

My health insurance premium is going up by $100 a month, and my car insurance premium is going down by $90 a month. 

I also saw a gastroenterologist, but more on that later. It’s a really long story. I didn’t just go see him for a colonoscopy consult. I was told in 2022 that I have a slight condition, but more on that later. In past blog posts, I’ve said that I lost no more than 25 pounds since January of 2024. Well I weighed myself the morning of my first appointment with him, and I was another 7 pounds down. So now I can safely say I’ve lost at least 30. Next blog post will be all about this. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about the thing I was diagnosed with in 2022, because I don’t want to hear horror stories from people who had a friend who knew a person who’s spouse’s sister’s son had it or whatever. Stay tuned. 

Extremely Bad Day

 Depression has completely overtaken me. I heard back from the teledoc app and found out why the therapist I saw Tuesday “requested cancellation” and thought I was a bad fit. In the beginning of the session she asked me if I’d been to a psychiatrist or therapist before and what my diagnosis was. I answered honestly. I suffered panic attacks for 10 years, and saw some 8-10 mental health professionals during that decade. They mostly diagnosed me with different things, but the most consistent diagnosis was anxiety or panic attacks. She then asked why I was diagnosed with many different things. I simple said, because this isn’t an empirical science. There is no blood test or imaging that can give a definitive diagnosis. All there is is the provider’s interpretation of what I’m telling them. 

Teledoc got back to me to let me know that she said I made an inappropriate comment that psychiatry wasn’t a “real” science. And I am 100% sure I didn’t say “real.”  I said “empirical.”  What really burns me is the fact that she didn’t even stop me when I said it to sort of explain the DSM or anything. (The DSM is still not the same as a blood test or imaging), but she could have back tracked and sought further explanation. Instead she chose to give me a dirty look through the entire session. She allowed me to open up about regretting my college degree and actually argued with me about it. She allowed me to say I’d just gotten married to someone I met at work, which women like herself generally believe is unacceptable. 

I feel extremely defeated and can not even function today. I forgot why I even sought out therapy. I don’t even want to get out of my bed. My cat is out of retirement from his therapy cat days and laying on my head. (He’s not an official therapy cat, I just call him that.). 

The only positive thing is that my daughter had her prom. Here are some pictures. I’m glad she can’t see me like this. 

At the end of the day, what I said was true. There are no physical tests to test for psychiatric conditions, and that’s a fact whether it offends someone or not. If they feel that strongly about it, they can get to work developing a physical test. I remember getting extra credit in college for participating in psychological studies where all I had to do was answer questions. No one could control what I or anyone else answered. It’s the truth whether anyone likes it or not or not. 

Therapy Update

 I was willing to give the therapist with the judge mental eyebrows one more shot. You know what it was more of a dirty look. Not only that but she was arguing with me the whole time. When I told her that my panic attacks started when I graduated college, she argued with me that getting a degree was “always worth it.”  I simply responded, “Not for me.”  When I said that people in my family had a problem with me getting married and only wanted me to have a career, she pushed back and said, “But it’s your choice.”  And when she found out that Kevin and I met at work and that he’s 12 years older than me, the look on her face showed an insane amount of disapproval, but I think she could tell that I wasn’t back ing down from my “choice”. 

Well two nights ago, I got a message on the teledoc app saying that she was requesting cancellation and didn’t even give me a reason why. I was flabbergasted. It was obvious that my suspicions were correct and she just had a problem with me as a person. It explains the evil eye she gave me the whole entire time. Forget addressing my health anxiety anymore. I spent all yesterday just a crying mess. We live in a society where everyone worships therapy. It’s the only solution to anything. I was completely nonfunctional yesterday and yes I did call the main number asking why this happened. What was her reason for doing this to me. It’s absolutely pointless though. I don’t know how I’m going to function this upcoming week. It’s been extremely hard and I do not even know if I want to know why she had such a low opinion of me. Maybe she’s against my age gap relationship and the fact that we met at work, maybe she’s against the fact that I regret my college degree. I don’t know I just know that things were mostly fine and now they’re not fine at all and I’m not fine in the slightest 

Helpfulness of Therapy

 I’m seeing that therapist for the second time on Tuesday evening. I know it was my choice to go, but now I seem to be dreading it. I just don’t find it helpful after all. At the end of the session, she tried to teach me box breathing. I know all about breathing techniques, and in fact, there are several things you can do in the moment for panic attacks that are well known. A long time ago, I found an article 13 Things to do for a Panic Attack. 

In fact, if you google that, several more articles come up regurgitating the same tips and adding a couple additional tips here and there. When it comes to panic attacks, I feel like any therapist I see is just going to paraphrase those articles, give me the same tips, and nothing else. 

Also, I was not able to do my routine blood work yesterday because the order from teledoc still has my old last name on it. I changed my name at the dmv Monday. So I spent yesterday correcting that hassle. Now I have to go back to fedex office and print the order again. 

Regarding the 13 things to do for panic attacks- it’s not exactly that some of them “work” and some “don’t work”. It’s that they all work and don’t work at different times, depending on a million different things. I remember writing down for one therapist what “percentage of the time” each one worked, but the percentages fluctuate. That therapist just sat there and argued with me that they should work all the time, because “they are backed by science.”  I didn’t have the confidence at the time to tell her that in those scientific studies, at least some of the participants did state that it didn’t work. The findings are an overall thing. I shouldn’t have had to argue that to someone with a master’s degree. 

We’re having heavy storms today with flash flooding, so I can’t go to fedex until later today or tomorrow. Then hopefully I can do my fasting blood Monday and THEN I also have to go report my name change to the social security office. 

Everything seems like such a pain in the ass all of a sudden. 

Seed ball Garden Update 🪴 🌿

My seed ball mixtures of 3 kinds of squash, spinach, cilantro and catnip now look like this. 

My father in law fell about a month ago and since then hasn’t been himself. Because of this, we didn’t want to ask him if we could plant them in the ground. We live on his property in the guest house. So we bought this planter. I’m not sure how it will work but at least now we have it. It’s reusable. 

 

Quilt Rows

I went through two drawers full of blue and gray denim quilt blocks and pieced them together in rows of 7 blocks. I thought I could make a denim chenille quilt for my Etsy shop that consisted of 7 rows of 7 blocks (all of the previous ones were 6 rows of 6 blocks). I put the rows together, and I realized that I had two different shades of gray. The inconsistency gave me a bad case of the irritation. Here’s the before:

So I took some of them apart and took some of my remaining blocks apart just enough to fix it so it’s all the dark shade of gray. The end result is now only 6 rows of 7 blocks, but still a good size and the colors look more uniform. 

I thought back to my real estate class. It taught that if all houses in a sub division look the same, then the value increases. You may support someone’s right to choose to paint their own house purple, but the reality is that it will bring the value of the whole block or sub division down. That’s why those pesky HOA’s exist. I guess they’re a necessary evil, even though I really wish people could do as they wished with their own houses. Same went with this quilt. I have a better chance of selling it if the rows looked better.