Exercise is Amazing

I’ve been pushing myself more than usual to exercise. This is mainly because the weight loss pill I was prescribed gives me a burst of energy lasting about 6-7 hours every morning. Unfortunately, a crash of tiredness then follows, but a caffeinated drink reverses that. The burst of energy feels nice, and the point is to use it to exercise. 

I’ve also usually described my anxiety as a certain feeling in my arms, legs, upper chest, and upper back. The feeling itself is not anxiety, but causes anxiety, I think. The feeling makes it super difficult to initiate movement. I have to really force myself to get out of a chair or out of the car, and so on. It makes me feel suspended, like my arms and legs are being held back. I think this has contributed to weight gain for me. This happened after I finished college. This muscle feeling happened, and the extreme difficulty in initiating movement caused gradual weight gain. Also when you have anxiety, everything is an emergency, and I personally kind of eat like it’s an emergency. If that makes me sound “fat phobic,” then please try to understand about anxiety and the fight, flight or freeze responses. 

Ever since I started taking phentermine, I have not had this constant emergency feeling surrounding food. I can eat just enough and be good for several hours, not even feeling hungry or anticipating what I should eat next.

Before the phentermine, I was only walking about 1,000-3,000 steps daily, even though my goal is 10,000. Last week, I hit my goal of 10,000 five out of the seven days. This week, I hit it all three days in a row now. 

Trust me, I am SORE AS HELL.  But the creepy Crawley muscle feeling that I've had since finishing college actually is cured by that soreness. It's hard to explain. The soreness is preferable. 

This morning, I went to the gym at 5:00 am and did 5500 steps on the treadmill. Then I went to the park at 7:00 am and did about 3,000 more as well as got on this machine. You push those with your arms, and it works your upper arms and upper abdomen. I completed my 10,000 steps goal by doing some side jobs (taking pictures in stores) and parking far away from the doors. I think this is a great way to heal the stuff I've been through the last 12 years. I definitely have “the high”  And the sore. 

 

10 Unfinished Projects

 I feel like the poster child for late diagnosed ADHD right now, because I feel like I’ve started ten things and haven’t finished any of them. 

The book I’m writing called The Child Advocate. I did write out a few scenes in the spiral notebook I talked about earlier. That thing is too heavy to work on every day. Every day would be ideal, though. 

All the reading and research on anti-ABA online, which now includes  This culmination

The two books I’m reading on the same subject.  The book by the author “Julie Roberts” who I can’t find info on because of her similar name to Julia Roberts is all full of scientific studies. I simply can’t remember much of what I learned in methods in research class at University of Houston.  I’d need a brief refresher, probably something on YouTube.  I texted my daughter asking her when she takes it at TXST.  She doesn’t know.  Probably in her junior year, as it’s a 300 level class. 

Working as a caregiver and trying to set at least some boundaries with musical schedule boss (gift card boss).  She does sort of a professional version of love bombing.  It’s not real love bombing, it’s work appropriate.  She says I’m amazing, I’m a rockstar, I’m this and that  and maybe I am 🤷🏻‍♀️.  I’m also fundamentally exhausted, and musical schedules affects my mental health.  

I am trying to do more side jobs on the merchandiser and field agent apps, and now my husband wants to try them.  We are planning to go do some together, but haven’t gotten a chance.  This weekend, the field agent app had a lot of freebies.  I got two free subway sandwiches plus $3 each, free chipotle (I got vegetarian tacos) plus I think $3 or $5, and another free stick of deodorant plus $5.  We will never run out of deodorant at this rate.

Writing my own recipe cards based on stuff I find in cookbooks that I like and want to try. 

I bought an old art history textbook from half price books and am trying to cut out pictures of art and make collages with decoupage.  I worked a little on a Byzantine inspired one for my mom for Mother’s Day.

Reading the handful of books I have on writing. 

Purpose nigh to walk 10,000 steps daily  

The fun I’m having with ChatGPT helping me come up with elements to the other book in my head- the one with the couple based on me and my first love, Matthew. I’m actually creating story lines for all seven kids based on the kids of some influencers I semi-follow. 

Thinking of Matt brought a memory to mind. When we first started dating, we worked together at a supermarket. He used to say he wanted to work his way up with that and eventually become a store manager. This was very much discouraged. He was basically yelled at that there was no working his way up in the supermarket business and that it was a dead end job to even be a store manager. He was pressured to go to college and get a degree instead.  We all were. Well, about a year ago, my inventory coworker, who used to be a grocery store manager told me that she was making $120-$130,000 a year. I was floored. She was making that in the past, not just now days. When I expressed my disbelief, her husband told me that store managers actually do make that much. What?  I literally said, “Why then, when you are a kid working in a store, they tell you that working your way up there is a dead end?  They both said, “I don’t know.” And “It’s not a dead end.” 

One more thing to add to the list of “things they were wrong about.”  RIP Matt

AI Family Portraits

It dawned on me today that there would be no way possible to get my three cats posing together in a nice grassy meadow for a family portrait. So I had ChatGPT do it. It came out perfect, except for the fact that Alex has less white on his paws. He wears ankle socks, not crews. 

Then I thought- you know what else would be impossible?  Getting my family together to pose for a family portrait. It’s not just because we all live in different cities and states, it’s also because many of us/them don’t even speak to each other. I tried to get ChatGPT to do one family portrait of me with my paternal first cousins, and one with me and my maternal first cousins. 

This one is what came up when I entered pictures of me and my cousins on my father’s side. That’s supposed to be me on the far left. My only female cousin on that side has aged significantly since looking like this, and she looks exactly like our mutual grandmother now.  The four men all look spot on. 

My mother’s side was a little more complicated, because there were 16 of us.  I’m supposed to be the one in the black shirt in the front row. It looks nothing like me. This was way more complicated to make, because I didn’t have pictures of everyone. For the ones I didn’t have pictures of, I gave ChatGPT pictures of their siblings that they resembled most. That’s why there are a couple in here that look like twins. In my opinion, only half of the people here look like the actual people, but this one was just hard to do. Maybe when I have the mental energy and headspace to do so, I’ll submit more changes to ChatGPT to get a more realistic family portrait. 

I didn’t like being an only child, and I gravitated to my 19 cousins as much as possible. Yes there are 20 total, but one was an adoptee that we didn’t find out about until about 2017.  Two have passed away, two have gone no contact with everyone (it’s not known if these two are alive or dead but I presume them alive), and there are three that won’t speak to me and are among my biggest haters now. But that’s ok. Haters are gonna hate!  

I’m not sure if the children of one’s first cousins are considered your second cousins or your first cousins once removed, but in total, I have 29 of those now. Most of those 29 are adults with their own families, and I do not have a count on how many grandchildren of my first cousins there are. (Great grandchildren of my parents siblings). On my father’s side, it’s 8.  On my mom’s side, who knows. It’s 24-25 that I know of. 

When I’m old, with grandkids and great grandkids, I hope we can take family portraits like this in real time, instead of having AI do it because we are all so distant in so many ways. In the 1980’s in Chicago, my holidays looked like this. 

If my grandparents saw these fake images with everyone hugging and smiling, they’d be proud if they thought it would be real. Realistically, they couldn’t possibly proud at the sheer number of generational curses that have been perpetrated. I’m confident that third generation, the one I don’t have a count for, will “break those curses” and do way better than we did. In fact, I believe the young people in general are already doing way better than we ever did, in most families. 

The kids are alright. 

I’m the Proudest Mom

Today my daughter Anna volunteered again with the animal sciences club at Texas State U. Then, she went to a No Kings protest and posed with a drag queen. 

I’m so proud of my kid. I never tried to live vicariously through her, and I never pushed things on her that would make her “have things I didn’t have”.  But here she is, living her best life at 18. 

Tidbits for the Last Full Week of March

 Gift card boss has me working with a couple whose son normally cares for them but is out of town until Sunday. The shift differential for this is $6.50 more per hour, probably because they are only paying for split shifts. They get two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. It’s 8-10 am and 5-7 pm from this past Wednesday until this Sunday. GCBoss said it’s a very important client because they were referred by their hospice company and she wants that hospice company to refer more people. So, I’m the only one working with this couple in order to prevent them from thinking she sends different people all the time and plays musical schedules. This couple are both dying from COPD. I go in and basically just get them a meal, clean their commode, take care of all the pets, visit with them and that’s it. They are lonely. They gave me several cookbooks. In fact, they insisted I take them. I took only two and they wanted me to take more. 

I actually like having seven hour breaks. Can’t do it all the time, though. I had a doctors appointment, did the taxes, and a lot of grocery shopping. My doctor put me on a weight loss pill!  It’s called phentermine, and it’s great. I have a nice burst of energy all day long, and I’m good eating only half of what I normally eat. Tomorrow, I’ll be able to go to the park on my 7 hour break and get 10,000 steps again. 

I also got two $50 gift cards to Walmart for taking last minute shifts over the weekend. After I’m done working with this couple and their son comes home, I’ll get an Amazon gift card. The son of this couple, who’s traveling, told me about the Lone Star Walking Trail. It’s 96 miles. I gotta check it out. There must be some great nature there. I want to go before the bluebonnets die. 

I’ve also been using ChatGPT to help me in writing a narrative about some fictional characters based on me and my first boyfriend. My first boyfriend died last year at age 46. We were 18 and a half when we started dating and about 21 when we broke up. I dumped him out of pressure from others, and when I regretted it a month later and tried to get him back, he refused. We kept in touch here and there over the years. But with ChatGPT, I started exploring kind of a story line of us if we had actually gone through with the things we dreamed of in the future. The main thing is that we wanted 7 kids. Realistically, would that have happened?  Probably not, but we were young daydreamers. We had other goals and aspirations too, regarding jobs, businesses, house design, etc. ChatGPT is an insanely horrible writer. It can’t write the story, but it gives me ideas. It shows pictures of the house we dreamed of. It gives me potential story lines and characteristics of the seven kids we never got to have. Which in the story is a boy, then a girl, then boy/girl twins, then adoption of a sibling group of 3. If this were ever to become a “book”, there would need to be a character arc, perhaps even a character arc for all seven kids. And of course, in the made up story, he doesn’t die at age 46. It’s fun to go down the possibilities. I do not believe the claims that ChatGPT causes psychosis. I’m not psychotic yet. I’m 100% in reality, and I’m bringing companionship and help to a couple in their final days. An escape to the what ifs is deserved. 

Tuesday Tidbits

Thanks for the advice you two, but I kind of despise getting out my laptop. I have no idea why!  I was able to upload photos by simply opening safari on my phone instead of chrome. Here’s my friend DP showing how her broom stood up on the spring equinox. I also heard that eggs stand upright on the two equinoxes. I didn’t know these things had any sort of validity. 

I’m getting a lot better at going to the park intentionally to get my steps in while speed walking  while there, I saw this interesting flower.  It’s too big to be a dandelion. 

While walking, I’m listening to an audiobook that was a free download (with membership) on Audible called Writing with Impact: Crafting Compelling Arguments by Barrett Williams. It’s read by an AI voice, but the voice is tolerable and doesn’t sound too robotic. 

Last but not least, we have a nest outside, and here’s a short clip of our baby Jordan really thinking he can get those birdies. He’s really a joy.  He gets along better with Mitchell. Alex is old and just ignores the two of them. If they bother him, he hisses as if to say “Get off my lawn!”
 

Why has 2026 sucked so badly?

 I traded in my old iPhone 13 for an iPhone 16. I dropped the 13 flat on the ground and it ended up with a very bright stripe down the left center of the screen. It hurt my eyes. This phone is great, but I can’t upload pictures to my blog on it, and I want to. My friend, who is a witch, posted pictures of herself standing on her doorstep with her broom standing straight up by itself on the spring equinox. I heard that was a thing, but I didn’t believe it. 

It’s also bluebonnet season here in Texas. The Texas wildflowers are so beautiful, and there are way more of them this year than last year. The bluebonnets give sort of an indigo mirage against the green grass. They are usually surrounded by yellow and orange wildflowers. The spring equinox was also my father in law’s 89th birthday. There were three or four times this past year that we thought this was it for him, but nope, he’s been blessed with another birthday. 

March 19 was our one year wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we took Anna to the sushi place where we had our first date. She’d never been there before. Anna was home for spring break. Now she’s back in her dorm. She drove her little prelude all the way to town and back and complained about gas prices. 

At work, a mother and daughter client have requested me to come more often. On a bad note, I am not working with the married couple anymore. He always made flirty comments towards me and apparently other female caregivers. One day, he attempted to sexually assault me. Gift card boss feels super bad about it, but I don’t hold anything against her. I don’t want to go into detail. I say sexual assault, but honestly I’m not sure if  I even have the “right” to say that’s what happened. I feel like if it was anyone else, they could call it that. He doesn’t have a diagnosis of dementia at all. It’s a long story, and that was a very bad day. Since then, I’ve had a little bit of dissociation, but I’m trying to ground every day. I wish I could post a picture of the bluebonnets. 🪻🪻🪻