Across and Inside my Universe

This n' That 6/30/12

Upon looking through a family Scottish cookbook, my daughter was reading out loud about Haggis.  I asked her, what does it say about it?  She said, "Haggis is a mixture of . . .EWWWWW!" and she backed away, as we all cracked up laughing for the next 5 minutes.

Apparently Haggis is a mixture of ewww.  I'd agree with that!

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After more than a week of no progress on the bedroom cleanout/organize project, I've made a leap or two forward by getting the area in front of the closet cleaned out.  SIX bags of stuff to go to the thrift store (toys, clothes, fabric) and four bags of garbage.  How did all that stuff fit there?  There'll actually be another bag for the thrift store after we finish washing the rest of the clothes to donate.

Progress is great!  Makes me feel good.

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We're trying to plan our Olympic meal/party for the opening ceremonies coming up.  We usually do a meal of a variety of appetizers, but this time we want British stuff, for at least part of it.  Fish and chips are the first thing on my daughter's list, and that sounds great to me too.

When I mention "spotted dick" to her, she screws up her face, says "ewww", and swiftly goes elsewhere.  I think she thinks I'm saying something different than what I think I'm saying.  It's a spongy sort of cake fingerish sort of thing, with currants in it I think for the spots.  So it's a wierd variation of a Twinkie, basically.

I just say it to tease her, though! 

I need some ideas for London food!  Welsh Rarebit is cheese on toast/bread.  I think.  I always thought it was a roasted rabbit when I was little.

See, I have Scottish, Britsh, Welsh, and maybe some Irish heritage too.  My maiden name is from a Welsh ancestor; means stone mason.  Which, funnily enough, my ancestors were, all the way down to my grandfather.

Oh, my married name, tradition has it, came from Ireland with a Mc in front of it.  Still not the easiest name to have, but I guess it makes sense.  So there's me some Irish (and Dutch Royalty too; if you go to St. Thomas or St. Croix, there's a Rum/sugar plantation and castle that's ours.  I mean, our Dutch Royal ancestors.)

*****

My therapist is back!  It was hard to prioritize what to talk about, and in fact it wasn't until a day after therapy this week that I remembered some of the important stuff I'd been going to talk about, and forgot.  I did pretty well though with what I did remember.

I'd been getting rather piled on by a variety of stuff, including one SIL who says I have a heart of gold but she doesn't want to be friends with me.  That was painful, but we're hammering out how we're going to relate to each other in the future. 

Part of me wonders, however, if I have a heart of gold, what's so bad about me that it drowns out the heart of gold?  But that's personalising; her choice is about her and what she wants in her life, and doesn't want.  It's hard to not take that personally, though.  It's sort of freeing to not be stuck in hurt at why she seemed to not give a fig about me; I can move on, now.

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A pet peeve of mine about blogs with alot of pictures, especially food and craft blogs; don't take 6 pictures from a zillion angles of your dish, cookie, necklace, scarf, whatever and post them ALL.  Really, one (or at most, 2, if one is a closeup or something) will do.  I know you're in love with how it turned out, and how well it photographed, but get over it.  Please.

*****

I tried a macaroni and cheese in a mug recipe that's popular on Pinterest.

Don't do it.  It sucks.

However, an Eggnog Pound Cake recipe I tried from Pinterest last Christmas, is now my preferred way to consume egg nog.  8^D 

Man, now I want egg nog, and it'll be months and months before it's available!

*****

Quote from Utah Governor yesterday, in regards to all the people rubber-necking the wildfires up by Herriman (and elsewhere in the state, like, 360,000 acres) and who are getting in the way of fire people getting to the fires:  "You can't outlaw stupid!"

You can possibly try, but you'll never get rid of it.

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Updating the Blog When You Have OCD

I spent 4 hours updating the blog today, and several the other day starting to add tags/categories to posts.

The thing is, I look at the Category Cloud and I can see a couple I can get rid of, which is good, but then the urge to add more as I categorize further back is hard to resist.  It's kind of frustrating and a little embarassing.

Much of the time spent today on the sidebar widgets, was spent super-fine tuning the size or the details like the order the books are shown in, their size, etc.  I think I spent two hours alone on the boardgamegeek widget, although that one required more primitive-level tweaking in the code itself.

It's going to take me some time to add categories to older posts; hopefully I can do just a few at a time, and not feel compelled to do a year's worth in one sitting . . .

My OCD is acting up, partly because I've been taking my Vyvanse, that lets it come out a bit more when I'm more active, and I'm under a huge amount of stress.

 

Too Sensitive

Hell. Sometimes I think I just don't know when to shut up, especially when I feel hurt.

Just regretting some recent comments on another blog. Part of me is tempted to shut up for awhile because, well, you don't get really hurt that way.

The rest of me knows that withdrawing from something that's been positive in my life would be over-reacting to me feeling overly self-conscious and perhaps taking things too personally that aren't even directed at me.

So, suck it up, Sara. You'll stop feeling stupid in a few weeks. Mostly.

Edit: I just got an email that makes me feel better some. 8^D

Reassessing the Roles My Therapist Plays

I know I sort of recently said I'd get around to discussing the roles my therapist plays, at least that I think he does, but a week and a half ago I had a session during which a thing or two he did as well as didn't do, really bothered me, to the point that I woke up in the middle of the night that night and couldn't get back to sleep for hours due to thinking about it, trying to work through it, and trying to figure some things out.

It became clear to me when I woke up later after having fallen back asleep, that maybe I needed to reassess some of my attitudes towards therapy, some of the roles I think he plays or want him to play, and reassess my general orientation towards therapy. I kind of need a paradigm shift, about what I expect and want from therapy, and what I want it to do for me, and whether or not I've been expecting THERAPY to do for me what I should be doing for myself.

At the same time my thoughts get so distorted and tangled sometimes I KNOW I can't always sort them out myself; in fact fairly often I cannot and get stuck. But is helping me see the distortions in my thoughts, and helping me to work inside myself to come up with alternatives to those distortions, ALL my psychologist is there for?

Often, he also reveals observations about my behavior, sometimes connecting things from months or more ago to something I just brought up, and it's sometimes a "lightbulb" moment when he does this. Other times it feels like he is observing, without connecting with what I'm feeling or thinking, when he does this. And so I then feel like he is being, well, cold, almost, or so neutral that it feels like I'm not interacting with a person; like WE aren't interacting at all, but rather that he's just stating his observations without other therapeutic things going on, like empathy and such.

I suppose the nature of observing, and being observed, is that the observer, in order to adequately identify and point out what they are observing, has to hold themselves apart, in some ways, to keep anything emotional or biased from affecting the observation. I think it is that "apartness" that I sense when he's giving me observations that bothers me, a little bit.

He does, though, give empathy when he determines I need it; he gives understanding, he gives patience, and even kindness from time to time. He gives objectiveness (which sometimes promotes that sense of "apartness" in me) and he gives no judgements (most of the time; he's not perfect and when I think he's judged me, I say so and he'll most often explore it with me for a minute and, if he thinks that he did, indeed, judge me, he apologizes for it).

I should say that he strives for objectiveness and lack of judgement; these seem to me to be two of the hardest things to accomplish, especially after you've been working with someone for years and could have some caring about their welfare. He has said, on a couple of occasions, when questioned about it, that he DOES care about his patients; he has said that is an acceptable thing in his work, and a natural thing to happen. It's my opinion that the better therapists (I've only had one, though, so it's a guess) DO care about their patients, on a basic human level. I'd imagine that those who don't would come across as cold all the time.

Even knowing this, I still have times I struggle with feeling less "connected" in our therapeutic relationship. Is connectedness, a feeling of give and take, a feeling of working TOGETHER in therapy, necessary, positive, etc. for the therapeutic relationship? I would suggest that yes they are essential for a good working therapeutic relationship. This does not mean that the times I feel this "apartness" I've described indicate big problems in the therapeutic relationship; it just means that maybe I should note these things to him so he's aware that I feel these things when triggered by specific things during therapy. It does NOT mean that he'll necessarily change his behavior, but I believe it's important to communicate with your therapist if and when you feel like it is more difficult to connect with them, or any other things that trouble me about the relationship at any time.

This makes me wonder, am I after too idealized of a therapeutic relationship? I am thinking right now that I know I tend to idealize people who treat me positively, and so I wonder if this is another attitude about therapy that I need to examine and perhaps change. I do not know that I necessarily idealize the relationship for sure, but this blog post surely gives me THAT impression. I will think some more on it and even talk with my psychologist about it.

There have been occasions I've taken one of my blog posts into therapy, read it, and then discussed it with him, sometimes point by point, and sometimes at the end of the thing. I think this one would be good to bring to therapy this week.

I don't know why it still surprises me after all this years that writing or typing out my thoughts and feelings on a subject will sometimes lead me to new discoveries, unexpected realizations, and even a reassessment of my own behavior or thinking/attitudes on a subject.

A postscript on the Lamictal rash: Well, welts never showed up and it became even more sandpapery feeling, so I was right that it was not the "bad" one that leads to Stevens' Johnson syndrome; on the other hand, I've had it for a week now and taking Benadryl changes it only a little, though I admit most days I've taken it sporadically.

What I do not know is if I should bump up my dose to 250 mg tomorrow as scheduled; the rash appeared the morning after I bumped it to 200; I may be too fearful and cautious, but I will keep it at 200 until I hear back from my psychiatrist via email; I don't think it's urgent enough for a phone call, and it shouldn't hurt me to stay at 200 for a bit longer (I hope!). I guess I fear worse allergic reactions like anaphylactic shock if I bump it up higher, with the rash not responding much to Benadryl.