My Body My Food

I didn't mean to leave anyone hanging at the end of the last blog post.  I presume everyone who reads is Facebook friends with me.

To make a long story short, I was able to see a psychiatrist and they upped one of my meds and that mostly fixed everything.  Just as I had gotten the meds fixed I had a really horrific confrontation with a woman at work which set me back a good bit.  In June I got sent to another building to sort out some problems there and have since been happily in limbo, technically working with a team I never actually have to see.  I found that as long as I don't have to witness the team drama it doesn't bother me.  On top of that I LOVE the project I'm doing.  A couple weeks ago I got notice that I might have to move back over with the team, but it's kind of a one person says yes and another person says no kind of thing.  I figure I'll sit away from the team until someone tells me I have to go back, and not worry about it because it's out of my control.  That's easier said than done though, because now I'm having flashbacks every day about the stupid aforementioned confrontation.  Oh, I also got a new counselor, and I was really freaked out at first because she had a Christian symbol tattoo, but I ended up just telling her my worries about it and we talked about it and it turns out I really like her.  That wasn't as short as I'd planned.  In any case, I decided to come back to my blog to talk about my body and food issues.  Today's food and physical body.

I weigh 130 pounds more than I should, which means to be at a "healthy" BMI I should lose half my bodyweight.  I've put healthy in quotes there because I think eating right and exercising regularly makes for a healthy person at a wide range of weights.  I'm also a compulsive eater and I have been for as long as I can remember.  I don't eat whole pizzas at a time or anything, but I can easily put in four pieces, and then another two later, and another two in the morning, and another two later until that pizza is gone, because I can't stop thinking about it until it is.  Drive throughs are my downfall.  I have to drive past dozens of them every day.  I adore breakfast sandwiches.  I like fatty food, savory food, and sweet food.  It's definitely not one or the other for me.  I'll eat something junky to celebrate any small achievement and to console any minor bad mood, any excuse to get something yummy.  I used to avoid the vending machines at work by not carrying cash, but now they take my card, so it's hard to get through the day without two diet rockstars and a rice krispy treat.  It's definitely a compulsion.  Almost all my binges are not gigantic but they are calorie dense, like a milkshake on the way home from work after a tough day.  In my adult life I have not been able to stave off eating compulsively for more than about three months at a time.  I hide it from Evy so she won't beg for the junk I'm eating.  I'm not sure why I'm like this or what to do about it except to keep trying again/harder to stop doing it.  I've tried everything short of hiring some meanie to follow along behind me and knock the junk food out of my hands directly.  I'd hire a personal chef if I had the dough.

I remember when I was very small my mom would give me a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and a piece of bologna, some canned veg-all, and a canned pear for lunch, and she cooked supper.  I think I may have been hungry a lot, but mom was strict about food because she didn't want me to ever get fat like she was.  My school age breakfast was the same and lunch was a PB&J sandwich, a piece of fruit, and a snack like a granola bar or fruit leather.  That lasted until ma got sick when I was in 6th grade.  After that Dad and I went out a lot to fast food and buffets, and I put on weight at a rapid pace.  The summer between 9th and 10th grade my ma helped me crash diet, teaching me how to count calories, and sneaking me cigarettes to help stave off my hunger.  I managed to stay somewhere between thin and chunky until ma died when I was 22, often by denying myself meals so I could fill my belly at others.  After ma died I gained a bunch, got back down to 200 for one shining moment after my divorce, and then minor roller coastering to my current weight.  I've maintained this weight for a few years, mostly through feeble ongoing attempts at Weight Watchers.

Right now I'm on vacation and am attempting one more time.  It's SO hard to make changes when I'm working.  I just don't have the energy to keep them up and I keep slowly slipping back to where I was before.   My vacation is a staycation and I'm focusing on the following:

• I happily joined the cheap no-frills gym that just opened across the street from my house.  When I'm working I will only be able to use them on weekends as they have reduced hours at the mini pre-location they opened, but on 1/1/15 they will open the main gym and I will be able to go before work or after.  There will also be classes, including Zumba which I love.
• I'm tracking my food on Weight Watchers again.
• I'm trying to eat mostly things which are whole or minimally processed, with a focus on fueling my physical body properly.  This is after a discussion with my doctor of me possibly having an endocrine disorder.
• Last week I instituted theme nights at home for four nights a week, both to improve family bonding and to set a dining theme for each evening so we are prepared, and avoid last minute takeout suppers. (Monday is planned takeout like Subway, Tuesday is antipasto (cold supper), Wednesday is family dinner, and Thursday is a fast or very easy cooked dinner, like crockpot or stir fry.
• Some time ago I started packing my own lunch when I pack Evy's.  I'd like to source some more easy whole food options for the lunches, because I'm packing a lot of froot by the foot and angry birds graham crackers.  
• I quit diet cola again.  Needing a diet cola is often a great excuse for a trip through the drive through.  Plus, that stuff is nasty for my body.

I know that seems like a lot at once, but if I don't structure this staycation all I'm going to do is eat, sleep, and play video games.

40th Bday Post

I stayed up until the wee hours of my birthday doing my 2013 self assessment for work.  It was actually pretty positive.  I listed all the stuff I've done, quantifying how many of this or that I did.  I found out that despite being so upset because I have more to do than I could possibly get done, I did an extraordinary amount of stuff this year!  Much of what I did was innovative, technical and complex.  I'm impressed with myself, and my boss should be too.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I'll just get a 3, "meets expectations".  The person that I watched be a total badass in 2012 only got a 3 on his review, and left shortly thereafter.  But despite what the boss does with it *I* know that this year I was a badass.

The outpouring of good wishes for my health and birthday has been really touching!  At work they outdid themselves decorating my cube and did a card where everyone signs.  Some people have reached out specifically and said some of the nicest and unexpected things.  Thank you all so much!

I'm going to get off here now and go see what sort of trouble I can get into!

Operation Fix Me

Hi!  So I'm not doing so well.  There's a post down there I didn't even share because I wrote it in half-on crisis mode.  Here's the biggest problem.  Full on crisis mode for me is bad, folks.  My anxiety attacks include lovely things like screaming (loudly), falling on the floor, drooling, choking and gasping for breath.  (I looked on youtube for an example but none of them are as bad as mine.) I can NOT afford to have one of these at work.  If I did I'm sure an ambulance would be called, and I have very very serious reasons why I MUST not be 5150'd.  Of course, trying to make sure I don't leads to additional anxiety.  I had to take an Ativan at work yesterday, it sucked.  My brain was dulled.

So...operation fix me has started.  I told my counselor what was going on (I had an anxiety attack over telling her about my anxiety attacks, so meta!) I asked for two weeks off work.  I told my manager that I am having health issues, and I told my new lead, who I trust implicitly, exactly what was going on.  I have today and Monday off to start, and then I will return to work for two weeks of training up my lead and new colleague to do what I'm doing and then I'm out of there for two whole weeks and I will NOT be logging on for anything less than a balls-out emergency.  Letting go of work is hard though.  Maybe because I feel important there, and I really like feeling important.  Also, my responsibility, which creeps back in in an, "I'm the only one who knows how to do these 100 things, who will do them if I'm not there?"  and "I got three x yesterday that I need to do y to but I didn't get to them even working 12 hours a day, what's going to happen?"   I'm going to get in trouble.  When people ask why something is not done the only thing I can say is, "Sorry, I didn't have time."  No one likes that answer.

Today is kind of worky.  I had to log on to approve a ticket I promised to approve, and later I have to log on to write my year end review, due today and haven't started.  :-/  I'm home though, and hiding on IM so no one can bug me unless they know the trick of checking to see if someone is hiding on IM or really offline.

I'm going to be posting short posts about operation fix me I think.  Today I'm having my nails done, because they are falling off.  We're going to Ikea to buy pillows for the whole family and have some meatballs.  Ikea is a fun place for us, like an adult playground where we ooh and ahhh over the interesting designs and fall in love with the ingenuity of the cabinetry and stuff.  It's getting kind of late, so the nails and Ikea might happen in the other order.  Then I have to take Evy to exchange with her dad for the weekend.

Tomorrow is my 40th birthday, which is playing a part in my anxiety, but I think it's a peripheral part, like, the anxiety from work spills over into everything and makes it bad too.  Poor Sheldon!  He's the one I'm always with when I finally break and have an attack.  I'm sure it's because it's the only time I really feel like I can be myself is with him, but really, poor guy!  He's being really great about it, but I can see he's becoming exhausted as well trying to support everything else so I can keep it together enough to continue working.

Whoops, start over.  Tomorrow is my 40th birthday and I was able to Priceline a nice hotel in Oakland for $60 (thanks to Judge for reminding me again how to Priceline properly), so we'll be playing in the City Saturday and Sunday.  I'm not planning anything specific, I mostly like looking at the people and architecture and pigeons and other city stuff, but a good meal or two will probably be had.  I have Monday off to rest.  My sleep has been utter shite lately.

Still Not OK

I think I've cracked, or am about to, because I can't seem to pull myself together. I'm back at work today (we were allowed to work at home for Christmas and New Years weeks) but I can't stop crying. It feels like every aspect in my life is just bad. Everywhere I look everything's all wrong, it's bad, and I don't have the mental resources to deal with any of it. I'm back in debt, over $1000 now. My mental health out of pocket costs are $235 a month. My work, I don't think I can deal with changing jobs, but I can't deal with the one I'm doing either. We're finally getting a new person at work to be above me, so I go back to being a peon instead of being a peon trying to do peon and senior work both. This is the third time this has happened in a year though, and I feel like I could DO all the senior work if I didn't also have my peon work to do, but no one has given me a chance to try, they just give the interesting work to someone else. It just looks like I'm a great big failure because I can't do both jobs well. My kid just got back from 2 weeks away and her new favorite thing to do is scream "I hate you" at Sheldon. The house is a mess, there's no food and no money AND I need gas, so a couple hundred more will go on the credit card. I can't find time to exercise and I'm not sleeping well at all. Oh, I also have this check to deal with for my 401k rollover, but now that it has gone past the first I don't know how the taxes will work, and also my kid has been termed from her insurance due to the ACA, so now I have to figure out how to work that before March 1 too.

Secret Nutters

So, about 10 minutes after that last post, probably because I let my guard down before it was time, I had the biggest anxiety attack I've had in years.  Thank goodness it was NOT a screaming one, but it  awful enough that I asked Sheldon if he thought I needed to go to the hospital or something.  It's really embarrassing too.  Having anxiety attacks makes me feel crazy and ashamed.

I've been really careful since then to keep an eye on how I'm feeling and try and tend it so it doesn't get out of hand.  I've continued to believe the work stuff is not all my fault and that's helping.  On Christmas I started to feel anxiety coming on and took an ativan for the fist time that wasn't for something like flying or surgery.  I didn't want to break my "streak" of not having to take them but it seemed more practical to break the streak and not have an anxiety attack in the middle of Christmas dinner.

During times of anxiety I also get this really fun thing where I'm able to leap to big conclusions in a single bound.  For example, today we put away Christmas and I saw Sheldon lovingly packing away his Star Trek ornaments into a special box.  Immediately I figure that he is of course separating them so if he decides to leave me this year they will be easy to grab.  I KNOW this is likely ridiculous, and I'm super lucky to have Sheldon and friends who I can say, "Hey, I want you to know that I am feeling this thing that I am pretty sure is unreasonable and it would be really helpful if we could speak briefly about it."

I'm going to be working set hours and making sure I don't get too emotionally involved in work and then trying to get a handle on my mind and health and stuff.  I need to make time for exercise and eating healthy.  I KNOW that doing those things improves my physical and emotional health more than anything else.  I KNOW how to do them, and it kind of baffles me how I just slip so easily back into gluttony and sloth when I feel so much better when I do them and worse when I don't.

I looked up loving kindness meditation the other night, but when I got to the bits where I'm supposed to be loving and kind and forgiving to myself I just couldn't make myself buy in.  When I see my friends having a hard time it's really easy for me to empathize and be understanding about all the things that contributed to their hard time.  When I turn it inward though I can pick at every time I slacked when I should have been working harder, and I know all the times when I played when I could have been working towards my goals, and I can't say I did my best, so how can I be forgiving?

Made it another day!

Ok, so now thanks to a Lot of help from Sheldon, all the presents have been bought and I don't have to work for the next two days.  I spent today letting go of a lot of responsibility for my impending business failure. I'm keeping a more appropriate amount now.

I came home and fell asleep for three hours.  Now we're watching A Christmas Story and tentatively wrapping gifts (read: tossing shit in gift bags, yo).   Why do always forget how funny this movie is?   I  feel pretty good.  Thanks  to everyone for  wishing me well.  It really helped!  

I hope everyone has a safe and happy (or at the very least not unpleasant!) next couple of days.

Merry Christmas

Christmas used to be my favorite holiday.  My birthday was OK until my 30th, when I almost spent the whole day alone because my then-husband wouldn't bring our car home and I wasn't allowed to ride in the work truck, and then I finally did get to go to my old auntie's, and my parents showed up, and that was it.  My parents and aunt were the only people who cared enough to do anything for my 30th birthday.  Valentine's day was OK until 2006 when my then-boyfriend of 2 years chose that day to tell me that he had a new girlfriend, well not exactly new, they'd been seeing each other for a number of months.  I guess telling me was his gift to her.  Anyway, now I don't really like my birthday or Valentine's day.

Christmas though is special.  I can spend months figuring out what to get people, I LOVE picking presents for people.  I like baking, I like entertaining, and I like having a Christmas tree in the house. Christmas was my absolute favorite holiday.

This year though it's been ruined.  My work, I got a project on Thanksgiving week that's been taking up 4-6 hours a day of my time, but I'm also the only person who can do these two other things.  Those two other things re really just packs of things though.  One of them is 40 things, and one is a dozen things, and I needed to be able to get them done between Thanksgiving and New Years.  So there's basically 18 working days in December, so I needed to get about three of the things done every day.  Each thing involves a lot of back and forth with outside agencies and a lot of testing, but three things a day is definitely doable....if I wasn't spending 4-6 hours a day on the project.  I called out to my superiors several times that I was not going to be able to do ALL the things, but they haven't done anything about it.  If I don't get these things done literally THOUSANDS of people will be at the least inconvenienced and at the worst one or more could die, so I'm really emotionally invested in the things, but I'm doing the best I can, and knowing that even then I will NOT get these things done is literally driving me crazy.  I can't sleep, I'm exhausted, I'm despairing, crying every day, and have started having anxiety attacks for the first time in a few years.  It's making it so I can't function at all at home.  I have to keep it together at work, so all the falling apart is happening at home.  I'm working extra hours when I can, sometimes even until midnight, but I don't have the energy to keep it up, so one day I'll work 12 hours and the next day I'll be exhausted after 7.  I'm having a hard time getting to sleep so I'm having a hard time waking up, and I'm dragging myself into work at 9:30am.  It looks bad.  People are running out of patience with me too.  They want me to do fun stuff and I'm too tired, or they want to talk about something other than how shitty my work is, or they don't know what to do when I can't stop crying and it's starting to irritate them.

With all the energy I'm investing in working and the worry I can't get rid of I have NOTHING left over for Christmas stuff.  Everything is just another thing that must be done on time.  On top of everything, No money showed up for any of Sheldon's three jobs in December.  I guess everyone likes to put off paying until the next year to make the revenues look better.  So we were waiting for the money to show up which we were planning to use for Christmas and it didn't.  Luckily I did a weekend project at work that got me a $500 bonus...payable in gift certificates for specific stores, none of which I shop at.  Kmart was one of the stores, so I just spent several hours trudging around Kmart looking for Evy's and everyone else's Christmas gifts.  There wasn't anything fun about it.  I wasn't able to really get any of the stuff I wanted to get, just a bunch of meaningless crap to fill the empty spaces under the tree so Evy won't be disappointed.

My Facebook post got too long blog

Wow, so I haven't been posting partly because it's insanely busy at work and I'm working a lot.  December is always busy but this year is particularly awful.  I didn't sleep well this week so this morning I got up and dragged myself to the computer (thank goodness for working from home) and worked balls-to-the-wall straight through 'til 5 without a break.  Then I walked back upstairs, climbed into bed, and woke up at 11pm.  I had funny dreams about snuggling with men who I think represented the men I was in conference call with today for hours and hours.

Now it's 1am, and I'm going to try for a second sleep.  Have you read about that?  I think I'd love it.  Here's a link:  http://slumberwise.com/science/your-ancestors-didnt-sleep-like-you/.

The weather seems to think there's a chance of snow tonight though, so I'm setting an alarm to check in a few hours.  If by chance it is snowing I'm going to make some cocoa and watch it because snow.  Then I'll try out a third sleep before getting up to to see if I can't do an "extra credit project" for work.  Happy Holidays!

Mini Blog

This has been a really great weekend!  I was really worried because my ex was taking my kid to Disneyland, but it turned out she had a good time.  I found myself looking forward to something that would normally fill me with dread, AND it was fun, so my anxiety can just fuck right off.  It wasn't a huge deal.  It was a tabletop game day among friends and friends of friends.  I'm really inexperienced at games because I grew up as an only child in a rural area and never really played tabletop games, much less role playing games.  Usually I feel like a fraud geek when I play games, if that makes sense.  In any case I got really into it this time and had a bunch of fun.    Then everything just continued to be fun all day Sunday too.  I returned my bad boots to REI with no issue and we replaced them with two pair of Merrells, and a Leatherman for my purse.  Then we met up with friends at Boneshaker in Rocklin, which is an amazing Pub.  If you like beer and you live in the Sacramento area it's totally worth the drive.  The food's really good too.


Funny note on edit:  The spell checker suggested I change leatherman to leather-man.

Fat chick Burning Man Attire and Beauty.

If you've been reading you'll remember that I was SUPER worried about what sort of clothes and shoes I'd wear out on the playa.  I ended up buying some nylon tube top dress things and was worried about not wearing a bra or whatnot.  The two long dresses I bought were a fail.  They were almost to the ground and kind of hot and I had to tie them up shorter in knots to ride my bike or do any meaningful work.  The shorter dress was a win.  I think the two long ones may get new lives as knee-length ones soon.  I was short on clothes but serendipitously found that I really liked wearing a pretty bra and ruffle-butt bloomers.  No once seemed to be throwing up or anything, but I have no idea what it looked like.  Mirrors are rare out there.  When I was out exploring I got more attention when I wore less, so that was fun too.

My $140 boots I got, I think I might take them back.  I wore them one day with two sets of squishy heel stuff in them and my heels still hurt if I stood more than a half hour or so.  Is it ethical to take them back because my particular feet hurt in them?  It's not like the shoes are defective in any way.  I ended up wearing athletic shoes.

My nails held up like a charm!  I had them done as short as aesthetically possible and told the technician I was going camping.  He put some extra hard gel stuff on them and had no problems.

My hair, oy.  I had no idea it would do this, but it dried up and frizzed into this unrecognizable curl-tangle I could barely get a brush through.  The playa took much of the purple and all I could do was scrape it into a pony tail.  Camp mate Stacy had braids done before she came, and that looked like it worked out much better.

I've been back for 2 weeks and my skin is still messed up and weirdly thickened on the back of my calves.  It took a week of prescription cream steroid to get rid of the rash on my arms.  I'm sure I got a big vitamin D boost and I have a respectable tan.  When I put my regular powder on my face now it looks like playa dust against my skin.  I guess I'll pay for that with a few more wrinkles.

I took a whole sack of makeup to wear out there, but all I ever used was lip balm, sunscreen (sometimes), and moisturizer.

Burning Man, setting the stage.

So if all about Burning Man is what you've seen on TV, you probably don't know much about what it's about or what it's like living in it.  Basically it's a week-long "art of all kinds" festival centered around ten principles which you can read about here.  The principles create a unique social environment in which to experience, create, and perhaps even be art.

The whole thing takes place on a particularly inhospitable bit of desert in Nevada.  It is so barren that the only animals that are inconvenienced by the presence of seventy thousand people tromping all over for a week are the fairy shrimp eggs in the dust. The dust is everywhere, and it sucks the moisture out of everything and eventually does nasty stuff to skin.  The weather is unpredictable.  It can be anything from freezing to city-paralyzing rain but specializes in effing hot with winds full of dust in the afternoons.  The infrastructure is minimal.  Porta-Potties are provided in generous numbers, but still possibly more than a quarter mile from where you might be at any given time.  There are trained medical personnel and ambulances and helicopters on call to whisk people away on expensive trips to far off medical centers.  There are security forces including federal, county, and an incredible volunteer safety force of the city called the Rangers.  There are helpful services for people who need psychological help.  Ice is available for purchase from the city for health reasons, and coffee is available to purchase, I'm not sure why, likely tradition.  It is prudent bring everything you need to survive in that environment physically for the whole week.  Some people don't though, and get by on the kindness and gifts of strangers.

Meh.  I don't like that description at all though.  One of the most important parts I think is the LACK of a society that will say "don't".  You can choose to express yourself in any way that isn't ridiculously harmful to yourself or others.  Even "ridiculously harmful" is subjective.  If you want to put people in a suit and shoot fire at them, it's okay as long as everyone's in consent and you're pretty sure it's safe.  When too many people fell off the giant coyote they put up a sign suggesting they refrain from climbing it, but it is NOT a place where they do overly much to protect you from doing stuff that could get you injured or even possibly killed.  You're responsible for yourownself.

I don't like that description either.  I'm trying to capture the spirit of the thing.  OK.  Cory Doctorow has a book called Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (free download from the author).  In it is an alternate reality Disneyland in a world with no money.  People work on whatever Disney attraction they are most passionate about because money's not a factor.  Burning Man is a lot like that.  The desert makes it concurrently like a giant game of the reality show Survivor, IF it were a collaborative game instead of a competitive one.

Going out of order: Decompression

  I'd heard that coming back to the "default world" could be tough, but I didn't really believe it.  As if I would go camping for a week and have a hard time adjusting to the life I've had for years.  Actually, I really am having a hard time and I'm starting to be depressed.  It was kind of like someone handed me an amazing Utopian society to live in, and then made me give it back at the end of the week.

We got home at 2am Tuesday, and had to meet my parents at 2pm to get Evy.  I'm Really grateful that they watched her for us AND met us halfway so we didn't have to drive all the way down to Valley Home to get her.  It was still a long few more hours on the road though.  Wednesday I worked from home.  I took two naps and only managed 6 hours of work, all of it whittling down my 1369 unread emails (I still have 120 of those left to look at).  Thursday I jumped in with both feet taking on issues and found out that no one had had time to do very much of my work for the last 6 days, so things were becoming emergencies.  Then at 5pm someone forwards me an EMERGENCY that was dated last Friday. It's too late to do anything now, it will have to wait until morning, so a whole week has gone by with this "holy crap that's a great bloody fuck up" EMERGENCY just sitting there, so I'm kind of freaked out about it.  Then I ran to Target because Evy needed some Raiders clothes for school because it's sports team Friday and we have no team clothes.  I got some bread and cheese intending to duplicate the breakfasts Rebecca Rose Bleu made us on the playa.  Licensed sportswear is expensive.  Also my prescriptions happened to be ready, so more expensiveness than I expected. Then I got home and it was 7pm and Evy needs dinner before her 8 o'clock bedtime.  Also, someone almost backed into Sheldon, the lunch lady is mad at Evy because she can't remember her student ID, and the school called me saying Evy was absent for a period.  Then. I. Burned. The. Fucking. Dinner.  And that's how I ended up crying and shoving a plate of food at Sheldon telling him to "Go eat your nasty-assed burned fucking dinner!"  Evy decided I should have two hugs for the amount of upset that I was and everything was fine soon after.

I can show you where I camped though!  Here is the photo:

So if you go 1/3 the way along the top of the photo from the left, there is a yellow school bus colored container.  It is a dumpster.  There are two little humps against the dumpster.  The forward hump is our tent.

Camp was at 3:00 and Airstrip, which was a great location.  Whenever I was too tired to go anymore I could just sit in the camp living room and watch people and art cars go by.  At night we could watch people playing with the camp's 2 story interactive light wall.

8/28/13

I'm here, and still alive!

It took us 11  hours to get to camp.  We were expecting that, but didn't know what it would be like.  It wasn't too bad.  We drove the speed limit, and were Very careful.  About half the time was getting from our house to gate road, and the other half was waiting in line to get in, and then an excruciating 4 mile drive at 4mph to get to camp proper.

After that we set up camp in the dark and went to sleep.  I saw So many amazing things that night.  The art cars people manage to get out here are amazing.

Once we got Into the tent and settled ,  Sheldon looked at his phone and said there was no phone, data, or wifi.  It's pretty silly, but that was the thing that tripped my anxiety!  All of a sudden I felt very very alone and disconnected.  When we came in I got a sense of the size of this place.  It's gigantic.  It's 4-10 times the size I imagined it to be.  The city of Davis near where I live had about 50,000 people in it when I lived there.  This is bigger.  Going from one end to the other is miles.  I got
agoraphobic and spent a few minutes shivering, but since then I've been fine.

We did spend the first 36 hours close to camp.  We had to move our car way out, and the bathrooms are far enough I have to bike to them, so that's as far as we went.

Last night we took a walk out to the man.  It's actually more impressive from farther away, but we got to climb up into the base and see the city from a bit higher up.  All in all it was pretty neat and we saw a few art installations on the way.

This morning we went visiting.  We biked across the playa to center camp and camp Nosefish to see Howard and Franziska.  Next time we'll bring some cash and get some coffee.

Altaira scored tix for us for the motorized art tour in the morning, that should be awesome.  Tonight we're headed to a Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog Sing Along.

We're camped next to a camp called Playa Skool, which seems to be what people call a plug and play camp.  People pay a lot of money to show up and have their food and housing needs provided.  Last night they had a HUGE club which blasted 94 db of unfortunately generic music .  Sleeping in it was oddly easy.

It's tomorrow, huh.

We're just about to load the car, and I'm still in denial.  By this time tomorrow I should be at Burning Man and will have rung the bell and made the dust angel and all that.  This. Time. Tomorrow.  To quote the classic Fifty Shades of Grey, "Hoe Lee Crap!"

I don't quite know exactly what to expect, so I'm a little scared.  I'm excited, with trepidation.  My only goal really is to experience the thing, and to just be.  It's also the first week since 2005 that I'll be away from BOTH my parental duties and my career duties.   It feels incredibly weird to not have those responsibilities.

I have some thoughts on how my life has already changed this year in getting ready for Burning Man.  It's been transformative.  But, I'll have to leave that for another time if I'm not going to be up all night loading the car.

I am going to try and blog from the playa, but I may not if it doesn't fit into the experience I'm having.

Bye!

Ergh

Finished almost all the shopping tonight.  I'm exhausted.  My feet hurt just from that.  I'm worried by the time we get to the playa I'll be immobile from working so much to get ready.  Then I'm worried I'll be miserable and all this will have been for nothing.  I don't really think I'll be miserable though.  I think it will be an experience. Even if I'm exhausted when I get there and don't explore or anything for a couple days there will be enough time for exploring.  I do not have to cram the whole thing in.  I do not need to worry that I will miss something.  I'll miss a lot of things and that's ok.

Huh, I wrote myself into a better mood.

I also had a noontime appointment with my therapist, in which we decided to talk about the history of the abuse I've had and all that.  I hadn't talked about it in a long time.  I've been out of that situation for nine years now, and the details of what it was like are kind of fading.  I was able to dredge up enough of the pertinent facts for her to get the picture, but it was really oddly like describing what happened to a character in a book I read once.  In any case it was weird.  I think I'd rather have NOT dredged it up enough so that I'm going to carry it to the playa with me.  Maybe I'll see if I can't symbolically leave it there somehow.

I had a bit of a crying jag this evening over something silly and frustrating.  Now I realize though that I guess I probably needed one!

For more hard (but not as hard as today please!) days until we're on the road.

So Much Stuff!

The house is strewn with stuff.  The card table in the living room is full of tools and electrical stuff from putting the solar panel battery charging system together.  There are bags EVERYWHERE.  Ziplock bags full of batteries and toiletries and stuff that's been bought and stuff that needs to be packed.  I'm beginning to doubt that all this stuff is going to fit in the car.  

I think I need to do more about food, and quickly, lest we be eating whatever cans we grabbed out of the backs of the cupboards and bagged snacks.  I'm not going to be into cooking while I'm there though.  Normally I love to cook, but I've never camped anywhere that didn't have water, and that's really daunting to me.  I think I should bake cookies this week.  I wonder if there's any sort of tasty but non-oaty people-chow type cookie I could make that'd be good.  Off to google!

I have shoes!

Boots actually, like army boots, which I've definitely seen worn with dresses...by River on Firefly at least, oh, and also River Song, so it definitely works for people called River.  They were much more expensive than the $10 I usually spend on shoes.  They seem like the kind that you get resoled and wear forever though, and they're VERY comfortable.

I've been really worried about shoes.  I do NOT wear enclosed shoes even in winter.  It doesn't get cold enough here to need them, and as a result my feet feel weirdly hot and claustrophobic in shoes.  I'll be wearing these and breaking them in pretty much every day until Burning Man though, so I guess I'll be getting used to the feeling of 'em.

One more dress arrived too, so I have three dresses, one pair of pants, three pair of bloomers suitable for under dresses, and two pairs of bloomers which are goofy and ruffly.  I meant these to be for under dresses too, but they add a couple inches to my butt and thighs which is the last place I need those inches.  I might wear the bloomers as outerwear instead though if I get brave enough.

I haven't talked about food and exercise in a while.  Everything got so crazy at work I was sometimes grabbing fast food three times a day, no bueno.  Also, exercise would either cut into work or sleep time, so I wasn't doing that either.  I'm going to re-start exercising in the gym at work three times a week.  I definitely notice a significant change after just a week or two and every little bit of stamina I can get is going to help.

Still here!

Hi blog!  I've missed you!  I've been in a work tailspin until today.  Burning Man stuff is coming together!  We've taken delivery on things like goggles and face masks, clothes for me, a bike for Sheldon.  We have a tent!  I'm pleased with the fact it has a hinged door, very fancy!  We have non-moopy insulating material to stick between the rain fly and the tent and twenty strong spring clamps to hold it together.  We have baby wipes, plastic bags, and sunscreen, and a bunch more.

Two things at the forefront of my mind that I haven't gotten yet are shoes and cool weather night clothing.  I have no idea what sort of clothes people wear at night.  I'll have to look at some photos and figure out what I need.  I have no idea about shoes.  I need something that fits and is really comfortable but doesn't look stupid with dresses.  The comfort is most important but I hope I can manage it without looking stupid.

One thing I'm really self conscious about is making newbie mistakes and embarrassing myself, or getting jumped on by people for doing something wrong.  I'm spending a lot of energy worrying about this.  I don't want to be "that couple" who got out there and was unprepared, or couldn't deal.

Yo Bloggiddy! (Did I already do that one?)

August!  OMG freak out.  I have been working when I'm not sleeping.  I have to work today too.  I have a training class in SF Monday and Tuesday.  I'm driving up Sunday for that.  When am I prepping for Burning Man?

My healthy eating has gone out the window and I feel pretty awful!  I need to strive for proper sustenance and at least SOME exercise so I can have enough energy to do what  need to do.  Last night we went out for dinner and I had pho.  That's pretty healthy for a meal out, and cheap too!  I probably could have done without the mocha boba drink, but yum.

Clothes.  I'm afraid Ted's right.  Oh how I hate to admit that, but I dug a tube top dress out of the closet and have been wearing the heck out of it.  Here's the thing:  It's my boobs y'all.  I usually wear very good bras to make them look proportional to my size, but they're actually pretty small, and the opposite of perky.  With this tube dress I always had to wear this complex and frankly slightly rubbery and uncomfortable strapless bra.  I've been wearing it without a bra lately though, and it's really cool and comfortable.  If I get a couple more of them and some bike shorts or bloomers for underneath I should be OK.  Burning Man's an appropriate place to go braless right?

I still have no idea about shoes.  I don't wear closed shoes summer or winter.  I would be much happier of I could wear Birkenstocks (birkies and no bra, sexy! not) and make up some sort of regimen to keep my feet healthy.  I'm thinking I might try this and also bring my regular exercise tennies and socks, in case I fail at keeping my feet happy.  Let me know if y'all think this is a horrifying idea.

Sheldon's designed a dust box for my c-pap machine.  I'm going to let him run with that, because I have too much work!  <3 Sheldon

I Have The Power!

Hi blog!  We sourced and received almost every little thing I need to run my c-pap out in the desert.  I've got a battery, solar panel, charger, inverter, and wire.  It's really hard to find wire!  You'd think Radio Shack would have spools of all sorts, but they only had ready-made cables for TVs and stuff, and some speaker wire.  We finally found wire at the auto parts store, but they only had 10 gauge and I wanted bigger.  The Internet seems to think it will be good enough, but I'll be running the thing for a week at home to make sure.  The only thing I didn't find was a specific connector that goes to the solar panel.  Sheldon's grabbing a set of those off Amazon right now.

I also did all the math and found out that the battery I bought should actually power my c-pap for 57 hours on one charge.  8 hours a night * 7 nights is 56 hours.  That means with the 100W solar panel I'll have plenty of power to spare for charging phones and such, I'll want to run some LED lighting in the tent, and....?  Oh, I should make a quick swamp cooler!  What else awesome can I bring to power?  The inverter's 400W.

I don't think I have time for my art project. :-/  I really wanted to build a hula hoop with total control lighting that could be programmed and then controlled via a remote to speed up or slow down the pattern or change patterns.  That would probably take me $200 I shouldn't spare and a number of hours I don't have.  I'm kind of bummed about that.