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I was more successful in the traction machine today. I still can't relax entirely but I was better at it today. Good news from the physical therapist, though. When I mentioned that my arm and hand were starting to itch he said that that was one of the modalities they expect as treatment progresses. (In English, it's a sign that there's less pressure on the nerve, the therapy is working, and I'm getting better.) Now that I'm in the strength-building part of the therapy I'm feeling wimpy as fuck. I used to carry twenty bridal gowns on each arm up and down the length of a retail store, and now a two pound weight is kicking my ass. After doing ten reps of raising my arms to vertical from each of four different starting points with a weight in each hand, my left arm was complaining that two pounds was so hard. The pulling down and rowing motion sets were pretty easy (I should probably be doing more weight for those), but lateral extensions kicked my ass. I was supposed to do four sets of seven for each arm. The weight was a little more than I'd done the previous week, but after doing the first three extensions with my left arm, it started shaking. After that I had to strain to finish the rest of them, slowly, resting between each one. I made it midway through the second set when the PT assistant took pity on me and set the weight to the lowest one on the machine. Of course I thought "weaksauce". Because feeling so weak is alarming.
As a fat girl and a fat woman, one of the only good things about being fat was feeling like I'm strong, like I have substance, like I can do stuff. I wasn't a petite little thing that was going to blow away in a stiff breeze (something my grandmother often told me, verbatim, that she was teased about a lot when she was a girl). I could do brute force physical activity until someone told me it was ok to stop. Of course I'd pay for it a few days later when delayed onset muscle soreness would leave me unable to move without severe pain, but I was not weak. And the DOMS would make me hate (and I do still kind of hate) doing physical activity. Nobody ever told me I should start slowly (and being fat and out of shape I should start even more slowly than most). It was just "do all these sets of exercises" and I'd power through (because, remember, not weak), only to be knocked on my ass a few days later by the muscle soreness. Nowadays I think the starting slowly and appropriately for one's fitness level is called conditioning. But what I was doing, every time I tried to get not-fat with exercise like i was supposed to, I was conditioning myself to hate every minute and failed over and over again. Now this stupid injury has made me weak again and I hate it.
Day 11
Yesterday I decided that my hoarder brain is called Charlotte. It popped into my head and just feels right. Charlotte looks (and sounds) like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. I read some tumblr meme that said the poster started calling the voice in their head that says terrible things "Donald Drumpf" and it made it easier to ignore. Maybe if I name the hoarder in my head I can stop listening to it so much.
I really, truly only wanted to find my one thing and then slack on the couch, but I do this thing when I'm hungry that I get focused on doing some task and will keep doing it, unable to stop. I blame low blood sugar hangriness. It does come in handy when I need to clean. It's like a fractal mental state where I keep looking at what I'm doing and I keep seeing more and more things around me that need to be cleaned, often to the point at which I'm shaking from hunger and crying because I think I'm surrounded by filth. (Hi there, Shame!) Again, these episodes conditioned me to really hate housework. So one thing turned into another which led to me digging through my jewelry armoire (it's not my nightstand anymore so I have little enough on the top that I can even open the lid without major fuss), and within a half hour I was going from room to room to room with my hands full of stuff. I'm getting better at breaking out of those mental fractals. Sometimes by myself, having to say "I need to stop" out loud. Sometimes I have to ask D to help me stop, and sometimes he'll see where I'm heading and physically stop me (and make me eat something).
So into the office, where there was a leopard print camisole top with a busted strap. Said strap is held onto the garment with a safety pin, as it has been since I got it several years ago in a clothing exchange. Every time I'd see it I'd say "I'm going to fix that", and just before we got evicted I even went so far as to put it on my sewing table for the next time I had the wee beastie out for a spin. But today I'm admitting it. I am never going to actually do it.
I realized that if I kept digging into a clothing bag I'd need to try stuff on, something I don't want to do fresh from therapy. (Yeah, I am sweaty and stinky, ew.) Then I reached into a box of bathroom stuff. shudder It's random AND grotty. Most of the important stuff has already been pulled out, but there were things that I knew needed to go (and some I'm not ready to get rid of):
A hollow plastic heart that used to hold M&M's (a Valentine's gift from several years before I stopped eating sugar).
THREE tubes of some protective goop you're supposed to put on your hair's delicate ends when you dye it so the ends won't get damaged further (it really just keeps the dye from fully penetrating my hair, and my ends aren't damaged anyway). I should buy the dye that doesn't have these but I can never remember which one it is.
A slap bracelet that was shedding its fabric cover.
A safety pin in the box made me go into the bedroom where I keep a carefully hand-labelled bottle of safety pins, when I spied one of my infamous Bags of Random Crap (usually crap pulled out of a tote bag or pockets) that had been floating around the bedroom for a few years. Perfect!
I got the trash and the recyclables out of it (Disposable wooden chopsticks? Really? ["Yes", says my hoarder brain, "Chopsticks are always useful in so many crafts. What if you need them?"]
Empty tiny Nivea lotion tin (that emptied itself out inside my purse, ew). But crafts or holding tiny things? Shut up, Charlotte.
Our old bathroom cup (crackled acrylic, a lost cause).
A champagne cork (or more likely from sweet sparkling wine, because I think it tastes better) that was probably from a bottle I took to a party and had a great time at with other people (which I don't even remember now).
There was a pair of clip-on earrings that needed to go back to the jewelry armoire, which provided more fodder. The drawers were too full so of course I had to start sorting them out. Hair stuff went to the box of hair things, bra accessories went into the FUNderwear drawer (which emptied out a drawer and a half in the armoire). A bunch of inelastic hair elastics went straight into the trash. (Do not pass go; do not take a picture.)
There were these ponytail/bun things I'd bought (from Claire's) to do something vaguely more interesting with my hair (when I kept it much longer). My hair is too thick for these things to work, so I never used them after getting them untangled from my hair.
A very grotty silver -toned metal costume jewelry necklace that has so far resisted being cleaned (which I'm not going to waste any more time on doing, since my taste is so consistent that I've bought multiple similar items that I still have). Round circles hanging from a chain. Not quite dazzling enough to be a statement necklace, kind of lost on "my huge tracts of land". When one has "huge tracts of land" like I do, anything that isn't super flashy really isn't worth wearing (unless it's a TARDIS key, which is always worth wearing and qualifies as me being subtle [aka "not shouting]).
A necklace that I've always hated owning: a braided leather-ish cord with a small dull silver-tone medallion on it that I found while walking along the railroad tracks many years ago. The medallion has some Hebrew letters on one side, which made me pick it up, but the other side shows that it's clearly a "souvenir" from the brutal movie" The Passion" that Mel Gibson directed. On the one hand, I didn't want to keep it, because I survived Catholic school, but on the other hand I didn't want anyone else to have to own merchandise from such a horrible movie. I have decided to make it someone else's problem and put it in the go-away box. I am no longer taking responsibility for something I think is terrible.
And then there were the earrings. I don't have pierced ears, so I buy clip-ons. Let me say it again for the folks in the back. I DO NOT HAVE PIERCED EARS. But people I love give me earrings. And they're beautiful. I (Charlotte) keep(s) telling myself I'm going to put them in the earring converters I bought from (again) Claire's (several) years ago, but I haven't (because they're French hooks and not posts and I'm afraid they'll break). And I won't try to rework them. But I kept them, because someone I love gave them to me. (They'll eventually leave you all alone and this is all you'll have to remember them by.) [Shut UP, Charlotte.] So two lovely pairs of handmade earrings (the intricately beaded ones hurt to give away, because look at how well they're made.)
The armoire also yielded up a red sequined wristband (Future crafts? Hush Charlotte.) and a plastic toy spinny top that at one point had been in a piñata that appeals to my magpie nature because laser stickers. OOH IT"S A SHINY!
This took way longer than it should because I accidentally backspaced out of this page without saving the text ("Autosave" doesn't like I think it should on DW.) Hitting the preview button activates the autosave feature. Lesson learned (again).
As a fat girl and a fat woman, one of the only good things about being fat was feeling like I'm strong, like I have substance, like I can do stuff. I wasn't a petite little thing that was going to blow away in a stiff breeze (something my grandmother often told me, verbatim, that she was teased about a lot when she was a girl). I could do brute force physical activity until someone told me it was ok to stop. Of course I'd pay for it a few days later when delayed onset muscle soreness would leave me unable to move without severe pain, but I was not weak. And the DOMS would make me hate (and I do still kind of hate) doing physical activity. Nobody ever told me I should start slowly (and being fat and out of shape I should start even more slowly than most). It was just "do all these sets of exercises" and I'd power through (because, remember, not weak), only to be knocked on my ass a few days later by the muscle soreness. Nowadays I think the starting slowly and appropriately for one's fitness level is called conditioning. But what I was doing, every time I tried to get not-fat with exercise like i was supposed to, I was conditioning myself to hate every minute and failed over and over again. Now this stupid injury has made me weak again and I hate it.
Day 11
Yesterday I decided that my hoarder brain is called Charlotte. It popped into my head and just feels right. Charlotte looks (and sounds) like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. I read some tumblr meme that said the poster started calling the voice in their head that says terrible things "Donald Drumpf" and it made it easier to ignore. Maybe if I name the hoarder in my head I can stop listening to it so much.
I really, truly only wanted to find my one thing and then slack on the couch, but I do this thing when I'm hungry that I get focused on doing some task and will keep doing it, unable to stop. I blame low blood sugar hangriness. It does come in handy when I need to clean. It's like a fractal mental state where I keep looking at what I'm doing and I keep seeing more and more things around me that need to be cleaned, often to the point at which I'm shaking from hunger and crying because I think I'm surrounded by filth. (Hi there, Shame!) Again, these episodes conditioned me to really hate housework. So one thing turned into another which led to me digging through my jewelry armoire (it's not my nightstand anymore so I have little enough on the top that I can even open the lid without major fuss), and within a half hour I was going from room to room to room with my hands full of stuff. I'm getting better at breaking out of those mental fractals. Sometimes by myself, having to say "I need to stop" out loud. Sometimes I have to ask D to help me stop, and sometimes he'll see where I'm heading and physically stop me (and make me eat something).
So into the office, where there was a leopard print camisole top with a busted strap. Said strap is held onto the garment with a safety pin, as it has been since I got it several years ago in a clothing exchange. Every time I'd see it I'd say "I'm going to fix that", and just before we got evicted I even went so far as to put it on my sewing table for the next time I had the wee beastie out for a spin. But today I'm admitting it. I am never going to actually do it.
I realized that if I kept digging into a clothing bag I'd need to try stuff on, something I don't want to do fresh from therapy. (Yeah, I am sweaty and stinky, ew.) Then I reached into a box of bathroom stuff. shudder It's random AND grotty. Most of the important stuff has already been pulled out, but there were things that I knew needed to go (and some I'm not ready to get rid of):
A hollow plastic heart that used to hold M&M's (a Valentine's gift from several years before I stopped eating sugar).
THREE tubes of some protective goop you're supposed to put on your hair's delicate ends when you dye it so the ends won't get damaged further (it really just keeps the dye from fully penetrating my hair, and my ends aren't damaged anyway). I should buy the dye that doesn't have these but I can never remember which one it is.
A slap bracelet that was shedding its fabric cover.
A safety pin in the box made me go into the bedroom where I keep a carefully hand-labelled bottle of safety pins, when I spied one of my infamous Bags of Random Crap (usually crap pulled out of a tote bag or pockets) that had been floating around the bedroom for a few years. Perfect!
I got the trash and the recyclables out of it (Disposable wooden chopsticks? Really? ["Yes", says my hoarder brain, "Chopsticks are always useful in so many crafts. What if you need them?"]
Empty tiny Nivea lotion tin (that emptied itself out inside my purse, ew). But crafts or holding tiny things? Shut up, Charlotte.
Our old bathroom cup (crackled acrylic, a lost cause).
A champagne cork (or more likely from sweet sparkling wine, because I think it tastes better) that was probably from a bottle I took to a party and had a great time at with other people (which I don't even remember now).
There was a pair of clip-on earrings that needed to go back to the jewelry armoire, which provided more fodder. The drawers were too full so of course I had to start sorting them out. Hair stuff went to the box of hair things, bra accessories went into the FUNderwear drawer (which emptied out a drawer and a half in the armoire). A bunch of inelastic hair elastics went straight into the trash. (Do not pass go; do not take a picture.)
There were these ponytail/bun things I'd bought (from Claire's) to do something vaguely more interesting with my hair (when I kept it much longer). My hair is too thick for these things to work, so I never used them after getting them untangled from my hair.
A very grotty silver -toned metal costume jewelry necklace that has so far resisted being cleaned (which I'm not going to waste any more time on doing, since my taste is so consistent that I've bought multiple similar items that I still have). Round circles hanging from a chain. Not quite dazzling enough to be a statement necklace, kind of lost on "my huge tracts of land". When one has "huge tracts of land" like I do, anything that isn't super flashy really isn't worth wearing (unless it's a TARDIS key, which is always worth wearing and qualifies as me being subtle [aka "not shouting]).
A necklace that I've always hated owning: a braided leather-ish cord with a small dull silver-tone medallion on it that I found while walking along the railroad tracks many years ago. The medallion has some Hebrew letters on one side, which made me pick it up, but the other side shows that it's clearly a "souvenir" from the brutal movie" The Passion" that Mel Gibson directed. On the one hand, I didn't want to keep it, because I survived Catholic school, but on the other hand I didn't want anyone else to have to own merchandise from such a horrible movie. I have decided to make it someone else's problem and put it in the go-away box. I am no longer taking responsibility for something I think is terrible.
And then there were the earrings. I don't have pierced ears, so I buy clip-ons. Let me say it again for the folks in the back. I DO NOT HAVE PIERCED EARS. But people I love give me earrings. And they're beautiful. I (Charlotte) keep(s) telling myself I'm going to put them in the earring converters I bought from (again) Claire's (several) years ago, but I haven't (because they're French hooks and not posts and I'm afraid they'll break). And I won't try to rework them. But I kept them, because someone I love gave them to me. (They'll eventually leave you all alone and this is all you'll have to remember them by.) [Shut UP, Charlotte.] So two lovely pairs of handmade earrings (the intricately beaded ones hurt to give away, because look at how well they're made.)
The armoire also yielded up a red sequined wristband (Future crafts? Hush Charlotte.) and a plastic toy spinny top that at one point had been in a piñata that appeals to my magpie nature because laser stickers. OOH IT"S A SHINY!
This took way longer than it should because I accidentally backspaced out of this page without saving the text ("Autosave" doesn't like I think it should on DW.) Hitting the preview button activates the autosave feature. Lesson learned (again).
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