Catch up on the past 4 months

Wow, it's been 4 months exactly since I posted anything here. Things that have happened since I last posted:

-Participated in a sleep study, they said there's nothing wrong, just get enough of it regularly (I need 9-10 hours usually)

-Tried 4 different stimulant-class adhd meds, none of them worked and had bad side effects

-Saw a nutritionist for a few weeks in July at the recommendation of a doctor for my diverticulitis

-Lost my job at the end of July and was depressed for a while

-Let my sleep schedule fall into night owl mode, more time to see Carlo since he works evenings 3-11!

-Applied for a few jobs

-Got a part-time job at a new fried chicken restaurant that only lasted 3 weeks in September cause they hired too much staff when they opened

-Decided that I should go back to school

-Found a free six month career counselling program to help me decide what to go to school in

-Discovered that I have to be approved by Emploi Quebec (provincial government employment agency) before I can take part in free career counselling services, but there are advantages in the form of refunds for travel and other stuff

-Took an appointment with an Emploi Quebec agent for the 29th for them to evaluate me

-Started attending group cognitive behavioral therapy for adhd on the 2nd of this month (it's helping)

-Started trying to work out and bike regularly and restart my food journal with the help of My Fitness Pal

-Decided that I want to try a ketogenic diet eventually if I can manage to reduce my carbs to 60g/day and maintain that for a while like the nutritionist advised me

-Didn't sleep one day and decided to take the opportunity to flip my sleep schedule back to normal since I missed the sun, haven't been to church in too long and it's just easier to get daytime-only stuff done this way. Although I will miss seeing Carlo as much, but it still isn't as bad as when I was working full time day shift.

-Saw the doctor again finally for the first time in 4 months to get a prescription for a new adhd med to try (Strattera, will try it starting next week cause this week I'm still stabilizing my sleep schedule)

-Made a daily schedule to follow in an attempt to get things done, so far it's working somewhat

And... um that's about all I can think of. Yesterday was my first day of trying to stick to a daily schedule using my agenda, I was mostly successful. So far today I'm not really on track, I got my morning routine done but I procrastinated and did it really late so it went into my pre-lunch "work" period, and then I procrastinated some more and decided to write a blog post :P

I was initially resistant to the idea of having such a tighly regimented schedule but the psychologist supervising the CBT group said that although it might be overwhelming to contemplate and difficult to get used to, people with adhd thrive on rigid schedules once they actually get the hang of it and create a new routine. So I figured I'd try and see, I have nothing to lose.

Although every hour of my day is accounted for, half of that is for sleep, and another quarter is set aside for meals, snacks, break times, morning and evening routines, etc., and I decided to leave myself a lot of free time on weekends also, so I'm definitely not driving myself to exhaustion. Especially after this week, they talked about the concept of concentration "batteries", that we have to find out how long our attention span is for unpleasant tasks and then stick to doing it for periods of that amount of time with breaks to do other things to recharge our "attention batteries" in between.

So in my schedule I set aside two blocks of two hours each per day, Mon-Fri, to do "work" in 10-minute intervals with little breaks in between so I don't get too fed up and stop working altogether. "Work" consists of anything important on my to-do list, like looking for a job, or housework, or other necessary things to do that aren't fun.

I'm really hoping that I'll find a medication that can help me soon so that I can be even more productive when it's combined with the tools learned in CBT. It's been 8 months since I got my diagnosis and I STILL haven't found a medication that works, although 2 months of that was not seeing the doctor due to procrastination on my part, and another month of waiting to find a doctor who was somewhat familiar with the meds and could prescribe them for me. I have over 50 things on my to do list, only 14 or so of which need to be done soon though, and maybe 5 of those today. So it's still doable. If I start. *sigh* I'm gonna go make lunch...

Here is a picture of some blooming cabbages I saw on my walk this morning, click to full view:

More on bras

Here's a great blog, and a video (one of many) every woman should see.

Things I didn't know about bras.

I learned these things recently after discovering a forum called A Bra That Fits on Reddit. If I didn't know these things at the age of 29, then how many other women are wearing uncomfortable, ill-fitted bras??? I HAD to post this here to spread the word.

-80% of women are wearing the wrong-sized bra. Usually a too-large band and a too small cup size.

-Cup size is relative to bra size

-A D-cup is NOT HUGE!

How to put a bra on properly

-Hard-to-find sizes don't have to be expensive! Ebay is good for that I'm told, as well as other online lingerie retailers.

-Some girls with back problems have even seen these problems go away by wearing a properly-fitted bra!

Anyone who wears a bra and sees this I beg you to measure yourself and read this for lots more interesting info about bras, bra myths, etc. All these links are in the sidebar on A Bra That Fits. Please go read!

I didn't believe it when the measurements said I had to go down two band sizes and UP FIVE WHOLE CUP SIZES!!! Until I tried one on... and my jaw dropped! It fit perfectly! My female family members didn't believe me till I showed them pictures and then I got nothing but amazement and compliments out of them! Even the fitting-lady at the store didn't believe I was that size! Unfortunately a lot of people who work in lingerie stores are misinformed about proper bra sizing as well :( So always measure yourself and don't rely on a fitting in a store.

And any man who wants to pass this info on to have a wife or girlfriend that is more comfortable and feeling awesome about herself, please do so!

Ginger beer plant, Volga mushroom and kombucha

I recently came across this article, a really interesting writing on how in the old days people used to use and share something called ginger beer plant (aka "bees"), a weird gelatinous lumpy thing, to make ginger beer. That reminded me of something my mom told me about when I was younger. In the old days in Sweden when she used to live there people could buy at the pharmacy a living flat round disk that you kept in a jar with water and drank the broth of. My memory was bad so I sent her the link to the article saying I wondered if it was the same thing and what her "thing" was called. She replied:

No the thing that I had was called a "Volga mushroom" after the river Volga in Russia. Also, it was not a mushroom but more like a round very firm substance that was thicker in the middle than on the edges and cutting it was like cutting meat although much firmer. The color was white/slightly pink and it grew so you had to divide it now and then because it became the size of a dinner plate. They were sold at the old fashioned pharmacies we had in Sweden when I lived there. You made a black tea solution with sugar in it and let the whole thing stand for five to seven days and then you drank the product and it was considered beneficial to your health.
Love Mama xox

 So I googled "volga mushroom" and discovered that it's basically a SCOBY used to make kombucha. I've made ginger beer before but only with yeast, I'd like to try making this as well as kombucha sometime though.

Fr. Stephen on beauty

Here. Read the comments.

Church and Chinatown

Here's the outside of the Anglican church where our parish is renting a chapel in the basement.

And some pics taken in Chinatown where I went with my dad and Carlo this afternoon. It's only about a 7 minute walk to get there from church.

Fried catfish, rice and eggplant baked with tomato sauce, oregano and cheese

YUM!

More renovation pics

Here's the livingroom mostly painted, and Carlo and my sister, and a view from the balcony the other evening:

Pascha and breakfast

Last night was exhausting but beautiful and joyful :) (see previous post for pics). It was my first time going to St-Benoit for Pascha, in the past I'd always made the trip to Rawdon to attend at St-Seraphim. It was nice to be able to understand the singing, which was in French, at St-Seraphim it's all done in Russian (or is it called Slavonic? I'm not sure...). Bishop Irénée was there, and the liturgy lasted till 1am or so, then Carlo joined us for the meal afterwards. I invited him to come watch the end of the liturgy, but things progressed faster than I expected so when I told him to come after the Our Father they were already serving communion 5 minutes later! Oh well, another time :)

We all piled into the back room at around 1:30 and a small buffet table of delicious cold food was set up and we all stuffed our faces on cold cuts, salads, rice, bread, salmon, ham, sausage, lamb and several cheeses, then the usual pascha and cake for dessert :)

Carlo and I left and biked home slowly at around 2:30am, then I showered and collapsed into bed around 4am. I woke up around 11am and had a breakfast of toast, boiled carrots and double-smoked bacon, with the company of a few pigeons on our balcony :D

Christ is Risen!