Hortus Deliciarum

I’m a worrier.

You had probably noticed that.

I’m a worrier who worries about big things, little things, middle-sized things. All The Things [tm], to quote Hyperbole and a Half. If it’s out there, I’ve probably worried about it at least once, from Yosemite blowing up and exterminating my family (okay, that was a short-lived, insane worry that I mostly don’t worry about any more, given that Seattle’s very own Cascadia subduction zone could produce an over-9-point earthquake with a tsunami up to 30 meters high, so I’ve got more immediate problems on my hands, obviously), to whether or not it should matter to me that people in the office haven’t said that my new scarf is pretty today.

Yes, I worry. Yes, I know this is bad. Yes, I worry that I’m worrying myself into an early grave. It’s what I do. I’m good at it. I’m working on not doing it so much…but did any of you other chronic worriers notice how hard that is?! Back when I was doing my first master’s degree, I took a great biofeedback and meditation class that worked really well for shutting off the 2:00 am crazies. Since getting out of the habit, though, the worrying has come back with a vengeance.

Last night I think I spent two hours feeling like a terrible person because, back when I worked with students in Manchester, I didn’t give a girl a class refund of all of 4 pounds when she was obviously really desperate for it. It was the rule, and I was following the rules, but, in hindsight, I wish I’d broken them. An hour worrying about that, and an hour reading to try to stop worrying about that…and I’m exhausted today.

It’s almost funny. I know, of course, that we all should let go of our guilt and fly free like happy butterflies, but the knowing and the doing (and the flying thereafter) are all entirely disconnected steps. I can let go of things. I can close the door on some things, knowing that I’ve done my best and that was the best I could do, but it’s the pesky moments when I let someone down, or when I let myself down, that plague me. Letting go of those, acknowledging that I’ve grown as a person and am trying to improve, just seems so difficult to accomplish, because the logical reminders of my growth don’t seem to hold much weight in the middle of the night, especially when, being human and all, I keep making more pesky mistakes to regret.

So, a nasty cold/flu/whatever thing meant that I needed to call my doc today for an appointment to get checked out. After two hours of not hearing from her, I gave up and called the clinic my husband visited for the first time yesterday. One same-day appointment later, it really is just a virus, I have a refill for my rescue inhaler, and all is well.

Thing is, my regular doctor hasn’t been great lately. I needed a Metformin refill and didn’t hear from her for a week. Luckily it’s for PCOS, not diabetes, but I consider that bordering on negligent, myself. I’ve had trouble booking appointments and her assistant never actually answers calls. They just go straight to voicemail and you get to hope that you’ll get a call back…sometime. Not okay, for my purposes, so I’ve been considering shopping for doctors and this was the final straw.

The guy I saw today was friendly and seemed to be really eager to be helpful. He’d never heard of HAES but was okay with my saying that I didn’t want to discuss my weight. He said that he was fine with that, although if I came in for a sore back, say, he’d want to throw it out there as a possible avenue, but that he would absolutely respect my wishes. The office was fine with my asking not to be weighed, which is also nice.

I think I’ll switch over, for the time being, although I’m tempted to mail him a copy of “Health At Every Size” for some homework reading. What made me proudest was that, when he said that he’d be willing to be my PCP if I wanted, I was very firm and unapologetic about my history of ED and desire not to discuss weight loss. I didn’t feel embarrassed, either. If he hadn’t been okay with it, that would have been fine, but I would have moved on to find a different doctor without feeling ashamed. I think.

It felt like a step forward. Now I just have to deal with all the other freaking issues that I’ve got, the biggest of which I can’t discuss here, resulting in my long absence from posting!

The thing they don’t tell you about adulthood as a kid, when you dream of all the freedom that you’ll have when you’re grown up, is that as an adult, you don’t get the kid- or teen-excuse card to play that is sort of your get-out-of-jail-free. Your excuse to do, say, and feel whatever’s on your mind and have it all written off as “teenage angst.”

Not as an adult. When you’re having a hormonal sort of day, your son woke up with a cough and you had to keep him home from kindergarten even though he wanted to go, and you found out that one of your very best work colleagues (one of those people that keeps you going to work in the first place) is moving away, and everyone seems to be NEEDY!NEEDY!NEEDY, and you didn’t get anything tangible accomplished over the weekend, and said work friends is going out with two other work friends and you were invited but can’t go because they set it at about the ONLY time during the day when your schedule precludes it, and you are being expected to know information that nobody gave you in the first place, and all you want to do is either throw a screaming tantrum or huddle up in a ball and weep…you don’t get to.

You get to smile, and do the job at the time that you had it scheduled, and you don’t get to go home, and you don’t get to say that you don’t wanna do it and you’re not gonna, and you suck it up and you do it. Because if you don’t, you’ll lose your job, and you’ll lose your income, and the little person at home depending on you won’t get the new clothes he needs, and you’ll default on your student loans and and and…

And you still have to do it anyway. And it sucks. It sucks so much that I wonder why I ever wanted to be a grown up anyway. Being in high school and college might have been some of the most screwed-up, depressing, horrible times of my life…but at least I could go home, cry, and think that some day, as a grown up, it would be better. I’d make it better.

And I haven’t.

As a teenager, you can always think that it may suck now but it is going to get better. As an adult, not so much. This could be as good as it gets, ever.

And I thought I had it bad back then!

One of my goals for the remainder of the year, especially as I get to start repaying those zillions of dollars’ worth of student loans, is to Spend Less Money On Frivolous Things [tm]. Considering that shopping for pretty things is one of the ways that I cope with stress and depression, this isn’t an easy goal. Shoes? Pshaw. Clothes? HA HA bloody HA. Shopping for them sucks (wide feet, size 30 body) so I avoid them like the plague. But pretty things…pretty decorative things…oh, be still my wallet!

Did I mention that some douchebag posted several hundred dollars’ worth of fraudulent charges on my debit card (which never left my possession), which I’m having to work on claiming back? Bastards.

Anyway, I found a couple of pretty things for quite cheap on Etsy and lost all willpower. First, this:

Okay, so, I know it’s not crazy cheap ($14, in the end), but isn’t it beautiful? It’s 4″ square and sitting on my piano. It’s dreamy, features hydrangeas, which I love, and is just the right color scheme to match with any number of rooms, including both my bathroom and bedroom, if I want to move it.

I also fell for this:

It’s hanging on my bedroom wall above my great-grandmother’s vintage (50s? 60s?) chest of drawers and mirror. It cost a little more than the hydrangea wooden block but still, $20 for something beautiful isn’t THAT much, right?

Right?

This is why I’m poor. But, I will say, at least I’m being careful about how much I spend and for what. No more purchases of things I don’t really love. No purchases of things that aren’t small and easy to transport.

I will say that one of the great cures for my retail therapy needs has been Pinterest, because I can “own” the pretty thing, only I don’t have to purchase it – I pin it on my wall and it’s there permanently, or as permanently as social media can be.

It has been the most Mondayish of Mondays, what with the carryover of feeling nauseated all day yesterday, which meant I didn’t get nearly as much done as I had hoped, save for baking a homemade peach pie (and even that wasn’t quite right, because I forgot the lemon juice, which meant it was a tad overly-sweet). When Sunday is a bit crummy, Monday’s not going to get any better and it hasn’t.

But, I did manage one tiny little mental breakthrough that I need to write down, lest I forget it. I was in the shower, doing my groggy-ugh-Monday waking thing and, for some reason, my thoughts were wandering to shopping with a work friend on Friday – I realized that, back in the day, I could have fit a women’s large too and that I sitll thought of myself as horribly fat. I wondered, as I’ve wondered before, what size I would be now if my dad, mom, and grandmother had recognized that putting on a bit of chub around age 9/10 is normal, given the fact that I started my period less than two years later, and had never started the “oh, don’t eat that, or you’ll get fat!” mantra. What if I had been taught that PE was fun, instead of seeing it as the miserable place where I was clumsy, awkward, and never did anything well enough not to be chosen last? Would I still be a size large? Or just XL?

Anyway, I was suddenly filled with this fury toward my PE teachers. How DARE they take the joy of movement away from me? When I was little I rode bikes. I climbed trees. I walked all over the place. And then I learned to hate my body, to feel like it wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t good enough, and I stopped doing any kind of movement for joy.

Last night, in bed, my husband was telling me about the local swimming pool and mentioned that they have a rope swing that goes out over the water. I said I thought maybe I should go to the pool too and he said that he wasn’t sure they’d let me on the swing. I know he didn’t mean it hurtfully; he’s not that sort of person, but entirely factually, they might not let me on the swing, because I’m fat. Things that I used to love doing as a kid, like scrambling over rocks, or swinging on rope swings…my body is in no shape to do those things, not just because I’m fat but because I haven’t voluntarily done movement in so long that I know I’m out of shape. My lower back has been killing me for weeks now (my chiropractor says there’s a nerve, possibly in the s1 vertebra, being pinched…which…ugh) and I just feel really OLD. I’m only 34 and I feel old.

Damn those stupid PE teachers for taking fun movement away from me. Now I “just” need to figure out how to get it back, so that I stop feeling so sore, achy, and tired all the time.

My first New England autumn that first year of college was something like a miracle. Growing up in West Africa and Southern California, autumn color is one of those things you only ever see in magazines and movies. Massachusetts in autumn must be something like a golden-crimson heaven, where life gives one last, brilliant flare before falling asleep for a season. Seattle color isn’t anything like comparable but I still feel that same rush of joy on a day when the autumn wind wants to pick me up and swirl me into the sky. I imagine that if I held out my arms, or leapt off the top of a building, it would catch me and take me somewhere joyful, somewhere so beautiful and exotic that even I can’t imagine it.

That autumn wind started today and I can feel it tugging at my very bones, especially this year that has been so full of grey depression and, occasionally, miserable despair. At 33 I feel like I’m 21 again, just out of college and not sure if my unhappiness is my own fault, the fault of factors out of my control, or both. And I really, really don’t know how to fix it, or even if I can.

I want to be swept away by the wind. I want the unknown ahead to be something joyful that I can jump into, instead of a dull slog that makes me question everything about myself. I’m an autumn baby and this season always reminds me that there is so much more that I want to be doing and seeing – the leaves are always more golden on the other side of the fence and I want to be there. Not here.

I’m not a procrastinator, most of the time. I’ll get things I don’t want to do and on those I may procrastinate for a while but I always get to them in the end. Knock on wood (a week and a half before the last paper of my MSLIS career), I have never turned in a project late without advance approval. Never spent an all-nighter. And yet, sometimes the (do not want) To Do List builds up to a howling crescendo and I realize that my much-neglected procrastinating side is showing her sharp, cruel fangs because SHE DOES NOT WANT.

So here are the things I’m procrastinating on, in no particular order. Encouragement to accomplish one (or multiple) goals via inspiring commentary below much appreciated.

1. Seeing a gynecologist about my Bartholin’s gland abscesses. Warning: No link that you could possibly Google for these will be SFW. Just saying, before you look. Also, in the last couple of months said abscesses seem to be inviting apparently related, but not quite the same abscesses to visit my Private Areas.

Why am I avoiding #1? Have I mentioned that lancing/catheterizing a Bartholin’s gland abscess is the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced? It is. That includes 42 hours of labor and childbirth. It is my 10 on the pain scale of 10, because if there is something more painful, I want death to be the swift result (or Dilaudid, whichever arrives first). I’m not exaggerating on that either. The next step is marsupializing those babies and I do not anticipate that being any less painful, the healing process is somewhat extended, and I have a wedding that I’m flying out to on August 10.

2. Annual exam. This should not be painful, however, it involves seeing a doctor.

Why am I avoiding #2? Seeing a doctor. ’nuff said.

3. Trying on my bridesmaid’s dress for the-never-posting-TeacherMommy’s-wedding. It’s red. I ordered it from an Etsy seller who seemed very nice and competent. I paid a lot of money for it. I got it a week ago and have not tried it on.

Why am I avoiding #3?I hate trying on clothes and what if this dress looks bad on me? I’ll have spent a lot of money on a dress that looks bad on me and it will give me only a couple of weeks to actually buy one that fits. Because I’m so limited as to size options, that means I’ll have NO freaking dress for the wedding and I’ll either end up wearing the one that might not fit (and looking ugly) or not being a bridesmaid even though I promised. Oh, and let’s not forget that, regardless of whether or not it fits, I’m going to be the Fat Bridesmaid [tm] looking ugly in photos. Also #4.

4. I need a new bra for the dress that might not fit but that I haven’t actually tried on. I have comfy bras but their support is…less than stellar. I should buy a new bra or two to look better in the dress-that-might-not-fit-but-that-I-haven’t-actually-tried-on (TDTMNFBTIHATO)

Why am I avoiding #4? I hate trying on clothes. I hate trying on bras more, because I hate underwire and softcup bras don’t give me much support because I have a Chest of Doom. And then I panic more that TDTMNFBTIHATO won’t fit, because I start thinking about that.

5. I need new makeup. I think I finally tossed the makeup I bought for my wedding eight years ago because, well. It was pretty old.

Why am I avoiding #5? Money. Also time. Also shame being girly. Also, makeup irritates my skin. But if I don’t have makeup, then I’ll be the even more unattractive and pale girl potentially wearing TDTMNFBTIHATO in photos.

Did I mention that I was even more of a wreck about all of this stuff before my own wedding? Third time’s the charm when it comes to bridesmaid-ing. I swear I’m never doing this again, even when my sister finds her Own True Love [tm] and begs me to be a bridesmaid. I will say no and point to this post as proof of my insanity.

I want to just weep sad, sad tears of first world woe that these, THESE, are the issues that I’m getting worked up/procrastinatory over.

Today the BBC is running a story claiming that tall people are more likely to develop cancer. Apparently, ‘[f]or every four inches (10cm) above five feet a person was, the researchers said they had a 16% increased cancer risk.’

The article is no more or less detailed than most BBC news stories on medicine – they include a run-down of the story and a few expert opinions and quotes. No big deal.

On Tuesday, the top Health headline was Obesity ‘leading driver’ of breast cancer, with a similar story structure.

Let’s compare:

Story A (on height): The study of more than one million women, published in The Lancet Oncology, suggested chemicals that control growth might also affect tumours.

Story B (on weight): One in eight women in the UK develop breast cancer in their lifetime, data shows, and the majority of these tumours are “hormone sensitive” meaning their growth is fuelled by hormones.

Heidi thinks: Okay, no problem. Tumors appear to be linked with hormones in some way.

Story A: The study followed 1.3 million middle-aged women in the UK between 1996 and 2001.

It linked 10 cancers to height – colon, rectal, malignant melanoma, breast, endometrial (uterus), ovarian, kidney, lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukaemia.

Story B: The Oxford University team, funded by Cancer Research UK, studied the health records of nearly 6,300 post-menopausal women, looking for factors that might explain why some developed hormone sensitive breast cancer when others did not.

Heidi thinks: Based solely on the way that this story is reported by the BBC, both were statistically significant groups of people. Story A, mind you, used 1.3 million women and Story B only 6,300, but both are dramatically more than, say, the 60 women you might see in a “study” done by a cosmetics company on whether their mascara is more waterproof.

Story A: Those in the tallest group, over 5ft 9in, were 37% more likely to have developed a tumour than those in the shortest group, under 5ft.

Story B: No specific figures given in this story on how many of those 6,300 women developed cancer or the statistical increase in cancer among fat women vs. thin women.

Heidi thinks: Ah…

Story A: Dr Jane Green, lead researcher and from the University of Oxford, told the BBC: “Obviously height itself cannot affect cancer, but it may be a marker for something else.”

Story B: Experts have known for some time that factors that influence hormone levels – like pregnancy, the oral contraceptive pill and the menopause – can change a woman’s breast cancer risk.

This latest work, published in the British Journal of Cancer, suggests obesity should go at the top of this list, not least because it is a lifestyle factor that women can have some control over. (emphasis mine)

Heidi thinks: The hell, you say?

Story A: “Higher levels of growth factors could do two things. They could result in more cells – taller people are made of more stuff so there are more cells which could mutate and become tumours. Alternatively, they could increase the rate of cell division and turnover, increasing the risk of cancer…

The researchers suggested that height could also have contributed to increasing cancer incidence. In Europe, average height is thought to have increased by around 1cm every decade during the 20th Century.

They argued that the height increase in that time could have resulted in a 10-15% more cancers than if heights had remained the same.”

Story B: “Dr Julie Sharp, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘This is an important study as it helps to show how alcohol and weight can influence hormone levels. Understanding their role in breast cancer is vital and this analysis sheds light on how they could affect breast cancer risk.

‘We know that the risk of the disease can be affected by family history and getting older, but there are also things women can do help reduce the risk of the disease. Maintaining a healthy body weight and reducing alcohol consumption are key to reducing breast cancer risk.’”

So, in conclusion, what we can take from this is that the sample size of women involved in the study on breast cancer was substantially smaller than the study of tall women. We know that tumors are probably linked to hormones and, when it comes to tall people being more at risk, researchers are willing to conclude that if growth hormones affect height, they might also make tumors grow more too. However, tall people shouldn’t worry (even though women over 5′9″ are supposed to be 37% more likely to develop tumors!!!) because it’s not under their control and it’s medicine’s job to figure out how to fix the problem.

Fat women, on the other hand, can totally control their weight (how, we don’t quite know, since science hasn’t given us a foolproof method that escapes the 97%-weight-regained stat anyway, but science says it, so it must be true). Therefore, even though we have absolutely no evidence on how much more likely we are supposed to be to get breast cancer, we need to get to losing weight NOW.

Now, it’s fairly evident that weight is based on genetics and that people with metabolic disorders can be more likely to be fat. If hormones are linked to fatness, which they probably are in at least some people, and hormones are linked to height also, why is it that the tall people get a pass because hormones are out of their control, but fat people don’t?

I’m not a scientist and I know that media reporting of obesity-related stories is biased anyway but can any of you tell me if the flaws I’m seeing in these two stories, set out side by side, actually ARE serious flaws or if I’m just hallucinating? Does this piss off anyone else?!

Finally, finally, summer is here. There’s a saying that Seattle summer doesn’t start until July 4th weekend and this year, at least, that is true. Today we’re looking at 82 degrees as the high and the sky and sea outside the office window are both perfect clear blue. I had to actually water my deck garden for the first time yesterday, as my white astilbe was drooping, and despite the fact that I spent the entirety of Saturday working on a class assignment, this weekend was more relaxing than I had expected. I think I must have SAD in some form or another, because as much as I like grey, cloudy weather, my mood shoots up when there’s sun (and I hate heat), so…something to investigate with my GP when I see her for my annual in a few weeks.

So, here’s a confession. I’m a terrible, terrible housekeeper. I watch Hoarders and Clean House with fervent passion because I can actually say that those people are messier than I am. A lot messier and that pleases me. What do those of you who are CLEAN people do about clutter? How is it that you seem to have boundless energy for cleaning, dusting, putting things away…I get home from work in the evening and just crash. I don’t want to spend a half an hour washing dishes, or vacuuming/mopping the bathroom floor. I don’t want to dust all my knick-knacks, beloved as they are (how DO you dust knick-knacks without knocking them over and, therefore, having to pick up every single one in order to dust them?) It exhausts me and I’m just bad, bad, bad at it. How do you people do it (and don’t suggest FlyLady – her “body clutter” e-mails were the nail in the coffin of the DOZENS of e-mails that she spammed my inbox with)? Seriously? How?!

What I realize I envy is not people’s lives in the lovely photos I see on crafting/parenting blogs, but their orderly houses. I see a pretty shabby-chic house full of antiques and I wonder how the hell they keep it looking nice. Do they keep it looking nice? How?!

I’m hanging in there – at least I can say I have a pretty deck garden, even if my house is a nightmare.

It’s been a roller coaster here the last couple of weeks. Work changes and turmoil (don’t worry, no firings or anything, just lots and lots of change in the air) along with personal busy-ness and, probably, delightful female hormones have thrown me off quite a lot, but I’m doing okay. Mostly.

Yesterday, on the way home, we’d gotten off at the park ‘n ride and were headed for the car when I did what I do every few months or so – my ankle gave out, for no apparent reason, and I fell. Usually I can catch myself but for some reason my body was just not interested in regaining balance, thankyouverymuch, so yesterday I went almost entirely spreadeagled on the sidewalk. My palms stung, my wrist was aching, and I was a bit sore but nothing hurt as badly as my wounded pride. My ankle has been doing this since I was ten or eleven – somehow, while walking, it votes no on the next step and I go flying. Apparently this happens to other people too, fat and thin, and I was a lot thinner when it started, so there’s no reason to think it’s anything to do with my weight, but the inner critic shrieks, “FAT CLUMSY IDIOT!” and I picture all the worst possible things that people could be thinking about me.

Mortifying.

Two guys stopped to ask if I was okay, and I was, except for the damage to my ego. My husband helped me up and we went on our way; a day later, I have bruised palms and a bit of an ache in my right ankle, probably from twisting it, but it’s no big deal. Just a balloon-puncturing moment that makes me wince out of embarrassment and old tapes in my head than actual discomfort.

***

Summer is slowly, ever so slowly, coming to Seattle. I’ve been making it a goal, now that I only have one class this summer, to craft something with Ciaran every weekend. We’ve done Waldorf window stars, a painted, button-bedecked photo frame, and a tissue-paper-decoupaged glass jar votive holder. He loves it, the process compels me to step out of my comfort zone and let go of control over the process as much as I can, and I feel like I’m actually giving him some good Mummy-Ciaran moments, rather than just depressed-homework-doing-Mummy.

I try.

Nights of insomnia aside, I’m doing better – tentatively poking my turtle-head out of its shell to figure out whether or not it’s worth looking out at the world after all.