Anxiety, Part 1

Nothing much is happening in my life currently. Tene has had 3 interviews with the New Company, and we'll find out next week if they want to fly him out to California to interview him in-person. It looks hopeful.

I've been looking at apartments, but have yet to act on any of them. I hope to begin my emailing campaign sometime today. Otherwise I've been working on cleaning up the apartment to try to get it available for someone else to move in to. Speaking of which: Does anyone want to move into our apartment for 2 months?

I've also switched medication again. I'm now on Cymbalta, which is not an SSRI, but something else (I'm unsure exactly what it is, but I know it helps with the reuptake of dopamine rather than serotonin, so maybe it will help me?). I've been taking it for two days, and it reaches saturation around day 3 or 4. Celexa takes about a week to fully leave the system. So, I guess I'll find out the effects of Cymbalta in ... five days? Here's hoping it works.

Otherwise, my life is quite boring.

I wanted to talk about my anxiety - it's been a little worse lately, and I've wanted to write about what I go through, in the hopes that my friends and family who read this may understand a bit better what I go through when my anxiety gets bad.

I'm going to be writing this in parts, otherwise it will end up being one single huge post.

First off: I've always had problems with anxiety. Looking back, it was obvious that I had problems. At the time, I figured the fears/worries/etc that I had were normal, and if not normal - at least they weren't too far from the norm. Now I know that my reactions to a lot of things was very very very odd. I sometimes wonder why my Mother never did anything about my anxiety - I don't believe my Dad knew about what I was going through.

The earliest memory I have of disabling anxiety started when I was in or just about to start sixth grade - shortly after August 11, 1999, the day a tornado hit downtown Salt Lake City. My entire life up to that point I had been told and reassured and reminded that: "A tornado couldn't happen here, the mountains and tall buildings would prevent it" and that Utah didn't have many tornados anyway, and they occurred in the desert, salt flats, and more open areas. After the tornado I began having trouble sleeping at night. I became worried that some horrible disaster would occur while I slept (tornado, earthquake, fire, etc) and I would lose my family. I became hyper-aware of any Bad Thing that could possibly ever happen.

Soon my anxiety shifted to solely concern earthquakes.

The Salt Lake Valley sits right next to a fault line (I can't even read that article without anxiety, obviously this is still a problem), which has tendrils that go underneath most of the valley. I believe my Junior High School was  (is) situated on one of these faults. There hasn't been a large quake in a good long while. I believe that we're supposed to have a large quake every ... I think 5000 years, but I could be wrong. Anyway, we're supposedly overdue for The Big One any year now.

This was driven into my head all through Grade School, and some more in Middle School. It never scared me, until the tornado. Suddenly the abstract idea of an earthquake happening became real. And everything I was being taught in class became terrifying.

I had a hard time getting to sleep. Any movement - even slight - of my bed was enough to make my heartrate raise and get my adrenaline going. I became more and more tired as I got less and less sleep. I didn't talk to anyone about this. Even the counselor I saw later that year.

The nightly fear and anxiety continued until February 2001, when a decently large earthquake hit Seattle, Washington, and only one person was killed in it. However, I still have nights where I have trouble falling asleep due to anxiety or fear about Something Bad Happening.

Almost a year and a half of having trouble sleeping, and the only help I ever got for it was a poem my stepdad would tell me - almost every night.

If there's a worry under the sun
There is a remedy or there's none
If there be one, hurry and find it
If there be none, nevermind it

But I couldn't just forget my worries, or ignore them, no matter how much I tried.

What should have been a serious warning sign that something wasn't quite right with my brain was ignored, brushed aside with poems and blessings. Looking back, I honestly feel like I was being ignored, and that I wasn't being taken seriously.

Part Two: Cars and Tests

Ratties? ... Ratties!

Okay, so it is possible that in the next month I may be getting some new rats. Here's what's going on ...

I sent a message to the owner of Frannie's Rattery (now the only Utah rattery I know of, as Adelaide's seems to have vanished) informing her that I am very interested in getting some rats to add to my family. Three to four of them, to be exact. I gave her my specifics, let her know I would not be breeding them (such a thing is difficult to do when you're going to be spaying them), and let her know that I would like them by the end of March (when it looks like Tene and I will most likely be moving).

She replied almost instantly:

Hi michelle, I have a new litter that I can put you on the waiting list you will beable to pick out the ones u want after me (I'm only keeping 1) I also have a 4 week old blac capped girl from my last litter I can save her for you to go with the others if you like ... Just let me know what you would like to do :)
Thank you,
Frannie's Rattery

I  quickly replied that I was interested, and should know for certain if I can take them this weekend (as my apartment currently does not allow pets I'm going to need to find a temporary home for them until Tene and I move - I should have that all figured out by Sunday).

I'm now on the waiting list for three girls from the new litter, and I'm most likely going to take the black-capped girl. She's just so cute!

I'm so excited :) Hooray!

I hope this all works out ...

Valentine's Meal for My Valentine

Today was a whirlwind adventure of cooking and baking for me.

I've been planning to do something nice for Tene (due to it being Valentine's Day) for a week now. You'd think, having plenty of time to prepare, that I would have everything in the kitchen, just ready and waiting. But I didn't. We lacked a few things called for in the recipes I chose (lemon juice, paprika, chicken bullion, strawberries, and chocolate chips). So in the early afternoon Tene and I went shopping to get the missing ingredients - and a few other things (I was baking a cake, and needed two round cakepans - 9", and they barely fit in the oven together. Have I mentioned my oven/stove is tiny? Because it is). Then we came home, and the cooking began.

For our one meal of the day (bruchinner? We don't eat much around these parts) I made Chicken Piccata, which was very tasty, used too much butter. Like way too much butter. Maybe because I only made one breast (cut in half) instead of four? But still ... It was swimming in the butter. It was tasty though, and the chicken was nice and tender. I also made, as a sort of warm salad, some Garlic Bok Choy (I left out the ginger [which neither Tene nor I are huge fans of], oyster sauce [again: we're not really fans], and the red pepper flakes. and I put in an extra tablespoon of the soy sauce to make up for the missing oyster sauce. I also wasn't precise in measuring the brown sugar), which was also quite good. I found I prefer the taste of the leafy bits of the bok choy, which is good to know for future reference. I added a few strawberries as garnish and there it was! A healthy, delicious meal!

Tene didn't like how oily the chicken was, so I also heated up some leftover rice and mixed in some garlic power and salt, it worked well.

Then came desert. I had two deserts planned - one Tene knew about (a chocolate cake) and one he didn't (chocolate covered strawberries). The strawberries came from a conversation earlier in the week, when I asked Tene what he would enjoy as a desert. He didn't know, and said that what he likes from deserts is a mixture of sweetness and tartness - which I knew, but it was nice to be reminded. I thought about it for a while and it dawned on me - chocolate covered strawberries are absolutely perfect for those requirements. And so I decided to make them.

First was the cake. I've never really made a cake before, let alone a two-tiered one, but this one was pretty easy. Everything was just mixed together in one bowl - the dry ingredients first, then the wet ingredients, and then some boiling hot water. It made a relatively thin batter, which was easy to just pour into my new, well greased, cake pans. Then into the oven it went.

Then I went on to make the frosting. I didn't want to use buttercream (the only other frosting I've ever made), so I decided to try out a chocolate ganache. I found one that was really easy - two cups of heavy cream, warmed, and 16 oz of baker's chocolate. I used some really-dark-chocolate-chips, because there was no baker's chocolate left at the grocery store we went to. Brought the heavy cream to almost boiling, poured it over the chocolate chips, waiting for a few minutes (I covered the bowl the mixture was in to help trap some of the heat) and then stir until mixed! Then I just had to wait for the cakes to be done and the ganache to cool to a spreadable consistency.

So I worked on my strawberries! Really easy - I melted a decent amount of chocolate chips on the stove over a very low heat, Tene stirred it all the while. I added some milk (ended up being too much, but at least I know for next time) to make it a little smoother. Then I dipped the strawberries and set them out to harden on a cookie sheet.

Time passed, I took out the cakes to cool, flipped their pans over and had them slide out perfectly. More time passed, Tene and I ate the strawberries (I didn't get a picture of them). More time passed and I finally got around to frosting the cake.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but the ganache spread very smoothly. I wish I had leveled the sides of the cakes, but now I know what to do next time. Once the cake was nice and covered in a decent layer of frosting I decided to decorate. At first I considered sprinkles, since Tene and I got a little bottle of them at the store. But then I remembered my strawberries, and so I put 8 strawberries all around the edge of the cake.

Finally I cut two slices - one for me and one for Tene - and brought them up to him so we could eat them together.

It was delicious. The cake was rich and moist and chocolaty - but not overly sweet, and the frosting was a very appetizing bittersweet. I was only able to eat half of my slice (the other half is in the fridge, I will finish it off tomorrow).

All in all, I'm quite pleased with my Valentine's day meal. I hope to do more cooking, and baking, in the near future.

So through a connection of my dad's at the Willey Ford in Bountiful Tene and I now have a new car. Currently unnamed, we got it a couple weeks ago. It is a white 2001 Ford Taurus. So far, I'm very impressed with it's gas mileage, and overall just the feel of the car. And - I have a trunk. OMG! I was a little let down at first, because I was wanting either a smaller car (a 2 door, possibly a mini or something) and maybe something with a hatchback (like Rubiru had), but after having driven this car for two weeks, I find myself liking it more and more. It's a very nice ride. When I showed it to my mother, her first comment was about children (childseats in the back!), which ... kinda scared me a little, since I don't want kids just yet (if ever).

The new medication, Celexa, seems to be doing a good job. I'm not yet perfect, but much better than I was doing. Some side effects have started hitting me - I've had a hard time eating without feeling nauseous shortly afterwards, and I've been having decently bad headaches and body aches. The sleep reduction isn't so awesome either, but I'll admit ... I have been feeling better as I've been adjusting to the less sleep.

Tene and I are looking to be moving sooner, rather than later. Right now we're trying to figure out the logistics of it. We'll have to get out of our lease with the apartment complex we're currently renting from, and obviously we'll need an affordable apartment and jobs wherever we're going to. I'm currently guessing that we're going to stick around until the end of March/beginning of April, and then we'll be off. Currently we're waiting to hear back from IMVU on Tene's resume, I believe he might also be looking at applying to Facebook and Google as backup options. As a result we're looking for housing more in the Silicon Valley area, as opposed to San Francisco. I'm excited, and I'm feeling that this move will be good for both of us mentally, if nothing else.

Otherwise, my life is pretty boring - if a bit busy. My Year-Of-Adventures plan has had a couple of bad weeks, which I'm writing a post to explain about over there. I've been hanging out with a handful of my friends more often - Teffy, Ima, and Spaz mostly - which has been  helpful emotionally, even though it's a very draining experience. Lots of movie watching, and some interesting Little Big Planet playing.