The Ups, Downs & Sugar-Fuelled Run-Arounds of a Girl Looking for A Diagnosis
I know it’s been a while but I wanted to check in (before I forgot again) to say happy April all! I’ve had a few posts lined up that I haven’t finished but I’m going through an up-and-down fatigue wave right now and haven’t been awake enough to make anything substantial – or of sense!
Anyway I hope this month brings forward some more in-depth talk when it comes to autistics people and we are able to bring new knowledge, understanding and acceptance on a global scale.
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Cooking sucks.
Oh god do I hate cooking. Do you hate cooking?
Don’t get me wrong, I really really love eating, but the thought of prepping and getting a meal ready fills me with so much frustration.
Yes I also mean “30 minute meals”. They don’t take me ’30 minutes’ no matter how hard I try. There’s nothing easy, simple and rewarding about it. The multitasking, the waste if things aren’t cooked correctly.. cook it too little and you could get sick, cook it too much and you’ve lost the nutritional component, the multitasking, the multitasking…
So on the weekend I decided to bite the bullet and order Lite N’ Easy for a week, where for $162 I’d get 7 lunches and 7 dinners with small snacks. I’ve been wanting to do Lite N’ Easy for a long time but it’s so expensive for me, hooowever everything is ready to eat with a bit of heating included. With my dad now living with me and unable to move around a lot, having my own health issues as well as my pure disdain for cooking, I’m going to (hopefully!) try it for a few weeks and see how I feel. It is very expensive at almost double what I usually spend on groceries, but in the end I’m hoping that since it’s my sole food requirement besides getting eggs or a protein shake for breakfast, I shouldn’t be out of pocket too much. On that note we can only see..
[I’m going to talk about Lite N’ Easy a little bit and starting it, so if you’re interested, continue below!]
Day 1:
I didn’t expect just how much I was going to think about food, it was actually quite obsessive. At first it was just excitement to start and anticipating trying my first meal, but as the day went on I kept thinking about food in general and if I’d have enough to space out so I wasn’t going to bed starving, thus getting a headache and being up most of the night. I did feel hungry as I went to bed and can only surmise that was because of not only eating less calories but also thinking about the food too. Thankfully though, I had no headache and just took a few sips of water and did my best to ignore the topic of food.
Day 2:
Again, did my usual shake in the late morning and was okay until I was trying to get ready for the day around midday. I wasn’t hungry yet but I found myself thinking about food again; when I should eat, if I have enough. I realised that an hour of this felt very long. So I guzzled some more cold water and decided to rearrange my study. Yeah, I rearranged my room to distract myself, but it worked! By the time I sat down to eat it was about 1:30, I wasn’t starving but I thought it was a good time to get my lunch down and slowly snack.
Around 4:30 I was getting a slight headache above my eye and was more distracted than usual so I had a hot snack bowl of chicken and cashew, but I was feeling that 4-5pm fatigue. I decided to lay on the couch and play a bit of Animal Crossing for an hour before feeling a bit more awake but by 6:30 I decided to have dinner and now at the time of writing this, it’s 8:15, I am starving. That starving where you feel a headache coming on and feel a bit sick in your gut.
I don’t know what I’m going to do but it looks like I’m eating a carrot and seeing how that goes – good week to start before a period, right?
I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last post, but January was a busy one!
Now that February has started, it brings one of my favourite things to do: go to a medical professional and try to summarise my health history into a few sentences and hope they believe me so I can get on a path to being healthy again.
In about an hour I’m going to a gynaecologist to see why I’ve been having some major period symptoms and to (hopefully) see if it’s part of a bigger picture, like PCOS or something more endocrine, maybe both, maybe neither!
As of today I’m late for my period (I’ve been mostly late so no surprise), on day 41. At this point I’m not worried because I’m so used to it, however I’m nervous for the pain when it eventually comes.
For now though I have to leave it there and get ready to leave. Fingers and toes are crossed!
For a lot of people, Christmas time is family. Whether you’re really close or all meet up for this specific event, you all actually stand each other and huddle around and watch each other open thoughtful presents, or you’re family communicates in underhand remarks about what each other is or isn’t doing (“So when are you going to college?”), everyone has their own experience of Christmastime.
For me, I don’t like it. In fact, I hate Christmas.
You can think of me as a Scrooge McDuck, that’s fine. “Surely as a kid you were excited for Christmas?”. True, I think the last and most vivid memory I have of actually being excited I was 11 or 12. I was aching to know what I got for Christmas. We had a tradition in our house that after we went to Christmas Mass (which was on Xmas Eve), we got to open one present. Even after opening just one I wanted to know what were in the others. I barely slept. Waking up that morning, my sister and I eagerly wait for the parents to slowly wake up, get a coffee in them, get their bearings then move to the lounge room to start the mess of wrapping paper. All that time we waited with as much restraint as dogs obediently sitting and waiting for the go signal to swallow a treat whole.
The more complex explanation would be that my disdain for Christmas is layered.
Continue reading “Christmas, huh…”
Hey everyone, hope you’re well! New post for you and it’s in collaboration with She Does Stuff!
Like a lot of you, we’re not big on vegetables. There’s some that are top tier, always the best no matter what you do, and then it kind of just trickles down from there.
So when my mum gave me a box of free vegetables, I placed them all out and stared at the disappointment, knowing these little parcels are good for the body but by god they sucked. Throwing them out is never an option.
Minds had to come together once more and think about how to utilise these unappealing veg in the best way possible, for the picky eaters, food and texture sensitive and begrudging people of the world.
Also, you sites out there with the titles “Vegetables You Think You Hate”, no, I know I hate these stupid vegetables, don’t think you’re making me join your vegetable cult.
Continue reading “What To Do with Veggies You Hate”
You know what? I almost forgot it was World Mental Health Day today, so to all my fellow sufferers, yay for us and when people all ask questions and are sympathetic for one whole day. Cynicism aside, if you don’t suffer from a mental illness but are looking at different things to read up on and use what you learn, good on you.
Remembering it was WMHD instantly reminded me that a long time ago – ten years ago to be exact – I had written something for the occasion. Now, I can’t really remember what spurred me to write this stream-of-conscious piece, I think I was having a mental health ‘moment’ around this time and there were people in my life exacerbating it who also didn’t take it seriously.
Anyway I thought I’d post it below for you. To me it’s cringey (I always think that about everything I write) but it’s interesting to see for myself as well as the outside world, what has changed and what hasn’t. Oh, little, tired, young Lucy…
Continue reading “World Mental Health Day”
I remember the day I saw this picture.
It was a few years ago, around 2017/18. I was scrolling through Pinterest searching posts about Asperger’s in women when I stopped at this picture of a young girl smiling.
That smile… It was like looking at the younger version of me. The top lip curled inwards, the bared teeth, the little areas of tension in the lower half of the face while the rest is relaxed, what others might call ’emotionless’.
Continue reading “…And the Whole World Smiles with You”Hey everyone stopping by, just wanted to give a quick notice to say I’m having ~technical issues so the post I was going to put up will be up tomorrow, possibly Friday!
Watch Barry.
Let me say that again: Watch the HBO show BARRY.
We doubt you just went ahead and did that, so let us put it this way. Barry is about Barry Berkman, a former marine-turned-assassin that stumbles into an LA acting class after following a target there and, wouldn’t ya know, the boy loves it!
If that isn’t enough to pique your interest, we got some reasons why you should watch and… sorry in advance if we get too passionate.
[This post is spoiler-free! Be careful going onto YouTube to watch videos because a lot a very spoilery but we’ve added some videos below for your curiosity]
Continue reading “Reasons to Stop Sleeping On BARRY and Start Watching”
What a year, huh? We’re only halfway but I feel like I’ve lived two lifetimes since Christmas. Six months ago my dad was getting discharged from hospital and I was getting ready to look after him here!
In case you don’t know, I live in Australia (south-east Queensland) and we are in a weird time with COVID. We’re now getting into the colder part of our winter and different states are in different stages of lockdown, with Victoria about to go into full lockdown yet again in around 24+ hours. In New South Wales (the state between QLD and Vic) it’s, for the most part, the close to ‘back to normal’ but still with restrictions (as of writing 8 new cases emerged overnight) and here in QLD we’re coming up to phase 3 of restrictions (with no new cases). I should add that it’s easier to travel into NSW with its active cases than into QLD and since I live near the border, that’s the main difference I’ve found firsthand.
While this does ease a lot of the anxiety with going out in public it still makes me hesitant, and I’m not alone. Our conservative government here has been pressuring all states and territories here to open and get back to work and school for months now. even with evidence that the lump payment people got from Centrelink (if they were ‘eligible’) our absolute scab of a prime minister has voiced that people don’t want to go back to work because they’re getting money from the government. I should let you know that this government just did this too.
I say this because since the initial outbreak here, we’ve had weird, pseudo, contradictory rules here that have constantly made people confused. Between the phrase “social distancing” and being able to do one thing then the PM confirming it yet letting people -himself included- go to Hillsong conferences. Not one mask there, of course.
These contradictions and an Australian philosophy of “she be right, mate” [x]made a lot of people, especially in the autumn-but-still-summery-climate take a very relaxed attitude. This is a city where even McDonald’s has to remind patrons “no shirt, no thongs/shoes, no service” if they come rolling in from the beach. Honestly, the second – the SECOND – we went from the full phase one restriction and went into phase three, two of my neighbours had parties again, I had people wanting to come over, knowing very well I’m immunocompromised, in public no one was using hand sanitiser going into grocery stores or cleaning their carts. For a lot of people, it was already back to normal!
I don’t have to tell you that it wasn’t for me. Look, during this outbreak I’ve been very lucky. I don’t have a job but I do get a government payment so I can’t survive. I’m very much a homebody and a lot of the things I’m trying to achieve are through doing work here at home. This change to being ‘housebound’ didn’t change my day-to-day living. However, I wasn’t eligible for grocery delivery, I still had to get meds (thankfully our chemists here had strict protocols for stepping foot inside). I still had to go out with people who found all of it really annoying and convenient. For me, it was incredibly stressful and the idea that people found it disrupting to get their 10 packs of toilet paper or to get coffee and drinks with their mates was so. goddamn. infuriating.
As I said above, we’re officially in winter now and August is our coldest month. With phase three in effect in a few days and borders starting to open (except Vic) it’s a nervous time for a lot of people, including me. The pressure for things to be normal again and a relaxed/careless atmosphere almost guarantees a second wave.
I can’t begin to imagine how you guys in the US are doing, for you guys doing the right thing I commend you so much. You have all my support and thoughts.
For now my life is still the same and I’m hoping online acting classes will start up again soon so I can do that. My family and I (along with some of my friends) are all moving to different places in the next few months so this is going to be an interesting rest of the year that’s for sure!
Sorry if you didn’t want to read a half-political, half-rant post, however, you can’t separate COVID and politics as what we can and can’t do is dictated by the leader/party of your country.
We’re also in a recession and while you might get an image of the 2008 financial crisis, with a pandemic happening we’re not really seeing the physical (or financial effects) of it yet. Actually, I think most Australians have forgotten we’re in one – I almost did right now.
