So, here’s a quick and somewhat hilarious arachnid story.. without images because I don’t want to see pictures of an eight legged creature and neither do you. :) I’m putting it behind a read more for the arachnophobes. :) Click through to read it.
Snoskred Health
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Vitamin Regime
I’ve mentioned before that when I stop taking my vitamins daily, that is a signal to me that I am on the road to depression. I take 5 things daily – 1x multivitamin – 1x hair, skin and nails – 2x Echinacea – 1x Mucus Relief Guaifenesin..
The Echinacea comes from Vitamin World – I bought a large quantity of Echinacea from there when I was on Oahu in 2013. The multivitamin in the middle is from Aldi. They are reasonably priced and I find them to contain everything I need in a multivitamin. The Hair, Skin and Nails is from Costco. 250 tablets last me 250 days and cost me less than $20 from memory, which is awesome value.
I don’t think any human being is capable of creating a diet that gives them every single nutrient they need on a daily basis, which is why I supplement with vitamins. I wrote before about having a warm feeling in my leg which was caused by a lack of vitamin B.
In Australia vitamins can be costly so I often seek out more cost effective options. Once a year, if I am not going to the states that year, I’ll do a big order from Vitamin World.
I’ve posted about that before – Vitamin Delivery. Their vitamins are excellent and though shipping is not cheap it still works out cheaper than buying the vitamins here, unless I get them from Costco.
Sephyroth sent me a couple of bottles of the Guaifenesin which is not readily available in Australia, certainly not in a tablet format. It can sometimes be found in cough syrups. I’m just about out of them, sadly. I do believe they assist me, especially when taken in combination with allergy tablets during hay fever season.
Why do I take the Guaifenesin? I have a problem with fluid in my middle ears, which can cause dizziness and reduce my hearing to a level not acceptable to me. If I run out of Guaifenesin I can take Bisolvon which is used for chest mucus here in Australia but it also dries up my ears.
So I make up these 7 day packs every couple of weeks, and each day I just open the flap and take the vitamins for that day. I can’t fit the blue ones in with the others, so they reside in their own container and I take one of those out each day.
Vitamins are considered food by customs so if and when you bring them back into Australia you need to declare them. :)
What vitamins do you take, if any? :)
Wax Melts Sample
Snoskred received a free sample which any PINCHme member could receive as long as they answered the survey questions and qualified for the sample.
So let me say right up front.. Nobody is paying me to write any of this, though I guess that will become somewhat self evident as you read on.
PINCHme had a survey you could fill in to see if you would qualify for a “secret sample” – so I filled it in, and I got an email telling me I qualified and I would receive a sample of Glade Wax Melts.
So they were aware, from my answers to this survey, that I burn wax melts regularly, and that I have never bought their wax melts before. I looked at them when they first came out and there was a special pack with the burner but they were all sold out when I went to get one. I had picked them up and smelled them, and there were a couple of flavours I would be likely to purchase.
I was extremely excited about this sample because I am a wax melts girl. I love those things. Here are some of the Yankee Candle ones I brought back from Hawaii last trip..
I am now able to source the Yankee Candle melts here, though at double the US price. You can buy them too – most Spotlight stores now stock them. I’m here to tell you from a lot of testing these personally, they smell amazing, the scent lasts a long, long time, and there is a huge range of scents to choose from. The candles are awesome as well but not at all cheap.
I also brought back a bunch of Essenza candle melts and a bunch of Better Homes and Gardens wax melts. And even though I have been using them regularly I still have quite a few of these left.
With all that said, I like to mix it up and have as many different scents to choose from as possible – because who knows if I will be in the mood for Red Delicious or Black Coconut or Spiced Rum Cake.
So here was a chance for a new company I do not usually buy product from to win my regular wax melts business. They were sending me a sample! YAY! I was very excited.. but day after day went by, and no sample appeared. The date for me to give feedback on the sample was getting closer and I was starting to think I might not be able to leave any feedback this time. Then I got an email advising me there was a delay with the sample and it will arrive sometime in January.
And eventually, arrive it did.
And then I wondered why they even bothered to send me this stingy one little wax cube.
Glade, you are asking me to spend $8.99 for 6 wax cubes on an ongoing basis, while sending me one, tiny, little cube.
I think, perhaps not.
Samples are a great chance for company and consumer to try each other out, see if maybe a relationship can develop. I took the time to fill in the sample and qualify for you that I am a potential customer, and then you scrimp on the sample you sent me? Stingy much?
For your future reference, Glade. Fairy sent me 3x dishwasher tablets. Pantene sent me enough shampoo and conditioner for 5 washes. If you are going to send out samples, I think 2-3 squares in different scents is the minimum you should aim for.
Sephy you ought to get this – Better Homes and Gardens Wax Warmer Starter Set, Woodland Deer – next time you are at Walmart, if you can’t find an Essenza kit at Costco.
Here are some closer views of the Yankee wax melts.
Update Week
What I’m Doing – Exercising
There has been a significant addition to my living space. You might remember how it was before – my living space.
I recently got the all clear from the lung specialist to get back into exercise and while I have a elliptical here already, I did not want to start with that. It has been a year since I have done any significant exercise and jumping onto the elliptical right away would be the best way to get myself injured. So I borrowed this treadmill from my parents – it was gathering dust at their place anyway.
I started out easy but within a relatively short time I was walking 5kms a day and I felt like I had to limit myself to that, because I could easily have walked for hours of an evening while watching tv..
This past week, I cranked up the pace a little and it went like this – Sunday 5km – Monday 6km – Tuesday 7km -Wednesday 8km – Thursday 9km – Friday 10km. Over the space of 6 days I walked 45km. By Friday I had a super awesome blister on my right ankle so I took the weekend off from walking, but I’ll be back at it tomorrow.
What I’m Thinking – Positives
River posted some thoughts yesterday which got me thinking.
I try to write positive letters or emails to companies and people fairly regularly and I wonder if maybe this is something which could work as a linkup, maybe once a month or so. I’ll ruminate some more on this and probably launch something in January. It would be a monthly link up thing, I think.
I think it would be something amazing to start a movement of positive feedback. We all are quick to complain when things are wrong, but how many of us send a note to the companies that make products we trust, use daily, and rely on?
The Inlinkz thing I use for the Shoe Sundays is pretty simple to use, and I can leave them open forever, so maybe I’ll do one and see if people want to link up with their positive company feedback, and whether or not they get a response as well.
What I’m Considering – Checking In
I try to visit the blogs I read and leave comments as often as I can however you may have noticed a drop off in my comments lately – first of all, check your spam bin because I might be in there – here’s how to check your spam bin on WordPress, scroll down to please note – and second of all, I was commented out by the end of November.
I’m planning a January visiting blogs spree, and I’m going to try leaving a comment as well as leaving an actual note if possible, via an email address or contact form. This is harder than you might suspect. The amount of people blogging without an email address or contact me form is way higher than it should be. :(
If you are wanting to know how to put your email address out in the open without attracting significant spam, try writing it like this – snoskred {at} gmail {dot} com <-- that one will reach me, by the way.
What I’m Obsessed With – Moonbase Inc
The Other Half was trying to talk me out of playing Candy Crush Saga, which I had only recently tried out and I got stuck on this one level, I can’t beat it no matter what I do. It is *infuriating* which is not what a game should be, in my opinion. :( And it keeps telling me to buy boosts so I can win the level and I flat out refuse to do that.
So he showed me this neat little Moonbase Inc game, which is completely free, you can play on your Android tablet or phone. I have it on both. :) It is that awesome. I would actually pay for this game.
I can see there from here..
A few weeks ago, I had to go to an appointment about 40km away. This was the first time I’d been out by myself on the roads driving a decent distance in a while.
3 separate times, I saw vehicles in front of me cross to the wrong side of the road, while they were busy doing something.. I could see they were texting or reading something on their mobile phone.
And my car horn is like the horn from a clown car. Nobody takes my beeps seriously. In fact I don’t even think they hear them, it never seems like anyone does. I asked the other half to install me a more serious horn, because these people need a wake up, when they are doing this. If there were cars coming the other way, they could kill someone, even themselves!
There was a time recently, after watching one too many episodes of Crash Investigation Unit, that I found myself sitting in the car, at the end of the driveway, unable to leave the driveway because if I went X way, then Y could happen, and if I went A way, then B could happen. No way seemed safe, and my mind was screaming at me.. don’t go anywhere, put the car away, it is too dangerous on the roads.
And then rational me said err, no, lets’s get going, I have to live life. I need to buy stuff, like chocolate and icecream. I can’t become a hermit and just order my groceries on the internet and never leave home again. But I could see there from where I was. And part of me wanted to do exactly that – become a hermit, stay home where it is safe..
I mean, I could easily do that, Coles and Woolies home deliver here now. But if I let those fears take over, then there will be no end to it. What will be, will be. If I get taken out by an unlicensed idiot driving while texting, I’ll be pissed, sure. And I’ll haunt that person foreverz, because seriously your text couldn’t wait, you couldn’t pull over?
Quirky Snoskred
Tell us about a quirk or odd habit that you have.
Many of my best one liners are courtesy of NYPD Blue. The one I use the most was from the first season with Jimmy Smits, where they had a “skell” in the room and they said something to him, and he yells “I decline that”.
I took this to work by simply adding the word “respectfully” in there. I was respectfully declining all kinds of shiznit. Nobody minded, because of the respectful aspect. I even used it on the phones with callers, on one occasion with great success to a prank caller who wanted me to.. well, things I wanted to decline with great prejudice, and possibly to decline with my fists, if such wants had been requested to my face.
No became a word rarely used. And to be honest, I liked declining a lot more than just no. Why use one word when you can use three or four? It fit in with my quirky, Aspergers nature. And with my friends, it was an in joke, as well. :)
I’m like a virus, my words are contagious, they don’t just stay with me, they go places with people. I heard someone respectfully decline that at the supermarket – someone I never met myself, but someone I know is a friend of a friend. And that was kinda cool.. :)
One Year Later
I have not mentioned it here before, but last November after we got home from our amazing and wonderful Hawaii trip, I had a very large Pulmonary Embolism which could easily have killed me.
After we got home I felt like I had a flu, I couldn’t catch my breath. But I didn’t have any of the other symptoms you get with flu. My doctor suspected PE and sent me for a V/Q lung scan and in doing so he saved my life..
They put me in hospital for 24 hours – they wanted to keep me for many days to monitor me but I refused because the other half can nurse me better than anyone else can, we have an oxygen monitor right here at home, they needed the bed for much sicker people than me, and I wanted to be with my cats because a cat purring on you is the best medicine anyone can have.
So, they sent me home with some hospital charts that the other half could keep all his observations of me on, and I had the longest shower ever. Ick. I am a germophobe, so not a big fan of hospitals at all. I was back at work the next day, o2 monitor attached set to alarm if my blood oxygen went below 90.
In speaking with the doctors I know exactly when the clot formed – probably 3-4 hours into the flight home, one of my legs went to sleep and when I got up to try and wake it up, there was this pain in the back of my thigh. It felt like a muscle cramp, so I asked the other half to pummel and massage that spot a little – and he did. This may have been an excellent thing breaking up the clot into smaller pieces. It might have actually saved my life.
The doctors put me on a wonderful new-ish medication called Rivaroxaban which is the alternative to Wharfarin and does not require constant blood tests and monitoring. Anyway, enough about that – all this just to say I have been getting some tests done to try and determine why this happened, and if it is likely to happen again, and so I can get off the medication and be cleared to snorkel this summer. ;)
Shoe Cleaning Station
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember my very first Shoe Sunday post – I showed you where my shoes live.
I do own a lot of shoes, and every single pair gets a regular clean. What I usually do is wait until a rainy afternoon, when I can’t be doing anything useful outside, and all my other chores are done for a bit, so I do not feel even a tiny bit guilty about spending a good couple of hours with my much loved shoes..
First up, I cover the work space with a floor mat – the kind you might use in a bathroom. It is good to use something with a bit of thickness to protect the work space, as there will be times when I am removing stones from the shoes with a metal nail file. I always make sure to have a pair of nail scissors and a metal nail file handy at my shoe cleaning station, because your shoes may have some surprises for you.. like this –
I recently sat down with a couple of freshly arrived TV episodes – Homeland and Downton Abbey, my anti-bacterial wipes because there is a lot of flotsam and poopsam on the soles of shoes. The outside of the shoe get a decent wipe down, the place where my foot sits also gets a decent clean, plus the soles get a really thorough scrub. Here is a pair mid scrub, you can see the suds. I’m using the Kirkland Antibacterial Wipes from Costco.
Below you can see one clean sole, and one ready to be cleaned sole.
I cleaned 13 pairs in the space of a pleasant couple of hours, while watching teevee. Once the shoes are clean, they are placed on a clean towel so they can dry off. These shoes all went off for a photo shoot right after being cleaned, for future Shoe Sundays here on the blog.
Tell a story about your shoes on your blog, and link up below!
Life Rules
Sometimes, as a person with Aspergers, I make mistakes.
It would be so much easier for me if I would allow myself to delete them and pretend like they never happened. Wouldn’t life be so much easier if we could all do that, when we screw up?
But if I did that, I would learn nothing from those mistakes. These mistakes must remain in existence for a reason. I made myself a life rule some years ago – I must never delete something I type. Even when it would be so much easier.
These mistakes come along when I am feeling comfortable enough with people to type things I should not type, the things I should only think and never allow to be typed out loud.
And isn’t that an awful thing – to know that every time you begin to get comfortable with people, to settle in, to be accepted, to feel like a part of a community, that you are going to screw that up, possibly in un-fixable ways.
It makes me want to retreat, to hide, to disappear. And that is dangerous in itself.
I know I’m a good person. I’m generous, with my time, with my money, with others. But like everyone, I am not perfect.
Believe me, that thing I said wrong, I’ll still be kicking my own butt over it months, maybe even years later, long after you have forgotten it. That is the only way I can learn and make progress and not make that mistake the next time..
Signs That Lead Towards Depression Town.
Everyone experiences depression in their own way..
As someone who has been back in that hole a couple of times now, I know when I stop doing some simple everyday things, I’m on my way back there. And just in case, I’ll share those here – your mileage may of course vary.
1. I stop listening to music
When the thoughts in my head tell me music playing while doing my chores is too annoying or irritating, there’s a sign.
2. I stop lighting candles and burning incense
They might sound like nothing but these things are important to me mentally and I recognise that now.
3. I stop accepting invites
When it is safer to stay at home in my safe place than to go out into the world and see people I know and love, that is a bad sign.
4. I stop eating well
Something in my mind says my body is not worthy of decent food or the time and energy it takes to create decent food. I certainly do not feel like experimenting or trying any new recipes.
5. I stop doing chores
Clutter begins to pile up, and that in itself causes me to feel depressed.
6. I stop taking my vitamins
I can’t be bothered putting them in the little pill containers ready for taking daily, and I can’t be bothered taking them out of their larger containers daily. As a consequence my nails become brittle (hair and nails is the most important vitamin for me) and my immune system becomes less awesome at dealing with things (I take 2x echinacea daily).
7. I stop caring about – and following – my daily routine
Having a daily routine is very important to me – almost too much so. When I’m not depressed, if I don’t get to follow my regular routine for too many days together I begin to lose the plot a little. When I start to not care about following the routine, I know I’m in trouble.
8. I sleep more than usual
– Usual for me is 8-9 hours, anything more than that on a regular basis (and I don’t mean one off situations like I have a cold or I slept badly the night before) and I know I’m on that road back to depression
When I spot any of these signs on a regular basis, especially more than one of them at a time, I know it is time to seek medical assistance and/or head back to my counsellor. I also know that I need to *make* myself do these things for a little while, because if I can just keep doing them I can avoid that hole. :)
That is my situation and as always everyone may find theirs to be different. :)
Please to note – those in Australia – if you know anyone who is suffering from depression, anxiety, or other forms of mental illness, one of the best first steps to take is to see your local GP and ask about creating a mental health plan. You currently can receive up to 10 free sessions with a psychologist every 12 months under this plan.
Also, you can check out Beyond Blue to get support and find more resources. You can also call Lifeline on 131114.
You can also talk with your doctor about whether anti-depressants would be worthwhile for you.
Some people are opposed to taking medication for depression. When those people tell me this, I ask them if they are also opposed to insulin for diabetics, or opposed to blood thinners for people with blood clots, or opposed to this list does go on for some time. I make sure to ask if they are opposed to everything from giving children nurofen or panadol right through to organ transplants. And believe you me, if someone is silly enough to make that statement in my presence, they are going to get asked the *entire* list of things. :) I’m wacky like that.
Depression is more than just a low mood – it’s a serious illness that has an impact on both physical and mental health, and medication can be important in treating it in order to correct the chemistry of the brain which may be out of whack. Yep, that is my technical term for that, however you can google if you want to know more about that. Here is a good article to start with but it is quite technical.