Home Posts tagged "personal" (Page 3)

Tag: personal

Gluten-free FTW

So, last month I talked about how I’d switched to a gluten-free diet due to a gluten intolerance. I’d just started it, and it was going well. I wanted to give a bit of an update about my progress. 🙂 For the most part, I’ve been doing well. I’ve either been making actual gluten-free recipes, or modifying my own to make them gluten free. That hasn’t been too hard…yet. Except when you are running late and are starting dinner and have completely forgotten that some ingredients aren’t gluten free and you aren’t sure if you have any gluten-free equivalents on hand because this is the first time you’ve made it since going gluten free. Yeah. That happened recently. Luckily, it worked out. I just omitted the ingredient in question and checked that the other one was in fact gluten free (the brand was, thankfully) and all was well. Thing is, my cooking, since the pandemic started, has been what I call “fast and loose” — meaning that instead of figuring out which day I am making which meal on any given week like I used to, I literally decide the night before. Sometimes a few nights ahead if it’s more complicated. So things unfortunately slip my mind. I’m human. And I’m still adjusting. I’m sure at some point this will become more normal and natural and I won’t have to think, “Oh crap, is everything gluten free?” because all of my ingredients will be. I’m still in transition. Which brings…

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Clothes Make the Woman, Redux

This time last year, I blogged about how the pandemic was changing both my style tastes and my size and how I was adapting. This year…well, my wardrobe is still mostly in stay-at-home pandemic mode (as am I), but it continues to evolve… I’m still wearing a lot of athleisure, especially as the days heat up (here in Toronto we’ve had several heatwaves already). Reitmans has a wide size range and a variety of comfy leggings (and jeans); Icebreaker does the best merino t-shirts for both warm and cool weather; Tentree uses recycled polyester in their athletic line. I’m also slowly adding other items to meet my non-athleisure style needs. Really digging loose flowy tops in natural fibres — especially since I’ve at last discovered where to get tunic-length tops that are cut to skim over my decidedly not-pregnant round belly. Shout-out to Blue Sky Clothing! They also have comfy bike shorts in extended sizing. Since I have a terrible time finding shorts that fit me well and don’t pull in weird ways, I’m quite liking this leggings-meets-shorts trend (at least in my own house…ahem). To save my Northern European skin while gardening and walking, I’ve also picked up a couple of lightweight, oversized button-downs in organic cotton from MEC (last year) and hemp from Patagonia (this year). They go nicely with my straw hat. Coastal Grandma style, anyone? And I’m leaning into the colours and prints I love, that bring out my colouring and make me feel great. (Blue…

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Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes…

Like the song, I’ve had a pretty big change in my life recently. I started having symptoms of what I thought was another food allergy. For the record, I was diagnosed with quite a few nut allergies — including a deadly peanut allergy which did not manifest in childhood, oddly enough — and fruit allergies, as well as a few other random ones (latex and wintergreen, I’m looking at you). Fun fact: If you are allergic to either latex or bananas, chances are, you will be allergic to the other one, too. I didn’t know that. I’d known about my latex allergy for years, having worked in foodservice and was forced to wear latex gloves and basically suffer with hives going up my arms every night until they allowed me to start using non-latex gloves later. But the banana allergy took some time to figure out. Anyway, this all happened in my twenties, and I am forty-six now, so it’s been awhile. My symptoms were similar to hay fever: runny nose and tearing eyes, and also some fun digestive issues. (We won’t get into that). So after making a list of the culprit foods (a very varied list, I might add), I went to my allergist and got a scratch test. Which, by the way, is no longer a scratch test but more like a poke test. Anyway, nothing came up as an allergy. She told me that it was possible that these symptoms were due to an intolerance, which…

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Re-entry, Part 3

[CW: pandemic, mental health] Here in Toronto, the world hasn’t fully started up again yet. Lots of white-collar workers are still working from home at least some of the time, and downtown is still pretty empty. My contra dance group has just held its first dance since February 2020 (though I didn’t feel comfortable attending…maybe next time). And I’m tiptoeing back, one step at a time…but there are an awful lot of steps to take, somehow. (Case in point: this is my third re-entry post.) My spouse and I just got back from our first trip since summer 2020 — we took the train to Montreal to visit family for a week. It was wonderful to spend time with some of my immediate family members again, as well as hug a dear friend and pet a kitty and visit a bilingual indie SF&F bookstore. The travel and associated “new” experiences were less anxiety-inducing than I’d feared, especially since I had a really hard time with going back to the office pre-Omicron. My anxiety from earlier in the pandemic still flares up sometimes, but it’s back to being more manageable now. As long as I’m able to keep my mask on, I’m okay. (It gets harder as the hours stretch on or when I need to take the mask off in close quarters.) The part I found more exhausting was all the “peopling”, that is, spending time around people (other than my spouse, who doesn’t count). I’m an introvert and have…

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When I’m Not Writing I’m…Thinking About Art

So, due to some health stuff, writing has had to take a back burner and it totally sucks. I expect this to be temporary, and I fully plan on being back at it as soon as my fingers can get typing. But in the meantime, I’ve been doing some serious contemplation about art. Specifically, Tarot and Lenormand decks. For those who don’t know, I started on a dog deck for my sister about twenty-five years ago but never finished it. So that’s on my list of things to do. I’d like to expand the subjects to include other dogs and our cat, Hailey, as the only subject at the time was our dog, Emmy, who is of course now deceased. So that’s a thing. But lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about life in general and healing, affirmations, self-care, and other self-empowering type stuff. I just turned forty-six last month, and it dawned on me that I could use a bit of healing, being that I had been bullied and made fun of as a child and was in an abusive marriage. And I thought a healing/self-empowerment type Tarot deck would be so cool. There are so many out there, you can’t even believe. Kickstarter is literally my Kryptonite — I got turned on to it last year and went on a bit of a backing spree on Tarot decks. Of course I stopped before things got out of hand, and I backed them with the idea that…

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Buh-bye, Springing Forward and Falling Back!

Just in case you’re wondering, Kit and I switched blog slots this month, so you’re getting me a week early. Lucky you! 🙂 I just found out that the Senate passed a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. By unaminious consent. I found that interesting. They all agreed on this. Everyone. It still needs to go through the House and to President Biden, so we’re not quite there yet, but I am optimistic. I’ve said for years — years — that this crap needs to stop. It’s antiquated and from a time long past (1918 apparently). To save energy. But the world was so different then, right? Now…I don’t know about you, but every time we change, no matter which direction, it takes me about two weeks to adjust. I’m irritable, basically jet-lagged for all intents and purposes, and I’m completely out of sorts. My body even rebels. I used to end up in fibro flares, too. Back when I was a kid, and there was no internet to quickly check what date we were changing (yeah, imagine that), we’d end up either early or late for church on Sunday because we never knew. Now, with my Esperanto study? My friend just moved back to the States. So, we have time zones to consider and DST. Because where he lived previously, they hadn’t changed yet, but where he is now, they did, and so did we, and they were different. So this afternoon, we’re sitting here trying to puzzle…

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COVID Christmas, Year 2

Things are a bit different than they were last year. For one, we’ve gotten vaccines and boosters, whereas last year we did not. We’d had a full lockdown in March, and this year, we didn’t. Masks are not required now in Michigan but are “recommended.” And yet, COVID-19, the “virus in Seattle” from December 2019, is still very much with us. We’re on our, what, twelth variant now (second Variant of Concern) with omicron? There was a tweet the other day from a doctor about not wanting to learn the entire Greek alphabet due to the virus. I don’t mind that. I find it kind of interesting; kind of like the tropical storm/hurricane naming. I just want it gone. Last year, my family made the heartbreaking decision to not see my in-laws for the holidays. They’re elderly, and we were concerned about them catching the virus. We did a FaceTime thing on Christmas Day to open gifts and that was okay…and we made the best of it….but let’s be real. It just wasn’t the same. They were missed. Terribly. This year, we’re all vaccinated and boostered, so we’re going for it. We’re seeing them both days, actually. It is great to go back to some measure of normalcy, although the specter of this thing is still hanging in the background, always there. Siri Paulson, my fellow Turtleducker, posted on Facebook a meme about in the future, how we’ll be going through old stuff and run across a mask and it’ll…

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Re-entry, Part 2

You’ve got me for a second time this month because KD is busy putting the finishing touches on her awesome haunted-house ghost-chaser found-family novel, which will be out just in time for Halloween! (Are you excited? I’m excited.) [CW: pandemic, mental health] I blogged a couple of months ago about facing down the prospect of re-entry, and enough has shifted since then that I thought it would be worth revisiting… Since getting my second shot in June, I’ve seen friends a couple of times a month (not that far off from the frequency in my pre-COVID social life, except that pre-COVID there was dancing, which meant seeing a lot more friends each time). I’ve been to restaurants a few times, either on patios or in very well-ventilated spaces or with very few other patrons. I’ve stayed in a hotel. I even got to see (and hug!) a few family members I don’t live with. I’ve gone out to run errands more often. I’ve been to the mall once or twice. I’ve been to the dentist, the hairdresser, the optometrist. It’s gradually getting easier and less weird to be around people again. November, though, will be the big test. I’ve been working from home since March 13, 2020 — quite happily, aside from this whole pandemic thing. But my dayjob is calling people back into the high-rise office one day a week (which, for me, also involves a long public transit ride). I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t causing…

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This Time, I Will Breathe

It’s that time again, friends – the time when I come back from vacation vowing that Now Things Will Be Different. This time, in my day-to-day life I will get outside more and move my body more (like I did during vacation…we walked 8 km / 5 miles upriver one day, and went kayaking downriver the next day!) and get on top of all those niggling appointments that need to be made (the kicker is when you get them made and then they spawn MORE appointments). This time, I will make my house feel more like the hotel I just came back from – calming, nicely decorated and nicely lit, not stuffed with random crap – and take care of all (or at least some) of the little things that have been bugging me. Oh, and this time, I will make sure to relax more. Right. You can see the problem. The goal, of course, is to stop feeling like vacation is a precious breath of air before I go under again. I’m not drowning, exactly, but I am swimming very hard. My day job is the lake I’m trying to cross, with a shoreline that seems very far away and is always moving. The pandemic is a constant undertow that makes everything ten times harder (mentally/emotionally, that is; I’m lucky that my work isn’t directly affected, except for having gone virtual). Bad news (pandemic-related or otherwise) is the slap of a wave in the face. Weekends are when I…

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Vacation Time!

So, I did it! As I mentioned in my last post, I was in dire need of a break, so I found some time to take a week off. It was particularly tough because there still were a few odds and ends to take care of, but those weren’t really too big a deal. My clients were good with it, so I went for it. It feels a bit odd, to be honest. I’m one of those people that can’t relax well. I need to “be productive” constantly, so relaxing or resting or whatever is like a foreign concept. This time, I made a to-do list. I know that is probably the opposite of “relaxing” and “resting,” but I always like to have some kind of plan…even if I blow it three days in. It includes writing, relaxation, reading…some cleaning, since my office is in dire need of it, and some serious catch up stuff. I’m also participating in a self-care challenge, which is just the thing I need to get myself out of this funk and maybe into a situation where I am feeling better on a regular basis. Because for me it’s been, “Self care? What’s that?” Terrible, I know. My only excuse is that in the midst of a health crisis, long work hours, life in general, the pandemic, sleep apnea crap, and general madness, it was way down on the list of priorities. And I know that is bad. So that’s why I am doing it.…

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