I feel like a rug that has been trampled on by many people wearing muddy boots. I have dirt crunched into my fibers and pieces of grass and crumpled leaves. Some of those little burs that take a ride on people’s socks and a few pebbles have ground their way deep into me and I feel heavy and grimy and gritty and dull.
This is no way to feel. And it is Monday, and I for one would like to begin the week with a little freshening up.
The thing is, freshening a rug isn’t a PLEASANT undertaking. You’ve got to heave the whole thing over your shoulder and drag it outside and drape it over a railing or a clothesline somewhere. And then you beat it with the handle of a broom. It’s hard, dirty work, and clouds of dust accumulate around you and the rug. But eventually! The clouds dissipate into the air and you can lug your rug back into the house and unroll it on the floor and, even if it doesn’t LOOK much different (we’re not doing a deep clean here, just a freshening), it should FEEL better.
In the name of beating all the dirt out of the rug of my soul, I am going to release some clouds into the air. (This is just me complaining about things so I can hopefully stop thinking about them.) Grab your own run and join me, won’t you?
- Ongoing lack of sleep. A possible explanation for my ongoing sleep difficulty, it seems, is perimenopause which has the benefit of having next to zero remediation and can apparently last for up to 14 years. Funsies. Other symptoms – besides “sleep problems” (check) – include night sweats (check), dry skin (check), frizzy hair (frizz-dizzle), brain fog (yep), weight gain or excess tummy chub (indeed), and joint pain (yessir). I am just two months into my forty-first year on this planet, so it seems a wee bit early for perimenopause, but then again it apparently could be right on time. WE SHALL SEE.
- Health fret. This is really the heaviest thing weighing on me right now. But it’s not my health concern to share and all I can do is worry and pray and divert my energy to fretting about less important/more solvable issues.
- Walking shoes. My preferred form of exercise is walking. On a good week, I get in about 20 miles or so. But recently, I’ve been getting shin splints when I walk even a mile, which is a painful deterrent. So I finally went to a Proper Shoe Store, with real, live people who measured my feet and observed my walk (awkward) and made some sort of digital map of my feet. I bought some very expensive walking shoes. We had sunshine last week, so I got to try them out. And they immediately a) gave me blisters and b) sent sciatic pain shooting through my, you know, sciatic area. I don’t know if I need to return the shoes or just suck it up, but neither choice sounds preferable to the other.
- Having decisions made for me. I know a person who has many good qualities but who is also very, shall we say, secure in their knowledge that their way is The Right Way. Recently, they asked me if I was interested in a thing (sorry for being so very vague), and I said maybe, and then the very next day I spoke to someone else and learned that I was now enrolled in that thing! I do not think the person who enrolled me would have told me. And when I asked about it, they did not apologize, but just sort of acted like it was a big surprise. And the thing is, I would have agreed to enroll in the thing! But I didn’t get to make the choice, the choice was made FOR me. And I am super annoyed because I can either stay enrolled in the thing that I would have chosen to be part of but, by doing so, give this person the impression that I am okay with their making the choice for me… or I can un-enroll myself out of spite and miss out on the thing that I would enjoy. I am not close enough with this person that I know how to say, hey, that wasn’t cool. Especially because I suspect they are the type of person who would not change their behavior but would instead suggest that I was making a big deal out of nothing. The whole thing makes me want to grab someone by the shoulders and shake.
- Skin rebellion. My skin has undertaken a full-on revolt. I don’t know where it thinks it’s going, or how it could imagine that conditions will improve/change after all our years together. But it’s giving it a go, that’s for sure. I made the rash (foreshadowing pun) decision to try out some new moisturizing products. I applied the products on Wednesday of last week, and then again on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, I had an itchy red rash all over my neck. My husband went into scientist mode and asked me what changes I’d made to my diet, skincare, laundry situation. Since the only change I’d made was the moisturizer, he diagnosed (not really; he is not a dermatologist) contact dermatitis and said I needed to discontinue use of the moisturizer. The next day, the neck rash was itchier and angrier and I saw some suspicious rash-like bumps on my chin. On Saturday, the rash had crept up my face. Now, my forehead, nose, and chin are covered with scaly bumps, my eyelids are puffy and itchy, and I am facially miserable. I do not understand how one and a half days of using a new moisturizer equates to GOING ON FIVE DAYS NOW of itchy, aesthetically unpleasant reaction, but here we are.
- Eyelid Malfunction. Have you ever used one of those accordion-style window shades? We have them on our upstairs windows. To reveal the window, you grip the bottom bar and push it upward and the pleats of the shade compress into one another until you’ve exposed the entire window. This works most of the time. But once in a while, the pleats don’t compress neatly and they bulge out over the bar, obscuring part of the window. This is my upper eyelids right now. Heavy pleats of skin bulging out of the space between my eyebrows and my eyelashes. Maybe this is a result of the aforementioned skin rebellion, maybe it’s my ongoing lack of sleep, maybe it’s something to do with The Decline of Old Age (see above), maybe it’s allergies, but I am Not A Fan.
- No good clothes, anywhere. I cannot find any clothing that I like. I have purchased and tried on and returned so many things, I’m afraid someone is going to force me to attend a class in How to Use a Credit Card. The thing is, I have gained a lot of weight in the past year. While I don’t enjoy the way it feels at ALL, I am also completely unwilling to undertake yet another diet. The thought of following a strict regimen or buying specific foods or counting calories and — with any method at all — thinking about food all day every day is exhausting. But I need to cover my body with something, and I would prefer that I didn’t hate my appearance 100% of the time, so I am trying to find at least some new clothes that fit the body I have right now. And it’s NOT WORKING and this is not a new complaint or unique to me but I hate it.
All right, I think we’ve beaten as much dirt out of this old rug as we can this morning. It’s not FRESH, but it’s fresh-ER. I feel ready to face the week.
And now, to counteract the negativity – to spritz the air with a clean scent, if you will – I will list some good things.
- Because I am now two weeks past my second vaccination, I am going to stop wearing a mask entirely! No, just kidding. But I do have a hair appointment ON THE BOOKS and I am so excited.
- This weekend, I made reservations to fly with Carla to visit my parents. I got really teary after we booked the flights – out of joy at the prospect of seeing my parents and out of anxiety at the prospect of being in an airplane and airport with so many strangers – but I am tentatively looking forward to our trip. At least, to the part where we are THERE. Not so much to the part where I am potentially exposing my precious baby to a deadly disease. Our trip isn’t until August, so there is plenty of time to work myself into a nervous wreck. Right now I am choosing to be happy.
- MY HOUSECLEANER IS COMING BACK. Confetti! Fireworks! Cheers! I have the date of her return in my calendar and I am SO EXCITED and now I have the fun decision of what delicious treat to make for her when she arrives.
Do bring your own rug over to my railing. I’ll lend you my broom and you can share what’s making you feel gritty and grubby these days.
I’m on the same rug re sleep and skin, and suddenly having weird skin reactions to things, and it probably being perimenopause. I used to try skincare samples WILLY-NILLY with no issues!! Now I am still extremely twice-shy, having been once-bitten HARD by something back in December that left my eyelids weird and foldy and scaly and itchy for weeks. (Why so LONG? Just react, so I know not to use the product again, and then STOP WHEN I STOP USING IT.)
I would feel the same about that person who signed you up for something. I would stay signed up. But I would have many, many mental discussions about it, in which I explained to that person every way in which they were wrong to do that. And in which I composed The Things I Would Say if they ever asked me about anything AGAIN.
The walking shoes would send me right over the precipice of despair. You got them SPECIALLY MADE by EXPERTS. They should be GLORIOUS not TERRIBLE. This is ALL WRONG.
The clothing. Sigh. I just. Why. When we are being Accepting and so forth, why can we not at least find ACCEPTABLE clothing? I will say (perhaps utterly pointlessly, since what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another, and perhaps nowhere more obviously than on the issue of jeans; and also, perhaps you have already tried these) that I have had some acceptable success buying jeans from Maurices.com. (But I will caution that their leg openings tend to be larger than expected—which is good if you miss bootcut the way I do, but a little startling if you’re expecting New Bootcut, which is what we used to call Straight, and so you overcompensated by ordering Flare, hoping for something CLOSE to Old Bootcut, and what arrives is Actual Flare—and in fact maybe a more dramatic flare even than Flare?)
I AM SO GLAD YOUR HOUSECLEANER IS COMING BACK. Mine is coming in a week, and so I have entered Full-On Fret about it. But I know I DO want her to come back. I just…right now I just am looking at my house with new eyes.
Yes, come on, skin! Stop reacting when I stop using the thing! I will go check out maurices – thank you for the suggestion. I still have a few weeks before I realize just how far gone my house is in terms of cleanliness, but then I am sure I will be right there with you. Your housecleaner is coming back in a week! Woo hoo!!!!
I just remembered that I needed new walking shoes because of your post so I ordered five pairs to try on, hate all of, and then return to the store. So that will take care of that for a few months until I remember again that I still need new walking shoes and have for years.
Finding new walking shoes is almost as bad as finding new jeans!
Oh yes, perimenopause…it brings on many awful things…sleep, skin, mood, etc. Hopefully, it will be a short trip and not a long haul.
I would be LIVID if someone made a decision like that for me. Would I stay enrolled? It depends on just how LIVID I was at the time.
Clothes shopping. *sigh* It was hard enough pre-pandemic…now? Impossible.
The walking shoes thing! That makes me feel mental. I mean, seriously. SERIOUSLY. I have been in perimenopause for a while now and the sleep thing comes and goes. I hope it GOES for you. Praying to the sleep gods, and also sending positive thoughts about the health issue.
The person who signed you up for the thing? NO NO NO DO NOT DO THAT. Ugh.
Thank you for reaching out to the sleep gods on my behalf!
Sending you a virtual hug!! Love the metaphor but I’m sorry you needed one. I hope a new day dawning has helped!
<3
I would totally spite “not do the thing” if someone signed me up without asking and then tell them to please cancel the signup for me since they’re the one that did it. Seriously- that would ruin my time at whatever the thing is and I’d pass the pain point back to them to never ever pull that crap again.
AND THEN- sign yourself up at the last minute and tell that person your schedule suddenly cleared up and you can in fact go if you REALLY want to attend, maybe?
I’m also liking some of the super flowy sundresses on Amazon. Cotton, tiered… truly garishly bright colors. They’d be mumus if they had sleeves, but spaghetti straps change the look enough for me, though I sure don’t look like the willowy model in them- at least they don’t pinch anywhere! But dang it- they either have no pockets or only one pocket (WHHHHY?!?!) and that kills me. I like them enough to be looking for a seamstress to put pockets in a few for me.
Also I found I needed to jump TWO sizes this past year, not just one… I found (sigh) that was the reason none of the pants fit that I tried. I console myself that the amazing Kuhl hiking pants and shorts I generally live in are cut small to begin with…
One pocket – what in the world?!?! Although I am curious about these dresses, if you care to send a link.
Ask and you shall receive, sista. https://www.amazon.com/YESNO-Casual-Bohemian-Spaghetti-E75-CR35L/dp/B091TW2T72/ref=mp_s_a_1_15?dchild=1&keywords=tiered%2Bsundress&qid=1620174867&sr=8-15&th=1&psc=1
Yessssssss thank you!
This person who signed you up for something – WHAT IN THE WORLD? My sister is the most controlling person alive, but I now need to celebrate that her control issues are not combined with overstepping issues.
Bummed about the skin and the itching – I’d see a dermatologist if I were you, but sheesh, maybe it’s more of an allergist thing. Baffled.
So excited about your visit to your folks’ house- and my August even more people will be vaccinated.
I’m feeling super frustrated right now because there are many things up in the air over here – like when some things are happening, and that makes life hard to navigate. Add to that a snafu when registering Tank for college orientation and I was reduced to tears this morning. It will all work out, but there is money involved – as in flights bought, etc. What to do with those? Cancel? Hope we can make it? My mind is feeling overwhelmed.
Oh man, I’m so sorry – snafus that involve large amounts of money are the WORST. I have faith you will find a way to make it work, though. Hang in there!
I got new running shoes last year (pre pandemic) going to the store and all that because I had foot pain. Next run in my new shoes my knees and hips hurt. A lot. I went back to the store and they said this is common – the shoe corrected my stride so I was using my muscles just a little bit differently hence the pain. At their insistence I gave it two (painful) weeks and lots of extra stretching and ended up pain free.
I quit running this winter and still haven’t gone back but need to. Of course starting is always aweful. I too have your clothes problem. Grrr.
Oh that is good to know! Thank you!
Ugh, I’m sorry you’re STILL dealing with sleep issues. Have you considered prescription sleep meds, or do you not want to go that route (completely understandable!)? I would not be able to handle not sleeping for so long!!
I like Jd’s comment about the new running shoes – I was wondering, too, if it’s just the process of breaking them in that’s causing the pain. Hopefully!
Oh, I would 100% cancel the thing that the friend enrolled me in out of spite because that’s just the kind of person I am, lol. But I see the conundrum! But still. Overstepping boundaries like that is not cool!
One of the clients I write for is a cosmetic surgeon and his most popular surgery is eyelid surgery! I didn’t even know that was a thing people did, haha, but apparently the eyelids can show signs of aging really easily. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that weirdness.
Your good things are REALLY GOOD THINGS. YAYYYY!
What do I want to complain about? Work is stupid busy and it’s stressing me out so much (thankfully, I have a 5-day weekend coming up and I am NOT GOING TO OPEN MY EMAIL ONCE). I had a hair appointment that I had to cancel because the salon just announced masks are VOLUNTARY now. (UMMM.) And it’s now too hot to do afternoon walks. (100 degrees in the afternoon, no thanks!)
UGH UGH UGH – time to find a new salon, I guess, BOO. But HOORAY for a five-day weekend! I hope it is restorative!