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I did notice a change pre and post 25- alcoholism/alcohol tolerance

I read a little while back that a woman’s brain is fully developed in her 25th year (for men, it’s 30)

It’s had me thinking and since I’m now half a decade away from 25, (I’m 31) I have been able to see how true that really was for me.

I have an impulse control disorder, it’s commonly joked about but it is real and makes impulses hard to control.

I have been thinking back and trying to remember years (typially by my kids’ ages) and I did realize that I may not have woken up on my 25th birthday different, but that year did make a huge difference.

Pre-25 Me

When I was 21, I drank. A lot. Like, so much that people were trying to get me into rehab for it (I actually did try but the cost and waiting time made it unfeasible). I would blow my whole paycheck at the bar after work. I got tired of going through my check so fast, I started giving myself an allowance (the rest would go in savings) and I’d only spend a set amount a night. It worked but there were some nights random people would offer to buy drinks (one guy hit the jackpot on a game 3 times and bought 3 rounds for the entire bar- that was the night I was trying to only drink 1-2 beers a night)

At 22, I met my husband and he was too young to go with me, so I very slowly quit drinking. He was never a drinker either so it wasn’t fun to drink without the man I was dating.

At 23, I had my first child. It was extremely easy for me to go the pregnancy with no alcohol.

It was also easy to go her NICU stay without it but I did pick some other habits up. I started overeating.

I also picked up loom knitting to kill the stress and it was very therapeutic.

While she was in NICU out of state, I went home for a weekend to study and take my state board exam for school. While I was home, we went to a game convention and the after party.

I met one of the workers and his wife and I ended up getting drunk. Instead of how I usually was, I cried most of the night about being there instead of at the NICU, even though the nurses themselves told me I needed a break and I made sure they would have a volunteer to go in and cuddle her a bit.

I didnt drink again after that for a year, when I drank with some neighbors, then again a year after that with neighbors. Both times the pain wasn’t worth the alcohol. I had to get drunk to avoid the pain so I slacked even further off.

Post-25 Me

By the time I was 25, I had one living 2 year old and 25 was the age we lost miss Cassie. It was also the literal year I found the side effects from drinking weren’t worth the taste. I got to a point I hated how I acted drunk, but I couldn’t even drink one small glass without getting a buzz. By that time, I was drinking maybe 2-3 times a year.

After 25, I started to notice how bad my joints would ache after taking just 1 sip.

I started just saying yes to the occasional offer when I was around someone else drinking so by the age of 26-27 I was down to maybe 1 a year.

This past summer, we took both kids to the beach with my parents. My mom and the kids were asleep and my husband and I went to a small restaurant at the hotel.

I was strictly on the gluten free diet by this time, so I researched and the margarita seemed safe. It had been over a year since I had drank last and I ordered a small margarita.

I had such a bad immediate reaction I couldn’t finish it. My stomach bloated up and I couldn’t breathe, I started to feel like my throat was closing up and it took me 30 minutes of walking around the beach to regulate my breathing. That night scared me to the point I’m now saying I’m allergic, although there is probably something I cant tolerate in most alcoholic drinks. I’ve been unable to drink most drinks for years anyways.

I say sometimes that my family has saved me from alcoholism and I do mean it but age is also playing a factor. When I was 21, I didnt get the severe pain in my joints I do now with one sip. I didn’t feel nothing but guilt for drinking and I didnt bloat up.

Either way, I prefer staying sober to being blacked out and passed out.

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My Dream Journal is Up For Sale

After talking about it and working on it for the past few months, my dream journal is up and ready.

In this, there is space to record your dreams along with descriptions of common themes. I’m already in the middle of working on a dictionary to go along with this and am hoping to release that out by the end of the year.

It’s 10.00 a copy, you can get it here.

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“I can’t keep plants alive”

I’ve heard that “argument” for not having kids a few times.

I have to ask, is that a true worry or is that one of the random “excuses” people feel they are forced to come up with when they don’t want kids (by the way, the only valid excuse should be “because I don’t want to have kids.” I’m sorry, but people should never be pressured or told they are selfish if they don’t want to have kids.

This question is coming from someone who has managed to keep 2 kids alive- for 8 years almost now (8 years next month for one and 3 years for number 2) but still managed to kill cacti and other “impossible to kill” plants. It’s so much easier to keep children and pets alive than it is to keep a plant alive, at least in my book.

With kids you just have to provide food, shelter, water/milk, teach safety and make sure they aren’t in dangerous situations.

With pets, it’s the same.

With plants- make sure the soil is perfect, the temperature and lighting is perfect and give them water- but not too much. That’s not enough… no! that’s too much… you just killed it.

Inside plants are the worst when you have cats. You can’t put something by the window, if you do, the cat will perch. With the cat perching, they will likely destroy the plant, make a mess and destroy the blinds.

Outside plants are a bit easier, until it rains and you end up with mud soup. You go outside in the morning after a hard rain and watch your flowers floating around your garden. Or you see huge bite marks in your sunflowers. Or your tomatoes are ate up.

I’ve had successful gardens a few times but more than once I’ve had unwanted visitors eating my plants and over watered succulents. Every year I’ll keep trying to keep plants alive, but I will always say- it’s much easier to keep kids alive than plants.

 

 

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My writing has been featured

A while back I submitted a “Share your story” post about losing my Cassandra to Pickle & Poppet. They submitted the post to “ABloggingGoodTime” and they selected it as their featured post this past week.

“Reflections
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Three year olds say some of the funniest things

My three year old has my imagination. She is always someone different.

Yesterday, she was Doc McStuffins and I was her patient.

“You have a bleed on your cheek. When your cheek has a bleed on it, I’ll get some cheek paste for the bleed.”

She got sick one day, I’m guessing from drinking too much soy milk before her meal. She threw up in the restaurant and asked my mom “what is that? That’s not my favorite thing.”

I guess it’s good to know that throwing up isn’t her favorite.

Another time, I got glutened. We went out to eat when it kicked in (almost exactly 12 hours later) and I was sitting in the restaurant crying unable to move or sit still. She had to run over and inform the waitress mommy was sick, then she had to tell every single customer that we walked past that mommy was sick.

She has also announced to all of Walmart that “that milk is diarrhea” or “that juice is diarrhea”

She is learning and she now verifying with me if food is “diarrhea” or safe and is doing a good job avoiding “diarrhea’ foods.

 

What are some of the funnier things your young kids have said?

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A Few Updates on Projects I’m working on

Astrology and Divination Newsletter

By the end of this weekend, I’m planning on having my first newsletter ready to send out.

This will be a once monthly letter, within the first week of the month. I refuse to spam but I will send out random updates occasionally but the updates will never be more than one to two extra a month.

Guided Dream Journal

I’m almost finished with my dream analysis journal. There will be a dictionary that will go with it, but that will be later this year.

When I get it published, I’ll be posting it on here. It will be 15 and will contain information as well as a journal to record your dreams.

Bethcessories Design

I’m putting the finishing touches to cleaning up the look of my shop, Bethcessories  It’s been up and running but I am going to be holding a special sale to celebrate the official grand opening when I have more stuff.

Bethcessories Design is my personal brand. I create every item myself. I also offer dream interpretations, tarot chats, tarot readings, rune/iching readings and Astrological charts, as well as spell SUPPLY kits.

I’m currently working on some Zodiac coloured decorations, and I’m hoping within the year to add curtains.

You can see my reviews here.

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Participation trophies and ribbons

One thing people are always screaming about are how Millennials grew up getting participation trophies, so that makes us “entitled” and that makes us think we deserve more than we do.

It makes me think of when I was in school, when we had competitions and I didn’t place, I wanted to be invisible. I hated those stupid ribbons- they were a symbol of failure not fun rewards for participation. I don’t know anyone who took pride in receiving a participation trophy- unless maybe they had physical disabilities and competed against fully able bodied children. (I can’t speak for them- so I don’t know how they felt)

It was also not our idea to give trophies to every child- we were children, not the adults leading the competitions so to blame us for being the generation given the ribbons is unfair itself. It was not our idea and we didn’t demand it. (parents likely did)

I wasn’t even that interested in the awards themselves- just to show to my parents (I do still have them somewhere but my mom saved nearly everything) but the stories about winning the field day or coming in second/third place were what I was proud of- one of my classmates got a bunch of participation ribbons and I actually traded them a second or first place for them to show their parents- the award meant nothing- I had placed they hadn’t and trading meant nothing. They were empty symbols. I have yet to meet anyone who actually took pride in those ribbons, that’s not to say no one ever has but they were meaningless at best and embarrassing at worst.

Do I think they are good for some physically or even mentally disabled children at a young age? Maybe. Especially since children with certain types of disabilities can’t compete as well with “normal abled” children. Not to say there aren’t exceptions, but kids who have trouble walking or running can’t win a race against a kid who is a naturally fast runner. I had 2 problems that both were undiagnosed. I just thought that thanks to hip dysplasia, I wasn’t flexible. I thought my joints snapping in and out were normal reactions- I didn’t know that’s what was happening (or that each snap was weakening my joints and leading to the somewhat severe, at times, OsteoArthritis I have now. I also had no idea I had asthma until one of my lungs started to collapse a few years ago and I ended up going to the ER becuase I was having trouble breathing and my chest was killing me.

None of those counted as real disabilities. I worked out daily at home, could pretty much keep up with the athletes in gym class and running was my only real weakness. I didn’t know I had Ehlers Danlos or that some of the nervous habits I had meant I was double jointed. I also had no idea the breathing problems were asthma. I was simply called lazy, a slacker and made to redo until the class was over. I still remember feeling like my lungs were on fire and the pain in my chest, but I never had major attacks.

There are children with much worse disabilities, though, and those kids may benefit from the trophies. Like I said, I don’t know. At a high school level, it may be as embarrassing to them as it is for most of us at a young age.

 

Did you ever get a participation trophy in school? Were you as embarrassed as I was or was it something you took pride in?

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I’m doing a mini Facebook Fast

This is something I do occasionally, especially when going through my feed starts to feel like a chore. I do it, but then it makes me feel like I’m wasting time (which I am)

I decided to go until February 28 (so, log back on March 1- if I want to go through the annoyance)

I see no real need to keep with it, I see no reason to even have a profile, but I keep it. I was told a while back that I needed to make sure I had a business page so that I could tell people who didn’t have Twitter, Instagram or other ways of following my website or Etsy shop

 

As of tomorrow, I’m 1 week in.

My last log in was January 28. My first time doing a facebook cleanse, I barely could last this long. Now, it feels like second nature. I do these a few times a year typically. When I first started, I did it as a trial to see if I could get away with deleting my Facebook permanently. It didn’t work out too well.

I did delete my account twice. The first time, I needed to get ahold of someone and found it was ten times easier to get ahold of them on Facebook and not on the phone.

The second time, I was trying to keep track of all my friends and family who said to keep them updated about when I had my baby, so I started a new account and only added those select family, in laws and close friends. That turned into adding back several people who requested me and before I knew it, I was back up to 100.

I’ve never had an account much older than 1 year but this time I decided to keep it and make it less personal.

I’m not planning on deleting

I am working on redoing things. I have been and I post very little private now. I keep the thought that if I wouldn’t post it publicly on my blog, if I wouldn’t say it in a guest blog for another site under my own name, if I wouldn’t sell the story to another website, I won’t post it on Facebook.

I use Facebook as one site to share articles and blogs I have written.

I use Facebook for networking and marketing purposes

I have found the best move for me personally

Instead of deleting the account, I do Facebook cleanses, as they’re called.

I take a few weeks to a few months off then go back on but before long, the incessant negativity has gotten to me again and I end up planning out another break. Most people go back with a renewed appreciation of the site, I just feel like it’s still a time-suck and waste to go but find myself browsing through my feed.

I know sites like that are supposed to be good for staying in touch with friends and family, but it doesn’t feel personal now like it used to feel. Already, keeping it turned off and staying away from accessing it at all has been giving me a somewhat hard time. I tried to respond to a comment on my latest post that was published and couldn’t without Facebook. I also have had a few pieces published and Facebook is the first place I typically share posts- but I’m doing a 100% fast right now, so those are being bookmarked until next month.

I’m still on the fence about how useful the site is (outside of a few random groups for writers/bloggers) but since I was told I needed a page since some people only have Facebook, I need to maintain my two pages at least a little.

 

Have you given up Facebook or gone on a “Facebook fast?”

If you have, what have been your obstacles? I may try to turn this into the 99 days challenge and see if I can go the full 99 days, not sure. I didn’t plan this. I just decided to see how long I could stay off this time.