I spent so much time on var­i­ous bus­es today (or wait­ing for them) that I read half of Fifty Shades Dark­er and all of Fifty Shades Freed, then start­ed the first book of the Iron Druid Chron­i­cles by Kevin Hearne, Hound­ed. I can’t say how grate­ful I am to have my Nook on days like this.

I’m exhaust­ed, though, and for the first time in a while I feel on the verge of a flare. I just can’t get warm and I don’t feel like I’ve real­ly recov­ered from a hypo­glycemic episode ear­li­er this evening, but I don’t want to eat any­thing. Every­thing hurts more than usu­al and I feel too tired to sleep, if that makes any sense. I can’t begin to count the num­ber of mis­takes I’ve had to cor­rect while typ­ing just this short post. Please for­give me for whichev­er ones made it past me.

I start­ed a new series at Fibrant Liv­ing today about being an active part of your own health care team. It’s impor­tant for any­one, but vital for those of us with com­plex or chron­ic con­di­tions.

I got to go to the library again today, thanks to Steven! We also had a great lunch at John­ny’s Piz­za. I have enough of my cal­zone left for anoth­er two meals, in fact (at least).

Now I have five more books with which to con­tin­ue my stud­ies, so I should get on with it!

Over at Fibrant Liv­ing, I’m talk­ing about ways to fight brain fog. That’s a prob­lem for peo­ple with chron­ic pain, depres­sion, and oth­er dis­or­ders, and I’d love to hear about how some of you deal with it.

I’m in a good mood. It’s a love­ly day, I’m learn­ing things, and I’ve got things to look for­ward to. How about you?

I missed men­tion­ing an FL post yes­ter­day! It’s one that has been in the works for a while, Canaries Are Us.

Get­ting Bet­ter is today’s post. I’m going to be alter­nat­ing between post­ing here and post­ing on my oth­er blogs from now on, but I’ll always at least post a notice here.

A Beau­ti­ful Path­way Lined with Trees … Buy From Art.com

Back to the NaBloPo­Mo prompts:
What do you do to cope when you’re ner­vous?

I have a whole mess of diag­noses, includ­ing post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and social anx­i­ety dis­or­der, so I feel jumpy and ner­vous fair­ly often. I’m on med­ica­tion that helps, and I have Ati­van that I can take if I must for pan­ic attacks. But I try real­ly hard to use the Ati­van, because 1) it can be addic­tive; and 2) it makes me sleepy. It makes far more sense to take advan­tage of the biofeed­back tech­niques I learned years ago to try to get my heart rate and breath­ing under con­trol. Cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py has also giv­en me some valu­able ways to exam­ine the thought pat­terns that lead to pan­ic attacks, so that I can try to short-cir­cuit them before I get too wound up.

For less crit­i­cal nerves, I find it impor­tant to keep my hands busy. I usu­al­l­ly take a small stitch­ing project with me wher­ev­er I go. Hav­ing my hands busy and keep­ing my mind par­tial­ly occu­pied takes up enough of my ener­gy to keep me from get­ting too wound up in nerves, most of the time. My stitch­ing is the equiv­a­lent of oth­er peo­ples’ doo­dling or fid­get toys.

Today I’m grate­ful for MARTA, which allows me to get around with­out hav­ing to own a car.

I’m also grate­ful for my won­der­ful pain spe­cial­ist and incred­i­ble ther­a­pist.

Today I’m grate­ful for hav­ing access to exer­cise equip­ment, and being healthy enough to use it.

I’ve been respond­ing to writ­ing prompts instead of writ­ing per­son­al posts because I haven’t had a lot to say pub­licly. I feel a need to stop now, though, and strong­ly rec­om­mend a book that I’ve been read­ing. The Mind­ful Way through Depres­sion: Free­ing Your­self from Chron­ic Unhap­pi­ness takes a very dif­fer­ent approach to recov­ery from depres­sion and anx­i­ety, issues I’ve dealt with for more than 20 years. The book includes record­ed Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion Prac­tices nar­rat­ed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, which are high­ly effec­tive.

I’m find­ing the book’s approach­es very use­ful. I have hope of pos­si­bly recov­er­ing beyond just tak­ing med­ica­tion for­ev­er for the first time I can remem­ber. I’d be inter­est­ed in hear­ing feed­back from oth­ers who are using the same approach.

When some­one asks, “Is (X place) acces­si­ble?” the answer is “no” if there are any stairs involved in get­ting there. It does­n’t mat­ter if every­thing inside X is on one lev­el but there are three “lit­tle” steps at the front door, or “just one flight of stairs out front.” Those “lit­tle” steps aren’t so lit­tle for those using scoot­er and wheel­chairs. The answer is also “no” if there is no whol­ly acces­si­ble bath­room near the main area.

Just once, I’d like to arrive some­where to find a place tru­ly acces­si­ble instead of hav­ing some­one who’d claimed acces­si­bil­i­ty say, “Oh, I did­n’t think about those lit­tle steps!” or “But that’s just one flight of stairs!” or some such stu­pid thing. Even though I hap­pen to be able to walk most of the time, if I’m using my scoot­er, there’s a rea­son for it. If I were to get off of it to walk up those few steps, where am I to store the scoot­er? ¹ Plen­ty of oth­er peo­ple can­not walk up those steps.

Why choose an inac­ces­si­ble place of busi­ness, any­way? Why are builders con­tin­u­ing to build inac­ces­si­ble res­i­dences? It isn’t expen­sive to build in acces­si­bil­i­ty in the first place, com­pared to ren­o­vat­ing for acces­si­bil­i­ty. Has all the talk of the aging of Amer­i­ca meant noth­ing with regards to home design?

Every­one is just tem­porar­i­ly abled in the long run, any­way. If you buy or build a house, it pays to go ahead and con­sid­er whether or not it would still suit you if you were injured in some man­ner. Could you get around on crutch­es or in a chair? If (shock­ing thought) you were to want to enter­tain some­one who uses mobil­i­ty devices to get around, could that per­son even get in your front door? Any door? I’ve lived in places where the answer would be a resound­ing “No!” and even if we got the poor soul in through, say, the garage, she could­n’t get up to the liv­ing areas.