Sunday, March 27, 2016

Homeowniversary Update: Closets and Health Stuff and Worms -- Oh My!

. . . No, health stuff and worms are not related, although there was that one supplement experiment. . .

Posts have been scarce for the last few months. I was balls-deep in my busy work season from mid-January to mid-March, and the vast majority of my domestic pursuits have been redundant to the point of being unworthy of documentation. I figured I'd refrain from sharing what little I've been doing around the house until there was enough of it to merit a full post (unless you follow me on Facebook, in which case you're probably subjected to multiple inconsequential posts on the subject daily. Sorry about that. . .).

Today seemed as good a time as any for an update, as it was a year ago today that I closed on my condo. I've evaded repossession, HOA reprimands (mostly) and meeting the neighbors, and only one thing's caught fire. I'll count that as a successful year in review.

In the spirit of spring cleaning and all that jazz, my focus has mostly been on rearranging my closets to maximize efficiency. The cleaning/cat closet and the patio closet have been my primary focus, and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out (ask my Pathfinder group -- I may have squeed when they asked where my trash lived now and I showed them that it fit under the sink and that I had a separate recycling bin and a cleaning closet now that all of the stuff from under the sink was hanging on the door).




The patio closet may not be pretty, but it's functional. There are four of those green totes in there, and each one holds, respectively, all of my Christmas, seasonal, painting and gardening stuff. Now there's only two loose things instead of piles to exhume when I need something from the bottom.

Aesthetically, since I finally got around to putting Christmas stuff away, I've been trying to avoid buying more seasonal stuff, but the Dollar Tree actually had a lot of cute decorative crap this year.




Not bad for under $10, am I right? It's a little tacky, but I think my place can pull it off.

I also finally got around to setting up my worm bin, which fits perfectly on a shelf in the cat closet. Most of my worms arrived dead and I'm awaiting new ones, but it'll be nice to have a little self-sustaining ecosystem going in a couple square feet. Plus they're currently feasting on coffee and tea -- classiest invertebrates ever. Momma's proud.
As for the health stuff, I've been on something of an experimental kick with my body in trying to figure out what might be causing some of my most obnoxious symptoms (mostly persistent acne). Before anyone crawls up my ass, yes, I have been to the doctor several times for everything and have yet to receive treatment and results I felt were worth my money. I can throw money at copays and prescriptions, or I can research shit myself and try what others are saying have worked for them. My first guess was an estrogen /progesterone imbalance, so I got on DIM and vitex, plus milk thistle to help my liver process the shaking up of the hormones. Worked great for a couple weeks, then acne came back, so back to the drawing board. Then I realized it might be from a persistent two-year bladder thing I've had, so I got D-mannose and marshmallow root to calm the inflammation down. I've only been on these a couple days, so the jury's still out.

I've decided the next step is an elimination diet, wherein I eliminate potential sources of irritation and intolerance from my diet and see what might be causing a problem. As much as I am convinced food intolerances are largely a glamorous first-world fad and that people who make food services workers jump through unnecessary hoops to accommodate their medically unnecessary requests are assholes, I'm at the end of my rope. The people who assure me I should be able to eat whatever I want don't have to wear the evidence of their dietary choices on their face. I'm getting awfully tired of having the worst skin of anyone I know, of getting sick all the time and of being unable to kick a two-year infection, and diet is the variable I have the power to change. If I strip my diet down to bare necessities and nutrients and there's no appreciable change, I'll know it's just my lot in life, genetics or whatever. I have a hunch it's dairy since that's what I eat a lot of and crave (which is damn shame, because my homemade yogurt was starting to turn out really good), but I'll also be cutting out gluten, probably coffee (ugh), sugar, alcohol and eggs for three weeks. I already eat pretty well and don't keep bread or pasta in the house, so dairy's really the only hard part, plus social drinking. It'll be worth it if it fixes anything. Maybe I'll document the process when I start it.

3 comments:

  1. Try this: http://www.rawfamily.com/green-smoothie I have the book if you want to read it.

    You may be able to rescue your gluten, eggs and diary habits (especially the home made yoghurt). Quit coffee? Those two words do not combine well with me.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, I'll look into it. I had a pretty good kale salad habit going for a couple years, but this winter I thought I'd try to cook more so I could eat something hot for a change. My greens intake has suffered.

      As for coffee, I'm going to see if drinking it with water as a chaser and/or eating first helps, before I go cold turkey. I don't think my caffeine intake is excessive at one large cup a day.

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