BlogFerret » Life and Lifestyle

Midnightferret Munches: Torchy’s Tacos Spicewood

midnightferret — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:52:19 +0000

I thought I might make another effort with my blog, so I decided to review a restaurant. I love restaurants. Mostly, I

This is not my picture. This is Torchy's picture, from their website. I ate my taco before I could take a picture of it.

love not having to cook. Last year, we decided to stop eating stuff with artificial crap in it. You know, added colors, flavors, preservatives, hormones, antibiotics, and the like. This decision was a bit style cramping where restaurants are concerned, even here in Austin, where a lot of people feel the same way. What’s worse is that we’d find a place to eat that had the same philosophy we did, only to discover the food was bland or just plain bad. Austin, what’s up with that? Why do you tolerate overpriced restaurants with poor service and mediocre (at best) food? My husband and I often either “cheat” on our vow not to eat what amounts to poison in the name of tastiness, or we just don’t eat out.

In any case, I digress. Today I lunched with my friend Casey at Torchy’s Taco’s. I wanted to go because I haven’t been there yet, and I’ve been in Austin since 2008! How did I let that happen? Torchy’s food is not bland or bad, and they use additive free ingredients. Their sauces are house made, and the food is remarkably inexpensive, considering. We had to go to the Spicewood Springs location because it’s between our respective workplaces. He had warned me that the place would be packed, and it was. I took it as a good sign, and tried to console myself with that thought as I walked from my car, which I had to park hell and gone from the door of the establishment.

Torchy’s menu is what an acquaintance of mine once termed “lowbrow gourmet.” I have to admit, I wanted a bit of everything on the menu, but I settled on “The Crossroads” taco, which is composed of brisket, grilled onions, avocado, jalapeños, pepper jack cheese, and tomatillo sauce. The brisket had a really smoky flavor that blended well with the onions and avocado. The jalapeños had spent some time on the grill, so they were more smoky than hot, but I admit that I promptly drowned everything in Torchy’s award-winning Diablo sauce after the first few bites. Oh, Diablo sauce, where have you been all my life? Casey had the “Republican,” which was a grilled jalapeño sausage with cheese and pico, and a “Trailer Park,” a fried chicken tender with pico, cheese, lettuce, and green chiles. We also shared some green chile queso. It was all pretty good! I must mention that they are serious about the queso at Torchy’s.

In closing, I loved it. Are there more authentic taco joints in Austin? You bet, but even despite forcing one to tolerate crowds of other so-called humans, Torchy’s is tasty, fast, and fun, and it won’t hurt your wallet much, either. For what it is, it gets a 4 Ferret rating, with the highest being 5 Ferrets.

Rating: 4/5 Ferrets

Pros: Great service, Good food, Inexpensive.

Cons: Parking, Crowds of entitled hipsters and people who should be old enough to know better than to act like hipsters, but don’t.

Social Media: I’m Doing It Wrong

midnightferret — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:37:33 +0000

I used to pride myself on my “internet solidarity.” Having been “on the internet” since before there was a word for it, I always thought I was just kickin’ it old school or something. I resisted LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. At one point, I used LiveJournal and MySpace as RSS feeddumps for my website/blog. I had a “blog” before I remember knowing the word “blog.” What was cool, though, was that I could use those services to say “If you really want to get in touch, come over to my website.” Now, Facebook doesn’t even let you have a static status on your profile. I don’t even think people read profiles much anymore, anyway.

This is not some icky hipster rant about how I used social media before it was cool. I didn’t use social media even when it became cool. I’m still angry that the internet went public and let people advertise businesses and services on search engines! I’m not an “early adopter.” I’m a troglodyte! A troglodyte!

Even after it was really easy to put your writing out on the web, I resisted it because I didn’t want some twink high school student passing my fiction or poetry off as his or her work. Hey, I spent money on creative writing classes in college. Despite the fact that I should have been spending that money on “internet marketing” classes (which they didn’t teach when I was in college) or journalism classes, I still wasn’t going to just put my hard-won brain labor out there for anyone who can copy/paste!

Now I’ve been dipping my toes in, I can say with certainty that I AM DOING IT WRONG. How do I know? Because user created content sites get book deals, and I probably won’t get one in the next ten years if I start submitting this year. Because blog posts with the right keywords get more traffic than ones that don’t, no matter what their actual content may be. And because I’m too weird and my attention span is too short to actually build my own following. I had a bigger following as a short-order cook and bartender in New Orleans than I do online now. Which is strange, because you’d think after 18 years online I’d know how to interwebs with the best of ’em? Well, nope. I’m still doing it wrong.

For example, I can post my crap on Facebook for days and it might get shared. Might. But some fake spam crap about anthrax being in your Tide sample gets shared thirty bazillion million times. Now, if I had a “real following,” I might get shared 30 times. That might even get me some name-recognition somewhere besides my own living room, if I invoked it with the proper dance and the stars were in the correct alignment. But we’re still not even in the running with anthrax, and the LOLcats have two books out now. Two.

Some days those facts are enough to motivate me to try to get out there and be part of the online community. If my own health and happiness won’t put my ass in gear to socialize, then maybe the thought of achieving a childhood dream might do it? Other days, though, the same thoughts motivate me only to weep for the future of humanity.

Guns Don’t Kill People, Mentally Defective People Kill People!

midnightferret — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:48:51 +0000

I’m sure I’m opting in for a whole world of pain (and trolling) here. But I can’t help myself. Because this article came onto my radar today, I read a couple of articles today about Virginia’s ban on gun sales to the mentally ill. That link is to a 2007 Washington Post article. In this About.com article, the June 2007 law in Virginia is referenced, along with an interview on CBS of Wayne LaPierre, the VP of the NRA. Wayne calls the mentally ill “mentally defective.” I’m now going to call Wayne a shithead for saying that on national television. Shithead. But it’s worse than that, Mouseketeers. Much, much worse.

I’m not a huge fan of About.com: the info found there is often subjective. Also, this particular article was “about” something someone else (not the author) posted in a forum. So the author says someone saw Wayne LaPierre on television, and he said… Well, you get the idea.

I give you this background info because I need y’all to understand where I’m coming from, here. At any rate, a few internet searches later, I discover that in the form that Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms requires for over-the-counter gun sales, the language is the same as good ol’ Wayne’s. “Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective…?” There is is, in black and white, the language of federal law. I’m about ready to go buy a gun myself. Well, not really.

I actually don’t like guns much. I don’t think as many people should probably have guns as do have them, but I don’t see any real way to evaluate who is going to be irresponsible with his or her gun and who is not. Honestly, I’m not really against hunting. Let’s just say I’m not hugely into guns, but I’m also not hugely into gun control. And I don’t want to go into that right now. I’m also aware that some of the mentally ill can be violent and dangerous. Those people have also probably already committed a violent crime and would be disqualified from being able to own a gun anyway. Also, people who really want a gun — and who aren’t “supposed” to have one — can acquire them illegally without forms or background checks, or whatever. But, again, those aren’t the issues I want to address now.

What I want to go into here is the language of that legal form. “Mentally defective.” That’s like saying women are defective males, or homosexuals are “sexually defective,” or people with physical disabilities are “physically defective.” (Incidentally, if you have said or thought any of those things, fuck you.) Basically, it’s just as disgusting as all of those previous examples that the language of United States law calls the mentally ill “defective.” I have bi-polar disorder and I am not fucking defective. Fuck you, language of the law. And fuck you if you think that the mentally ill are “defective.” What’s next? Are you going to take away my right to vote? Do I not get a voice because I have a mood disorder? Do I need to sew a big red “BPD” to all of my clothing so people can identify me as defective and avoid me? Is it still OK for me to have a driver’s license or are you going to take that away? Can I own property? Maybe I’m too defective to live in your neighborhood.

I’ve already mentioned in this blog that I’m bi-polar and (for lack of a better word) “out” about it. It’s my way of volunteering to help end the stigma of mental illness. I try to be relatively open about my mood disorder without shoving it at people too much, and by living as well as I can with it. Still, I’ve had people distance themselves from me after finding out. I’ve had them blink and then try to pretend they still accept me, but I can tell they don’t. Whatever. Other “defective” people have it a lot worse than I do, so I try to suck it up and do my part to be a human on this planet with other humans. It kind of sucks, because most other humans piss me off. A lot.

But this shit here, my friends. This shit here, where the mentally ill are called “defective,” not only by intolerant NRA leaders (who, if they would actually go get a psych eval, would probably be diagnosed with something in the DSM) but in the language of the cat-damned United States law. I support your right to own a gun. I support your right to air your opinion. But I do not fucking support the printed law labeling other human beings as “defective,” whether they be mentally ill or otherwise different from whatever stupid fucking American “society” says they “should” be. Again, language of the law, fuck you. Sideways. I will do everything in my power to change you. This means war.

Seductive Self Pity and Sweet Anger Part 1

midnightferret — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:25:26 +0000

Part 1: They Meet

Ok, Not Really.

Identifying Unhealthy Patterns of Anger and Self Pity

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself. – D.H. Lawrence

I found some of my notes from my posts on how I fight bipolar disorder, and I thought I would treat you to some of the issues I wanted to address but which were probably too narrow to include in a general mood disorder article. You lucky people, you.

About two months ago, I went through a little slump. Just a couple of days of sadness and fatigue, nothing really out of the ordinary. It passed. Then I went to an event which involved a great deal of activity and stimulus for me, and so I intelligently stopped taking my meds regularly. Don’t worry, I was still taking them, but I would miss days here and there. Ok, I missed about two out of three doses. For a week or so. The consequences of doing so were that I had a huge meltdown about a week ago, spent the next three days recovering, and then I had to be really strict with myself about the meds. I experienced more side effects, and I was less stable than usual. Welcome to fatigue and nausea city! Fatigue and nausea town? In any case, it wasn’t a spot you’d choose for your destination wedding. The moral? When you’re experiencing fluctuations in mood, and when you’re engaging in activities that you know might make you fluctuate, make sure you take your medications correctly!

I noticed during my meltdown that the first emotion I felt was a sort of self-righteous anger. Yes, I notice things when I’m having an irrational mood swing. If you have a mood disorder, you may have noticed that you tend to detach when experiencing strong emotions. People often describe it as a feeling of “watching” themselves and having no control over their actions, as if they were “someone else.” This is called “dissociation.” Wikipedia says so. While I was crying hysterically, I noticed that I was very very angry, mostly because “no one ever listen[ed] to me,” “no one care[d] that I have a right to feel this way,” and “I listen[ed] to everybody all the time, but when I need[ed] someone to listen to me, no one [gave] a shit!” This was about the time I noticed that I was feeling really sorry for myself. That’s a classic bipolar pattern, in miniature, because these emotions went away the next day.

So what’s with the anger/self pity pattern? I mean, sure, the sudden, evil, gut shredding anger is part of a chemical fluctuation in the brain, but the pattern of anger and self-pity seems pretty common, not only for me, but for a lot of people with mood disorders. Heck, even “normal” emotional traumas like grief or even unemployment can evoke this pattern! So what gives?

Anger is pretty natural. Come to think of it, so is self pity. Both are (usually) responses to outside stimuli. Problems occur when these emotions don’t go away, and if they start to impair one’s life, whether the problems occur at work, at home, or with other relationships. I guess the trick is really to try and figure out what we are feeling, and if those feelings are helping us or hurting us!

Easier said than done, right? Anger is pretty straightforward. We get angry when someone hurts us. We should ask ourselves, though, are we angry all the time? If nothing else, statistically it’s impossible that someone is hurting us all the time, so if we find that we’re always angry, we might want to look within for the problem. The more seductive emotion is self pity. If you read back in this blog, you will see that I’m no stranger to its wiles! Sometimes I have to make a whiny blog post just to get self pity to loosen its hold!

What’s the deal with self pity, anyway? Self pity is a way of self comforting. Little kids do it to elicit sympathy and/or advice from adults or other kids. Adults sometimes do it because “If I don’t feel sorry for myself, no one else will!” (That one’s my personal favorite.) Again, sometimes feeling sorry for yourself is healthy. What’s unhealthy is waking up every day and telling yourself: “I hurt so much, and nobody cares.” “Why does everything always happen to me?” “If people only knew how bad I feel, they would feel sorry for me.” Wait — what?

Who really wants people to feel sorry for them? Nobody healthy, that’s who. Self pity is addictive, too. Once people start feeling sorry for themselves, they sometimes don’t want to stop. Why? Well, it’s comfortable. Remember how I talked about taking responsibility for your mood disorder (Look under Step 2)? When feeling sorry for oneself, it’s healthiest to move on and use that self-pity as a step toward accepting something (such as a layoff or the death of a loved one) or deciding to change something (such as getting treatment for an addiction or moving to a different apartment). Still, sometimes we get trapped in the folds of that self-comforting behavior.

A Response to a Response: Some People Are Demanding

midnightferret — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:39:20 +0000

How about this: Don’t Bother.

I read a response to a parenting article on Happily Childfree today. The author posts a response to a parenting article entitled “How to Stay Friends With Parents.” (The grammar in some of these articles needs to be ignored, by the way, possibly even in my own article!)

The upshot of the original parenting article: If you want to keep being friends with parents, and you are childfree (or even childless at the moment) you must jump through all sorts of accommodating hoops. The upshot of Happily Childfree’s article: Why bother?

I have an answer for the last question. Personally, I would “bother” because I was still close friends with the parent in question. Emphasis on “close.” And yet, and yet…

Why would I remain friends with someone who had so many rules and regulations if those rules didn’t fit into my lifestyle? In all honesty, I don’t know if I would remain friends with anyone so demanding, parent or not! In the past, when someone made too many demands on me without giving back, the friendship did dissolve. However, if I lived in the parent author’s world, there could be a few rules for her to follow if she wished to stay friends with me, also:

While I understand that you are on a schedule, sometimes I might have to touch base with you during “difficult” hours, simply because I’m busy working during “naptime” or “mommy’s/daddy’s day out” and can’t take or make personal calls at that time. Please be tolerant and at least listen to the voicemail at some point, if you’re truly interested in my friendship. Also, I don’t mind spending time with you and your children if you invite me to do so, but really, about an hour or two in “toddler world” is probably all I can stand. (Exceptions will/have been made, especially if I invited myself or otherwise encroached upon your hospitality for some reason. I do that, sometimes. My parent friends were awesome about it.) Please don’t invite me over to spend time with your kids (because if they’re in the room, that’s what we’re doing), or worse, don’t invite me over and then ask, “Would you mind watching them for a little while while I cook dinner/watch tv/some other activity?” Not only is that rude, it defeats the purpose of my visit and also endangers your children. Trust me, I have no idea what they are doing: it looks like they are small drunk people who are intent on destroying themselves. I’m completely useless in that department, and very happy to remain so.
If I am organizing a party, I will probably give plenty of notice. It will probably be at night/during the dinner hour. If you can’t come, I probably won’t be annoyed. I would love to see you, but I’m not going to organize my whole event around you. Sorry. If only one partner can make it, we would love to have him/her.
Please do not bring your kids to a “fancy restaurant.” If I say “we’d love to see the kids” while inviting you out to one, I’m probably just being polite, although I rarely do/say things like that just for politeness’ sake. If only one partner can come, we’ll probably have a great time with him/her. Maybe next time both of you can come, or, here’s an idea: why don’t you invite me somewhere and you pick the place. I might even come, if your children are genuinely well-behaved for their ages (and not just “well-behaved” by your standards: I mean behavior I can actually tolerate without wishing I or they were dead).
I don’t usually answer the phone after 9pm, either. I don’t care when you leave if you come out; I have to get up early, too. If you act like you did me a favor by coming out with me, you probably won’t be invited out with me again, anyway.
If you don’t call me back, I don’t mind. We are all busy people, even those of us without children. I will probably call you again eventually. Or, you could just call me once in a while, if you think about it. I won’t mind, and if I have the a few minutes free, we could catch up. You could actually have an adult conversation, with an adult, even! Isn’t that what parents sometimes complain about, not getting enough “adult” time?

So here’s the upshot of my article: friendship is a social contract. We operate within social contracts in order to help each other to be happier and healthier. That’s what boundaries are for. If you want a friend, be a friend. If you want good neighbors, be a good neighbor. Be aware that your lifestyle and your boundaries and what-not may look a little different from the outside. This advice is not just for parents, it’s for everyone. I think the author at Happily Childfree just doesn’t want to be friends with entitled, demanding people, not necessarily parents. Although entitled, demanding parents are just as annoying as any other entitled, demanding people. Some parents just use their children as an excuse to be so, which is kind of icky. All parents aren’t like that. This particular demanding person in the article just happens to be a parent.

The Picayune’s Creole Cookbook

midnightferret — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:31:11 +0000

Today we did some errands and, as usual, couldn’t stop ourselves from visiting Half Price Books. I was so pleased to pick up an actual treasure: The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book – Sesquicentennial Edition! It contains 150 years worth of recipes compiles from The Times Picayune, the New Orleans daily newspaper. The Picayune itself is somewhat sentimental for me, in part because my grandfather always said it phonetically to make us giggle when we went to visit. Also, a lot of my mom’s own recipe clippings come from the Picayune, and, miraculously, the paper has two pages of comics on weekdays! Weekdays! Can you believe it?

This isn’t the newer version, printed in 2002, with the pretty cover. The hardback of that edition seems not to be available now for less than a C-note, but I’ll settle for the more “homey” version from 1987. It is a reprint of the second edition of the Picayune Cookbook from 1901, which is considered the definitive collection. This edition was edited by Marcelle Bienvenu, of St. Martinville, LA. She worked for the Brennan’s family of restaurants, as well as opening her own restaurant, Chez Marcelle.

I love, love, love this cookbook. After Hurricane Katrina, everyone was not only traumatized, but most of us were (and still are) scattered to the four winds. Entire neighborhoods that have stood for three hundred years disappeared, and some of those neighborhoods are still toxic piles of sticks today. I am especially distressed about it because in New Orleans going to a different neighborhood can be like visiting a different country. The entire city evolved like an ecosystem with the different cultures blending and overlapping in unique ways. It’s depressing to think that some of those ways of life could be gone forever.

New books and cookbooks have been published since Katrina in an attempt to preserve New Orleans culture and also to help the rest of the US understand why it matters so much that New Orleans is in such dire straights. It’s comforting for me, personally, to have such a tangible collection of Creole culture in my hands. It’s a substantial book, containing recipes I would never eat paired with recipes I grew up eating or remember from special occasions.

The Picayune Cookbook began in 1901, carrying on the tradition of New Orleans Creole cooking and household management. It actually began as the old Creole cooks began to die off after the Civil War (or as my old New Orleans History professor called it, “The WAW-uh”), leaving the ladies of the house (who could no longer afford cooks) to carry on. Can you imagine living without the family cook? The humanity! The horror! Actually, I have some older friends who had personal acquaintances who thought the kitchen was the place where the cook went in and the food came out, and that was rather much later than 1901.

Especially entertaining is the section with various menus: Under the heading of “Economical Menus,” The Picayune insists that a family of six can live “comfortably and with variety” on $1.00 to $1.50 per day, and proceeds to list menus with so much food on them that if I had to cook it, much less eat it, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else all day! Incidentally, the money with inflation would be around $25 or so. I don’t know if that’s what it costs to feed a family of six today.

I am especially looking forward to a brunch of grits and grillades (round steak) with red gravy. I ate this dish when I was a kid and gave my mom grief about it, but strangely my grown-up palate craves those flavors! My friend Eric asked me to explain how red gravy and tomato sauce are two different things. This one’s for you, Eric: red gravy is made when you make a brown roux over some onion and garlic, and throw in two chopped tomatoes in their juice. As it browns, put your meat on top, and cover it, turning after one side is browned. Then add a little vinegar and and simmer on low for around half an hour, still covered. Then you have meat and red gravy. The cookbook will give you exact proportions for doing so, and page 139 asserts that “[t]he great truth is that the Creoles knew how to fry meat.”

The are very few illustrations in the book, and what pictures there are have to do with Creole history. Just about every category of food item is covered, including syrups and cordials, as well as pickling and preserving, and even condiments! Caveat: Although I have always thought I would be an excellent book reviewer, I haven’t come up with any sort of rubric or rating system for books, much less for cookbooks. There goes that dream. I can say, however, that I haven’t been as excited by a secondhand cookbook find in some time, and anyone who wants to come over in the near future for a complete “Picayune Creole” meal is going to be pretty lucky!

On Health And Weight Loss

midnightferret — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:23:08 +0000

The other day I was surprised to discover that even with the bizarre month of July I’ve had, I still lost a little weight this month. Four pounds, to be exact, bringing me up to a total of fourteen pounds since May. I’m going to tell you how I began to lose weight, and how, miraculously, I continue to lose and the weight isn’t coming back. It may not work for you, but it may help you decide what your needs are and how to achieve your own nutritional goals. I hope it does!

Because of my friend Andrea’s continued updates on her trials and successes in this department, I decided to create a little post of my own on the subject of weight loss and healthy nutrition in general. I may even make a series of posts. Yes, I know how envious you are of this demonstration of my organization and planning skills. Don’t grovel. It’s unattractive.

A bit of history and background on my fat, and/or lack thereof, in a convenient bulleted list:

Anyone who knows me will know that I was obsessed with weight. In fact, I still probably am, but I’m working on it and get better every day. In the past , I spent years thinking I was “fat,” when I wasn’t. I dieted all the time. I worried all the time. Part of this was body image, and part of it was just, well, who the heck knows? Anti-depressants and mood stabilizers seem to help.
When I got married eight years ago, I was heavier than I had ever been before, due to quitting smoking, being depressed, and later taking lithium for bi-polar disorder. I gained a total of 35-40 lbs. This was not awesome, but worse, I couldn’t lose it. I lost some before the wedding, but it popped right back on again because the diet was ridiculous and un-maintainable.
The only way I started to lose weight was a) by accident and b) by focusing on health and a lifestyle change that I can maintain. I highly recommend that everyone focus on health first. As Count Rugen correctly asserts, “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.”

Now I’m going to outline the steps I’ve been taking to achieve not only better health, but also (apparently) weight loss for my chunky self. My husband is on the same “diet”: he just eats more to maintain his weight. He lost a little in the beginning, but he’s stabilized. I don’t starve myself either, I just eat until I feel satisfied. Here are my rules for eating things:

No Fast Food, Ever. James and I did eat fast food. In James‘ case, it was a lot of fast food. It was easy for me to stop, because I never really liked it that much, anyway, except I was a fool for the Chick-fil-a biscuit. Now I don’t even think of it as food, really. It can be a pain when looking for convenience, but this is your body. Why would you just shove random crap into your body? I know! When I thought about it, it was so weird to think I saw food with chemicals and way too much salt and fat in it as “normal.”
Daily Salad. Leafy greens! I try to have at least a double fist sized portion of greens a day. It can be difficult, especially since I don’t like iceberg lettuce — it’s gotta be romaine, baby spinach, or spring mix, or I won’t eat it. I’m also weird about creamy dressing, because it’s kinda ew, and I actually prefer to make my own dressing anyway.
No White Flour, White Rice, or White Sugar. If you are going to eat bread, rice, pasta, etc, it should be brown. And don’t eat very much of it, anyway. Especially sugar and sweets. Sugar/sweetener replacement options include small amounts of honey, maple syrup, and agave sweetener. Agave sweetener has a relatively low glycemic index.
Eat More Veggies. It’s hard to eat your veggies. If you have a hard time with it, start with a small amount and work up, or start with ones you like. Have a small salad with your meal, in addition to your “daily greens.” Some veggies are better than no veggies at all. Oh, and sorry: corn is a grain. It is a grain with little or no nutritional value and lots of sugar. View it like a candy or something else that is to be eaten only on special occasions or as a treat when in season. Eat veggies that are in season! They are cheaper and tastier!
No Preservatives, Artificial Colors, Artificial Flavors or High-Fructose Corn Syrup. All natural or nothing. No Splenda, no Nutri-Sweet, no nothing. After a while, you’ll actually be able to taste the difference between foods which contain this stuff and foods which do not. I had to stop drinking Diet Cokes. I thought I would die of withdrawal, but I now drink unsweetened green tea and love it. I can buy a better quality of green tea because of all the money I save not buying Diet Cokes. Oh, and I cut back on caffeine and have more energy now, not less. And the high-fructose corn syrup? It’s just a filler and is cheaper than real, natural sugar. If you eat too much of it, as we all have, it can mess up your response to insulin, which regulates your blood sugar. Some people get permanently messed up, but others just feel vaguely crappy all the time. Eat real sugar, or none at all. Sweet craving? Fruit really is “nature’s candy.” I know, I know, I still have a hard time with that, too, but I’m working on it!
Some Fat is Good. Fats from nuts, seeds, and animal fat (if you eat animal products) are not so bad. If you are cutting back on carbs, you need to get energy from somewhere. Upping your protein helps, but if you are getting good fats, like from olive oil, real dairy products, fish, and eggs (Omega-3) are all ok. Now, don’t think you can just chow on fats, because you can’t. But don’t be too afraid of them either.
Avoid Anything Heavily Processed. Sadly, this includes a lot of cheese, so make cheese an occasional treat. But the rule should be that if your food does not (for the most part) resemble the form in which it is found in nature, you probably want to choose something different.
If You Must Snack, Eat Veggies, Nuts, or Fruit. Watch out for the sugar in fruit, especially dried fruit. I know my blood sugar plummets later if I chow on a bunch of dried fruit.
Cut Back on Red Meat. I aim for red meat only once a month, using fish, chicken, turkey, or beans and soy for protein the rest of the time. Sometimes we cheat and get “no added nitrate/nitrites” beef hotdogs, although I try to use the turkey ones if I can find them. Red meat isn’t fabulous for digestion or fat intake, and the American diet contains far too much fat as it is. I love a good grassfed all-natural steak as much as anyone, but I try to make it a special treat.

I think that’s it. It’s not really a diet. I plan to eat this way for the rest of my life. I don’t want to put artificial crap into my body. I don’t want to eat preservatives or stuff that’s coated in bread or salt to make it taste “good.” I want to eat food that tastes good in its natural form. The food I eat now tastes better than that other crap! If it’s more expensive, or inconvenient, I consider the pros to outweigh the cons. Now I must admit that bread is my heroin, and when I fall off the wagon James has to tie me to the bed while I beg him for “just one fix” to get me through the worst of the detox, but we usually get through it. And I’m learning some sprouted grain and spelt bread recipes — so we can get some all natural grass-fed beef and make yummy burgers on homemade buns!

And if we “cheat” or splurge occasionally, it’s ok. It’s not the end of the world. We usually don’t eat foods twice that make us feel bad, though. If I eat a meal that makes me feel run down or like I have to “recover” after eating it, a lot of times I won’t eat that again for a while, or maybe ever. It’s a different feeling from “full and lazy,” if you know what I mean. If you don’t, and you still eat fast food, go pick up a value meal and eat the whole thing. That cruddy, overfull, exhausted feeling is what I’m talking about. I feel much better now, in general, than before the diet. My moods are more stable and I’m more motivated.

I have theories why eating this way has also helped me lose weight. One is that I am headed toward my natural healthy weight, and all the chemicals in the crap I ate before were preventing my body from knowing what that healthy weight was. My other theory is just that eating the previous amounts of fat, salt, sugar, and carbs that I thought were “normal” were not normal and the new amounts are better for my health and metabolism. In any case, I know drinking all that Diet Coke with artificial sweetener in it every day was bad. I know that eating artificial preservatives and colors was bad. Even now I look around and see people consuming what, essentially, is inedible. It’s the same as if I were to eat this computer or the table it’s sitting on. Groceries are filled with shelves and shelves of non-food. I now shop in maybe 25% of a grocery store. Just a little food for thought.

The Elephant on Your Head Part 3

midnightferret — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:56:07 +0000

“Achieving Your Goal, or The Care and Feeding of Your Elephant: Part Three of How I Fight My Mood Disorder Every Day “

It’s pretty hard to live with an elephant, even one that doesn’t sit on your head. They’re really large. They’re moody. Ok, well, they have moods. In any case, they’re often inconvenient, impossible to ignore, they leave a mess, and boy can they eat! My mood disorder is on a similar scale, and I admit that I occasionally doubt my ability to manage it and still be able to have some semblance of a life.

It’s a sticky situation: if I don’t manage the disorder, I have no quality of life, but if I do manage my disorder, will it take all of my time and energy? Will I have anything left for my family, friends, pets, or hobbies? The short answer is, “Not at first.”

Having More Good Days Than Bad in A Million Easy Steps

There is no simple path to your goal. You can’t do one, three, or five specific tasks a day and achieve mental health. Mental health, similar to physical health, is a lifestyle. If you, like I did, lived for a long time undiagnosed, un-treated, or non-compliant, getting healthy will be pretty difficult, feel strange, and take a long time. I found myself relieved at first, because feeling anything but bad was so new and wonderful to me. A relatively short time later, however, I began the old “why me?” pattern. Sure, I felt better, but it was so much work. I was on the way to stabilizing but wasn’t there yet, and I was both impatient and at the same time wondering if it was worth it. I have learned, however, that I need to maintain certain habits in order to keep my hard-won mental health.

I used to consider myself a “night owl.” Especially when I was younger, I seemed to be most alert between the hours of five and nine in the evening. Oddly enough, nowadays I feel the most anxious or irritable during those hours. As hard as it can be, I’ve got to maintain a strict sleep schedule. I have to get enough sleep at night and wake up in the daytime. Most humans are programmed to function best in the daytime. I have to grudgingly agree with nature. I also try to get a little sunlight in the morning, too. It helps reset my “internal clock” and let the ol’ bod know that it’s daytime and time to be active. I take my elephant for a walk around the block or sit with him on the porch when I have my coffee. Speaking of coffee:

I try to limit my intake of alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. Well, I don’t smoke anymore. But these “big three” are all psychoactive drugs. But don’t take my word for it. The Wiki knows all, right? That means that booze, smokes, and that cup of joe are going to affect your mood just like your Prozac. Possibly worse, because you don’t have “doses” of the former, unless your bartender measures your booze in that stupid jigger thing. Switch bars. Seriously, though, depending on the severity of your mood disorder, you probably want to cut back on this stuff or eliminate it altogether. Many is the time I’ve found myself sleepless and remembered that I’ve been pounding down the diet sodas, or feeling really bummed out and realized I had one (or two or three) too many glasses of the old Cabernet the other night. Don’t let your elephant get all boozed up or tweaked up on caffeine! In all honesty, I recommend keeping track of everything you put into your body and then adjusting that according to its effect on your mood. I find that a diet high in sugar, preservatives, and artificial colors and flavors really makes my elephant grumpy.

Another great habit to get into is getting some exercise. That’s right, you and your elephant need to go for a walk or a bike ride a couple of times a week. Exercise releases endorphins, and those endorphins can help with depression. Vigorous activity can also help those of us with a tendency toward anxiety or mania to burn off some of that nervous energy and be more calm. I find that sometimes thirty minutes of exercise can help me feel like I’ve got more organized thoughts and a better outlook on life in general. Exercise makes your elephant happy!

I also have to have a doctor. All the time. Even if I’m not on meds. I have to do so because I’ve found that if I’m not monitored by a qualified professional even after I’ve stabilized, I tend to ignore the signs of relapse, and therefore, I relapse. Hard. Like an elephant doing a belly flop from the high dive. It ain’t pretty.

Most of this stuff sounds like common sense, but the difference between knowing to do something and actually doing it can be huge. For example, everyone knows fast food is pretty bad for us. Still, if we”re not careful, we can find ourselves making excuses, thinking, “This one time won’t hurt.” Great, if it’s one time, but if I find myself saying that often, eventually I’m eating nothing but cheeseburgers! Only feed your elephant cheeseburgers sometimes, not all the time!

My other excuses for not taking care of my elephant include: “But I can’t.” That one’s just silly. Of course I can! “I don’t have time.“ Wait, I don’t have the time to make my own life worth living? I can’t take a few extra minutes to make certain that I get to bed instead of staying up to watch TV? Is Letterman really more important than my health? I don’t have time to cut back on the caffeine if I’m feeling anxious or having trouble sleeping? Sometimes little things like that can mean the difference between feeling a little funky and having a full-blown manic or depressive episode. My episodes almost invariably damage my life, so why wouldn’t I want to do everything I can to prevent or at least lessen their severity? I mean, we are talking about our lives, here!

I’ve also found it helpful to get my elephant a companion. I currently share my apartment not only with my husband and my metaphorical elephant, but also with the world’s greatest cat! Wednesday Addams has been one of the best additions to my life since I got married, and that’s no exaggeration. For those of us with mood disorders, I highly recommend getting a dog or a cat if it is at all possible. Having another living creature for whom you are responsible helps us change focus from the internal to the external world, much as group therapy does. I have to focus on Wednesday’s physical and emotional needs, and that helps keep me from ruminating and obsessing, two of the “danger zone” negative thought patterns for bipolar people. Also, Wednesday’s unconditional love (which I sometimes suspect has a lot to do with stinky canned food) can be a huge comfort to me. I don’t recommend exotics for this purpose, even though I keep a bird and some hermit crabs, too, because the relationship isn’t really the same. Also, I recommend one dog or one cat. Too many animals to care for, and even a “normal” person will find him- or herself overwhelmed with responsibilities, and that’s no good for mental health.

Your path to mental health may be different from mine. Everyone’s elephant is unique and has different needs. Take some time to asses your elephant’s habits and responses to your day-to-day life, then start with some small changes if necessary. Get your friends, family, and your therapist or psychiatrist to help. You won’t be sorry. For whatever reason, we’ve been chosen to keep our respective elephant hats for the rest of our lives. If we want to achieve a real and lasting mental health, we’ll have to make peace with our elephant and learn to care for him. After all, if you’ve got to spend your life with an elephant, you might as well learn to get along.

The Elephant on Your Head Part 2

midnightferret — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:41:47 +0000

“Making Peace With Your Elephant: Part Two of How I Fight My Mood Disorder Every Day”

When I was 21, I had been in treatment for depression on and off for about six years. At one appointment with my psychiatrist, I told her, “Well, I feel miserable. I feel like something is terribly, horribly wrong, and I’m so angry and sad I can hardly move. But I know there’s nothing really wrong!”

She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Christine, something is wrong, and it has been for a long time.” I was devastated. I went home and cried for a long time. Even twelve years later, I have trouble with the idea that a mood disorder doesn’t simply mean that your emotions are all “messed up” and your feelings aren’t “all in your head.” What? Of course they’re “all in your head,” because emotions are run by chemicals in your brain! Sure, but that perception is inaccurate: just because your brain chemicals are “messed up” doesn’t mean that your feelings are any less real than anyone else’s feelings!

How to Make Peace With Your Elephant

Step 1. Acknowledging the Elephant: Validate yourself, and teach those around you to validate you, too.

Take your disorder seriously, and try to get your loved ones to take it seriously, too. Get help if you have to, but you and those close to you must come to an understanding that your mood disorder is a real disease that will not simply disappear one day. Getting this idea into your head and dealing with it can require therapy all by itself. A mood disorder needs to be taken seriously and treated before the person’s quality of life will improve. Also, when depressed or bi-polar people have an episode, their feelings are just as real to them as those of “healthy” people when a loved one dies, when they are in extreme danger, or when they experience a great triumph. Just because a friend thinks you are upset for “no reason” does not mean you don’t have a right to feel upset or you are simply supposed to “turn that feeling off.” That’s impossible.

Sadly, back then I didn’t quite wrap my head around what my doctor was telling me. She was trying to tell me that I needed to face my disorder head on and not only take it seriously, but also take responsibility for my treatment, as well. I did not take responsibility back then, and it was years before I even began to understand what that means!

Step 2. Claiming the Elephant As Your Own: Take responsibility for your disorder and your treatment.

You might be thinking, “Okay, so I’m sick. Great. Thanks. Now what?” You might also be thinking, “You’re stretching this elephant metaphor a little too far,” but that’s what the comments section is for. Besides, elephants are very large and can be stretched quite far with the correct equipment.

Yes, we’re sick, and yes, we hurt, but I’m sorry to say that we’ve got work to do, y’all! Sure it would be great if we could sit around and pop our pills, experience our horrendous and sometimes embarrassing side effects, and go to therapy all the time and whine about everything or have a breakthrough every once in a while, but that ain’t exactly how it works.

First, you’ve got to want to help yourself, and then you’ve got to step up and do it. Often, especially in the cases of people who have gone undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for long periods of time, people get used to being depressed or bipolar. It’s “comfy,” for lack of a better word. It’s scary to get healthy, and it’s also a lot of work to get healthy and stay healthy. Part of the reason I entitled this piece “How I Fight My Mood Disorder Every Day” is because in order to stay healthy, a person with a mood disorder works for it every day.

It’s much easier to slip into old patterns and be passive about the disorder. Medications not working even after the usual adjustment period? Are you taking them correctly? Really? Then go back to your doctor and tell her so you can both figure out a different plan. Did you lose it and behave badly because you were irritable and in the middle of an anxiety episode? Apologize and offer to make amends. Can’t tolerate your meds because of side-effects? Call your doctor, don’t just stop taking them. Sleeping too much in the daytime? How late did you go to bed last night? Can’t get to sleep at night? Are you exercising? Be honest with yourself! Your doctor cannot help you if you don’t help yourself. You have an active part in your treatment, and that includes doing everything you can to feel better, not just complaining about it when you don’t feel better. You are working toward the goal of having more good days than bad ones, and your doctor, family, and friends are there to help, not to do the work for you.

Step 3. Caring for Your Elephant: Don’t Do It Alone!

Keep in mind that the previous “steps” cover a lot of ground: it could take a person with a mood disorder months or years to even get close to what works for him or her in those departments. Still, like a stampede of elephants, we will forge ever onward, trampling everything in our paths.

A mood disorder, much like an elephant, is a large and unmanageable creature that doesn’t tame easily. You need help! Possibly a lot of help! Yep, this is the part in which we discuss “support systems.” A support system is simply a group of people: your doctor, your friends and family, a spouse, a support group, group therapy, or even an online community can all function as a support system or part of one. Many of us with mood disorders have trouble recognizing and/or building a support system because we have often alienated many of the people we really need the most!

And face it, you can’t just walk up to your brother and announce, “You will now be part of my support system. You will be required to help me through all my manic episodes.” Again, it doesn’t quite work that way. Nor does it mean you have to give every person who comes into your life all the gory details of your gooey innards. That, my friend, is called inappropriate personal disclosure, and we all know that person, don’t we? Yeah, we need to not be that person if we can help it.

I personally am still feeling my way through the whole “support system” issue. In the past, I either alienated my friends and family or made poor choices when it came to companionship. Out of all the relationships I developed during my formative years, I have retained only my immediate family, a few close friends, and my spouse (who is a trooper, by the way). Of the few relationships I have left to “choose from,” as it were, even fewer possess the levels of mutual trust required in order to be part of a support system in the traditional sense.

And this “support system” relationship, by the way, is mutual. I can’t call you crying at three in the morning if I am not also prepared to answer the phone for you at three in the morning. You can’t spend an hour on the phone with me telling me how much your mother is messing up your life without expecting me to also call you at some point to tell you I feel like a hair clog in the U-bend of life and enumerate the reasons why. Being friends (or lovers, or family, or married) takes work and energy. You have to be prepared to put that work and energy into your support system if you want to get some back, and that’s tough to do for those of us with mood disorders. Heck, sometimes I think that’s tough for anyone. Sometimes we don’t even have enough energy to decide what to eat for dinner, so how are we supposed do do something difficult like maintain a trusted relationship? The answer to that, as far as I have found, is practice. Practice, and hoping your friends and family are very forgiving people.

So we’ve acknowledged our Elephant Hat, we’ve taken responsibility for it, and we’re getting help dragging it around all the time. What’s next? In short? Rinse and repeat. Every day? Yep, every day. Bummer! Not really. You know how if you exercise regularly (which is good advice, by the way) you get used to it and even come to enjoy it (sort of)? Well it’s the same here. Think of it as mental hygiene. You take care of your mind, and your mind will take care of you, thus helping you achieve your goal of having more good days than bad ones. Remember that goal? In Part Three, we’ll look at some more ideas about achieving that goal, and some tips for the care and feeding of both yourself and your elephant.

The Elephant on Your Head

midnightferret — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:56:20 +0000

Or, “How I Fight My Mood Disorder Every Day: An Article in Three Parts”

I was originally going to complete my site makeover before I made this post, but I keep having great ideas about points to make in it. Because of a few conversations I’ve had with more than one friend lately, I think it’s time to get these words out into the world!

I’ve been diagnosed with a mood disorder of one kind or another since 1992 or so, when I was first diagnosed with situational depression due to trauma. In all honesty, I believe that my mood disorder is partially genetic and partially due to repeated life trauma (i.e. both nature and nurture). Since that time, I’ve been diagnosed with chronic depression, ADHD, and finally bi-polar disorder. Before I was properly diagnosed, and even for a couple of years afterward, I could have been named the poster child for “How Not to Properly Manage Your Mood Disorder.” I abused alcohol, stayed up all night and slept all day, went on and off my medications without advice from my doctor, and was non-compliant with my therapist. I was housebound for six months and ate a terrible diet when I ate at all. I missed appointments and stopped going to the doctor altogether. I withdrew from my friends and family, couldn’t keep a job, and was actually evicted from my apartment not once, but twice. I actually spent some time living in my car. I seriously considered suicide at least once a day. To this day, part of the reason I lack what other people call a true “support system” is because I couldn’t maintain a decent long term relationship to save my life. More on support systems will come later in this series, by the way.

I have been so high that I really believed some of the stupidest things I’ve ever done in my life were good ideas. I have been so low that I couldn’t see the point of even getting out of bed. I would imagine all of the steps involved: sit up, put your feet on the floor, stand up, walk to the bathroom, turn on the shower, step into the shower… I just couldn’t actually complete any of the steps. I was secretly convinced I was going to hell for an entire year, even though I wasn’t sure I believed in any hell but the one I was living. In 2007, I spent a month seriously convinced that I was the victim of demonic possession. I was accepted into every one of the PhD programs I applied for with funding and assistantships, but I couldn’t go because I was so depressed I was sure I wouldn’t be able to do quality work. This list could go on forever.

If you’ve come this far with me, you may be wondering, “But what does all of this have to do with me? And more importantly, what does all of it have to do with elephants? You promised elephants!”

I was talking to a friend of mine who also suffers from a mental illness and she expressed her frustration with the lack of understanding that her family and friends sometimes exhibit when she is having problems. Sometimes they behave as if they expect her to “shake it off,” which anyone with a mood disorder can tell you is next to impossible. In a moment of empathy, I said to her, “Well, it’s easy for someone to tell you to get out of bed when they don’t understand that for people like us, getting out of bed involves first chewing through the leather straps and then removing the elephant that’s sitting on your head before you can even think about getting up.”

She laughed and told me that that was exactly how she felt. Imagine having to expend energy like that before you can even start your day, and then sometimes that day is filled mostly with despair and hopelessness. Or you’re so wound up you can’t even sleep in the first place, and then you’re too tired during the day to get up and do anything.

If you have a mood disorder, you’re probably all too familiar with these feelings. So how do you get that elephant off your head? The shelves at the bookstore are full of titles like “Beat Your Depression!” and “Four Superfoods to End Mental Illness,” but the fact is most sufferers of mood disorders will fight their illness for life. There is no way to beat your depression, bi-polar disorder, or other mood disorder.

So if you can’t get the elephant off your head, what do you do with it? In order to fight your mood disorder, you must first make peace with your elephant.