Yes, another post for today. I just have to share this.

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On that blog that I just linked to, she says "Wow this is so selfish. Why do people in relationships feel like they have to be the sole provider and keeper of their partner’s happiness? I truly just do not understand this phenomenon."


Amen, sista, is what I have to say to that.


Even if you are monogamous, being the sole provider and keeper of your partner's happiness is a fallacy. There are lots of other things than just your partner that make you happy in life. Your friends (maybe they're male, maybe they're female), your family, your pets, your hobbies, movies, music, etc. etc. If you look at it that way, would people still be saying they're their partner's sole provider and keeper of their happiness? Probably not.


Perspective, people.

I have to remember that I am important, that I am a priority in my life, that I have a responsibility to be good to myself and take care of myself.

This is something that for my whole life, I have forgotten, or ignored. No wonder I have so many health problems now (seriously).

First and foremost, I have to focus on self care that makes me feel good. I have to keep doing yoga, I have to keep writing, I have to keep going to bed early, I have to keep eating well. Some of these things have been slipping lately, and I can see what a difference it makes. I have been tired and sore for the past week and a half. There could be other factors at play here, but it seems that because I haven't been eating that well the past week and a half or so, I've been going to bed later than I should be, etc., my body is now mad at me.

And I think I need to cut coffee out again. I started feeling really good after I quit coffee. And I think that includes decaf, unfortunately. Argh, it's so hard. Not that I have been drinking caffeinated coffee all that much (ok, I've been doing half decaf, half regular quite a bit), but I hope it hasn't been enough to cut it out again with no major problems (read: HEADACHES). I think I'll go back to just decaf for now and see how that goes.

At least we have a long weekend coming up. I am so looking forward to that. I'm going to get some much needed stuff on my to do list done, I'm going to relax and recharge, and it's gonna be great.

Maybe I'll go to a spa this weekend or something...

I've written about my fatigue and health problems before, and I was just walking through my office trying to keep this posture that the physiotherapist I've been seeing wants me to maintain, and I realized I felt totally silly, and it would be fun to write about on here.

Let me back up.

Earlier this year, I guess in March, I started feeling really super fatigued and didn't know why. I had sleep tests done, and they thought I might have sleep apnea, but the home oximetry tests they did didn't really confirm that. My GP was honestly really not helpful, so I switched doctors. My new doctor said "I want you to see a physiotherapist. I think you are hyperventilating and blowing off too much CO2."

This wasn't a totally new concept, because the tech at the sleep clinic said it could be a possibility that I was hyperventilating while I was sleeping, but I didn't think that I was doing it during the day.

So I went to the physiotherapist and he was like "this is classic hyperventilation syndrome." So he was asking me all these questions and looking in my mouth and feeling my neck and my back and looking at my posture and he measured my chest to see how much it expands when I breathe, etc.

Basically, his conclusions are thus:

• My tongue is in the wrong position in my mouth. I know, it sounds crazy. I didn't know there was a "right" position. Apparently my tongue has been resting down by my bottom teeth, and I was getting literally tooth imprints on the edge of my tongue. I had always wondered why that was, and now I know. So, he has been working with me to bring my tongue up so that it actually rests on the palate. My tongue muscles were totally weak, so he is having me do tongue exercises.  Not even joking. I stick the handle of a spoon or something on my tongue, push down with the spoon, and push up with my tongue. Tongue push ups.
• Because my tongue is in the wrong position, I don't swallow correctly, I don't breathe correctly, and my neck and jaw muscles are tense because by letting my tongue drop, I'm actually putting too much strain on the muscles. Doesn't sound logical, but apparently it's true. I was breathing through my mouth too much, and I am still doing that, because my allergies have been pretty bad and my nose has been stuffed. But I've had issues with that my whole life, and now it seems that some of it might be because of my tongue/nose situation.
• About the nose - my nostrils don't dilate when I breathe in quickly through my nose. They are supposed to dilate to let air in. Mine literally collapse so they close up. The muscles around my nose aren't working correctly to stop that from happening, so I have exercises for that, too.
• My posture is horrible. And I knew that already. But the physiotherapist is not even worried so much about being hunched over a computer at work, which is what most chiropractors and massage therapists and even doctors have said I do too much of. He's worried more about my lower back, and how I arch it so that I stick my butt out. I knew I was doing this, but I didn't realize it was a problem. I guess because I do that, my stomach muscles are weaker than they should be because they're not working to keep my tailbone tucked under (and I always wondered why I had a pudge that was kind of...stretched out. Hard to explain, but it makes sense to me now - you can see it in the image below, second from the left). And with my stomach muscles being weak, my diaphragm is weak, so I don't breathe into my diaphragm and stomach, I breathe into my chest too much. Etc. etc.

So this all kind of snowballs into these problems I've been having. I don't know why they suddenly got worse a few months ago, but maybe my body was finally like "wake up! You're not holding me correctly and you're not breathing right!" It just kind of gave out on me, I suppose.

Back to the beginning of my post - my physiotherapist showed me how I should be standing so my posture is correct. Knees bent and out a little, tailbone tucked under, but using stomach muscles, not butt muscles to do that. So I was just doing that in the washroom (no one was around), then trying to keep that as I was walking (which is really hard), and I realized it felt totally strange and foreign. I felt like I probably looked like I was hunched over and walking all funny with my back rounded like Quasimoto or something...But then I saw my reflection in a window and it looked normal. It just *feels* strange, because I'm not used to my back being straight.

There you have it. My misadventures in physiotherapy. 

Apparently I do that second one...

Life is such a twisty road. Sometimes you make U-turns, too. I seem to be making one right now.

Now that my friends and family are potentially reading this blog, it makes me feel strange sharing what's going on. Some people will already know what's going on, but others don't, and I just have to decide if I care what people think.

I'm trying to strike a truce with my body. It has been feeling a lot better lately from doing yoga every day. I feel stronger, mentally more "with it," my muscles are getting toned, I'm getting more flexible even in just very small ways, and it's been really good. But today I feel like I've been run over by a truck. My back is sore, my abs are sore, I'm tired, my vision seems all fuzzy, my brain feels like a giant ball of fluff, and I can't concentrate or actually really think at all. I guess everyone has bad days, but this was how I was feeling every day before I started feeling better, and I don't want it to come back!

I get paranoid that my body issues are going to come back all the time. Two summers ago, I started getting extremely bad pain in my knees, my shoulders, fingers, toes, ankles, wrists...But mostly fingers, knees, and shoulders. And it would migrate between those places. I had days where I couldn't walk right and was limping. I had days I couldn't lift my arm over my head. I had days I couldn't lift even moderately heavy things because my fingers or my wrist would hurt too much (or I couldn't turn a doorknob, pull a door open, put weight on my wrist/hand, lift even a glass of water, etc.). I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and I sometimes feel like that was because they couldn't figure out what else it could be.

I get so afraid that is going to come back, and after my first riding lesson here, it did come back for a couple of days. For some reason my knee was in so much pain, and I was limping for a couple of days. It hasn't happen since then. But I get so afraid it will.

Today I don't feel like that kind of pain is happening, but it does remind me that I have this constant struggle with my body. There are days that are better than others, and lately I've been feeling pretty damn good, and I really do attribute it to doing yoga every day. But I feel like this struggle might never end. And it makes me think that it'll just put me on the fast track for being a crippled old lady in a wheelchair. People say "it's all in the mind, you have to will yourself to feel better, erase the negativity and you will feel better." And I think that's true to a certain extent, but a) We can't live without negativity, at least not all the time, that's just not how life works, and b) It's just not that simple. All I can do is just treat my body with "esteem" as my therapist says, and treat it well, and be healthy, and feed it good, healthy food, and on days when I'm really tired at the end of it all, just acknowledge that my body got me through the day and I'm still alive.

So that's what I'm trying to do...Even though I feel like crawling under my desk and taking a nap.

I've had 2 dates in the past week. With different people. Neither was one I really felt any "spark" with. But I didn't have any expectations going into it, really, so it's all good.

I've been really busy lately, yet I've been feeling pretty lonely, in a weird way. But at the same time, I think about relationships and just want to crawl under a rock. Dating sucks. It's hard. It's like going on job interviews. There are reasons I just don't do it. I just kind of want to wait and let it come to me, but that doesn't really get you anywhere, either. Maybe it's because I'm just not looking that hard right now, and the past few times I've actually tried being in a relationship, it's just been too much for me, emotionally and physically. It exhausts me. Relationships are time consuming, and can be stressful, and are really fun, but there aren't enough hours in the day for work, my life, and a relationship - let alone more than one relationship if that were ever to happen. I don't know how people do it. 

I guess I'm not really ready to sacrifice my life to anyone right now. I like getting up at 6am with 8 hours of sleep behind me, as weird as that sounds. I like not having to impress someone day in and day out. I like having my schedule and doing what I want with my time and not have to juggle someone else's schedule, too.

But, as I said, it gets lonely. Sometimes you just want to cuddle with someone, and feel loved. Cats can only go so far in that regard.

I don't really know what I'm doing wrong. Or what I'm doing right. Or actually, what I'm doing at all.

 

Freedom or Relationship: Which is better? Or is it better to have something in between? 

It's easy to see when you are in Starbucks that they are wasteful. You just have to look around, it's that simple. Individually wrapped plasticware. Paper cups (I've been in ONE Starbucks that had "for here," reusable cups...Correction: I am in a Starbucks now that has reusable mugs, but apparently you have to ask for one - they don't ask you if it's for here or to go...Sneaky!) with plastic lids. Napkins, napkins, napkins. Straws, straws, straws. Little individual packets of sugar, Splenda, what have you. Snacks that are individually wrapped. No "for here" plates - instead, you get a little paper bag. Paper sleeves.

How many people do you think are actually reusing these things?

It would be really not that hard to clean out your paper cup, clean out your plastic lid, and reuse those, as well as reusing your sleeve. But the people who do are probably a very small percentage, if there are people who do that at all. And it's easier to just throw it all in the trash, right? Way less energy burned, way less work involved. Throw away your cup, throw away the environment.

Anyway, I found this article from 2011 which talks about Starbucks' new (back then) logo, and how they are going to just throw away tons of cups, signs, road signs, window graphics, brochures, etc. etc. etc. I'd like to think that they just kept using the paper cups and napkins and sleeves with the old logo until they ran out and started using the ones with the new logo. But she has a point about everything else. We can't have the old logo on the rest area signs! Old logo on the window? Not acceptable. Good old corporate thinking.

Starbucks says on their website that they have started putting recycling bins in every store (I've been in Starbucks in the States that still don't have them...). Of course, "Recycling success depends on the availability of commercial recycling services where our stores are located. While our policy is that stores recycle where space and services are available, execution often presents challenges, both with customer perception of the services being provided and the actual service itself." Why? What is so freaking hard about recycling your cups, your lids, your napkins, etc.?


They go on to say: "Also, different commercial recyclers accept different materials, so we’re not able to provide a consistent program from store to store. And for stores located in shared spaces like malls, it is often the landlord who controls waste collection and recycling." Enough excuses, guys. Just make it happen. Just talk to the landlords. I can't believe this is that difficult. You're Starbucks! Offer higher rent or offer to pay for the recycling or something! You can take that small dent in the budget, guys!


Granted, they are doing some other things like providing coffee grounds for composting, trying to gain support for more recycling nationwide, and they give you a discount when you reuse your cup. That last point is not that impressive - ooh, 10 cent discount, big whoop. And they still aren't using reusable cups of their own in many locations. So, not that impressed, guys. You're relying on the customer to bring their own cup, but it would make a lot more sense if you had reusable cups and asked people if they were going to stay or leaving.


I just thought a bit more about the reusable cup idea. This is Starbucks. Image is so important. Ceramic mugs get broken a lot. Starbucks wouldn't want to use cheap ceramic mugs, because they want their logo on EVERYTHING. I'm looking at the cup a gentleman across the room is using, and there is an indented Starbucks logo on the side. Starbucks would loathe to use cheap mugs that get chipped and don't look pretty enough. Just ridiculous.


Yet, here I sit, in a Starbucks, drinking from a paper cup, with a plastic lid, and a paper sleeve. And I'm complaining about this. And I still go to places like this, which are so wasteful, and hypocritical, and say they're working hard when it really doesn't seem like they are. Looks like I need to reevaluate my coffee intake options. I feel like in our society, it's extremely hard to find places that are going to be friendlier to the environment, fair trade, etc., and where I live, it's double the price. That's not sustainable on my *budget.*


I feel like I'm stuck in a loop, and I can't break out. I feel like there is no escape from this. I suppose I could just choose and stick my ground and not go to places like this. Why is that so much easier said than done?


Some more interesting reports:
Starbucks wastes 23 million litres of water a day - big surprise
The basic problem with coffee cups - really interesting if you have a couple minutes
Only 11% of shareholders voted in favour of a comprehensive recycling plan in 2010

Blah blah blah, etc. etc. etc.