Heather says:

January 1st is an excellent time to take stock of what needs to change for positive growth. Life’s rough enough without creating additional problems. Just opening my calendar app makes my stomach clench and causes  my eye to start twitching -truly an attractive quirk. Is my calendar that jam packed? Well, no it’s just significantly more than I am used managing. To get through the next six months I must practice discipline.

*No! This is a family oriented site, put that away.*

Is it fun?

Nope.

However, the results are much more exciting than the alternative. One of  my goals for January is to get my butt out of bed on time. I’ve slipped into a bad habit of waiting until I hear the kids stirring. Even if I took weekends off, I still lose more than 20 hours of guilt and interruption free time.

My second goal for January is to quit abandoning small tasks before they are done. I’ve become a master avoider, this quickly leads to piles of laundry and unwashed dishes.  These two chores alone create a cascade of guilt and avoidance that ooze into every corner of my home. So my plan is to quit leaving dishes in the sink and fold (and put away) all the laundry. Neither of these chores are hard,they’re just repetitive in a busy home.

What areas of your life lack discipline? No, the kids don’t count.

Ivy says:

I’m sure it doesn’t surprise anyone to learn that when I was a kid, I’d break the rules as much as possible. Finally, to keep peace in the house, I stopped breaking so many rules, but I vowed that when I had my own house, I’d not have any of those same rules. Now that I’m an adult, I’ve spent some time breaking those rules and I’ve learned that most (not all!) of them had a really good reason for it. Let’s take a look.

“Don’t stand and stare into the refrigerator”

This might have been the one thing my mom and I fought the most about. If I spent more than 30 seconds staring into the fridge, mom would be on me like white on rice, yelling at me not to stand around staring into the refrigerator. Naturally, the first thing I did when I got a house of my own, is open my refrigerator and stand there staring into it for as long as I felt like it.

The truth is, it really does let the cold out, and you shouldn’t stand around staring into the fridge. But how are you going to decide what to eat without opening the refrigerator?

“We don’t turn on the air conditioning until June.”

Growing up in north central Indiana, we didn’t need air conditioning as much as we do here in Tennessee. But sometimes we’d have days in May that were 90 degrees with 80 percent humidity, and still Mom wouldn’t turn on the AC. “Not until June,” she’d say, as I languished half-naked in front of the fan, dabbing my forehead with a washcloth.

By the time I moved out, I was living in Tennessee. As any Tennessean knows, there are times when you need to turn on the AC as early as April, sometimes even March. Mom had calmed down on that rule when we moved here. But she was still pretty strict about making sure it was miserably hot before turning on the AC.

I have a programmable thermostat that takes all the guesswork of turning on the AC or not. When it’s in AC mode, the house is kept at 76 during the day and 78 at night. The thermostat does all the work of deciding whether or not we need heat, AC or nothing at all. Still, I do sometimes long to sleep half-naked under a fan on a hot night, so sometimes I turn it all off. Funny how things that once were miserable are now somewhat of a treat.

“Don’t yank your clothes off the hanger.”

That used to drive my mom nuts. I never understood why until I became the person fetching hangers out of people’s closets. There’s nothing worse than a pile of tangled hangers in the closet. Especially when a bunch of them end up on the floor. Now, as an adult, I yank my clothes off the hanger and then I neatly put the hanger back. Oh, and I make my kids do the hanger-fetching, so they understand why you shouldn’t yank your clothes off the hangers.

“Change your underwear every day! What if you’re in a car wreck?!”

Because, you know, there’s nothing worse than being in a car wreck with dirty underwear. Actually, some of the wrecks I’ve had have nearly caused me to wet myself anyway. But stinky drawers are a bad thing whether you’re in a car wreck or not, so I’m on the clean underwear every day train now.

“No dessert until you’ve finished enough of your dinner.”

I remember when my mom would give me an amount of bites I had to take before I could have dessert. I’d put a miniscule amount of food on my fork and hope to get away with that counting as a bite. It never worked. I vowed when I grew up that I’d eat cake for breakfast if I wanted to, or have my dessert before dinner. And I did, many times. But I’ve learned as I grow older that eating the right foods really does make me feel better, look better, and be generally happier. Now, I hardly ever bother with dessert at all, even when I’m at my mom’s. My willpower is awesome, she says.

Now, Home Eccers, it’s your turn: tell me what rules your mom had that you broke shamelessly as an adult. And was your mom right, or are you right?

Heather says:

Fearless Friday will return next week. I decided to cut myself some slack for the the holiday weekend. Also, everyone thank Ivy who has been so generously picking up my slack while I dealt with allergy testing. The tests itself weren’t bad, it was the five days prior to each where I could not take any antihistamines. It’s been fun around here, let me tell you.

Oh, I said there’d be a funny story. Did you know there can be more to allergies than just the headaches, itching, and sneezing? Apparently irritability and anxiety can be part of the whole deal. I tend to try to first reach for a mild, natural therapy before going the pharmaceutical route. Many friends had raved about the calming effects of chamomile tea. I have three small children and there are many days where I feel pushed to the limits of my patience and tolerance.

I figured what the heck, I’ll try the tea. I drank cup after cup, day after day,  for several weeks never feeling even a smidgin of relief. If anything, I felt more and more high-strung and irritable. My nerves were frayed, almost crackling with the cranky.

Guess who is allergic to ragweed.

Guess who cross-reacts to chamomile.

That’s right, Home Eccers, learn from my mistakes.

Now a quick #backontrack update, there are quite a few Twitter users who are encouraging each other through this hashtag. Speaking for myself, I find it encouraging to know there are others out there struggling to establish healthy routines. It’s always nice to have a few cheerleaders. I enjoy watching as each of us strive to meet our goals, one lady is breaking her cola habit, another is working to stick to Weight Watchers, and one of our guys reached his goal of a 50 mile bike ride. Congratulations to all of them. And for the rest of you, feel free to jump in, no introductions needed.

Ivy says:

Hi. My name is Ivy Hogan and I am using anti-depressants. That might not sound like a shocking revelation- after all, I’ve read several posts in recent weeks decrying how many doctors overprescribe anti-depressants, and how, surely, all these people who are on anti-depressants don’t really need them. I, myself, fought being put on anti-depressants for a very long time, partly due to the “you don’t really need them” stigma and partly because I wanted to see if I could get out of this funk myself, because, really, things in my life are hard lately and I thought that these things were the root cause.

And they might be. For the newbies here and for people who don’t know me and don’t know what’s going on in my life, I’ll give you a recap. About five years ago, my dad was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy. Now, for those of you who don’t feel like clicking the link, the long and short of it is that it is a very slow moving kidney disease that has no cure and usually results in kidney failure. 5 years ago when my dad was diagnosed, they estimated that he had already had it for at least 15 years and was getting to the end stages of the disease.

They attempted to treat it with prednisone, but that has resulted in many other problems such as diabetes and cataracts. And, in addition to everything else, because of my dad’s kidneys failing, he has also developed congestive heart failure, gout, and a few other problems I can’t even remember right now. Basically- my dad is dying very slowly right before my very eyes, and there is nothing I can do about it.

On top of everything else, last year on August 31st, my grandma passed away very suddenly. My grandma, who had lived with us for 8 years. My grandma, who I was very close to. Losing her was heartbreaking, and the subsequent cleaning out of all the stuff she had owned piled sadness onto my heart as much as her stuff was being piled into my house.

You might be thinking, “Ivy, that doesn’t make you a candidate for anti-depressants, that makes you a candidate for therapy.” I’d agree, except I talk to a therapist nearly every Friday. He’s been recommending I see my doctor (or a psychiatrist) for antidepressants for 6 months, at least.

So after several incidents where I picked fights with people I dearly love, after sleeping several entire days away, and finally, after overhearing a conversation my kids had about my depression, I talked to my doctor and he prescribed Celexa.

The night I filled the prescription I was at my mom and dad’s house, and Dad and I went to the store. On the way, I told him about my new prescription. “Thank God,” he said. “I’ve been watching your normal sparkle drain out of you for nearly a year now and I was about to say something to you. Did you know Mr. Ivy had even called me about your depression?”

See, I think with clinical depression, the person who is depressed is often the last to really know. Everyone else sees it, but they don’t want to bring it up to you for fear of making you angry or more depressed. Dad went on to tell me several things that I really needed to hear. First, he told me that it runs in my family. He talked about how, when he was a kid, my grandma would be fine for a few years, but then would lock herself into her bedroom for months and even sometimes years at a time. What was she doing? Sleeping, mainly, he said. She cried a lot too.

This reminded me of when I was a kid and my dad would spend a bunch of time in his bedroom, sleeping or just staring at the television. This just stopped when I was in high school. I asked him what was the difference, why it stopped and he simply said, “That’s when Prozac came on the market.” Ah-hah. One of my life’s mysteries explained.

I told him about how many people in my life had been telling me to just snap out of it, or that I needed to get my act together, or that I needed to start thinking positively. And my very favorite- my mom told me if I cleaned my house, I would be much happier. Because we all know, a clean house is totally the key to sanity.

Then my dad told me something that may have been one of the most important things I needed to hear: the people telling me to snap out of it, or think positively or clean my house do NOT understand what being clinically depressed is like. These people are well meaning, but because they cannot comprehend that all the positive thinking and spotless houses in the world are not going to cheer me up, are making me feel worse. What I needed to do was just what I did. Go to the doctor and find an anti-depressant that works for me.

I’m writing this for you Home Eccers that do understand. For those of you who may or may not have problems in your life, but still feel hopeless. For those of you who, all you want to do is sleep. And for those of you who think it’s probably better for everyone else if you vanished off the face of the planet. Have you been there? Are you there now?

I’ve been on the Celexa for 3 weeks now. People have been telling me they’re so glad to see my “voice” back. Mr. Ivy grabbed me and hugged me hard yesterday and said he had missed me immensely. My oldest son said, “What, you’re laughing? I didn’t know you knew how to do that anymore.” Things are getting back on track.

If you’ve been feeling hopeless or anything similar, I cannot urge you enough to pick up the phone and call your doctor for an appointment to talk to them about getting the right medicine to help you. Also, do not discount the amazing benefits of talk therapy. I’ve always said everyone should have a therapist. They’re like having friends you can tell everything to with the bonus of being absolutely sure they’re never going to spread gossip about you. Plus, you don’t have to deal with their problems. Therapists have their own therapists for that.

Be well, Home Eccers. I’m getting there, myself.

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