a why and an i

this is a super boring post. i am interspersing completely unrelated, yet new, pictures of judah to make up for it. forgivsies?

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i went back and read yesterday's post and was kind of amazed by the words i was pulling out of my...nowhere. i promise i wasn't using a thesaurus. i have always read a lot and there are hundreds of words that i know by sight and understand in context that i don't ever use in conversation or even know how to pronounce (which has turned out embarrassing for me with lichen, archipelago, and livery) or what they mean on their own. but something about writing brings them out of my head. i often have to go the dictionary and make sure i am using it correctly. even knowing this, yesterday was crazy vocabularistic. i think i might know why.
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i usually look like that after hitting the bottle. judah likes his late meal to be served semi-conscious

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when i was in 5th grade i got diagnosed with ADHD by a real psychologist (my parents didn't just decide i had it). when i was in 8th grade my nurse aunt noticed my neck was puffy and it turns out i have hypothyroidism (you can totally tell its enlarged when you know to look for it...but we are not at goiter-ville yet). i have taken the thyroid medicine every day since and endocrinologist confirmed the suspicions and then medicine for the ADHD sparingly and only when forced. but i learned later that both of these conditions can make you prone to feeling very overwhelmed when presented with stress. i am pretty tightly-wound to begin with, so you throw in these and i don't stand a chance.

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"well, that's a valid point...i'll consider it"

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we have been to several marriage counselors before and during our marriage. if we could afford it we would go regularly once or twice a month. preventative care, homies! one of our main issues is that i seem to walk around at an 8 or 9 on the stress-o-meter in daily life so when jesse or judah or a cat or a piece of mail kicks it up even one notch i am at a boiling 10 instead of just a one. i can never seem to get back down to the baseline of 0: nothing stressing me.

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so i would describe the stress i feel and how it plays out with jesse and invariably the counselor would say, "it sounds like you have more on your plate than you can handle." and i would say, "NUH-UH!" and that's the crux of the thing. i know intellectually that my life isn't that challenging. sure, there is lots to get done, but i am more than capable of doing it all (ask me again when judah learns to walk/gets a sibling). so there's no rational reason to feel crushed by stress and overwhelmed 70% of the time like i do. this stress management technique is also a great way to have a heart attack by 30. every counselor we have seen (even christian ones) has told me upon hearing this that the bulk of this issue seems to be biochemical and not emotional/relational (even though it plays out big-time in those ways). they always suggested "taking something for it."

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first creature on earth to get a real hug (not pictured) from judah: bearface, my teddy bear.
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i instantly rebelled against this every time. i am not a fan of america's policy of "medicate first, ask questions later" concerning behavioral/emotional issues. i am so glad we have all the pharmacuticals we do and that so many of them can and do help people, but for my situation, i always thought that it would be a cop out. i love jesus and am truly committed to growing and stretching myself into a better person no matter how much it hurts or how hard it gets and i felt like i could fix these things if i tried or prayed hard enough. when i am not on anything i feel 100% normal and right rather than disadvantaged or incapable so it felt like a medication would be the same as using performance enhancing drugs. i felt that taking something would be like cheating or the easy way out or even worse, giving up and admitting i couldn't do it on my own.

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well last summer i finally gave up and let my doctor prescribe an antidepressant for me. i was a little miffed to have to call it that because i am not depressed at all. i do get extremely anxious from time to time but i am pretty positive i have never suffered from actual clinical depression. so i felt bummed that i was just another number in the massive american antidepressant machine. but whatever. if i was gonna lay down the pride and admit i couldn't do this on my own, i might as well go all the way and not feel any shame at having the D-word thrown out.

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newest goal: to grab the stream of water and put it in my mouth. very tricky

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surprisingly i actually loved it because i never felt it kick in unlike the crazy ADHD medicines that i had taken as a kid and in college. hello heart palpitations, blinding euphoria, disgust with food and inability to sleep...there's a reason the prescription pad for these is pink, they are controlled substances and are bad mama-jamas. i was thrilled that i never felt anything different physically when i started on the antidepressant. for all i could tell it was like taking a multivitatmin every morning.

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i did notice the effect though after a few days. things that would fluster my face off before i was now able to see for just what they were and address them as such rather than attaching a whole emotionally cataclysmic set of assumptions to them. it was just, "oh, look at that, jesse left a bowl out, i think i will/won't pick it up" versus, "that dirty mofo thinks he can just leave his crap around and make ME his doormat slave and that i'll just pick it up with out realizing what he's trying to get away with...and also he probably thinks i'm fat." all those extra crazy-lady messages got turned way down so that rational keight could be heard over it all saying, "it's a freaking bowl, he's a freaking dude...not much more to it," and at least have a fighting chance of me believing her.

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sat in his big boy highchair during our entire date. AWESOME! also, first vest.

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it was seriously the best time in our marriage. things were still hard. i was still bitchy sometimes and flew off the handle, but like the doctor said, it just seemed to really "take the edge off" (damn, i hate when they nail me like that). things were so great we decided, "hey, this is easy...let's have a baby." (well technically i said jesse could get an iphone if he knocked me up and then he was fully on board). while the doctor said i could keep taking the medicine up until the 3rd trimester, i wasn't going to mess around with it and stopped altogether. ditto for during breastfeeding. poor jesse went from being married to the brand new wonderfully clear-thinking keight straight past regular crazy unmedicated keight and right into unmedicated hormonal and nauseous keight (since then he's had the pleasure of meeting unmedicated 3rd trimester exploding mood swings/gas keight, unmedicated caged, rabid wookie in labor keight, and my personal favorite: unmedicated uncontrollably sobbing post-partum lactating and corporally deflated keight).

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zombified right before bedtime

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so the moral of the story is that i am back on the medicine. i think some part of this drug acts like my ADHD medicine did and makes me "smarter." which really just means it allows me access to knowledge i have in my brain that i'm not aware i have when in the midst of all the stressing. so there's my explanation for the boosted vocab plus a whole bunch of other crap about me that you probably don't care about.

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first time in the buggy (did you know that yankees call this a "carriage?") on his half birthday, which worked out because the seat says "6 months to 4 years" hooray rules!

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the other part of this blog title has to do with being really fed up with people thinking they're being smart and grammatically correct by always saying "jesse and i" instead of "jesse and me," no matter the occasion. i think english teachers corrected kids so many times for saying things like, "me and billy want to go outside" by saying, "no, billy and i want to go outside" so kids thought, "billy and me = wrong; must convert to billy and i at all times." this is not true. i is a subject and me is an object. my dad was an english teacher before becoming grand dragon of woodward north so i had grammar drilled into me early on and am a bit tyrannical about it.

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crotch shot (the only shot he had) at his 6 month checkup
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ironically though, my PE teacher mom was the one who gave me the trick to always getting this right. take away the other person/people you are talking about and try it out and see if it sounds right. recent example: on the biggest loser, trainers bob and jillian are HORRIBLE about subject/verb agreement. bob said the other night, "these contestants think they owe their success to jillian and i, but they did the work." ok, that sounds good and smart maybe to a fourth grader...but it's wrong. take away jillian and pretend like he was just talking about himself: "these contestants think they owe their success to i...?" um, no.

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also people, I apostrophe S is not a word. i have seen people write, "at jesse and i's wedding," for real, y'all??? that is some baloney and you need to pick it up! i feel like you shouldn't even need the trick here. if you are making up new words you know you've done something wrong.
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i mean seriously, they should make door handles that feel like these

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can't believe i just posted on grammar and antidepressants. but hopefully i have made the world a slightly more agreeable place for subjects, verbs, and anyone who has to talk to me ever. godspeed.