Journal – SuperSonnek

The Worst.

For someone who works with WordPress, I’m an awful blogger.

I used to blog nearly every day before WordPress became my job, now I’m just “ugh blogging” like it’s some chore. I mean it really isn’t, but I think it’s more that I’m less anonymous than I was before so I’m less…open…about my life and everything around it.

Maybe it’s because I somehow think I have this image to protect. Which is riduculous because anyone that knows me already knows I’m a hot mess express. Or maybe I’m now a hot flash express…

Yep. The big M. Or more accurately, perimenopause – which is the bratty younger sister of menopause. The thing that has aggrivated me so much that I need to write about it.

And what I’ve discovered about perimenopause/menopause is that:

There’s few resources out there for women going through this.
There’s few doctors that actually know what to do about it.
There’s fuck all you can do about it.

What do you mean? Surely there’s medications or treatments that can help?

Of course there are, but what are you trying to treat? Here’s a graphic to help you picture the bullshit women of a certain age go through:

Note that this says Common Symptoms. COMMON.

But just to give you a fun insight into what I’M dealing with, the only ones I haven’t had either periodically or all the fucking time are 3, 6 (hysterectomy), 16, 20, 25, 30, 31, and 34. For you math-challenged folks, I have 26 of 34 “common” symptoms. With my luck, those other eight will pop up eventually.

How do you treat that? I went from zero medications to currently six to deal with these symptoms with varying levels of success. The best part about these symptoms is that they’re not constant nor are they consistent from person to person. So how do you treat that? Even with hormone treatment, a woman’s hormones can fluctuate by the hour – so how is a single dose of hormones going to be consistently effective?

Crazy, right? Welcome to the terrordome.

I try to give my husband half of an idea about what I’m going through, but it’s tough to explain to someone how fucking wild this all is. Like, when did this weird saggy neck thing pop up? Why can’t I remember shit anymore? Whose old hands are these? Why do I itch? WHY AM I SO HOT?!

In the past week, I literally raged at a piece of ice that fell on the floor. Screaming and stomping and I wanted to blow up the entire world. Because I dropped a piece of ice. Then an hour later I’m crying. Like full-on Katherine Hepburn sobs.

On other days I have to take a cold shower to just find some relief from the incessant hot feeling I’m suffering through. Other days I want to crawl up into a ball and die. Don’t get me started about what my allergies are doing now. They weren’t the greatest before but now they’re even worse!

Also, I love the advice on how to improve symptoms: cut down on caffeine, alcohol, and sugar. What’s the point of life after that?

I’m not even going to go into the digestive and other biological warfare that’s being waged in my body.

I’ve been finding myself to be increasingly stressed out and overwhelmed by everything lately. It got to the point where I exercised the option at work to go to a part-time schedule. I work four days a week for 80% of my full-time salary. I’m grateful to both my company and the good fortune that my husband and I have where we can weather a pay reduction, even for a short period of time. I’ve been on this reduced schedule for a month now and it’s been so helpful. I planned on staying part-time until the end of the year, but I’ll re-evaluate when the time gets closer. Knowing that I can be going through this for YEARS, I may need more time as I try to adjust and adapt to this new phase of life.

Yes, I’m trying to exercise and be more healthy, but my god it’s hard. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: if men had to go through this shit, there’d be more comprehensive health and mental care for this. 😦

I’m sure I’ll post more than once every two years now. Maybe.

Lost Friends

There are friends in your life who made a huge impact on you. Friends who changed who you were as a person. Friends who were your lifeline through hard times. Friends who were there to celebrate your victories. Friends who you shared once-in-a-lifetime experiences with. Friends who were there through the laughter and the tears. Friends who you thought would always be in your life.

But today – they’re not.

They’re not around for a number of reasons. You no longer work at the same company, so you don’t see them every day like you used to. You moved to a different city or a different state. Your interests changed and you didn’t have enough in common anymore. They had kids and you didn’t. You both grew up and life took priority. All valid life reasons why friendships ended or fizzled.

There are other times where there doesn’t seem to be a reason. One day you’re friends, the next they’ve ghosted you. Those are the ones that really sting. It would be one thing to have a huge fight and exchange hearty “fuck yous”, then that would make sense. But nothing like that happened. It’s like one day you were friends, the next you never existed. Which hurts because these friends helped you through some low points in your life and now that you’ve come out the other side, they’re not around to see that person that you’ve become.

Finally – the worst one and the reason I’m being so introspective today is when your friend passes away. One minute they’re there and the next they’re gone forever. I haven’t lost anyone to COVID-19 thank fucking gawd, but I have lost them to cancer.

My good friend Alex passed away after a long battle with leukemia two years ago tomorrow. I have the reminder in my calendar so I make sure to remember him and to celebrate that friendship even though it’s now lost. He’d probably tell me I was being stupid for being so mushy and making such a big fuss about it. Makes me smile just thinking about it. Miss you, friend.

Is This Thing On?

It’s been…checks calendar…two and a half years since I’ve made a blog post.

Whoops.

I’ve had a slight job change – I’m working for the same company, but in a different group, so everything feels fresh and new to me now! I’m also using this as an opportunity to start blogging more and getting back to the person 10 years ago who blogged on a near daily basis.

But what to talk about? In the past I used this space as a way to talk through diet, exercise, and the lack of success with weight loss, so I suppose I could start there.

Typically I would complain about my failures with weight loss, but you want to know the worst part? Starting January 2020, I found my groove with diet and exercise and I was starting to see results. Yes!

Then the pandemic hit.

My fitness outlet of choice (OrangeTheory) closed down and while we had a rower in the house, it wasn’t the same so I fell off the fitness wagon. Over the past year, we outfitted our home exercise equipment so I could do just about anything out of the house: dumbbells, TRX bands, weight bench, etc. The big purchase was getting a treadmill – which the one I wanted finally came back in stock in August so we jumped on it. This spurred on an office makeover where I updated furniture and rearranged the layout so I could fit the treadmill right next to my desk. I don’t use it while I work, but I’m more apt to use it here than in the basement where the rest of the equipment is.

Side note: my husband and I are talking about moving all the basement exercise equipment to our unused spare bedroom so it’s a nicer place to be and would make it more likely that we’d use it. Right now going into the “dungeon” next to the litter boxes doesn’t sound too exciting.

We’d lose the spare bed, but nobody visits us now anyway – if so, it’s a few days per year. So we’re seriously considering it.

My diet had been going SO well too – started WW on January 1, 2020 and had lost 10lbs over the first two months and noticed all the changes the combination of fitness and diet were making to my body.

Then, well, you know.

All the food shortages threw a wrench into things – the staples that allowed me to lose weight without stressing out were impossible to find. Nevermind what the overall stress levels did to my mental well being. Hellooo wine!

Ended up buying whatever was available in the store and I dove into comfort foods and just not caring in general. I mean, we all lived through that time – that shit sucked!

Now, I’m just as heavy as I was when I started my weight loss journey in January 2020. I am running more since I got the treadmill and on New Year’s Day this year I ran a 5k without stopping for the first time since 2015. I’ve also been hitting other running milestones since then, so I’ll take that little success. 🙂

It’s so hard to get the food thing back on track. I’m super tempted to sign up for one of those meal services so I don’t have to think about it because planning menus is THE WORST. I’ll happily eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch, but once dinner hits, all bets are off. I learned how to make really good pizza dough and hot wings over the pandemic, so that’s part of the problem. Like, if I stopped eating like an asshole, I’d probably have a better time of it, so this isn’t a problem with no solution. I’m just unmotivated and lazy and I don’t know how to get myself out of it.

I guess my biggest problem is that I’m still feeling the weight of stress about the pandemic and how everything in my life has been put on hold. I’m lucky that my job was already remote before all this happened, my husband’s job pivoted to being remote, and we both stayed healthy throughout the past year. But I’m missing travel and visiting family and it’s hard to get motivated again.

I guess that’s enough for an update. Maybe I’ll write more than once every few years going forward. 😀