starsapart revisits the basics

[Scaly Freak]

20 minutes ago, starsapart said:

I already stop drinking black tea by 2 (usually by noon). I do have green tea after that but it's never impacted me before, caffeine-wise. I've been trying to transition from green to herbal in the evenings, but it's hard as I'm really picky about my herbals.

 

My grocery stores carry decaffeinated green tea. Can you switch to that and see if it makes a difference? We're not living under normal circumstances and what made no difference before might be a factor now.

[raptron]

23 minutes ago, starsapart said:

What Hatter said. I think the societally "feminine" definition of "abs" is literally just a flat stomach? I don't know.

Haaaa. Yeah, that sounds about right. 

 

23 minutes ago, starsapart said:

Tomorrow morning, we're all packing up and going to my parents' because our house cleaner will be coming for the first time in two months, and I'd like everything arranged before she does. She wouldn't let me pay her if she wasn't working (and obviously, we didn't have anyone in the house for the last couple of months), so we've decided to resume service this month with a couple of precautions. Namely, we will leave her a key and a check and depart before she comes. I've asked her to disinfect all surfaces and leave all the windows open. We'll come home a couple hours after she finishes. I can't deny that it will be nice to have someone else scrub and disinfect the various surfaces in my house for a change. I've gotten so spoiled having a cleaner for the last five years. 😅

 

Ohhh, that'll be so great! 

[starsapart]

6 minutes ago, Scalyfreak said:

 

My grocery stores carry decaffeinated green tea. Can you switch to that and see if it makes a difference? We're not living under normal circumstances and what made no difference before might be a factor now.

 

I am assuming that's teabags? I don't acknowledge teabags as containing actual tea 🙃 But I will try to do the one herbal I have that actually don't hate after 5.

 

3 minutes ago, raptron said:

Haaaa. Yeah, that sounds about right. 

 

Ohhh, that'll be so great! 

 

I have distinctly un-feminine abs and I am fine with it.

 

And YES, I am SO excited for a clean house that I didn't have to clean myself. Plus my mom will no doubt spoil us with delicious food just like she does on the weekends.

[Scaly Freak]

2 minutes ago, starsapart said:

I am assuming that's teabags? I don't acknowledge teabags as containing actual tea

 

They have those, yes, but  in the section with organic food they have a few different brands with loose leaf tea as well. I don't remember if they have decaffeinated loose leaf green tea though, since I've never searched for it.

[miss_marissa]

2 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Because god forbid if a woman looks jacked. No no that wouldn't be very feminine, you need to have just the right amount of leanness everywhere. And big tits.

 

Technically the video doesn't claim abs in two weeks. I found this disclaimer at the bottom of the video. 😉

 

Having said that, it's a decent enough video for a bit of light conditioning (I also tried it!). And even if it won't get anyone abs it still gets a lot of people exercising for a few minutes. 🙂

 

41 minutes ago, starsapart said:

What Hatter said. I think the societally "feminine" definition of "abs" is literally just a flat stomach? I don't know.

 

 

Yeah, the two week thing was the social challenge she ran saying if you do this for two weeks you'll get abs, but I think that's now been buried (unless you look at the videos from her followers). There were a ton of Instagrams and TikToks and so on. I was just fascinated that something so... average? Had so many freakouts attached to it. But as you said, it's exercise, she's not promoting terrible form, and it's far from the worst thing you could do!

 

But yea, more just pointing out my surprise/bias that being skinny was what many people considered having abs instead of visible 6-pack. 

 

Yea, I'm sure the video is still useful and if folks enjoy it then sure go for it. I might even try it one of these upcoming days  

[Renate]

55 minutes ago, starsapart said:

What Hatter said. I think the societally "feminine" definition of "abs" is literally just a flat stomach? I don't know.

 

Yeah, I was so confused when I learnt this. My best friend around the age of 11-12 was a amateur competitor for ballroom dancing, and she always had DEFINED abs, was tall, had broad-ish shoulders, wore heels (where other later tall friends of mine avoided heels), was super confident and I supported her fiercely(*). (Yes, she had defined abs at 12 and she's never stopped maintaining them as far as I know. We don't see each other a lot anymore and she didn't wear crop tops last time we had drinks together.) (*)And she did that for me too.  

 

EDIT: BY THE WAY, I am very glad your friend gave you a talking to!!!  I think I've mentioned this before, but I constantly have to remind friends with chronic illnesses that they have every right to tell others how they feel, regardless of their strength and stellar poker faces lol. You even HAVE to, because people don't see it otherwise. Not everyone sees you often enough/is good at noticing signs that you are close to going into the negative when you have an excited/energetic demeanor...

[starsapart]

4 hours ago, miss_marissa said:

But yea, more just pointing out my surprise/bias that being skinny was what many people considered having abs instead of visible 6-pack.

 

Mainstream society is weird. Though maybe I only think that because I'm fully disconnected from it at this point? LOL

 

4 hours ago, analoggirl said:

EDIT: BY THE WAY, I am very glad your friend gave you a talking to!!!  I think I've mentioned this before, but I constantly have to remind friends with chronic illnesses that they have every right to tell others how they feel, regardless of their strength and stellar poker faces lol. You even HAVE to, because people don't see it otherwise. Not everyone sees you often enough/is good at noticing signs that you are close to going into the negative when you have an excited/energetic demeanor...

 

We all navigate as best we can, which is (I guess?) the lesson that the spoon theory is trying to teach, anyhow. I find it easier to say I'm running low on spoons than to "whine" about how much I hurt on a bad pain day... even if the lack of spoons and the pain are closely related.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Chronic pain is no joke, and it can suck the life right out of you. The worst part is, so many people just don't understand. On top of the exhaustion from pain, there's the exhaustion of putting up with people assuming you haven't tried the obvious solution you tried five years ago, or that it's all in your head, or that it's not that bad, or.... Further exhaustion comes from trying to explain it to people who have an open mind, cause even they take a while to get it.

 

Hugs friend.

[Scaly Freak]

12 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Chronic pain is no joke, and it can suck the life right out of you. The worst part is, so many people just don't understand.

 

Well, obviously if you can function it can't be that bad, right?

 

 

 

"People" often forget that someone who lives with chronic pain, or any other chronic condition learns to live with it and function, for obvious reasons. That doesn't mean the pain isn't there anymore. It just means it's harder to see for the people around the person in pain.

[starsapart]

15 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Chronic pain is no joke, and it can suck the life right out of you. The worst part is, so many people just don't understand. On top of the exhaustion from pain, there's the exhaustion of putting up with people assuming you haven't tried the obvious solution you tried five years ago, or that it's all in your head, or that it's not that bad, or.... Further exhaustion comes from trying to explain it to people who have an open mind, cause even they take a while to get it.

 

Hugs friend.

 

2 hours ago, Scalyfreak said:

 

Well, obviously if you can function it can't be that bad, right?

 

 

 

"People" often forget that someone who lives with chronic pain, or any other chronic condition learns to live with it and function, for obvious reasons. That doesn't mean the pain isn't there anymore. It just means it's harder to see for the people around the person in pain.

 

Thanks. And to be perfectly fair, I'm so good at managing around it that I genuinely forget about it for stretches of time, as it has become my new "normal." Maybe someday when I can afford to have the surgery I need, I will find myself shocked at how much excess energy I have, wouldn't that be great???

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was all right. We took a family walk and I did some shoulder warm-ups on the pull-up bar between laundry (I don't usually do it on weekdays, but when baby has a blowout, you gotta do what you gotta do). I did pretty good with food but then in the evening a belated Mother's day gift came from a good friend which included chocolate-covered strawberries, and of course starlet and I had to have some (and I had to have some more after she was in bed............). This was also super nice because this was the only Mother's Day gift I got this year, though now I feel bad that I didn't think to get my friend anything (just to clarify, I did get small gifts for both my mom and my wife, I just didn't receive anything). Maybe because I was stupidly focusing on that, I was pretty low yesterday evening. I did manage to get to bed by 10:30 on the dot. Speaking of sleep, I tried reducing caffeine but because work was so busy this basically meant that I had my one cup of tea at 7am and then no more tea at all for the rest of the day. I was exhausted by mid-afternoon. Incidentally, I still slept like crap and woke up four times in the night, so I don't think removing tea helped much. 😕

[Scaly Freak]

4 minutes ago, starsapart said:

Speaking of sleep, I tried reducing caffeine but because work was so busy this basically meant that I had my one cup of tea at 7am and then no more tea at all for the rest of the day. I was exhausted by mid-afternoon. Incidentally, I still slept like crap and woke up four times in the night, so I don't think removing tea helped much. 😕

 

So the good news is that you can continue to have your tea. That's not a bad thing.

 

I can very much relate to the sleep difficulties... please let me know if your find a working solution!

[starsapart]

Just now, Scalyfreak said:

 

So the good news is that you can continue to have your tea. That's not a bad thing.

 

I can very much relate to the sleep difficulties... please let me know if your find a working solution!

 

I will be so rich when I figure this out. 😅 Nearly everyone I know is having a hard time sleeping. I think it's just all of the constant (if low-key) stress that we're living in. There's a lot of uncertainty and fear in the world right now and it's taking its toll on us.

 

Thankfully, at least starlet doesn't understand that the world is on fire, so she's sleeping great. I wish I could see things through her eyes sometimes; I get the sense life would be simpler (and much more fascinating) if I could tap into that baby mindset.

[raptron]

Yum for chocolate-covered strawberries! I'm sorry you're dealing with so many sleep issues. I think the constant stress plus the changes in activity levels are huge contributors. At least you know tea probably isn't the issue. 

[KB Girl]

Indeed, you wouldn’t want to live without (proper) tea!

 

but hey, look at you making the best of a shitty situation 😁 pun fully intended. You know, sneaking in movement during poopy laundry. 
 

and I don’t have anything useful to say.. but here to offer solidarity. I also spend last night with sleep trouble and a ridiculously high heart rate while lying in bed. And meditation is a very foreign concept that only induces more anxiety. 

[starsapart]

1 hour ago, raptron said:

Yum for chocolate-covered strawberries! I'm sorry you're dealing with so many sleep issues. I think the constant stress plus the changes in activity levels are huge contributors. At least you know tea probably isn't the issue. 

 

Yes, that's the bright side. I had all the tea I wanted yesterday. Weirdly, my sleep was actually better than usual even though I had caffeine at 7pm.

 

 

32 minutes ago, KB Girl said:

Indeed, you wouldn’t want to live without (proper) tea!

 

but hey, look at you making the best of a shitty situation 😁 pun fully intended. You know, sneaking in movement during poopy laundry. 
 

and I don’t have anything useful to say.. but here to offer solidarity. I also spend last night with sleep trouble and a ridiculously high heart rate while lying in bed. And meditation is a very foreign concept that only induces more anxiety. 

 

Hahahaha thank you for the pun. Blowouts are so miserable. I don't know if we should just size her up to the next size of overnight diaper? She's had two early morning blowouts in a row recently, but her diaper size is meant for 22-37 pounds and she's only just barely 20 pounds as it is! The next size up is for 27+ pounds and that just seems excessive... I don't know.

 

I appreciate the solidarity. This thread hasn't been much fun lately but that makes me all the more grateful for the people who still show up here. 🥰

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was a bit better than the day before! I am pretty sure caffeine didn't hurt in keeping me less grumpy. It was a hectic morning as we tidied up, packed up the baby, and headed to my parents' house so the cleaner could come and scrub things down. I spent the morning and early afternoon working from my mom's kitchen table and being plied with delicious food. After starlet's unfortunately very short nap, we packed her up and headed back home to a clean house. We had a crazy intense rainstorm on our drive and as we got home, and starlet was fascinated by the sound of it. It also allowed a lot of wonderful fresh air to circulate in the house. We had some fun family play time in the evening, and then after we settled the baby into bed, we relaxed a bit since there was NO housework, for a change. Shortly before bed, I reminded myself I needed to do SOMETHING and did the advanced Cirque abs circuit again. It's still properly challenging for sure. Then I had some fun chatter on the NF D&D server with @WhiteGhost and @juliebarkley (about non D&D things), and stayed up a little bit too late. I was in bed by 10:38 though, which isn't terrible. I only had one heart-racing anxious wake-up all night, which is a great improvement over the several nights prior. Maybe my body is starting to calm down and get accustomed to the sleep schedule I am trying to impose? One can only hope.

 

Today is another gloomy day with rain in the forecast. I think I'll use my weekly takeout day to get some nice, comforting pho.

[KB Girl]

5 hours ago, starsapart said:

I don't know if we should just size her up to the next size of overnight diaper?

yes, always yes. 2 blowouts in a row? up you go! 

 

I am so happy for you that you got a clean house, made that way by someone else! and then delicious food? all the good stuff  and you did movement things! 

Also now i want pho. And i'm thinking that the late tea actually helps sleep because good sweet tea makes you feel better about everything. 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

2 hours ago, KB Girl said:

yes, always yes. 2 blowouts in a row? up you go! 

Agreed.

[starpuck]

Rainy day pho sounds like the perfect idea.   

I looove that smell fresh after rain.   I heard once that it's the smell of ozone?  But who knows if that's based in any truth lol.  I just know it smells amazing.

Glad the tea didn't cause sleep foo.   And yay now you can have tea without restraint!   (Or just a little.)

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, Starpuck said:

Rainy day pho sounds like the perfect idea.   

I looove that smell fresh after rain.   I heard once that it's the smell of ozone?  But who knows if that's based in any truth lol.  I just know it smells amazing.

Glad the tea didn't cause sleep foo.   And yay now you can have tea without restraint!   (Or just a little.)

Petrichor. Apparently ozone is only present if there was lightning along with the rain.

[Mad Hatter]

On 5/14/2020 at 8:21 PM, starsapart said:

Thankfully, at least starlet doesn't understand that the world is on fire, so she's sleeping great. I wish I could see things through her eyes sometimes; I get the sense life would be simpler (and much more fascinating) if I could tap into that baby mindset.

Not to mention you'd have someone to cook for you, clean up your mess...  

[raptron]

 

On 5/16/2020 at 4:34 PM, Starpuck said:

 

I looove that smell fresh after rain.   I heard once that it's the smell of ozone?  But who knows if that's based in any truth lol.  I just know it smells amazing.

On 5/16/2020 at 6:16 PM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Petrichor. Apparently ozone is only present if there was lightning along with the rain.

Funnily enough, I read an article about this yesterday, haha! 

https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/28/geosmin-why-we-smell-air-after-storm-13240

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

10 minutes ago, raptron said:

 

Funnily enough, I read an article about this yesterday, haha! 

https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/28/geosmin-why-we-smell-air-after-storm-13240

 

https://dqydj.com/baader-meinhof-phenomenon-frequency-bias/

[starsapart]

On 5/15/2020 at 4:00 PM, KB Girl said:

yes, always yes. 2 blowouts in a row? up you go! 

 

On 5/15/2020 at 6:45 PM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Agreed.

 

Yeah, I might do even though they just seem SO big.

 

On 5/16/2020 at 2:34 PM, Starpuck said:

I looove that smell fresh after rain.   I heard once that it's the smell of ozone?  But who knows if that's based in any truth lol.  I just know it smells amazing.

 

On 5/16/2020 at 4:16 PM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Petrichor. Apparently ozone is only present if there was lightning along with the rain.

 

1 hour ago, raptron said:

 

Funnily enough, I read an article about this yesterday, haha! 

https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/28/geosmin-why-we-smell-air-after-storm-13240

 

 

57 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

https://dqydj.com/baader-meinhof-phenomenon-frequency-bias/

 

I love that these nerdy asides can happen on my thread. This was fun to read through.

 

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Not to mention you'd have someone to cook for you, clean up your mess...  

 

I mean, I'm only looking for the mindset... as much as a regression to childhood might be awfully nice, I don't really think that's feasible. But boy, wouldn't it be great if someone just took care of me? Magical.

[dancezwithkittehz]

On 5/15/2020 at 9:38 AM, starsapart said:

 

 Then I had some fun chatter on the NF D&D server with @WhiteGhost and @juliebarkley (about non D&D things)

 

Wait what. This is a thing?!

[starsapart]

1 hour ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

 

Wait what. This is a thing?!

 

It mostly houses the Saltmarsh campaign, but we do use the general chat to discuss random other things. I sent you an IM.

 

 

 

 

 

In any case, the weekend is over so I am here to play catch-up and reflect on week one. It went pretty well! I got to bed pretty close to my desired bedtime most nights! I drank A LOT more water (though didn't have full drink-before-eating adherence; I'll be doubling down there in week two)! I was active all but maybe one day? There was a lot of building and carrying furniture over the weekend, which totally counts. Yay, good job me! Setting the bar low means I can feel good about succeeding instead of feeling like a failure! Yeah!

 

The new playroom project is in full swing, which means our den currently looks like a tornado came through it, which is stressing me out. We did successfully cull down our DVDs, which was long overdue. I put the old media shelving on Craigslist for free and dragged it outside and the shelves were gone within 15 minutes. I finished building the new toy storage for starlet and last night when my parents came over, my dad bolted the shelving units to the wall downstairs, as well as helped get rid of some unwanted/unneeded wires (there are satellite dishes on the side of our house that were there when we moved in and that we never intend to hook up to anything) and put up some floating shelves to put our pretty knickknacks that needed to be out of baby's reach. After we'd had dinner and starlet was in bed, I loaded my old big shelving unit into my parents' SUV and drove with them to drop it off at my BFF's house (since she said she wanted it). We've still got a lot to do, like organizing the DVDs we did keep, moving puzzles and other non-baby-friendly stuff upstairs, moving starlet's play furniture downstairs, etc... but I'm feeling like we maybe could be done as soon as tomorrow? I'm itching to finish up so it's NOT so chaotic in my house. Mess makes me anxious.

 

I feel like there's an overwhelming amount to do around the house right now. Short term: the den, so many dishes, the disaster of a kitchen, getting food prepped for the next couple of days, packaging up the fan/swamp cooler we bought for starlet's room to send it back because it does NOT work as advertised. Long term: calling the warranty folks to check out what's going on with my new dryer (the light comes on maybe only 1/4 of the time), getting an appointment with the heating and cooling company to do an annual check on our AC as it gets hotter, getting quotes for painting the exterior of the house............. ugh. So much.

 

Ah well, I'll chip away at it one bit at a time!

 

We did play D&D on Saturday, and it was a doozy of a session. Recap below:

 

Spoiler

Fraxaria: As you may recall, last week we left off in the middle of a fight, trying to hunt down a very expensive (25k gold!) mark, largely at the behest of the party's cleric who, upon hearing about the bandits and their deeds, pronounced that it was a sign from her god that she had to smite the evildoers. The rest of us followed along for a variety of reasons, then set a very tidy ambush and drew out the first six enemies to exit the cave where they were holed up so that we could snipe them from the shadows one by one. The main mark hadn't shown up, but things were going great! With the field temporarily clear of enemies, most of us (that is, my rogue, stillskies' monk, a fighter who specializes in archery, and a warlock) prepared actions for when something else left the cave and sat intelligently in our respective hidey holes, ready to continue sniping (the monk has darts and a boomerang for ranged attacks). But our friendly neighborhood zealot goes charging into the middle of the empty clearing BY HERSELF, making a ruckus and essentially painting a target on her chest. Out of the cave comes a worg, which tears into her, then two goblins with bows who start shooting at her, then a bigass bugbear with a morningstar. She is getting SLAUGHTERED out there. Figuring we need to protect our dumbass healer, my roue pops into the field, shows herself, kills the worg, takes an arrow from one of the goblins, slices into the bugbear (which gets finished off by the archer and an eldritch blast from the shadows) then goes dashing for the woods and cover, shouting for the cleric to GTFO. Meanwhile, stillskies' monk engages one of the archers, also trying to assist in getting the focus off the cleric. The big bad mark comes out of the cave and tosses a javelin at the cleric, who is now most of the way dead. Instead of retreating, she advances, and casts an AoE spell that kills a goblin, barely dents the big baddie, and nearly murders the monk, who is standing RIGHT THERE because she was trying to help. Monk correctly decides, fuck this, disengages and bolts for the trees. Archer and warlock finish off the other goblin archer. Big baddie KOs the cleric (NO ONE IS SURPRISED) then takes off for the treeline in a direction he thinks is the opposite from everyone else.

 

Which, unfortunately for him, is right into me, hidden in the shadows.

 

Some deity is looking out for me; I roll a nat 20 on my attack. With doubled dice and sneak attack damage, I slash the big ol' baddie for 31 damage. I manage to stab him as a follow-up with my dagger for 2 damage, which is exactly how many HP he has left. He goes down like a big, angry tree. I take his armor and his head, 'cause we have to prove we killed him, you know?

 

Meanwhile, they manage to stabilize the cleric, who is one death save shy of permadeath. Have I mentioned yet she never healed anyone except herself, once? Anyhow, we all kind of crawl into the cave the bandits were hanging out in to get some rest and recover. We wake up the next morning feeling better, and one would think the cleric might have learned something from the experience, but you'd be wrong (cannot stress enough that this is supposedly a high intelligence character). We find that the bandits were trying to chisel through the cave wall. On the other side there appears to be some kind of ancient shrine to some deity none of us know..... The cleric crawls through the hole cause she's kind of small, takes all the offerings, and then blows up the idol of the god, which causes the cave to start collapsing. She's very proud of herself after the fact for destroying "blasphemy," while the rest of us are like what? the? fuck?????

 

We go back to town, and around this time, my rogue decides, you know what, I'm glad we're going to get paid a lot but honestly this group's current presumptive leader is a lunatic. I'm going to take charge. So she just starts telling people what to do. And she's sensible. And everyone is like oh thank gods yes, let's do what Zi proposed. In fact, she even takes the gold that she found on the big boss dude and gives shares to everyone but the cleric, and won't give her her share until they have a conversation to the effect of "check yourself before you wreck yourself; I'm not going to give you money if you're going to just try to get killed in 5 minutes, and I don't appreciate you nearly killing people who are trying to help you, so can you please just calm down. Also, when we move on, please think five times before you open your mouth."

 

So now I am in charge of the party and the cleric is on probation, because the rest of us are grown-ups and she is a child. 🙃 The funny thing is, I can't recall exactly WHY I put so many points into CHA for this character, but it's serving her remarkably well, so maybe I was anticipating the future. Our next mission is to go to the nearby baron to deliver proof of our successful mark hunting (aka the severed head) and get an official letter to take to the duke to collect our reward. We could go straight to the duke, but he's many weeks away and we're concerned the "proof" will decompose by then. Anyway, going to the baron lets us tag along with a group of soldiers that's going the same way (surprise, the cleric has already antagonized them and we had to find a roundabout way of getting them to accept us as escorts), and with us signed on as "caravan guards," they've stopped hassling the town mayor to give them his entire town guard as escorts instead. So the town retains its militia, we get where we're going anyway (with NPC company who should be at least a little helpful when we inevitably get attacked on the road), and maybe we pick up some additional pay. We should pretty much be lauded as town heroes AND get rich if this goes down as planned.