Our bodies are hardwired to have two subconscious things working within us so that we're able to go about our business each day with a minimum of effort. For example, we breathe, but are we aware of normal breathing? We notice how we breathe when we become ill with pneumonia or just the common cold. When we walk, for the most part we just do it. We put one foot in front of the other, aiming our bodies in the right direction. Rarely do we need to think about the many tiny steps which we take each day. There are most probably thousands, if not millions, of little things that our body performs each day (cell turnover on your face comes to mind) which we are blissfully unaware of until something goes wrong: as in pneumonia, a broken foot or the wrinkles we acquire as we age. But does this hold true for the CFIDS/ME/CFS and/or fibromyalgia patient?
Let me set up a small scenario for you. Bear with me: I think it'll be worth your time - I hope! I may write posts that are a bit long, but remember, it's always for the greater good. (Smiley face with halo over it, that's me!)
My typical day is spent in bed, 24/7, with the usual outing to the bathroom, and the a few trips into my closet or the room off the bedroom where my frightening PC sits - my frenemy - ready to frustrate my life even further because I just don't along with the darn thing. But for the most part, everything I use is within feet of me, literally, on my bed or nightstand.
However, I spend and waste at least hours each day looking for things that I can't find. Forget about the big expedition such as looking for a certain book or picture: those are acceptable hunts at this point because our house is in such disarray. I'm talking about the little things like my glasses, the TV remote, my iPad, the iPhone, the one thin sweater that has such a nice quality of cotton that it's one of the few things I can wear without my skin protesting.
So, this is my what my days consist of: I'll suddenly pop up in bed, like a jack-in-the-box, realizing that my glasses are missing - distance or reading; I have two pairs that make life a little bit more exciting. So I jump out of bed, a bad idea because I've forgotten for the billionth time that I should get out of bed slowly if I don't want to pass out or just fall. I've already gone through my comforter and the glasses are not there, but the other necessities are: the clicker, the cell, the iPads, etc. Trust me, they won't stay there too long. As soon as I need those things they will have magically disappeared as well.
I walk to the bathroom, look around vaguely and then go back to bed. Less than two seconds pass and I pop up out of bed, look around and then return to bed. Less then two seconds go by and I pop up out of bed again and... Well, you get the picture. Hubs finds this all extremely amusing. (The creep!)
He'll say, "What are you looking for?" and he knows the answer: I don't remember.
"Is it your distance glasses?" the clue being that we are watching TV and I'd like to NOT stain my eyes for fear of a migraine coming on.
"Would you like for me to look for them?" he'll say overly-kindly, at which point I give him a dirty look because he is enjoying this vaudeville act he's getting for free and at home. (Insufferable ".....": you can add your own word here.)
The hunt is back on but with the memory and attention span of a gnat, I keep forgetting what it IS that I'm looking for. I just hope that when I see it, I'll recognize it, but by then, of course, I've lost something else and a new search is on. And this sort of scenario plays itself out countless times a day, with hubs usually finding what I'm looking for since he has a freakishly great memory (knock on wood!).
So, in our house, which is at its worst because of the non-stop lists of things that need to be done, I live the life of a scavenger. I'm on a mission to get rid of as many things which we don't need any longer. But in full disclosure, it's not I who do the decluttering, but it's hubs. I just point him in the right direction, figuratively speaking, and tell him to come back when he's come up with, say, 30 items to be given away or thrown away.
But getting back to my unsuccessful wanderings. In the last few weeks I've been wondering why this continues to happen and why it seems to be getting worse. After all, we can't blame everything on remodeling!
Well, I suddenly realized that my auto-pilot and muscle memory are completely and totally shot.
How often during the day do we move something from one place to another and when that "thing" is needed, we go straight to where we moved it? It's right where our auto-pilot or muscle memory remembers where it is and we go about our business like this dozens, if not hundreds, of times a day.
So, when I put down my glasses, my brain should remember where I put them, or if I put the TV remote next to me on the right side, I should "remember" that that remote was put on my right side and my hand should remember exactly where to go, not engaging a brain which has almost no short-term memory.
I can organize to my heart's content (theoretically speaking) but my brain no longer takes in where things should go, despite labels on so many things, like a drawer in the closet reading, "socks."
Putting my makeup on is a very long job because I need to think each step through, whereas even just twenty years ago, putting my makeup on would take no more than seven minutes, and that was "the works" with eyeliner, brows, eyeshadow, foundation etc, for a "no-makeup" look, which we all know takes longer than the heavy makeup look.
Whipping up a loaf of saffron bread was done in a jiffy, because the auto-pilot and muscle memory were there. Now a simple carrot cake is a laborious effort. Forget about trying new recipes: hubs might implode since he is trying so hard, but cooking is as foreign to him as remembering obscure historical dates or a statistical analysis would be to me.
So, what to do? As mentioned above, I'm trying to label things as much as I can. Currently I'm furious with my plumber because I picked out fixtures which have hot and cold labels on the new faucets but he's "accidentally" forgotten to install the labels and I can't tell you how often I've burned my hands on extremely hot water, thinking I was turning on the cold water.
Various methods have been tried to organize my gadgets in a nice-looking box on my bed with compartments, so that I don't need to troll through my small area of my bedroom for nail clippers, lip balm, a pen and notebook, and so forth. (Actually, the pens I've given up on: they are NEVER to be found.) It was a failure because I could never remember to put those items into the box.
I did realize that the problem was lessened when we lived in the attic during the rip-apart-the-house stage of remodeling. The nightstand up there had just the right-sized drawers, not too shallow, not too high, not too deep. So, other than buying a new nightstand, I see little improvement in my future. Yet, coping mechanisms which are needed for survival from day to day, that is - automatic pilot and muscle memory - are truly things of the past as far as my life is concerned.
Now if I could just stop my mini-excursions with all of the wandering about, which entertain hubs to no end. Heavens, he'd die of boredom if my auto-pilot and muscle memory returned - we might get something productive done. But, shhhhhhh! Don't let hubs know: the show IS rather amusing, even to no-brain, no-energy, no-memory me.
To summarize, if you have a huge auto-pilot and muscle memory problem:
- Use labels, generously.
- Establish a place for everything and put everything in its place.
- De-clutter: how can we find anything needed amongst all the things we THINK we need but really don't!
- Plan each project or outing with perhaps a run-through (physically, if able; laid out, if too ill) a few days ahead of time in order to make your outing successful.
- Try to get duplicates of necessities, for home and for purse.
What you do YOU think? Do you agree with this analysis/theory? Do you have any ideas to help any one of us out of this mess?
As always I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend, feeling their best, only better. Ciao and paka.
My Mally Eyebrow kit.
Just a few moments ago I opened up a box with an order I'd placed a few days prior on one of my favorite drugstore/beauty websites. I'm always so excited when I receive a package. It's about the only time, you see, that my poor memory works in my favor: I get to see what the surprise in the box is because heaven forbid I manage to remember something from one day to the next, often one hour to the next. Receiving a package in the mail reminds me of Christmas, before I learned that there was no Santa.
The surprise was a new mascara that I'll be trying. There have been several companies now that have come out with mascaras using the new technology of forming a tube around each lash, instead of "painting" mascara on lashes. I so wanted to try it on immediately but remembered that tomorrow I will (hopefully) be going up to get my hair, brows and lashes done and I don't want to risk any residue on said brows and lashes to interfere with coloring/tinting. But considering the fact that I often forgo mascara and hope that liner will suffice (it never does) this is a biggie for me. My eyes are always turning red for this reason or that and I've grown tired of mascara as one of the contributing factors to the redness. This latest attempt to find a mascara that I LOVE (as opposed to "love") is an on-going project.
But to continue with the adventures of trying to grow more eyebrow hair and lashes - or trying to deceive the world at large that I DO have them at all....
This past winter I actually started using men's foaming Rogaine. It, Rogaine, is something I've tried on and off for years, although I'd be embarrassed to tell you the number of cans of just-started Rogaine cans/pump bottles I threw out when we had to move ourselves and everything we owned when vacating the second floor for the remodeling. Actually, the old Rogaines would probably have made a great exhibition of the progress Rogaine has made since it hit the market big-time; there seemed to be new packaging with each "improvement" to the formula.
I think my biggest problem is that I'll use it but then something will happen (a flare, a relapse, a crisis) and when life gets back to "normal," I forget all about it. We've just started moving back into our bedroom and bath and already, as my life is slipping out of control a bit - OK, more than a bit, but more controllable than what's been the norm in the last two years - I'm finding it hard to remember to take my meds, much less remember to work Rogaine into the needed areas of my head.
However, the Rogaine on my bald spots, as well as my eyebrows, has worked out well. And since I'll soon be mother of the groom and because I want to look my best in order to not embarrass child number two, I've moved my trip to get my hair done, etc. to now rather than later. And I can't wait to hear from my stylist if she thinks there's been an improvement since she last saw me a couple of months ago.
Continuing with the brow-growing adventures/sage... after a while, I got a bit lazy with the Rogaine on my eyebrows routine (it DOES take a bit of concentration and focusing, not something a person with CFIDS/ME/fibro has in much abundance) so I ordered one of those eyelash enhancers. I can see that my brows are a little bit fuller (doesn't take much...I'll never be a "before and after" picture) but whether that's from Rogaine being applied to my head and that some is getting to the brow area because of the chemicals going around, who knows? Actually, that's a rather frightening thought, isn't it?
I have to admit that I have no idea as to why I chose the "Smartlash" eyelash enhancer over the others on the market. I do know it was from reading one of the beauty columns out there and somehow I felt I could give it a go with the brows. After seeing that I hadn't grown a third head, I've started using it for its intended purpose, on the eyelashes. I have noticed that the eyelashes, BTW, are a tiny bit thicker and darker, this despite the fact that I'm easing into the eyelash routine. There are indeed two reasons for the hesitation.
Somewhere, I'd read that one of the products could change blue or green eyes to brown - and permanently. Aside from the scary part of putting something so close to your eyes that can change your eye color, I've been hesitant because so much of my identity is tied up in the color of my eyes and I don't really want to mess things up. If I'm in a great mood or feeling good, my eyes are green, their default color. The better I feel and the better the mood, the greener the eyes. If I'm in a lousy mood or very ill, the color changes to blue. Back in the 80's, I bought green contact lenses, when they first came out in various colors, and my ever-observant hubby didn't realize I'd been wearing those suckers for at least a month. When I asked him how he could manage to miss this, he answered, most sincerely, "I just thought you were in a great mood this past month." I'd hate to mess up a system that my family banks on in order to judge how to treat me...gingerly or badly! (Just kidding about the badly...somewhat?)
Getting back to brows, I've also somehow fallen into the eyebrow "shadow" approach for the past two decades, thinking that the pencils were too harsh and fake - but let me add that I'm not the greatest artist in the world! Stila has a brow set that I think is rather nice. My only problem is that my skin tone changes day to day and my hair color changes every time I get it done (or as it grows out!) and I need a bigger selection of colors to choose from.Stila has two colors in each of her pots, one for the lighter side and one for for the darker side of the spectrum of your hair color. However, here too, my blending skills are just not good enough for my satisfaction.
Consequently, when Bobbi Brown came out with her chocolate palette of eyeshadows a few years ago (not brow shadows, but close enough for me!), I snapped that up quickly because of the various shades I could play with. I've got a few quads too, like Dior and Smashbox, which have brown shades included which I like to experiment with also.
Now Colorscience came out with the cutest, most convenient little brow kit I've ever come across, but the colors do NOT suit me and I'm embarrassed when I think that my second most frequently viewed post is a picture where I'd used the Colorscience. I can't tell you how often I've wanted to change that lousy picture and wonder if I was on crack the day I posted it - JUST JOKING about the "crack" bit!!! But I was fooling around with trying to learn how to take a picture of myself that day with my iPad, not keeping in mind that HOW I looked mattered too. At any rate, if I could repot this compact with tins of colors I like in the right size and shape to fit the "compact," I would. I love the very slim case (and I've had many over the years), with its brushes, one my favorite miniature slant brushes for brows. I just dislike the color immensely for my skin. But others may find it suits, especially if there are brow hairs to begin with and only "filling in" is required, not building brows with almost no hairs, that is, having to almost start from scratch. This kit is perfect to throw in your bag. And because I'm always losing the tiny slant brushes, I often carry the kit with me just for the brush alone. (I know this makes no sense to the "normal" person out there but to the CFIDS/ME/fibro's I think this is somehow understandable.)
Not too long ago, I saw that Mally had come out with a nice kit, made of fabric, that holds a compact of brown brow color and an ivory highlighter. It also holds a brush with two different brush heads on either end, and her black pencil eyeliner, which I love - it does not move after it's had a chance to set, though there is enough time to smudge it if you like before it dries completely. I also like the kit because it can't be lost easily (it's a shiny lime-ish green) and because I can throw in one or two other (small and thin) products. It's a bit too bulky though, so for something like flying, it most probably won't make it to my carry-on bag, though the jury's still out on that.
I think I still have one more post to do and we'll be finished with the "brow miniseries." I've found a couple of gems that I'll describe next time.
Until then, I hope you are doing as well as can be and are going to have a great weekend! Until next time, when, hopefully, I'll be back with great-looking brows!
