It's a good thing that I started this post the other day because I forgot that today is Friday and there was simply no energy for "Friday Tidbits" last night. I worked on this earlier but I'm not sure I've reworked it enough to hit "publish." But since I'm not inspired into writing anything any better... well, you'll see! (Eek!)
Each three-day weekend brings the same thing: I have such wonderful visions of getting things done. OK, I realize this July 4th wasn't exactly a three-day weekend, what with Friday being a work day, but close enough. I always envision wonderful developments of putting the house closer to what it should look like - you know, less of the "Green Acres" look, in the midst of remodeling, etc., going on.
And in many ways it's not an unattainable goal. The latest development, after all, is that I'm no longer falling out of bed, something that had become such an annoyance and just a bit of a dangerous phase that I went through in the past year - just a tad "inconvenient," you know. It had become such a regular "thing" that I wasn't surprised any longer when I found myself on the floor at the foot of the bed, or on the bathroom floor. However, now that the falling nonsense is out of the way, I find myself walking into walls, or, more specifically, walking into door frames, misjudging how wide open the door actually is.
OK. That sounds crazy but when we redid "my" bathroom (going as "handicap-friendly" and as "handicap-accessible" as possible) we thought a pocket door would work so very nicely. Somehow, a pocket door seemed a bit easier to navigate than a regular door. (I know: how silly!)
What I hadn't counted on is one of the (many) contraditory natures of our CFIDS/CFS/ME and fibromyaglia. On the one hand we have such a lack of muscle memory and on the other hand we really depend on it.
Indeed, I'd given up on muscle memory. I simply didn't realize how dependent we still are on some part of the brain, the one that's considered to house "muscle memory." It accounts for many things - like walking?
But it's when you come to more complicated matters that you realize that your muscle memory is impaired. You put down the TV clicker and when you need it a minute later, you can't find it. You put your cell phone aside and then can't find that darned thing. The other day, after hubs and I searched for my cell phone entirely too long, I said, after getting monstrously discouraged, "those were words I never imagined using when I was growing up: saying 'where is the darn phone?'" There are only about seven items on or next to my bed - literally - and I am constantly hunting for them, including two pairs of glasses, one for reading and one for distance (don't ask!). They almost never leave the room because *I* so rarely leave my room.
And so bearing the constant hunts for everything, I had no idea how much muscle memory was involved in navigating my living area, the bed and bath. Everything is off. For example, I can no longer tell if I'm waking up in the morning or in the evening. The way the sun comes through the windows from the bathroom into my room is completely off. The outside noises coming through the windows I now hear are off. The walking distances are off. And that means that the pocket door is usually only 3/4 open and I misjudge and walk into the door frame. Misjudging everything has become a pain in the patookie.
Some days it's just too much, this hunt for everything, the navigating. After much hollering the other day (to myself: I was, after all, alone in the house) I realized that most people do not spend half of their "awake time" looking for things. Nor do they spend the other half of their time annoyed with the fact that they'd just spent all that time hunting for lost items because they weren't put away in the right place. I used to say to the kids - as well as to hubs - "if I were blind, I wouldn't have this problem because you'd all agree that we needed a place for everything and everything in its place." Can we say, "deaf ears?" Lately, I've given up on that battle.
Which leads me into saying that one of the reasons I look forward to three-day weekends is because I keep hoping that I'll be able to get a massive amount of work done in the house - because hubs will be here for me to hand him the list that he can start doing and crossing off the "honey do" list. (See that list up top? I actually gave him one that long once and he still has it - as a "souvenir"!)
A few days ago, I misjudged the narrow door entrance (the now "infamous" pocket door) and went Whack! into the door frame, bruising and then scraping my shoulder in the process. A couple of nights ago I walked into the same door frame and hit it so hard that it may have cracked one of the bones in my "ring" toe, leaving a very painful and completely swollen toe. (How can such a small toe hurt soo much and incapacitate you?)
Where is my brain? Where is that muscle memory that judges your steps and that calculator in your (so-called) brain - the one which keeps you from walking into doors and walls, from automatically reaching for things which should be in a certain spot but aren't because your brain was too "fibro'd" with other matters to register what you're doing?
So because of a dumb toe there's another "holiday" when I won't get a bunch of things done that I'd hoped to. It sort of reminds me of "for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost."
But I tell myself that though the 4th was spent in a bit of pain and I wasn't able to get anything off that "honey do" list, the weekend still remains. This may be (probably is!) convoluted thinking but if I look at the 4th as the day that would have been the Saturday of a normal weekend, then I'm still a day ahead!
Hey! I'm just trying to make lemonade out of lemons! My optimistic self says that perhaps we'll have been able to indeed do a huge bit of decluttering, putting things away into newly-designated spots. This will indeed be the magic weekend we can get things done. And who knows, perhaps I'll be able to find the couple of pairs of flip flops that have gotten lost in the moves from one room to another and which I desperately need now that my toe is swollen into a mushroom-like growth. (Yuck! That sounds really gross!)
Besides, emailing my BFF and talking to her on the phone was worth it all today. In true BFF fashion, it turns out that she messed up her ankle yesterday - thus showing what parallel lives we lead.
So until next time, stay safe, everyone. I hope everyone's feeling their very best - only better. Ciao and paka!
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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.
