Things I have to say about…

(I wrote this two weeks ago and never posted it, so it’s a little outdated, but I threw in some updates)

…Pinterest

Ever look at your recipe board on Pinterest and wonder who you were when you pinned that? There was a day I became intrigued by tuna melts. I’ve never had one because they’ve never sounded good to me. And yet… one day I saved a bunch of tuna melt recipes, and then a year later I deleted all of them without trying any. What was I going through when I became intrigued by hot tuna?

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My relationship with Pinterest is the following:

80% recipes

6% bulletin board ideas

3% perler bead patterns

4% writing prompts

3% books

1% gift ideas

1% activities for the kids

1% garden ideas

1% other (as in I’ve pinned 1 stretching routine, 2 hair tutorials, and 3 miscellaneous things I titled “great ideas”)

…brain fog

My brain? Is fried. 

Here are some of the ways my brain has failed me recently:

I bought 8 tickets for Zoe’s musical for a Thursday. That Monday, I randomly looked at my email confirmation and the tickets were actually for THAT NIGHT. Plus I had three more tickets for Monday… which I bought intentionally for Monday. Which meant I had 11 tickets for Monday and had no idea! I had to contact everyone that was coming on Thursday to see if they could go “tonight” instead. Can you imagine if I’d shown up with a party of 8 on Thursday night? The shows were all sold out, so we would have just had to leave. It was dumb luck that I even caught the error.

When I drove to my dad’s house for my brother’s memorial service, I missed the turn-off and drove 30 miles in the wrong direction before I realized I was in the wrong place. That means I drove an extra 60 miles by the time I went 30 miles out and 30 miles back to the turn off.

The other day I was driving to Scotty’s work to pick him up, and instead of going to his work, I mindlessly got on the freeway and started driving to some unknown destination. 

I’ve forgotten some basic rules to some of the board games we play all the time, and I keep getting called out for a bunch of really bizarre actions. It’s like I’m just making up the rules of the game as I go.

Last week when I got home from church I was walking around my house barefoot and I had no memory of putting shoes on for church. I started to worry that I’d forgotten to wear shoes, but I didn’t think I’d go that far (would I?) I concluded that I must’ve worn my flip flops because I slip them on and off all summer without even thinking about it. So I asked Scotty, “Do you know if I wore my flip flops to church?” and he said, “I think you did.” It doesn’t really matter that I wore flip flops to church, but the fact that I couldn’t remember what footwear I wore to church really bothers me, and, in my right mind, I never would have worn those particular flip flops to church. They are old, nasty, and smelly, and they are compressed in the shape of my foot from years of wear. 

I’ve been missing exits, losing my car keys, forgetting events, forgetting to change the laundry (but also going to change the laundry and finding that I’ve already changed it), forgetting where I’m going when I’m halfway there, ordering stuff online but never completing the purchase, and blanking out in the middle of sentences. I do all of these things on occasion, but right now I’m doing them with very high frequency. I’m also really clumsy. I almost broke my hand the other day, and about half an hour after that, I sliced my finger with a knife.

Update: I talked to my doctor last week, and she lowered my dose of antidepressants and added an ADHD medication. I’m hoping for good things, but I hate trying to interpret the effectiveness of medication. 

…weather

We’ve had some wild weather here lately. The sunflowers in my backyard that were supposed to be 4-6’ tall but ended up 10-12’ tall were knocked down from wind and rain. When they fell, their roots lifted up our garden box. After the storms, I went outside to assess the situation and see if we could salvage them or if we needed to take them out. I decided to try standing them back up and holding them up with twine tied to the fence. 

I hope they’ll be okay, because they were just starting to bloom, and I really wanted to see them in their prime.

Update: I was very shocked to find that once I tied the flowers up, they were able to stabilize themselves, and they are now standing on their own! There were two sunflowers I didn’t tie up because they were still standing, and they ended up breaking and falling over. It’s actually been really fascinating to watch the sunflowers heal. 

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In other garden news, we are starting to harvest tomatoes. We’ve had lots of cucumbers. The zucchini and squash are up to their usual antics - meaning we either have ten or none, there is nothing in between. We have a crenshaw melon on the vine, but it looks funky so we’re not sure if it will be edible in the end. We have a few pumpkins, and our pumpkin vines have taken over a section of the garden that we now can’t walk through, so I’m hoping there are more pumpkins hiding in there that we can’t see yet. Our corn exists, but it fails every year, so we’re just planning on that happening again, but we’ll see. We grew potatoes for the first time this year, and they are ready! And… everything smells like mint.

Update: we got 8 half-length, pathetic ears of corn, and they were delicious!