Intermission--The Art of Finding

Seems things have been getting heavier around here as I've been getting lighter. Obviously there's more to be said about that--perhaps I owe an explanation--but let's have an intermission. I have lost so many things--objects, people, opportunities; and I choose to live without so many things--amenities, luxuries, status... As such, much of what is delightful and nourishing in my life comes from things found...

Things like wild blueberries, tiny, almost hidden, full of goodness and deliciousness that couldn't be bought.

 Things like this rock. I pick up rocks every time I hike the beach, which is several times a week. Generally, all the rocks I pick up fall into a very similar category in terms of size and color. Occasionally there's one with a special shape or color. But this one I picked up two weekends ago, with the tiger face that can also be a sheep face and also many other faces and expressions is the most amazing rock that's eve come to my hands. It was washed up on the Homer Spit, and who knows how deep in the ocean it has been, from how far it has traveled, to be a found object and muse for me.

Things like this--what is it? Magnifying glass? Telephone receiver? Goofy toy, anyway.

 Things like the potato people, slightly different every harvest.

 Things like a whole sea urchin, whole except for the life force, every geometrically placed spine present, delicate filigree.

 Things like this chip of fir bark with its own little figure drawing inside. I found it when I was down in WA at the Sandwich Academy.

Things like this piece of charred wood found a little way up from Bishop's Beach in Homer. Does that or does that not look like a fish?

I end with the rock again, since its coming into my life feels almost mystically significant. It's an odd kind of significance that I haven't yet figured out for myself--I've never been a cat person especially, although I have always been a rock person and a person who finds faces in objects without objective faces.

Mastery of the art of losing may not lead to disaster, suggests Elizabeth Bishop. But perhaps living with the daily losses that are life, I -- perhaps we -- can come into a space where loss is exhalation, finding is breathing back in. And perhaps, somewhere in there, is balance. That's my prayer for today.

Canticle of Cold; Weight Dilemma

(In which Ela sets off at 6.30 to drive to Anchorage for a psych appointment)

Canticle of Cold
Thirty miles into my 220 mile drive, I accepted that the Warthog's heater wasn't working. Fan on highest setting, temperature up on maximum; my feet were numb; and I could feel just a little warmth if I held my hands to the vents.Sunrise isn't until after 8am right now, and I had to get over the mountains before there was a chance of getting out of the shade to be warmed. I think I wove as I drove, trying to give each hand a turn at clenching inside the glove to de-numb, trying to stomp my feet a bit (hard when you're on the gas)!

When I stopped in Soldotna, 72 miles in, for gas and to put another quart of oil in the 'hog, outside temperatures were 0 degrees Fahrenheit. And it was almost sunrise, so must have been even colder. Did I mention it was a cold morning? But fortunately, this is Alaska, so the car is stocked with blankets, down clothes, sleeping bags, in case of getting caught out. 

I used the rest room and stomped some feeling back into my feet, then wrapped up in blankets and drove on, recognizing I would be cold most of the way. I had some hot tea, a race between drinking it avidly and saving some to warm my hands with the steam. 

When it's so frigid and there's too little snow on the ground to insulate, it's deeper cold; crisp and dry, inviting the water of your own being to sublime into air. As the dawn twilight lost its pinkish glow and I could see the road clearly, I noticed the deciduous trees, completely leafless now, so stiff and dignified. Still some very brown and ragged leaves blowing around, reminding: alder, cottonwood, aspen, birch.

My toes were still numb; otherwise, things were better. Turning the heat off for as long as I could bear it and turning it back on again seemed to warm things above tepid, but it was probably my imagination. There were bands of fog, some of them filmy and pervasive, some hanging like bridges above the road, and after I passed through one small band, I could see nothing through the windshield. Freezing fog. A great time to have a faulty heat system! 

I survived the cold. I survived the even greater cold of the mountains, and drove Turnagain Arm with sunglasses on, grateful for the car windows absorbing all the warmth of this winter sun that shines at such an acute angle, it's always right in your eyes or windows. Once in town, I tried out Phil's best ideas on fixing, had a friend in town look the Warthog over, and ended up having the radiator flushed. I'm hoping for a warmer ride home tomorrow, but I'll keep the blankets up front in any case!

Edited to add: The most miraculous thing in this gelid adventure, mundane though it might seem...Evidently, when I stopped in Soldotna to add gas, oil, and blankets, I was so addlepated and chilled, and probably overdue for breakfast, I managed to leave the cap off the oil and the gas intakes. I didn't discover this until town, 150 miles further. The gas cap was still on the roof of the car. The oil cap was still under the hood. They can be expensive to replace, and this had been a journey not devoid of headwinds or bumps like to dislodge such objects. Small graces, minor providences...what was the purpose of this trip? =>

Weight Dilemma
I feel sick to my stomach even typing this, but I've been very open lately, and want to continue to share. 
I saw my psych today.
I've lost weight since I saw her last month. 
She was already unhappy about my weight, but was willing to work with it so long as it was stable.
"Steady downward trend" does not equal "stable."
If my weight isn't stable, she doesn't feel safe prescribing me lithium, although she strongly believes I need it.
Lithium is a salt, so it's implicated in electrolytes; the lower a person's weight goes below what's considered the safe range, the more likely there are to be electrolyte imbalances. These can kill a person just by themselves; they could also cause lithium levels to become toxic.
So, if I haven't gained x amount of weight by my next appointment with her, she will have to take me off lithium because in her professional opinion it's too risky. 

What a mess, eh? How would you handle being told you have to drastically change your behaviors or else be deprived of something that has been making a significant and positive difference in your life and the lives of people around you?

My options are: 
I could gain this significant amount of weight, on my own, on purpose.
Or: I could find another psychiatrist who doesn't share that anxiety about lithium/electrolytes
Or: I could take a different medication, (but why would I do that when this one works so well)?
Or: I could just go back to my earlier anti-medications philosophy and not take any

I'm thinking many people who know me well would be horrified at option 4, concerned about option 3, lukewarm on option 2 (this is Alaska; we have lots of cold weather, but we don't have a lot of very good psychiatrists like this one), and inclined toward option 1. Is that true?

There are probably some things I can do differently food-wise. I'm not going to list what I have been doing, to avoid triggering. Just one little feature: I have some extremely bitter white stevia powder: a brand I wouldn't buy again. Before I left for treatment, I was practically addicted to it. When I got out of treatment, I could barely stand the taste of it. Lately, I am putting it in everything again.

I like the sounds of "Canticle" and "Dilemma" -- I like the sensation of being warm.
And you?

"It's Not Healthy; It's Not Attractive: Post-Treatment Part 3

Whether we want to look like a supermodel or to disappear in strict observances like an early Christian saint, we have some consciousness of appearance.

I'll get back to the 'face' rock in my next post. It's a little placeholder for the dazzling deceptiveness of appearances. Before I get on to the aesthetic/beauty aspect of anorexia, with which I screeched to an embarrassed halt in my previous post, let me make this very clear:
(it's not healthy)
How someone looks tells only part of the story of how they are doing. This is true for eating disorders. This is true for cancer. This is true for many ailments and malaises. In the eating disorder sphere, however, since extremes of appearance are how most lay people even recognize them, I feel I must emphasize the point particularly. Someone could be at a 'normal' weight after treatment and be in utter anguish. Someone could be at a 'normal' weight and still have to take various medications for damaged organs. Someone could look 'normal' and have a brain tumor. Someone could be at a low weight and steadily pulling together all aspects of their health and life. Someone could be at a higher weight than they've always been and starving themselves to maintain it because of undiagnosed hypothyroid. Someone could be overweight and starving themself. Someone could be underweight and making up for it. At any given moment, you might encounter one of these 'someone's. Someone could be bulimic with decades of practice in making sure you would never guess. Someone might look stunning and be suicidal. Don't make assumptions. When insurance companies won't cover treatment for someone because their weight isn't low enough, it makes me want to scream.

When treatment centers insist that weight restoration to 80% of your 'ideal' weight is essential and non-negotiable: that without this weight, physical and mental problems both will persist, it makes me want to scream. From my own experience, excepting times when things have gone out of control and I've had to go to treatment, I've felt worst and most in the thick of the disorder when I've been at a more 'normal' weight, especially in the wake of a masochistic 'experiment' five years ago to make myself gain far beyond my comfort level. Flip side: it's true, I've never had a regular menstrual cycle--I menstruated maybe a half-dozen times in the whole of my twenties; since then, only with progesterone pills and some other things and more weight--but, frankly, so what? It makes sense for not all women in a society to be set up for child-bearing. And since I'm thirty-five now, for heaven's sakes, that's all moot. Of course, there's a whole host of other reasons why progesterone's important, and many other physical issues in the mix too. Whatever my weight is, the internal damage is still there. I don't mean to be glib. With this condition, as with any relationship, balance, and even health, involve compromise.

(and frankly, it isn't attractive)
Moving from appearance as health-related to appearance as beauty-related, not a lot of people with eating disorders simply 'went on a diet' and took it too far because they wanted to look like/be a model. There are people who fit in that stereotype, but I'd have to say they're the minority. Far more common for someone to have heard their parents constantly commenting about other people's sizes, or for someone to have been bullied and had unkind things said to them regarding their body. And for there to have been trauma of some kind, lack of love, too much love of the wrong kind...Yes, the body takes the brunt; yes, some of us consider 'thin' the most aesthetically pleasing way for our bodies to be--we tend to be accepting of other people's bodies; we even don't understand someone wanting to lose weight if we think they're beautiful how they are.

But this isn't a twisted distortion on die(t)ing to be pretty.
Is not, despite the jumbles of beauty products that have to be kept as contraband behind the nurses' station, the banks of various fancy blow-dryers going early in the morning; the eyelash curlers, the specially approved electric shavers, the tweezers, the creams and lotions. Hair straightened, hair curled, nails painted to match clothes. I never normally get to hang out with girls in such an intimate setting, and, as my mum lamented a while ago, I'm kind of a feral girl--all I brought was a carry-on size tube of Dr Bronner's--so mornings in treatment feel like the green room behind the set for a play. Or for a masked ball? Being in treatment feels like being in a play in more ways than one.
A few of us covered up, barely showed skin, definitely not legs, didn't wear make-up, basic hair-brushing; but we were a tiny minority. Everyone else had an elaborate routine to 'get ready' in the mornings. I do see that a lot of it's cultural. Girls watch their moms, learn from each other in high school, read magazines. But doesn't it look like a vanity routine? I asked someone how she could care so little about herself and still spend so much time on her appearance. She replied that she had lost so much, including especially self esteem, and that spending time on her appearance felt like taking care of herself, felt like one thing she could feel good about.

You shrink and swathe yourself with baggy clothes. Or, you wear tiny cute clothes and a mask. Even though most of us didn't get into this because of focus on appearance, and despite all denials, there is some b.s. around clothes and clothing sizes, people trying to compare with other people. This can be especially crazy-making in treatment, gaining weight and self-conscious about it as new people come in.
I discovered how unusually laissez-faire I am about the whole clothing issue--I didn't bring many changes of clothes for the length of time I was 'inside.' And the whole idea of buying new clothes as your size changes is just beyond me. It's true, back in February I did post about doing precisely that, but although I still believe that conflating different goals can help with success in each, I think that was an ill-conceived, perhaps stupid, post. It was also inaccurate: I could have worn that size all along, but I shop at thrift stores, and just hadn't bothered to find the right size. I favor leggings generally, and with jeans it's just a matter of how tight my belt is, although depending on the cut there may be one or two pairs that simply don't stay up. But everything I just said shows that despite my laissez-faire around clothes, I too have some sort of issue about clothing and appearance. Perhaps I don't get the right size jeans because I like being able to slide them on without undoing them. I say I won't wear white because I'm a dirt magnet, which is true; but perhaps I also won't wear white because I think it makes me look fat, and the converse is why I wear so much black.

Perhaps this is just normal for any female, disordered or not. But if I, who would really rather disappear and be completely disembodied, have some clothing hangups, imagine how it would be for someone with an eating disorder who desired to be a model or a dancer.

There's more to be said on this. I'd love to hear the experience of anyone who cares to share--about the aesthetic aspect of the (your) disorder, to what extent a desire for thinness drove it, what you believe about the health implications, Whether you have/had/never had an eating disorder, it'll be an interesting conversation.

Do I Look Fat? Talking and Not-Talking

I promised more on talking and not-talking in the context of illness/treatment/coming back from treatment. This post has been a little delayed by a cold/flu that's affecting my thinking, and by the arrival of winter here!

What other people do say can be frustrating or triggering. When other people don't say anything, it can lead to my perception that there is nothing to be said, based on which I can feel very lonesome, or triggered, or justified in a return to denial.
More on that in a moment. First, not-talking.
Do I Look Fat?
Yes, it's the old "Does my butt look big in this?" turned sinister. As I mentioned in my last post, no matter how far my eating and weight go south, the awareness I've gained of my words' implications is valuable--even if it came as much from more effective meds as from all that time in treatment. 
Some of the awareness is around body image and other eating disorder-related talk. The little comments about weighing less than that big dog designed to provoke remarks about my size from others. The mentions of how much I ate and consequently how awful I feel, or about how little I'm eating these days...These are games that most people with eating disorders play. They're more sinister than the near-universal "Does my butt look big?" because they're sucking well-meaning friends and loved ones into acquiescence with or anger against the eating disorder, both of which reactions give the e.d. energy. Of course, the closest loved ones hear it the most.
I was horrified when I realized I've been doing this, not constantly but occasionally-regularly, since my teens! How icky!!
I don't do it anymore. I can't say I never ever ever do it, but awareness makes abstinence so much easier. It also lets me imagine being on the receiving end of someone who talks like that. Yes I've had relationships end over it but I'd never really understood why.
I'm Going to Say that Again
Seeing the perspective of the person on the receiving end is the biggest change for me this year, and it almost always has me choose not to say something I would otherwise have said. This includes all the e.d.-related stuff above, but it also includes pretty much every aspect of how I talk. Which impacts how I'm writing also, and since it's a renewed appreciation of audience, I expect it's a positive impact.
-I no longer talk in sprawling sentences that include every possible subclause and alternate circumstance before circling back to the main point. Similarly, I ask straight questions without lots of disjuncts.
-I no longer repeat myself excessively. 
-Miraculously, most of the time I'm able to choose not to say those things that always escalate an awkward discussion into all-out conflict.
-I'm growing awareness of how I can phrase a statement or question to avoid having it imply a whole bunch of other things that may be on my mind but that I don't want on the table.
-I'm working on tone of voice.
Amazing that I've been oblivious to this my whole life. I understand that it's a bipolar thing, and I still mess up and miss sometimes. But since I bit the bullet and finally went on lithium, my eyes opened to a new dimension, like a child getting glasses and finally seeing in sharp outlines.

You Look Great!/You Look Awful--There are Other Options
The weight fluctuations of a person with an eating disorder must baffle the words of their circle of friends, even up here, where a lot can be concealed with layers of clothing. 
The trickiest part of what to say must be due to the perception that eating disorders are self-inflicted, whereas an appearance altered by, say, cancer, is the result of bona fide illness.  
Why are you doing this to yourself? The cliche, of course, being the just snap out of it attitude that can be so frustrating. I've had strangers passing me on the streets of Oakland yell comments along those lines.
Otherwise, people care, people worry, people don't know what to say (and go ask your nearest and dearest what on earth...), people blurt things out (you've gained weight!). People say one thing to you and something else to your loved one (You look great! declared by a guy who, I know, prefers skinny women, who then, out of my hearing, asked my husband why I looked so terrible),

Is there anything good that a person can say? It seems clear that comments about how someone looks or is behaving (eating/not-eating) can never have a constructive result. They either state the speaker's own denial and/or acquiesce in my (or whoever's) denial, or they are hurtful and provoke my opposition. I will admit that if I'm behaving dangerously out of mania or depression, someone ought to intervene. As far as the eating disorder appearance goes, it's good for someone to say I care about you, I'm concerned about you; I pray that you take care of yourself; Please let me know if there is a single thing I can do to help; Please call me anytime you need to. Saying something like that leaves behavior and appearance out of it and expresses care and love.

Looks like Death
All my life I've avoided or tuned out comments on the aesthetic front, whether positive or negative. Haven't taken compliments on my appearance, haven't paid great attention to the opposite. Then years ago, when things were very bad, I met up with friends to go hiking. I hadn't seen them for a while, and only one of them knew that things were 'very bad.' We hiked perhaps more gently and stopped frequently; we enjoyed seeing a troupe of llamas being let out the back of a Dodge caravan when we got back to the parking lot. The day after the hike, one of my friends, a guy, emailed to say how shocked they had been at my appearance. "It's not healthy," he wrote, "and frankly, it's not attractive either." 

Behold my first dip into the shock of juxtaposing beauty with anorexia--and yes, I was very very slow to learn that, especially given the shape of most supermodels out there. But I'll talk more about the aesthetic thing, clueless as I am, in the next post.

Frank Talk about Post-Treatment: (1) Food: A Return to the Exquisite Privateness

What happens when you get out of treatment? First of all, you don't want any special attention as a result of where you've just been; especially, you don't want to appear to be making any special efforts around food. 
Do you?
I didn't. On reflection, actually, some of my fellow travelers took pride in the prospect of showing their loved ones that they were doing things differently, better. So perhaps I just speak for myself. What I do know is that nobody wants the "Oh, you've gained weight! You look great!" comment. I've had that one a few times on previous go-rounds and it is an enforced lesson in grace.

In view of this, I was lucky: the day after I left treatment I went to our MFA residency, at which the majority didn't know me well enough to know where I'd been for the previous ten weeks and probably hadn't noticed my food oddities the year before or remembered them if they had. I left the residency to a freewheeling crazed run of travel and family stuff, during which there were far greater priorities to attend to. My friends and family, most of whom didn't see me until a month or so after I got free anyway, are dazzlingly tactful.

Additionally, I don't talk about it. Not-talking, like talking, is powerful energy.
I'm choosing to talk about it now because I suspect it may be helpful for someone else, and possibly even useful information for people who know me. For this post, I'll talk mostly about the food aspect, but in a later post I'll talk about other aspects of life affected; not least among them, not-talking in a different context.

Being on the outside is not the same as being in treatment. The only reason I state something so obvious is because when you get out of treatment, the otherness is such a shock. Even stepping down from five weeks inpatient on a campus in the middle of nowhere to a day program in a city, with streets and cars and stuff, was overwhelming to the point that I was barely coherent at first. From there to 'total freedom' was another rush of adrenaline. In theory at least, they don't let you out the door of a treatment center without a multifaceted "plan," including an individualized meal-plan (considered the foundation of all growth both metaphorical and literal (!)), a therapist, a doctor, a dietitian and, if necessary, a psychiatrist (it usually is necessary), plus scheduled appointments with each of these. There are always people who fall through the cracks and get home without any of the support system, at which time the meal-plan is down to their discretion alone. Back home is where all the restricting and other 'disordered' habits are at home too. Without some kind of serious support--with it, even--it's easy for the meal-plan to fade from consideration. Last time I got out, I didn't have support and it was a big train-wreck. This time, you've all heard me talk about how much I love my naturopath and therapist. I don't know the psychiatrist as well, but she is formidably impressive.

Within this paradigm, the meal-plan makes a lot of sense. I have to admire it, even if I kick against it. The aim is to ensure you get enough food, while also eating a variety of food and avoiding calorie-counting or other ways to marshal food into controlled units. Most places use some variation on the "exchange" system, so that you should have a prescribed number of servings of carbs, protein, fat at each meal. Different food items in various quantities can be counted as a serving size for different macronutrients. The one many of us found crazymaking was that two teaspoons of nut butter counts as a fat serving, but two tablespoons of nut butter counts as a protein! And you're not allowed to double-count any one food item; in other words, you take nut butter as your protein and you still need your serving(s) of fat. Depending on what food items you chose, you could end up with a meal hundreds of calories more or less. But that's falling back into the regimented thinking, and since the meal plan's designed with the intent that exchanges are not exactly equal, and that you should pick different items at each meal, and that those items should go together: no beans and guacamole with your oatmeal, now!--the point is to relax and recognize that if you vary enough, it all evens out.

On top of this abandon-counting-but-commit-to-variation twister, depending on our weight, some of us leave treatment with supplements on our meal-plans still.

Three cups of coconut cream and three cups of either juice or full-calorie nondairy milk on top of all that food??
Could you do that?
I don't think anyone could make me get that all in in one day outside of treatment, myself included--often enough, it didn't happen in treatment unless a lot of the solid food was 'exchanged' for yet more coconut cream. But the point is, I don't think anyone really expects me to do all that: they are professionals, they recognize it's much tougher 'on the outside.' Most importantly, they recognize this recovery thing is a process. It's not a linear progression of physical and metaphysical growth to lasting happiness and total comfort around food.

I suspect their hope for all of us is that eventually we can eat enough, not too much or too little, in an intuitive way, listening to our bodies, gradually letting go of the 'exchanges' like training wheels, and that we can love our bodies at 'normal' sizes, and be comfortable eating in any situation.

So, where am I in all this? From what I've already said, I'm sure it's pretty clear that I'm not following my meal-plan 100%. But I have wonderful care providers and they're not worried, because they understand that it's a process.
I think of the meal-plan occasionally, and it helps me to evaluate how what I've been doing instead measures up. If I think I ate too much, running what I ate by my theoretical plan helps provide a reality check. Still how you'd express some of my smoothies in terms of carb/protein/fat exchanges is a question without an answer, and these can be quite substantial smoothies.
Some things slide around. I haven't had three cups of it on any day, but the coconut cream has morphed from 'supplement on top of everything else' to 'insurance,' making sure I got at least a certain amount of nutrition down, to not having it at all, to 'insurance' again. Once it's in the mix as insurance, I find it hard not to think that that's all I should have. This is a tricky dance. Right now, I'm committed to three quarter-cups of coconut cream per day. Three quarter-cups is not three cups, but this is a process, and having the commitment in place is like creating a rung on the ladder up to the trapdoor.

Pitfalls and Trapdoors. I mentioned having fallen through some trapdoors in my previous post. Here's some of what I meant. If you feel you may be triggered, please do not read on.

First big trapdoor: going too long without a snack, after an inadequate meal, hiking, and getting low-blood-sugared to that state of stare-eyed, whirly but still able to hold a conversation. This was a trapdoor because it reminded me of that feeling, that emptiness, that exquisite privateness to which I hadn't yet returned. In treatment, I was always so full that even half that amount of food in a day was still overly filling. Getting back to that reminds me of how easy it is to be in that place, how functional I seem to myself to be when I'm like that. If I feel like I'm functional, it's easy to say no need to eat more.
Second trapdoor: restricting/bipolar one-two punch. Letting dinnertime get too late, working too hard and too fast, paying too much attention to the monsters/hallucinations, and getting to the meltdown point. That nothing was smashed, nothing bigger than a piece of paper thrown, is testament to how much better things are now.
Pitfalls: -Counting calories and doing lots of math to determine portion sizes while preparing a meal.
-Poring over recipe books like novels and either making nothing or making lots and stashing it all in the freezer.
-Telling yourself "No"..."No"..."No"...over and over because you're too hungry to focus but have decreed you cannot have a snack.
-Deciding to eat only three (or four, or whatever, plus carrots) specified foods on a particular day.
-Throwing lots of good food away by various mechanisms.
HOWEVER--throwing some food away is actually a good sign for me because of this:
Danger Sign: -Intense fascination with food that's going bad, has fallen on the floor, is about to be thrown away, etc. Learning to feel ok about eating food that isn't about to be tossed--high-grading--was one of the biggest benefits of the enforced abundance of being in treatment.

There is so much more to write, but this is already long, and has taken me so long to write because I really want to be clear and nonjudgmental and as little triggering as possible. Another post soon with some more of the benefits of being 'inside.'

Sliding Scale/Erratum, Two Months, Questions

I'm feeling full of words and lost for words. I finished and sent in my packet that was due the day after my last post. Relief followed, and hot on its heels a bunch of second-guessing, worrying that this or that piece was too long or too short or no good--all the standard stuff! Finding a way to remain in the writerly furrow and simultaneously work in the upcoming work deadlines is a deliciously acute challenge. Phil and I have been hiking the various beaches around town every day. When we first got back, that felt like good exercise and part of an obligation to spend time with Phil. Now, I'm loving the hiking and glad for the spending time with Phil part. There's a chance of snow in the forecast as early as next week.

Two months since getting out of treatment, I said. Apparently it bears repeating. There are some things to be said about it. I tell everyone and myself that I'm doing pretty well, but I've also fallen through a couple of trapdoors. I call them trapdoors, because they seem to go mostly one way--harder to crawl back up! Let's just say there's a certain degree to which I push myself that one isn't able to even approach in treatment, beyond which it's continuously easier to 'go there.' On the other hand, I'm taking my meds very consistently, which I wasn't pre-treatment with many disastrous consequences, and the positive changes brought about by that deserve a post all of their own, if it seems right to do so.

Yes, I'm very unsure about what it is right to post about at this point.

An erratum on my post about daily weigh-ins and the enormous fluctuations that seemed normal:- Turns out, those fluctuations were accented by the fact that I had the scale stashed under our tiny desk and was sliding it out between desk and chair where the floor isn't level and there's barely room for it to sit or me to stand! Since I moved its resting spot to under the fridge, whence I can slide it out and set it on a level surface, I have noted a far smaller fluctuation, although it still does fluctuate. This made me laugh at myself; also cautioned me to guard against panicking about fluctuations since the period of that wave now seems to be smaller. In some ways it makes the whole numerical tyranny seem very ridiculous.

Sliding scale is a funny play on words here, but it got me thinking about how many ways it's applicable in my current situation. 
Being fully in the groove of writing--vs--letting days go by in chores and social obligations and getting no writing in #"unmilked cow". 
Talking to no one all day--vs--talking until my throat hurts
Following my 'meal plan' 100% (have I ever?)--vs--eating almost nothing.
Allowing my appetite to emerge and embracing it--vs--still manipulating it.
Being totally uninterested in food and swearing off preparing for myself any other than the most basic (saving that exclusively for making food for others--vs--reading recipes as if they were novels (something I thought I'd entirely outgrown) and making four or five different Ela-friendly creations in a single afternoon.
Considering myself in the midst of a "process"--vs--thinking I'm out of treatment so we're all good now. 
OR--somewhere in between ??? 

How to write my blog--to change it altogether, to make some subtle changes, what to do?... 
It's essential in my life and valuable in the life of others--vs--it's narcissistic and I should channel my creative writing differently...
That's not so much a 'somewhere in between'-type situation.

This may be partly being a bipolar person, but it's surely partly just being a person, and it is a rocking backward and forward toward settling, like the ball rolling around the rim before dropping into the basket. Perhaps I'll always rock back and forth.

Am I being too indirect?

Looking for some answers, whether they agree or not. I'll take more questions too, if you have 'em.

Getting Back Into It--Thanks and Pictures

Hello again everyone!

We're well post "termination dust" here now--the snow is halfway down the mountains.

Today is two months since I got out of 'treatment', which means it is six weeks since the MFA program residency, which means it is over a month since I got home and since Phil's surgery, which means it is a week since my mom left, and a week of appointments and a short-notice editing deadline, which means my first packet is due...tomorrow. 

On and on and on and on and on and round. I finally saw the psychiatrist last week, who knows me far less well than my ND and therapist. She wants more stringent 'monitoring', which is exactly what I was glad to be free from, so things feel to be swinging in a way to remind me of treatment as well as the far more welcome reconnection offered by my packet deadline.

Speaking of reconnecting, I have missed this blog, I have missed you guys; I promise I'll be back soon with some of the several posts currently in my head, and perhaps to ask your thoughts on directions I might take this blog moving forward. Thank you so much for the wonderful comments on my mum's post, and thank you to all my friends with whom I've been woefully out of contact recently, and Tracy E, I so look forward to getting to know you more and maybe making friendship bracelets... 

And thank you to my neglected worry beads, and thank you to all the friends who gave me nail-care products recently as I continue to pull at those poor digits, and thank you to the floor for holding your dust until I can vacuum, and thank you to my long-suffering toenails, my under-brushed hair...

All my friends, all parts of myself--please accept my thanks and apologies. I'll aim to email or call you come the weekend, come the passing of this deadline and, with any luck, the beginning of a less frenetic period.

And since I'm so far out of the rhythm and so burnt by the ticking clock that anything I could post would be a squeezed non-sequitur, I'm going to do the only sensible thing and share some pictures. More words soon.

A few final pictures of my mum from our drive to Anchorage to take her to the airport--one of the most beautiful times of year for that drive, autumn glory at its ephemeral best up here.

This birch tree so close to Tern Lake its feet are wet!

Yet another in the timeworn genre of "Ela in a tree" pics...

Mum and Phil.

The Kenai was in impressive (read: evacuation from homes) flood. Check out that glorious glacial blue.

Here's another view of the snow on the mountains that day Phil and I finally headed back home: a day of gray lowering clouds suddenly replaced by blue sky and then rain again. The way winter skies are, but we'll be glad of Fall for a while. Definitely getting darker here, but at least the astonishing windstorms have died down.

We went blueberry picking one more time. It's freezing pretty hard at nights now, so the trick was to pick the blueberries while they were still frozen: try to pick thawed frozen berries and you get mush, especially when the blueberries are tucked away like this--that's some tricky picking!

On a final fruity note, we got a parcel in the mail from Phil's mom. It smelled of apples, and when we opened it, we found it was apples: apples from the little orchard Phil and I planted three years ago, no less! How lovely to be getting fruit from those trees already! The big ones are Honeycrisps; the little ones I think are Snow, Jonathan and Rome. I know everyone's all excited about Honeycrisps, but I'd never really had one before because (a) they're usually frightfully expensive and (b) I generally don't prefer big apples (and perhaps (c) I can be put off by hype!). All that said, my goodness, those Honeycrisps may be the best apples I've ever tasted.

But lookit: these three are all apples! There's the huge Honeycrisp, the smallish Snow, and a little Alaska Crabapple! I don't know that we see humans sized differently by such orders of magnitude--talking fully grown humans here--but perhaps our souls or auras can differ by that much.

I missed Rosh Hashanah, but with these apples, a sweet new year to everyone.