Relief

So, yesterday my husband headed out to sell his blood. Well, it's technically "donating plasma" and they pay you for time, but that's not the way I see it.

    He was denied. They required a note from his doctor saying he's mentally fit to donate.

mmmmkay?

   I am terribly confused, shocked and a bit angry on his behalf that something like bipolar could bar someone from donating plasma, but I do have to say I'm awfully relieved.
    I've done a good job of ABSOLUTELY STAYING OUT OF IT.

    I figured it was totally his deal and I avoided talking about it or reminding him at all. He remembered on his own so I figured he actually wanted to. . . Until he was just about headed out the door.

    "Are you sure you want to?" The words slipped out of my mouth and I winced at my lack of self-control.

    "No," he stated flatly, "but we need the money."

    And my heart sank. My nausea was justified and I felt awful.

    I don't want to be at that point where the man who my life revolves around feels like he has to sell his blood for us to survive.

    So, I applied for a second job. *sigh*

Aspie Anger

As an aspie, I often feel like John from the Watchmen.

    Unlike the average bear, which are born with communication instincts, I have to constantly learn things, like how to change your voice when you're happy, and how to shriek when scared.
    The people in my life often don't know how I'm feeling.

    Except, my beloved bipolar husband. He knows how I'm feeling.

   Yesterday, after I washed off the stove, swept the floor, washed the couch cushion covers and the throw blanket I didn't have time to finish the dishes. I took the girls to the carousel to allow him a breather from his full-time job as a Stay-At-Home-Dad.

   That evening, while getting the girls down for bedtime, I did need him, but I avoided asking him for much.

    After this fun, but exhausting day, he complains that the dishes he needs to cook with are dirty.

    I felt terribly angry and unappreciated, so I called him "Mr. Complainy Pants." Anyone else would have thought that was cute and pretty much ignored it.

    He knew though. He knew it was my extreme emotions popping out, so he apologized with donuts because he is the sweetest person I know.

I Love the Lulls

I love when there is nothing to report.

It's so nice to have normal time.
I'm planning on taking the Tiny Girl Pile to the children's museum today while our big girl is at school, so I'll have to keep an eye out for little Bubbles getting over excited, but it seems like we're gearing up for a pretty normal week!

The Edge of Mania

    My beloved bipolar husband revealed that two things can spark his "crazy."
    Money and Flies!

    Well, sleep has been so-so. It seems like we've been getting a good 5 or 6 hours a night, which I appreciate greatly.
     We're developing a game where we see who can make the most money starting off with a $20 budget and I think the amount of thinking and research he's doing towards this goal might be the edge of a mania.

    For those of you interested, the clues that he's tip toeing on the pool edge is that he stays up as late as he can gorging on information. He literally can't get enough.
    The whole day, while he's buried deep in research, his eyes are glassy and bright, like a kid who was just handed a big gift box wrapped in pretty paper.
    There is mild hesitation when I ask him to do things. I have to ask him a few times, but when he's full manic, he won't respond at all when I ask him to do things.



    My beloved bipolar keeps a good handle on his mind, so I'm not concerned so far. I trust him quite a lot.


  See ya next week ;)

Lost Track

    It's been seven weeks now, one week shy of two months, since I've started blogging about living with my beloved bipolar. I feel like some days, I get so caught up on what I should share, that I've forgotten that I just wanted to show people how normal it is to live with, and be in love with, someone with bipolar.

    I wanted to show people how normal our lives are despite his bipolar, or even because of his bipolar.
   I will say that parts of our lives are extraordinary, and people have looked at us with jealousy, however, we have coffee when we wake up. I go to work. We eat scrambled eggs and sometimes forget to brush our teeth. We get tired and cranky. Sometimes we workout, sometimes we go months without working out. We get rained on.

    Life is normal. It has both good and bad parts and everyone has a choice to surround themselves with as much good as they can. You also have the choice to see more good around you. I adore my husband, so I see the good in him every day, and as you think of someone you adore, you'll find it's so easy see the pleasant things in your own life. It's easy to feel happy when every day, you can go out and see at least one thing that makes you happy. A person, a pet, a piece of jewelry even, can make you feel a glowing happiness. Something so simple can make you feel like life is worthwhile. It can make you glow inside. It can even make you feel glad to be alive, because there are all these tiny fragments of happiness floating around you all the time. You might not have even realized that you have collected them around you, quite possibly to remind you to be happy.

    I find happiness frequently in this life I've built around myself and I bet, if you look around, you can see something that makes you happy, today, to.

In Other News: Aspie News

    I've always thought that my beloved bipolar husband was just incredibly accepting of the challenges I face everyday, all the time, but he said something the other day that makes me feel like, maybe he just really doesn't see it.

    He often says I'm stressed too much, and I am. Sometimes he takes it personally and he shouldn't.

    I can imagine how frustrating it must be to see someone you love so much never being quite as happy as you'd like your life with them to make them.
    I do tend to always have something to complain about. Life isn't where I want it to be. I've failed at my life goals repeatedly for a few years in a row and as an Aspie, I have to say that it is just thoroughly devastating.
   I've wanted to own my own house, on acreage, with chickens since I was 12. I'm almost 30 now and it breaks my heart when my girls can't play soccer in our yard because it's too small.

    But really, the reason I'm so crabby is the over stimulation, ALL THE TIME. It's hard to handle the feeling of clothing.
    As a kid did you ever get shoved in something that was just a little bit too tight? Not to the cutting off circulation point, just where the arm holes are uncomfortably snug and the bottom pulls up when you lift your arms and the part across the chest is a bit too tight?
   I'm not a huge person. If I weren't an Aspie, I'd wear a medium, but since I am, I am only comfortable in XL or bigger. I like to swim in my clothes so they don't touch me much.
    I don't "tune sounds out" like other people can. I'm so very, very jealous of that skill. I hear refrigerator, all the time. Occasionally it shuts off and then I hear the lack of something that should be there, which makes me uncomfortable because then I'm subconsciously thinking about what's broken, and my hair. I will admit, I don't feel every hair I have, but I feel a lot of them. I shave the back of my neck because those tiny hairs feel like a collection of needles, constantly point-in in my neck and any light touch swirls those points around in my flesh. Around my hairline, especially on my temples, those hairs aren't painful so much as invasive, almost like an itchy scab. I've shaved twice in my life. Ran around bald for as long as I could stand the backlash. As an "attractive" white girl, it's not socially acceptable to be bald on purpose, especially while wearing a 5XL coco puff t shirt.

   Well it was my hair that tipped me off. He happens to like Power Hair! So I've been trying to master the Power Ponytail. It takes more hair product than I normally use, which is fine, however the smell of the gel I used gave me a headache to the nauseous point.

    So I'm headed off to the shower to wash it out and he recommends using cocoa paste in stead. When I told him that the cocoa paste wouldn't make my head stop aching he was confused,

    "But it smells like delicious chocolate," he retorted in confusion.

    "Yes it does, and it would give me a headache," I stated, in the blunt factual way I state truths. I'm sure none of the emotions swirling around me showed, I'm sure I looked relatively "Poker faced" as my perceptions of his acceptance crumbled and curled around me like a choking mental smoke.


    I no longer have any notion of what he knows about how I perceive things, but he's so supportive and sweet that it doesn't change anything other than my own mind.
    Even if he doesn't know why I need to shower, he watches the kiddos and allows me time to decompress.
    Even if he doesn't know why I sometimes can't bring myself out of my baggy clothes, he never complains about it. He still calls me sexy, even when I loaf around in jamie pants.

    Even if he can't comprehend my situation, he's always there to support me and love me.

    I hope everyone has someone in their lives who is as wonderful as my beloved bipolar is.

How much I Love My Beloved Bipolar

    My husband has had two jobs where he was making $2000 more a month than we are now.

    During the first one, we saw him on weekends, and on Wednesdays.
    It was so devastating to our little girl, who was about two at the time, she broke down when she said bye-bye. It wasn't normal little girl "parent going to work" crying, it was "abandonment issues in the making crying." So, he left that job for the second one to spend more time with us. Specifically, to spend more time with her.
    Well, that didn't work out well either because they'd put him up in a hotel every other week, and send him hours away on the other weeks.
   He was too far away when I had our third daughter and he missed her birth because of that job. It's not something he'll ever, ever get over.

    Jobs are never more important than the beloved people in your life.

    So now we live paycheck-to-paycheck, never eating out and never going out to movies or camping. Saving up for back-to-school was incredibly difficult, but it's worth ever lack of penny.

   According to math, I love him enough to pay $2000/month at keep him home with us.

   If you are bipolar, don't let anyone say you're not lovable.

I can't argue

    When my beloved bipolar goes manic, he tends to pick really awesome stuff to be passionate about.

    He'll come up with these amazing ideas that are really hard to resist and it's really hard for me to tell him to take it slow because I get just as wrapped up in his idea.
    You want to start working out and get super sexy? Absolutely not!
    You want to open a food truck, make at least double, probably triple what I'm making with the job I dislike and fulfil my dream of having a business? Whoa there Buddy! Simmer down.

    It's hard to get him to see things when he's manic, not because he's oblivious to reason, but because he presents such factual truths that I literally cannot argue. There is no logical argument against what he says.

   The only thing is that he floats away from me.

   He digs himself so deeply in his projects that he stops helping me clean. He only cooks when I ask him to and resents anything he does need to do.

   I'm going to ask him to come back to me.
    Wish me luck

Finding your Why

    My husband came out of somewhere a few days ago and told me, in not so many words, that he had rediscovered his why.

    I was first introduced to the concept to finding your why in The Toilet Paper Entreprenuer by Mike Michalwicz, an adorable father who is very pleasant to talk to. 

    I believe knowing your why is very important to all humans persons.
    If you know why you feel like you exist, it's easier to work toward that goal. It's also easier to see opportunities where that goal is achievable.

    Here's how to find your why.
    Take a goal you want to achieve and ask yourself, "why?"
     Keep asking yourself "why" until you can no longer find an answer.
    My example:
       "I want MONEY!"
   -"Why?"
       "So I can buy groceries when I need to and a house to live in with land for some cows and chickens!"
  -"Why?"
        "So I can be self-sufficient!"
  -"Why?"
       "So I don't have to rely on anyone to live the life I want!"
   -"Why?"
       "So I can feel safe."
   -"Why?"
       "So I can build myself up to person I can be!"
 -"Why?"
      "So I can help people!"
-"Why?"
     . . . "So. . . people can be helped? So I can feel helpful? Because I want to help people?"
-"Why?"
    "Because I want to help people?"

This is my Why. If all I do in my lifetime is help people, I'll have lived a fulfilled life.
    I desire to help people more than anything.

I think everyone should find their why, especially bipolars. 

    I've seen that bipolars tend to be inclined to research, so when they research self-improvement, their manias can make them saner.
   Work on yourself! It's good.
 

I miss coffee

    When you're poor, you often long for money, but really, you want something that you want to buy with that money.


    I miss coffee, but really, I miss my husband.


    With a teeny tiny in the house comes sleep deprivation and when that happens, I fall asleep while cuddling my beloved bipolar at night while watching movies.
    I miss the warm, delicious steamed milk, but what I miss more the ability to stay awake and be intimate with my husband. I miss cuddling and kissing him. I miss talking to him until 2am.

    I've begun working out to boost my energy levels because even sans coffee, I still need my husband time!

Fall Is Coming!

    It smells crisp out. No longer do we have to fight against the heat! No more 80 degrees in the living room.


    With the sun becoming sparse, it's time to watch out for sadness and to pull out the hibernating happy lamp.
    However, it's also the month before Halloween, which is my beloved bipolar and my favorite holiday!

    He's already gotten warm costumes for the girls. It's so exciting!

    I'm not sure what we are going to wear, but we have some time.

    It's also the time of year when my beloved bipolar remembers how much he likes mentalism and hypnosis. He's wanted to run a psychologically seeded seance, like Derren Brown did, for three years now. We've never had the money but each year we build up closer and closer.

   

It's Helped Us

    People are often jealous of us, I think it's mostly because we're so happy, but happiness is something we work for.
    My husband and I have done a lot of psychological research and we've used what we've learned to improve our lives.

    The most helpful thing we've found is raising your base level of happiness. Once the level of happiness you return to is "pretty happy" it's easy to start living your own life and embracing the positive things you experience.


    Igor Ledochowski's Life Long Learning really helped as well. He sets up a mental castle for you to escape to and builds a really good set up for living.

 

How to: Keep Calm

    Keep Calm and __________.

    Great words. I am particularly fond of;

• Keep Calm and Knit On
• Keep Calm and Have Some Coffee
• Keep Calm and Eat Cookies
• Keep Calm and Hug Your Children
• Keep Calm and Buy a Fish (Ok, I haven't actually seen this one, but I can sketch one out).

Keeping Calm to Carry On doing whatever ever you prefer to carry on doing can be a challenge and I've only mastered it after years of hypnosis and NLP training.

   The biggest, most helpful tool we've developed is this mantra, 

"It can happen, and you can be freaking out about it, or it can happen and you can be fine."

    I use it on myself, I use it on RP and whenever I do, the situation fades away.

Morning Goals

    I'm crazy.
    I really want to be able to blog in the mornings before the babies are awake and crawling all over me and trying to jump off the couch and, you know, doing that thing where they're learning, but as a parent, it seems like they're trying to kill themselves on everything! When I started this blog I had grand ideas about art. Since then my beloved bipolar bought the most giantist box of crayons I have literally ever seen, and it sits squarely in it's very hard to reach hiding spot, so Icy can't break or eat any of them.
    I'd also like to pump some milk and cook breakfast before my daughter wakes up with the goal of eating breakfast with her.

    Yeah, but I'd have to wake up at around 5:30-6:00am and I'm not sure if that is feasible.

    Is it physically possible for me to wake up at 6?
    After my beloved bipolar and I are 100% sure ALL the girls are sleeping, we often talk and cuddle, or watch a not-kid movie so we end up getting in bed around 1-2am. I wake up at least 3 times to nurse the teeny tiniest, and then at 7am, it's "Up for the day" time because I have to get my princess out the door to the bus stop. Icy wakes up somewhere between 5-8am so I make sure she doesn't wake up my beloved bipolars; Icy and Mr. Professional. They seem to be alive best when they can sleep til 9, so I do my part to make sure those two can get that rest.

    Very occasionally, I do ask Mr.Professional to get the oldest up for school. It hasn't happened this year, but I suspect it will once or twice.

    Bipolar is a careful balance of sunlight and sleep, and I do find that being a caring spouse is also a careful balance between taking care of yourself and others.
    I'm the kind of person that easily looses track of myself. I've been known to sacrifice too much of what I need to keep those I love happy. It's been hard to learn how to pull back, ask for what I need and let me give what I need to myself, but, luckily, Mr.Professional is the greatest husband for me and is constantly telling me to love myself as much as he loves me (in other words.)
    He loves me an awful lot, so I have a long way to go.

Emotional

    It's much harder to tell when my adorable baby, Bubbles is depressed.

    She could be in a depressive slump after all her rambunctiousness lately, or she could be emotional because there is a new baby in the house.
    She was extremely attached to her bottle, and was extremely attached to breastfeeding before that, so after her bottle broke, it's become her friend. She is allowed to cuddle it in and pack it around like a stuffed animal, we just don't put any fluids in it.

    Well, last night she woke up desperately crying. My husband went in and comforted her. He said she had such a bad dream, it woke her up.
    Not a great start to the night.
    At 5 am she started crying again, complaining that her diaper was hurting her, so I took it off and we headed out to get her another when she started crying about our missing ferret, who passed away about 6 months ago. She was better after some cuddles, but then it started again when she wanted to drink from her cuddle bottle.

    It could be depression, it could be heightened emotions. Either way, that adorable little girl is getting a lot of hugs for the next few weeks.

Keto Diet: Gettin' Technical

   I've been told multiple times that I assume everyone knows what I know. They say I should share my sources and stop assuming everyone has done the same research I've done so I'll give it a try.

   I don't claim to be an expert at anything, but I do happen to know how to look things up pretty good and I'd like to share what I've learned to explain why I think the Keto Diet is working so well for my beloved bipolar husband.



    Keto Defined:

    For those of you who don't know what the keto diet is, it is a fat-dense diet where one keeps things that digest down into glucose down to a minimum. That would be sugar, carbs and a lot of sugar substitutes.
    Some keep their carbs down below 100 grams, but he's trying to keep his at 20 or below.

    It's recomended for those with epilepsy and both epilepsy and bipolar greatly effect a part of the brain called the hypothalamus.
   I suspect this is why the keto diet has helped him stay so sane despite getting less than 5hrs of sleep a night since our cutie was born.

Blogging for a Month!

    Woo! Today is my 20th post which means I've been blogging for a whole month now!

    I really hope my daily ramblings are helping people see how normal, or even pleasant, life can be when your significant other has bipolar.

   I've had quite a lot of readers poking in and I wanted to express my appreciation to you all!

   You guys keep me going and make me feel like, maybe there is a need for blogs like this.

The Fine Line

    There is a fine line between mania and just crazy passion.

    There are three passions that run deep in my husband:

•  making money
• cooking
• and his family.

    I think these might be the driving passions behind everything he does in life.

    It's been 40 days since he's been on his keto diet, and I'm so impressed by how he hasn't broken down and scarfed down a chocolate bar. He has been baking fantastic bread and caramel-chocolate covered fry bread to feed us, in part to live vicariously through us eating it. However, even while cooking, he hasn't even tasted his creations for cook-y, flavor adjusting reasons. So impressive! Yesterday MyFitnessPay congratulated him for losing 23 pounds.

     Part of his family, and actually the beginning of his family, is me. <3
    I think my post-baby inability to be intimate with him is really affecting him negatively. It's usually something we do twice a week, and it's been three weeks of nothing so far. His self-esteem is so incredibly low lately, and I feel so bad for him, but I'm not physically ready yet.
    He keeps saying he's trying to woo me with food, and I really don't want his attempts to go in vain. Such a sad situation. His passion is incredibly flattering.

    His cooking is obviously derived from his passion. His passion for me and his passion for feeding his girls.
    Coming home to piles of goodies is wonderful, and with him lucid and calm, I'm not worried right now, but I know that with how little sleep he's gotten recently, he could slip into a hypomania. Probably food related.

   This is what I came home to the other day!

Mr. Professional calls them 

White Girl Fry Bread.

Fry bread covered in a cream cheese-pumpkin spice frosting with homemade caramel and a homemade chocolate ganache. 

Sometimes I love being married to food crazy cook!