Words...uhhh...words...

You have to read that title in the voice of Beavis. Or is it Butthead? You get the drift.  I think it's been a year since I wrote in this thing. There is no real big reason. I just felt so meh about it all. Not just blogging. About pretty much everything. Sometimes it's cyclical. I think more likely I was just worn the fuck out from the past few years. The house. My mother sending me nastygram emails to remind me I was a piece of shit. The new house. The new house is still GREAT, do not let me imply otherwise. No, it's good, it's just a whole lot of work. Coming after several years of...a whole lot of work.

I just holed up worse than usual.

Also, I'm allergic to like...fucking ev.er.y.thing. it turns out. Like not actually...but just about. it seems to just be the same old same old myristicin, I just didn't realize how much it's in. Not just nutmeg. Also, coconut oil and palm oil. Those two oils are in at least 50% of stuff you can get at the grocery store. And I don't just mean shitty processed food. Oh no, anything where fat has been removed that would have naturally had Vitamin A in it? A synthetic version made from Palm replaces it. Vitamin A Palmitate. In all your less than full fat dairy. And in many cereals and every single non-dairy milk analog I could find, too.  Also, beef and butterfat are good sources of it. I don't actually eat much beef, but still, who doesn't love tacos?

And that's only things you eat. I also found out it was in my shampoo. My soap. My lotion. Body wash, toothpaste, deodorant, advil, vitamins, dish soap, laundry soap, nail polish remover, ......jesus h christ no wonder I felt like hammered ass at least 50% of the time!!I only made the connection when I realized that I was getting rebound migraines more often than not when I took advil, and then after several days of knowing for sure that everything I had eaten was all from scratch I started checking my vitamin labels. Coconut oil was in them.  So I googled it. And oh yeah...this is familiar. And explains why using pure coconut oil as a moisturizer made me want to puke and die.

So about 6 weeks ago I started eliminating all those things. My migraines have dropped to maybe 1 a week (still tinkering on some surprise sources....I'm looking at you nail polish remover).  I read labels obsessively and take full advantage of online shopping through Peapod because grocery shopping now takes HOURS, I've used them forever since grocery shopping also freaks me out, but now i have even more appreciation. I found resources to make soap at home. I'm not ready for a full on cold process with lye soap making experience yet, so I am making french milled soap by melting down shredded pure olive oil castille soap, then I can scent it to my liking (or not as the case may be...still working on this!). I am using some fucked up salty ass tooth powder to brush my teeth. I use only baking soda and vinegar to wash my hair and after three weeks it stopped being a greasenest that just about made me cry. I made body butter with cocoa butter and beeswax this week since it's dry skin season and something had to be done. It smells weird because I underestimated how much the cocoa butter would smell like chocolate, but if I use it at night the weird smell is gone by morning. I found hippie deodorant that almost works. I have made milk from almonds in my own blender. And you know what? It didn't suck at all. It kicks ass on cereal.

And somehow, I started to feel..more like me. I wasn't waking up every day feeling like I was on the verge of or getting over a migraine. I don't feel quite as much sheer terror at being in my own skin. I  now understand why I used to wake up feeling good and then shower, do my hair, put on makeup and finish with the best lip-gloss ever (Buxom Big and Healthy Lip Polish in Trixie, one of the very few things on this planet I bought full retail at $20 a pop) and then instead of feeling good I'd start to feel so..not good. So off. So unwell, so anxious, so off kilter and eventually just panicked to the point of being unable to even function for the rest of the day when I would scrub my face, pull my hair back and get into yoga pants and a ratty tee and go wallow in my wretchedness and try not to cry.  Well the lip-gloss alone had 7 different palm based ingredients in it. SEVEN. By trying to make myself feel better I was making it all worse.

I ha lost my writing mojo completely, my reading mojo was barely there and my knitting mojo was in fits and starts of hyperfocused freakouts of insomnia.

It's not all bad, I did get a lot of knitting done while I was doing all of that not sleeping! And as part of NaNoWriMo, which for me will be AnnieWriMo to just get in the practice of writing again there might actually be some knitting content in this here knitting blog again.

And now, I'm going to go watch a movie and work on finishing the heel of my Latte Lace socks: