Okay, I Cannot Do It All

I have finally accepted that I cannot do it all. I have hired someone to come in and give my house a good cleaning once a month. I figure I can keep up with it in between with quick dustings. She is coming for the first time this week so now I have to work on accepting that no one else will do it the same way I do. I figure some of her ways will be not as good as mine but just as many will be better than how I do it.

This may seem like a trivial thing to be doing, but it is one of the most difficult things I have done since being diagnosed six or seven years ago. It is really tough for me to admit I need assistance. Admitting that seems to be like giving in to the disease, this disease I have been fighting tooth and nail. Even though I know I am being ridiculous, it's tough. I will have to stay out of her way, not to mention keeping my husband out of her way. I will admit, though, I already told them that no way will I make anyone clean my toilets. They found that quite funny and insisted they were used to it but I will be cleaning the toilets before she arrives just the same. I'm just not ready to take it that far.

Hopefully, taking this step will stop me from looking around and feeling helpless and worthless because I can't keep up with the house.

Next challenge is the yard. The friend who comes and trims my bushes and spreads mulch has committed to doing it, but is working long hours and has not made it yet. Every time I look out my sliding door to the deck and every time we pull into the driveway, I get extremely stressed that it hasn't been done yet. Yes, I could hire someone else, but he does it very well and very inexpensively.

I am dealing with the stress of this issue a different way. Every day for the past week, I went out and did a little trimming and weeding. It took me a full week because I can only manage an hour or so each day before my FTD body and brain give out. What I have done is trimming and weeding the area that I can see out my patio door to the deck and the area at the back of the driveway that we see when we pull in to it. I finished doing that yesterday so hopefully I can relax a little about that. I also keep up with my flower garden beside the deck so I can even go out onto the deck and relax for a while without stressing.

This leads me to another phenomenon. I am sensitive to most anything... laundry  products, soaps, lotions, perfumes and on and on. Oh, and poison ivy, definitely poison ivy. So far this year I have avoided that. (Insert Knock on Wood here.)  Mosquito bites have always been worse for me than most people. They stay puffed up, red and itchy for about a week. Now, as I have said before, FTD magnifies any problem or irritation for me. My brain reacts more strongly to distractions, irritants and anything that triggers a reaction in the brain. That is why I avoid crowds (meaning more than 2 or 3 people), loud noises, even action packed television shows.

I know all this, but I never thought about something as simple as mosquito bites. When I get them now, it is akin to a constant zapping of an electrical stimulation along with the itch. It is constant and my brain cannot ignore them and is in a constant agitated state. I hope this is an adequate definition of what it feels like. I have been driven several times to taking a mild sedative to calm down the nerves on my skin and in my brain. This is not something that would have occurred to me as a possibility and is new to me this year.

I accomplished something this week that really boosted my confidence in my ability to still do things. I saw a recipe online for Roasted Garlic Rosemary Artisan Bread. It had a lot of steps to the recipe but they were all simple ones. It is a no-knead bread which made it even easier. Even though it was a 24-hour process, it went very well and I got only one burn. That may be a record for the past couple years. It was also delicious. That first slice after it came out of the oven, slathered with butter, was scrumptious!

I will admit that I have not shared any with my husband. When I offered him a slice when it was fresh from the oven, he requested peanut butter and jelly on it. Did I mention it was roasted garlic/rosemary bread?  So, baking that bread also offered some comic relief to the day!  Oh, and please don't tell my husband I told you this part of the story. Hopefully when he reads this blog entry, he will get tired of it before the end...