I messed up, big time.

Something terrible happened to me this morning, and it made me realize that I’m going about some things the wrong way.

This blog is one of them.

Talk about Depression.

As a student nurse, I feel like I should really be mentioning a lot more posts about health promotion and awareness.

That’s why I’m going to do a Mental Health related post because its Mental Illness Awareness Week!

More specifically, today (October 10th) is National Depression Screening Day! So if you, or someone you know, has had an inkling that something is a bit off in their lives and that feeling doesn’t seem to resolve, there’s free screenings offered through the website “Help yourself. Help others.”

I’m not sure why there is such a stigma about depression, although no one can deny that it exists. People go through so much in their life times, its no wonder that the statistics for depression are so high.

I’d like to leave some of these statistics with you all so that you can become more aware of how problematic this health issue is, and why it needs to be talked about.

• 3 million men are affected by depression in the United States
• Men are 4 times as likely to die by suicide
• Women 18 to 45 years of age account for the largest proportion of people suffering from depression
• 10 percent to 15 percent of women experience a clinical depression during pregnancy or after the birth of a baby
• Latinos are more likely to present “somatic” symptoms of depression, like body aches and nervousness
• One out of four young adults will experience a depressive episode by age 24
• Suicide is the third leading cause of death for those aged 15-24 and the second leading cause of death of college students
• Depression affects more than 6.5 million of the 35 million Americans who are 65 years or older

The CDC has some more statistics and information about depression.

Depression can be caused by a variety or combination of different factors. No one chooses to be depressed. Start talking about it. Seek out resources about depression, especially those in your local community.

I recommend that you give Kevin Breel’s TED talk, “Confessions of a depressed comic” a listen as well.

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Paying it forward

Fun fact, “Midori” is green in Japanese. The more you know.

So yesterday my internet bud, Annmarie (AKA Sweet Wild Flower), decided to give me this cool anniversary present for my 1 month of blogging. I’d like to take a second to thank her for being such a positive internet buddy. I’m not so used to seeing nice people on the internet. It’s a great change.

Check out that sweet piece of jpeg! I like it, its green and its got a great adjective, more importantly its got “award” at the end of it. Everyone loves awards, right? I give myself awards all the time. The dark chocolate eater award, the best excuses to not go to the gym award, the eating a second and third breakfast this morning award. That last one is really dear to my heart. I’m basically a hobbit.

So this green stallion of an award has some rules that go along with receiving it. Which I will follow, since I don’t really break rules all that often!

Select 15 bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly. Holy shit, that is a lot of blogs to list….okay, here goes!

1. Miami Transit Rider – Daniella’s Rants about Miami public transportation makes her blog my favorite!
2. Michael Chaney’s Blog -Michael is my favorite writer that I have been exposed to since joining wordpress!
3. Knitting, feminism and miscellaneous ranting – I WISH I KNEW MANDY IN PERSON, O GOD, SHE’S AMAZING.
4. Lafemmeroar – I get something out of every post, she’s a great writer.
5. Museums Reviewed – I have read every single post on this blog. Its re-god-damn-diculous how much I love it.
6. Hanna Brencher – I just discovered Hanna via her TEDtalk regarding her more love letters project.
7. Just Homemade – because food porn is the best kind of porn.
8. Illustrator Bites – Heather is hella talented, I love her illustrations and her blog is adorable.
9. Delightfully Tacky – I’ve been following Elizabeth since 2009, you could say that I follow her the most regularly!
10. Living Europea – I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, this couple are living my dream.
11. Map of Jo – Only recently discovered this blog, but its become my wordpress version of tumblr!
12. Little Wolf – I want to be Maryanna when I grow up.
13. Pretty Pink Pebbles – Ana has a little bit of everything!
14. Stegothesaurus – for your regular dose of flash fiction! :3
15. The Illustrious Peacock – beautiful photography, you know you want to look at it. LOOK AT IT I SAY.
16. Violent Metaphors – for when I’m feeling sassy and science-y.

[I added one for good luck!]

As per the instructions, you have all just been nominated for Versatile Blogger Award as well. Let the never-ending game of internet tag begin!

The last rule says I have to tell you guys 7 things about myself. Now you see, the problem with this is, I already did that before. So its hard for me to come up with 7 NEW things to tell you about myself. Mostly because I’ve only been awake for three hours and I’m not at home…

Luckily the Daily Prompt has come to my rescue, giving an idea as to what what I can talk about.

1. Clothes are very important to me. I need them, or else I’d be naked. That may sound a bit obvious, but, really, I don’t want to be walking around naked. Mostly because I get cold very easily. I’m not sure why I’m always perpetually cold, maybe its bad circulation. Regardless, I need clothes so that I don’t feel like one of those shivering hairless cats. I AM A BEAR, and thus require a warm coat of fur. I prefer to be bear than bare, GET IT? O GOD IM NOT EVEN KIND OF FUNNY.

2. When I was growing up my style was that of a tom boy. All I did when I was a kid was play with my brothers toys and video games. My mother attempted to dress me up in skirts and poofy dresses, but these efforts were always met with retaliation. I remember at some point my parents started buying us clothing a few sizes up so that we would grow into them. I ended up stealing my brothers pants and shirts that were too big for him. I don’t think he minded much…but I never actually asked, lol.

3. When I was in highschool my style was that of a hottopic poster child. I wasn’t the happiest of kids when I moved back to the states. I was pretty depressed that America and American teenagers were not at all how I pictured them.  So I think that’s why I started listening to really dark music. I say dark, because it involved the color black. Lots of black. I think I wore only black for like a good solid two years of my life. Sometimes I’d add in some bright colors, but most of the time…just black. I had those giant over sized baggy pants, the ones where it looked like I was hiding a small child in each pant leg. I didn’t own shirts that weren’t band shirts. Seriously. I had spikey wrist bracelets and wore clunky metal necklaces. My backpack was filled with band patches and I only listened to black metal, death metal, speed metal or alternative bands. And I had a livejournal (does that still exist?). Basically, I was your average angsty teen.

4. My style today is a little bit of everything. I enjoy skirts and dresses again, lol, I’m glad I got over that. I also love the shit out of bermuda shorts. Best. Invention. Ever. If I’m not wearing flip flops its because I’m going to the gym. If I’m going dancing I never wear heels…as I learned the hard way that bar hopping and clubbing require a lot of footwork. I have a shit ton of novelty t-shirts. I have star wars, star trek, band shirts, a tuxedo shirt, super hero shirts, I even have a Powerthirst shirt – for when I decide that I need to be uncomfortably energetic! I also have a wonderful pile of more fashionable tops, but I never seem to find occasions to wear them.

5. My style as a nursing student screams yoga pants and college t-shirts…Mostly because I don’t sleep much, I wake up early, I spend my days studying and I have no life. Don’t judge me; you’d dress like this too. The only permanent addition to my wardrobe since starting nursing school is a watch. I never regularly wore watches before, but now I feel weird if I go a day without one. Maybe one day, when I’m a super adult, I’ll get a cool galaxy gear watch…until then, I can only hope to buy a Casio calculator watch. Those are the fucking coolest.

6. Clothes you will never see me in: overalls or no-sleeve tees. There was this one time, when I went to Japan with my girl friend Kim, that the cool peeps we were hanging out with took us to the beach and we had nothing to wear for such an occasion. So we went to a nearby clothing store, but the cheapest clothing we found were a pair of overalls…one pink and one yellow. We ended up purchasing them because our friends told us that they looked cute, and they pushed us to buy them. We looked so absolutely ridiculous. We looked like Pink Mario and Wario. It was so embarrassing. All picture evidence has since been burned. The no-sleeve thing is related, once again, to my dislike of being cold. Speaking of which, something you will ALWAYS see me carrying: a sweater or jacket. I never leave home without one.

7. My favorite article of clothing is my hello kitty snuggie. I consider it an article of clothing…even though if you want to get technical, I’m pretty sure its more of a robe-blanket. MAD? MAD CAUSE I GOT A HELLO KITTY SNUGGIE? You should be.

BAAAAAAAAAAM. Two birds, one early morning stone. Done and done! I’m ready for second breakfast now.

 

I AM TECH SUPPORT!

Disclaimer: I have never been, nor do I claim to be, a computer expert of any kind. The following story is based on true events that happened to me yesterday. All information regarding the incident was found off of google, my friend Kauf (a programmer), my friend Luuk (a person who knows what memory sticks are) and my own brain. If this isn’t how these things work, I am not the least bit surprised. At some point I will claim to be a computer wizard, I’d like to mention now that I do not and have never practiced magic. I was, however, my own tech support. Let me bask in this moment, okay? I did something without others present. THIS IS LIKE A HUGE LIFE ACCOMPLISHMENT. (Also, kind of magical)

Friends, I wish to tell you a little story.

It all started when I was typing up some essays yesterday, you know, normal nursing school stuff…when something happened to me. My computer screen suddenly went blank.

Naturally I immediately assumed it had something to do with the cable that runs from my magical computer box (tower) to my monitor. But I was interrupted mid-thought by a high pitched, upset, demonic noise suddenly erupting from my desktop tower.

My response, as it is when anything goes wrong with digital devices, was to turn off the computer. So I did. I waited a few seconds…and a few more, then I turned it back on. To my dismay, my tower was still singing its raging digital acapella. WTF IS HAPPENING??? OGOD.

Initially I of course, because I am a catastrophic thinker, went to the worst possible scenario; I killed it. I must have somehow offended my tower to the point of hardware suicide. It was failing to thrive. My computer was dying and this was its final Cheyne-Stokes breathes. I turned it off and went into full TECH PANIC MODE.

I texted a few people, but when no one responded,  I called my friend Kauf. I don’t recall most of the phone call in much detail, it was a blur of anxiety, but I do remember Kauf telling me that my computer’s beeps were a code. A code? Well, shit. What kind of code are we talking here? It wants to communicate with me, I’m okay with that, I’ll go into the grid! WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO TALK WITH IT???

Unfortunately, my call was badly timed, as Kauf was in the middle of a Final Fantasy XIV Online raid.  I apologized for the frantic phone call, said goodbye, and just sat on the floor staring at my computer tower.

A code? My sweet, innocent tower, what is it that you want to tell me? Is this in binary? Is binary even a language? Are there other languages? Oh sweet Jesus, I hope this isn’t the audio version of C++…for a moment the scene from Zoolander came to mind… I don’t understand.  LET ME HELP YOU.

With no options left, and millions of unanswered questions, I knew there was only one thing left to try. Google it.

I ran for my laptop and ferociously finger stabbed my keyboard until the google screen appeared. When you type into google “dying computer noises” you actually get free sound clips of what, I presume, a computer sounds like when its dying. Which is random and cool at the same time, but of no use to me. So I tried “computer noises + code” (Kauf mentioned it, so I should have probably used that in the search…) and BAM, answers!

The beepies are  “beep codes” that are used by something called BIOS (basic input output system). The BIOS is the lord of the boots! Boots being the booting up process of a computer. BIOS is the tower guardian.

Mr. BIOS was letting me know that shit was going down in my tower. OH GOD HOW DO I COMMUNICATE WITH YOU MR. BIOS??? Easy, back to google. I searched “HP BIOS codes” – and lo and behold, I had found it. THE ROSETTA STONE FOR HP DESKTOP TOWER BIOS BEEPS. OH WHAT A GLOOOOOORIOUS DAY!

I listened again to my tower’s beep message, it wasn’t random complaints,  oh no, no sir. My computer was speaking to me. He was saying “ONE SHORT BEEP AND A LONG BEEP. ONE SHORT BEEP AND A LONG BEEP. HEY, ARE YOU GETTING THIS? I MEAN I CAN KEEP GOING, BUT I FEEL LIKE I’M JUST REPEATING MYSELF AT THIS POINT. ONE SHORT BEEP AND A LONG BEEP.”

I’ll spare you the suspense, it was a memory problem. I tore open my tower and searched for the culprits. Two, very suspicious, RAM sticks were just sitting there…acting like nothing had fucking happened. YOU DON’T FOOL ME, DEVIANTS!

I took one of the sticks of RAM out, tried to turn my computer on again, but he was still cranky and repeating the memory BIOS code. So I put that one back and took out the other one. The most magical thing happened when I pressed the power…MY COMPUTER BOOTED. It brought a tear to my eye. But I couldn’t celebrate just yet…my computer is hella old, I can’t just survive off of one memory stick for long. Looking at the motherboard, where the stick holders (not the technical term) were located I took note that two of them were black and two of them were blue. The memory sticks had been in the blue slots, so, I moved both sticks into the black slots and tried turning on the computer.

SUCCESS. I had never been so happy to see my monitor screen’s ten minute long Windows Starting logo.

Then it dawned on me. This is the first time, ever, in the history of my life, that I fixed a hardware computer problem BY MYSELF. AND IT FELT GLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORIOUS! 

To reward myself, I went on a magical internet browsing journey where I accomplished nothing, and it felt great. The moral of this story is, wait no, there’s no moral to this story. This is just what happened to me yesterday.

But, there was a take away message from all this, and that is – I AM A COMPUTER WIZARD, I DON’T NEED TECH SUPPORT, I AM TECH SUPPORT *drops a mic* DEUCES.

 

 

 

 

 

 

            

Stress Eaters – Part 1

“Stressed is desserts spelled backwards.” FUCK THAT GUY. Yeah, fuck whoever first said that crap. “Pots” is “Stop” spelled backward, welcome to palindrome land! Where there is no hidden meanings, shit just happens to spell things when the letters are read backwards!

Some of you may be saying “Whoa, chill out bro. You mad?” To which I would like to respond, “Yes, good sir or madam. Yes I am.” Get ready for a long post.

The reason I’m mad is because I’ve been stress eating everything in sight. Yesterday I was cleaning up my room (something that deserves a whole post by itself) and I all of a sudden got overwhelmed with how long this is going to take to finish. This feeling was quickly followed by the sudden, dire need to eat cupcakes. FUCK! I wanted cupcakes so bad. I had just had lunch too, but my body doesn’t care, its not here to make sense…its here to make me happy. And you know what makes me the happiest little school girl? CUPCAKES. So then I started having that inner battle, the one where you argue with yourself about how you really, really don’t need cupcakes but you really, really, really need cupcakes. If you have never had this battle before, fuck you. I’m sorry, that was harsh, I’m sure you have some kind of Kryptonite – pizza perhaps? Or are you into those little cake pops? Or full blown ice cream from the container? Do you get what I’m saying here? This is part of our lives folks. Hence why I want to smack whoever said “stressed is desserts backwards” in the face. You trying to be cute? It’s not cute. THIS IS MY LIFE. My life is not a catchphrase! Oh God. This…is my life.

So I broke down and bought cookies. Yes, its one step down from cupcakes, but I’m still not proud of myself. Icing makes me weak willed. Anyway, I started thinking more and more about stress eating, or emotional eating. Emotional eating didn’t pop up out of no where guys, this shit is deep rooted in our psyche.  Lifelong behavioral conditioning has taught us that doing something right should be rewarded with a piece of candy. Nailing that report card grade deserves a greasy night out dinning.  Making it through your period deserves chocolate. Shit, living with the fact that you have periods means you deserve chocolate. As if that wasn’t enough, your body gets rewarded with food chemicals that give you pleasures. Yes, pleasure.

Ever heard of serotonin or anandamide? Serotonin is a hormone associated with the infatuation you feel related to love. And anandamide is literally known as the “bliss molecule” – its a neurotransmitter that binds to your brain receptors similarly as THC (marijuana) does. Chocolate is full of these two guys. Guess what happens when you eat a piece of chocolate and your body gets flooded full of happy chemicals; your brain sends endorphins back. Yes, endorphins.  This is just the chocolate example, but I think you get where I’m going with this.

While no one is going to deny that happy events in any given person’s life probably had some junk food involved (happy birthday cake anyone?), there is a new study saying that this isn’t exactly where emotional or stress eaters get their drive to down those baddie foods in times of need.

According to a small (12 volunteer) recent study, there are hormones in your stomach that are sending signals to your brain that aren’t linked to any specific food at all.  The study’s experimental subject group were given saturated fats, while the control subject group was given a saline solution; both to the point of satiation. Tummies full, they were shown images of sad faces and listened to sad music, and guess what – neither group was hungrier after that.

What does this mean? This means that emotional eating is both psychological and biological.  Its just that more work has to be done in order to really figure out whats happening biologically. Lukas Van Oudenhove, one of the authors of this study, had this to say:

“Evolution has made every aspect of feeding as rewarding as possible… These days it may not be a good thing anymore. When food is available anywhere, then it may be a bad thing, leading to obesity or eating disorders in some people.”

Susan Albers, Psy.D., a Cleveland Clinic psychologist, added:

“Given the strong soothing effect of food on a biological level, we have to work even harder to find ways to soothe and comfort ourselves without calories… This is important in the long run for managing your weight, improving your self-esteem, and protecting your overall health.”

But while top researchers continue to study these findings and carry out additional studies, I’d like to follow up this post with Stress Eaters – Part 2.