Moving and Cancer

Problems and Saviors 

     I haven't posted in a while. I've moved from an apartment to a house, which my husband and I bought. I've started a new job. I've offended some people, because, apparently, the truth hurts. And I've learned quite a few more things. 

     A writer needs social interactions to develop good characters. Being off work for a year and a half and generally only having social interactions with my husband and immediate family made me a little abrasive, I suppose. It's not hard, even in the least, to offend some people. Now, to develop good characters, one needs to know a few characters, even those who get offended by the smallest things. Personally, I don't like some people and would be just fine not knowing a lot of them, but I have to admit, they liven up the diversity in my characters. I guess that's the silver lining.

     When you're looking for a house, you tend to look for things you'd like. When we were looking for a house, we looked at a lot of them that had some major problems. Most of them had a moldy smell in the basement, huge cracks in the walls, really odd layouts, or other rather disturbing signs of huge problems. An important thing for me was a good-sized kitchen - we could have saved a lot of time if the realtor had shown us the kitchens first. Now, I'm not super satisfied with the kitchen we ended up with, but I am satisfied with the house we are now living in. Though it is a bit small, and though the layout isn't the best possible, logical thing on Earth, it fits our needs and is pretty nice. We like it. Now, the radon problem we didn't know we had until after we bought the house is a little of a stinker, especially since it's quite expensive to fix and/or handle. It's not too bad - there are many places which are much worse - but radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer. So, it's not something you can just let go and expect to never come back and bite you. That's something that has a good chance of doing that. 

     Now, the new job. Haha, the new job. Well, I have the best boss in the world, and he makes the going worth it. That's all I'm going to say: my boss is the best, and that makes the world of a difference. 

      To finish, I'm sorry I can't blog as much. I just don't have as much time as I did before. I will try to keep up, but forgive me for being not as involved online as I was at one time.

Happy Housekeeping!

Exotic Pet Care

Scarlet, a Sick Snake Sneezing
Say that five times fast - I sure got tongue-tied trying to tell the vet that.

Autumn

Turbo

   My husband and I have multiple exotic pets. We have Autumn, who's a red-foot tortoise (pictured left); she's about four years old and has had colds and hookworms. We are currently watching a female red-eared slider named Turbo (pictured right); her shell's about three inches in diameter and we are only pet-sitting her until her owners acquire a more sizable aquarium to house her. We have Uro, an adult male Saharan uromastyx or spiny-tailed lizard. We have an adult Pueblan milk snake named Hannibal. And we have the corn snakes: Diamond who's a corn/rat snake hybrid (the orange one), Sagan who's an anerythristic corn (the gray one), and Scarlet who's a snow corn.

Uro

Hannibal

   Hannibal, who we're pretty sure is male, has never been sick while we've had him and he's never refused food, though he's quite a scaredy snake and likes to thrash around when being held. Diamond and Sagan, both of whom I am quite sure are also male, have never been sick as long as we've had them, though they both went on food strike for a few months a while back (whether because they were too close to Scarlet or because they didn't like the mice, we're not sure, but they're better now). 

   Scarlet, on the other hand, has been sick lately. First, it was sneezing. We read about it, turned up the heat on her, and when she didn't get better on her own, we took her to our exotic pet vet. We determined she needed a bigger water bowl that she couldn't spill like she did the one she had. The vet set us up with a few medicine/vitamin mixture injections, we got her a better water bowl, separated her from the other snakes, and after a week or two it seemed she was doing better for the most part. And the other snakes haven't gotten sick.

Anxious Neat Freak

Is It Bad to Be a Neat Freak?

     As I was watching one of my favorite shows this morning, I realized that maybe Danny Tanner wasn't as crazy as he was supposed to be on Full House. Though I'm sure the dad of the Tanner household was supposed to seem Obsessive Compulsive sometimes, probably meant to be a part of his anticipated Post Traumatic Stress from losing his wife to a fatal car accident and being left to raise three young daughters all on his own, I've suddenly realized from watching the episode I did today that Danny wasn't just trying to fill a void in his life with his obsessive cleaning. Watch the clip below so you know what I'm talking about. 

     As you can tell from the above video, it does seem at times that Danny is obsessed with cleaning. But as the character says so himself, he's always been a neat freak, and it has nothing to do with him being a single dad or PTSD. Danny Tanner may have been a little crazy at times, but his cleaning was embedded in his genes. And though he was a fictional television character, we can learn from his example.

     Now don't get me wrong - being a neat freak isn't for everyone. But some need a clean environment for their mental health. A clean living environment reduces stress, and when over-stressed, as I'm sure Danny was at times, it's natural to look for ways to reduce the anxiety. So when Danny's in Karen's apartment after their wonderful date and he finds that her apartment is a pig sty, the stress of the situation, of finding that he's once again dating and unsure of everything, causes him to need to clean. Sure, it's a little embarrassing and creepy for Karen, but Danny finds he needs a clean environment and making that happen reduces his stress.

     What can we learn from Danny Tanner being a neat freak? Though his cleaning seems pretty obsessive sometimes, it's a little like biting nails or chewing gum, neither of which Danny did very often, if at all. Cleaning was his stress-reliever. It just happened to help reduce others' anxieties too, to live in a clean environment.

     I've noticed becoming a little less of a neat freak since I started taking my anti-anxiety medication. I've also reduced the frequency of how often I bite my nails, how often I get sick with colds and stomach viruses, and how often I have my evil hiccups. Reducing the amount of stress in one's life can have multiple positive effects. So cleaning and living in a clean environment in effect can have multiple benefits for you and your family. Being obsessed with cleaning is just a stress-reliever and an unconscious attempt to relieve anxiety. 

     What are your personal habits that you think help to relieve stress? Share in the comments and I'll let you know whether I think they are healthy or signs of an illness that needs attention.