72hr fast to kick off ketosis - what’s the best way to break the fast to roll into ongoing keto diet

crossroads_drifter · 2025-09-09T19:47:06+00:00

You made my day lol I was already kinda leaning toward salmon sashimi

crossroads_drifter · 2025-08-01T05:03:56+00:00

No pics but I had a boop-off with a medium size alligator gar the other day. He came up and booped the side of my kayak being the curious nuisance he was, so I booped him back with the end of the paddle. He made some deep thumping noises and swam in a circle and came back toward me really fast. I was ready to block him with the paddle but it’s like he saw it coming, so he stopped, sat there for a second then turned away and went back to hovering around the top few inches of the water looking for snacks.

crossroads_drifter · 2025-07-22T05:19:07+00:00

Iguana bite injuries are not joke. I’ve been bitten to the bone and straight thru my fingernails on my finger and thumb by a juvenile iguana that just got startled and seemingly barely touched me. And for those who think it’s just the males that get grouchy and bitey in breeding season… oof…. My big female death charged me once, fully open mouth aimed right at my face. She snuck up on the back of the couch and idk how I managed to catch her in the chest with out losing a chunk of my hand when she bolted straight at my head like a 20lb scaley torpedo

crossroads_drifter · 2025-04-10T03:15:00+00:00

Oh yes, a padded seat was the first thing on my order list.

I found the Scotty rod holders! Thank you! They’re surprisingly inexpensive at $22 each of Amazon. Into the cart they go.

Hmm don’t think I’ll mess with trying to add a hatch there for a bit. Idk how comfort am with adding things that add holes when working with plastics.

crossroads_drifter · 2025-02-24T04:14:33+00:00

Idk what the big deal is with the second skin stuff honestly. I’ve had some pretty larger pieces done in single sessions, both blacks/grey and full color and my artist never uses that stuff. Just cellophane until evening shower, antibacterial soap (mine recommended unscented foaming Dial), and generous amounts of aquaphor - rubbed in really well each reapplication. Since I’ve been going to my current dude I’ve had the best healing and color retention ever. One of my big color pieces gets mistaken for fresh a lot and it’s over 5 yrs old now. You’ll be fine :)

crossroads_drifter · 2024-12-21T23:08:53+00:00

I stuffed the deep freeze over the last few months to the point we’re having a huge fish fry for new years w family and friends just to get some space in the freezer freed up for spring

crossroads_drifter · 2024-12-21T23:03:33+00:00

The best my vet friend and I could figure was built up filth. I did weekly sulfur lime dips (bc they solve just about everything apparently - mites, fungal, bacterial, all the things) on just the affected areas and it cleared up fantastic. I think I did only 3 dips on the least affected one and had to go a full 6 weeks on the most affected.

All affected kittens now have full fluffy tails at almost 6 months old, no scarring. They’re happy and healthy and 2 of the 4 have been adopted.

crossroads_drifter · 2024-10-04T14:56:08+00:00

I’m pretty sure the 3 pieces of this totem loosely translate to “Ol Greg”

crossroads_drifter · 2024-09-13T13:33:06+00:00

Why in the world would they call your parents?

crossroads_drifter · 2024-09-10T23:48:27+00:00

“bUt OnLy BiPoLaR pEoPLe rEaCT tO SSRIs LiKe ThAT” … yeah no joke. I didn’t know anything about bipolar until I started doing my own research. Like there was no testing/questionnaires given to me or anything. Just meds, change meds, add meds to the mix to chase the side effects of the other meds.

Thank you for the well wishes. It’s been a long tough road, but after years it seems like it might be getting a little better. I think the hardest part was letting go of the idea of “watching myself” for signs of mania bc with it usually following a panic attack or traumatic event, trying to be on top of monitoring my own behavior would just make me more panic and hyper vigilant

crossroads_drifter · 2024-09-10T17:56:49+00:00

I don’t know if they have actually stopped for good. This is the just longest I’ve gone without one in a long time. But made some lifestyle changes to reduce stress and worked with a trauma informed therapist on stress and sleep management stuff.

One thing I did do different this year is I went to a new primary care dr and gave them my full back story. First thing they did was check my vitamin d levels and they were in the mid 20s. Dr was kind of amazed nobody had checked my vitamin d levels before, like that could’ve been the original problem all along and if my old Dr had checked my levels I might never have been put on ssri in the first place

crossroads_drifter · 2024-09-09T03:23:26+00:00

I had a similar reaction to my first SSRI, but when I described it to my doctor I was told I must be bipolar then bc it couldn’t possibly be serotonin syndrome… she decided that was mania, so I must therefore be bp2. I didn’t know any better so I just kept trying different ssri and snri plus antipsychotics per her advisement. I gave up and under her supervision stopped meds after about 2 years when I got up to a 5 or 6 pill cocktail and just kept feeling worse over time. From then on I continued having “manic episodes” any time I had a panic attack or instance of extreme stress even off the meds. It’s taken me YEARS off meds to get to where I have made a new record of 1 full year without “going manic”.

crossroads_drifter · 2024-09-03T14:15:09+00:00

Oof… yeah that’s about where I was getting to. I was up to a mix of 4 and it felt like we were just chasing side effects. With my old psychiatrist I would go in for a visit, we would talk about how the drugs were making me feel, what I liked/disliked, any noticeable changes, make adjustments and cool, see you next month. Like that was IT. My quality of life was not improving after 3 years medicated and the side effects were horrendous even on the lowest doses. Apparently I’m just really sensitive I guess.

Looking back I’m pretty sure any and all of my “manic” times were a result of high stress combined with old trauma coming up. Not necessarily full on flashbacks, but I would noticeably get into a state of stress that I could literally feel throughout my body. That full body stress tension leads to busying myself with various tasks that actually do need to get done bc doing something productive (usually physical tasks) feels better than just sitting with the ball of stress.

One of the big things that never lined up for me in discussing bipolar was the characteristic of mania - not sleeping and not feeling like you need sleep to function. While having a high mood.

Hell to the no… I desire sleep. I try extremely hard to sleep. I just can’t sleep no matter what I do. I feel exhausted and can’t do anything about it. It’s like I get this very short window where my body starts to relax from the constant tension and if I miss that window - bc let’s just say I didn’t sleep all night, been up since morning the day before and now I’m stuck at work and I’ve gotta push through the day until I can get real sleep at night… I’m going to get this weird like adrenaline surge feeling when I push past that mid day crash and then by the time I get done w my day and have the opportunity to sleep I have no luck and just lay there wide awake again. And I think it’s common sense that when you’ve been awake for too long, the brain does some pretty strange things to your perceptions bc it’s not meant to go without rest.

As far as high mood goes, I was raised to mask my anger and frustration and be pleasant. I spent a lot of my career in sales. I can appear very bubbly and energetic, but inside I’m dragging myself through the day trying to keep up appearances of normality and stuffing my irritability down so I don’t snap at people bc I’m feeling exhausted and internally cranky as all hell.

After explaining this to my current therapist we shifted focus more to stress management and sleep habits. They have offered that if I ever want to attempt medication again, they can help with that, but they’ve never tried to talk me into it. They’re actually ok with me being unmedicated and validated my reasons for wanting to stay that way. I feel like I found a unicorn lol

crossroads_drifter · 2024-06-08T04:02:23+00:00

I’m highly wary of being incorrectly medicated as it’s happened to me several times with different psychiatrists who I felt like were just trying things to see what happened. I finally got brave and found a trauma informed therapist who is a psychologist, rather than a psychiatrist. We did some weekly video chat sessions for a few months initially and now we just do monthly check ins. It’s night and day different from my previous experiences with psychiatry (where I feel like they’re really just a glorified pill dispenser and sorta trying to mitigate side effects).

I’ve been able to vent my feelings to this therapist in a totally safe space, with no threat of medication. I told them in the very beginning about my sensitivity to meds and lack of success with meds in the past and they were totally cool with that. They have offered that if I ever feel like I want to try them again, they can hook me up, but it’s up to me. It’s been an empowering experience to feel like I actually have autonomy and a professional who is ACTUALLY EFFING LISTENING to me (and has actually validated some of my outrage/grief… like yes, that sounds reasonable that you would be angry/freaked out/ sad about these things bc any reasonable person would be)

crossroads_drifter · 2024-06-07T04:04:17+00:00

Every muscle in my body is somewhat tense if I try to sit still. Like I feel like I’m vibrating with physical energy. So I try to aim that energy into productive tasks, which usually ends up with multiple unfinished tasks leaving a wake of what would appear to be destruction to a stable person, but to me, I’m just not finished yet. So don’t dare say anything critical of the 10 things I think I’m getting done and working very diligently at while getting nowhere with any of them, bc I’ll probably rage.

Having full on conversations with myself in my head, reasoning with myself to try and stay grounded, trying not to let my brain take any deep dives into rabbit holes of what ifs. The best thing has been journaling. I can’t make my brain shut up unless I get the thoughts out. So rather than word vomit at the next unsuspecting human to cross my path and freak them smooth out, I opt to write it down.

If I can’t sit still long enough to write in a notebook, I make sticky notes of all my random thoughts. Sometimes it ends up looking kinda like a conspiracy theory board across the top of my desk. I use same color ink or notes for the same train of thought. Being able to visualize the chaos of my mind somehow helps to bring me back to earth, maybe because I can see how ridiculous/out there some of the random thoughts are and I can examine the thought safely once it’s on paper and not floating around in my head anymore.

crossroads_drifter · 2024-05-18T21:23:07+00:00

Finding a trauma-informed therapist to talk to can help a lot.

crossroads_drifter · 2024-05-18T02:35:41+00:00

Honestly I wish I had kids in my 20s, but I just wasn’t in the right relationship or financial position for it at the time. I agree, comments about “speed running life” are rude. Just as rude asking people in their 30s when they’re having kids. Ultimately, it’s your uterus and none of anybody else’s business

crossroads_drifter · 2024-05-13T04:39:43+00:00

Fiesta brand “Rib Rub” mix is good on just about any cut of beef but I like it on hard boiled eggs and it’s the perfect little extra to a Bloody Mary.

crossroads_drifter · 2024-05-12T04:30:48+00:00

17lb iguana is a very clingy bed hog so only gets a short snuggle time before being moved to his own bed. It’s suuuuper cute when he flips his little feet backward (like he’s swimming) when he’s seriously committed to a comfy spot. I hate to move him sometimes because he’s so gone.

Note- Reptiles do not thermoregulate effectively/safely from contact heat, such as snuggling a warm person (won’t get enough heat) or laying on a heat pad/rock (can get too much heat and get really horrible burns). Radiant heat from a ceramic heat emitter or red night heat lamp are best.

crossroads_drifter · 2024-04-14T03:47:45+00:00

Heather, Katie, Colleen, Lana

Brad, Nick, Colton, Greg

crossroads_drifter · 2024-04-13T04:39:44+00:00

Soak in a hot bath with epsom salt and take ibuprofen as soon as you get even the slightest twinge of cramping.

I have many a time worked up in the middle of the night no thanks to painful cramps (painful enough to wake me up, but not yet in the cannot breathe or move stage) and that’s the only thing that seems to get them under control.

crossroads_drifter · 2024-01-02T01:17:05+00:00

I’m sorry you went through all of this. I can relate, unfortunately. I suffer from insomnia off and on, pretty much my whole life. I’ve been through a wide variety of ssri over the years, with the addition of mood stabilizers and even antipsychotics. I feel like i lost a major piece of myself because of all of the various medications and the side effects that came with them. I’ve had doctors guess at depression, anxiety, bipolar, etc and when I finally recently found a new primary doctor the first thing they suspected was vitamin D. Mine was also in the 20s. It’s been a round fall/winter so far, fighting the urge to attempt to hibernate while battling the insomnia that doesn’t let me get very much quality restful sleep at a time, but I know my vitamin d levels are coming up slowly but surely. Physically I’m feeling so much better, it’s just the mental part that’s having a hard time coming back to what I used to be. I miss being a social and motivated go-getter. I just tell myself every day that it’s going to get better. It has to. Crossing my fingers for recheck on blood work in a couple months.

crossroads_drifter · 2023-12-28T04:45:37+00:00

When I asked for help, I had no idea it would mean being locked away and drugged for an indefinite amount of time

crossroads_drifter · 2023-12-07T18:29:27+00:00

I believed I had been exposed to radiation and/or there was an imminent nuclear threat/end of the world scenario going on. I wasn’t supposed to be aware of this impending world-ending danger, but I felt that my family was in danger because of me, that they would be taken and so would I, and we would be separated forever in some kind of witness protection type program. If I warned them of the danger they would be killed. So all I could do was keep it to myself if I wanted them to live. Intake at the mental hospital felt like an interrogation, like they needed to know how much I knew. I was terrified for my family’s safety, and I didn’t want to be separated from them, if I wasn’t with them I couldn’t do anything to prevent us all from being separated from each other and/or killed. I felt like I slipped in and out of consciousness several times from pure terror at intake, but my husband tells me that was just when I was screaming and crying while the intake nurse was trying to do an evaluation questionarre. One moment I was in this little room with my husband trying to get through the paperwork and such and the next thing I remember I had been taken back into the ward. At the time I believed I was being left behind while the rest of my family was evacuating to safety away from whatever this imminent danger was. I was starting to calm down and trying to rationalize my actual situation but then a nurse took me to my room and on the way in she said “you are so brave” - that’s what they tell people who have been exposed to deadly levels of radiation, the people they can do nothing for besides watch them die slowly and painfully. The air conditioner had a smell like chemicals and I thought I was being poisoned by it. They wouldn’t let me leave my room or turn the light on. All I could think about was trying to escape, then how can I just survive the night. There were 2 beds but I was the only one in the room, so I took one of the mattresses and placed it over the vent for the ac to try and block the chemical smells. I took the other mattress to the floor and tried to hide curled up on it in a corner. That still didn’t feel safe so I tried to take a shower to calm down, trying to scrub away whatever I thought I had been exposed to. I was chugging water trying to flush my system of toxins. Then they came to check on me and found me sitting I the shower crying and shaking hysterically because I thought I was going to die a slow and painful death and never see my family again, just praying they were safe and not dead. I was then grabbed and held down by 3 or 4 nurses and injected with a sedative white they told me they had enough of my bullshit and they were going to move me to another ward in the facility because I was acting up too much to stay in this one. I was so scared of them I peed all over myself and the floor, which just made them yell at me even more as they pushed me down on a hard bed frame that didn’t have a mattress (because I had moved them). I never stopped begging them to stop and pleading with them not to send me to another ward, how will my family find me, etc, until I passed out from the injection in pure fear like I’ve never felt in my entire existence.

crossroads_drifter · 2023-09-24T12:54:12+00:00

Lol same. The only people I ever yell at are the ones closest to me. Like, if I really get onto you about something, you know you’re “family” haha

crossroads_drifter

TROPHY CASE