Ninth salon: for the bad days.

[jenett]

Welcome to our ninthsalon discussion thread. Wander in, invite a friend to come along, and chat! (Not sure what's going on? Here, have a brief FAQ.) You can find previous ones in my salon tag. Please take a quick look at the reminders at the bottom of this post, too.

I have been having the sort of week where there's nothing exactly wrong, but wherein I have no energy, spent four hours napping on Sunday (the cat considers that 'right' and approves highly, but it's not very productive) and I feel like I am not making progress on useful things. (And actually, today is worse than yesterday, and it's the fact I really have stuff that has to happen at work that has me here.)

So. Today's discussion. What do you do when you have a bad week? (Or weeks?) What stuff do you keep handy?

Me: I try to have food around that I will eat (and is sensible for me to eat) even if I'm not very hungry. I try to remember to listen to music, because that generally helps, really. I keep stuff to read that is interesting but not demanding. I keep a stock of Awesome Bath Stuff For Bad Days (my purveyor of choice tends to be Fantasy Bath, but y'know. Bath stuff is good.)

And I keep links. (Um. If you are reading these at work, they reliably make me crack up out loud. You are forewarned. My humour is probably not your humour, but all of these have the kind of content you'd expect from the brief descriptions.)
* Folksongs are your friends: A long digression (comments are worth reading) on useful things one can learn from folksongs.
* I has a sweet potato: One dog. Several sweet potatoes. Much laughter.
* Gaming group meets hellhounds Ursula Vernon's gaming group encounters some hellhounds. Who need rescuing. (the rest of that tag is also excellent, but the first one is good even if you're not a gamer.)
* And because it still makes me crack up, nearly a year later, I present a discussion of the Alternity-verse's version of 50 Shades of Gray which shares a title with one of the assigned Dark Arts/Noble Arts books. (For this, you basically need to know that alt_antonin is the subject's professor, and he's just started teaching at the beginning of term, less than two weeks before this.) Once you've read that, his discussion with Narcissa is also deeply amusing (or you can back up and read the whole set of comments in general.)

Comments

[kyrielle]

I wish I could describe something useful I do for bad days. Mostly, I try hard, and not always successfully, not to take them out on the people around me.

Routine gets me through the parts of my day that MUST happen. I have lists for getting me out the door, for stuff done, etc. I use them on days good or bad to make them habit, and on bad days that are bad in the "forgetful" or "feeling crummy" ways, they get the things that have to be done, largely done.

But I don't have much to make a bad day better. Most frequent causes of bad days are illnesses, or being short of sleep (small children, work on-call, reading a book until stupid o'clock...). I try hard not to voluntarily cause the latter (resist the book!), but I can't exactly say I won't take care of the 19-month-old because I need my sleep. It's not reasonable.

And then, unfortunately, the real cure is more sleep, which is impossible unless I want to take a sick day from work, which...if I did that every time I was short of sleep, I'd probably be unemployed. Or at least on medical leave. It is also not reasonable, sadly.

Eating the right food (high protein, but also high carb) on those days helps a bit. But other than that? Other than that I just slog through and dislike things, because a tired Laura is a grumpy Laura who dislikes things just because they are things.

TEA!

[kyrielle]

Ah! One thing that usually does help is tea, my favorite comfort food. (Because it can, within reason, be indulged without concern for consequences. For a bonus point, hot drink is good for my most common non-sleep-deprived annoyance, which is allergies/colds that like to go for the stuffy sinus routine.)

Teas I love: Tea Forte's Belgian Mint. Teavana's White Peach (sigh, I want to not like it, but I love it). Bigelow's Green Mango and Green Peach. Anyone's pure peppermint, there's no nuance to that between brands that I've found. Tazo's Lotus. A good jasmine green in any of several brands. Sadly, Teavana's now discontinued Strawberry Misaki (which, if you've never had, tasted much more of the carnation and much less of the strawberry, actually; strawberry teas in general do not please my taste buds near as much).

Teas I would adore EXCEPT they're black and I can't handle that much caffeine: Tea Forte's Orchid Vanilla, and their Vienna Cinnamon. HEAVENLY taste, but...stomach doesn't care for them. Alas.

Re: TEA!

[jenett]

This just lead to me ordering more tea. (I, um, had been eyeing one of Adagio's Fandom Samplers for a bit, and today is payday. And then there was some blending to try a few things out. Like you do.)

I normally do tisanes, mind you, and not tea-what-comes-from-tea-plants, because I've been trying to back off caffeine, and because I'm not that crazy about either roiboos or decaf black. (I don't know. Decaf anything tastes funny to me. I have no idea why.)

Re: TEA!

[kyrielle]

Yeah, I tend to call it "tea" if the company does, but several of the ones I like have no actual tea.

I can handle decaf, depending on the flavors that go with it. Mostly it is not worth it, but a decaf orchid vanilla? I COVET. Because that tea is smooth and sweet and begging to be a "soothe you to sleep" tea which, black tea, totally not, even if you don't have my issues with caffeine and stomach coexisting poorly. :P

Mostly I stick to herbals, greens, or a rare white, though. The green and white in general it seems I tolerate better.

[theora]

This, a lot. The sleep deficit thing is crazy-making for me.

My other main bad day cause is the frazzledness that comes from having to be "on" without a minute to myself for several hours. I have a couple of strategies to try and mitigate this one. First, I make coffee twice a day. This is a bit of a process since I start with whole beans and use a pour-over method, so it takes a few minutes and is a ritual that anchors me (and my kids know is non-negotiable). Second, if I'm starting to run out of words (at the end of a day answering All The Questions from my four year old I get to the point where I need to not talk for a while), we do music time, in which we each get to pick a song in turn. Listening to music I enjoy, even if it's interspersed with eighteen million versions of Oh Susannah, is somewhat restoring. Plus at the moment I get to choose for my 1 year old, so I effectively get two turns ;)

I also eat plenty of chocolate.

[kyrielle]

...okay, our kids are about the same ages too (4.5 years and 19 months here, and the 19-month-old has Opinions I tell you...).

Also, chocolate, oh man chocolate. I try not to eat too much of it (I could live on it, and that would be a bad idea), but man does it help. (One reason I love the Belgian Mint tea above - the taste is acceptable and the smell is perfect. Hehe.)