Maybe I overdid it. I had hypoglycemic symptoms this morning and they went away almost as soon as I drank that sugary tea I''m used to. I had almost none of it yesterday. I felt light headed this morning like I had eaten almost nothing for a whole day. I certainly did eat.

I woke up feeling down but clear headed. A few hours later at work, I felt up but almost like I would faint. I felt physically fine but down again later. This seems to me more of a demonstration that my mood issues have nothing to do with anything that would reasonably cause good or bad moods.

I haven't had anything to drink for six hours when I lay down for a long nap. No sugar during that time either, of course. I'm feeling slightly foggy headed. I knew it would be hard weaning off the stuff. I just didn't know it would be hard this way.

Visiting someone in the local hospital last year, I went to the hospital cafeteria and discovered a great tasting drink I thought would be a good substitute for iced tea with lots of sugar. I've been addicted to caffeine and sugar for years. I have managed to get myself down to one pitcher of heavily sugared tea a day. I was at two a year ago.

I finally found this raspberry ice flavor drink by Crystal Light in a grocery store. I'd been looking for the wrong thing baffled why I couldn't even find it on the Internet since last year. I thought it was made by Hi-C. I went to the hospital again yesterday for the first time in several months for a breakfast meeting. (The hospital has meeting rooms the public can reserve.) I stopped by the cafeteria and checked the name of that drink again.

I thought the stuff at the hospital was sweetened with Nutrasweet or something. It just has that kind of taste to it. Apparently, it's not sweetened with anything. The stuff I made at home this morning tastes exactly like what I got at the hospital with no sweetener added at all. Well, maybe the stuff in the hospital cafeteria fountain has a little more water in it.

My therapist said good job on cutting down but said I should cut down some more. Stimulants like caffeine could aggravate the cyclothymia. All that sugar isn't so good for me either. So, I'm going to try getting that one pitcher of heavily sugared tea down to a half pitcher a day with this other drink put in the rest of the time. I'll find out if my body thinks it needs the caffeine and sugar or if it's just a taste craving. One big problem: the Crystal Light stuff is a heck of a lot more expensive than the big jar of instant tea mix.

I hope this blog doesn't violate the rules on advertising. I have no financial stake in Crystal Light, Hi-C, Nutrasweet, or the generic instant tea I like so much.

I didn't mean to. I was home for lunch and saw the garbage hadn't been picked up yet and there was another bag ready to go out. I took it out and the neighbor's dog barked at me as I walked through the back yard. On the way back from the alley I decided to stand there and let him get used to the idea of me being in the yard so he's not barking at me all the time. He's chained over there, so he's no threat to me. He doesn't seem to be a biting dog anyway.

I stood there looking around while he kept barking. When I turned my head to look at him, he backed up. He was way out of my reach. It's not like I could have hit him. I've never been mean to him. That's not in me. I kept looking at him and he backed up some more. Then he turned his head away like he was ashamed to be seen. He stopped barking for a few moments. He looked back at me again, then away again like he was ashamed. Finally, he walked onto the back porch out of my sight.

I walked onto my back porch to return to my house. I paused as I did when the dog was within my sight again. He still acted ashamed that I was making eye contact with him. He kept turning his head looking back at me every few seconds as though to see if I was finally gone. He wasn't barking at all now.

I went into the house just inside the back door. I looked back at the dog one more time and he had moved from his back porch back into the yard. When he saw me looking at him through the screen door glass, he looked away again and went back onto his back porch. Such strange behavior. I stood there looking at him for a few minutes wondering what could be going on. After a while, he went back into his yard, looked at me again, and this time just looked at me without acting ashamed to be seen.

I've heard of animals rescued from abusive situations acting strangely in very particular, well defined circumstances that remind them of the abuse. Someone I know recently told me about adopting a dog and having to make sure nobody wears a baseball cap at his house because the dog cowers in fear of them. He figures the abuser wore a baseball cap. I don't know where the neighbors got their dog. But I wonder if someone used to punish him and he learned to look ashamed because he got beat less that way and the first sign that it was coming was an eye to eye stare.

The last few days, my moods change more than once a day. I'm not sure what brings me up. But if I lie down for a nap I wake up feeling down. This evening I could still interact with people and it felt good. But that was a brief feeling. As soon as the interaction ends, I feel awful. The worst thing is there's no reason for me to feel bad. I don't like admitting the possibility that my feelings are at the mercy of some chemical reaction that's happening in a wrong way in my brain. I have nothing to feel sad about. I just do. Nothing bad happened to me today. But here are these feelings. If I let my mind wander, I'll come across some memory of some stupid thing that happened long ago--somebody who mistreated me or some thing I did that I shouldn't have--and I'll feel worse.

I don't know what happened today to change in just a few minutes. I was talking to someone for a work project and it felt like work just talking to him. Within ten minutes of the end of the conversation, I felt a burst of energy and enthusiasm and got a whole bunch of other work done. It's nothing against the guy I was talking to. I don't know him that well. It was a good stroke of luck that I saw him when I did. He just happened to be available when I had a moment and I got done what I needed to get done from the meeting.

Stuff to write down and tell the doctor about when I have the followup to my physical next month. Maybe it's time for a psychiatrist to write a prescription.

I lay down for a nap three hours ago feeling good, wondering if I could really fall asleep. I did. Now I wake up sad. I'm tired of not knowing how I'm going to feel at different times of the day. Maybe I should ask for medication.

I'm thinking about my grandma who died years ago. I wonder what she would think of me today. I'd like to ask her did she ever have times when she was sad for no reason or happy when she shouldn't have been. Or did anybody else in the family seem that way. My family doesn't really like dealing with things like this.

One of my uncles had asthma when he was little. Then Grandma closed up a dirt cellar under her house. My uncle's asthma went away. Grandma thought moisture from the cellar caused the asthma. Today, we know about things like mold. There was probably something there letting off spores. Now we also know about chemical imbalances causing people's behavior to be erratic.

I'd love to tell her now about my last 20 years. I wonder what she'd think. I'm mostly happy now but nowhere near as accomplished as so many people expected. They think only about money. My parents always took such joy in insulting me I never talk to them anymore. It's like they knew exactly how to make me feel ashamed and worthless and like I don't deserve to exist and they played it for all they could get. I'm not living up to their expectations. I'm living up to mine. I don't know what Grandma would approve. My life works well enough for me. I'm not begging other relatives for money. If I have to walk away from a house sale owing the bank money yet, I'll be okay. The economy happened. It's not my fault. My family would never accept me for doing that. But I'm not asking them to. I don't expect them to eat the loss. Their knowledge of financial planning consists of buying lottery tickets just knowing there's some pattern to the numbers that are chosen. But then they insult their kids for not knowing about taxes and insurance even though talking about such is taboo.

Ignorant. Oh well. I'm better than that. Maybe I'll write Grandma a letter, what I would say to her if I could today. She'd still love me. My mom would just tell some story about how I let Grandma down sometime. But I knew when Grandma was mad at me and I knew when she forgave. She knew I just needed to be a kid sometimes. And she knew that kids goof up.

Written Sunday afternoon, September 4, 2011