Category: Julia

posts by Julia

Categories
Julia Self-Help

How to Calm Down in a Moment of Anxiety/Dread

First, take a deep breath, in through your nose and out through your mouth, slowly…

Take a minute of deep breathing.

—

Then, ground yourself where you are through use of your senses. Do this by naming five things you physical feel (ex: your feet on the cool floor, the chair underneath you), then name five things you hear, and five things you see around you.

This action of grounding helps pull your thoughts to your present, from whatever you were ruminating on to where you literally are.

You can now go from this calmer, present state, to factual thoughts about the friendships you have and the support you give and receive. It also helps me to think about how in some way we will always been connected to those we love.

Categories
Fixing Stuff Julia

Making Your Rental Work (A Preparation)

I got permission from my landlord to make small, surface level updates around the house. And the first room I’m pumping myself up to tackle is the bathroom. We have an old light wood vanity with a surface that is slightly discolored after years of use, no matter how hard I scrub. So, I’ve done a little research and I’m planning to make purchases in early October. I think all I need is the following and the space is going to look 100% better.

Vanity Update:

  • Screwdriver
  • TSP cleaning solution
  • Sandpaper to remove the finish on the wood
  • Primer
  • Half-gallon can of paint
  • Painter’s tape (for the floor and mirror since I’ll paint the trim of it too)
  • two new pull handles

To update the countertop:

  • Xacto knife
  • Removable vinyl contact paper in ‘marble‘
  • Rubbing alcohol
  • Smoothing device (like a credit card or gift card)

Other:

 

Eventually I’d also like to buy removable wallpaper and/or repaint the bathroom, but I think this will be more than enough to start. I already love the shelf we hung when we moved in, and the shower curtin/handtowels/rug we have.
I’ll post an update with photos of supplies and the before/during/after photos when this gets underway. Posting this “prep” is working to hold myself accountable to actually start and finish this project.

Categories
Fixing Stuff Julia

How to stop a Brinks/ADT alarm from beeping…even when it’s not active

So, for the past several weeks my landlord has said he would call about fixing the unused Brinks alarm system in our apartment. We’ve got two keypads and for the most part they were an eyesore when we moved in but otherwise worthless. Until they started beeping. Once every 12-18 hours long, loud beeps would occur until we pressed the cancel button on the keypad; in the middle of the night, as I was getting home from work and when I was home alone in the shower and thought maybe I was under attack…

Since my landlord was not moving fast enough (though apologetic) I decided to take matters into my own hands. In case anyone is running into the same issue, here’s how to disarm a disconnected alarm that won’t shut up!

1. Get a Phillips screw driver.

2. Locate the power box for the alarm. For me this was in a closet in my entryway. It looks like this:

image

3. Use the screwdriver to open the box, and once opened locate the battery. Pull the black cord off the battery (mine was pretty stuck, don’t be afraid to yank on it). Here’s what it looks like with the black cord unplugged from the top of the battery:

image

4. Look down from the box, or in my case if a hole with wires is drilled into the wall then look on the other side of the wall. You should see something that looks like a small white speaker plugged into an outlet. It’s screwed in, so grab that screw driver and unscrew it and the 4 wires on its backside once it’s free from the outlet/wall. Here’s what the box looks like.:

image

5. Push any wires into the wall, close up the power box and pour yourself a drink as you celebrate the lights on your alarm keypad going dead. No more beeping!! Your partner and nighbors will thank you.

And I thought I wasn’t handy. Boo-ya. Next up, trying not to die as I get a step stool at the top of my porch steps to figure out how to replace the light bulb in the Fort Knox of sconce lighting.

Categories
Books Julia

A good book

I just finished reading a book about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves the girl to find out about her life before she was a grandmother; and to learn the lesson of how this girl and her mother and grandmother are connected to the people who live in their 6 flat building. The way this kid (she’s 7) who’s a wise “old soul” does this is through realizing that the fairy tales her grandmother told her growing up had elements of truth to them. Left for her to decode on her own. It was reminiscent of the movie Big Fish, if you’ve seen that, where the dad tells fantastical stories that don’t turn out to be totally untrue. This kid is hilarious and way smarter than other kids her age and she gets picked on for it. Her grandmother used their stories so she’d have an escape and took her to imaginary lands where she could be the hero.

This book about the little girl and her grandma was about loss and love, how people are rooting for you when you don’t even know it, and it even tied in some magic and love for Harry Potter. When the dog dies, who from the girl’s vantage point is as big as a human, I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. Not because I’m an animal lover but because it was the moment in the book when the girl realizes how much people (and not people) are trying to protect her despite their own lives they are trying to live. She learns that she isn’t the only one reeling from the loss of her grandmother, that other people knew her grandmother from another time and grieve her too. Like how my mom’s college roommate walks in a 5k for breast cancer every year with her daughter in memory of my mom, but from a time before my mom was a mom, and when she meant so much to this woman as a roommate and a friend. This book reminded you you of the power of a good story – both through the tales the grandmother created for her granddaughter and through the story of the girl finding truth in them.

go read: My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry.

 

Categories
Julia

Thinking through a project

Mulling over an idea isn’t inherently bad. But letting an idea or a plan sit alone for too long may make you resent it, and vise versa. So if you’ve got something that you think will work, or will make you happy to try (even if it fails) but you feel underqualified…here’s what you can try,

1. write the idea down. Get specific about where it would be and how big and how much (based on averages in that market)

2. Look online for associations or groups that exist solely for the purpose of helping people like you with this plan

3. When you find that association or organization (and you will) ask them to send you any manuals, laws, rules, assistance they can.

4. Don’t wimp out on #3. Because if  there is one thing people love to do, its talk all day about the thing they do/love/promote.

5. Carve out time from your day job and your other obligations to go through what was sent to you. And figure out how much applies to you specifically and your plan

6. Add this to your written down notes and idea.

7. To anyone who has ever been scared by a dream or a hope or an idea, you know that the 6 steps above are not easy to do and they don’t come all at once. So take a second and be proud of actually thinking you can do something new, and of the learning you did.

The next list of hurtles will involve more research, learning how to wrie your plan, writing it, and creating a budget.

Categories
Julia

Acceptance

Just last night I was thinking about how the “if it turns out to be something” and “if it’s anything you’ve caught it early” I’ve been hearing from the doctors and friends/family, means something. It means I might be walking around with a 1cm circle of cancer in my right breast. Cancer. That feels like it should be a foreign word to me but its sickly familiar and almost expected. I feel like I’ve crash at 100 miles an hour into the legacy I was pretending I’d out run. Because that’s what cancer is to the women in my family. An unfortunate legacy that means my grandma died young, way before her kids were grown; and it means my mom died young, so young. It’s a harsh moment to be confronted with. My incredulous self at 18 and 20 and 21 was adamant and full of pride that I was going to break that dreadful chain. I was proud and loud and unafraid.

One of my favorite quotes by an author I love is about acceptance, and she says “Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.” And she’s right. In this small quiet room I am letting go of my naive bravery and accepting that I am scared and accepting that being certain in the face of nothing, was never really certainty at all. Even though I am scared I am now very certain, faced with mortality and feeling the weight of my mother and her mother on my shoulders — that like them I am going to do whatever it takes. And I am not going to let my fear keep me immobile and thanks to advances in medicine, “even if it’s something”, even if it’s fucking cancer, I’m going to be okay.