Old Habits Die Hard

Today I broke my year long caffeine fast and had a regular soy latte for breakfast. Peanut M&M's for brunch. Reeses Peanut Butter Cups for Lunch. Plain M&M's for a mid day snack. A couple of saltines and water to calm my stomach. Rounded it off with Chinese: Lemon Chicken, Green Beans and Brown Rice, all washed down with a Racer 5 IPA.

Yesterday was hard, exhausting, excruciating. And brought family dynamics stuff to the forefront - magnified by a million.

I'm abandoning my family, I'm the outcast, they don't choose me to help even though I'm available and want to help. Because I'm not like them, I don't do things correctly. I'm no good.

This is not logical. It is purely emotional.

Pure Chatter

A woman showering at the gym tonight was scrubbing her skin with one of those green kitchen brillo pads used for getting the caked on baked on goo off of pots & pans. All I could think was hmmmm.

I had a great running dream. It was the same night we happened to see part of the Boston Marathon on TV. In my dream I ran fast and strong for a long time. It felt good. In my waking run over a week ago, my knee hurt with every step and afterward for a couple of days. I have a half marathon in June and haven't trained enough. Because of the knee pain. So I'll go to the chiropractor, keeping my fingers crossed that it's something that can be addressed simply.

Tonight I meet another mom for tea and planning for the preschool 'yearbook'. My boy goess to kindergarten in the fall. And while there is plenty to keep me busy, I'm volunteering for the school's auction by entering information into a database, I felt compelled to try to help. The woman who is doing the work is one of the very few that I care for. Most are not my type in the least. The ones that have been at the school since the beginning of time. This mom is new like us. And ready to be finished with this school. I have no illusions about the new place or that the families will be that much different than the ones we've encountered here. But fully understand that I'm not too open to certain people. That and I'm simply not the kind of person that walks around pretending that the world is perfect or anything resembling my experience of it. I'm judgemental and disinterested in being like most of them but also get that being closed off is not helpful either.

The Witching Hour

Apparently my internal clock is set to wake me up at exactly 4am.every day. Which sucks because it's not like I can just pop up and vaccuum or do the dishes. NO, I've got othr people in the house to consider. And doing exactly that is probably why I wake so freaking early in the morning- I put Twig to sleep at 8pm. Duuuh, Wonelle, 8pm to 4am is exactly 8 hours! So you have two choices: figure out how to stay up later (feudal) or figure out how to get some shit done in the wee hours of the morn. And I do not mean #2. Sometimes the simplest things are lost on you, Wonelle.

I owe y'all a post on the Oakland Marathon & my sinus surgery. It's just that I've been taking recouperrate to the extreme. Except I'll probably hit the gym tonight. Slugggishness is setting in...

Yawn

I'm tired.

The paperwork said to get plenty of rest the week prior to surgery. I've been burning the candle at both ends. Staying awake late to meet deadlines, getting up early to keep house, exercising multiple times a week for at least two hours at a time, planning as many social activities as possible. Amid all of the craziness I even took some time off of work. Not because I wanted to, more like because I had to. But, I decided to approach the day different than usual. No, no, no, I didn't have a leisurely day planned. Instead, I decided to do the fun stuff first.

And it worked! Twig and I had a lot of fun and then he was able to keep himself occupied AND help me with housework (he's a master of dusting and dishes despite the broken bowl). It was nice to be able to redirect his "bad" behavior and actually get the response I was looking for. He seems to be quite satisfied with our time together too.

We're having company for dinner and I have no interest in finishing the cleaning, no desire to cook. But I do want to spend time with our friends. So I'll suck it up and make frozen pizza or something equally easy to prepare and clean up...

Been thinking about my dad a lot lately. Want to write something about him but it's not quite there. I'm hoping that next week I'll feel energetic enough - and not too loopy - to write to him. I miss him a lot and often feel sad that we didn't talk for about 10 years before he died. He was a stubborn cuss though and I tried a meager try as it were.

Two Trips to the Vending Machine

Oh, Mrs. Frreshley how I covet your no trans fat per serving creme filled doesn't really taste like chocolate ccupcakes. To the tune of 4 today.

I'm stressed that I'm going to have surrgery a week from Thursday and there iss always so much undone at the end of each day. I feel the most displeasure when the undone thngs incclude not returning phone calls to friends (so sorry J & B & J) and that I struggle to keep up with their excitement, acccomplishments and milestones (birthday cards, holiday cards & the like unsent) that supporting other friends through their daily struggles doesn't come as easily as it once did (Miss P).

Spring has sprung and that always reminds me that everything is always changing and that I should remember to be gentle on me too. Gentle isn't my strongest personality trait. So I self medicate with vending machine food that labels itself as cupcakes. After a two hour workout last night I can get away with it. For today.

Happy Anniversay

Seven. Offiicially, that is. Ten total.

We're in Calistoga celebrating in an olympic sized swimming pool, mud baths and full session masages. And cucumber-lemon water to clean out all the othe stuff.

Sheer luxury and leisure. The last time we were here was 9 years ago. Wow, how time flies when you're having fun!

I hope to post 'The Anti-Socialite' - or how bad I am at maintaining friendships because of my husband, child, house, exercise rroutine, cooking fetish, full-time job and other excuses I'd like to denounce because they get in the way of meaningful adult relationships and I think I'm a putz for not keepingg in touch more regularly - post soon. Shit, I volunteered to do some school auction stuff and that will keep me busy for the next few weeks... maybe not doing soon, just more thinking about it...

Happy Anniversary

Wood and I are celebrating our 7 year wedding anniversary this week... We're dropping Twig off at Bam's house and heading to the spa. What bourgeois yuppies we are. One night, 2 mud baths, swimming in the olympic size pool, massages and cucumber water, and fine dining for several meals sans kid... here I come!

Happy Friday!

It's Friday!

And I've been waiting all week for today!

Whew, I have been lots more tired this week than usual. My sleep has been disturbed a lot lately for no apparent reason. Lat night however, I slept like a log. Maybe it was the beer. Or the late - - almost midnight - - bedtime that helped... Who cares? I slept for something like 5 hours n a row and that is huge in my world.

I've also been having more than usual shortness of breath lately when carrying as little as 20 lbs. Usually when walking to and from my office... I think my tiredness has something to do with my COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease - chronic Bronchitis in my case). Unfortunately it is a progressive disease that can be managed but not cured. My fear of drowning to death will someday come true, I'm afraid. I will eventually come to be okay with that prospect.

The diagnosis came a little more than a year ago when I just couldn't bounce back from a cold and later couldn't walk anywhere or carry anything without being extremely short of breath. With my history of smoking, recurrent bouts with lung infections and other issues - most notably the need for oral steroids for a lung infection while I was pregnant, and pretty much every cold since then with no significant improvement over several months of seeing many different doctors and trying many different medication regimes, there it is. Upon meeting my (beloved) pulmonologist and hearing him say I'd be taking inhaled medicine for the rest of my life and that I needed to exercise to stay healthy, it hit home real hard. Actually, it became real for the first time.

I'm late for a work meeting so more on this and my fabulous anniversary weekend plans later. Sorry for the typos, I'm on my smart phone, blogging from the parking lot. No spell check option here!

Hump Day

Is it Friday yet?

Sleep sucked again last night; my boy, my body/breathing and my brain all getting in the way. Not 100% sure what exactly is getting in the way to make this a regular occurrence...

On a brighter note, these longer days are nice even if they are cold, cold, cold. And we did get the public school choice we wanted for Twig! We are now planning to take him out of preschool in late June for a series of summer camp sessions that will include a swimming camp, gymnastics, outdoor science camp, and very likely a Mandarin and/or Spanish immersion camp.

Work finds me soon taking on more responsibilities (gladly). And exercise, eating, etc. are going well enough. My body has decided that fatty foods, alcohol and sugar will cause great allergic reaction (swelling of hands and feet) so I'm looking at and actively making significant dietary changes. Not a bad thing, not a bad thing at all.

My lungs are acting badly lately... My sinuses are too but I am scheduled to have those surgically addressed at the end of the month. It's all okay overall but every now and again, I'm confronted with my health in ways that I don't like. I'm reminded that my lungs will be deteriorating over time... It makes me feel sad, weak and depressed but, I just charge ahead despite my fears and anxieties about the future. After all, I'm relatively healthy now and that is all that matters for the time being.

And my family is healthy too. Life really is pretty darn good!

How Do You Figure?

I slept for almost 11 hours last night. At 11 am today I was still yawning. What gives? Granted, i% was not without sleep interruptions. The boy has been sleeping in his own bed for two months or more. I've been using a homeopathic sleep aid. And I'm still exhausted.

I just don't understand.

insomnia

Maybe it's my husband's incessant snoring that keeps me awake at night... not the caffeine...

Fine, it's both.

Either way I find it annoying to be awake while everyone else is peacefully sleeping. The snoring makes it hard to fall back to sleep and when it's especially annoying (like tonight) it makes me mad. Which doesn't help the relaxation process either.

I'm sure I'm mad about something else. Just haven't worked it out yet. Although, the fact that I've been (pending post on the subject written this morning so will show up after this post when finally published at a reasonable hour on Sunday) parenting an over tired and physically demanding kid for the past couple of weeks might have something to do with my generally pissy demeanor. Add in being awake at 1am after cleaning up the pee accident, which came after the getting ready for bed fight which came after the getting dressed for ballet and not one but two birthday parties today fights (it really was a great day), you can see why I'm feeling a little possessive of my rest time.

Mmmkayyy, now it's time to take back my night. Sweet dreams and thanks for reading!

Spine of Steel, Heart of Stone

A friend once gave me the sage advice about parenting. "Spine of Steel, Heart of Stone", she said. It was certainly during one of those times when the boy was being what I like to call 'extra, extra'.

He's been pushing all of my buttons these last few weeks. Playing instead of getting dressed, not answering when I ask a question or give direction. While those things are to be expected when child rearing, they do kind piss me off when they have been the norm for such a while (or at least what feels like such a long time - these are recurring issues). But there is one thing that really, I mean really makes me angry and that is his violence. Acting as if he will be violent with dirty looks, stances, and even props. Sometimes it's not just for show, he actually karate kicks me or punches me. And every time we have these altercations, he gets hurt. Take today as an example.

He didn't want to change his tights (he takes ballet and the tights he was wearing had a hole in them.) He didn't want to change and didn't until I helped. Soon thereafter he wasn't answering my questions so I sent him to his room for the customary time out. Which made him more angry. Since he was trying to shoot me with fiddlesticks, punching me as I tried to walk out of the room, he tried to snatch them out of my hands and quickly turned around for his departure and ran into the corner of his dresser. OUCH! His shoulder screaming and tears flowing but he was now able to listen.

There are moments I think I should simply beat the crap out of him. Seems that reason isn't working on him. Truth is I need to go to my happy place when this stuff comes up. I'm beat down. Truly beat down. For now that is. I'll get it back soon enough - without any child abuse. Mark my words.

Yawn

I know better than do drink caffeinated beverages and yet, in my infinite wisdom in following the natural healing book, I drank green tea yesterday.

Woke up at 1am, unable to go back to sleep until 4:30am - or something equally outrageous. And then the alarm roused me at 6am.

Worked all day and got a lot done. But in the afternoon, my lungs said NO to more activity tonight. No boot camp. Sleep. But I had to ask Wood to give me permission to take a night off. "lots of goo coming out of my lungs, even after taking medicine, I need permission to listen to my body and rest today". He was gentle and supportive; here I am feeling slightly guilty for not doing more than writing despite him being correct.

Tomorrow I will have more energy. Like I did over the weekend. I will pick up an extra exercise session when my body is less fatigued. If my body is less fatigued. I will run on Saturday.

For now, I will change out of my work clothes and cuddle with the boy on the couch. Because I can!

I Choose

In some fit of wisdom, I realized that I had to choose every day to be married. Before I got married that is. 

I realized today that my current challenges are that because I need to choose to behave like a grown up. Knowing is not enough. Now I must act on the knowledge. That knowledge makes the depression non existent. And the tears make it less heavy, too. 

I choose to be a responsible role model of a grown up. So now I'm going to sleep.

This Has Been a Prickly Time

Paula uses the term frequently enough that it has begun to make good sense to use it. I do hope it is oaky to do so. I need something to describe how I am feeling, mostly at work lately, but often outside the office too. It's not pms, not bitchy. Frustrated is appropriate but I don't think it really conveys the right message. Depressed could work but I routinely dismiss that term because of all of the other things connected to it. Negative stereotypes and all. But that is going to have to do for now because I'm doing this from my cell phone potty break. Yup, I know it's TMI but imagining the perplexed look on your face or furrowed brow because of it makes me grin & giggle and I need to do that a lot lately to keep my sanity. So there! Until later...

legumes & other excesses

Oooh, I've been eating too many beans this week. Black beans., refried beans, lentils, soy beans. No meat. Just beans! Yum and yuck all at the same time. My body craves them but noses (mine and everyone else's) simply don't agree.

I officially met my weight loss goal this week! 30 pounds and 4 sizes in a year. Keep the weight or lower for 6 weeks and I'm a lifetime member of weight watchers for free!

took two classes at the gym last night in preparation for the Oakland Marathon 5k at the end of March. And I'm feeling it, too. But it's to be expected. It's more that I usually do but it must be done to go to the next level of fitness.

that's all for now. My break is over!

Whoa, Nellie!

Oh, my today was a challenging, busy day. Actually, it's been a challenging, busy week. No, make that a month (or more).

Hubbie is, on very short notice, out of town this weekend at his aging, ailing mother's request, helping to clean her apartment of it's sundry items so that she doesn't get evicted for her not-so-well hidden from her landlord when they came in to inspect smoke detectors hoarding tendencies. She doesn't want me to know that this is an issue but if Twig's any indicator - When I told him that Daddy had to go to LA to visit Grammie and help her with some things for the weekend, his response was "You mean to help her throw things away and clean her apartment?", um, yeah, nobody knows...

Last week was a long weekend, I had a 100% free day (hubbie was working and Twig was in school), so I spent it cooking. All day prepping vegetables from our food box for the following week. Joyous times bee-bopping in the kitchen, doin' my thang. But with really swollen ankles/feet in the evening. And that evening we went to visit some friends for a get together - dinner and Olympic opening ceremonies - while the food, wine and company were excellent, the ceremonies started so late that we didn't get to watch more than about 10 minutes before we had to leave, already an hour and a half past Twigs bed time. Needless to say the next day he woke up earlier than usual unable to go back to sleep. And although he had a huge breakfast that morning, he was less than himself for the rest of the day. Ballet class found him not able to really focus on the teachers instruction. While focus is a tad bit of a "problem" for him under normal circumstances, he was in an extra special place that day. So Sunday I let him sit in front of the TV for most of the day and was not displeased when ballet/tap class (yes, he's willingly taking two ballet classes) was cancelled. I hadn't cleaned the house in a few weeks. Monday was another holiday. Despite the playdate, he melted when we tried to get me some new running shoes. Hubbie melted too. It was all in all, a really bad scene. Much of the week has been difficult. Is he still overtired? Hell if I know. But probably so.

The previous weekend we went snowboarding (spent a small fortune and had a fabulous time) but leaving on Friday and coming home on Sunday leaves little time for things like laundry and lavatory duty). Oh, lest we forget about the fact that the slopes kicked my lily-white ass and I was effing beat. There was no energy to be mustered to do things like clean after snowboarding and traveling or before going to work.

The week before that I'm sure we were busy too... observing a real serious pre-ballet program in the City. One that he can start in the fall (the boy wants to dance the Nutcracker - yes, he's 5 and he has such lofty goals), helping one of Hubbie's friends by taping the boy to be on a pop up "no-no, that's a dangerous web site" video for their company, eating out as a treat, birthday party for the twins of friends we haven't seen in oh-too-long, Sunday Ballet/tap, and then fun with the French - whom, by the way, we adore and spend far to little time with because they live in Berkeley and that's oh, so freaking far away!

But back to today, this week, this weekend... Is Mercury in retrograde? I mean shit-fuck-piss-son-of-a-bitch, it seems like everything that I need to do is dependent on another person in some way, shape, or form, and damn if they aren't doing their part. All I do is spend time managing people and projects that I shouldn't have to manage. Okay, that's not totally true, but it really feels like people aren't taking seriously the work that they need to do for me. And I'm being forced to fight really hard to get them to do their stuff so that I can get my stuff done. And even when it is done I still have to fight, or find workarounds, or generally work harder because everyone else around seems to have found ways to work less, take less responsibility, and be okay with doing "what we can", or... OR?

My blood pressure was sky high today. Not because of any one thing. It was simply the culmination of many things; the many "fights" that happen at work, at home, in my head, while driving down the street, in my husband's head, that have just piled up. But now, more than ever, I am feeling very vulnerable.

Budget issues at the State and Federal levels do threaten my agency. And while my program is a main function of why the agency exists, my position is expendable (and my boss has reminded me that he held a position exactly like mine so he could take it over quite easily if needed). I don't want to be expendable or vulnerable so I feel as if I have to work harder than ever to make my worth known. I'm swamped catching up, cleaning up, and making things up as I go along.

Hubbie is struggling more than ever with his work, his health, his overcommitted calendar and he's not in a good space. Having to be responsible for his mom's problems doesn't help matters much. I had the most horrible dream of him having a long standing affair with someone at work that I had met and spent time with on several occasions. And my reaction in the dream was exactly like it was toward my high school boyfriend who cheated - with the girl that had introduced us and whom I called my best friend. It was petulant, angry, and inconsolable. And it was a dream that seemed to last forever.

The putting out fire mode, being in situations that do not allow me the time and space I need to be able to act "appropriately", is not where I like to be. And yet, it's always been there where I've been able to thrive. In a crazy kind of way, being in chaos has always fueled me to move. The movement was simply a cover, a way to deflect the shit that was being thrown at me. Trouble is, I don't like, have never liked chaos - or crazy - at all. So, I moved forward: succeed at or at least appear to be living a socially acceptable, normal life and sooner or later the craziness seems odd, and the internal compass "you can become anything, make your life, your relationships, anything you want them to be", "you are not bound to follow the destiny your makers have set for you" is automatic, innate, normal. Except when the chaos is overwhelming and uncontrollable; like it's been this month, this week, this day. When it's like this, it's not that easy to stay out of the momentum because it becomes muscle-memory-familiar and I simply respond in muscle-memory-familiar ways. Auto pilot. Fire dancing.

I think I need to keep exercising, keep running, keep focused on those things that make me physically strong. But I also need to be more mentally/psychically strong. I do believe I need learn to slow down and quiet the chaos in my head. To meditate.

Goodness knows staying up past 11pm isn't going to help!!! G'night y'all! And thanks for reading.

Short Day

Muscle aches, yawn, cough, ready for a fight, cough again. Probably too much exercise, not enough food, and not enough sleep this week.

Work has been a bit stressful this week. Okay, this month has been extremely hectic. And I have been doing much more than I usually do. I think.

I'm trying to work around a situation at work that isn't really work-aroundable (sorry for making up words but that's how I'm feeling). Actually, it's probably not something I can manipulate to my advantage so I need to figure out how to cope and still get what I need done - so I don't get bitchy and angry like I did today. Not helpful to be that way.

So I started getting some space to figure that out by leaving work early to take a nap - in hopes of relieving the cough, aches, cough. Instead I watched Mad Men. Nonetheless I got some much needed rest.

I keep my fingers crossed that Twig continues his 4 night trend of sleeping in his bed all night long. Candy first thing in the morning is quite the motivator for him I guess. He doesn't quite understand that when I get more sleep that he benefits too, but someday he will. Like when his little person cuddles so close that he can't get a deep enough sleep to be 'a good night's sleep'.

G'night y'all.