Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Déjà vu

I don't mind when people share hard things with me.  Even when I can't relate or have a limited framework to understand what they're talking about.  In fact, sometimes I think that people are so concerned with appearances that they don't really let people see the real them.  I'm guilty of this sometimes too.

Yesterday I had someone stop by my office, a woman, who I would estimate to be late 40s or early 50s.  During the course of the conversation she mentioned that her youngest child leaves for college in the fall and that she was having a pretty difficult time dealing with it.  It wasn't in a "look at me" sort of way or a "my life is so much worse than yours" sort of way, but in a very matter of fact, "this is what is happening and I'm having a hard time with it" sort of way.  We ended up talking about how expected (or unexpected) curveballs that life throws our way can end up turning into a really fun adventure.

A little bit later I was in a meeting with another woman, who I would also estimate to be somewhere in the late 40s or early 50s age range.  She shared that her youngest left for college in August and how she's finding it difficult to adjust to life as an empty nester.  Again, shared in a very matter of fact sort of way.  Again we talked about making it an adventure, and maybe pursuing some things she hadn't previously been able to do.

Neither of these interactions were hurtful.  In fact, they were both quite genuine.  I guess I just sort of found me an odd choice for a confidant on this topic.  And two conversations on the same exact topic maybe two hours apart, that's just weird.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Mother Nature listened to my pleas

In my last post I mentioned that a snow storm would be mighty convenient in light of my sister's baby shower and my niece's 5th birthday party this weekend.  Well, I got my wish.  It started snowing around 3:30 yesterday afternoon and didn't stop until around noon today.  When it was all said and done we ended up with about nine inches (which is nothing compared to what areas further east got).  I wouldn't go as far as to say that we were snowed in, but it was enough snow that the Department of Transportation asked residents to stay at home unless they absolutely needed to go out.  Since we didn't need to go anywhere we stayed home all day, watched X-Files (in preparation for the reboot starting tomorrow night!),  played board games, and ate way too much food.

While I really was ok with whatever snap judgements that people made about me for not attending the shower, having a big snow storm as an excuse definitely made a dent in the criticism and made me look like not quite as much of an ass for not attending.  :)

Monday, January 18, 2016

Well at least we weren't overlooked this year

Last January we weren't invited to my niece's birthday party.  I'm sure that this wasn't intentional and I suspect that everybody thought somebody else invited us (my family does not excel at effective communication), but at the same time being left out hurt really bad (particularly since I found out when I saw party pictures on Facebook).  Honestly, it still hurts a bit.  Not keen to repeat the hurt feelings from last year, my sister (birthday niece's mom) called me on Friday to invite me to niece's party.  The big party is this coming Sunday, a date chosen specifically to accommodate out of town guests coming for pregnant sister's baby shower which is on Saturday. 

So my choices are:
  1. Suck it up and go to the baby shower and then attend the party the next day.
  2. Skip the baby shower, go to the party, and look like an ass.
  3. Skip both, look like an ass, and take care of myself.
  4. Pray for a snow storm over the weekend that will make travel impossible and give me a convenient excuse to skip both.
Choice 1 isn't going to happen because I promised myself that I never had to attend a baby shower ever again.  Choice 2 isn't going to happen either, mainly because I don't want to appear to play favorites, and a child's birthday party isn't my definition of fun, particularly when attending would mean six hours of driving (round trip).  So choice 3 is what's going to happen, but a snow storm would make a mighty convenient excuse. 

I won't lie, I do feel bad.  I feel like I'm letting people down.  I feel like I'm missing out on important things in their lives.  And all of that may be true.  But it's what I need to do to take care of myself.  I know I could handle the birthday party but the baby shower would set me up for failure.  I can't go to one and not the other, so I will go to neither.  The thing that's making me feel a little bit better at the moment is that there will probably be so many people at both events that my absence won't be missed.  But it still sucks. 

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Apparently I'm not dying

Last week I had an appointment with my new GP and she ordered a bunch of bloodwork so she could get baselines for a lot of different things.  Having not seen a GP regularly since approximately 2007 I was pretty sure that the bloodwork would reveal that I was dying.   Alas, I am not dying.  As a matter of fact I appear to be pretty darn healthy.  My Vitamin D is a little low so I need to start taking a supplement more regularly again, but this isn't hugely surprising since I live someplace where there isn't regular uninterrupted sunshine for 5-6 months a year and for a few of those months it's too darn cold to spend much time outside even when the sun is shining.  Plus it's not nearly as low as it was a couple of years ago so that's good too.

Related, here is a bit of info on Vitamin D deficiency.  It's extremely common in people that live in winter weather climates and I've heard it's near epidemic proportions for people who live in the US and Canada.  It takes a simple blood test to find out if you are deficient and you can purchase the supplement relatively inexpensively and over the counter (at least here in the US).

I'm glad everything came back fine and that I'm not dying.  I was sort of hoping that there would be some sort of medical explanation for my insomnia/exhaustion, but there does not appear to be.  But that's ok, and I'll address it at a different appointment a little bit later. 

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Ewwwww!

Hubs and I share a lot of things.  We have a communal sock drawer.  We wear a lot of the same t-shirts.  We have dog boots and a jacket that we wear when walking the dog or taking him out.  We don't even mind if the other takes a sip out of whatever the other is drinking.  It's safe to say that after nearly nine years together we've exchanged a lot of cooties.  But I draw the line at toothbrushes, so to eliminate the possibly of this happening I buy two different colors and assign one to each of us.

The other night we were getting ready to go to bed and I saw something that disgusted me.  Hubs was using MY toothbrush.  I immediately pointed this out to him, to which he replied "mine is the red one and yours is green." And I was like "no, mine is the red one and yours is green."  At this point he pointed out that we'd been using the same toothbrush since I bought these ones around the beginning of December.  I was disgusted.  He was unbothered.

I am happy to report that we now have new toothbrushes and that he knows which one is his.

*****

To further illustrate the differences between hubs and me, I give you this example.  Hubs handles all of our financials*.  This is something that he does really well, even keeping an old fashioned check register (something I haven't done since approximately 2002 when my bank introduced online banking) and then balances to the online banking total weekly.  Whatever, he handles everything, and I don't dispute his methods.  Anyway, yesterday morning he was paying some bills and was getting visibly frustrated.  The source of his frustration?  Apparently the balance he showed and the balance the bank showed were off.  How much were they off?  Ten cents.  Not 10 dollars.  Not 100 dollars. Not 1000 dollars.  A dime.  Ten pennies. One tenth of one dollar.  To me this is literally no big deal at all.  None.  Back in the day when I actually kept a check register, I didn't get stressed until there was a disagreement approaching $100.  To be within a dime would have been a cause for celebration.  To him, one penny is a crisis.

I chose this as a good time to go grocery shopping so I could get out of the house, since the alternative was to pour over a bunch of financial crap to find a dime.  I'm not being dramatic or exaggerating when I say that I would prefer dental work to this task.  Thankfully, by the time I got home he had found the offending dime and everything was balanced to his satisfaction.

*I always am "in the know" about all of our finances, he's just the one who's responsible for making sure the bills are paid on time, transferring money to savings, etc.

*****

Addendum to my Welcome, 2016 post:

When I wrote about my October-December reading, I had a feeling that I was leaving something out, and sure enough, I did.  I left out The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.  This book was a gift from a friend who thought I'd enjoy it.  First off, the book isn't religious at all.  You could just as easily replace "heaven" with "the afterlife" or similar.  Essentially the book follows the narrator after his death as he meets five different people whose life he impacted, some of which he didn't even realize.  It's a really good book (and a quick read!) that makes you realize that as you go about your life that the people you meet can change the trajectory of your life, sometimes without you even realizing it.

With the addition of this book, met my reading goal for 2015! 

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Today

Today I had my appointment with my new GP.  I didn't particularly like her but I didn't hate her either.  So I think I'll deal with her because finding a new doctor in my insurance network and within a reasonable distance from home is a pain in the butt.  I don't know what I was hoping for but I guess I wanted somebody to actually listen, and beyond the questions that the computer wants her to ask, and she really didn't do that.  But I left with orders for a bunch of blood tests (thyroid, blood glucose, Vitamin D, and a few others that I can't remember at the moment) and that appointment is on Saturday morning.

Some of the blood tests require fasting and she asked that I abstain from alcohol for 48 hours before the test.  You get one guess what's sitting on the table beside my computer at this very moment.  :)

I got home from my appointment and checked my mail.  In the mail was a baby shower invitation to my sister's baby shower.  She knows I'm not going and I don't know why she wasted the postage to send me an invitation.  I wish her all the best, I really do, and I hope it's a fun time, but my mind is made up about not going, and that's not going to change.

On a related note, she (pregnant sister) called me this afternoon and asked if I would please come to her fancy 3D ultrasound with her on Saturday.  Because apparently non-medically needed ultrasounds are now a thing?  This is where it's really hard to balance being the big sister and taking care of myself.  Honestly I feel like crap that I told her no.  There was no good choice on this one.  Either her feelings were going to be hurt or I was was going to put myself in a situation that no good could possibly come of it.  I really am excited for her but no.  I just can't do that. So I chose myself and told a little white lie that I already had plans for Saturday morning.  Then I scheduled my blood draw for Saturday morning so I really do have plans.  I really am ready for her to not be pregnant anymore.

Finally, my hot flashes are kicking it up a notch again.  I pulled the trash and recycle to the curb tonight in shorts and a t-shirt.  It was approximately 20F (-6C) outside.  It felt good.  And my neighbor told me I was too young to be wandering around on a January night in summer clothes. 

So that was my day.  Well, work too, of course. 

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

New look

Over the weekend I decided that I needed some change in my life.  That I needed to do something on impulse and just for fun.  So I cut off my hair.  Like six inches of it.  And colored it.  It's fun and I really like it, though I was hoping that the color would turn out a bit more red.

It's been a long time since I've taken the plunge and done something like this.  I need to get back in the habit of doing things like this.  For fun.  Just because I want to. 

Is anyone else impulsive with their hair or has ever made a drastic change to it?  Or is it just me?

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Welcome, 2016

This is going to be somewhat of a catch up post.  Sorry if it's a bit disjointed.

October-December Reading
 I intended to blog monthly about the books I read that month as a measure of accountability for one of my resolutions for the year.  Then I got super busy.  To close out 2015, I read the following books:
So I fell short of my two books per month goal by 1/4 of a book.  So freaking close!  
 2015 Year In Review

The good:
  • I survived the birth of two nieces, the pregnancies that led to them, and the pregnancy of my third sister.   
  • Hubs started a new job/career.  Yeah, I know this one isn't about me, but I can't help but think that this wouldn't have been possible if we had kids or were still in the midst of infertility.
  • Hubs and I are growing closer together.  Infertility really did a number on our relationship, but we survived, and now we're making up for lost time.  We're working on communicating better and I'm working on doing a better job of sharing my feelings with him.  My default strategy has always been to retreat within myself to deal with hard stuff, but I'm working really hard to move away from that.
  • Amazing friends.  Both friends I know in the flesh and those who I know online and haven't met (yet).
  • Hubs and I prioritized ourselves and our needs in relation to family expectations and obligations, particularly during the holiday season.
The bad: 
  •  So many pregnant sisters.
  • My dad had a heart attack and it hit me pretty hard that my parents aren't going to live forever.  I mean, I understand that we are born, live, and die, but this was the closest I've come to losing either parent.  (He's doing great now!)
How I fared on my goals for 2015:
  • Survive the birth of both of my nieces without going off of the deep end-YES! With a "bonus" pregnancy to boot.
  • Continue to feel what I'm feeling.-I think I did a pretty good job of this.  It wasn't easy, but I did it.
  • Continue to hit the gym. For the first six months of the year I did great, then it became sporadic.  Run a 5k or 10K.  Nope. Because the truth is that I hate running.
  • Read two books per month-See above.

*****
2015 ended pretty uneventfully, but for the first time in a really, really long time I didn't enter the new year by giving the middle finger to the previous year.  I was stretched and challenged so much in 2015, but I also grew so much.  I'm starting 2016 with a feeling of lightness and hope.  So on that note, my goals for this year are:

2016 Goals:
  •  Renew my commitment to exercise.
  • Take better care of myself, health wise.
  • Continue reading for pleasure.  I think I'll set my goal for one book per year for 2016, because I'm already feeling like the year is going to be busy.
  • Be more present in my daily life/try to filter out some of the distractions.