So why do I have this blessed little bottle is the most logical question.  On Tuesday while at the airport in Kansas City I received a call  that I have an autoimmune disease.  It’s called…wait for it <breath>

Hypothyroidism

(que internal giggling)

Ok so I have to admit I’m feeling punchy.  If you know me you know I have a flair for, shall we say, the drama  and if you can’t tell already, I’m being a goof. The truth is that yes, it’s autoimmune but it’s just an under producing thyroid.  Well, “just” is a relative term.   I cannot lie I’m beyond relieved to hear that I have a crappy thyroid.  Giddy even.

Now don’t go getting me wrong.  I don’t think that I’m fat just b/c I have a lazy thyroid.  I’m fat b/c I like food.  But you have to understand that I”ve been following all of my Weight Watchers rules, even working out religiously and at first I was staying even and then, as if that wasn’t insulting enough, I started gaining weight.  Oh nothing that was even equivalent to a whole pound, but when you let Jillian abuse you every afternoon and avoid treats well, let’s just say it’s a touch frustrating.  One might even say that I had a little itty bitty temper tantrum expression of frustration last week.  So to have at least some semblance of an explanation (albeit not an entire solution) is awesome.  Meanwhile this week I didn’t work out, followed the plan (but not over the weekend) and *wham* 1.8 lbs down.  Go figure.   And I haven’t even started the pills yet so perhaps I just need to go a bit easier on myself?

Anywho

The whole weight thing is certainly a PITA but moreover, there are a series of other symptoms that are even more debilitating.  Naming, the extreme fatigue.  So, I’m hopeful.  And if not this then we’ll see what else there is to do.

And in the meantime, I’ll do my little happy dance all over Kansas City airport.

Guess who is one of the top 5 producers in her company?! That’s right-Top 5 be-atches!  Actually, as it turns out 3 of the 5 of us are from the DC office.

Because I love what I do and well, because this is a public blog I’ll just leave it as “top 5 producer”.  If you know me you know (or can find out) what that means, but I’d rather stay employed thankyouverymuch.  I have to be honest, I’m over the moon.    I am so very proud.

And then I came home.  And the boy, while happy, wasn’t through the roof (as I suppose I expected).  And I was hurt. And I should know better than to set up expectations, because let’s face it setting expectations for others never ends up like you want.   But as he put it, and the fact is, that winning some award doesn’t make me who I am and quite frankly doesn’t change “what everyone knows about me”.  It’s just announcing out loud the reality of my day-t0-day life.

Should I be proud?  Yep.  Am I proud?  You damn straight. And the boy is proud too.  Add to that some less than stellar news we learned about our dear friend’s pups, and  it’s a gentle reminder that at the end of the day, there’s more to life than winning awards.  Oh yea, and next time, I’ll send a memo about the reaction I’m looking for

PS-I’m still top 5 be-atches!

*ahem*

Anywho, where was I?  oh yes, doing well.  The irony is that I’ve been drinking a lot more wine thank normal but hey, what’re ya gonna do?  And I’ve been very proud of myself, only really being tempted around 2pm and at dinner time.  Oh, and driving home from work when I want gum. But nothing too bad.  That is, until today.  Today when I met my Nemesis…the weekend.

It started out innocently enough.  The boy and I were running errands and he headed to 7-11 for a drink.  I can’t have  diet soda, I won’t have regular soda, and I can’t have gum.  Hmmmm.  I should note I cannot be in the car without a drink and/or snack.  I ended up with a York Peppermint Patty.  But then we headed to Target and I thought I would loose it.  There I stood, headlong down the aisle of all things Aspartame–diet sodas and Crystal light drinks galore.  And if I thought THAT was bad, when we got to the checkout the little mini-fridge was literally calling my name. At one point one of the employees told us to go to line 3 (lines were long) and there was no wait.  But the lady was snarky telling us she was closed.  Poor uninformed woman.  I let her know that her coworker actually told us to come to her line, where in she promptly said something that sounded like “he not my team leader” and shooed us away.  I resisted the urge to scream

“TEAM Leader?!  What the hell do you think this is lady the starship f’ing enterprise?!”

Which I’m glad i didn’t b/c I totally got two sci-fi space movies confused but I cannot help it…I’m in the throws of withdrawl.  Anyway, after informing everyone who would listen what a snarky narcissist she was, I gave her “a stern look” and we got in a different line…a line full of gum.

After that it’s all dark and fuzzy.  All I know is I’m safe at home with my wine, and I lived to tell the tale.

What I have discovered, though, is that I have interesting vices.  Smoking was a vice, food was another, and as it turns out, so is diet coke.  Without it I find myself just wanting to snack on anything.  No Bueno.

And I’ve managed to drink enough water to drown a fish.

I would venture to say that most people probably don’t think of me as “super religious”.  And while I would not characterize myself that way either, I am certainly much more so than most would realize.  There is a reading from Matthew every Ash Wednesday that I think describes it best:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”

Now, I’m not saying anything derogatory about any one or other religion, but I put that out there because I feel like it synopsizes so much about the religion I was brought up in.  The bottom line is that I was never brought up to talk about my relationship with God.  In fact, I never had even heard such a phrase until I became involved with Young Life in high school.  And when someone first asked me “how is your relationship with God?” my first thought was “do-what?” and the second was “none of your business thankyouverymuch”.

The point is, I was just not brought up to discuss my beliefs like some.  And that’s fine.  The point isn’t whether or not you shout about your beliefs or you hold them close to the vest.  But the point is that because of the fact that my belief system was quite private, most  people just aren’t aware.  Even my mother probably doesn’t get it.  This was only the second Christmas that I wasn’t with them on Christmas Eve, and the first time that I was spending it with another family (besides just my husband).  My mother felt the need to remind me to go to church for Christmas Eve mass.  I had to laugh.  I had already told the boy it was a non-negotiable item.

And of course the older I get, the more important it is to me, and to the boy.

But still, it’s not exactly something I shout out from the rooftops.

For whatever reason, in the past few years Lent has become more and more important.  I suppose it’s a time for me to “show my Catholicism” and it’s a chance for me to reconnect.  It’s no secret that I”m having a hard time finding a church in this area (I have issue with the Arlington Diocese and their old school mentality) and I’ve long known that even if we join another denomination I’ll always be a Catholic at heart.  What can I say, I hate change love tradition.

So this morning I drug myself out of bed for 6:30am service.  It was dark, and I almost busted my booty on the ice, but I made it.  I got all ashed up, and began my 40 days.

What did I give up?  Aspartame.  Which, as it turns out is in a LOT.  Like Diet Coke.  Pretty sure Jesus should give me bonus points for that one.  Going back to Matthew 6, we’re not supposed to “look dismal” but rather we’re supposed to ‘put our big girl panties on and deal with it…with a smile”.  Ok, so maybe Matthew didn’t say THAT but you get the idea.  Have no fear though, I’ll be sharing all of it here.

So 16 hours in.  within the first 62 minuets I thought about Diet Coke 5 times.  By 1:00pm I had a massive headache and thought I was going to toss my cookies.  You tell me how I”m doing.

I’m far from the only person on this earth who has trouble saying No.  And the good Lord knows all I need is a little flattery about how “indespensible” I am and I’m a little like melted butta’.  Basically, I’m a sucker for some good flattery.  

So you can imagine when I recieved this correspondance (which was then followed up that afternoon with some training for this organization to ‘re-energize us) I was thrown.  Not a week before I sat with my manager discussing my goals for 2010.  One of my goals included being LESS involved.

Yep, you heard it hear first folks.

Two bloggers I read have used a certain turn of phrase that seems particularly appropriate–my ’seaon of life’ has changed.  (yes I know it sounds like a menopause commercial)  It’s no secret that the boy and I have talked about starting a family sometime in the next two years (the same length as a board term) and to be honest, I want to focus more on ‘non-work’ things…you know, it’s normally called a personal life?  Yea, I had to look it up too.

I won’t lie, they almost had me.  I was so flattered by the compliments I was given, by the confidence they have in me and the optimisim I could bring to the table.  Heck, even the fact that they were “looking forward to the opporutnity to work with me and get to know me better”.  Seriously, that’s some good stuff.  And I mulled it over.  Long and hard. 
Maybe, I thought, I could carry on.  How hard would it be right?

When I mentioned it to the boy and said we needed to discuss it, he asked me what there was to discuss.  “Oh” I said, “so you think I should go for it??!”

His reply:

“What part of that statement makes you think I think this is a good idea?”

In fairness, when it’s written out it sounds like he’s running some sort of dictatorship.  That couldn’t be further from the case actually.  This is a man that hears all the backend jumbled jarrgon of all of my little world’s ins and outs.  He knows me, perhaps better than I know myself (much to my dismay) he also knows when I need to slow down.  He’s like my own personal barameter.  And so when the discussion of our family and where our lives are heading originally came up, I had to suck it up and hear what he had to say.  No longer am I a single gal who can come home after working a 12 hour day and tune out, with only myself and a cat to be responsible for.  Never would I have thought that that would be a struggle for me to embrace, and yet here it is almost a year and a half to the day later and I still struggle with it.  Apparently, I can be a bit selfish.  And to be perfectly honest, this is a new season for me and there is a lot going on.  Perhaps it was time to shift it down.

And so yesterday I responded with a thank you, but no thank you.  I expressed my sincere appreciation but declined the offer.  It was harder than I would have thought, I cannot lie.  A year and a half in and I have to remind myself still that it’s not just me.  Sad maybe, but true.  But the benefit to all of this is a life shared, which is much better than a life as the cat lady

I love the snow.  Correction.  I USED to love the snow.  Right now snow and I, we have a kinda love hate relationship.

We’ve had 3 storms in 2 weeks, and tonight is our 4th.  6inches, 6 inches, 29 flippin inches, and now somewhere between 10-20 inches.  The snowflakes are huge and falling, but they are not pretty to me.  Instead, every one is currently another one that we will have to shovel.  It may in fact be the on that pushes the tree over, or collapses the roof.  Stupid flakes. 

It’s a rather morbid Debbie Downer though process, I realize.  And that’s when it occured to me.  Let Go and Let God.  Seriously.  I mean, sure we’ll shovel the deck and the sidewalk and drip the water and do what we can, but at the end of the day if the trees’a comin down, it’s coming down.  You’re certainly not going to see my fool butt up in that tree shaking it off (though I totally took a broom to it -bwahaha)  At the end of the day, it will all work out one way or another. 

And so with that, I’ll just enjoy power while we have it.  I can’t say that my relationship with Mother Nature isn’t brusied at the moment, but for now I’ll do my best to enjoy the snow…you know, the ones that are going to accumulate and cause me to shovel another 3 hours…..oops.  Well, baby steps.

“…it ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward.  That’s how winning is done!”

-Rocky Balboa

The idea behind this, of course, was the craptastically crappy year a lot of use had in 2009.  But the quote, to me, goes much further than just last year’s poor economic status.

It’s about all of the times  that you just want to give up, to say “to hell with this” but instead you put your chin up and press onward.  Sometimes it’s so painful that you literally have to hold your breath and you get up and go on with it.  It’s about choosing to learn from even the worst situations, when it would be just as easy to speak of excuses, place blame and lament about how unfair life is.

It is no secret if you know me that my work life in 2009 was…a bit painful.  One of my coworkers was telling me about a challenge she recently faced, one that was I’m sure very painful.  I kept saying to her “I just wish you knew how awesome you are”, because she is.  Because I know that regardless of everything, I have no doubt that she gave her all and she’s an amazing planner.  And then it occurred to me that perhaps I should look in a mirror and not only remind myself of the same thing, but listen when others remind me.

Because at the end of the day, you gotta “keep moving forward, that’s how winning is done”.  And sometimes winning just means making it to the end of the day :

This is Archie

Our sweet pupper, 13lbs of love and fluff.

Lately he’s being showing us his bark, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.  Heck, our cat not only outweighs him but is more of a bruiser than our boy.

But then, something comes over him.  One minute he’s playing with his stuffed toys and the next…

the carnage begins

Rest in peace weird little ASPCA bird toy.

December 25, 2009-January 19, 2010

For our 2nd ‘dating’ anniversary, knowing that I love to journal, the boy gave me a small leatherbound book with the words “carpe diem” embossed on the front.  The book is a bit too small for a journal (particularly for a gal with as much to say as I do) so instead I created long desired compilation of quotes.

Though still in it’s infancy, there are already a variety of quotes. Everything from classic novels, to quotes found embroidered on tea towels.  Anything that speaks to me.

The following is a quote that was in a Christmas card we received this year.  I love the sentiment of it as much as the cadence.  I also love the fact that the author is Ralph Waldo Emmerson.  I learned this summer that my paternal grandfather, whose name was Ralph, held the middle name Emmerson after the great poet.  Who would have known that this farmer family of mine had a love of poetry.

At any rate, without further ado:

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.