Catching Up and Stuff

My daughter colored this (she's 6...I'm super impressed!)

I'm eating a small heart of Russel Stoffer's chocolates that I traded a cupcake for with my daughter on Valentine's Day.  I'm also drinking a second glass of wine.  Healthy choices quickly became less desirable when I realized that meant less (to no) chocolate and wine. My mindset isn't on the right track to make healthy choices so I'm scheduling a Whole30 reset starting the day after my birthday.

My first full day of being 34 is on March 4th and I will start 30 days of no wine, (or alcohol of any kind), no chocolate, (or sugar of any kind), and no dairy/legumes/grains/etc, for 30 days.  Basically I can eat meat, nuts, fruits and vegetables. And eggs. I did a Whole30 in 2014 when my second child was less than a year old. I was still breastfeeding then so I got away with snacking a lot more than is typically condoned on the plan, but I still lost a ton of weight and kept it off for a long time.

I'm just in such a slump.  I know I want to eat healthier and be healthier, but then I cave under the tiniest of cravings. I don't want to eat a ton of high calorie, low nutrition meals and snacks, but then one tiny craving and I'm like "why not, I deserve to eat what I want" and all the good motivation goes out the window.

I feel like it's contributing to my poor mental health. I have this daily irking feeling in my gut that won't go away no matter how much I exercise or write or meditate or relax. It's just there all the time. It's slightly muted over the past couple of days but only because I'm forcing myself not to overthink anything. I almost feel like I have PTSD or something but I have no trauma to be post-stressing over (other than the fucking current state of our political climate, which truly gives me daily anxiety).

My doctor suggested anti-anxiety medication but I'm still mulling it over. I've always been a mentally unstable person but it's something I've kind of liked about myself. It makes me feel more unique.

But recently it's different..I have less desire to make myself healthier (mentally, physically, etc.) and that's really not normal for me. I had lab work done today so hopefully it doesn't turn out to be some medical thing.

I'm feeling very ready and excited to do the Whole30 again.  It was really hard the first time but I definitely needed it then. I read somewhere on their website back then that: yes, it's hard, but lots of things are harder. Like childbirth. Or running a marathon. Or moving your family every 3 years to places that are out of your control. Or writing 50,000 words in 30 days.  I can do all of those things, so I can do this. And I need to reset my mindset.

Just over 2 weeks from now. Last time I did it, I started it about 3 days after I decided I wanted to do it. I'm not sure if having extra time is good or bad. I'm afraid that this extra time will use up all my positive "you can do this" vibes before I even start changing my diet.

Here, this makes it super legit:

Stress

So I'm pretty sure I now have physical proof of the amount of stress I felt over the past several weeks. For about a week now I've had an itch all along the skin of my left torso.  I kept wondering if maybe I was dying because along with the skin itching, the area under my skin felt tight and ached dully...back behind my lung and in the front of my chest as well.  So yesterday I noticed a few small red bumps forming around this general area, which I chalked up to the fact that I'd been scratching the area and irritated it.  But then today I woke up with two much larger red patches and half a dozen more smaller bumps like hives all throughout this area...and all of them are sore to the touch.

Somehow it dawned on me to check if I had the shingles and the more I've researched, the more convinced I am that I do.  I knew a friend of mine had them a few years ago so I told her about my symptoms and she agrees.  When I first brought it up to my husband, he laughed and then got mad at me for being such a hypochondriac, but after reading him more about the symptoms of shingles and showing him my bumps, he believes that's what I have too.

I'm really kind of relieved.  Not only am I not dying of lung cancer, but I now have a real battle scar resulting from this move to Colorado.  I can now say that even though I am only 32 years old, I was so stressed from moving to Colorado essentially by myself, that it gave me the shingles!

Of course, if they spread up to my eye and I go blind, I might not be as excited about this.  I'm not really excited about the fact that I have shingles...I'm just one of those weirdos who always thinks she's dying.  Then, whenever I get a real scare (dull ache in my chest) and find out it's something much less life threatening (shingles will hurt pretty bad for a couple of weeks but that's usually as bad as it gets), I feel a mild sense of euphoria and a resurgence of an appreciation for life (I really am this crazy).

Drinking a whole lot of alcohol over the past few weeks probably didn't help my immune system much either, but I'm still going to blame the stress.  If it weren't for the stress, I wouldn't have made it a nightly ritual to drink a bunch of wine before bed.

I'm still able to exercise, which is good.  We got a treadmill about a week ago and almost died trying to carry it into the house and down the steps to the basement.  But other than a baseball sized black bruise on my leg, we survived and we've both been running on it pretty regularly.  I also ran outside today for the 3rd time since moving here.  I count it as the real first time though because when I ran with Ike a day or two after moving in, it was 19 degrees and windy so I felt like Ana trying to find Elsa in that crazy monsoon of snow at the very end of Frozen.  So clearly I didn't get very far that day.  The next run was just to test out how my legs would handle hills.  They didn't like them much.  Today, however, they handled them like a boss.  I felt great on the run and feel great now (other than the sharp pinching pain in my back).

Today is the last day of this intermission in our lives though.  Husband checks in for real at his new job tomorrow and I start working from home.  Unfortunately we don't yet have our kids signed up for daycare.  There was a short waiting list when we got here and they haven't called us to give us the thumbs up yet.  I'm going to call them tomorrow though and hope for the best.  I'll get as much work done with my girls home as I can until the daycare opens up.

Even though these past few weeks have been stressful enough to inflict a physical ailment meant for the elderly, I'm sad this time is coming to an end.  We were finally getting to the good part.  The part where we had time to just relax and breathe and look around at what we accomplished.  And now real life has to start again, damn it.

Time to go research the shingles some more then email my boss to update her on my daycare/work situation.

Everything's changing

My husband leaves for OTS (Office Training School) in 5 days.  I'll be single parenting for 2 months before I see him again and I'm far from ready for all of the changes this will bring.  Not to mention moving to another state when he gets finished.  I could have gone to Barnes n Noble this afternoon during naptime, and maybe I should have, but I decided to stay home, sit in our office, and mimic my new weekend afternoon naptime routine.  This way it won't be such a foreign thing next week when I can no longer leave the house while the kids are asleep.

I can't really put into words how I'm feeling right now about all of this...it's hard to think of anything else though.  It makes me want to cry, while at the same time look forward to the ability to have some time to myself; makes me sad to leave Arizona and the friends I've made here, while at the same time I'm looking forward to Colorado Springs.

I'm honestly close to having a nervous breakdown.  Really, I feel like I might pass out at least once a day (not joking...I'm actually slightly concerned about this on a medical level, but it happened when we were leaving PA too, so I'm chalking it up to stress).

My amazing job is being so flexible with me...they've offered to give me irregular hours for the next two months so I don't have to worry about racing to and from work to make it to the daycare on time.  I'll be going in from 10-3:30 Monday through Friday (I used to work from home on Mondays...this is going to be the compromise for having me in every day)...then spend a couple of hours each evening working at home after the kids go to bed.  This arrangement made me want to cry happy tears when I learned about it on Friday.

So regardless of all of the reasons I'm stressing about this transition, I'm confident we'll get through it fine.  I've got supportive friends at work, kids that are both (usually) well behaved (just kidding, the older daughter is usually doing the opposite of what I ask of her...but with just me here, we might be able to get into a routine where she isn't getting herself in trouble most of the time...I hope), wine, books I can read, movies I can watch.  Gotta cook for the family...that's gonna be no fun...but everything I'm worrying about...everything that's making it hard to catch my breath...it's all minor compared to what some people have to manage on their own.  I'm really just being a baby about all of it.

I guess I never anticipated how much harder each of these moves is going to get.  I used to look forward to them.  In Louisiana, when Steve went to train for this recruiting job for 6 weeks, I was happier than maybe any time of my life (no offense, husband).  Up until then, I'd never lived by myself before...so 6 weeks of my own apartment while living in a city was incredible.  I'm not the type to get bored with too much time on my hands...so that's when I started making jewelry, I read about a dozen books, watched any movie I felt like watching, went out with friends for dinner and drinks (the one thing that'll be almost impossible this time around...babysitters are expensive), and my house always looked the same when I came home from work as it looked when I left it in the morning.  It was the most liberating 6 weeks of my life.  Then we moved to PA and I had a baby.  So moving out here was not easy, but we did it together.  This time, doing so much of this by myself while taking care of two daughters and a dog...it's all so much more intimidating.

I could go on and on about all of this though (as you can see), and that's something I'd rather not do right now.  I'll go read now...and finish up a couple of jewelry orders.