December 2006

2006 in review

Usually I’m not one for year-end reflections and New Year’s resolutions, but I’ve felt a bit introspective lately and I find myself wanting to measure and tally my achievements and accomplishments as well as put forth some goals for the next 12 months. So: The year in review. 2006 has been a year of changes on a personal level, more of them than I can remember in a long time. On the material side of things, we replaced a number of old worn out items with new ones: our bed (12 years), my computer (4-1/2 years), a refrigerator (13 years), the vacuum cleaner (12 years). And we acquired a couple of things we’ve been wanting for a while: a treadmill and a new car. So it’s been a rather expensive year as well. We also joined the local Freecycling group, and we’ve given away a lot of extra stuff that we don’t need or don’t use anymore. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. I don’t think I mentioned it before, but we also have ordered (and will receive in mid-January) two new office chairs to replace both of our old broken workstation chairs. This was a serious splurge but the way I see it, if we’re going to be sitting in these chairs for 12 hours a day or more (Doc) and have back problems (me), it’s totally worth it to have a good chair. So hello, Herman Miller! 🙂 This year has brought an onslaught of health issues for me. It kind of feels sometimes like I’m just falling apart and I don’t know how to stop it. My migraine headaches have returned after years of dormancy; I tore my rotator cuff; I fell a couple of times (stairs and sidewalk), thankfully not seriously injuring myself but enough […]

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Heave yourself a merry little Christmas

Oooh, how I wish that post title was a typo. Guess what I got for Christmas? Stomach flu! I actually managed to LOSE weight over the holidays, but in a totally not worth it kind of way. We have spent the past few days with my parents in Houston, and they have assured us that it will be the last Christmas in that crowded, hot, sweaty, smelly city with nutjob freak drivers and no zoning laws (there is a preschool next door to an oil refinery a few blocks away from my parents’ neighborhood). Of all the places I have lived, Houston is at the bottom of the list. Yes, even Sherman ranks higher. The parents feel the same way and can’t wait to move next year to a cool, sunny city on the ocean. Mike, Vanessa, and Bob flew in and it was fantastic to see all of them, as usual. I have the greatest brothers and sister-in-law. All very smart, very cool people. I was having a nice time up until about 6 a.m. Christmas morning when I woke up from a nightmare about being queasy. And it was all downhill from there. The entire day was kind of a blur of crawling back and forth to the bathroom, trying to catch brief snatches of sleep, trying to drink fluids (nope, not even water was agreeing with me), shivering under four blankets, and apologizing to Doc for ruining Christmas. He was being his usual sweet self, checking on me every few minutes, going all over the city to find a store that was open so I could have juice and ginger ale (which I wasn’t even able to drink until the next day), and trying to make me comfortable. Meanwhile, I heaved and whined and shivered and complained […]

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Finally, some follow-through!

If nothing else, at least I followed through with one of my newest goals: that I would NOT complete my open water dives. And I didn’t! Go, me! Doc and K1 and BB, on the other hand, all got their certifications. I didn’t realize that the lake at Aquarena Springs was only 10 feet deep. I don’t know that I would have been quite as freaked out in water that shallow, but I still think I made the right decision. I’m proud of all of you guys for sticking with it and passing all your tests! Several people have said some very nice and supportive things to me, trying to get me to feel better about not going through with it. It helps. Thanks, guys. 🙂 Part of me still feels like a big fat whiny baby, though. The other thing is, if I get to Belize and start kicking my own ass for not getting my certification, I can get certified there. I do like having that option. The Prius is a fine travelling car. Roomy, quiet, fantastic gas mileage. I freakin’ love that hatchback. My 1-year-and-2-week-old digital camera ceased functioning after I’d taken only three photos of the divers. I did not drop it or get it wet or anything of the sort. The lens is stuck open and makes a horrid grinding sound whenever I turn the camera on. It grinds for a second, beeps, and shuts itself off. It wasn’t a cheap camera, and I am thoroughly pissed. One thing about vacation that bothers me is eating out all the time. I get sick of it really fast. I like my own cooking. Aquarena is kind of an interesting place. It’s sort of a ecological learning center now, but it used to host things like Ralph […]

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Add “loser, failure” to yesterday’s list

Today was a pretty rotten day. A Project From Hell at work got me stressed out to the point where I was kind of laughing uncontrollably at the futility of it all — and y’all know me, it takes a lot to get me worked up like that — and none of it would have been difficult if we hadn’t had to work through STUPID CONVIO (there, I said it). I won’t bore you with details, so suffice it to say that they specialize in making the simple complex. Also, for whatever reason, I woke up this morning without much patience to begin with, so this project got me on the edge pretty quickly. By the time I was able to take a quick break late afternoon and meet Doc at the dive shop to pick up our equipment for our upcoming lake dive, I was stretched pretty thin. In the dressing room, attempting to squeeze my (apparently) enormous ass into every rental wetsuit they had in the shop to no avail, I snapped and bawled like a baby. You should know that I am almost six feet tall and while I’m not exactly “fat,” I do have a decent pear shape to my body. It would seem that I am one-of-a-kind in the diving world, as all wetsuits seem made for short women or thin men. The ladies’ sizes were way too small for me, and the only men’s wetsuit that fit over my butt was an XL, and I could have stored a week’s worth of snacks in the top part of it. The dive shop people didn’t seem to understand that I needed one with a small top and a large bottom. They kept suggesting larger and larger men’s sizes (to get the bottom to fit) or […]

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I feel so broken, so defective

I went back to the doctor today. (TMI WARNING: the squeamish and anyone related to me should bail now) Last month I mentioned that I was having problems with my periods, specifically that I got one only 16 days after the previous one. The doctor said that everything appeared normal, it might just be stress, and to keep an eye on my cycles for a while. The one after that was right on schedule if not a tad bit late, but it’s been going for about 20 days now nonstop. Also, I’ve had very sore breasts, and normally I get a little bit of that around my period but this is to the extent that I can’t sleep on my stomach. Seriously, not fun. He said that it was, of course, not normal, but that it could be attributed to any number of reasons: the fact that I was training for the marathon and then stopped; the diva cup, although that’s unlikely; stress; hormonal fluctuations; needing a new IUD. I told him that I didn’t want to be on birth control pills to regulate my hormones, which was one recommended course of treatment. He sent me for bloodwork and told me to go to an ob/gyn for further testing. They may need to do an endometrial biopsy, or go exploring in my uterus with a tiny little Utero-Cam, or possibly take out my IUD and give me a new one, and none of these options is anything I want to do because in my experience, any kind of medical-related jacking around up in there causes extreme crying-and-throwing-up style pain. I will, however, be a good little patient and call for the ob/gyn consult. The good news is that he said that it was unlikely to be cancer, which was of […]

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I Am Superman, And I Know What’s Happening

Sometimes I have dreams where I do heroic things. I wonder if maybe it’s because I don’t feel much like a hero in waking life? I think that to some degree, everybody wants to be seen as a savior, one who does great things for the common good, or at least to have the courage to try. And some people want to be superheroes, taking it to the next level. I dreamed last night that someone broke into my house. I was downstairs and heard a noise on the front porch. I opened the door and heard someone on the porch roof, and saw a wire that they’d attached to the ground and used (somehow) to get up on to the roof. I had a broom in my hand and was yelling at the person to get off the roof, and trying to swipe at the wire with the broom, but I didn’t step outside because I thought it might be dangerous. The situation didn’t really feel dangerous, though, but I yelled upstairs for Doc to call 911. Then the noise stopped and I knew that the person had gotten inside the house. I heard noises in the backyard and ran through the house. Our backyard was large and grassy, and someone I didn’t know had tackled the robber down to the ground. I ran out and took over, ordering him to turn over onto his stomach, and then I jammed my knee into the small of his back and cranked his hands up behind his back to hold him in place. My broom had shrunk to a small stick, but the end was nice and pointed and so I stuck this against his back so he wouldn’t try to get away. He had stolen a Walkman cassette player from […]

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