Dear Reader,
Today has been a pretty pleasant day, and I feel like I got a lot done. The first thing that happened today was, when I got out of bed I felt my belly and caught myself immediately saying, "You're so fat! You're so disgusting!" I switched that off right away and decided that, today, I was going to be kind to myself. No hating on myself for at least today. I mean, after all, my body is handling things about as well as you can expect it to. It is VERY hard for me to lose weight because of my high cortisol levels from all the extreme stress I'm under. So, I managed to get through the rest of the day with a minimum of smack-talk to myself, which was really nice.
I DID exercise today! Whoo hoo!! I am quite a bit stronger than I was at the outset of this project, which is encouraging. I impressed the heck out of my daughter when she saw me go into a shoulder stand and hold it. She can't do it at all which was just GREAT!!! I can't quite get my toes to the ground to go into Plow; I had only recently been able to do that a few months ago, and then quit practicing yoga. But, it was still nice to impress my 22 year-old girl!
We need some furniture re-finished before we leave, and were starting with my husband's credenza. He was given a $1000 estimate to sand it, restain it, and varnish it! No way! So, I was, thankfully, able to find someone who will do it for $300!
I also researched moving companies and did NOT like what I found! Virtually all the big names (Allied, Atlas, Mayflower, United, Bekins, etc.) get TERRIBLE reviews! I was getting worried about what I was finding and did a search for moving companies in my state. This brought up a different list with some lesser known companies. Two of these companies got STELLAR reveiws! One of them had 166 reviews, mostly all 5 stars. Another one had some 132 reviews, most of them 5 stars. I called the first one and, they do something curious. They don't come out to personally inspect your possessions, but they go on the information that other companies give you when they come out and, based on those figures, make you a bid. The other company doesn't send anyone out, either, but ask you very specific questions about your large furniture, and put together their bid based on that. With the first one, anyway, their bid is final, and they will not raise it at all. So, I'll be curious to find out more about them. A big national company is coming out tomorrow at 9:00. This was obviously scheduled by my husband, because I am ASLEEP at 9:00!
I was on the phone with one of these smaller companies and she was having me tell her all of the large furniture in our house. About the time I was getting close to being through...her computer dropped the whole thing. I thought that only happened to me! So now, I've got to send her an email detailing our big furniture because I didn't want to do all of that again. I really don't think this is going to work because I have TONS of stuff in the basement! My husband has a woodworking shop down there, I have all sorts of stuff, including about 16 boxes of Christmas decorations. So, how am I going to tell her about all of that?? Well ... I just made a decision. I'm not. I'm going to email her and tell her that it's impossible unless they send someone out, and if they can't do that then I will prefer to use someone else. And, that makes my evening shorter! Which is good because, it's a bit after 11:00 pm and I am, once again, really sleepy. This is so cool!
I am happy to report that my bathroom is completely ready to be packed up. I have finished going through every single thing in it and weeded out tons of stuff. I am still making headway on my desk and hope to finish going through the files tomorrow. I spent some time this evening typing up a bunch of information I have from researching ceiling fans for our outdoor veranda. My husband would never pay the money for them, but maybe hers will! We host a lot of events on it, so ceiling fans are really needed. At this point we rent three of those huge upright fans that are used in gyms! They are noisy and blow everyone's hair around unless you point them up toward the ceiling. I had a folder full of information, so I went through it and figured it out again and typed it up succinctly. My husband would say it was a waste of time, and he may be right, but I did it anyway.
I got some more work done on my credenza, also. One shelf has three baskets holding a lot of things. I completely got through two of these baskets and most of the third. In one of the baskets I found the entire file folder containing a large article I wrote sometime back. There are two versions of the article in the file, and I was happy to find them all. It was about to be accepted by a major Christian magazine when ... they suddenly WENT OUT OF BUSINESS!!! I received an email from the editor saying she was looking forward to offering it to her readers, but wanted me to double check what scholars said about some doctrinal points I was making on some little-used verses in Hebrews and 1 Peter. Then, the next email said they were closing down in the face of the recession. It discouraged me so badly!! Maybe I'll read over it again and see if there is a magazine I could place it with. I'd LOVE to be in Christianity Today! (Dream big, right??)
I did not run errands today, which is probably why I had a good day! Not a single one. I MUST do so tomorrow, though, because I'm about to run out of dog food! And human food also.
I ate well today, even though we went to Olive Garden! I had no bread, no croutons, and got the tilapia with shrimp on top and broccoli and a side of gluten-free pasta. And, I'm now HUNGRY! I think I'll be making a run downstairs to toast a gluten-free English muffin. These Glutino products are really good!
I did not do anything about finding an endocrinologist or a rheumatologist, though I did get out my cardiologist's phone number and wrote it down, along with the name of her assistant to call. But ... it was around lunchtime, so I figured they would not be in, and then I just completely forgot about it.
I came across an 8x11 picture of my father in black and white. It looks like it was taken not too long before he died. He looks miserable. It's the look he had on his face most of the time because of my mom. He looks so very sad and unhealthy. I keep a snapshot of him on my desk taken at work that caught him smiling big at someone and looking like he was about to start laughing. There aren't very many pictures of him. He died when I was 26, and before I appreciated the sacrifice he made in staying with us. He was going to move out at one point when I was around 5 and took me off in the car to tell me. I went into hysterical crying, begging him to please, please not leave. He finally agreed to stay, and I watched the tiny gleam of hope that was in his eye die. It breaks my heart now that he stayed because of me and lost his chance of some happiness. If he had moved out, even temporarily, he might have gained some control over my mother's behavior. But by giving in and staying I think he lost all chance of that. I do know that the abuse at home would have gotten WAAAAAY worse! And I think I would have had a complete collapse if he had left. But now, as an adult, I see it differently and realize how much strength it took for him to stay.
I haven't chewed on my nails or cuticles since I said I wouldn't. I've given up on making juices after that one thing that was SO AMAZINGLY awful.
I had the joints of two of my fingers on my right hand come out of joint this evening while we were at the restaurant. It hurt so badly! One of them went back into joint pretty quickly, but the other one is still out and quite painful. You can feel the big lump of bone where the knuckle juts out. I hope it slips back in place during the night.
Tomorrow won't be much fun. These are the errands I have to do:
dry cleaning
alterations shop
grocery store
Ulta
Dillards
drop off things at a thrift store
UPS store
post office
I'm looking at four hours at the very least. And I want so BAD to keep working in my office! That little bit of obsessive/compulsive nature I have has clicked into gear.
Waking up is not being as awful as it was there for a while. It still takes me about an hour to wake up and make the final decision to get out of bed. But, even still, it's better than it was.
Oh, I had an interesting bit with my counselor yesterday that I forgot to mention. We were talking about my concerns about our move, and my hopes that everything was going to be great. She talked about how I was going to handle moving away from my kids (28 and 23 ... not kids age-wise, but kids maturity-wise) and asked how I was going to feel about that. I said that I thought that I would probably be wracked with feelings of guilt. She, of course, asked why and I said just because I'm the mother and I'm always supposed to be there for them. But I'm not. I'm moving away from them. So, we talked about that some, and I mentioned how I blossomed when I moved to a town away from my mother back when I was in my twenties. She gave me a different perspective to look at this from. I blossomed when I got away from my mother; and she said that, even though I haven't been an awful parent like mom, that still, my moving away gives them the space to blossom on their own in a way that they might not if we were staying here.
Pretty interesting. I think the only one who feels like I will be abandoning them is me.
Well, I'm off for my Glutino English muffin and then bed. Tomorrow the main thing will be deciding whether to run errands first or work on my desk first... and where to work in exercising. I DON'T WANT TO GO TO THE Y! Not yet. Maybe next week? Well, have a great evening, and let's keep striving to improve our lives in the multiplicity of ways we are trying.
Cheers!
Lisa
No comments:
Post a Comment