Re-Inventing Myself

I go for long periods of time not blogging these days. I'm struggling with my anxiety monsters a lot, and my diabetes is raging out of control. There are a lot of changes on the horizon for me and that's never easy. And as always, I struggle with a lot of the same issues every day. Major clutter. Weight issues. Trouble with food. Trouble with managing my life in general.


Sometimes I get so down in the dumps about it all that the only thing I think I can do is re-invent myself. I'll start a new blog somewhere, writing about my life! I'll get it all together THIS TIME, and I'll keep it anonymous until I have it all together, then I'll re-emerge like a glorious phoenix out of the ashes of my current miserable, decrepit existence!

This time the 'new' blog was going to be called "Small House, Big Life" and was going to be all about my BIG struggles and BIG dreams locked away in a tiny space, fighting to get free. That doesn't sound familiar at all, does it?? And I might have even started it too if someone hadn't already claimed the name on blogger.

As I was sitting there staring at my Google search results and thinking of similar alternate names for the 'new me', I realized that my OLD blog is still me too. That just because a bunch of people know about this blog, doesn't make me any less able to make the changes I want. It doesn't mean I will, and it doesn't mean I won't. That's up to me. It's NOT up to whether I blog about it or not. And if I blog about it and people read it and it takes a long time to happen, it doesn't make me a failure. As long as I persevere I will get there eventually.

Sometimes I just get so ashamed of everyone watching me go in circles again and again.

But like the old adage says, 'wherever you go, there you are'. Hiding in a different corner of the internet won't make me change any faster.

And as long as I keep trying and keep fighting, I shouldn't be ashamed.

My Girl Likes To Party All The Time, Party All The ZZZZZzzzzzz....

I have been nothing short of exhausted lately. Bone-tired, brain completely fried kind of tired. It just seems to keep getting worse, it's interfering with my ability to get anything other than 'basic tasks of the day' done (I do manage a few extras here and there, like the monster cake pops I made for my son's class the other day, but it's with extreme effort and sheer force of will).

There ain't no second chance against the thing with 40 eyes, girl.

What's the reason? I'm not entirely sure but I really think it's lack of quality sleep, and I think there are several things that have been affecting this. (Which makes it much harder to fix!)

Problem #1: My teeth hurt, and they tend to hurt more at night for some reason.
Solution: I get my permanent crown on February 4th, and I'm hoping that will fix this issue. In the meantime, I am turning to drugs. Advil manages to work most of the time, but usually when the pain gets worse the Advil doesn't help or it wears off in the middle of the night and the pain wakes me up, thus interrupting my sleep. I took Advil PM a couple times but we're out of that now, and we do have some Codeine left still. The problem with the drowsy drugs is that it's hard for me to wake up in the mornings, which I need to do in order to take care of my family. This leads to...

Problem #2: I am not a morning person. Even in the face of sheer exhaustion, as soon as the sun sets I am wide awake, and find it hard to go to bed or fall asleep any earlier than midnight. I have school-age kids so we're up early to get off to school five days a week, and don't usually get to sleep in TOO late on weekends either.
Solution: Go to bed earlier? Yeah, not gonna happen. I've tried this off and on my whole life. My body is just programmed to be up at night. I can't seem to help it. And I ENJOY it. I just don't enjoy the 'getting up in the mornings' part. It would be easier if the world would just start conforming to my schedule. I know I'm not the only night owl out there.

Problem #3: We recently moved into the basement and have been sleeping on the futon down there. It's a fairly decent futon mattress, but it's not the most comfortable thing in the world and I don't feel that I'm sleeping very well on it at all. Not only have I been increasingly more exhausted every day since we moved down there, but I also wake up every day with a new ache somewhere in my body. Back, shoulders, and neck seem to be the most affected. I'm pretty sure that this 'bed' is not at all good for me.
Solution: We've talked about several options, ranging from getting a new mattress to getting a foam memory topper. None of them are particularly cheap, and while some aren't terribly expensive either, we still have to save up for them. I'm starting to be so tired that I kind of just don't care though and am almost willing to just charge it. Which we're trying not to do, but when you're tired and delirious you don't always make the best decisions.

Problem #4: We just got two kittens. Nighttime is playtime! Wheeeee! They run over us, they jump, the mock fight and growl, they wake us up for petting and purring and love, they roll around in the (dry) bathtub and clunk into things. It's ridiculously adorable, but it also wakes us up about 50 times a night.
Solution: Kinda just have to wait this one out, I think. Eventually they'll grow out of it, and they'll be used to the house and the dogs enough where we will be willing to leave the door open and let them roam all over the place while we sleep. Right now, we just have to put up with this one. It's like having a baby, only instead of needing to feed it or change it, it runs all over the place and makes a bunch of noise.

We are wine botttleesssss!

I think the bed is the biggest problem. Being uncomfortable all night long, every night, is awful. So I think I will focus on solving that problem this weekend and see what a difference it makes. Because I'm really having trouble functioning lately. And I can't spend the rest of my life sitting around like a zombie, watching reruns of Roseanne.

But hey, I got new glasses, and I think they're pretty spiffy. So life's not all bad.

living free

It has been a while since I posted, and I had some posts I wanted to write. Posts about BlogHer, about the Ford Ride 'N Drive event, about my new blog, about other things. This post is not about any of those topics.

Some things have been going on in the lives of people around me lately, and subsequently in my own life, that have me thinking an awful lot about change. These events, coupled with an extreme lack of ability to FOCUS (which I don't believe is related but who knows), have really pressed home that I need a drastic change in my life. Maybe more than one. Because for whatever reason, I'm unhappy. And it's affecting all of the areas in my life right now.

Longtime blog readers will know that I have three areas in my life that provide me with no end of frustration: my cluttered home, my weight, and my finances. All of them, I believe, being somewhat intertwined. If I can only suss out the reasons for my failures in this area and solve those problems, move past them, I feel I can go on to achieve all the dreams I have.

One common thread that runs through my dreams is that I want to live a life rich in EXPERIENCES. Very few of these dreams revolve around STUFF. Arguably, the only one that does is my dream of owning and operating my Not House On The Rock house one day - and even that could be considered an experience.

The stuff I collect around me is just that: STUFF. It's not really a collection, per se. There's no structure to it, no organization. It's just things I've acquired over 30 years of living with which I cannot, for some reason, bear to part.

Except more and more lately, I CAN bear to part with them. I have been. I continue to do so. Sometimes I have a radical dream of selling everything I own on ebay and going on to live a stuff-free life. Mostly this dream scares the hell out of me, for reasons I cannot entirely define. (If I COULD, I probably wouldn't have all the stuff to begin with.) But more and more lately, the dream thrills me. Titillates me like a secret lover, whispering seductively to me from the darkness. 'Go on,' it says. 'Sell your things. Get rid of them. Effect change in your life. Move on. Let go. Achieve your dreams.'

The doubtful, clingy part of me resists moving on to what might be a new joyous phase in my life. What if I need those things one day? What if I miss them? What about the memories attached to them?

The voice whispers to me that this could just be the defining factor in my life. That I might just be able to accomplish some of my biggest dreams right now if I did this one thing. I might be able to pay off a bunch of debt if I did this. I might feel freer, more creative, less confined. I might be able to WRITE. I might be able to breathe in my own home. I might be happier. I might be able to move to a bigger house in a better neighborhood. I might accomplish all of these things and more if I just give up on the things that are holding me back.

Is selling off the pieces of my life the right thing to do? Will it help me move on to bigger and better things? Will I feel freer? Will I BE freer? Will I be able to accomplish my dreams?

I don't know the answers to these questions. But the idea that the answer might be YES fills me with hope for the first time in a while.

A life that is, for a while, empty of (most) possessions, but full of experience. A life worth living.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I have been stuck in a bit of a rut these past couple weeks, since returning from vacation. Everything in the house around me is a mess and I can't seem to get up the motivation to tackle it. On the days I work, I get home and take care of the kids and I am exhausted. I barely feel like making dinner, let alone tackling chores. On my off days, obviously we've done some social things but I've had time to clean and tackle projects too, I'll be honest. I just haven't, for the most part.

The much-anticipated garage sale is this weekend and, while I know it's going to be something of a hassle and I still have much to do in order to prepare for it, I am really looking forward to just getting a bunch of that stuff OUT of my house.

Sometimes I get stuck in these ruts, you see, and I've spent many hours thinking about WHY and also thinking about how to get out of them, or stop them from happening. Here's my theories so far:

1) I become overwhelmed by the mess and clutter around me and I find it really hard to function. (Seriously, sometimes I just sit there and stare at the room I'm in and think that I have to get up and tackle it, but I know there's a bunch of other stuff I need to get done too, and I can't even mentally get to the point where I can make a to-do list because I can't get over the fact that I need to organize my space first, and my brain sort of explodes from trying to deal with it all, and I end up doing nothing but sitting and staring at the mess.)

2) Lack of energy and/or a general feeling of slight illness / sluggishness. Sometimes this is my blood sugar, sometimes not. (I'm diabetic.) And I contribute THIS to: lack of exercise, not eating right, not getting enough sleep.

Those are the things I believe are at the roots of these occasional slumps; it seems when all of those factors are on the 'bad' side, nothing gets done. If I'm doing better in even one of those areas, I generally feel better and can get more done. And of course, the better I'm doing in all of those areas, the more functional and efficient I am.

None of this should really be surprising information to anyone. Especially item two; that's kind of basic biology. I'm writing about it because sometimes I feel like I struggle with staying on the 'up' side of these factors more than most people do. Or when I catch myself on the 'down' side, doing negative things to myself and falling into a slump again, it is sometimes really hard for me to start reversing those trends and get back on the 'up' side. I am also writing this because I start individual therapy tonight to work on why some of these things are so difficult for me, and I am working out what I'll be discussing I suppose. Blogging has always been a form of therapy for me, though lately I haven't been all that introspective. I started this blog to share my journey in accomplishing my dreams. As I've mentioned before, I believe I have a number of roadblocks to overcome in order to accomplish all the things I've set out to do. I hold myself back. Figuring out why, and overcoming it all, is the first step in accomplishing those dreams. So I'm trying to be open and honest and share the good, bad and the ugly. Even when it's a less-than-flattering picture of myself.

When I start to feel overwhelmed by something I try to accomplish, often I will set my sights on a particular event: 'once X happens, I'll be able to accomplish Y'. Then my life becomes a waiting game, waiting for X, while I get very little else accomplished. In this case, X=the garage sale and Y=organzing the house again. What's frustrating to me is that I have thought of a number of ways I could work around the garage sale stuff and keep up with areas of the house, but I just haven't, because I'm waiting for X. That's another thing I've got to work on - staying in the present. I still want to plan for the future, but I don't like that I let opportunities pass me by while I wait for the future to be NOW.

My three main roadblocks, as I've mentioned before, are clutter, weight and finances. About the only one I've been any good at ltely is finances. Good in the sense that we've been trying to be much more conscientious about our spending, and I'm still using mint.com and tracking everything and trying to be more mindful of our budget. Unfortunately, we're in a very tight period right now and somehow we still catch ourselves overspending and making things worse from time to time. I'm struggling with this a bit because it's really frustrating and we've just never seemed to find a really good method that works to keep our heads above water for very long, and I don't see us accomplishing our financial goals if we don't stop living paycheck to paycheck. Then I add in extra stress to my mind by trying to come up with ways to make more money, and suddenly I've added about 50 extra projects to my plate, and I'm totally overwhelmed again.

A few months ago when I started this blog I told myself I was going to stop overwhelming myself with projects and just focus on one thing at a time, until I finished it. I did that successfully for a month, maybe a little longer; made a lot of progress on my house. But that was taking too long so I agreed to add in one more project: eating healthy. A few weeks after that, I started letting other things creep back in and before you know it, my project list is huge again.

Perhaps this is partially why I'm in a slump again. I'm trying to do too many things at once, once again. Getting back to the basics really was working for me before. You've seen the videos, and a few folks were even at my house and can testify that it was looking pretty good. I just started to panic because I could see all these others goals of mine flying past me and I get really impatient; I want everything to happen for me NOW. This is why I try to tackle everything at once, because I want it all NOW. But then I try to do it all right away and look what happens - nothing. I accomplish nothing at all.

So perhaps, tonight, we will talk about my impatience and the feeling of panic I get when I see time flying past me and I think about how long it's going to take to get all of these things done, and how I can work on changing that aspect of myself so I really CAN just tackle one thing at a time.

I'm afraid that if I stick to just one thing at a time, I'll get stuck on that one thing and never move past it. Cleaning, for example, is a never-ending thing. Even when I've got it all decluttered, the upkeep is a daily thing. Will I ever have time to keep up with it AND add new projects? Logically I know the answer is yes, at least one day, once it's decluttered and it's become routine. But emotionally, I feel like I'll never be able to juggle more than one thing at a time and I get a little panicked at the idea that even if I accomplish a goal and move on, I'll never be able to keep up with goal one when I'm working on goal two. I know not all goals will require upkeep once they're accomplished, but the main three: clutter, weight, finances - they will all require constant maintenance, for the rest of my life. I worry I won't be able to do it all. I think that's holding me back too.

So there's my introspection for the week. I keep tripping myself up. Here's hoping I can find ways to work past all this.

lead me not into temptation...I can find it just fine by myself.

I'm really ill at ease today. For no good reason (other than that it's sort of a constant feeling that seems to ebb and flow within me), I'm immensely dissatisfied with our finances and our house right now. Both the size of the house AND the clutterfied contents. I'm feeling really jealous of other people today. No one specific, just anyone that has (and can afford) a bigger, cleaner house than I. I'm not even dreaming about McMansions here, right now...what I'd really love is a three bedroom house with just a little more space, a few more rooms. I'd like the bedrooms to be on a separate floor from the living space. I'd like the kids to have their own bedrooms. I'd like to have a dining room that could accommodate a decent sized table so I could tackle a family holiday gathering. I'd like a kitchen with an island, so I had more cooking space. And I'd like a mudroom, or some sort of landing at the door, so we could clean off the dogs when they come in and so we would have some place to store shoes, coats, outdoor gear, etc.

That's my dream right now. And if you've got something like that, I'm feeling a little jealous today. Sorry.

Mostly, right now, I think that I'm really angry at myself for choices I've made in the past.

I have a really hard time with anything I perceive as DEPRIVING myself. A really hard time. And maybe this is what I need therapy for, more than anything, because it is the crux of so many issues in my life. I want ice cream? If I don't get it I'm DEPRIVING myself. I'm going out? If I get water for free instead of that glass of sangria for $8, I'm DEPRIVING myself. One ice cream cone won't hurt. One drink won't hurt. But it's not just one, occasionally. It's one, all the time. One, one, one. All those one's add up. And over time, they've added up to overweight, overcluttered, and over-debted. I do feel like I've made huge strides in fighting this, but I still slip up way too often, and in the meantime it's really frustrating to look at my life and the things I really want and to know that, if I had only learned to control this tendency of mine better, I could HAVE those things now.

Life is all about choices. And I'm not very happy with most of my past ones right now. Past minor / daily choices, that is. Most of my big life choices, like kids and getting married, I'm just fine with. But my daily choices are generally a huge struggle for me, and I keep making ones that are just not helping me get to where I need to be. I break vows I make to myself all the time. I recently vowed that I wouldn't buy any more books for the time being...for an undetermined amount of time, until we're on better financial footing. I have plenty of books. I have plenty of UNREAD books to plow through still. And if I get a hankering for a new book by one of my favorite authors, I should go to the library. I haven't been to the library in ages, and one of the things I wanted to do when I stopped working was to start taking my kids to the library on a regular basis. I haven't done it yet.

Last week my mom asked me to go to the mall with her, just for the hell of it. And of course she wants to go to the bookstore. And I know there are some books I want to read but I tell myself I don't need to buy them, I have plenty I'm reading now, and anyway I can just go to the library when I'm ready to read them. I don't need to buy a book. I'm happy with this decision.
Yet somehow I come out of the bookstore with a book. I see a book by an author I like, and it reminds me he has a book out that I've wanted for a while. So I talk myself into buying it. I do it in stages. I tell myself that if it's a paperback, it'll be OK, because they're cheaper than hardcovers. But then it's only in hardcover and I STILL allow myself to buy it anyway. It's "just ONE book", after all.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. Why I work against myself so frequently. How I can set such defined goals, goals I can envision so strongly I can practically taste them, and still go off the path towards achieving them so many times.

I'm not looking for tears or sympathy. I realize that I have quite a fortunate life and that while I may not have many of the things I want, we do live quite comfortably and do have many things we want, we often have more than we need, and I certainly am NOT deprived. Even if I feel like it sometimes. I KNOW, consciously, that I'm not. I only have to look at the massive amount of things that surround me to understand that I've been quite fortunate over the course of my life. But as I have gotten older, I have come to deeply believe that this STUFF isn't what is important, and that indeed so much of it and the behaviors that have led me to acquire it have been unhealthy and have held me back from the things I REALLY want.

Sometimes it's hard to see when I'm standing in the middle of it, but I look back on a lot of the decluttering I've done and the pictures and videos I've taken and I believe that I do have a problem with hoarding. I may not be as bad as some people (as in the past, when I've congratulated myself on not having boxes and stacks piled to the ceiling like SOME PEOPLE do)...but that doesn't mean I don't have a problem.

I think, even without ever getting any kind of therapy for this, that I have come a long way on my own with this problem. I have gotten rid of so much stuff. And if you could see the sheer amount of stuff I'm planning on unloading at the garage sale, you'd have to agree that I've made huge strides. Sometimes I even have daydreams about opening up my entire house to a garage sale of sorts and just letting people wander through and make offers on whatever they are interested in. LET IT ALL GO. I now believe that I CAN let it all go.

But the practicality of doing that is still a struggle. I have a hard time letting it go for free, because so much of my money is tied into this STUFF. I am so disgusted at where I let myself get financially that I can't seem to just purge and donate. I have to at least TRY to sell it first. Then there's the sheer overwhelming factor of trying to deal with so much STUFF (and in a small space to boot). And there are objects I'm still tied to emotionally. Though honestly, I've found it much easier to pack away objects for selling. I have a MUCH harder time with paper clutter. Getting rid of paper is a giant struggle for me. So many tasks and so many dreams are, in my mind, tied to all those pieces of paper in my house. I should go home, dump them all, and just start the fuck over. But I can't. Not yet. I've dumped a lot, to my credit. But then I'll find another box of papers from four years ago (or more), and it just keeps growing and growing.

Another factor I struggle with is that the behaviors I've had for so long are so difficult to change. Even if I believe that I don't need to hoard anymore, even if I truly feel that hoarding is bad, I still find myself acquiring things from time to time. Like the book in the aforementioned incident. I did not NEED that book. But at the time I was standing in the bookstore, I 'needed' it.

It's tied to food too. I don't NEED to sit and eat a bunch of popsicles, or a bag of chips, or whatever, while I'm reading. But when I get the urge, sometimes, I 'need' it.

I don't NEED to have a drink when I go out. I don't need anything but water, which is free (most places, anyway). But once I'm out, I feel like I'm depriving myself if I don't just have one, so I do it. And then I kick myself later over the calories AND the money spent.

It seems like the only way to fight this, sometimes, is to not go out at all. If I don't go to the mall, or go on vacation, or go out with my husband, or go out with friends, we'll spend so much less money. I can't order it or buy it if I'm not in the store or restaurant, right?
But then I really AM depriving myself. Depriving myself of the experiences and the company of people I love.

So why can't I manage to have the experience without feeling the need to spend money too?

I'm really having a hard time fighting those impulses. I've managed to tone them down; I don't buy or spend nearly as excessively as I used to. And I suppose I should congratulate myself on baby steps. But I still buy and spend (and eat) more than I WANT to. (In the long term, anyway. Obviously in the short term I have the desire to be doing those things.) How do I reconcile my short-term desires and my long-term desires? How do I fight this battle without feeling so downtrodden and experiencing a form of buyer's / eater's remorse every time I do ANYTHING?

Sometimes those long term desires seem so far away that it's easy to give in to the short term. And then the next day it's like a cloud lifts from my mind, and I see so clearly that what I did the night before just put more distance between me and the long term goal. And it just depresses me.

I'm just trying to work it all out right now. I'm really frustrated by the amount of money we blew in June. I get a little panicky when I look at all the other things we've planned for the summer, and when we talk with friends about making more plans, and all I see are dollar signs. Dollar signs flying out of my pocket, faster than the speed of light.

Clutter, fat, and money. My three biggest roadblocks. All problems caused by the way I've behaved in the past, and ways I continue to behave now. All tied into the same, or a very similar, source somewhere inside me. I keep trying to understand why I behave this. Is understanding why necessary to make a permanent, lasting change? I don't know.

But I think, if I DO decide to pursue therapy for my problem(s), this entry is probably a great thing to print out and just hand to my therapist and session one. Maybe I do need a guide. It's really, really hard trying to change this all by myself.

happy anniversary

I just updated my profile to reflect that OJ and I have been married for five years as of...today. Five years. There have been times I didn't think we'd make it this long. Then again, there have been times where I've envisioned our whole lives together stretching out before us, and five years seems like nothing. It's all a matter of perspective.

It's been a rough five years; one thing I do not recommend to new couples just starting out is to have children immediately. On the one hand, I am thrilled that we had children relatively young and am really looking forward to spending my 'mature' years with grown children. On the other hand, having children changes the dynamic of your relationship, and so much of your daily life, so drastically that I think it's really advisable to spend some time enjoying each other before taking that step, if possible. We didn't do that; I can't say I regret our choices because there has been so much joy in my life in the last five years. But I can say I had no idea, really, what I was getting myself into. I can also say that I think my relationship with my husband is much different than it would have been if we had waited to have children. In many ways, I think it would have been easier. OJ likens marriage to a rock tumbler; we are the rocks, and when we come together at first we scrape each other quite a bit with our sharp edges. Over time, we smooth things out and create grooves for each other and we come to fit together perfectly. Having kids added a couple extra rocks to the tumbler; there were definitely a number of sharp edges and scrapes for a while.

Nowadays? Well, I happen to think OJ and I both started as a couple of really spiny rocks. A lot of those edges are worn smooth, but we still scrape each other occasionally. We've really gotten into the rhythm of the rock tumbler though, and I have really come to appreciate our grooves. And those two little rocks we added so early? Are really beautiful gems.

I've never done things the easy way. I don't know why I would expect my marriage to be any different. But while I can look back and see how it might have BEEN easier...I wouldn't have it any other way. I am really looking forward to what the next five years will bring.

what's the definition of insanity again?

I am that scatterbrained mom who tries SO HARD to be organized, and yet I still fail. Not all the time...I would say I do a fair job of keeping things under control, but it's a huge amount of effort for me. I write lists of routines that I constantly have to revamp because they're overambitious. So I write a new one and basically just change the order of things, but I have difficulty paring back, so the routines REMAIN overambitious...just in a different order. I maintain multiple calendars and try to keep them with me at all times. I make grand plans that hardly ever come to fruition because I try to do too many things at once. I have REALLY GREAT ideas (no, trust me, they're FABULOUS) all the time, but hardly ever manage to act on them because I never manage to make the time, or plan the steps I need to take; if they go anywhere at all, it's on scraps of paper with a basic outline, and then I lose those scraps in the mountains of paper that live in my house.

Today I failed on a small scale. I took my son to Playskool. The problem with that is IT'S GOOD FRIDAY. There IS no Playskool today. So I got there and the parking lot is empty; at that moment the lightbulb went on. Normally I'd just feel a little silly, except that my son loves Playskool, so instead I felt terrible because he was incredibly disappointed. It's also his turn next for Show And Tell, so naturally he was extra excited. "Can't we just make them have Playskool Mommy? PLEASE?"

The glorious thing about Playskool is that it's right across the street from a big park, so even though it's 40 degrees and cloudy and incredibly windy, I took them to the park for half an hour to make up for it. And the glorious thing about kids is they easily forgive and forget.

But me? I'm left feeling like I dropped the ball again. Of the many balls I juggle, this is a small one, true; nevertheless, I live with a constant underlying sense of frustration at the lack of order in my life. I don't know how to get to 'organized'. I think there's a roadblock on that path for me. I haven't figured out how to bust through it yet. I watch shows like Clean House and wish they would come over, or I wish I could take a week's vacation from my job and my kids and my dogs (maybe just during working hours, not necessarily overnights) and get everything in my house decluttered and in order. Maybe if I could achieve it in my house, I could achieve it in my brain and then in my actions.

But that's how I feel about weight loss too...if I could just get to my goal weight, everything would be magically fixed, right?

The picture of me and my life I hold in my head is often drastically different from my reality. I KNOW this and yet I still try to make everything fit the picture far too often.