The good, the bad, and the just plain ugly of being an emotional sponge.

Here's the Story of the Day: Ghosts of the Past I'd probably have more trouble with the ghosts of the past, she said, if my memory wasn't shot to hell.

One of my hubby's Alabama cousins introduced me to StoryPeople. Whimsical, odd little things like the above arrive in my email daily. I love them.

If I were writing for them, I'd write one about myself that went something like this:

Being far too emotionally driven to be of

use in the real world, she has decided to

reside in a fantasy world where she wears

flowing skirts and is thin.

For this to make sense to anyone but me, I should tell you what I mean by being an emotional sponge, which is how I see myself. I seem to absorb the emotion of those around me, soaking up their anxiety, anger, depression, whatever. I then seem to internalize it, feel it, take it in personally, which then causes stress which makes my body hurt.

The "just plain ugly" of the above:

    *Pain, the fibromyalgia pain that reigns supreme in my body when I get too stressed. Let's face it, pain of any kind is just plain ugly!

The "bad":

     *I can't really watch the news or those Cops type shows. Sad humanity burns to my soul. As does sad-animal-kingdom. (Weirdly though, I'm so fascinated by Hoarder shows that I can watch that particular sad-humanity-sad-animal stuff. And the animals always get taken care of.)

    *I'm very susceptible to having my emotions put through the wringer. I give you as examples, the AT&T phone company commercials on the "Reach out and touch" theme that ran during my pregnancy with my daughter (seriously, so touching, people reuniting...grandchildren calling.... *SOB*) and movies/books/tv shows can cause me serious emotional trauma. For instance, Grey's Anatomy. I was done with the show after sobbing my way through the last part of the first season. And don't even get me started on that French novel, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" we read for bookclub.

The "good":

    *I can be pretty caring and compassionate.

    It makes me a good nurturer, and being a foster mom to drug-affected babies suited me well those ten years, and I love being a mom!

    *I like most people and enjoy talking to strangers in stores, and love knowing people's stories.

    *If I ask you how you're doing, I actually want to know.

So I guess like most of life, it has its good points and bad points. I'm glad it occurred to me to write this post since all I was seeing was the negative side, but now I've reminded myself of the good. So I guess I just need to be willing to wade through the bad and the ugly to get to the lovely land of the good. 

Skimmer's Recap: Note to self: buy yourself some rubber boots and just keep moving.

   

 



Life by the Numbers.

< imagine funny cartoon about numbers here because

 i couldn't find one. numbers just aren't that funny. >

I've long had a love/hate relationship with numbers. I don't love math, but I love that my birthday is 9/9. I was a giggling (old) girl about my 09/09/09 birthday. People just looked at me when I mentioned it with that half smile/half quizzical "not sure what you want me to say" expression.

 My British son-in-law and I have spent an exceeding (Brit-word alert!) amount of time during the birth of each of his children trying to add up the date numbers to come out as an even number (his favorite) or odd (mine.)

 I can remember important points in my life by the number of my weight at the time: my wedding (down 20 because of my nerves,) or just before the birth of my daughter (roughly the size, shape and weight of a dirigible.)

And driver's licenses. How many lies have I told filling out that form over the years? I've always tried to stay in the believable ballpark, not wanting to risk the raised eyebrow of the store clerk reading my I.D.

And there have been more numbers since December, since I've been using MyFitnessPal.com to count calories. I've learned things that cause my blood to run cold, like the calorie count of a Costco cookie (230) or Costco's Cinnabons (over 500, for cryin' in a bucket!) And I've learned just how much time I need to spend on the treadmill to warrant having that super buttery, yummy pasta dish my daughter Cori makes (a lot. But so worth it.)

SO: between my Year Of The Gym and starting MyFitnessPal, I've lost enough weight that, get this, I WEIGH LESS THAN THE NUMBER ON MY DRIVER'S LICENSE! I hate to say it, but this is probably the first time. Ever.

I'll probably never turn into someone who does Trigonometry for fun, but I'm definitely feelin' a little more love for the numbers these days.


Skimmer's Recap: For once in my life my license weight is a lie. In a good way. (Thanks, Sabrina, for introducing me to MFP.)

Trying to leave Overwhelmed Lane.

borrowed from LOL Zombie
http://lolzombie.com/2551/get-er-done-with-jesus/

What did I used to tell my kids when they needed to do a project that seemed overwhelming? Break it down.

Like I mentioned in my last post, I'm feeling mired in the Land of Too Much Information, stalled out on Overwhelmed Lane. What did I do yesterday? Let myself hunker down to picnic on aforementioned lane. What did I do today? Assessed my options, which seemed to me to be 1) let myself run screaming into the night, or 2) follow my own advice. Being chronically fatigued and inherently lazy made option 1, while appealing, seem like much too much effort, so I chose option 2.

Faced with too many supplements and medications at too many different times, I made myself a chart. I suppose I could take a page from my preschool teacher daughter and make a sticker chart where for every time I got the right pills taken at the proper time I get to put on a sticker of my choice. (This worked well to potty-train said preschool teacher daughter as well.) But instead I stuck with making the chart in pretty colors, something like this:

So now all I need to do is get about a half-dozen more of those old-lady-weekly-pill-holders, fill it, and I'm set! Oh, and then remember to take them!

Skimmer's Recap: Sometimes it's just baby steps, yunno?

Fibromyalgia and My Baby Steps Toward Physical Health.

This is what surrounds me at the gym as I step on the treadmill.

from f80-treadmill.org

Slender, long-legged women casually step onto the treadmills on either side of me, put their headphones on, crank up the speed and start running. RUNNING, i said.

i smile vaguely into the middle distance, pulling my belly in, and act as if i am not breaking into a slight mist from walking.

But it's baby steps that will get me there.

"There" is this mystical place in my future where i don't puff along at 3 miles an hour, where i can easily bend to tie my shoe, where i don't see my next decade painted in fibromyalgic shades of pain and fatigue.

i have a trainer. She tells me, "Baby steps. We will take baby steps." i work to do 8 repetitions of simple floor exercises. The first day of training my body loudly informs me that 10 repetitions will set the fibro beast in motion. So we do 8. There's a certain point when my body tells me I Am Done. The muscle fatigue sets in like the fangs of an angry dog, far different from the regular pain of exercised muscles. So we take 8 baby steps.

Three times a week i go to the gym. It's been three weeks now. One day with the trainer, two more days to repeat the exercises and walk on the treadmill next to the Looks Awesome In Spandex crowd. So far i don't listen to music while i walk, instead i people watch, think, pray, and check my heart rate--repeatedly.

Today i noticed on the heart rate zone graph on the treadmill that i am training at the rates for a 70 year old. But that's okay, baby steps. Perhaps before i turn 60 in three years i will be able to train at the rate for a 65 year old.

i think i'm doing this for good reasons this time. i have no illusions that i will again look like i did at 21. i'm not pre-buying a wardrobe 6 sizes smaller. i am aiming for flexibility and strength and energy, things i've lost to this disorder. i had thought i might somehow make peace with my fibromyalgia, but even if i never do, perhaps i can at least learn to smile vaguely into the middle distance when i see it, and just keep walking.


Skimmer's Recap: Feeling fed up with fibromyalgia, julie subjects herself and others to talk of treadmills and spandex.

Everything i needed to learn about life, i learned from playing Snood.

Okay, well maybe not entirely--but i do love Snood! And while in my Happy Snood Place one day, it occurred to me, there are lessons to be learned...

For instance, the lesson of Do-Overs. If i try and fail, i can hit "R" and replay that same game until i get it right! But sometimes i'm just bashing my head against the wall, so, life lesson wise? Persistence is good. Trying again is good. Unless you realize what you're trying to do is pretty much a useless venture. Then cashing it in and trying something else is good. Or as Dr. Phil would say to someone's futile attempts at control etc: "And how's that workin' for ya?" That takes us to the lesson of Plan-B.

Plan-B says, my personal stubbornness is not always going to pay off--sometimes i need to learn when to walk away. That could be because i'm trying to change something that isn't really mine to change, or it could be because i'm being stubborn just to be right. Like being too stubborn to say "sorry." or maybe what i'm so stubbornly trying to do just isn't really part of my personal set of talents or skills. So maybe i should ReThink rather than Replay. Try a New Game rather than keep beating the old one to death.

There's also the law of consequences--in Snood, take a bad shot, stuff piles up, and then BAM. Game over. BUT--you can press "M" and call up a Mulligan. This will allow you to take as many shots over as you'd like in that game--but if you do win the game by using a Mulligan, you get a big Cheesy icon by your score, indicating your cheesily assisted win. This is akin to "Milli Vanilli's" musical talents, not quite a genuine "win." So, the life lesson of the consequences of our decision making--will my "success" be worth it if i take a shortcut? Okay, so maybe for a while i'll have the hot groupies and the tv appearances, but wait till they find out i'm only lip-syncing.

Well, i'd love to go on rambling about Snood, but i think i'm going to go play a few games now and see if i can get enough honest wins to get rid of that cheese icon by one of my scores.