A Fresh Start?

I don't know if it's the birthday, the beginning of summer, three weeks of using the Intuitive Eating hypnosis CD, my PCOS medication kicking in or any combination thereof, but this week I've finally, after months and months, felt like trying to try again to become a normal eater. For the past three days I've done my best to be more conscious about my eating, as well as catching up and reviewing IE material online. So far, so good.

It could just be that I've hit rock bottom, too, and there doesn't appear to be anywhere to go but up. The past few months have been a process of realization for me. Mostly that for the past year I had simply given up and didn't care anymore -- about tackling my eating issues or even working on non-food issues. Let's face it -- I didn't care about anything, including myself. Call it depression, a breakdown, whatever; but it has definitely been an emotional, physical and spiritual trough that has left me feeling pretty lousy about myself. I have realized that this is something that isn't going away and I have to cope with for the rest of my life, just like if I was diabetic, had cancer, you name it. I will always have a tendency for depression, and I will always have to be aware that food is my biggest form of self-medication.

Maybe this is all part of a process of metamorphosis for me. Perhaps this past year has been an incubation period, and if I'm lucky, I'll break free from this cocoon I've been in and emerge as a butterfly and not a gypsy moth. I know in my IE reading it's been stated that becoming a normal eater takes time -- even years -- until one is finally free of the old diet mentality or disordered thoughts about food and emotions and the new rational beliefs become ingrained. And in many of the cases I've read about there have been periods where there is a gaining and free-for-all period before reaching a saner, more intuitive state.

I know, it's only been three days, and in the past few months I've had a week here and there of "clarity," only to fall back into my old ways again. But like emerging from that cocoon, it takes work and effort to break through, and I'm beginning to accept the fact that this is going to be a long process. In fact, I may have to work at this for the rest of my life. But I have to remember that working towards something is better than giving up and doing nothing.

By the way, I never mentioned here that after a few weeks, my neck/arm pain has pretty much gone away. Again, it's something I'm going to have to continue to keep an eye on, but for now, thank goodness, I'm not in pain.

You Live in a Zoo...

Yes, today is the day of my birth. Long long ago, longer ago than seems possible, I entered life around 6:50 a.m. EDT. Maybe that's why I'm such a morning person now.

I think I'll take this day to reflect on others who share my special day.

Garfield the cartoon strip began on this day, and so it's the cat's birthday, too. As a kid I always used to think it was cool to share this day with Garfield -- he was very popular at the time. My sister in particular really liked the cartoon and had books of the strips. At one point my mom named one of our dogs Odie after the canine that shares his home, and one of my best friend's nickname is Nermi, Garfield's sickeningly cute nemesis. I have to admit I haven't been that thrilled with the recent Garfield movies, and while the idea of the Garfield ride at Kennywood Park is nice, the ride is woefully antiquated and could use some major upgrades.


Later on I discovered that Ann Wilson of Heart also shares my birthday. I've discussed before how I've felt a kind of affinity for Ann and have found several similarities in our lives (other than her being a massively talented musician and incredible vocalist, while I'm definitely NOT). We both have sisters who are blonde, we both have adopted children, and we both have struggled with our weight. Oh yeah, we're both huge Led Zeppelin fans, too! In the one instance in my life that I got hit on by a woman at a bar I was told I looked like Ann. While the incident freaked me out a little bit, I was in the end complimented immensely by the comparison. I always felt bad in the 80s when the video directors turned her sister into a sex symbol while Ann was relegated to close-up face shots in near darkness because she didn't meet the skinny rock slut standards. (Not that Nancy is a skinny rock slut, either! I think she's great, too). But I'm glad that Ann has continued to perform and look great, no matter what her size.


Other famous people who share my birthday are Nancy Marchand (Tony Soprano's mother and Lou Grant's publisher), author Salman Rushdie, Stooge Moe Howard, Serial Mom Kathleen Turner, baseball legend Lou Gherig, Wallis Simpson, who led King Edward VIII to give up the British crown, amongst others. Phylicia Rashad is one of them, but I have to say that fact always makes me cringe, because I always detested her character as Mrs. Huxtable on The Cosby Show. I realize TV is not reality and she is probably nothing like the character she portrayed, but I guess I'm petty and superficial. And as for Paula Abdul, who's also celebrating today, I don't know what the **** is up with her!

In history, today had some highs and lows. The Rosenbergs were executed for treason; slavery was outlawed in the U.S.; Father's Day was first celebrated; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved; and the F.C.C. was created.

As for my personal history, yesterday two of my girlfriends took me out for Mexican (yea strawberry margaritas!), today I'm at work, but tonight my husband and daughter are taking me out for sushi (yea California roll!). And tomorrow night we'll have cake after watching my daughter's performance in "The Princess and the Pea" as Bride #2. I can't wait!

Puzzled

mabel

I am so hooked on puzzles right now. I know, it's feeding into my OCD tendencies big time, but there are times it keeps me from overeating, so I guess it's a positive.

Will write more soon. I swear.

Adventures in Boredom

Remember yesterday when I said how quick and easy it was to get Mabel x-rayed and splinted at the ER? Well, I wish it had been that fast at the orthopedic doctor's office. It took TWO AND HALF HOURS for her to be seen and get a cast on her arm. I think 40 minutes was spent in the waiting room, another 15 minutes waiting in the exam room for the doctor. We saw her for 5 to 10 minutes, then had to wait another 45 minutes in the exam room for the physician's assistant to get to us to cast her. This took the rest of the 2 1/2 hours.

My wonderful daughter did manage to entertain us with her antics. In the waiting room she was writhing in agony over her boredom. I asked her why she didn't bring her Nintendo DS along, and her reply was fast and mumbled (as usual), and I was sure she replied, "I wanted Lucky Charms but they died." This made us all laugh, and Hubby and I went on to ask her if it was the green pots of gold or the blue moons that actually died. In truth, she forgot to charge her DS, and that's what was dead.

During the interminably long wait in the exam room, Mabel was continuing her roller coaster ride of giggles, whining, mock crying, then back to the giggles again in this bizarre cycle of mood swings. During one of the whiny periods she asked us, "Do I have to go to Camp Aldo Nova?", referring to our unusually-named church camp (and it doesn't even remotely sound like Aldo Nova, by the way!). Hubby and I looked at each other and burst out laughing, both bursting into scary renditions of "Fantasy." This definitely helped relieve the drudgery of sitting there in the empty vacuum of a doctor's office.

But we finally got the heck out of there and manged to get back to our hometown just as the rain began, dampening our opportunity to go to our local volunteer fire department's carnival/block party. This has been a tradition in our town for generations, and every kid in the area looks forward to the week of rides, games, cotton candy, funnel cakes and candy apples. The adults play Bingo, eat hamburgers and hot dogs in our hometown bakery's rolls that everyone adores, and moan over how much money their kids beg them for to play "just one more game." We managed to get our supper and dessert, but it was too wet to ride, and we didn't really want Mabel out in the rain with her new cast. She was bummed, but I promised to take her later in the week. Hopefully the weather forecast will improve for us. But rain on Block Party week is pretty much tradition in these parts, too.

I must say the last two days my neck/shoulder/arm issue has been much better. There's still a little pain and ache there, but vastly improved from a week ago. Maybe I'm on the mend. Let's hope so.

Hand Out

I am not the only one in the house who is having physical problems right now. This past Thursday, the next-to-last day of school, my daughter (who I've referred to as Mabel in the past) broke her hand at the school carnival. She was trying to soak her teacher in the dunking booth and hit the target with the ball, but not hard enough to activate the dunker. The rule was that if this happened, the kids were allowed to go up and hit the target with their hand.

I'm assuming the apparatus was something like this image at right, because from what I've been told, once she hit the target with her hand, it sprang back and smashed the back of her hand. In typical drama queen fashion, I'm told she fell to the ground (which for 24 hours both the school nurse and I thought was the only thing that happened), then leapt up and gave the Ronnie James Dio rock 'n roll hand (with the uninjured hand) and yelled, "I'm alright!"

But she wasn't. She went to the nurse, gave one of her indecipherable explanations that make adults' heads spin, and got an ice pack. She came home, gave me a similarly convoluted tale, so I continued the ice packs and Ibuprofen. She didn't complain of a lot of pain, and the hand wasn't discolored, but I started to worry the next morning when the swelling didn't seem to be going down. It was the last day of school, and they only stayed for two hours, so I sent her with a note for the teacher to send her back to the school nurse for her second opinion. Once my daughter returned to the nurse she finally gave the full story of the killer dunking booth, so she called me and let me know, and it was pretty obvious that I needed to get this looked at.

I called the orthopedic doctor we went to three years ago when, again, on the last day of school, we took our Danger Prone Daphne there to cast a broken leg. Like me, we once again dealt with the medical rural community; no one who could cast her would be in the office until Tuesday. So when Mabel got off the bus we got in the vehicle and went to the ER. The good thing about rural medicine is that our emergency rooms tend to be pretty quiet, especially during the day. So we had a very short wait (probably shorter than most doctors' offices) and got right in to get x-rayed. Sure enough, there's a broken bone in the center of her hand, the bone below the middle finger. They put a splint on her hand and forearm and put it in a sling, and we were out of there in about an hour. Not bad.

Here's the cute 9 year-old part: At first Mabel didn't know what a splint was and was really scared about it. Once it was explained to her, she calmed down, but then asked me if she could get a splinter from a splint. Then, after we got the diagnosis and the nurse went off to get the supplies, Mabel turned to me and said, "I bet I'm gonna' get a slingshot!" At first I didn't know what she meant, but then of course I figured out she meant sling. When her daddy showed up at the end of the procedure she proudly showed him her "splinter in her slingshot."

Of course, we still have to get it casted, and that happens this afternoon. I think my daughter was born shot out of a cannon, and it's been incredibly difficult these past few days to keep her from leaping about, balancing on curbs, crawling into our Suburban through the window. We keep explaining to her that she needs to be careful until we can get her hand in the cast, but she can't seem to control her unending energy. It's also a major bummer because now she can't do her gymnastics, which she is so good at, and now she's going to fall behind, especially with her upper body strength. Besides that, she can't play piano, ride her bike or roller blade. If she's lucky she'll get a waterproof cast, or else she can't go swimming, either. What a way to start summer vacation.

So in a way we're having some mother-daughter bonding with our bum arms. One thing we can do is walk, and since we are both participating in a 5k walk June 14, I've been taking her out to train by walking around town. We're up to 2 miles now, and I have to say I'm a little surprised that her stamina isn't better. This child works out hard at gymnastics 4 to 6 hours a week -- the child has fantastic muscle tone -- but I realize now that the majority of that work is in short, fast bursts. They run laps, but only for a few minutes. She's not used to walking non-stop for 45-50 minutes straight. So it's definitely a conditioning experience for her, and we also get to talk and experience things together without a television or computer screen in front of us.

What a Pain

Okay, I realize it's been almost a month to the day since I've posted last. I'm not pleased with that, and apologize to those who've posted messages here and I haven't responded right away.

For three and a half weeks I've been dealing with nearly constant pain in my neck, shoulder and arm, with some infrequent tingling in both arms. For those of you who have been with me from the beginning of my blogging life, you'll know about my previous problems in this area, which is fully documented in this old blog entry.

I have tremendous respect for people who deal with permanent chronic pain, because these past three weeks have been tough. I rarely get through a full night's sleep without waking up with my shoulder and arm in agony.

You may wonder if I'm getting this treated. Almost two weeks ago I called my surgeon, but it right before Memorial Day and he was away. To add to it, he is based out of Pittsburgh and only visits our Podunk little area once a week. But the nurse knew me from my previous visits there and took my health insurance information. The hope was that we could get an MRI scheduled and the doctor could have it on hand when I have my appointment. Well, because MRIs are so expensive, my health insurance won't approve it until they receive doctor's "notes." So now I have to wait until June 23 to even see the guy so he can write something up, THEN wait for approval from the health insurance, then get the MRI scheduled, have it done, then wait God knows how long to get another appointment with the doctor!

So in the meantime I'm popping Ibuprofen, trying to do the stretching exercises I learned in physical therapy last time, and icing the shoulder down. I did heat at first, which turned out to be a mistake, because while it felt good at first, it seemed to make the area even more inflamed later, and seemed to be causing the excruciating pain I was having at night. The cold treatment has cut that down greatly, thank goodness. It's still not gone, though. Sleeping involves a complicated operation of body and pillow positioning that still never gives me a completely pain-free night.

On the bright side, I really think the Clearing Emotional Blocks hypnosis CD I started last month has kept me sane through all of this. My irritability and frustration has been quite low, and I can only attribute my level of tolerance and calm to that half an hour I spend every night listening to the CD and relaxing my body while listening to those positive, affirmative statements and suggestions.

In fact, I truly believe the CD has helped me throughout my life. I'm much more patient with my family, which I'm really glad about because I didn't like how frazzled I would get in the mornings trying to get my daughter despite her lack of organization and tiny attention span. I feel calmer throughout the day and have found it easier to speak my mind in a calm, confident way. I have had a goodly number of stresses in my life right now -- I'll get to some here when I can -- and I'm amazed that I've been able to handle them as well as I have.

Now that my first month is over, I'm now beginning a month of the second CD, Intuitive Eating for Weight Release. I'm really hoping the CD will help me as much as the first one has.