Mom to the Screaming Masses

4 a.m. Ponderings

Before I begin - a bit of housekeeping. Should you feel the need to leave a comment that is, shall we say, less than kind? Know that I don't read them. The moment I feel a comment going south, I delete. I'm too tired to deal with that any longer. I am. I have been playing with this internet stuff for sixteen years now, working seriously in a corporate capacity for six of it, and my tolerance level for bullshit is just gone. I pay for this space to have a safe space to unload my thoughts and my feelings and my stuff, and just as I pay for my house, I would never let anyone come into my house and take a dump on my sofa. If you don't agree with me, fine. Move it on. Get your own blog and rant and rave on it. You are not welcome here. I've worked too damned hard on me to let you try to take me down. 

Now. Back to me. 

I don't sleep much. (I'm writing this at 4:40, holla.) So I'm often awake, thinking deep and sometimes random thoughts, mostly how I might make different choices in things, how I might have lived my life differently, or remembering times I've embarrassed and humiliated myself - you know, playing back the "best of" reel that runs through some of our minds, ad nauseam. 

One of the thoughts I keep coming back to is that the schooling choice we made, many eons ago - to send the kids to a small, private, PreK-8 Catholic school - may not have been the best one for us. Sure, in some ways, it was the best one for some of the family. It was definitely the best one for one of my kids, and the best one for my husband, who is deeply religious and felt that this was the exact place the family belonged. I did want the small, family based structure that I thought it brought. 

But, for me, I think in the long run it hurt, because it didn't allow me to be me. I tried to fit in, as best as I could, but I didn't belong to any of the groups. I wasn't a "sports" mom, because none of my kids were super athletic - one of my kids was really good at soccer, but having lots of little kids to take care of meant that I wasn't able to devote my time to hanging around the soccer field and shooting the breeze with the moms and working on strategy with my kid. I wasn't a "room mom", because I had little kids. Also because, let's be real - I don't have the creativity or patience to do that kind of stuff. I didn't have the money needed to be a big time school supporter, wasn't able to spend time in the school volunteering because I had babies (although I do remember taking one field trip with a tiny baby in a sling, and the teacher was totally shocked that she never heard that baby even peep. Yeah. I was good with teeny tiny babies. It's when they become middle schoolers that I struggle, lol.) 

Mostly, I remember being frenetically busy and very lonely, at the same time. 

I tried to fit in with the different groups but I was on the fringes of every one, and I was just different enough that I stood out like a sore thumb. Not religious enough for the homeschool or religious groups. Too religious for the mainstream groups (this really just means I had too many kids, very few people can absorb the fact of a large size family.) Too loud for most of those quiet Catholic ladies, too outgoing for most - it was a long, lonely time that I think affected me more than I realized and caused me to try to close down, to change different aspects of myself that I thought were "suboptimal" were "no good", were too much, too far "out there" 

those parts of me that make other people uncomfortable or nervous or face it - the parts of me that are at war with the parts of them. The parts of me that they just.plain.old.don't.like. And let's face it, if you don't like someone, or if they make you uncomfortable - you aren't kind to them. 

My family was too much. My family was too loud, too difficult to take in, too much to invite over - I mean, for real - what if you had to feed ALL OF THESE PEOPLE? What if you had to LISTEN to ALL OF THOSE CHILDREN TALK ALL AT ONCE? It's not like I might have taught them to listen politely, or to take turns, or that I might have offered to bring food to mitigate the cost, or anything. 

So I tried to minimize all of it, to shrink, to close in, and by doing so, I think - and my therapist agrees with me - that I lost a valid and whole part of myself. The part of me that makes me happy. And it led to some bad thoughts on my side, and some bad choices, and you know what? 

I am not going back there. Not for anyone. Not for anything, not to make anyone happy, ever again. I am the only person I am trying to make happy in my life, because this is MY LIFE  and I am the only person who gets to have a say in it. 

ME. 

I like to have fun. I like to be funny. I like to laugh, to goof around, to be loud and to have color in my life. I love music and dancing. Do you know the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding? My family is the Greek family. 

I love my family. I love my loud, happy, fun family. I love my loud, happy, dancing, funny, caring, smart self. And if you can't, or don't, want to see that? 

It's your loss. 

I've Been Thinking

Which is, I know, sometimes not such a good thing. 

Hear me out. 

I realized a couple of months ago that I wasn't fair to myself for many, many years. 

I spent many years doing a shit ton of very hard work virtually alone. 

I think that I've said here that my husband works long hours. Have I explained exactly what those hours entail? Those hours mean that he leaves for work, six freakin days a week, at 8:15 in the morning. He gets home somewhere between 10 pm and midnight. This means that for every single year of child rearing, I've been doing it almost by myself. He's not always reachable by phone. He's extremely busy, and that's just the way it is. I get it. I understand. I don't like it, but that's the reality of his extremely high pressure job. On his day off, he often goes into work to take care of problem deals, or goes to church to work on cantoring responsibilities, cantor for funerals, take care of the prayer garden, go to the gym, and do house stuff that always, always is around and never ever goes away. He works really hard. He needs time to relax. 

So this means that I have spent 27 years raising six kids pretty close to alone. I am not complaining about this. This is the choice we made, this is how we decided to live our lives and raise a family. But I have historically been really, really hard on myself, and it's only recently that I've realized that I owe myself some grace, because I have done a pretty fantastic job - so far, let's not get ahead of myself - and the only one to be sacrificed was myself. 

I am not a single parent. I don't have the pressures that come with a single parent, I have the comfort of knowing that there is another person here if I absolutely need something - but I am the one doing every one of the doctor appointments, the teacher conferences, the projects, the late night talks, holding people when they cry, listening to people rant and rave, the dishes and the laundry, the days of six soccer games in a row at four different fields, the late night ambulance rides and the early morning medication dispensations. I've done the religion classes, the homework sessions, the driving lessons, the principal meetings, the bills, IEP's and 504's, the separating people when they get physical with each other, the physical therapy, occupational therapy, cross country trips - 

and I've never given myself credit for it. 

I've always thought I was a failure. 

It's only been in the past few months that I've been able to see that I've done a damned lot of hard work 

I've confused being proud of myself with being conceited. It's a fine line, one that's hard to walk - for if you are too proud, it's thought of as a sin, yes? But I went too far, trying to keep myself humble. 

It's ok for me to have pride in the hard work I've done. 

Dream Interpretation

I used to dream a lot, all the time, every night. I had the most vivid dreams, it was totally bizarre and crazy. It was almost like being in the movies every night. 

And then I had a sleep study done, because I was waking every morning with terrible, horrific migraines. It was discovered that I grind my teeth - well, I already knew this, because I'd ground so hard that I'd cracked a molar and needed to have a cap and I had been told to use a mouthguard but I'd broken four of them so I had a fiberglass mouthguard made and 

yeah. Stress, man.

It was discovered during the sleep study that I grind my teeth so hard that I pull my jaw forward and close off my airway, so I was given a cpap to try to fix the issue. This was the cause of the multiple migraines every morning - not enough oxygen to my brain. Basically, by grinding my teeth so much, I was trying to suffocate myself nightly. About a year ago, I had to start wearing a full face mask along with a specially created mouthguard - all to save my teeth and keep sending some oxygen to my brain. Super, super sexy, baby. You only wish you could be me.

There are two trade offs to this scenario. I have a much smaller need for sleep - I used to wake up feeling exhausted, could never get enough sleep, and my head ached fiercely almost every day. It felt almost as if I had a hangover every morning when I woke, and it took me hours to lose the pain. I sleep deeper, but I wake up several times during the night. I never sleep through the night, ever. 

Some times I get up and walk around my house. I switch over the laundry. I check on my family. I pick up the house, or read. I'm usually awake for about an hour somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-4 a.m. My fitbit shows I sleep about 5 hours a night, interrupted. 

The other thing is that I've virtually lost my dreams. I miss that. I loved my dreams. 

This past week, though, I had two separate, yet very distinct dreams. They were vivid and amazing in how I felt when I woke from both of them. In fact, both were so powerful that as soon as I woke up, before I even sat up, I grabbed my phone and jotted down my impression of each one. I shared them with my therapist this week, and her thoughts (and mine) are below both dreams. 

1 - I woke up from a dream. I can’t remember the dream, only that I had a deep sense of being a disappointment to everyone and feeling this way my entire life. I am so tired of that. The feeling of everyone being disappointed in me, looking at me as someone who has failed, yet again, someone who hasn’t succeeded in something, someone they have to say, “Well, poor girl, she tried, but she just didn’t get very far, did she?”  Tsk. What a failure in life she was. 

2 -I feel like a butterfly,, coming out of a chrysalis. I’m stretching and stretching, turning as my wings open and becoming something different. I don’t have time for those who don’t support, and I’m leaving them below me. I’m rising above the chaos below as my wings spread, and as my wings gain strength, so do I. I become more confident and more sure of who I am, and those who are not my supporters are below and fading fast. I'm leaving them behind and I rise.

When I went to therapy this week, I showed my therapist these two dreams, and she took a few minutes to read them over. She finally said, "It's almost as if the second dream is in response to the first. We've been working very hard on your self esteem, and it's as if your subconscious is telling you that you are finally getting it. You are getting to the point where you feel better about yourself. You are leaving the bad feelings about yourself behind. All of your hard work is coming to fruition."

I don't know if that's true, but I'd like to believe her, and not just because I'm paying her. 

For so long, the first dream is how I have felt. It's how I've felt my entire life, and I have not been able to get away from it. It's only been in the past six months that I have started to feel a better sense of purpose, a sense of self worth, and a feeling of value. 

There are people - or were people - in my life who don't like that. Who are uncomfortable with that, who are challenged by that, who are intimidated by the fact that the second dream is coming to fulfillment. Too damned bad. It's not fair to me that I've spent so many years feeling unworthy to take up space on this earth. and I refuse to spend the rest of my life - however long it may be - apologizing for how I feel, how I act, what or who I like or enjoy or what makes me happy. 

I like color. I like music. I enjoy being with people, helping the less fortunate, spending time in nature. I love to dance, and I really love taking Zumba and MixxedFit - and I'm getting really freakin' good at both, after years of thinking that I can't dance in those ways. I have tattoos and piercings, but that doesn't make me a bad person, despite the multiple people at my church who look down on me for that.  I love hard and fiercely, and with my entire being. I will stand up for the ones who can't stand up for themselves, and if you don't like that, tough shit. 

I am finally, finally, starting to love myself. More importantly, I am starting to like myself. I'm learning who I am, what makes me tick, what I enjoy. I am not the person anyone else wants me to be, the person who makes someone else happy. i am not the mother/spouse/daughter/friend/coworker that anyone can design into an image that fits their need. 

I am me. 

 

Troublemaker

She looked me right in the eyes, leaned forward and said to me, "You are a troublemaker." 

Then she leaned back and waited for me to respond. She didn't say anything else, just waited. That's what she does, she just waits. She's really stinkin' good at the waiting part. She can outwait me all day. 

I kind of squirmed and looked around, picked at the pillow I was holding, wrinkled my nose and said, "No, I'm not. I'm a nice person!" 

She smiled and said, "You can be a nice person and be a troublemaker, and you are a troublemaker. There's nothing wrong with being a troublemaker, but troublemakers make people uncomfortable, and that's what you run into, most often, and that's what is happening to you in this situation. You've made someone uncomfortable, because you were truthful. You've made them face an unpleasant fact, you've raised a valid point, you've stood up for someone who needed help, and it made someone else look bad. So rather than face the reality that you may have been right about this particular issue, you were branded the one with the problem. Which may or may not have been true."

Man. Even though I pay her, I love my therapist. She has a super clear way of getting right to the meat of every single issue I bring to her, every time. 

She's right, though. I am a trouble maker, but she (and I) didn't mean it in the traditional sense. More along the lines of Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Now, phew, there is one troublemaking woman. Or Rosa Parks. Or Susan B. Anthony, or Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, or the unnamed women who fight every day for the rights of all. 

I have always had a big mouth. Always. I have always been a person to speak up when I see things that aren't right, and I have spent much of my life trying to squelch this, to be quiet, to fit in and not rock the boat. To close my mouth when people hurt my feelings, to tamp down when I'm unhappy, to turn away and let things roll off and just- ignore.

But being a troublemaker isn't a bad thing. It's actually a good thing, to stand up and speak up. Without the troublemakers of the world, there would be no reform. There would be no checks and balances. There would be no one to keep people accountable. The world would run amuck. 

So, I think I will no longer let things slide - I'm going to be the best version of me that I can be, and if that means being a troublemaker when I see people behaving poorly, guess what? I'm calling them out. 

 

Dance, Past and Present

I know that I have mentioned a time or twenty seven that I took dance classes back in the day. 

Oh, haiiiii. I'm back. I am trying to only write when I have something to say, and because I have a lot of stuff to think about but not a lot to share, I've been radio silent lately. 

So, dance classes. 

I only took ballet class. Ballet, and when I was old enough, pointe class, and partnering. 

I really wanted to take jazz class, but the teacher of the class would not let me. She said that I wasn't good enough to join the class. And I was insecure enough and self conscious enough, and she was a big enough bully  - that I believed her. So for many, many years, I believed that I could not dance in any way other than classically. I didn't think I had any rhythm, and didn't think I was any good at any type of popular dance at all. I never danced in public at all. Not at weddings, not at parties, not in public at all. 

It wasn't until about ten years ago that I overcame my uncomfortable feelings and my fear of making a fool of myself and decided that I would just - throw caution to the wind and actually, you know, dance, in public, along to current music, in a group setting, and not worry about making a fool of myself. I think it was probably at a BlogHer conference and I remember dancing with a group of my friends and feeling so incredibly free and alive - and I loved that feeling and wanted to have it again and again. 

Now I dance all the time, no matter when and where I am. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I even danced in the woods while I was on hike. (There was no one around, holla, which is good, because I probably looked like a crazy pants pyscho, but whatever. Life is short and I have have had a crazy rough time of it for a very long time now and I felt like dancing and I had some really good music on - Summer Rain, by Belinda Carlisle - and it was just, you know, what felt good.)

Lately, I've been taking Zumba and MixxedFitt - a cross between HipHop and Zumba, and at first I was super uncomfortable and thought I must look very awkward and stupid, but the more I do it, the more comfortable I feel, and this past Friday, I had my best class ever. I felt completely at home and after the class, the teacher complimented me on my dance skills. That was the best part of my entire day. I can't explain it - after years of thinking I couldn't do any type of popular dance, I was at home and thoroughly enjoying myself. 

I dance all the time. In the car, in the house, in the shower, in the store, at work, in public, pretty much wherever I am. I have no shame anymore. Life is too short. 

I recently read an article that said that dancing can reverse the signs of aging in the brain. Hopefully my brain will stay young with all of the dancing I've been doing, but if not, it's nice to feel good about myself after so many years of thinking I sucked at something that I love to do. 

Tying Random Streams of Consciousness Together

In no particular order, and then I'll try to connect them - maybe. 

• When I was younger, I took ballet. A LOT of ballet. Like, by the time I was 12, I was in class 4 nights a week for a couple of hours a night, and on the weekends I had rehearsal. It only got more intense as I got older, but I didn't take any other type of dance except for ballet. I really wanted to take jazz, but the jazz teacher didn't think that I was good and she made it really clear that I wasn't welcome in the class. 
• This colored the way that I felt about my dancing for a long, long time. Like, for most of my life. I have had self esteem issues for years and years, and any time that I tried to dance in public, I was super self conscious about my dance capability - I mean, after all, if I wasn't good enough to take jazz class, why did I think that I was good enough to dance in public? I was for certain sure that people were staring at me and laughing. So, for a long time, I just didn't. 
• Over the last several months, I've realized that the more often I exercise, the better I feel. If I make a solid effort to exercise at least 4 days a week, my mood stabilizes and stays elevated. 
• I have discovered that I love Zumba, MixxedFitt (which is a dance combo of Hip-Hop and Zumba), and, oddly enough - hiking. 

I can't adequately explain how much of a difference exercise makes to me, and how foreign this concept is to me. 

Several years ago, had you told me that I would be actively seeking out exercise, I would have laughed in your face - probably while eating a cupcake. I really did not enjoy exercise. Then I discovered boxing. I really loved boxing, and I still do. 

But then I became massively depressed, and exercise dropped off the radar again, and it because ridiculously difficult to even entertain the idea of putting on a pair of sneakers to get moving, never mind trying to participate in some kind of coordinated group activity. Once I started working with a very good therapist and doctor and (finally) followed many of the things I was supposed to do, and began to see some positive results, I decided that I would try to add the exercise component that both of them kept suggesting. I din't think it would make a difference, but I agreed to give it a try for at least a couple of months. What did I have to lose, was my thought process. 

I am not too proud to say that they were right and I was wrong. Exercise has made a significant difference in my mental outlook, the way I feel physically, my emotional tolerance and my, well, everything. I have tried to explain this to people, but I don't think that many really understand. 

So, I try to take Zumba or MixxedFitt at least three days a week at the Rec Center. In the beginning, I was really, really self conscious about it - I had the voice of that jazz teacher in my head telling me that I was no good, I shouldn't try, no one would want to see me. At first, I even apologized to one of the teachers, saying that I knew I wasn't any good, but I would work hard. (She gave me a funny look but was super kind about it.)

As I've felt better over the past several months, and worked with my therapist, my self-esteem has improved, and with it, my feelings in the dance classes. I thoroughly enjoy myself in them, and even though I know I'm not the best, I know I'm not the worst, and more importantly - it absolutely doesn't matter - and I'm enjoying myself immensely. (And? I'm actually better than I thought, now that I've lost weight, feel better about myself and I'm not so self conscious.)

I've also added in hiking at a state park. It's a heavily wooded area, which also includes a beach, and a lot of the trails are hilly, which makes for a great leg workout. There are several different trails, ranging in distance from 2-5 miles, and I've been really enjoying myself walking the paths. I try to go at least twice a week. 

I went hiking today, even though it was raining. In the past, I would have used the rain as an excuse to stay home and take a nap, but I really wanted to hike, and the thought of staying home actually filled me with bitter disappointment. I layered up with a sweater and a sweatshirt and a raincoat, and I took an umbrella. Being out in the cold air and the rain was invigorating and refreshing, and I walked for 4 miles. I don't listen to music when I hike, I just try to empty my mind and just - be. It's a kind of mediation for me. 

I hope I can keep up my exercise enthusiasm, because I am for certain that it's one of the things that is helping me feel so much better lately. And anything that helps me feel better? Well, I am all for that. :)

A Purposeful, Driven Life

Yes, I've taken liberties with the title of the book, but I haven't read the entirety of the book. Just bits and pieces, and although some of it stuck with me, what I want to ramble on (and on, and on and on, lol) about here really doesn't have to do with the book, per se, but just about me. 

Duh. 

For reasons, some of which are because it's good for me (mentally and physically), I have been trying to increase my exercise. Until recently, I would have said that I had a couple of preferred forms of exercise - Rowing and Zumba. Zumba probably squeaks out ahead, because I do love me some dancing, especially because Zumba is an awful lot like dirty club dancing that you can get away with in public, haha. Rowing I enjoy because I can get on the machine, put my music on and just - go. I often zone out and don't really think. Usually after I do either of these, I spend some time on the walking track in the pool and try to do fifteen or twenty laps around - it's  a resistance track and I can spend some time just meditating that way as well. 

When I was visiting my dad, we went hiking in the mountains, and I realized that I absolutely loved it. So when I got home, I found a good place to hike locally (no mountains, sadly, it's all ocean level here) and I bought myself some trail runners and I've been out a few times to walk. I don't listen to music, I try to clear my mind and just walk and not think. 

Easier said than done, especially for me, but it's led me to ponder on the concept of a purposeful, driven life. 

Which is different from a purpose driven life. 

A purpose driven life is defined by three questions:

• The Question of Existence: Why am I alive?
• The Question of Significance: Does my life matter?
• The Question of Purpose: What on earth am I here for?

I think over the past year+, i have pretty much pondered these questions to death :)

so I have moved on to the mechanics of things. 

How am I living a purposeful, driven life? And what, exactly does that mean?

I want to make the rest of my life count for something. I want to make a difference. I want to be helpful, to be a source of strength and encouragement, a place that a person can feel comfortable with. A person who will be remembered as having made a change in something (for the better, please, not for the worse.)

So I need to uncover the purpose. Yes, I have kids, and the purpose of my life has been, and will continue to be, my family - but I am not my family. My children are growing to adulthood and moving on with their lives, as they should, and I am happy for them and proud of them. My life doesn't and shouldn't end with that and the focus will shift to me in the near future. I just need to figure out where I want to move with it. 

Thunderstorms

When I was a child, my parents had this set of records, they were recordings of nature sounds. Some of them were outright weird - I mean, who wants to listen to hours of heartbeats? - and some of them I thought were stupid - in my childish mind, no one would pay to listen to the crickets and the frogs that I could hear right outside FOR FREE, the ones that kept me up at night when I WAS TRYING TO SLEEP, thank you very much. I really enjoyed the thunderstorm one, though. That one? I could groove to that one. 

Living in a metropolitan area, for me a thunderstorm is really more of an inconvenience than anything. You hear it, but you don't really see it, it's kind of off in the distance, blocked by the buildings and the cars and all of the - stuff. It means I have to grab an umbrella, my raincoat, my boots if I'm getting out of the truck repeatedly. I have had small kids for years, and so it meant dealing with the unreasonable fears that come with the combined territory of small children and big storms. Living in a neighborhood definitely has it perks - people to wave at, someone to ask if they've lost power (so you don't wonder for a hot second if you've forgotten to pay the electric - just me? Ok, forget I said that, carry on), other people around in the event of a hurricane - but those other houses and people mean that you lose a bit of privacy and space and just 

area around you and sometimes

I do miss that. 

I am realizing, as my children get older, that I miss who I am. Their tethers to me are growing longer, but every so often they snap back  with a resounding WHACK and they fly back to me in a tangle of too long arms and legs and hormones and unresolved issues and I can barely figure myself out most days and then by the time I make heads or tails of what the trouble is, 

it's over. 

I've become immune to the thrill of a good storm. 

I am spending a couple of days with my dad and my step mom, both of whom are very, very good people, and they live in the middle of the United States. They live surrounded by nothing, on their own land. 

I am visiting alone. For five days. 

I have had insomnia for a long time, and so my sleep pattern is whack. Generally speaking, I get a good solid four hours, and then BAM.  I'm wide awake. Typically I get up, do some laundry, maybe some dishes, and then I meditate for a bit and go back to sleep for a couple of hours (broken up) and that's how it goes. It's not stellar, but I've adapted and it's how I do. 

First night at my dad's I followed my typical pattern, but I awoke to an extremely bright light shining in my face, and I wondered for a hot second if my dad was waking me to go hunting by shining a flashlight. 

Nope. Just some incredible lightning. I got up and stood by the window for a minute, watching the storm, and then made an executive decision. (It still kills me that I can do these things, that someone considers me the adult, haha.)

I put on my coat and shoes and went outside. It was 2:04 a.m. and I stood on the porch and watched a massively intense thunderstorm. It was refreshing, just to watch this brilliantly lit storm through sky high trees, without a house to block the view or an office building to get in the way. I don't think I've ever seen lightning so bright. 

It wasn't until it had begun to fade that I thought about recording a bit of it, just to share. 

Standing outside, even under the overhang of the porch, was electric. Strangely, it was also amazingly peaceful and very relaxing. I haven't intentionally stood outside in a storm in a long time and I miss that. I used to do it quite a bit, mostly when I was a teen. This was a powerful one. You wouldn't get the full drama of this one unless, maybe, you used headphones and had your volume cranked and the video full screen. It is indeed completely dark here at night, and the intensity of the storm lit up the sky - what I captured was the tail end. If I had brought my hair stuff, I would have gone out and walked in the rain, but I didn't, and so I didn't, because I know that over the next couple of days I'll be the subject of some pictures and I'm just vain enough to want to look decent. :)

It wasn't until the storm passed that I came back inside. I grabbed an iced coffee that my step mom was thoughtful enough to provide and came back to my room, where I uploaded the above, and ended my writing block at 3:32 a.m. 

Man, was that an invigorating thirty minutes. 

More Than Six Months Ago

It's a really interesting thing, and it's changed my life in a very fascinating and unexpected way.

I take a couple of different medications, and all three of them have a strong "do not drink" warning on them. 

Me being me, and thinking I know better than anyone else (haha, story of my entire freaking life), I proceeded to, for the first six months of taking said medications, ignore those warnings. I mean, I did the prudent thing and talked with the dr and the pharmacist and both told me that an occasional drink would not be a bad thing, and so I thought

what could it hurt. 

And then my husband and I went on a trip, and I drank on the trip, not heavily, and I proceeded to have my first (and I sincerely hope, very very last) trigeminal migraine. It was a migraine that lasted for more than 30 hours, and was characterized by a stabbing pain that pulsed every couple of minutes in the upper right quarter of my head along the trigeminal nerve, just exactly as if I was being zapped by an electrical charge. It caused my eye to twitch and water and it was easily the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my entire life, and I have had migraines since I was a teen, and I've had six babies, five of them unmedicated. 

I took my migraine medication and went to bed, and when I woke up, it was still there. I took it again, and twelve hours later, I told my husband that if the pain didn't start to dissipate, I'd have him take me to the Jamaican Emergency and cost be damned. Thankfully, it started to fade, although it didn't go away fully until the third day of our trip. 

I hadn't had much to drink, just two drinks, but when I returned to the States, and visited my dr, (who helped me figure out that it was a trigeminal migraine) I decided that, for a couple of reasons, one of which being that some types of medications work better when you don't drink (because alcohol is a depressant) 

I would stop drinking alcohol. Which wasn't as tough as I thought it would be, but was super weird to me this holiday season. 

I haven't had a drink since May. My daughter made me a drink for Mother's Day and I had a couple of sips, but other than that, nada. No bourbon, no mixed drinks, no martinis. No frozen sangria over the summer! It's WEIRD. I miss it, in that I miss the camaraderie and the friendship I would have when I go out with people. I miss the looseness and the relaxation that I would feel, and I miss the flavor of it, and I miss the fun of it - when my husband and I go out, it's still difficult to see the mixed drink menu and not want to pick a drink out. I miss the feeling of peace that would come after my evening was finished and I could curl up with a bourbon and a good book, or enjoying a well made martini with dinner. I miss creating new drinks and the fun of drinking with friends. 

Somehow, sparkling water - even the Spindrift for which I have developed an affinity - just doesn't have the same appeal. 

But. 

My medications work better. I feel better. 

It is strange to go to parties and be the one not drinking. It's weird to see everyone else through sober lenses, and watch people slide into their drunk selves, and wonder what I was like, not that long ago. I did not have a drinking problem, but I wonder if I could have developed one, further on in my life. I wonder if this was a blessing in disguise. 

Life is so freakin' weird, isn't it?

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same, Or The More They Change

Confusing. 

I feel like every Christmas season, I say the same thing. How is it possible that Christmas is just six days away? Where did the time go? In a mere three days, my youngest child will turn fifteen. I know I say this every year, but wasn't she just a baby? How is she a high school freshman?

How am I wrapping Christmas presents again? What happened to this entire year?

Well, I know that a lot of stuff happened to me. I know I experienced an entire life worth of living this past year, much of it I have no desire to repeat, but I did in fact learn a lot from it. Just wish I could have learned it a tiny bit less painfully, but at least it was just painful for me and not for those around me. Pain for myself I can deal with. 

Growth is pain, at least that's what I've heard. So, I think I should just consider 2018 a growth year. :)

There are some pretty steep changes in store for my family in the next several months, and I'm not at liberty to share them, as of yet. But if you know those dumb scale things, the ones that measure your stress levels, and they say, "If you experience XX, then your stress is such, and if you experience XY, your stress is such" - well, ours is somewhere on the mid of that scale and going to be climbing. 

So I am just going to strap on my seatbelt and hope that the airbag doesn't deploy in my face. 

Speaking of nothing in particular, I read an article that I thought was pretty interesting. Titled, Can Baking Reduce Stress and Anxiety?  

Go read it, it's pretty good. One of the lines in it struck me especially - "Baking is cheap, it’s easy, and it’s visceral" - Man, truer words were never spoken. I love to bake, love to cook, love to be in the kitchen, rattling around. Someone once tried to insult me by saying, "Oh, you're just a home cook."

Yeah, I'm just a home cook. But I'm a pretty good home cook, and all of the people who eat in my home and from my home? They are pretty damned happy. Furthermore, baking and cooking for those people helps to make me pretty damned happy - so I think it's a win-win situation. If I like you, I'll cook for you. If I give you food, you can bet I'm a fan of yours. :)

This week I made ten food baskets for friends - they contained sugar cookie snowflakes, tomato jam, homemade kahlua, peppermint marshmallows, dark chocolate cocoa mix, gingerbread men, sugar and spiced nuts, chex mix, salted caramel and Irish Whiskey truffles, and Stollen. I be tired, y'all, but I love my friends. 

Cooking and baking, for me, is a way to feel better about myself. It's a way to reduce my stress, get into a better headspace, spread some love, let others know I care about them, and feel like I am making a difference to someone. 

It's even better if the recipient enjoys what I give them.