When I started this reboot, 4 months ago, back in August, I had hoped to “look and feel better by my 45th birthday”.  So here I am 45 years and a few days old… how am I doing?

Well… I’m not where I thought I’d be, but I’m ok with where I am.  Back in August, I was thinking in terms of weight and exercise routine… but I think what I really was craving was a balance of all the balls I juggle and feeling like I was accomplishing something with my life.  I grew to realize this as the month of December bore down on me… December was a difficult month.

Not just because this time of year the “Holiday Spirit” that is actually people being really rude and meaner than any other time of year (especially on the roads and in parking lots) gets me down… but because my own health and my pup’s health (and even my husband’s health) started to get compromised starting around the middle of the month and we are still working through it.  In addition to all the hormonal fluctuations that I am trying to mitigate as I go through “the change” (in the form of night sweats, and hot flushes that wake me up several times in the night), my pup was also feeling the effects of winter in her bones and muscles.  She is now in her 90s (in dog years) and this winter’s colder and wetter weather really took it’s toll on her.  Both her front shoulder muscles are sore and she doesn’t want to put weight on one of her back legs… making the remaining leg get fatigued.  She wakes me up several times a night wanting help turning over because it hurts to do it on her own.  We have set up a doggie bathroom out on the balcony (so that she doesn’t have to go down the stairs) which has been a huge help.  Some nights she wakes me up nearly every hour, other times she only wakes me a few times… I imagine this is what having an newborn infant must feel like.  She’s starting to be on the mend, today she wanted to go for a ‘real walk’… so my husband carried her down the stairs and she limped and staggered and smelled and enjoyed herself… and wore herself out, but at least she’s no longer a bored puppy that might hurt herself.  We can see the improvement, but she takes a bit longer to heal now that she’s older.  The lack of sleep has really taken it’s toll on me and my husband, and the needing help throughout the day in the beginning made us coin the term “having ADHDog” (pronounced A-D-H-D-O-G), because we couldn’t concentrate on anything because she needed something every 30 min to an hour.

I was actually able to sleep in a little on my birthday (after staying up til midnight then having been woken up at 2, 3, 4, and 5… by 7am I couldn’t function anymore and slept til 11), but I didn’t want to sleep the day away*… my husband brought me breakfast and drew on my cup…  What a wonderful man! 😀  (*I did end up sleeping most of the next day away, my body had had enough)

I didn’t get to do much Zentangle… I was able to get to one triangle (still working through the 12 days of 3Zs, heh… this one is day 9 – auraknot)…

Auraknot

As the month wore on, I was less coherent enough to think of a drawing for my husband’s cup of tea, but I did draw on it a few times…

So back to the review…

I started to realize that the problems I was having was that the things that I was changing and doing well with, but ultimately couldn’t maintain for longer than 5 weeks, meant that I was going in the right direction, but when I concentrated solely on the ‘new’ thing of the month, I started to neglect the other things in my life that I enjoy and then felt like a failure because I couldn’t maintain this arbitrary condition I had set for myself.  So… I made a list of the things that bring me joy, and this list included several of the things I’ve been trying for the last four months.  My goal in life has always been to find some kind of balance between the want to’s and the have to’s… I’m still working on it.  But the recent snag this month has made me realize that some things are just more important than some of the things I’ve been unsuccessfully striving for… and I want to concentrate on what makes me happy, and not dwell on the things that make me feel like a failure.

My pup is asking for assistance…  I’ll write again soon…

Until next time…
~nic