faith

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When the Anger & Frustration Get The Best of You, What Do You Do? Choose Calm…

I am counting down the days… less than two weeks away until my son graduates from high school. While there is a lot to celebrate, I feel like I am seriously being tested. Mentally and physically…

This is one of those “how much can you take?” tests. All I’m saying is…. REALLY???? Right now???? First of all, I am not complaining. Okay. I’m complaining a little bit. So, as you read this, you must want to know what I am going on about. Well, I’ll tell you.

Work…. on top of Life…. on top of … Work … on top of Life… on top of … well you get it.

It is exhausting.

When the anger and the frustration get the best of you, what do you do? It’s interesting, either it’s age or all of the training I have received in the last couple years, I feel like I am a lot more calm now than I have ever been. This is another way for me to keep a flare away. If I lose my temper, I am guaranteed a flare within 24 hours. So, honestly, it’s a choice I make. How about you?

How about your surroundings? Do you notice people around you are getting mad a lot quicker? It seems to me people also get really mad at the small stuff. It’s crazy to me. I just don’t get it. It’s such a waste of energy. I guess, for me, I have so little energy to start with I see no reason to waste it on the small shit. Maybe if people were in pain, they would feel the same way. It’s an interesting way to learn such a profound lesson, but that’s how I learned! He said/she said… why do YOU care what people think of you? What is really important is what YOU think of you. Think about what makes you angry and figure out WHY. Is it worth spending the little energy you have on that anger? Or would you rather do something else with that energy… like LAUGH?

We are surrounded. There’s no doubt about it. Road rage. The daily news. TV shows. Movies. Rude people. Rude people in general. I am amazed at how rude people are these days. Rude people raising rude children…. and so on and so on…

So! Don’t stand for it. Smile. Don’t let the small shit get to you. Don’t get angry, get over it! Treat people with respect… ya hear me? Let’s use our energy for positivity!! Stand up and shout about it!

If you feel like you are about to lose it… close your eyes, breeeeeeeaaaaathe, count to ten.

If you want to scream at your boss, your husband, a rude person, your doctor …. take a deep breath, close your eyes, breeeeeeeaaaaathe, count to ten.

So… I think you get my point. The person who is going to suffer the most at the end of the day is the fibromite in the anger game.

Choose calm. Thanks for checking my blog out. Please leave a comment.

Stay cool – and chillax!!

PS. It’s funny how I always start off with one train of thought… and I always seem to end up somewhere else. Oh well, I did say I had ADHD, right? LOL!

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Fibromites, Do You Wake Up Refreshed? Just Smile!

It is Saturday morning, 6:30am and I am sitting here wide awake. Ask me why… c’mon, ask. Come onnnnn…. Okay fine! Because it’s Saturday and I can actually sleep in (well not really, my daughter has a soccer game and I would have to get up in a bit anyway, but that’s not the point!). The point is, it’s Saturday and I don’t have to get up at this time and it’s like flipping backwards day as usual in my life and I am awake for no reason when I should be asleep and here I am wide awake! Whew! That was a long sentence! It is not as if I got enough sleep so I woke up feeling…. and I hate this word now –> REFRESHED (Wait a minute, I honestly have tried to take that word out of my vocab… so rewind, erase and replace hate with strongly dislike). How many fibromites actually feel “refreshed” when they wake up? (could you actually feel me doing the quote/unquote really strongly with my fingers that time? because I was, well as strong as these grip-less hands would let me). I mean, that is just not something I have felt in years. I wake up feeling like …. hmmmm … not sure I have thought about this … I wake up and think about how I slept, what hurts and will I be able to walk when I get out of bed and then I try and figure out what day it is. Now as my daughter says, “sharing is caring” so when y’all read that one, laugh with me, not at me… because, for example, today I woke up and really thought it was Thursday for some reason. I was pretty happy it was Saturday once I figured it out. Still laughing at me, I mean, with me? That’s alright, that’s why you visited my blog today, some pain relief. :)

So back to my point, most days I wake up feeling tired, half of those days along with tired foggy decides to join the party and maybe 15% of those days depression decides to crash the party and bring everyone down. So refreshed never really happens. I wonder what that’s like. You know when you are watching t.v. and that commercial comes on with the chick in her all white pajamas changing the all white sheets, and the light shining through the wall of glass behind her and she just looks all clean and refreshed? She is the anti-me. I ha… oh wait, really dislike her.

It’s really not all bad, it’s my reality. I’m just saying it’s Saturday and “hellllllooooooooo”, just thought I might sleep in today, but apparently I needed to get up and greet the world. Okay… seriously, I am smiling… I really am. I just realized it. I am crackin’ myself up as I write this… I have to take my own advice, right? Don’t take life too seriously… and THAT my friends is why I am up early. I needed to wake up and get an early start so I could smile and hopefully make you smile. If I didn’t get up early enough I would not have been able to write this before getting out of the house for my daughter’s game. That’s the start of my day… smiling. Awesome!

Hope you enjoyed my post. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you start your day with a smile!

Stay cool!

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How Do You Recover?

How do you start your day? If it starts out good or bad, does that determine how the rest of your day will go? Do you have the ability to turn your bad day around if and when it turns sour?

I tell you… with chronic depression, it’s like climbing up Mt. Everest carrying a 100 lbs. of cement on my back to turn a bad day — to good. Some days it just doesn’t work out. Some days the depression just hangs around like the cloud of dirt around Pigpen. Some days I am able to turn it around.

Yes, I take medication. I take medication to help me manage my pain, my depression and to help me sleep. I remember what it was like without medication. I know I don’t want to go back to those days. I hate putting these pills into my body. Every time I have to refill my pill boxes, I hate it. It cause me to go down a bit, but I have to remember that in the end it helps me. I sleep better, It helps me walk, work, spend time with my family… it helps me be human.

I worked about 70 hours this past week. I had a colleague tell me on my fourth work day at our business dinner, when I finally gave in and used my cane, that I didn’t need to use my cane, that I had walked fine all day without it. Nice. It still kills me to have to use a cane, and it’s always nice to get comments like that on top of my own pride. By Friday I could barely stand up. A few hours into the day I just lost it and during the meeting started to tear up. Really nice. Nothing like being in so much pain and so exhausted you just can’t do anything but cry… while at work with your entire management team.

How do you recover on these days? I’m not sure I did on those days. Exhaustion is difficult to recover from without just laying down and going to sleep. It’s Sunday now and I have spent the last 48 hours since coming home from work on Friday basically in a complete fog. I have either been asleep or laying down only to get up to go watch my daughter’s soccer game and to take her to the store. To go watch her game was so fucking painful, I really had a hard time even watching. So five days of work, 2 days of sleep. Normally tomorrow I’d be going back to work, thankfully I am on spring break with the kids. This has been my schedule for the last few months.

So… again… how do you recover on these days?

  • You pray
  • You rest
  • You give yourself a break
  • You relax and take care of yourself
  • You smile
  • You laugh
  • You remember it’s just one minute, one hour, one day… you don’t look past right now

That’s what I need to do.

Take care of you.

Thank you for stopping by… please share with me how you recover.

Stay cool.

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I Close My Eyes…

I notice I close my eyes a lot these days…

When I am in physical pain.

I close my eyes.

When I am hurt emotionally.

I close my eyes.

When I am mad.

I close my eyes.

When I am sad.

I close my eyes.

When I am frustrated.

I close my eyes.

When I am tired… exhausted.

I close my eyes.

When I need to think.

I close my eyes.

When my heart is feeling scratched and torn.

I close my eyes.

When I feel disrespected and I am about to lose my mind.

I close my eyes.

When I am talking and I’m not being heard.

I close my eyes.

When I need to take a mental break.

I close my eyes.

I find myself thinking what it must feel like to be blind…. memorizing my surroundings and taking mental note of what I want to remember. Visualizing in my mind the environment I want to keep in my memory if I am not able to see.

What is this about? I have no idea. I have just noticed that more and more in the last six months, it is a physical response that I have started to use. It was not something intentional, but also not something I decided I didn’t like. I like it. I like that it makes me stop and take a moment to close the world out and take a break. It tells me… “don’t lose control…. just take a moment and get it together.” This life or any life is not easy. God did not put us on earth for “easy”, we are all here for different reasons. If we accept that and stop fighting it, then life becomes easi-“er”.

I believe I know why I am here. I am put in situations and I help out where I am needed. In the end I am definitely rewarded. God is good to me. As long as I look at the big picture and don’t just think about “ME”, I do well. This life is not about me.

It’s interesting, I got up this morning, to write about something completely different. God certainly does work in mysterious ways.

I hope you enjoyed this post, please leave your comments.

Stay cool and have a happy Easter!

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You are responsible for your happiness and your health

I had a breakthrough today… I believe that’s what it’s called. It’s personal so I won’t share it with all of you, but I felt I needed to just put it out there. Why say it at all? It was a big day for me, I wanted to mark the day as a historic moment in time. March 2nd, 2010. Done.

This life is a trip. No matter what happens good or bad, the sun still comes up in the morning and goes down at night… and let’s be honest NOONE wants that to change, right? Drama happens in everyone’s “world”, but do you ever stop and look around? Do you ever really stop and just take a good look around? I, personally, can’t take my life too seriously. I would be a real basket case if I did. I used to take my life too seriously and trust me… ALL I THOUGHT ABOUT WAS TRAGEDY.  (I bet you wish you were my friend in those days!) I was Ms. Negative about everything. I try really hard to think positive about things. I may not get it right all the time, but I do try.

Look around these days… earthquake in Haiti, earthquake in Chile, homeless people everywhere you look, you must know countless people looking for jobs, friends who have lost their spouses/children/parents… these are rough times people!! Why do you think we have chronic pain?? It is not a coincidence!!

You need to look at your life and figure out if there is a link between how you live your life and your pain.

  • Do you hang out with positive or negative people?
  • Do you have a positive or negative outlook on life?
  • Do you believe you will get better?
  • Do you believe you can be happy?

You are responsible for your happiness and your health. You have to make life choices toward happiness and good health. I have to do the same. Trust me, it’s not easy. There are days I prefer to stick my head in the sand and stay in the dark… but those are the days I need my husband to push me to get up and come outside and play.

What I’m trying to say is… your attitude about life plays a big role on how you feel and your pain level. We have so much pain already, anything that will reduce our pain … well … it helps, right?

Thanks for reading! Look forward to your comments… stay cool!

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whew! i’m still standing. or rather sitting. or am i passed out on the floor?? all i know is… i made it through the holidays and now… i’m getting ready for 2010!!

merry christmas!! i’m still standing. or rather sitting. or am i passed out on the floor? all i know is… i made it through!!

what a whirlwind holiday season this has been! most days i had no idea if i was coming or going. i was foggy brain multi-tasking which, trust me, was the scariest thing ever. i mean it. think of this… my family room had about 15 projects going on, you could not see the floor, the table tops, the chairs, the couches, it was absolute chaos in there… but for me? i was workin’ it. i had three 6-foot tables in that room, i swear when i wasn’t in there, there were little project angels helping me… (a girl can dream, right?) i have to really give it to my husband, he let me do my thang (that’s right THANG). he generally (and by generally i really mean always, can’t stand it, has no patience for it) hates clutter and if that room was not the ultimate, extreme definition of clutter, i don’t know what is… but he just soldiered on each day, for weeks, and let me work. i’m pretty sure he knew i would have lost my mind if he said something, but that, my friends, is support.

i gotta tell you, i had a lot going on before that big guy was comin’ down my chimney… i had:

  • eight 12×12 scrapbook calendars to make (only 3 of which were the same) so i was designing scrapbook pages for hours!,
  • 28 kids to buy for (thank goodness for amazon.com!!) – let me tell you those lightning deals on amazon saved my “you know what”,
  • one 12×12 album to scan and copy to create two smaller 8×8 albums (seriously can santa bring me a 12×12 scanner next year?? scanning a page 4 times is so not fun!! can you say 26 x 4? and honestly my husband did all the scanning, what a guy!),
  • two desk calendars (thankfully there’s snapfish where i went to create online) and
  • two poster collage calendars (again i love snapfish!)
  • christmas cards (last minute decision… snap! fish!) and
  • i helped my daughter make eight custom designed tshirts (what was i thinking…. i was thinking in October… that she needed to start, which is what i told her… told her in November… told her December 1… 2… 3… you get what i’m sayin’… her beautiful brother helped me in the middle of the night to get these and the calendars done)
  • in addition to her one 12×12 scrapbook calendar… (again, why do i encourage the start of all these projects? i love the feeling of frustration and stress all at the same time… it’s such a yummy feeling! and honestly (again) i didn’t really do anything but encourage/motivate/yell/yell/yell at her to get it done) but… her creations were awesome! i have to say it again… totally awesome!!!

and all this in the span of the three weeks before santa arrives… 80% of it the 5 days prior to… oh yeah, totally forgot…i also had:

  • the cookies to bake, which the kids did (thank goodness for auntie cheryl who faithfully comes every year to lead the troops while i quality check the end result)
  • the tree to decorate, which i did in the middle of the night one night after i just couldn’t take it anymore (the tree had been put up and the lights were on it, what was my excuse? don’t get me started… but i had to put my mom’s handmade ornaments on it.)
  • i scrapbooked an album as a birthday gift for a family member (i was really happy to have done this, this one made me feel really good)
  • i worked a little bit up until christmas eve, which i had meant to take off completely… because i was needed to do some things. it took more time than expected, but it was worth it.

moving on… i’m getting ready for 2010!!

now that christmas is over it’s that time of the year where everyone starts to make resolutions for the coming year and reviews the goals they did or did not achieve for the prior year. we do this as a family in my house. we set aside a day and scrapbook a page and each list our “10 most memorable moments” and “10 goals for the year” some of the goals are the same for each year, some are different – it’s not a time to be judged. my son is very good about listing smart achievable goals, he knows how to create achievable goals. i am going to learn from him this time. what a novel idea… an achievable goal! this is such a great skill he has at such a young age… he is very wise for a 17-year old. tomorrow is the day we will work on our lists and scrapbook together as a family. i hope for a drama-free day… i plan to just work at my desk with the family with tani by my side and get into my groove with positivity and God on my side… because that is how i plan to start 2010!

this will be a year of change for my family…

  • my son will graduate from high school. we will find out what his next path in life will be in the spring, i am going to be brave about this, but i already miss him. my best friend’s son is leaving for the air force in february… i miss him already even though i never see him as they live a state away. he was the first baby between the two of us bff’s so i feel as though he is leaving me too.
  • the company i have worked my entire adult life for, the last 24 years will be acquired by another company come the end of January. this will be a change like no other for me…
  • i start my chronic pain program in january, this is supposed to change everything for me as far as my pain. the pain team says they have seen people leave this program, literally, with renewed lives. i’m excited to see how i am doing as i progress through the program.

i am thinking about my goals for the coming year, i know all of you are as well. i am wishing all of you less pain in 2010 than you had in 2009 and continued sharing and support. we hold each other up in the good times and the bad and together we will continue to make each other stronger.

thank you so much for making me a stronger and better person despite having fibromyalgia, this community of fibromites/ chronic pain people seriously ROCK! nothing can hold us down!

thank you for reading and stay cool!