What am I thankful for this year?

I guess a lot of things.  I’m thankful as always for my loving husband and our precious dogs.

I’m thankful for a great long trip home to Maine earlier this year.  Though it had it’s frustrating moments I got to do most everything I wanted to and had the longest visit I’d had with my mom in a long time.  In the same vein, I’m grateful that while my mother’s health isn’t perfect, she is doing much better than she had been in the past.

I’m thankful that I married into a very loving and caring family.  My in laws are some really great people and I just adore them.  I hear a lot of horror stories fly around about in laws and how horrible they can be but I’ve never had an issue.  I think that if I actually sat down and dreamed up the perfect in laws, my actual in laws would surpass them in terms of awesomeness.

I’m grateful for that I am employed and actually get paid pretty well for what I do.  While I get frustrated at times when my callers aren’t the nicest, I really enjoy the people I work with and the sweet customers make it worthwhile.

I’m extremely thankful for the great health insurance that my husband’s work provides.   Especially with what I see other people going through right now, I am really pleased that Rob works for a company that can provide for their employees the the best of their abilities and really go the extra mile to see that they and their families are cared for in the best way possible.  It is rare in this day and age.

I am over the moon with gratitude for paying of our credit cards this year.  It was a long hard struggle and it literally paid off.  There were years where we had to use the credit cards to survive and to no longer be a slave to that AND to have more money in our savings because we no longer have to pay off the balances is amazing.

I’m glad for a successful Vegas trip this year in that we didn’t lose our shirts, had the perfect amount of downtime and on the go time and we had a lot of fun.

I’m grateful that I found the desire and willpower to quit smoking this year.   8 months ago in fact.  This is the first time that I have quit smoking where I didn’t resort to smoking socially.  The only trip I’ve ever taken to Vegas where I didn’t smoke and the first play I did a full run of other than Repo where I was more disciplined because Rob was in it with me, where I didn’t smoke while at the theater.  It’s also the first time that I have quit that I feel like I’m really DONE with it.

I’m thankful for my friends.  I have a lot of acquaintances and a few really close friends.  My close friends know me inside and out and are talked to on an almost daily basis.  That is not to discredit my other friends with whom I can have amazing fun and fantastic conversations with even though we don’t speak on a regular basis anymore.  I’ve been missing  a lot of those friendships lately, but I’m glad that they existed and will hopefully always be around.

I’m forever thankful to have theater as an outlet but am also glad to have free time on my hands.  When I first started theater I jumped in with both feet and did back to back shows for a year.  I burned myself out and made myself depressed and miserable.  I’m happy that I have found a balance between my home life and my theater life that seems to be working to give me the stage fix I so desire but the boring home life that I love.

I’m sure there is tons more that I’m thankful for but I’m going to close until next year.

I got an email from my husband this morning titled: “Fourteen years ago you said yes.”  It brought happy tears to my eyes.

Fourteen years ago today I made the easiest decision of my young life.  At 25 I changed my stance on my lifelong declaration that marriage wasn’t for me.

As long as I can remember I’ve always said I never wanted to get married.  I could blame it on seeing my parents’ marriage fall apart and that might have been the reason when I was a lot younger, but as I got older and started dating, I just never found anyone that fit.  I would enjoy the chase of the dating scene but once I landed the one that I wanted I was bored and ready for the next challenge.

I had thought I was in love a couple of times in my life but looking back that was more of just attraction and eventually just not wanting to be lonely.

Truth be told, the longest relationship I had before I met Rob was 6 whole months.  I got bored easily and no one ever kept me interested in the long term.

14 years ago I knew in my heart that I had met the man that I could easily spend my golden years with.  Even though I had only met him three months prior.

He fit.  We fit.  We made sense.

Fourteen years and one day ago I met his family for the first time.  We traveled from our house in Arizona to his parents place in Salinas, California for Thanksgiving.

The next day he took me sightseeing, including where he went to high school in Pebble Beach.  He showed me around the campus and then to the little chapel that was on the grounds.

I was admiring the stained glass windows fourteen years ago when the big grandfather clock began to chime in the noon hour.  I turned around to say something to Rob and found him down on one knee with ring extended.

Fourteen years ago I said yes, and I have never regretted it a single day.

This time next week Rob and I will be on the road to Vegas.  This will be the first trip there in three years where I won’t have the half marathon looming over my head.  That is both good and bad.

I’ve done the half marathon the last three years in a row in various stages of fitness, my last year being the worst.  Because last year was so miserable for me because of my lack of training for several reasons I decided this year that I would not sign up.  I needed a break.

In deciding that I basically gave myself permission to give up on myself as far as fitness was concerned.  And believe me when I tell you that I took that to heart!  I have done very little in the way of working out this year.  I have a once a week yoga/Pilates class that I take at work but that was it.  I was lucky if I went for a walk once a month this year.  It was downright disgusting.

The result of that is that I’ve gained a very uncomfortable 20 pounds and have also gained very little desire or willpower to do anything about it.  This is something I have to deal with on my own.  What I’m finding is that when pushed (even by myself) I want to resort back to very bad and unhealthy behavior to get the weight off fast and that just isn’t an option.  I put this information on the internet to hold myself accountable.  I’m not perfect, I never will be.  In my past I have done horrible things to my body to try to lose weight and make myself feel better about myself.  The urge to do that comes back so easily it is scary.

So what I need to do is get back into fitness.  And I will.  I can’t berate myself anymore for eating.  It triggers a very bad place in my mind that I no longer desire to go.  I will work on this in my own time.

In the mean time, the good part about this upcoming vacation is that it will be the first vacation I’ve had in three years where I wasn’t stressed about something.  With Vegas it was always about the marathon and how broken I would be after.  This last trip to Maine was about staying with my mom.  I LOVE my mother and we get along great.  However being almost 40 years old and sharing a very small space with your mother and your husband for almost two weeks is gonna make you insane, I don’t care who you are.

So, I’m really looking forward to having a vacation where I have nothing pressing….nothing weighing on my mind so I can just relax.  Sounds simple right?  I look forward to that very much.

One week.

So last night I woke Rob up from his nap around five and laid there with him awhile. I realized I was pretty tired but it was too early to go to sleep. So I got up and we finished getting dinner and lunches ready for the next day. I was still dragging so I wondered out loud about going to bed around seven and seeing if I could sleep through the night. I can sleep in on a Saturday or Sunday morning for 14 hours at a stretch so why not sleep through a dark night?
After much inner contemplation I headed to bed while it was still light out. I slept through…
…until 1:30 in the morning.
I woke up with an overwhelming desire to pee so I did so. It was the middle of the night and I had plenty of time to get back to sleep. Or so I thought.
I lay in bed on the cusp of sleep when I heard what sounded like one of our doors shutting and or opening, repeatedly. Instantly I was awake and in the midst of a panic attack because even though my right brain said that it was probably just windy out, my wrong brain remembered watching Paranormal Activity 4 and was actively running every single creepy scene from that movie in my head.
What I didn’t know was that it was raining outside and that the noises I was hearing were rain dripping from the gutters and so forth. What I did know was that ghosts or serial killers had invaded my house and were ready to kill me.
I would have a full on sweating panic attack and then calm down until I heard the noise again five minutes later and start all over again.
This went on for about two and a half hours because I’m not stupid! I know that when you get up to investigate a strange noise, that is how you die in a horror movie!
Around four in the morning Rob got up to pee and went out to the living room. I was ashamed at being such a wuss so I faked sleep but I was relieved because he didn’t come back as a zombie or possessed person so all must be well.
Unfortunately, my body was still in full on panic mode because even though my mind was at ease, at any point after that I felt like if I was falling asleep I was going to stop breathing and jerked myself awake.
I did eventually fall asleep around five thirty and dreamed that I was front row at a Motley Crue concert that was doubled as a haunted house but nothing bad happened. I thankfully woke around seven because Rob had accidentally turned his alarm off.
I’m tired…but I’m afraid to go to bed too early tonight.

On Tuesday it was time to check out of one hotel into another.
Since my mother is no longer mobile enough to come to Vegas to visit us any longer part of this trip was planned around bringing mom to the new casino that had opened up in Oxford, about an hour away.
So we packed up and left the Best Western in Waterville, picked up mom in Augusta and made our way to the Oxford/Poland Springs area. It was too early to check into the hotel so we headed straight for the Oxford Casino.

It was average size for an Indian casino. Slots and table games. We started Mom out with a hundred dollar bankroll with the promise of another hundred if she lost the first. The catch was that anything she made in addition to the first hundred, she got to keep.

We turned her loose and we played some slots and craps before rejoining her and checking her sugar level. It was kinda low so we set off in search of a restaurant we read about and were excited to try, only to find they were closed on Tuesdays.
Bummed, we checked into the hotel, got a restaurant recommendation from the clerk and then got settled into our rooms.

 
We rested for about an hour and then headed to Gray to Cole Farms to get some grub. The place was perfect for us! A real locals place that makes their own stuff. I got the baked Haddock and so did mom while Rob got the homemade chili and we got the coconut shrimp as an appetizer. It was all fantastic!

   
From the restaurant we headed back to the casino for more gaming fun. We all ended up winning in the end with mom getting to keep the 75 bucks she won. She was pretty happy. We grabbed some sandwiches from the snack bar at the casino and headed back to the lodge to sleep on the lumpy mattresses.

On Wednesday we woke and headed straight back to Mom’s house.  I think I may have taken a nap at that point but my memory of this afternoon is kind of fuzzy at this point.  Eventually we ended up at Red Barn to get our Lobster baskets for the evening.  We got three Lobster baskets as well as a mixed seafood basket and a pint of seafood stew.  Oh and a vanilla shake.  It was ready in a jiffy and we headed out to my friend Katherine’s house.

Of all the people I have ever met, I think Katherine is the person I have known the longest that I am still friends with.  We’ve known each other since Jr. High and while we haven’t always been in touch, whenever we get together, be it in person or over the phone it is like no time has passed.  She organized our Wednesday night get together and it ended up being even better than I had hoped.  What started out as the promise of Lobster baskets and fiddleheads with her family turned into a mini high school reunion including two people that I haven’t seen since high school.

The night turned out to be just what I needed.  A nice break from my mom and even my husband(he played guitar on the front porch while chatting with Katherine’s husband) while I got to let loose and laugh.  Perfection in friends, fiddleheads, lobster baskets and margaritas.

I slept very good that night.

On Thursday we allowed ourselves time to sleep in and then headed out to my Auntie Tee’s house in Portland.

We knew when we were first planning this trip that we wanted to do a lot of things so we put some research into the goings on around the state.  One thing that we were particularly excited about was a one night only burlesque show in Portland.  Rob has done music for several burlesque shows put on by a local theater in Monterey.  That has been our only experience with it so we were looking forward to seeing someone elses take on it.

My Aunt Lynda lives in Portland and had generously extended an invitation to stay with her if we wanted when we were first planning the trip so it worked out perfectly.  Just for clarification, her name is Lynda, she goes by Lee and when my brother and I were little we couldn’t say Auntie Lee so we called her Auntie Tee instead.  The name has stuck all these years.

We arrived to Auntie Tee making us homemade beef stew and rolls.  After almost a week of eating out everyday, this was a very welcome sight.  We hung out on her porch and chatted for a bit.  My Aunt lives in a neighborhood with many oak trees.  As a result there are many squirrels running around.  It was this distraction that caused and actual “SQUIRREL!” moment for my mother.  She was talking about something or other and in mid sentence, she literally stopped and shouted: “Oh! A Squirrel!”  This drove Rob and I into tears of laughter because while it is a common joke among my easily distratctable friends to shout Squirrel when they get sidetracked, we had never actually seen someone do it for real.  With an actual squirrel.

Once we recovered we had a delicious dinner of the stew and then my cousins Sherry and Cindy showed up to entertain us with their bickering  before we headed out to the show.

The burlesque show was a benefit for the arts theater that was housing it.  It had some local burlesque groups as well as individual acts.  It was hosted by MC Gay Jay and he was assisted by a very entertaining mime that cleaned up after the acts.

We very much enjoyed the show.  All of the acts were good, if a little under-practiced for a couple of them, but it made for a delightful evening.

Back home we had some leftover stew and went to bed.

Our original plan was for Rob and I to leave mom with Auntie Tee in the morning and take off for Old Orchard Beach.  We hadn’t visited there since one of our first visits back home.  We had no reason to go there other than just to fill some time and since we were pretty tired we decided to nix it and just head home.

After Auntie Tee made us a delish breakfast of course.

We got home and I played around with the Priceline app again and found an even cheaper hotel than the last time in Augusta for that night so Rob and I merely repacked out suitcases and headed out to the Best Western off of Civic Center Drive.  It was a fairly new hotel(by that I mean that it didn’t exist when I lived there) but our room was TINY!    Easily half the size of the room we had at the Best Western in Waterville.  I joked that it was the room they saved for the Priceline cheapskates that didn’t want to pay full price.  Still, it was a real bed(not like the air mattress we had been sleeping on most of the week) and it had a pool.  Of course, it was an outdoor pool and the weather had finally started to get cool, but that didn’t stop me from getting into it and freezing my butt off soon after check in.  I’m on vacation damn it and there is a pool!

Anyhoo, we got some room service from the attached restaurant called “Rooster’s”.  We were told they were famous for their wings so Rob got some, he wasn’t that impressed.  I got a haddock wrap that was okay but overall we weren’t thrilled with the dinner.  Good thing we had some ice cream that we had bought to sustain us.

At some point during that day Katherine contacted me to change our plans to get together and go to the Clinton Fair from Sunday to the following day, Saturday because there was a chance of rain on Sunday.   That was fine with us so I called my friend Kimmy(another friend that I have known almost as long as Katherine and have the same type of longstanding friendship with) and told her we would be in town and we made arrangements to meet at Governer’s for breakfast.

To Be Continued!

I’m terrified of driving on the freeway.  So much so that I have refused to do it for most of my adult life.  I never used to be.  Where I grew up a freeway was two lanes…three tops but that was only when you got into the “big city”.  When I was working in Augusta and living in Fairfield I drove the highway daily.  Never had a care about it.

When I moved to Arizona I had a preconceived notion about the scary traffic out there and I was pretty much right.  I refused to drive on the Arizona freeways.  It took me twice as long but I took side streets everywhere.  Being a passenger on a freeway didn’t bother me at that point though.

After a few years I started a new and very stressful job.  It was during that time I was working long hours and getting little sleep under stressful conditions that I began to get serious anxiety.

I’m sure I’ve written about this before.  How I couldn’t walk in wide open spaces without having a panic attack and feeling like I was going to fall over.  A parking lot with no cars in it was my nemesis.  I developed this weird hunched over, really fast walk if I was alone.  If I was with my husband I would cling to his hand and arm like there was no tomorrow.

It was at that point that merely being a passenger on the freeway made me insane with panic.  I would drive my husband CRAZY with distraction as I clung to the “Oh Shit” handle and stomped on the imaginary brake the entire trip.  He didn’t understand what flip had switched in my brain to turn me into this freak of nature and neither did I.

I went to the doctor and she upped my anti depressant dosage to be used to anti anxiety as well but it didn’t really help.  She also gave me Xanax which made me loopy for hours after I took it so I refused to use it.

Eventually we moved from Arizona to California to be nearer to Rob’s parents.  We ditched the high stress jobs for much easier ones and my anxiety level dropped.  Walking outside was no longer a problem and I felt FREE!

The freeway however, was still a long engrained issue in my brain.  I’ve come a long way as far as being a passenger but for 13 years I have refused to go on a freeway other than the 68 that takes me to Salinas.

Gradually I have been expanding my horizons.  I’ve taken the freeway to Seaside and home through Carmel with merging and everything.

But driving anywhere out of town and for any length of time, forget it!

The reason I’m telling you all of this is because when it came time to have my weekend away this past weekend, I specifically chose a location outside of my comfort zone to drive to.  Price was also a factor, but I liked the idea of giving myself a push.  Have something fun and exciting at the end of that scary drive to give me a reward for actually doing it.

I was anxious all day Friday about it.  I must have mapped that thing fifty different times and so many of those times I tried to find a way around the highways.  Finally I decided to just freaking do it and I did.

I had several *almost* panic attacks once I got out of my familiar area but I blasted the new P!nk CD on the stereo and sang really loud. I had one moment where I got lost but that was only because my map app directed me in the wrong direction.  It was quickly fixed and I arrived in Gilroy with no problems.  I had even sort of relaxed by the end of the drive.  You can go here to hear about the actual weekend.

On Sunday I had planned to hang out until check out at noon just swimming and relaxing in general but after I woke up at nine I realized I was getting anxious again.  The longer I pretended to lay around and watch TV the worse it was getting.

When I stopped for gas I realized that I wasn’t nervous about the drive, I had done that two days prior and it wasn’t that bad.  What I began to comprehend was that I was actually getting nervous about the fact that I MIGHT get nervous on the drive.  How ridiculous is that???

At that point I just had to laugh at myself and head out on the road.

My app sent me on a different route this time that ironically had MORE freeway on it and I was fine.  I was still scared but I realized it was silly to be.  Once again as long as I was singing I felt fine.  If I stopped for some reason I would start to panic.  That’s something I might need to work on, but the fact is that I did it!

I drove an hour out of my way on a freeway twice all by myself!  That might sound like a stupid thing to be proud of for a lot of people but for me it is pure joy!

So a little progress report on my weaning off my anti depressants:

I’m down to 20 mg of celexa from 40 mg.  I started down by 30 for a few weeks and just started on 20 mgs the end of last week.

There hasn’t been an overwhelming amount of withdrawals yet and I can only imagine that is because I’m still taking a significant amount of the drug.  I will admit to being more emotional lately for no apparent reason but that would happen a lot with my full dose of the meds.  When I feel the rage start to come in (that’s what it feels like, is just pure rage followed by tears because I cry when I’m frustrated) I am trying to stop and ask myself if the feeling is justified or not.  If it isn’t I try to chill out, if it is I let myself feel it and get it out.

For example, last night I couldn’t get an app on my phone link up to my twitter account.  Instead of looking up the information on how to do it properly I just kept trying the same thing over and over again knowing full well it wasn’t working until I wanted to huck the damn phone across the room and then chase after it and stomp it to death.

Instead I asked myself if it was really that big of a deal to get the app to work at 8:30 at night when I didn’t even know when I would use it again?  No, probably not.  So I put the phone aside for a half an hour and when I came back to it I realized exactly what I had to do and fixed it in a few minutes.

On the other side of the coin there was this morning.  I left my house at my usual time only to find four white construction trucks blocking the one lane, dead end street that I live on.  The drivers were all standing outside their trucks and they all just stared at me, I swear for a full minute, not knowing what to do.  Are you kidding me??  I pointed in the direction behind them and they slowly started moving.  One got into a truck and moved it a millimeter before getting out and seeing if the additional room he gave me in the one foot space I had to get my car through helped any.  Then another one got in another truck and did the same thing.  This went on for at least ten minutes before one of my neighbors came out and actually had to start directing them and then me through the tiny space that they were able to free up, literally just leaving an inch on either side to get my car through.  All of this insanity made me late for work.

In this instance, I did think my anger and the tears that followed were worth it, so I let myself cry on the way to work.  I let it out and then I was fine.

Basically I’m feeling a little less than good, but it seems manageable.  I’m going to stay at 20 mg for a while just to let my body get used to it and then I will cut it to 10 and finally wean off altogether.  I’m looking forward to no longer being dependent on a pill to determine my mood…I just hope it works.

As long as I can remember I have been on antidepressants.  It’s been so long I don’t even remember the order of them but in the past I’ve been on Prozac, Zoloft, Welbutrin and am currently on Celexa.  I’ve been on Celexa since before I met Rob so at least fourteen years.  At some point, I just accepted the fact that I will be on them for the rest of my life.

I ran out of my Celexa on Tuesday night, meaning I took my last pill around five on Tuesday.  My intention was to stop at the Pharmacy and pick up my refill on the way home from visiting friends Wednesday night therefore I would only miss a couple hours in between doses.  Well, I had car trouble that stopped the visit and the stop at the pharmacy.  It wasn’t really the thing on my mind after the check engine light went on in my car and it was having trouble shifting(whole other entry right there).

So this morning I got to work and thought of taking my pill, remembering I was out.  I evaluated how I felt during the morning and didn’t feel too bad.  Nothing out of the ordinary so I got to thinking.  What if I just stopped taking it, see what happened?  The worst that could happen is I get out of control with my anger and emotions and then go back on it.  I’m not exactly a fan of taking a chemical every day to make myself feel better and half the time it didn’t work anyway!

Recently I had started taking a vitamin regimen and was feeling pretty good because of it.  It’s a long story but I think I had a vitamin B deficiency and am working on getting that back up to speed.  Vitamin B deficiency can cause all the symptoms that I started taking anti depressants for in the first place.   So I though with my new vitamin program making me feel better, maybe it’s time to ditch the prescription.

So on my morning break I researched going cold turkey off celexa and the results were less than favorable–especially if you take the maximum dosage, which I have forever.  The preferred method is to taper off the dosage slowly until you are at the smallest dosage and then quit it.   There will still be withdrawals but they won’t be nearly as severe.

Well, the fact that there are severe withdrawals to not taking this drug was reason enough for me to want to stop taking it.  It never occurred to me that this could happen because I take my pill every day and have only missed about a day maximum in between doses.

So tonight I picked up my scrip and took my 40 mg dose.  Starting tomorrow I’m going to take 30 mg for a while and eventually cut down to 10 and then off.  It’s time to see how my mind and body will react to the real world without chemical protection.  I may not like it and my husband may eventually beg me to get back on it for his sake, but I’ve got to try.

I’ll keep you posted.

If you care to read, this is the blog entry I found that convinced me I wanted to wean off the drug.

And this was the article that told me not to do it cold turkey

Our dogs don’t fart.  We’ve never heard them or smelled them in all the years we’ve been dog owners.  I’ve always thought it a little odd because I’ve known dogs that just let them loose and man do they stink!  But our dogs, nary a peep or a smell.

I guess it stands to reason because they are on a pretty steady diet of quality dog food.  They don’t get table scraps other than the occasional Cheeze It or whatever that falls on the floor.  Good quality in, good quality out I guess.

Shilo gets a lot of dog treats when she’s at Rob’s work all day with him.  There are certain co workers that Rob gives a box of dog treats here and there because they like to feed her and try and get her to do tricks and the like.  It helps her socialize and gives Rob a little break to bring her around to get said treats.

I just found out that they tried a new brand of treats for her.  I was sitting here at the laptop on the couch checking facebook as I tend to do when I get home from work and all was quiet in the house.  Shilo was chillin on her dog bed on the opposite and of the couch when I heard the tiniest little toot.  Rob was outside and Pappy was in the bedroom so I knew they weren’t the guilty parties.  I looked over at Shilo and she had this look of shock on her face before she leaned down and sniffed her own butt looking very disgusted at what she smelled.

I fell out laughing.  The whole thing was just priceless!

Needless to say those dog treats are going in the garbage.  🙂

Yesterday marked the paying off of our second to last credit card.  That’s right, only one left and that is looking to be paid off before the end of the year.