Monday, February 29, 2016

Leap day snapshot

Because I am a huge copycat, I'm totally copying this post from Amy. And since Leap Day 2016 was a fabulous day (so far!) I'm excited to make a snapshot of today as well as highlight a few of the Leap Days in the past.

Leap Day 1988: I would have been at gymnastics. I was in 7th grade, and that was a terrible year for friends. I was just making friends with a girl named Amber, whose birthday party was the first week in March. Amy was competing in a meet in Sandy, and I missed the Friday night meet for the party. I had a cold and I was not planning on staying the night for the sleepover, but then decided to at the last minute. I can remember my sister Suzette taking me to Party City in Springville so I could pick out Amber's present since my mom was with Amy at the meet.

Leap Day 1992: I was a junior in high school. After a terrible fall, things were a bit better with my friends. I'm pretty sure I smoked my first cigarette in February 1992. What a lovely thing to remember. I was dating a guy from Pleasant Grove that I had met at the Palace Dance club in Provo, Utah. In March, I would dump him and start dating a guy named Daron from West Jordan.

Leap Day 1996: I was at school at Virginia Tech. On Leap Day, I did a performance with my dance group and another dance group at the school named Ujima. I danced in a piece that had been choreographed by a girl with scoliosis so there were no bends in the upper part of the spine, which I thought was really cool.

Leap Day 2000: I had just moved in to my first house the month before. I was working at my same job, and we were on the fourth floor of Eagle Gate in downtown Salt Lake. I sat in an arrangement that we called the Quad and I had three coworkers who sat within feet of me and heard every word I said.

Leap Day 2004: I was training for a marathon that I would do in April. Thomas was 2.5. We had just bought our Nissan Xterra (which we just sold last summer.) Shane and I carpooled to work every day together. I was waiting for the marathon to come so that I could get pregnant with Ben. I read the Time Traveler's Wife for the first time.

Leap Day 2008: Thomas was 6.5, Ben was 3. I still lived across the street from my friend Shelly, and we spent every weekend with our BFFs the Bells. I would have been working at year-end processing at work, just like I've done every February. My dad was still living at home, and I went down a few Thursdays a month to spend the afternoon with him. It was the first year I did SDBBE and I was reading How to Be Good, my friend Isabel's book.

Leap Day 2012: We were living in our current house for almost 2 years. Thomas was 10.5 and Ben was 7. Shane was working at a company down the street - he would change to his current job in 2 months. I was at my job, and we were still in our old building while most of the company was in our current location. Mel and John still lived in Utah, and my dad had been dead for 6 months. I was reading The Dive from Clausen's Pier for SDBBE.

Right now in 2016, we are:

  • We are loving snowshoeing. I'm sort of obsessed with it, actually. We've gone twice in two weeks. This week was our longest one yet. There is only one section of the trails at Solitude resort that we haven't gone on, which makes me feel a bit excited and proud. 
  • Ben just finished indoor soccer. It was an adventure. He had a lot of fun playing with one of his besties, Weston, and the rest of his team. They were sort of ragtag, but that makes even more fond of them for some reason. 
  • Thomas is plugging away at ninth grade. He went to his first region church dance about a week ago. He had so much fun, which made me so happy. I remember going to dances at his age and having the time of my life. He loves to play his Xbox, and spends a lot of Friday and Saturday nights on it with his friends in the basement. I'm pretty proud of the kid he is becoming.
  • Shane is finding himself a little nostalgic for doing household improvements. After spending two years with more than enough projects to do in the basement, it's weird for him to come home on Friday night and not have hours worth of work ahead of him. He's going to build a door for the utility room downstairs (we are jumping on the barn door bandwagon!) so he's got an opportunity to pull out his tool belt soon.
  • I'm trying to figure out this whole being 40 thing. I realized last month that I have choices. I might not be able to control what happens, but I can control how I react to things. I want to take more opportunities to do things I am interested in. Embrace and act are my two words for the year. I'm rereading Time Traveler's Wife and Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince.
Today I: went to work. Had a lovely Gandolfo's turkey avocado sandwich at my desk. Ran on the trail wearing my favorite running tights and new running shirt. Almost finished a project I've been working on for over a month. Picked Ben up from school for the first time since the first of February when he went off track. Did a  five minute workout on Youtube. Left my phone at work. Made chicken bowls for dinner and ate a Rice Krispy treat for dessert.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Happy making: wool socks edition

Lest it sound like my whole life is doom and gloom, I want to put it out there that there are things making me happy these days. I need to complain about anxiety every now and then, and I want to document things I notice so that I am armed for the future, but it isn’t the whole story lately.
So what things have made me happy lately? Let me count the ways.

Wool socks. Oh my gosh, I forgot this when I first posted this. How could I forget though? I went hiking in October with my sweet mother-in-law and she brought me a new pair of wool socks. I looked forward to wearing those socks every week, and so on the day after Christmas, I bought a four pack of the very best socks in the world: Merino wool socks from Costco. I have worn fluffy, warm, beautiful wool socks all winter since. And, I just bought another 4 pack last Friday. I'm sort of a sock slut. But I have no shame in that. No, none at all.

Running. Can I just tell you (again!) how much I love winter running? I am going to. I love the cold air. I love getting warm and sweaty at the same time as my face is delightfully cool. I love running fast in the winter. I even love my treadmill these days. I’ve been doing some different kinds of workouts thanks to the inspiration of taking an Orange Theory fitness class last month. At Orange Theory, they hook up you with a heart rate monitor for the entire workout, which consist of 23 minutes of cardio and 23 minutes of strength. All you have to do is follow the workout plan as set forth by the instructor while trying to keep your heartrate monitor color in the orange or red sections. These are the anaerobic thresholds that, once reached, can help burn calories after the workout has ended. I discovered in the class just how much I love working in the green section – the one right before orange & red. Why? Because I’m not out of breath as much in the green. After the class, I decided I could get myself in the orange by doing pick-ups of 1 or 2 minutes at a faster pace during my runs. I feel like it’s helping. I’m also getting back to doing some high intensity interval training on run days and cross train days. I haven’t done much strength training in the past few months, and I’m can tell that I need it.

Running clothes. I count this in a completely different category than running! I got a running skirt and long running tights for Christmas that make me so happy. Shane also gave me an awesome running jacket that I never would have bought for myself but absolutely love. It is perfect for an outdoor run and keeps me so warm I barely notice the wind and cold. Plus it has a cozy soft inner lining that is bright pink. I love running in pink.

Eating Lindor balls. Shane brought home a giant gift bag of assorted Lindor balls right before Christmas. How had I not discovered their particular brand of deliciousness??!! My faves are the light and dark blue, red, and black. I’ve since bought 2 more bags, and Shane also scared up another partial bag from work that have fed my addiction nicely.

Sewing. As one of my ways of coping with anxiety, I started sewing at night. I had started a Christmas tree skirt 2 Christmases ago that had tons of hand stitching. I spent many nights sewing on that and finished it right before I decorated. I then decided to make table runners as gifts. These were fun projects that forced me to finish the items I was working on, thus helping me get better at quilting and binding. I even tried my hand at free-form quilting, something I had never done before but now adore. In the midst of it, I found an awesome sewing machine that I ended up getting for Christmas. Sewing is so fun now, and I feel like I can do things I couldn’t do with my old machine. I have a few other projects in the works, which is exciting.

I have made three of these as gifts...we'll see if I ever finish the one I  started for myself.

Christmas tree skirt

Finishing our basement. Back before I went to Italy, Shane started working on finishing our basement. It took 2 loooonng years to finish. We used electricians, plumbers, and heating and air professionals early on to finish those jobs, but the rest was done by Shane. After spending all spring and summer sheet rocking, we saved up and had pros do the mudding and taping in the fall (I will forever be grateful for them! They did such a great job at helping our walls look good.) We also had a guy do the tile in the shower and bathroom floor. The boys helped us paint, which was pretty fun. We just got carpet 2 weeks ago. We finished it with all the same paint, doors, and trim so that it matches the upstairs. It’s so exciting to have it all done.

Reading. I’ve finished a couple of books lately, and started a few that I may or may not finish but still enjoyed. My favorites were The All Girls Filling Station’s Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg and The Lake House by Kate Morton. My least favorite was The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood…I didn’t finish it, but I may, eventually. I’m reading The Library at Mount Char currently.

My family. We’ve had some really fun times at home lately, watching The Office reruns (because Thomas, at 14, decided he wanted to watch the series again now that he “gets more of the jokes.” Teenagers. I just cringe!) and our TV watching staple Modern Family. Shane and I had a really fun and casual anniversary dinner together (we were both filthy, having worked in the basement all day cleaning and then went to a late soccer game for Ben – seriously, the game started at 5:40 in the evening. The opportunity to go out sort of just evolved out of a very nice offer of Ben’s friend’s parents who were also at the game.) Shane and I had some very important conversations and started to understand a few things about ourselves and about each other that can help make things smoother. I’ve enjoyed watching Ben’s soccer team get clobbered each week by the club teams he’s playing during indoor soccer. We are like the ragtag team from the wrong side of the tracks with our cotton t-shirts and mismatched shorts, but the kids are learning a lot and getting better thanks to playing teams that have played for years together in indoor and outdoor soccer.  

Meeting someone again that I haven’t seen in over 25 years. It was something I had dreamed and hoped for and am so very grateful happened.

Knick knacks from my mom’s house. While helping her pack, I brought home a few items that have made me so happy. I got a painting that my grandpa painted. I also got a milk glass bowl that was my mom’s moms, and a pitcher with cups that was my dad’s moms. I didn’t bring home a lot of stuff, but what I did get, I really love and am trying to incorporate into my house instead of just shoving them into a cabinet somewhere to never see the light of day. I also brought home a giant secretary that I still have sitting in my garage. The thing is massive, almost 7 feet tall. I want to put it in my basement, but I don’t know if it can fit and haven’t convinced anyone to pick it up and attempt to take it down the stairs. (If any of you local readers have a moving-company hookup that would do a house call and tell me if it will fit or not, I might just love you forever.)

So what is making you happy lately? I want to know.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Filling in the spaces

A few months ago, I posted about my anxiety. And then I stopped blogging. Not that the two were related, but I just could never get myself to take the time to blog. 

I’m a natural born worrier. I have worried about uncontrollable situations for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t until this summer that I found that my tendency to imagine the worst was more than just an annoying habit. Anxiety has become an entity in my life that goes with me wherever I go. Even when I’m not thinking about it, it’s always right there in the back of my mind. I constantly monitor it, judging if it’s at an acceptable level or not. I find it exhausting.



I wish I could say that after getting on medication, it all went away. I can definitely say that medication helped. Holy cow, it helped and I will always be very grateful that I made the decision to seek help. The place where I was all through August and into September was terrible. By the time I finally stopped fighting the idea of medication, I was in a dark and terrifying place. I was scared to sleep. I was scared to be in confined spaces. I was scared of passing out at any given moment. I was terrified to drive, especially on the freeway. It was awful, awful, awful.

It took a while for everything to even out. I was very grateful that I had decided to run an October half marathon. Having to do long runs each week gave me something to think about and plan for – a much needed diversion. I could also remind myself on a weekly basis with my long run that if I could run 7, 8, 9, 10 miles without passing out, that I could do the same while driving in my car. It took a few weeks, but I eventually got to a place where anxiety was in the background of everything.


I’d like to insert this quote from a Nine Inch Nail’s song:

“Then a tiny little dot caught my eye. It was just about too small to see. But I watched it way too long. It was pulling me down….I was up above it. Now I’m down in it.”

Isn’t that how it is? A tiny little dot, watched for too long, that somehow becomes all you can see. To be honest, my mom’s sale of her home and move dominated my thoughts for much of December and January. I had hoped she would sell for over 10 years (I can remember the first thing I said to my mom and dad when my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s was – are you going to sell the house?) I tried to prepare her, pack her, convince her to move for a very, very long time. When she got the offer in November it seemed like a godsend, but the timing was awful. In the mix of all the December activities, her move was a giant arrow on the calendar with a few bullseye rings around it. On Christmas, I looked around at her house and realized how much still needed to be done. Even 10 days before the move, the house wasn’t nearly ready to be moved out of. I tried to do things to alleviate what I felt was an inevitable train wreck, but I couldn’t manage it. It wasn’t my responsibility to carry out, and though I did what I could, it was hard for me to realize my place in it or allow my brain to stop worrying about it.

On Human Rights Day I decided to drive down to see my mom’s house one last time. I had tried to be ok with saying goodbye to it the previous Thursday, but then I realized that I really wanted to see it empty. I didn’t realize how emotionally fraught I was until I found myself in a full on panic attack on the freeway on the way down. I decided that freeway driving may not be the best idea, so I took the back roads the rest of the way and talked to Amy on the phone. I was so nervous to see the house. I was nervous that the new owners would be there and I wouldn’t get to be alone. I was anxious to get it over with and be back on my way home.

When I got there, I had a pretty good experience. I took a few pictures that I really wanted to get. I walked through every single room. I walked over to the neighbor’s house and hugged her, crying and telling her how grateful I was that she had helped my mom for so long. I looked at the house in different angles. It wasn’t just that it was empty. It just looked so…alone. Left behind.

After about half an hour, I set off home. Now, I’m usually a greedy girl and stop at the gas station on my way home (there is a lovely gas station there that has a drive through!) but I was trying to hurry so I just didn’t stop. I found that my earlier panic started right back up where it left off. About 20 minutes into the drive, I pulled off the freeway again and decided to give myself a break by getting a drink. It was then that I discovered to my everlasting horror that I had left my wallet back at my mom’s house. The thought of going back to get it nearly pushed me over the edge, but panic attack or not, I turned back around. It was sort of good – I ended up seeing my mom at the house for a minute, which was good. But it sucked adding an additional hour to my drive home. The lesson I learned from this was that I can drive through multiple panic attacks for hours on end and come out of it somewhat ok. I didn’t go crazy or crash my car or even do anything remotely close to those things. It’s the small victories, right?

The best part of the whole thing is that it’s finally done. My mom is moved. I feel like she was incredibly brave to have done it. It is such a relief to have her moved to a more manageable home that’s closer to me and my sisters.

The hard part has been telling my brain that it’s over. Over the many years of waiting, I’ve worn a very deep groove of worry about her and her home. Once it was over, I found that I didn’t know what to do in its absence. The after effects of the stress were almost as bad as the stress itself – maybe worse, because now it’s hard to figure out what to do about my anxiety over my anxiety. All of the feelings came rushing back that I had dealt with last summer.


I think I’m finally on the other side of it all. I’ve learned an important lesson about how I react to stress. The fact that my anxiety goes up after the stress has gone is crappy, but something I’m glad that I’ve figured out because it sort of helps explain my reaction last summer when it all began. I’m trying to not to be hard on myself at the fact that I relapsed. I’m so very glad that I’m better equipped to deal with it this time around. But the process of finding new ways to spend the mental energy I used to spend worrying about my mom’s house has been not very fun. I’d like to start filling in the spaces with more meaningful and positive thoughts instead of turning my mental energy to even more impossible-to-control things like global warming or gang violence or Donald Trump’s presidential run. I think I’m on the right track.