It dawned on me today that we leave for our beach vacation 13 weeks from this coming Saturday (not that I’m counting the days or anything). And at the same time, I realized I have SERIOUSLY fallen off the exercise wagon. I can’t seem to get back into the groove I was in last fall. Although I have to say, I’m not surprised. That groove was TOTALLY unlike me and I’m still not sure where it came from.

I have been able to keep my eating pretty much on track aside from the occasional weekend splurges. Now that football season is over, it’s easier to eat healthier even on the weekends. I have been on top of making menus and I want to get back into the habit of visiting the farmers market. There has been a pitfall. I recently discovered a fabulous cheap wine and my consumption of wine has started to creep back up so I need to reign that in a bit too. Entertaining with friends on weekends can make it tricky too since our friends like to drink as much as we do.

I think I mentioned that B is trying to lose weight too and we really want to set a good example for our girls. A few weeks ago, we started taking a walk as a family at least a few times a week. But the last couple of weeks, things have come up and we haven’t been able to go more than a couple times a week. And I have an awful feeling with the weather getting warmer that our excuses are going to become more and more frequent.

So, starting Monday I resolve to get my ass back on that treadmill. I figure if I do that AND we happen to take a family walk, that will just be a bonus and I’ll have burned even more calories.

I need to get a new bathing suit this year and I’m HOPING I can order one at least a size smaller. At the very least, I hope to lose another 13 pounds before we go to the beach. I hope I can get there.

Yeah, I know, I’m really late on this. First it was because my daughter didn’t go back to school until the 9th. Then I got caught up in my duties with The Band. On that front, I had to ask for some help and luckily, I was granted even more than I expected so, now I have more time to blog.

I am going to start by saying that I don’t like the word “resolution.” I like the word “goal” better, so that is what I’m going to use. I started thinking about my goals for the New Year Back in October and I think I have a decent list of OBTAINABLE (that’s KEY) goals to reach.

My first goal is to set SMALL goals that lead to bigger goals. I have learned that if I am overwhelmed with a goal, whether it be weight loss, blogging, etc., I get frustrated and give up. So now I am going to start breaking my big goals up into little chunks and go from there.

(Source: mommylifeinfloridaparadise.blogspot.com)

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I have always been an animal lover. Over the course of my childhood we had 3 cats and a dog. B never really had any pets. So, when we got ready to move in together, he wanted to get a cat. Since we both worked all day, we got two kittens, a brother and sister. We figured they would keep each other company. They came to live with us the DAY after we moved in together. We named them Maxwell and Nikita…Max and Nikki for short. About a year later, we adopted two more. They came from a feral colony that lived behind a deli in town. They were about the same age but they weren’t sisters. We named them Zoe and Kayla.

(Source: mommylifeinfloridaparadise.blogspot.com)

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When we first moved to FL, we picked the area we did because we were familiar with it (well that and the fact that this county has a great school system). We were familiar with it because I had a friend who had lived in this area since high school. I won’t get into the boring details of our friendship other than to say we met in 7th grade back in CT…right before she moved to Cape Cod and then a year or so later, she moved here to FL. We kept in touch as pen pals and visited each other when we could over the years. I flew down when she got married and she was a bridesmaid in our wedding. It was at around that time that I noticed she had changed a bit. Or maybe, we had both changed.

Over the next few years we continued to keep in touch although we did have period of not speaking. She was very helpful as we prepared to move here. She was also the one who took me to the hospital when I lost our last angel baby and stayed with me until all the intake stuff was over. But it became clear that we had different personalities, ways of parenting…the list could go on and on. I had thought we’d see each other often once we moved here but that wasn’t the case. I don’t think it was anyone’s fault. We both had lives and once we moved into the house we live in now, we got to know our neighbors and we made other friends along the way who were more like us. And of course she had friends as well. Our kids were slightly different ages too so that probably played into it as well.

As of right now, I would say it has been close to a year since I have seen her. She emails occasionally and I reply but I would say that happens once every couple of months. My mom doesn’t seem to understand it. I think she thinks that because I have known her so long, that we should just continue to TRY to keep the friendship going. But is it worth it when you have become such different people? How much effort should we be required to put into keeping a friendship going?

I had wondered how to handle the whole thing. Do I just distance myself? Not reply to emails or calls? Actually talk to her about the situation? In the end, it seems this friendship is dying a natural death and none of those things are necessary. I have no hard feelings toward her…she is a wonderful person. It’s not like there was a fight that led to this. We became different people who no longer mesh.

Am I the only one who finds this happening as we get older? Facebook has led to many people reconnecting after years of little or no contact but I wonder if issues like this are coming to light more often because of this. That wasn’t the case here but I am curious to know if Facebook has resulted in others having this issue. It’s always sad when a friendship ends and it may be even more sad when there isn’t one particular incident that leads to it…no fight or harsh words that make it easy to walk away. But regardless of how it ends, it’s like a chapter of your life has closed and all you have are the memories and hopefully, there are more good memories than bad.

(Source: mommylifeinfloridaparadise.blogspot.com)

bandbacktogether:

Me: I bite my nails.

You: So what? So do lots of people.

Me: No, I really bite my nails.

You: So what? Once I bit mine till they bled.

Me: No, I bite my nails until there are literally no nails. And then I pull back my cuticles to get to the nail hidden under my skin. And then I bite my skin.

You: …

————–

I have no nail on my index fingers right now. Maybe 1/8” on my pinkies. My ring and middle fingers have about 1/4” of exposed nail and my thumbs have a whole half an inch if you count the part where I shredded the top layer of nail but left the bottom one. I have callouses on every knuckle. My cuticles are a disaster. I’ve got at least one infection in a finger at any given moment.

I didn’t used to be self-conscious about it. I would bite my nails in public without a thought about hygiene or how bizarre it looked for me to be contorting my hand and my face trying to get the right angle on my thumbnail (try it, you’ll be surprised how difficult it is) but only just recently I started feeling awkward and ashamed. I try not to bite in public, or at least just my pinky, but sometimes I taste blood and realise I’ve shredded my index finger in the middle of class and well, now what?

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(Source: bandbacktogether.com)

bandbacktogether:

In celebration of our one year anniversary, we’re working to highlight other sites around the Internet that are Doing Good. Every Tuesday at noon (central time, yo), we’re bringing you a story of why someone else chooses to devote their time Doing Good.

You know our beginnings. Now it’s time to see theirs.

I’d like to introduce you to Mara from Medicinal Marzipan. Mara claims to be 50% smarts, 30% fire, and 20% cotton candy. Really she’s 100% awesome, but that’s not my story to tell, it’s hers.

~ jana

At its core, Medicinal Marzipan is a site about body image and authentic living. Frequent topics include healthy living, creating positive change in your life, confidence building, and developing amazing relationships with yourself and others.

I started Medicinal Marzipan three years ago in an attempt to reach out into the blogosphere and create an online safe-haven for others who knew that they deserved better than the life they were allowing themselves.

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bandbacktogether:

I can’t remember how old I was when my mom met him. He had a dog named Nika. He was handsome with blue eyes, his black hair covered by a cowboy hat. He didn’t smoke or drink anything but Pepsi. My mom loved him. I was his girl. I called him Daddy. We’d go fishing or drive around in his truck singing along to Charlie Daniels and Dolly Parton.

I loved him.

My mom married him and had two more babies. She’d been married before. I even had a little brother from that marriage I rarely saw. There’s a picture of my brother, my stepdad and I with Nika from before they were married. I was five or six, my brother a few years younger. I don’t remember that day but I remember loving the outfit I was wearing. The look in my eyes is too sad for someone that age. Perhaps it was going on even then.

I don’t know how old I was when he started making me do stuff that made me uncomfortable. I’d dread it whenever my mom left the house.

I remember specific incidents; acts he made me perform – the pain, gagging…feeling sick. Feeling WRONG. Dreading being alone with him but a strange sense of happiness that I could please him. He told me I was a good girl; a pretty girl. What a good job I was doing. Sometimes, I still have trouble accepting praise because it reminds me of him.

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bandbacktogether:

This contribution is part of the I Am The Face of Mental Illness Project we’re working on here at Band Back Together.

Please, join us.

Mental health, to me, is something more or less mythical. Like eating a balanced diet, being fit and having romantic relationships, it’s something I know other people do and do well, but somehow I can never manage it myself.

This past year has been… well, it’s not been good.

Last October I unknowingly took my last class at sixth form and haven’t been back since. At first, we thought it was just to do with the panic attacks – I’d need a week off, a month of rest maybe, and I’d be back at school getting ready for exams and university. I went to a CBT therapist, who was lovely, and he told me I had panic disorder, agoraphobia, severe depression, chronic anxiety and that none of this was my fault. It was months before I believed him on any of those counts. I’m still struggling with it most days.

Halfway through November, I realized the CBT wasn’t helping. My therapist said that was because I was too depressed for it to work, just getting into the room and sitting down and staring at the walls took a monumental effort. We decided we’d try counseling instead for a little while. You know, until I got back on my mental feet.

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bandbacktogether:

I knew I was going to have postpartum depression.

The second I found out I was pregnant, I knew I was going to have a hard time adjusting. I knew my anxiety would spin out of control. I knew I had a rough road ahead.

But most of all, I knew I couldn’t become her.

Despite what I’d seen and been through growing up, I came out the other side fairly unscathed. It’s not to say that I had a bad childhood; I didn’t, thanks to my dad, who is everything and anything a child would want in a parent. He was very diligent in sheltering my brother and I from her bipolar disorder. She had always been the source of the disarray.

Twenty one years of ups and downs passed before I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and started the road to recovery. Another eight passed before I felt I had a good enough handle on it to become a mom. A real mom.

And I felt like a real mom when we brought Blake home late Wednesday, February 4th, 2009. But that Saturday night, I had my first post-pregnancy anxiety attack.

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