I Feel GREAT!

This morning I woke up and I felt...well...strange.

I lay there for a moment and ran a quick body inventory.

Toes? Wriggle Wriggle. Oh, stuck in the sheets. Let me move my legs and get them unstuck. Eyup, the legs work.

Oh, I feel a cat moment coming on...stretch the back...ohhhh that feels soooo good. My back is working...why do I still feel strange?

I reach my arms up over my head and continue my stretch, spreading my fingers out one by one...completely enjoying the sensation of new circulation spreading from the tips of my fingers to my shoulders and connecting with the same sensation running up my spine.

What is this strange strange feeling though? I cannot place it.

I snuggle into Chris for a moment and give him instructions. I start to ask "will you make coffee while I shower?" but I stop because I suddenly remember that he has plans to visit the lab to having a fasting blood draw - something I think is absolutely stupid for about 12,000 reasons - all of which I listed in detail yesterday during a fight which involved every one of my personal demons and, because I am me, also involved me pulling out a few of his own and parading them in front of him.

But it is not yesterday. It is a NEW day. And I am feeling strange but can't place it. So instead I say "We will take my daughter to school, than you will drop me off at work, get your errands done, and then you will go to Starbucks and you will bring me a Venti Mocha Latte Breve" which is my favorite coffee drink in the entire world and is essentially the long name for one big fat calorie in a cup. I can feel his mouth curl up against my neck as he grins and asks me to write it down.


Feeling strange still, I swing my legs over the edge and in a few quick strides I'm in the hallway, knocking on my daughter's door, waking her up. "Sweetie" I call "It's time to get up."

"Okay mom, I'm up" her sleepy child's voice sings back to me.

"I love you"

I head back to the bedroom, finish the last bit of bedmaking, and head into the bathroom to shower. Under the steamy hot spray I am still feeling very strange.

Very strange indeed.

And then it hits me. I identify it. Standing there in wonder I realize that for the first time in weeks I am not feeling queasy vaguely green with nausea. Not in the least little bit. In fact, other than still being tired because I really am not the world's best sleeper, I feel pretty darn good.

I do my hair, put my makeup on and now I'm almost giddy with joy. Giddy I would be, in fact, if I weren't STILL tired and if I had coffee in my hands. I am filled with wonderous amazement because physically I feel pretty darn good.

Just before Chris drops me off I say to him "I am not nauseaus, not in the least little bit and you know what I haven't taken in two days?"

"Prilosec" he answers, not missing even a beat.

"Right!" and then I hop out of the car and dash up the steps into the building and up to my office.

And here I sit, working on project financials and waiting for him to bring me my coffee while I revel in the fact that I feel GREAT. I've decided to completely ignore the doctor's orders and listen to my body, which while on the double doses of prilosec craved tomatoes, salads with vinegars, and soda (which I rarely drink.)

What do those things have in common?

They are all acidic and they are all that I've wanted for a week now.

The doctors essentially ordered an approach that shut down all acid production in my stomach. Prior to that they'd been minimizing it with once daily prilosec. I don't have a gallbladder thanks to the gallbladder soccer game my daughter played the entire time I was pregnant with her and as a result I don't produce all the digestive juices we were built to produce.

In my heart I knew what they were telling me didn't make sense. I knew it but instead I listened to them anyway. I trusted them more than I trusted myself.

Until the weekend when I finally said "there has to be a reason I'm craving this stuff" and I went back to my once a day prilosec. And then last night, instead of taking my daily dose I said "no" and this morning...I feel strange.

Because I feel GREAT!

I am on my second bottle of water, happily rehydrating my body...which I've had trouble with over the past few weeks because of the nausea...and I'm enjoying the orange I've flavored it with. Two bottles of water before 9:30 in the morning..amazing. Oh, and my coffee has arrived!


It's going to be a fine day indeed....


NL

Oh Happiness! Holidays Coming!

I love Thanksgiving. I love Christmas. In fact, I pretty much love the entire stretch between the 29th of October and the 2nd of January.

I used to be a purist. Before Halloween (but not before Labor Day) you are supposed to have ghosts, graveyards in front yards, and the turmoil of figuring out what you are going to dress up as. Me, I don't do ugly. On purpose at least. I think Halloween is about celebrating a part of you that you don't usually let the rest of the world see. Or just have a little fun. So I've been a belly-dancer, a mime (big mistake, I did that for a party once), a medieval princess, a pirate, an earthquake survivor (my one foray into the ugly)and a cat to name a few. When I became a mom I expanded to family themes which included a pumpkin patch and a Host of Angels.

After Halloween you are allowed to start decorating for Thanksgiving. Everything becomes golds and oranges and browns with Indian corn and pictures of turkeys. I don't actually like turkey but I love ham so every year I make it for Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family. Nitrate free so it tastes good. It is now known as the "ham that Dad F" likes. One year we hit on the fact that I make a "sloppy spinach" - canned spinach with an ungodly amount of butter in it - that the kids like too. So every year I wait for my cooking orders and then I figure out the logistics. And every year I pretty much know I'm buying a ham and canned spinach and then working what little cooking magic I have in my fingers.

This year my brother and sister-in-law are hosting. They happen to own my parents old house, a big rambling brick split level that the father of an ex-boyfriend of mine used to refer to as a "the mansion." So it will fit us all very nicely and my sister-in-law, whom I often refer to as a sister of my heart, is a magnificent hostess. Oh, and I bet there will be WINE!!!

But the day after Thanksgiving, THAT is the day I wait for starting sometime in March or April. THAT is the day the decorations come out and get put up. THAT is the day I begin my Christmas shopping, often with my one sister online at the same time and our fingers sing-songing back and forth between the websites we are surfing and the chat session we have open between us.

I will stop at absolutely nothing to make my home look and smell like Christmas. I will have Christmas cards bought and ready to be addressed - even though I'm likely never to finish getting them sent.

I know that one of the gifts my family (extended) has given me is that we never celebrate Christmas all together on the 25th of December. Instead we pick a different day and we end up have TWO Christmases. My step-children, when they discovered this, thought they'd died and gone to heaven. So already they are asking "When is the F Christmas this year?" and I will have an answer for them on Thanksgiving day. I will also know which sibling I will be buying for this year because, oh glory how lucky am I, the family is just too BIG to buy for everyone.

Do you know how wonderful it is to be part of a family that is so big? It is amazing!!! It is a gift!!! Because not only are we a big family, we are only a little bit dysfunctional all things considered. But no one is in jail and no one is dead and that means everything else is just peanut butter.

So I am itching to start my Christmas shopping now. But I will wait. Oh, and here is where I need to give a shoutout to my sisters:

ISO and LilSis: I need Christmas shopping ideas for my niece and nephews. You know where to find me. Oh, and LilSis...I need a shipping address. :)

And finally, we got our very first snowflakes today. YAY!!!!

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas.

NL

Work and NaNoWriMo

I brought work home with me this weekend.

It was two little presentations and usually I like the creative process of presentations. But, apparently, not on weekends.

I'd sit down to work on my novelette and the Presentation Nag would sit on my shoulder whispering in my ear. So I'd pull up the presentations and work on them. Fiddle fiddle fiddle.

Oh, but the Presentation Nag's cousin the NaNoWriMo Nag would then hop up on the other shoulder and remind me that I was very naughty because I wasn't feeling well on Friday and so I didn't write and then I didn't get around to it yesterday because I had mom stuff to do.

So today I plopped on the couch and worked on the presentations. Then I sent one over to Chris because frankly, he needed to make up the hours and I didn't because I have plenty of sick leave to accommodate my recent sickliness on account of the fact that I hardly ever get sickly and use my sick leave.

So he worked on it a bit while I blathered on in my novelette. Then he sent it back to me and I worked more than I'd hoped to have to on finishing it.

Finally, I finished it good enough and went back to "If You Get Stuck, Write Porn" which is the title of my book which, as it turns out, Bink has read the first half of and apparently likes enough to print and have her mother read. Although she says there is not enough porn in it. I'm sure she'll appreciate tonight's chapter, which has to do with incontinence and kegels.

So as of this post I am at 30,057 words - which is about 3,000 words ahead of where I have to be and about 5,000 words behind where I want to be. And I am annoyed at the job that actually PAYS me because, get this, I'm not as far ahead as I want to be on this crazy novel thing I've decided to do for no money whatsoever.

Sigh.

I'll be up early tomorrow, writing. Oh, and I've stopped a week early the twice daily dosage of Prilosec the doc put me on to heal my bleeding stomach because I've just spent the last week walking around with what feels like a big stone in my stomach which I am convinced is undigested food and, of course, I watch entirely too much House and so I am sure it is probably creating the human equivalent of a huge hairball.

The great big "carrying a rock around in my stomach" feeling has gone away but not, apparently, my food aversions - and this is why I nearly ran screaming from the couch when Chris came into the living room with his tuna fish (which, according to my ex-husband is redundant) but of course I couldn't because I was being weighed down by my writing responsibilities and those two nags on my shoulders.

I enjoyed taking a quick break to answer some interview questions sent to me by my sister. So Sis, if you're reading this, thank you thank you thank you for the excuse to take a break. That was the best part of the evening. Except, of course, for writing the following in my novelette.

"This is why, when you’ve managed to hold a volume of urine that, if you were plumbed for it, would allow you to write War and Peace in the snow, you have no dignity left as you run mad for the hills to your bathroom yelling “Get the hell out of my way. I need to pee like a racehorse!”

By the way, if you’ve ever seen a racehorse pee it’s enough to put any man to shame in half a dozen ways. But horses cannot give foot massages so men are safe."

Oh, and Dad, if you are reading this...sorry for the image. But you deserve it for all the times you've talked about "parent sex."

NL