~*~ Lula ~*~

 

Life is settling down a bit finally!  My Step Dad had his surgery Wednesday and he is doing well.   The lost package situation is finally under control, and R is home.  That left me with enough ambition to finish my little elephant.  So meet Lula!  She is available on my website at www.blondheart.com

I hope you have a lovely and stress free day!

Hugs, K. <3

Stress And Stereotypes

 I guess even the toughest among us has a breaking point.  I am by no means the toughest, but I am pretty strong for the most part.  Now R might disagree with that because he always sees the softer, wimpier side of me.  But what he doesn't understand is that I don't have to be tough when he is around.  That's about the only time, and the rest of world seems to view me much differently than he does.

Today however, the world got a little different view.  I went to Dr. Ivy League's office for my weekly check in on this diet thing.  I stepped on the scale and thought it was the same as last week.  At that point I just started crying uncontrollably.  I had hit my breaking point.  The poor girl couldn't quite figure out what was wrong.  I was babbling pretty much incoherently about all the things going on in my life.  Lucky for me, she speaks fluent sobbing female and figured it out.  As a result, they are taking me off the program for about a month...two weeks at least. 

My Step Dad is going in for a quadruple bypass Wednesday.  I have also been worried about my brother who is going in for a defibrillator soon.  My Mother has been seriously stressed over my Step Dad and I have been trying to hold it together for her.  (My brother is a half brother and had a different Mother, but she is still concerned for him too.)  R is gone to Utah most of every week now for the job he is doing.  On top of that, I have been trying to deal with small pesky things like finding Ridley a new home, the post office who refuses to acknowledge the fact that the mistake in losing the package is their fault and won't do anything about.  (Thank you Andrea for taking that little point of stress away today...you're still a rock star!)  And dealing with all of these things on 500 calories a day. Not to mention the memory issues, extreme fatigue and muscle cramps that go with it.  Plus the fact that I started the diet after being sick for ten days.  So all the stress I had been holding back just bubbled to the surface and rushed out like a water fall.  I am talking Angel Falls in Venezuela, and I just couldn't stop crying.  I was so embarrassed.  As it turned out I was wrong, and I actually lost five pounds.  But that goes back to the memory thing.  Luckily they give me a print out from the scale every week or I wouldn't have known  for sure.

I am going to still try to eat healthy for the time I am not doing the diet and watch what I eat carefully, but I am not going to be in starvation mode right now.  It's just too much.  Tomorrow I am also going for a massage...God knows I need it.

On the other topic I was going to talk about, I read an interesting article today about tattoos.  You can see one of my two in the pic shown above. (Ignore my cracked heel!)  I also have a small man in the moon with a star on the back of my neck.  I got it when I was 21, before tattoos on the neck were really a thing, and I had short hair. I got my ankle one 21 years later, and I thought for several years about what I wanted to get and even if I wanted to get it.

I learned something interesting about how people view tattoos these days.  While the old stereotype used to be that if you had one you were probably a biker and someone not to be messed with, that has changed.  Personally I thought it wasn't a big deal anymore.  But now there is a new stereotype; if you have one you either feel a need to belong to a group, you are greatly dissatisfied with yourself in some way, or you are craving attention.  Who knew?

I am not here to try to change how you feel about having one on yourself...that's a very personal choice.  But honestly, despite this diet thing, I have never really been dissatisfied with my body image since I was 14 and convinced I needed a nose job.  I couldn't care less about belonging to a group.  When it comes to craving attention...again not really a problem.  I tend to get way more attention than I usually want.

The thought process that went into getting it went something like this:  I love winged hearts, they have always been my logo...and it would look cute on my ankle.  Do I want that forever?  *Insert a couple years deliberation*  Answer; yes!

We live in a world that is supposed to be so enlightened, understanding and accepting...so why is this even a big deal?   By the way, the article I read was written by someone who is gay.  While that isn't something I have ever had a problem with since so many of my friends have been gay...and both of my tattoos were gotten with gay best friends, we are all expected to be understanding and accepting of that...so who are they to judge this?  I find that interestingly ironic. 

Personally I think life is hard...especially lately.  Do what makes you happy.  I feel that it's up to you what you want to do with your life and your body, and as long as you aren't hurting anyone else in the process, I am ok with that and it's not my place to judge.  Vive la difference!

Mean People

I have been dealing with a lot of stress this week.  Tonight it finally got the better of me when I tried to open a new bottle of apple juice.  They put the lids on so tight and I couldn't get it off.  R was in bed so I couldn't ask him to do it.  I couldn't find the gripper thing either.  I ended up making a few frustrated, unsavory remarks to the bottle.  Luckily it was just a bottle and wasn't offended.

But if it had happened when I was in public, what might I have said to a stranger who inadvertently did something to cause me more stress?  Let's face it, we have all been there.  We try to be good, kind, polite people...but sometimes life can just pile up on us and stress speaks for us.

I recently read an account of someone who had something very unkind said to them at a show.  They didn't understand why that person was so mean to them.  Naturally people came along and made comments to the effect that some people just live to make other's lives miserable, and some people have no manners, etc.

But can we really judge a person that harshly based on one momentary encounter?  I am not in any way condoning such actions, but I think we need to stop and ask ourselves if there is something larger going on. 

Not that long ago a young man made some very rude remarks to me because I got in his way. The type of remarks I wouldn't repeat in polite company...or even in the company of salty sailors.  It was an accident, I hadn't meant to.  When he started cursing at me, I took one look at him and knew something was going very wrong in his life.  A part of me just wanted to hug him and tell him that it would be ok, but of course he wasn't mentally receptive to that and probably would have slugged me.  What I didn't do however was respond in kind.  He clearly had problems and didn't need me adding to them.  What he said was just words, it didn't mean anything or change my life in any way.  I didn't even let it ruin my afternoon.

I don't really believe that most people are one dimensionally mean all the time.  Sure I suppose there are a few, but even then I think there is something that has happened in their lives to make them mean.  Usually it's some type of fear.

As for people with no manners...well maybe they weren't taught to be respectful.  But again that follows a chain of events back to the person who didn't teach them.

I know it's difficult when someone is mean to us and we don't know why, but remember they are people...and sometimes people just go through rough times.  Being confrontational or saying mean things back doesn't help the situation.  Chances are later after the encounter they felt bad about it.  When you were mean to a stranger due to stress, worry or fear weren't you sorry later?  I know on those rare occasions when I let life get the better of me and I take it out on someone who doesn't deserve it and doesn't understand I was certainly sorry later.

While we usually can't go back and fix what we did in those instances, we can try to be understanding when we are on the receiving end.  And...I will try not to abuse my apple juice anymore.

Have a lovely day!  Hugs, K. <3

Just One Good Day Please!

Isn't it amazing how some days you can be so strong that you could survive any natural disaster or crisis that is thrown at you...and other days a series of small stupid things can make you crumble like a three year old fruit cake.

Unfortunately yesterday was one of the latter type of days.  I was awakened by another weird dream.  I dreamt that there was a tornado, but it wasn't made of wind, it was made of chunks of something black like graphite or coal.  I have no idea what that was about.  Probably something to do with feeling like things are spiraling out of my control.

I let the dogs out and staggered down the stairs squinting out of one eye, with a death grip on my coffee cup.  I was already in a stressed mood from the day before because one of my stitches fell out of my gum graft allowing me to see under it...as I had suspected a month ago the gum graft itself had pulled out.  So I have been enduring the torture of not eating properly and having four stitches for nothing.  It also means that I have to start over...as if I haven't had enough mouth trauma for the past two months. 

I called the periodontist and I have an appointment on Thursday.  They yelled at me for not calling sooner.  The irony is that I DID call sooner.  I called a month ago and they assured me there is no way it could have pulled out.  They were wrong.  I think I can tell if there is gum tissue over my tooth or not.  I can't believe that after two months I have to start all over again.

Between that and being paranoid that my new crown is going to fall out for a third time, I haven't slept well and my stress cup runneth over.

But then the doorbell rang.  My mail carrier was standing there with the package I had mailed last Wednesday to my Step Dad for Fathers Day.  It had some sort of a big ugly orange sticker on it.  The postman handed it to me and announced that you can't mail alcohol through the post office.  I still wasn't fully awake and couldn't process what he was telling me.

I said it's not alcohol, it's a shower head and faucet set.  (It was a really nice Victorian one that he had wanted because he liked the one R put in for me.)  Then it dawned on me what the problem was. 

I had grabbed a box off of the pile in the garage that it would fit in.  It just happened to be a Corona box that I had put stuff in from Costco.  But it seems to me that any postal employee worth their salt who handles boxes all day should have been able to discern just by handling the box that...
A.  It wasn't heavy enough to actually be a case of beer.
B. There was no glass or liquid sound coming from it.
C. No one in their right mind would spend $18.20 to mail a case of beer which costs what, $25-30.

He said if I took it to the post office I could get a refund on my shipping.  He was wrong.  I stood in line for 20 minutes, then had to wait for a supervisor to come and talk to me.  Apparently the supervisor was in no rush because 45 frustrated minutes later they told me there was no way they were refunding my $18.20, and that it was the fault of the FAA since I mailed it priority.  Way to pass the buck, and doesn't the FAA have an x-ray machine for stuff since they obviously can't tell just by lifting the box.

They did tell me that if I covered up all the Corona logos on the box (it was covered with them) that I could mail it again without paying.  So what I learned is apparently you can get away with sending alcohol in a box as long as it doesn't say it ON the box.  But you can't get away with sending anything else in a box that says anything about alcohol on it.  I left feeling as if the postal customers had more right to go postal than the employees and that I should start shipping stuff UPS.

Then I had to go return the present because in the interim my Step Dad informed my Mom that he would have to cut a hole in the wall in order to put the shower set in, and he didn't want to do that.

Somewhere in there I had a giant coughing fit because I have been sick for two weeks.  I think that I have a low level infection from all this gum graft and temporary crown that was cutting into the other side of my gum and it has caused me to develop flu like symptoms.  By the time I got into Lowes, which always makes me have a reaction from all the wood they cut in there, I couldn't even see my eyes were watering and running so bad.

When I got in my car I broke down out of frustration from lack of sleep for days, losing the shipping money for no good reason and the fact that I am finally convinced that my mouth will forever have something wrong.  Poor R, I called him on the phone and he couldn't make out what I was saying between the allergy attack the the sobbing.

When I got home I had an e-mail from the magazine and realized I made a mistake on my ad, so I had to sit down and immediately fix it.

I also realized I signed up to do a blog party in five days and I haven't even started on it.

My purse broke, and the vacuum cleaner caught the fringe trim on the end of my big wool rug and pulled half of it off. (That can wait until later today for me to repair!)

Plus I have one additional point of stress from my new neighbors, but I am not even going into that right now.

I know eventually this too shall pass, and I know that in the whole scheme of things I could have far worse problems.  I know I shouldn't be so stressed or frustrated or upset by these little things.  But I can't help it.  I am tired.  Losing the money for something so stupid and out of my control right now was hard because I have had so many bills with the gum and the crown and everything else going on.  But the main thing is that I have zero contol over any of this stuff at this point and I am not good at feeling helpless.  I have tried to remain positive despite everything going on.  I keep telling myself that this will pass and that each little issue is the last thing and it will get better...but so far it just keeps piling on.  I would give anything for just one good day right now.  One simple day where nothing goes wrong, falls apart or creates stress.  Is that really so much to ask?

Overwhelmed By Food

In the lives of everyday people we all have certain accomplishments. They might be personal or on a professional level. As a teddy bear artist, I have had those things like everyone else. While I haven't found a cure of cancer or walked on the moon, I was proud of my little accomplishments and when I shared them with family and friends they were proud of me too.

In the past few months I have started cooking fancy things. Well...fancy to us because they involve more than one pan or the microwave. We were in a rut, and since I was forced to take over the cooking I decided to find new and interesting things to eat.

Naturally through the course of conversation I have mentioned what I was making to my Mom and a few of my friends. The amazing thing is that they are giving me accolades over this as if I had just scaled Mount Everest.

It's kind of puzzling to be honest. Maybe for most women learning to cook is some sort of rite of passage, but for me it's always been something that I am just not interested in doing. The other accomplishments I have had meant much more to me than this.

With this new need to get out of the rut I have been scouring through magazines for new recipes. I was doing just that a couple days ago when I felt suddenly overwhelmed. The magazine I was perusing talked about a new kind of fat listed on food labels. Apparently it wasn't enough that we have trans fat, saturated fat, and a whole host of other things...now we have another one. It was inter...something. I forget.

In another article it talked about the health benefits of certain foods. Red grapes slow down wrinkles, asparagus is good for the liver, and the list went on and on. This thing that was once thought really healthy isn't now, and that thing that wasn't healthy is now. At least until they change their minds again.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by it all. I finally closed the magazine and tossed it on the coffee table. How can anyone be expected to keep track of it all?

They say stress makes us fat because of the cortisol. But keeping track of the healthy foods and what to eat and not to eat, not to mention how to cook it all causes stress in me. I feel like I am doomed no matter what I do!

Panic Mode

The hours are ticking by way too fast today. 8 AM is fast approaching and I have noticed I have achieved panic mode. I can't think clearly, I feel that overall cold chill you get from fear and I am slightly shaky.

I am trying to not be afraid of tomorrow, but I am. They want me to take a Xanax to relax me before I come in, but in truth that's kind of adding to my anxiety. I have never taken a Xanax and I am not sure what it's going to do to me. Sometimes I have very odd reactions to drugs, so I try to take as few as possible.

I probably won't be making a post tomorrow or even possibly for a few days to come. I don't really know how I am going to feel after the procedure. So if there is silence for a few days, just know I am sleeping and healing.

Wish me luck, I am going to need it! Also if anyone has ever taken Xanax, please tell me what it does to you.

Thanks, K. <3