Updates are coming! I promise!!

I haven't abandoned you all!  :)  CRAZINESS around here - some highlights to keep you up to date:

Ran my 5K and met BOTH my goals!  (Running the whole thing and finishing faster than 44:59)

I've been cast in another show!  Yet another obnoxious comic sidekick.  LOL

In my innaugural sessions with my new "happy light"....liking it so far!

Thanksgiving!  Always entertaining with family in the mix

Going to be having a new niece or nephew in June!

Tomorrow we head out of town to celebrate with the inlaws....then things should settle enough for me to give full updates.  Until then, things are going swell, so don't worry that the lack of updating is for anything bad!  I'll be baaaahk!

Decision making with Edie.

Never as simple as it should be.

As my previous entries have shown, I've taken up running.  In a fairly committed way.  Of course, in my good treatment way - in a flexible committed way instead of a crazy obsessive way, but still.  Committed.

I also live in the tundra.  Maybe not the exact geographically correct tundra, but close enough.  I'm *hoping* to somehow miraculously become one of those crazies you see running outside all bundled up in a snowstorm.  We all have our goals, right?  LOL  But, I'm also smart enough to know I need a contingency plan.  You know, for when the windchill is -3000 degrees and it just isn't going to happen.

A "normal" brain would just say, "Well, I'll join a gym for a few months to get me through the winter.  Come spring, I'll head back outdoors." 

My brain said that too.  And then I started thinking, "Hmmm, well, if you join the gym, then you really should figure out how to go more than just your 3 runs a week.  I mean, what a waste of money having a membership and not using it to its fullest.  You should look into the classes and then maybe start swimming on your off days and then if you're there running, you should look at doing some weight work.  It's good to do weight work according to all the magazines.  But you don't really know how to do the weights.  So, you'd look sort of stupid trying to figure it out.  And speaking of looking stupid, you're going to look like a real prize schlepping around the track.  Who joins a gym just to run around their track?  Especially when you have a treadmill at home.  Why can't you just use your treadmill at home?  Why do you have to turn this into a big production?"

Ahhhh, yes.  Edie.  She's a real charmer, huh?  And that's really the abbreviated version of her fillabuster.

See, it makes sense to me to just join the gym for the three months I'll most likely need it.  It's less expensive.  BUT, I have to take into consideration the extra mental baggage that comes with a gym membership.  I'm doing really great in my treatment process, but I'm still not sure I'm in a place where I can knowingly set myself up for a scenario where Edie will be challenged on a specific daily basis for three months.  Not when it's surrounding something that's so new to me like running and having a HEALTHY outlook on what exercise is and what a HEALTHY relationship with it will look like in my life.

This same gym does day passes.  If I can hold off another couple of weeks, they are half price.  $3 a visit.  Not THAT much more than a membership if I'm going 3x a week.  Not ENOUGH more for me to deal with the baggage I think.  This way, I can have the passes and know they're there to facilitate my running program.  Keep the other garbage separate. 

Now to just hold Edie off until I can make that happen.

I'm my inspiration.......

And yes, I totally just sang that in my head ala Peter Cetera/Chicago.

Finding my own inspiration is HARD.  I'm going to take a moment to whine here, so brace yourself.  Thankfully, the whining is unusual for me.  But I'm just feeling the twinges of melencholy and this is my line of defense.

I love inspiring other people.  It fills my proverbial tank.  It makes me happy when I can have ideas, complete actions which have lingering echoes and energize other folks.  I want to share the stuff that's making me so happy.

So, what happens when I'm not feelin' it?  That's sort of where I am today.  I spent yesterday coming off the high of finally finishing C25K.  (Oh yeah, biznatches.....THAT totally happened!!)  Bad back and neck.  Husband and kid off adventuring without me.  Missing an event I'd been looking forward to.  Just blah.

The blah lingers today.  I don't understand negative people.  I don't understand why negative people can't just keep their mouths shut and stew in their own negativity.  (Maybe they're thinking that about positive people like me!  LOL)  I will forever feel bad not being invited to things.  It's in my nature and my instinct is to decide it's because I'm unlikeable.  Which is TOTALLY not true and not something I believe when I'm in a normal state.  But BOY does Edie LOVE IT when she sees a group gathering which I'm not a part of.....LOVES IT.

So, it's named.  Now how to release.

I'm not sure.  Church is this morning.  I'm hoping to hear something inspiring there.  I have a run scheduled for today and it's gorgeous out.  I'm hoping to feel something inspiring there.  I guess the plan of attack is to stay open and ready to receive the inspiration the day brings.  And to not dwell on the feel "down" - which I also need to accept as part of normal life.

Owner of a burning heart...

Stupid motherfucking reflux.

GRRRRRRRRR.

Unbelievably, during my deepest purging days, I never had trouble with my esophogus or heartburn/reflux.  How I escaped both that and tooth damage is a complete miracle.  My sinuses being completely fried, I suppose is the way I paid my dues.

It took getting pregnant and the 80+ pounds that granted me to trigger my esophogeal sphincter to finally fail.  Really, I just mostly wanted to type sphincter right then.  Anyway.

All that pressure was apparently enough for the ol' sphinctie and I had reflux pretty much nightly for 8 years.  Some nights wasn't so bad.  Some, I felt like I was potentially having a heart attack or that someone had stabbed me without my knowledge.  I spent a LOT of time not telling doctors about it after one illfated appointment where not only did I cop to the reflux, but also to my fear that the years of purging had caused some sort of irrepairable damage.  AND, my craptastic doctor at the time basically ignored all of it and told me to keep taking Tums or if it got bad to buy some Tagament.

Which did nothing.

Finally with all the appointments I had this spring when I started the "ditch Edie" campaign, I once again spoke up about the constant reflux.  My NEW doctor rxed Prilosec and it was a MIRACLE.  I just recently finished the 6 month course and then began my "step down" to rantitadine.

I shouldn't be surprised, but yup.  Reflux is back and is pissed off.  Which gives Edie a perfect chance to tell me it's because I'm still so fat or it's because I was so stupid to purge all that time and attempt to make me feel guilt about things I have no control over. 

For now, the reflux is enough to be pissed about.  I'm not buying into what Edie is selling.  Tomorrow I'm going to call the doctor's office and ask them to renew the Prilosec.  It's FINE.  It's not failure.  It's medically necessary.  And I'm NOT going to keep suffering and potentially damage myself more because Edie wants me to feel bad.

But, ugh.  Yuck.  Stupid motherfucking reflux.

Smoke and mirrors.

Yeah, this isn't going to be about ACTUAL mirrors.  But that would probably be appropriate on any other entry.

I keep thinking about something Ms. Nutritionist and I chatted about today as sort of a follow up to Therapy yesterday.  Yesterday I had been talking about how I feel like I'm in a really familiar place in the "cycle".  The place where I've been before - succeeding at a new exercise plan, feeling by body change, etc.  And that the cycle then usually goes back around to me failing somehow and having to start all over again.

It was exciting because I felt like "Oh wow!  I've identified I'm in a cycle and this is the place where I get to pick my new direction."  And there were hand gestures illustrating my point even.  And I felt very good about that.  Like a good patient being proactive.

And then today happened.  And as I was sort of recounting my fabulousness to Ms. Nutritionist, I said this, "I feel like I'm in that same place in the cycle where I have been so many times before and that I have to keep really focused to make sure I don't cycle back in....that I make sure to veer off onto the new path that I'm choosing."

Which is really nice.

But.

I HAVEN'T been in this place in the cycle before.  Stupid ol' Edie.  I've never been HERE before.  Armed with tools and support to keep myself going on this path I want to be on.  I already got out of the cycle.  Edie is a sly little lady sometimes, huh?  Playing all these tricks on me to get me thinking I'm still at the mercy of this random cycle of behavior when really, the park closed and I'm off on another journey.

THAT was the big realization.  And this is why it's so important for me to keep my focus.  When I do, even better things come forward.

Reframing.

"Would you still exercise if it wasn't linked to losing weight/size?"

Well, geez Ms. Nutritionist.  Way to blow me out of the water! 

"What would you be eating if food had zero ability to control weight/size?"

*sigh*

I'm not ready to answer these questions yet.  I have some really good half answers, but need more time to really think about this in a way other than "well, ideally...."

I need a blow hole.

That would make coming up for air a bit easier to fit into the hecticness.  (Totally made that word up.  Can't help it.  I'm sleepy and can't think of real words.)

The past week or so has been a blur of Halloween related happenings, shit-tastic runs, one amazing run, new social environments, newsletter at work, piles of math homework for the kid and then just normal life stuff on top of that.

I'm exhausted.

When things get that busy, I go into survival mode.  I used to be someone who LOVED being distracted by being busy busy busy.  Now, I don't handle it so well.  It makes me want to shut down and totally deny that anything needs to get accomplished above and beyond the new stuff on my plate.  So, the house becomes a literal disaster area.  Grocery shopping gets put on the back burner.  The minimum only.

Of course, this is a new revelation.  In my attempt to break free of rolling back into the old and familiar cycle, I'm looking for opportunities to "push back" at Edie when she tries to bring me back in.  This is a great area to work on.  Life needs to go on.  There's a bare minimum that still needs to happen every day.  Dishes need to be done.  Things need to be put away.  I can't expect to keep finding new things to avoid those normal every day things.  Like building a new toy table instead of paying the mounting bills.

Maybe it's a problem with wanting to accept reality.  It's easier for me to just gloss over for fear of getting sucked back into the vortex.  The vortex = failure in my brain but I need to change that.  I need to just embrace that sometimes people have to go into the vortex, get their boring stuff accomplished, and come back out.

On a total aside, and only because it popped into my head, I'm still on a course of daily, hourly, minute-ly, reminders that the end result of my running training is NOT focused on what my body weighs or looks like.  It is that I'm able to do something I've never done before and that I've found something new to work on and enjoy.  Nowhere in the training does it tell me to weigh myself or get crazy about not seeing the number change/obsess about if my body is getting smaller while it gets stronger.  This is a hard lesson for me.

Anyway.  I guess my "blow hole" today is just dumping the mind clutter in the hopes that it will help me attack the house clutter.  I'm just exhausted and need to start tending to things like sleep and MINDFUL relaxation.