365 Days of Giving Thanks

Day 191 - Thursday 5/30/13 - Today I'm thankful that the rain held off till after recess.  Everyone needed the fresh air today!

Day 190 - Wednesday 5/29/13 - Grateful for a voice I don't always realize I have.  Finally spoke a truth that wasn't well received, but at least I spoke it.

Day 189 - Tuesday 5/28/13 - Grateful that I don't have to go back to the allergist unless something acts up....

Day 188 - Monday 5/27/13 - So thankful that I actually slept through the night last night! Not only that, but since I woke up super early, I even got a nap in and still had a productive day!

Day 187 - Sunday 5/26/13 - Grateful that I held it together for yet another day.  Not sure what is going on in my brain, but happy that it's staying there!

Day 186 - Saturday 5/25/13 - Thankful that my favorite veggie restaurant had a me-friendly soup de jour - it was a delish lunch!

Day 185 - Friday 5/24/13 - I am grateful that I accomplished as much as I did at work today!  I impressed even myself with my organization and focus!

More Music

Have you seen the movie Moneyball?  It's one of my favorite movies.  I never get tired of watching it. In fact, I just finished watching it again.... and though this song struck me from the first time I watched the movie, it hit a homer tonight.  Make that a grand slam.

Music seems to be speaking to me louder than usual as of late.  Maybe because these days, other than my therapist's voice, music is the only thing that gets through to this frenetically hyperactive brain of mine. Gives me momentary pause to think.

Sometimes that's a good thing.  Tonight?  I've kinda liked not thinking.

More processing ahead.......

The Show (Lyrics below)

I'm just a little bit caught in the middle,

Life is a maze and love is a riddle
I don't know where to go, can't do it alone, 

I've tried and I don't know why
Slow it down, make it stop 

or else my heart is going to pop
'Cause it's too much, yeah it's a lot
To be something I'm not
I'm a fool out of love
'Cause I just can't get enough..

I'm just a little bit caught in the middle
Life is a maze and love is a riddle
I don't know where to go, can't do it alone
I've tried and I don't know why
I'm just a little girl lost in the moment
I'm so scared but I don't show it
I can't figure it out, it's bringing me down
I know I've got to let it go
And just enjoy the show

The sun is hot in the sky just like a giant spotlight
The people follow the signs and synchronize in time
It's a joke nobody knows, they've got a ticket to the show
Yeah, I'm just a little bit caught in the middle,
Life is a maze and love is a riddle
I don't know where to go, can't do it alone, 

I've tried and I don't know why
I'm just a little girl lost in the moment
I'm so scared but I don't show it
I can't figure it out, it's bringing me down
I know I've got to let it go and just enjoy the show
Just enjoy the show

I'm just a little bit caught in the middle
Life is a maze and love is a riddle
I don't know where to go, can't do it alone
I've tried and I don't know why
I'm just a little girl lost in the moment
I'm so scared but I don't show it
I can't figure it out, it's bringing me down
I know I've got to let it go and just enjoy the show
Just enjoy the show, just enjoy the show....

(Here's the full length version)

Blackbird?

I was out for a walk with The Pup this afternoon and noticed a few blackbirds enjoying the patches of sunshine.  The song Blackbird instantly popped into my head and I've been humming it ever since.

This lyric has been stuck in my head: 

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

It took me by complete surprise how profoundly this lyric struck me.  My mom is a huge Beatles fan, so I've been listening to them since birth.  I enjoy their music, but I'm not a die-hard fan.  There is definitely some significance of this particular lyric, the part about these broken wings, and learning to fly?  Only waiting for this moment to arise?

Might be obvious at first glance, but methinks something is percolating in this chaotic brain of mine...  something more significant than face value of the words printed here....

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

365 Days of Giving Thanks

Day 184 - Thursday 5/23/13 - I am thankful for the nap I got to take yesterday.  And today.  Much, much needed.

Day 183 - Wednesday 5/22/13 - It's done!  I survived my first cavity being filled!  It sucked.  It hurt.  It was scary.  I was anxious.  But I am so grateful that it's over!

Day 182 - Tuesday 5/21/13 - Very much appreciate having a clean house.  Would appreciate it even more if the house cleaned itself, though.......

Day 181 - Monday 5/20/13 - Grateful to be able to watch my student's baseball game tonight.  Missed them all last year, and boy is it nice to be back on the bleachers cheering them on!

Day 180 - Sunday 5/19/13 - So grateful to have spent a great morning with a great friend, enjoying the great weather, great shopping, and a great meal..... Great way to start my week!

Day 179 - Saturday 5/18/13 - Grateful for the opportunity to share with an amazing group of educators at a workshop this morning.  Love that when I share with others, I learn a ton, too!!

Day 178 - Friday 5/17/13 - SO happy to be able to come home from work and have NO obligations!  Chilling with the Pup for a quiet evening was SO nice!

There's an App for That

There's an app for everything these days.  Literally.  I've been playing with this new app that makes a movie appear on a dollar bill.  Seriously cool.

There are dozens of apps to help you track calories, find songs on the radio, pick the best restaurant for dinner, get you un-lost on the highway.  You can even turn on the lights with an app.  At your house.  While you're at work.

There is seriously an app for everything.

So I shouldn't be surprised that my therapist "encouraged" me to check out a gratitude-type app that she had heard about the other day.  There are actually quite a few out there.  I downloaded a bunch of them, but weeded them down to two.

Gratitude Diary is exactly that- a simple diary to record your daily gratitude.  Pretty basic, simple, easy to use.

Gratitude Journal Free: Random Daily Happiness Diary is similar to the Gratitude Diary, with one really cool feature.  You can set an alarm to remind you to enter your gratitude for the day.  The trick?  You don't know when the reminder will come.  You enter a time range, and the reminder will appear sometime within the range you entered.  Different every day, too.

Both apps are free.

So far, I like the Random Daily Happiness Diary best.  I like that a message pops up on my phone.  It makes me pause for a moment, and think, "what am I grateful for at this very moment?"  Sometimes it's a simple "I'm grateful that I'm breathing."

OK.  You can go download them now.  Have fun playing!

Homework

I rarely get homework from my therapist.  I sometimes wish she'd give me homework more often.  At least until I actually get homework.  You know how that goes - you wish for something, then when you get it, you regret wishing for it in the first place?  Yep.  I'm there.

We've been dancing around the topic of self-image.  Mine is sucks.  Like, seriously sucks.  I have such a twisted perception of myself - both in how I look and in who I am.  I see nothing but flaws and failures.

Well, supposedly I am the only person that sees me this way.  My therapist *promised* me that no one else sees me the way I see me.  She also made a point of reminding me that she's never lied to me in the past.  She's always honest.  She is right about that.

Which means that I have two choices:
I can trust her, taking her word that no one else sees me the way I do. 
or
I can actually ask others what they see in me.

Because I rarely follow the rules, I chose both.

I DO trust my therapist, more than anyone else on this planet.  And she has never lied to me.  Ever.  Everything she tells me is honest, sometimes brutally honest, but always spoken with care.  Yet, I need a little help in trying to see me from the kinder eye of others.

So I've selected a select few, whom I trust more than most (which says a lot, since I trust few!) to ask the question "what do you see when you see me?"  My request was specific, I only want facts (thank you DBT!) as it is more helpful to work with facts than opinions (also known sometimes as judgements in the DBT world.)

Now....... I wait...... and hold on to the fact that I trust my therapist..... I trust my therapist..... I trust my therapist......

365 Days of Giving Thanks

Day 177 - Thursday 5/16/13 - Grateful for the opportunity to share some of my tech-ness with my peers today.

Day 176 - Wednesday 5/15/13 - Thankful for this unexpected burst of energy that I've had today.  Don't know where it came from, but I'll take it!

Day 175 - Tuesday 5/14/13 - Grateful for my health, despite the challenges I face, I am able to do much with myself.

Day 174 - Monday 5/13/13 - Love my doctor, even when I don't love what she has to say.  Grateful for my whole team, who cushion the falls I take.

Day 173 - Sunday 5/12/13 - Much gratitude for the gift of being present with four generations of women in my family to celebrate Mother's Day.

Day 172 - Saturday 5/11/13 - Appreciative of the fact that I am NOT where I was a year ago.

Day 171 - Friday 5/10/13 - Thankful that it's Friday.  Thankful that today was a casual day at work.  Thankful that I get to come home to The Pup after long days and weeks like this.

Hello Reality. I've missed you.

A year ago, I was recovering from major surgery.  As a matter of fact, exactly one year ago, Mother's Day, I was bed-ridden with an infection, deciding whether or not it warranted a trip to the ER or not.  Needless to say, a year ago, I was not in a good place.  Physically and mentally.

Today was a bit of an eye-opener.  I had my regular check-in with my doctor, and went in quite chipper, actually!  Things may not be great but they are pretty darn ok these days.  School is awesome.  I love coming home to The Pup every day.  I might not be eating the most balanced of meals, but I'm maintaining.

At least I thought I was.

Turns out I've lost a bit of weight since my last visit two months ago.  Enough to heighten my the concern of my doctor.  Enough to get her on the phone with my dietitian.  In the middle of my check-in.  Rather unexpectedly.  Doctor says that she's technically not concerned right now.  Says that the number on the scale isn't as important as what comes back from my labs.  That's the numbers that matter more.

The whole visit threw me for a loop.  It felt like a nose dive, actually.  A fast, spiraling out of control nose dive.  I'd like to say that the nose dive is over, landing safely in the security of my therapist's office immediately following my doctor visit.  I'd like to say that in crashing into the comfort of her sofa, the padded landing straightened out the chaotic loop.  Ended the nose dive on impact.

Truth is, while it didn't end the tailspin, talking with my therapist helped bring me back to reality.  And while I am definitely in the "three steps back" phase at the moment, I'm gonna do my best to not let it send me significantly backward.  Which isn't going to be easy.

But who said life was gonna be easy?

365 Days of Giving Thanks

Day 170 - Thursday 5/9/13 - Blown away by my students presentations and SO grateful to be able to guide them on their journeys this year!

Day 169 - Wednesday 5/8/13 - Thankful for the beautiful, blooming blossoms on the trees outside my windows.  They remind me to stay in the moment, as they only bloom for a short week before they snow pink petals.

Day 168 - Tuesday 5/7/13 - Loving the little things that make the world better.... like impromptu shoe shopping with the BFF.....

Day 167 - Monday 5/6/13 - So much gratitude for my therapist and her amazing way of working with words. 

Day 166 - Sunday 5/5/13 - Thrilled that I finally found a new comforter!  I've been looking for ages, and I finally found one I like!

Day 165 - Saturday 5/4/13 - Grateful for a lazy morning..... much appreciated after a long week, and perfectly capped with a visit to my dietitian!

Day 164 - Friday 5/3/13 - TGIF.  Seriously.  It's been a week.  Though specific for today?  I am very grateful to have an open mind, which enables me to enjoy school "stuff" more than many of my colleagues.

At last!

I had a pretty cool experience yesterday.  Or, more likely the experience of yesterday, months and months in the making, did not go unnoticed.  That's a more accurate description.

You might remember that a little over a year ago, I was in complete agony over my dietitian's maternity leave.  Actually, agony doesn't quite describe it.  More like, an unbearably intolerably excruciating inner ache.  Not gonna revisit that, but you can read more if you want.

Anyway.  Back to yesterday.  As I was heading for my visit with my dietitian, it hit me that it was three weeks since I last saw her.  Three weeks.  Three, rather chaotic, exhausting, long, weeks.  Three trying, frustrating, agonizing weeks.  But those three weeks were missing one thing.

In the past, when a week went by without a visit with my dietitian, I felt a desperate sense of longing, an urgency of sorts.  I could not go without my weekly visit, my weekly hug.  When we moved into visits every other week, that same longing was there, elevated at first, and while it did subside, it never fully went away.

Until recently.

Three weeks.  A few months ago, just the idea of going three weeks between appointments would have brought about crippling anxiety.  So you'd think that upon seeing my dietitian yesterday, for the first time in three weeks, I'd have that old sense of desperation and longing hanging around my neck.

Not the case.  Yes, I am just as surprised as you are.  There was no agonizing longing, no desperate sense of need.  There was just a sense of contentment in seeing my dietitian for the first time in three, long and crazy weeks.

I believe that I've finally arrived at what the psychology world calls "secure attachment."  This type of attachment is what I feel to be the healthiest, and yet, it's one I've experienced the least.  I have to admit, I was very excited to see my dietitian yesterday, and equally excited to share with her the news - that I now finally know that she's going to always be there for me, whether it's been days, weeks, or months between our visits.

Feels pretty darn good, if you ask me.

365 Days of Giving Thanks

Day 163 - Thursday 5/2/13 - Feeling SO thrilled with the progress my class has made!  They have been staying on schedule, and are doing such an amazing job on their projects!

Day 162 - Wednesday 5/1/13 - It has been a privilege to have been able to participate in the leadership academy during the past two years.  I am so grateful I got to be a part of it!

Day 161 - Tuesday 4/30/13 - Appreciate the little things, like sunshine after rain and quiet time after a loud day.

Day 160 - Monday 4/29/13 - Thankful for the quiet patience that has crept into my classroom during this anything-but-quiet project work.  Feeling pretty ok about where we are in the timeline - it's all good!

Day 159 - Sunday 4/28/13 - Grateful for little coincidences.  Especially on dreary, rainy days.

Day 158 - Saturday 4/27/13 - Grateful for a sun-drenched nap this afternoon.... so yum!

Day 157 - Friday 4/26/13 - SO thankful that an unexpected conversation with a difficult parent turned out to be so positive!