Whack-A-Mole is Better with Friends

I just wanted to take a minute to say something.

I've been struggling lately with a lot of different things. Nothing really serious, but just issues that continue to pop up again and again like a twisted game of Whack-A-Mole. It seems like no matter how hard I play, there's always another ugly little mole popping its head up, just when I thought I had it under control.

There have been moles of unexplained sadness, moles of doubt. Moles of spiritual emptiness, isolation, and unfulfilled longing. Moles of not feeling well and not knowing what's wrong.

Freaking moles. All over the dang place.

I hate them.

This is a hard game to play. I've never had very good hand-eye coordination.

Something woke me up last night and I ended up unable to get back to sleep for a while. I wasn't feeling great. My stomach was off yesterday (after lunch at my most favorite place, which just makes me sad) and frankly, I've been tired of the fighting stupid moles all the time. I felt so, so tired. And alone. And desperate for relief.

A thought occurred to me.

Maybe I should share what I have been going through. I've been trying to bash down the Mole of Isolation a lot lately, but it keeps popping up. And it is lonely. I'm tired of being alone.

I decided to take a chance and confide in some people that I care about, explain what's been going on.

I was scared to be vulnerable. I was afraid of telling the people I care about that I am having a hard time. I don't want to upset anyone. I tend to be a person that brings laughs. I like that about myself. I like to laugh and make others laugh too. So it was a little scary to tell my friends that I'm struggling. I wasn't sure how they would react.

I am so glad that I did.

It felt...like a weight had been lifted.

My friends are so, so caring. They are such lovely people. I can't believe it took me so long to become vulnerable. I think that I have been withdrawing, unconsciously, for a while. I don't want to do that anymore. That's not me.

So that's the truth. I am struggling with some things. Some days I feel great, I've whacked all the moles, and I am winning the game and tickets are flying out of the machine faster than I can fold them. Other times, I feel overwhelmed, like the damn mallet is broken and all of the moles popping up simultaneously arnd just leering at me. I am having a bit of a hard time.

It feels good to say that. To admit it. To come clean, to be vulnerable. It's scary, but it's good.

I know I am not alone. I guess part of me always knew that, but by intentionally reaching out to my friends, I was reminded that they really are always there for me.

It feels...like I've passed out the Whack-A-Mole mallets so that they can help me with this stupid game.

And you know what that's like, right?

When you're playing Whack-A-Mole and then your friend comes up and starts helping you by pummeling the moles with their hands? So that you are both working together, helping each other to beat the moles?

You can get so many more of the little buggers that way.

The game gets so much easier.

The same is true for life. For struggles.

You can do it alone, probably. You might be able to get by. Maybe you've got quick reflexes.

But it is so, so much easier and so, so much lovelier to allow others to come alongside you and help you when you need it. To share your struggles, your vulnerabilities. To lean on the people you care about.

So, my friends, I am holding out a mallet for you. Thank you for taking it, and helping me with the moles. I love you. I don't know where I would be without you.

Please know that I am always here for you as well.

My reflexes aren't great, but I'm ready to help you take a whack at your struggles in return.

We've got this.

Together, we can make it through this.

Doubts

Have you ever been covered in an avalanche of doubts?

One minute, you're plugging along at work or home or even your hobby, doing your thing, happily going about your business, then all the sudden, these feelings start creeping in that make you second guess your every move.

Are you...sure that's a good idea?

Geez, that seems risky. 

What will people think of you when they see that? 

Are you sure you know what you're doing? 

Hey, that conversation you just had? That last thing you said? Well you thought it was fine, but I'm not so sure...

Where does that little voice come from? How is it that you can be fine, confident in yourself, and then suddenly, debilitated by a tiny voice in your head? One little doubt leads to another, then another and suddenly, you are straight up buried in an avalanche of negative thoughts.

Buried.

I was struck by doubt today.

I was on Pinterest, reading some articles about writing, checking out some tips for bloggers. Trying to decide what I wanted to write about next. Just casually browsing and thinking. Then all the sudden, there it was.

It started small: Man, no one really read your last blog post. 

Well that's because I posted it right before the Royals game! I'll re-share it later, I worked hard on it and I'd like to know what people think.

But did you realize, you've had fewer views on each subsequent post? Maybe you're just boring. 

No, I'm pretty sure I just need to keep writing! I took a break for a bit, so that's why. Had some bad timing. Nothing to worry about.

Are you sure about that? Are you sure you're not wasting your time with this writing thing? Maybe you should give it a rest.

I'm doing okay. I think. Man, I don't know...

It takes just one little doubt, one instance of second-guessing, and before you know it, the floodgates are opened and the doubts are rolling in.

It didn't take long for me to go from feeling confident and excited about my writing to feeling that maybe I was just wasting my time and needed to quit. And that's just crazy. Of course I'm going to have ups and downs, highs and lows. I'm on a journey here! Not everything is going to go perfectly. But I'll never know what I'm capable of if I give up before I even really get started.

So today I'm telling you: When the doubts start creeping in, don't listen. I'm not sure exactly where that little voice in your head comes from. Maybe it's from you, maybe it's from someone in your life who has criticized you in the past, maybe it's based on a past experience and actually has some truth to it.

Whatever it is, shut it down before it poisons you. Don't second guess yourself. Don't let fear paralyze you.

Break free.

Doing great things requires risk. And yeah, you'll fail sometimes. Not everything you do is going to be amazing and perfect in every way. But if you give up, if you let fear paralyze you, you'll never know what could have been.

Get up, shake off those doubts, and go on your way.

You are made to do great things.

Don't let some punk voice in your head tell you otherwise.

Break free!

Stop staring at me, brownie

Last weekend, I decided to cut back on my sugar intake. I wrote my situation in detail here at my previous blog. But the quick version is this: I'm addicted to sugar. The more I eat, the more I crave. The more I crave, the more I eat and the more unhealthy pounds I pack on. Not a good situation. I decided to cut back on sugar by only having one dessert item per week.

And here is the beautiful, perfect choice I made on Tuesday.

Gorgeous, isn't she?

In my quest to cut back on delicious sugar, I decided to allow myself some small cheats. Flavored coffee creamer had to stay. As I said before, I can't drink coffee without creamer and I can't survive interacting with humans sans coffee. In addition, I've been consuming Greek yogurt with granola as a snack or part of a meal. I didn't realize there are nearly 15g of sugar per serving of yogurt and almost as many per serving of granola. Sheesh. But since this combo does contain protein, fiber, and some other nutrients, I've decided to let it slide, for now.

Back to the brownie.

On Tuesday, I decided to take dinner to my friends who have recently had a baby. I decided to include brownies along with the lasagna and sides, so I made a 9x13 pan and split it between our households. I dropped off their dinner, and headed out to a Mom's Night Out with a couple of my friends.

I've noticed that I am filling that sad and empty sugar hole with lots of other foods. Like delicious carbs. Who knew the pita chips and hummus eat had nine servings per container? I consumed them in 2.5 days. When we went out to dinner, I quickly shoveled my face with delicious Thai food. Chicken stir fry with cashews, to be exact. I'm still thinking about it.

Nine servings? Whoops.

After I inhaled my delicious dinner, I ordered an appetizer. Yep. My friends were still eating and my hands got restless, so I decided on more food. I sucked down four sub-par crab rangoon and then popped in some chewing gum and downed three tall glasses of water. Have I mentioned that I have trouble sitting and doing nothing?

Anywho, I got home around 9pm and decided it was time for my one dessert of the week. I pried open the container of brownies and cut myself a rather large slice. I even went back for more. It was heaven. Honestly, I did a kick ass job baking those boxed-mix brownies. Triple chocolate. Gooey in the center. Perfection.

The problem is, it's Wednesday night at 9:42pm and I don't get another dessert for a week.

The bigger problem is, there's one brownie left.

It's been whispering my name all day. I've been tempted to just smell it, but I don't think that would do the trick. I told Tim to eat the entire row that remained, yet he left this one large serving behind to taunt me.

I almost fed it to the kids when they returned home from Awana tonight, but they'd already brushed their teeth. I'm hoping Tim takes it to work tomorrow because I don't think I can stand to be around it all day.

I definitely have a sugar addiction.

Saying no to myself is really hard.

I've been sitting in the discomfort of the cravings all day long.

It sucks.

They come and go. I've tried feeding them with other foods. I ate the leftover lasagna at 11:30am. It was good but the cravings lived on. This afternoon I ate 3 slices of Muenster cheese and half a row of Ritz veggie crackers. It did nothing for me.

Cravings suck.

Go away, stupid brownie.

I've been eyeing these, but I'm pretty sure they break the rules.

Ironing out some Issues

I'm about to drop some truth and share some previous blog entries that have gone unpublished for a long while. I hope that by doing so, I will help someone else.

Here it is.

The past four years have been somewhat of a roller coaster for me. I have struggled with mood and energy issues. I have had periods of just not feeling like myself. First, it looked like anger, which I wrote about here and here. Then, it looked like anxiety, which I talked about here. It started to look like depression, which I thought I wrote about at one point, but perhaps not. The word irritability started popping up. Exhaustion came into play. I saw several different doctors. My OB-GYN, a counselor, a psychiatrist. I tried anti-depressants, vitamin supplements and hormone replacement therapy. When issues with energy level started plaguing me this summer, I finally made an appointment with a general practitioner to have a physical. I wanted to get to the bottom of the struggle and see what the heck was going on inside my body.

I hadn't seen a primary care physician since I was a teen (hence going to specialists instead) because I'd had a bad experience with a doctor when I was young and never found another one. But this new doctor came highly recommended by my family, so I decided to give him a try. I was impressed. The doctor listened carefully to all of my issues and history and then took 6 vials of blood to see what it would reveal.

A week later, I got a call and was told my iron was low and I needed to start taking iron supplements. So I did. I still felt like crap a few weeks later, so I called for a follow up appointment, wondering if I could have a yeast overgrowth, something I'd been Googling for a friend that seemed like it could fit my symptoms.  I complained to my doctor about my irritability and exhaustion and he told me right away that he knew what my problem was. He turned his computer screen to face me and pointed to where it said my iron level was 4. It was supposed to be 100. Oh. He explained that my red blood cells were struggling to get the oxygen they needed and I felt tired because my body was literally exhausted. Even rest wouldn't help because my body wasn't actually able to rest when it was supposed to. He told me it would take about 3 months for my iron stores to be built back up. I scheduled a follow up appointment for November and went home to wait. 

It's late September now. I'm feeling good some days and not so good others. There are days when I can get up and go, be on my feet and busy with the kids all day. There are days when I sleep for 10 hours and still wake up feeling tired. There are days when I look forward to to spending time socializing with friends and family. There are days when I want to be completely left alone to read or watch TV. 

It's hard. Some days I feel great and think that my iron must finally be where it needs to be. Other days, I lay in bed tired from doing nothing and wanting to be left alone. There are times when I am certain I must have some other underlying issue, and times when I think the iron is my only problem. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever consistently feel good again or if I am doomed to spend my life hunting down problems that no one can find answers to. 

It's a struggle. It's frustrating. But I've come to a new realization.

While I am waiting to find answers and to feel better, I need to keep living. And in order to do that happily, I need to give myself grace. I need to live in each day and accept that some days, I'm not going to feel well. Some days, I might sleep in. I might watch too much TV, or decide to stay home instead of going out with friends because that's what sounds and feels good to me. And that is okay. Exhaustion and irritability tend to come in waves, just as I suspect my iron levels go up and down since, y'know, I'm a woman, and our bodies do...y'know, womanly things every month. So if I need to take it easy, that is okay. Grace, grace, grace. I am only human.

It is hard to admit that.  I want to feel good all the time and have tons of energy and have the desire to get out and socialize and work out and stay active and take my kids to do awesome things. I wish I felt "on" all the time. But I simply don't, and perhaps I never will. That's something I'll have to learn to live with. I can start now by taking each day at a time and by allowing my activity level to reflect how I am feeling.

Some days the girls and I will go on big field trips, we'll go on hikes in the woods and we'll play outside. Other days, we'll stay in and paint at the kitchen table or read in the recliner. Maybe we'll all veg out and spend too much time in front of a screen. That's okay too. That's life. There will be ups and downs.

I'm doing the best job at living that I know how to do. And I'm not going to feel bad about it any more. 

Roadblock

This lovely piece of furniture has been stuck in our basement for 5 years.

When we bought our house in 2010, we were surprised to discover this love seat hanging out in the basement as we moved in. "Free furniture? Cool!" At the time, we did not realize that the reason the love seat was left behind was that they remodeled the basement around it and it was literally stuck down there because it was too big to fit through the renovated doorways. 

So for the past five years, we've been shuffling it around the basement room where it was trapped. It's not an uncomfortable piece of furniture. The kids enjoyed building forts with the cushions and jumping on it like a trampoline. It was a little irritating that it was stuck there, but not a big deal.

Then one of the cats peed on it.

Then the other cat peed on it.

Needless to say, it was time for the love seat to go.  Not to mention, the kids (and their ever-growing multitude of possessions) were outgrowing their shared room and play/school room. We needed to better utilize the basement. 

I sprayed the heck out of it with a variety of chemicals and sprinkled essential oils on it (one cat in particular can't stand the smell of oils) and we tried to come up with a plan for evicting our uninvited upholstered guest. We talked about taking a chainsaw to it and just removing the pieces, but we don't have a chainsaw. 

Tim started moving it toward the doorway to try squeezing it through one last time and discovered that the feet came off! With a bit of shoving, the removal of the railings on the staircase, and a little lost paint, he and I were able to squeeze the love seat out of the house and onto the curb. Victory!

Totally worth it.

We quickly listed it on Facebook and craigslist (for free, mind you) and hoped someone would take it off our hands. It got a little rained on but I honestly think that helped because when someone finally came to take it away and Tim helped them load it up, he said the smell was gone. 

It's funny. The love seat has been in our home since the beginning but it was not until it was finally gone that I realized how much of a burden it had been. It was a relief to see it go. With it gone, we were able to move our school stuff to the basement and split the girls into their own rooms. Just getting one piece of furniture out of the house inspired us to purge a bunch of other stuff that was cluttering up the garage as well as the kids' bedrooms. I honestly feel like we've gained a ton of space, which is a big deal when you're living in a small house with growing children.

Lexi's room. I think more purging is in order ;)

Lydia's room

Our new school area

It kind of made me wonder what other baggage or burdens I need to purge my life of, physically and metaphorically speaking. Sometimes there are roadblocks in your life and you don't even realize it until they are gone. Hmm.