General Updates for 2014

     This year has been a hell of a ride. And the ride isn't going to stop any time soon. Here's a little about what's been going on.

     Jack is in kindergarten this year. We had to make a choice as to whether we would send him this year or next because he has a late August birthday and the cutoff is September 15th. Wading through the pro's and con's and all of the opinions of all of the people who have and have not had to make that choice is enough to make your head implode. I honestly don't wish that decision upon anybody. Maybe it's easier for some people than others, but that was definitely not the case for us. Alas we came to the decision that we would send him. He's done well. He still has issues with fine motor skills so writing is a struggle, but he is reading very well and mostly on track. I'm glad for that. He has grown so much this year socially and academically so I'm really glad we sent him for those reasons too. I don't think that would have happened had he been made to do another year of preschool. But on the other side he is very immature still. He has a hard time asking for help when he doesn't understand something, he can't sit still long enough to get everything done, and he's still slow when he does do his work. I know these are all things that will even out over time, but I hate seeing my baby struggle so that's been rough. All we can do now is see what happens with first grade.
     Riley is in 2nd grade. She tests in the 97th percentile and above on basically everything. The day I have dreaded came the other day. She finally told me that she is bored in school because things are too easy for her. She still handles it well but I fear that it will end up skewing her perception of school and she'll stop trying as hard. I know I have a while before that happens still but I want to do what I can to avoid it. Hopefully as she progresses to higher grades things will become more challenging. Thus far her only challenge has been handwriting, but she finally decided to take that challenge more seriously this year and has improved dramatically.
     Kevin is still at HP. He's constantly overwhelmed and stressed at work and it affects him. He tries his hardest not to bring it home and I am thankful for that, but I worry about him because there is only so much stress one can take and they just keep piling more on his plate. We will be married 10 years this June. I'm so thankful for him every day of my life. I probably don't show him enough how grateful I am for him. He has a goiter that is HUGE right on the left side of his thyroid. The Dr. has done multiple tests and it is benign, but it affects him, especially when he's sick. I think eventually he will get it removed. It might not happen this year because we had to go back to buying our own insurance, and thanks to certain laws enacted it's costing us a ton more than it ever has.
    What about me, you ask? where do I start?
I decided this year is going to be a year of adventure and discovery for me. I'm trying really hard to change my perspective of the things that happen in my life. Up till this point I've had a very black and white attitude about things. This year I'm giving things a chance before I decide, and deciding I don't have to be so decisive. It's been working well so far. Thanks to an amazing yoga teacher, I handled winter this year better than I have in years. I was able to let it be what it was and not be AS cranky about it. I started school in January. I've been taking Biology and Veterinary Medical Terminology for the past 5 months. I have enjoyed it SO much and done extremely well in both classes. I have to figure out a math class and then I can start the Vet Tech program. Both of the kids will be in school full time so I'm really looking forward to it.
The thing I'm the most excited about is that Kevin and I are taking a 2 week trip to Nepal this fall with an amazing group of conservationists. The group works with Rhino conservation. I'm so excited about this trip I can't see straight. We will get to take a plane ride up around Mt. Everest, visit Bardia National Park, Chitwan and Shivapuri also. We will get to go rafting, hiking, search for wild elephants and rhinos, and bathe the park elephants in the river. This is like a dream come true for me. We had our first meeting with the group the other night which just made it even more real for me. I tried indian food for the first time too. Most of it was good! I did NOT like the green stuff though!
     I'm mostly recovered from ED now. There aren't many times I even pay attention to it anymore. This week has been hard but I know it will pass and every day I feel more and more in tune with myself and what I really need. Body acceptance is still my biggest hurdle but even that is better than it has ever been so I'm in a good place and will keep working until I can call myself completely recovered!
     This week has been hard. I think it's mostly just because I'm hormonal but I feel really sad this week. It's extremely hard for me when I feel like this because I don't think anybody really understands my feelings and I end up feeling really isolated, and end up isolating myself even more. I know this about myself but it's something I need to work on more because I still always go with my normal coping mechanism of isolating myself and it's not good for me or anybody else.
I got another weim in November. His name is Achilles. He has issues, he's 5 years old, and I love him to death. I know we've had the other 2 for a long time and I love them both so much, but I feel a different sort of connection with Achilles. Maybe because he's not perfect. I guess I know what it's like for people to turn their back on you even though you can't help being how you are.
Anyways that's enough for now. I have to go volunteer at the school. Dave was supposed to come talk to Jacks class today but had to cancel because they moved his meeting with the WWF to today instead of tomorrow. I'm disappointed. I'm having a hard time dealing with that too because I'm already so sad and keep blaming myself and telling myself it's because of me. I need to stop it because it's not the truth. Shit happens. It's just another in a series of events that have not gone right this week. It's just my turn to have a week of Mondays. I just make it harder on myself by beating myself up. Ok I said I was stopping so I'm stopping now.
TTFN
Theresa

I got ditched......again......for the past two weeks in a row now......

It's not really a surprise to me. It's happened so often I honestly don't know why it even hurts me anymore. Or why I keep trying. I'm so tired of it all. I feel so isolated. Like I just don't belong anywhere, or with anybody.

I'm tired of trying. I really don't think I can do it anymore. I can't tell myself it's not me and I can't put myself out there. It hurts too much.

Guess I just need time to cry, and figure out how to move on from here with a new set of circumstances. oh well

For Tanja

I hadn't talked to you in a long time. You had gone your way and I had gone mine. Like everybody else when you slipped away, I thought it was me. I didn't try too hard for too long. I never do. So I hadn't talked to you in at least a year. But I feel like I still had a connection with you. The first time I met you in group I had you pegged. I knew EXACTLY who you were, because you were so much like me. Your emotions ruled you. We hung out from time to time after group and chatted about random things. I knew you struggled. I knew there was a layer beyond what you shared in group. But you seemed to be happier and doing well. You were working so hard to get your life in order and work out the kinks. I remember the last time I talked to you. You seemed like you were still in a good place. Neither one of us had been to group in a while, but you sounded content, and I was happy that you were doing well. Now here I am finding out that you had a downhill spiral that you couldn't recover from. It makes me sad to know that I didn't know. That I couldn't help. You always inspired me with your love of animals. I have the same love and I looked up to you for everything you did. The deep devotion that you had to your work. I hope I can carry on your legacy in some way. I'll devote myself in both of our names. The world was lucky to have known you Tanja Pliler. I hope you have found peace.

What is Beauty?

Ok, there is this whole thing going about the internets. A dove beauty ad that shows how distorted women's views of themselves are. They take women, introduce them to a stranger, then have both that woman and the stranger they met talk to a sketch artist and each create a sketch of that woman. It is supposed to show how hard women are on themselves. It's creating a lot of buzz. People either love it or they hate it. It's celebrated or looked upon with malice. I haven't seen it. I've read a few comments about it from the celebrators and the critics, and I wanted to give my two cents on the main idea of the ad. The question that has some people jumping for joy at this ad, while at the same time has other people groaning and rolling their eyes. What is beauty?

First, I want to look at what Miriam Webster has to say about beauty.
Miriam Webster's Dictionary defines beauty as:

1. the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit



Now, A lot of critics are saying how damaging this ad is because they are still focusing on outward appearance as the main focus of the experiment. As in Oh hey I thought I was a dog but I guess other people don't see me that way, I must judge myself too harshly. While really the point should be there is a lot more to me than my outer appearance. While I agree that there is a lot more to people than their appearance, I think appearance is important as well.

Think about this......How many times have you gone all out, gotten all dolled up, and felt horrible and worthless afterwards? I know every time I get dressed up and fancy(as long as it's not too far out of my comfort zone) it makes me feel pretty awesome. Yet when you frump around the house in oversized sweats and holy shirts, your chances of feeling bad about yourself increase significantly. I don't think this has a single thing to do with the way you look when you're dressed up, though. I think it has to do with caring for yourself.

When you love something and care for it, you keep it polished, and pretty. Wether it is your dog, a favorite trinket, or anything else that is special. Why should your own self be any different? When you spend time on yourself to groom yourself and look good it's a very human way to show yourself that you are special and loved.

So then the question becomes, do other peoples opinions of what you look like matter?

This is a tougher question for me to answer. I think for people with high enough self esteem the answer to this is obviously no. But for those with little to no self esteem, that deem themselves worthless, I think it's important for them to know how people really see them. Again the reasoning is not what it seems. It's not because it's important for them to know that others find them attractive. Not at all. What's important about it is that most people with these self esteem issues project their opinions of themselves onto other people. An" I feel this way about me so everybody else feels the same way about me too". I think it's important for them to see that this is not reality. When you start letting other people develop their own opinions about you, a lot of room is freed up for other things besides the worry of how horrible you look to other people. It's pretty freeing.



So while I think what dove did is actually really awesome, I don't think they made the message clear enough. I think it does, to most people, feel like more of a - you're more beautiful than you think you are - than an - other people don't see me the same way I see myself - sort of thing. I think it was a good try, and I hope they keep trying because we really need more people to get these messages out to help combat all the you're not good enough, buy our stuff to be better crap we get flung at us from all directions all the time.

I know I'm still working on it myself, but I hope so much that someday we can change these stigmas of thin=beautiful and you have to be popular and have designer clothes and a clear face and a huge house and the best stuff to be loved. Because just being the happiest, best you, is the most beautiful thing in the world, at least to me :)
TTFN

Love and loss

     It's been a rough week. There has been a lot emotional bumps for me. The first one is hearing that Kevin's Grandmother passed away. I only met her once, and I know Kevin is not close to her, but she was still a part of the family, and it brings back other losses of grandparents and makes those feelings fresh again.
     Then the next day I heard that Mimi, an elephant at the Denver Zoo, has been put in hospice care. She is at least 53 years old and her health is starting to decline more rapidly. Her care takers believe it is just a matter of time now. I hate to have favorites amongst a species I adore so much. But Mimi is my girl. I just love her to pieces and hearing this tore me to shreds. I cried for half a day. I guess it's good to have time to prepare but this is not easy.

   Today I found out that Snow, Klondike's sister and one of Denver's Polar Bear miracles from 1994 passed away unexpectedly in her sleep last night at 17 years old. I was 11 years old when these two little guys were born. They were abandoned by their mother and hand raised at the Denver Zoo. I remember being in complete awe of the whole situation. I remember visiting them at the zoo nursery and seeing them laying there sucking on huge blocks of ice before they could even walk. I watched and listened to every story I could about them while they were growing up, following their every move. I cried when at a year old they were sent to their new home in Florida. I didn't think it was fair that after all the time spent loving and caring for them that they would just ship them off somewhere else. My 12 year old brain couldn't fathom it and didn't think it was fair at all. I went to visit them in Florida 8 years ago on my honeymoon. They've been a part of a HUGE chunk of my life. And now she is gone.
   

     So yeah, it's been a rough week. Made even rougher by the fact that everybody close to me does not really understand all of this loss and emotion. I am a very emotional person with a huge reliance on connections to people and things in my life so all of this has a more profound impact on me that it might have on other people. It feels pretty huge to me. It really sucks that I can't really share it with someone else close to me. I know I will be ok, I just get frustrated about that sometimes. It makes me feel isolated.

     On a positive note, On August 28th a new little girl was welcomed to the Elephant herd at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. She shares a birthday with my little man and she is a cutie. I celebrate and am so glad that they have had so much breeding success with these amazing animals. I hope some day I can be a part of something like that.

TTFN

I realized something today. I realized something very deep and important to me. Something that could potentially change everything for me. It scares the living daylights out of me to think about letting it in, and yet I look at it with such longing and need for it that I don't know how to not let it in. Today I realized who I am and why I feel like I have been chasing my tail for so long.

My whole life I always knew I wanted to be a mother. I wanted so badly for my children to know and feel all the love and patience and total adoration I had to give them. I knew I wanted to stay at home with them and be that mom that could give her children the gift of herself while they were young and impressionable. There were also things about being a stay at home mom that I didn't realize were part of the package. The isolation, the housework, the redundancy, days of whining, cranky, thankless children, worrying, sleep deprivation, etc. I didn't realize the days of the awesome payoffs of being a stay at home mom were often very few and far between.

I had a really hard time dealing with becoming a mother. Somewhere between the trauma that was my first childbirth experience, the hellish recovery, the postpartum depression, and feeling like nobody really understood what I was going through, I became anorexic.

When my daughter was about 11 months old I was finally able to admit that I had a problem and seek treatment. I did pretty well with it and by the time she was 2 and a half and I became pregnant again I felt like I was in a good place to have a healthy pregnancy and did everything I could to make sure that happened. And it did. My son was born healthy and happy and I was hopeful that this crappy part of my past was behind me.

I was wrong. Anorexia came back with a vengeance. I was a little quicker to get help this time but it was a harder fight. I felt like I was never going to be normal again. I felt pretty hopeless and everything I did in treatment at first was for my kids and my husband. Making sure I did it for them was the only way I could keep going. I had no self esteem and could not really fathom doing it for myself. There were some pretty dark times but, for the sake of my kids, I persisted. I was told that it would eventually get better. That you had to do the work before you could see the rewards.

Slowly the rewards started to trickle in. Every small step was celebrated. I really believed that if I kept going and got better that I could put this all behind me. That I could be ok and I could put this all behind me. It's been 3 years now and I came SO CLOSE. And then once again anorexia has come knocking on the door and I answered. But this time I couldn't understand WHY. I have worked so hard to move past this part of my life and it keeps coming back. WHY?!?!? I have learned to cope with things that I thought were a problem. One might come up once in a while but I'm pretty good at beating those things back. So then WHY is this happening again???

Then this morning as I was going through my list of stresses and what potential good could come of those things, something hit me like a ton of bricks. None of these things is REALLY the problem. None of these things is what keeps me on this endless cycle that makes me feel like I'm chasing my tail.  It is the fact that I've been trying to find myself, when all along I know who I am but can't be that person. I was raised to not be that person. It was engrained in me when I was growing up that the minute you have a family you cease to exist. From that point on you live for your children and do only what is best for them regardless of what you do or don't want.

And I really think that is why Ed (eating disorder) stepped in. To cope with the fact that in a day I went from a person to a care vessel that doesn't mean anything to anyone. Or at least that's the way I saw it and largely still do.

The problem with this revelation is that I don't know if there IS any way to fix it. Just time. Once the kids are grown up maybe I can regain a little bit of myself. I dunno. If there is ANYTHING left by then. I've been encouraged to do things for myself before and never have followed through. I think that is why. Because I truly believe that it's not acceptable for me to do that. But I tell people I will try just to appease them. And for a minute it makes me feel better to think of the possibility.

that's all I've got for now.
TTFN

Runnin'

Just got back from a run with my hunny :) I'm really glad he is trying this out with me. I'm so excited that we can do this together. We are just starting out still. This is our 2nd week. And we are in barefoot shoes, So the process is very slow but I don't really mind. We can only really go up and down our street right now anyways so It's a good start.

I've been thinking way too much lately. Some days it's good. Some days not so much. Today I decided I'm lonely but I SUCK at letting people in. Sometimes I'm reserved for good reason but other cases I can't really even understand myself. My husband for instance. He is always ALWAYS there for me no matter what. But I have a dang hard time getting support even from him if it is not in exactly the way that I want it. But I don't realize this is going on in my head. So I get irritated with him and shut him out. Then I don't even really understand what happened I just know that now I am irritated AND lonely. I hate my brain sometimes.

The kids are going to be out of school in like 5 weeks. I don't feel prepared. I don't know what I'm going to do with them all summer. It shouldn't be that much different as neither one of them is in school full time anyways. But GAH!

And if anyone knows where I can find some decent sand toys let me know! I've been looking around at the big box stores but nothing has really made me go ooooohhhhh yet. Maybe nothing will. They are just sand toys afterall. Maybe mediocrity is where it's at.

Reading the hunger games (finally!) and haven't seen the movie yet so no spoilers! (Not that anyone really reads this anyways. lol.

Off to read.
TTFN!