I have a really big problem stating my thoughts clearly and concisely, to the point where the chick who rocked the verbal part of the SATs can’t even come up with the word cat. MRIs are not needed because I know, as The Arnold would say, “It’s not a tumor.” but it’s frustrating as hell.

The cause of my thought block is one of my meds that makes me frustrated beyond all means. When I confessed to B that I just couldn’t say what I wanted when I wanted, I broke down into tears because even in that moment we had to play Password for me to even say that simple statement.

And Password is now a daily, sometime hourly, game in our relationship. I’ll be telling B about my day and then have to go into “It’s tall, with windows and I have a desk there.” when I simply want to say the four-letter word ‘work’. Or we’ll be trying to get to a destination and I’m navigating and I can’t say the words, “Turn right or turn left”, I can only point the direction I want him to go.

Writing out a full blog post could take a few hours when it should only be a few minutes. It’s not like my written word is that complicated. Self-editing can be crazy and the blog became more work than a blog should be. Honestly, there were points where I thought my self-appointed moniker would become more true than I could imagine.

One action has been to cut back the amount of the drug that has inhibited my thoughts, taking the lowest dose possible and I have already noticed that the blocks have been fewer and far between. Soon, I hope to be off the drug all together. But until then, please be patient if I make you play around of Password with me.

I’m sorry. You worked really hard to get the weight off of this body and the me from twenty-seven to thirty-one hasn’t been keeping up our end of the bargain. We’ve allowed greasy fast food, cakes with decadent amounts of icing and laziness to take precedence over keeping the fat off that you worked so hard to remove. You would spend an hour or two every day (even on weekends!) at the gym, focusing on cardio and the weight machines. You wouldn’t leave the elliptical machine until you had hit five miles. Now, I get winded after walking one mile.

Thankfully, I didn’t let all eighty pounds come back, just the same thirty pounds that we’ve been fighting with since I got out of grad school. We did manage to get it off for almost nine months in 2007 but then decided a sedentary lifestyle was much more conducive to doing nothing.

And the food issue, we know how wonderful fresh vegetables from the farmer markets taste – the glory of produce that was picked the day before being consumed in it’s natural state, as God intended. But now we don’t allow that type of food in the house, the Oreos needed their place of honor on the counter.

And the soda. It’s a bad addiction that’s going to be hard to break. I realized this morning that I drink almost a two liter of diet soda a day. I can only imagine what I’ve been doing to the body you had dedicated to drinking 100 ounces of water, every day, for two years straight.

But today, I would’ve made you proud. Today, I realized the harm I was doing to my body by trying to hide the food I eat from myself. My distorted thought pattern was that if I hid the food from B, I was hiding it from my body as well. Those calories weren’t going to count because I devoured it in secret where no one could witness my downfall. Also, I stopped the soda, put it down and picked up the water glass instead.

Our next step, on this side of thirty-one, I’m going to cut out sugars. Only natural sugars will prevail on a daily basis with something ‘bad’ on occasion and in moderation.

I know that these promises have been made many times to our self but today feels different. Today, I realized what you did and accomplished – how hard it was to work for that goal and I appreciate what you did, reminds me that it is possible to go back to that body. I know it’s going to be harder because we’re no longer in our early-twenties but it’s not insurmountable.

Thank you for being there twenty-three. Now, it’s time to embrace thirty-one.

Love,

Jen

Why am I in this emotional state of fucked uppedness?

Because I’m on a bloody roller coaster where I’m happy one day and damn right miserable the next. And poor B, he’s been strapped in against his will in the seat next to me.

And if I could pull the emergency brake or cut the straps so I could get out, I totally would. I just forgot my MacGyver kit when I got on.

The worse part, someone I who I knew in Grad school passed away. He and I had a few classes together, though he was in undergrad. He and I never had any ground breaking, emotional wrenching conversations but he was adored by his classmates. When he entered the room, he had the biggest grin on his face and it infected those around him. Danny was one of those guys that made the world a better place just knowing that he was on it.

He was only 27. And dammit, there are a lot of people that didn’t get to meet him. Thankfully, there was a significant number that did.

And I don’t want to post this because I feel like a whiny bitch (another scientific term). If you need me, I’ll be on the roller coaster that doesn’t stop.

The time on my bedside clocked glowed 4:30 and no light filtered in the window, there was no moon that night.

This was a common practice for me to be wide awake when most of the world was slumbering because I was in the second year of my double masters program and twenty-four hours a day was no where near the amount of time that I needed to get all of my work done. Since the start of August, I had been tasked with going to class, studying, go to work, running a project team of undergrads, organize and implement a recruitment campaign for my program, try to find a job and sleep (plus all of the other things that we have do to stay alive and maintain some sort of acceptable hygiene).

Sleep was the luxury that I gave up first.

There was too much to get done and I had to make sure everything was a success because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get the grades and if I didn’t get the grades I wouldn’t get the job and if I didn’t get the job, then twenty-six years of hard work would be for nothing.

That is the thought that would run through my head every moment that I wasn’t concentrating at the task at hand. So, anytime I tried to lay down I was thinking of the what had to be completed and that I just completed or that if I dared to play hokey, that I would be so far behind my whole life would come tumbling down.

Any slumber I did get was fretful and full of images of falling in endless pits. Being awake was so much better because I thought I had some sort of control.

But on this particular morning, the synapses in my brain were firing rapidly reminding me of a giant list of tasks and deadlines that needed to be completed and met. And that’s when I started crying and I couldn’t stop. I tried studying. Sobbing. Watching TV. Sobbing. I couldn’t call anyone to share my mental state because it was so early. My mind might have been broken but my manners were still in tact. The nausea started, my chest tightened, shaking from head-to-toe, dizzy spells and a number of other symptoms of being in a state of panic.

Then I got the brilliant idea that I needed to get to campus and camp out in front of my adviser’s office door, so that when he arrived at work at 7 am he could deal with a woman in full blown mental break-down and panic attack before his first cup of coffee. I wanted to quit everything – school, life because I couldn’t handle the responsibility.

I don’t remember the drive to the campus but I do remember entering the business school building (24 hour access) and feeling a sense of relief of being on campus. But that did not last long as the panic became a hundred times worse as I realized that by leaving the graduate program that I would be letting everyone down, that my parents would be ashamed and I was going to be labeled a quitter and a failure.

And honestly, after that point, I don’t remember the thoughts that went through my head or what I did until 7 am when my professor walked around the corner and saw me there. I just know that my professor found me outside of his office curled up in a ball and he patiently spoke to me for several hours until my panic attack was over. He let me babble incoherently and took the time to listen to my fears. All of them.

He assured me of my abilities, confirmed that I was overworked and that I would be fine. That life would be okay.

And he was right.

My lack of creativity isn’t contained to just writing, it’s also affecting my sewing and knitting life. Projects that I’ve been jonsing to do are sitting on the side waiting for my motivation to come back from the vacation that it took without my permission.

And I know what chased part of it away and I don’t really want to talk about it because I’ve bored you enough with my inability to deal with my Grandmother’s passing. Sometimes it feels better to do nothing that to do anything, especially when she was such a huge part in fostering my drive to be creative in the area of crafts. There are also other pressures that are compounding it that I won’t bring into the blogging world.

All I can ask is that you forgive me for not having fabulous posts, or pseudo-fabulous posts of late. Writing isn’t my forte but it is part of the outlets that I have to get things out of my head and it’s much cheaper than therapy.

Life is hunky doory.

Oh wait it’s not always happy. Sometimes it is.

But right now, we’re trying to figure out which way is up because we’ve been through a lot of good and bad change in our lives in just the last couple of months. A lot of it is really affecting B, because people in this world aren’t always who you thought that they would be and sometimes they change on a dime.

But there have been a lot of freaking awesome. People that take time out of their lives to tell you that you’re appreciated and they think you’re worth keeping around. This has been a continuing thread in both B and I’s lives and that gives us the warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I wasn’t going to write this post. Hell, I put up a fluff piece about the cats. THE CATS. I love the cats but they haven’t cured cancer or done anything YouTube worthy for them to become internet stars.

So, life is life. It’s fun, scary and damn interesting moment-by-moment. Honestly, I’d like it to slow down a bit to the pace it was before but if this is what it takes for B and I to make a life for ourselves, then so be it.

But, I actually started to feel a bit better later in the day but still had those pesty aches and pains running up and down my body. Yeah, I don’t remember making my nervous system open for the signal Indy 500 but I’m not always informed of the comings and goings of what the germs and viruses are doing to me.

Thankfully, after giving a list of my symptoms to the family health professional, my sister, I was informed that as long as I’m not running a fever I didn’t need to be worried about the H1N1 virus. Which, honestly, was the first thing that came to my overactive, hand-sanitizing, virus-killing-tissue loving mind. If you saw my desk before this illness set in, you’d wonder what I would do if I got sick.

Well, now that I am, I’m pumping saline through my nostrils to rinse out bugger germs, jugging emergen-C to fight the internal battle and attacking with DayQuil/NyQuil with real ephiniderine and Zyrtec. Yeah, I’ll do what I can to get back to normal, germ paranoid Jen.

Everyday I think about the phone call letting me know. The sound of my sister’s voice trying to remain calm but with the tenor of knowing she had to deliver bad news to me.

And when I speak to my mom, from the five minutes after finding out to yesterday, knowing that my mother’s heart is permanently cracked by not being ready for her mother’s passing and her memory fractured for not being ready to find her mother passed away. There is no super glue or apoxy of words that will make my mother feel like life is normal again for a while, if ever.

Then the times when I laugh, harder than ever before I feel guilt like no other. Thinking that this too will come to an end one day and I don’t know when that day will be. Tomorrow, ten years, fifty. And on Tuesday, I face a friend who lost her husband of only a few years suddenly, only a few days after my own loss. The emotions that course through me become incredibly real with fact of unknown attached. That’s when all things that I know are rational go out the window and my thoughts and pulse race.

I know that as days pass and the sting of loss fades, I won’t be as neurotic as the day before but until I come to a balance with this loss, I accept that I won’t be what I use to be. I never will. And that my actions may not be logical and eye ball leakage may occur on a moments notice, even when I seem to have been blissfully happy moments before.

My only desire at this moment is to be together enough for those around me who need a bit of strength to cope with their new lives. And knowing that when I start to crumble that my own rock is there to give me something to rest upon.

Now, I’m not a baby hater. NOT.AT.ALL. I know it’s a complete crapshoot if you’re going to have a child on the plane, especially one still in it’s infantile stage. Kids, you can give the glare if they start to kick your seat. When the child gets too rambunctious, you page the flight attendant and convince them that the child is really a midget terrorist that needs full restraints.

But a baby. That’s a gamble unto itself.

I nervously watched, waiting for “Ladies and Gentleman, we’re now pre-boarding for your flight to hell. People who need assistance or extra time to board or people with children under the age of four are now welcome to board.” I was hoping that maybe the baby convention was really on the flight to L.A. because maybe Gerber had a huge open call for a commercial. Or that there would only be one stroller going down the ramp to my plane, then I’d have odds that our seats would not be near the potential bomb of scream. So, I watch as the announcement for assistance or kids is played over the intercom.

One stroller goes down the ramp.

Then there goes a dad with a child seat and mother holding her pile of cuteness.

“Phew, only two.” I whisper in B’s ear. He knows what’s going on because we’ve been toddled over to by an adorable sticky mess several times, because the babies smell our fear.

Then it’s our time to board with our seats near the front of the plane and we note that the babies are strategically behind us, one near the middle of the plane and the other by the bathroom. (At least if I have to go twosies in the plane lavatory, I can totally give the ‘eewwww stinky diaper face’ when I walk out.)

B and I get settled, feeling safe and secure that the jet engines will drown out any noise that might occur and then it happens.

“Excuse us.” “What? We have to gate check the stroller?” “Are there still two seats together?”

Mom. Dad. BABY!!!!

Two rows in front of us the new parents struggle with their bundle of precious joy who is cooing and bubbling with cuteness. And that’s when it ALL goes to hell.

As we taxi and the engines start up, baby in the middle give the signal of cohesiveness to his generation mates. The pre-flight ear test wail is sound with the other two babies harmonizing. As we take off the babies decide to cry in rounds as their little ears pop in discomfort and make sure that one baby is breathing, another set of lungs is powerfully letting out a screech to make up for the silence.

One and a half hours later, those three creatures that don’t total 60lbs, have completely shriveled up my ovaries and caused me to become peri-menopausal. And as soon as the wheels hit the ground, the signal went out that the age set of under 12 months job was done. One went into nap mode, another decided to feed and the one in front of us, back to full on cuteness.

And I swear, the one in front, she gave me a smirk and a wink over her mother’s shoulder as they disembarked.

Those babies can totally smell fear.

*Note to parents: I know that it’s hard to keep an infant quiet on a plane and you have no control over the situation.*

Grandma has had several different health problems in the last few years and in the past few months there was one issue that has gone undiagnosed. Doctors were stumped and treating the symptoms to the best of their ability but not able to diagnosis the underlying cause. Because of this momma wanted to go up to upstate New York from Florida to help grandma around her house and to give her company.

Since where grandma lives is a bit remote, planning a trip up is not easy, typically requiring six hours of flying (with layovers) and a four hour car ride. Thankfully, the last time grandma had visited Florida, she left a small promotional item for a nearby New York airport. This little object happened to be left near my mom’s desk and gave mom an idea to see if there was a small airline that serviced the area. Unfortunately, flights that are not booked well in advance, are quite expensive so mom had to delay her trip up by a ten days.

Yesterday was the day that momma arrived in the small hamlet where she grew up and got to her childhood home around 4 pm. She spent the evening with grandma, my uncle and his girlfriend. She helped my grandma putter around the house, the house that my grandmother was born and that my mother was raised. Momma slept in her childhood room, glad to be able to see her mother. Grandma was in good spirits, they had a great conversation about life and what they would do during mom’s visit.

When mom got up this morning, she went to start the coffee and was concerned that grandma hadn’t gotten up as well since they are both habitually early morning risers. But grandma wasn’t there anymore. Her body was but the spirit wasn’t.

It was time for grandma to move on from this world, she’d gotten to spend a perfect evening with people that loved her – especially her only daughter – doing things that she loved and dying the way that she wanted, in her home.

There was a reason that mom wasn’t supposed to get to grandma’s earlier. There was a reason for her being able to fly in relatively close, so that she could spend that last evening with her mom. And being there when the event we unexpectedly expected happened.

I have many fond memories of my grandma that fill my heart every time I think of her. My selfish regrets are that the last time I saw her was in February of 2008 and my last phone call was several months back. I thought that she’d be immortal, it seemed no matter how many health scares we had because she’d inevitably bounce back. Unfortunately, my flawed logic didn’t come to fruition.

I’ll miss you Grandma. I love you.