Happy New Year! May all that read this have a year of unexpected joys. Hopefully, for the people reading this in the adoption process, here's wishing our little ones to be home in our arms soon.
We will have so many "firsts" this year to look forward to. We will make first time memories in our home, the Kid will go Kindergarten, I will manage to reverse time and turn 39 again, and we will gain a daughter!
I can't resist this confessional post whilst finding the humor in my first 24 hours of '11. I ended up in the ER this morning. I wish I could say it was a result of over indulging the night before - as it seemed the majority of people in the waiting room had some sort of post festivity battle wound - but no, not me. I was there because I had woken up, looked in the mirror, and found a cyclops looking back. I have shingles (or maybe staph - but seems more shinglish). On my face. Front and center on my right check and swelling up my eye. Never had it before, but as my health history proves, my body tends to go the extra mile with not hugely serious, but hugely strange and quirky aliments. I mean seriously, my first shingle experience has to be on my face? Come on! Anyhow, they think this came on from a compromised immune system from 2 steroid shots in 2 months and a minor procedure I had 2 weeks ago that involved an incision. Mix these in with the major stress from moving/adoption/work/holidays/testy 4 year old, and TA-DA! Freak show face! As I laid there on the ER table with my inflamed, teary eyed face buried in a pillow so that I may be in a position for my bare ass to stick straight up in the air for close examination... with 3 staff members.... a gloved finger... and a bright light spotlighting that place where the sun don't shine (follow-up from my incision from a procedure that I am too embarrassed to actually type, but as a sacrifice in re-creating that moment, I am giving a big hint), I decided right then that there were really just two choices to make to make following that ER visit from hell; I can either 1) go home, crawl into bed, pull the covers over my face, and feel sorry for myself until this passes, or 2) make the best of this, find humor in my decaying face and sore bum, and DE-STRESS! I chose #2. An hour later we gathered up friends, premiered my face, and had a playdate! Nothing like parachute games and kids vrs parents dodge ball to bring up the spirit. Starting tomorrow, I will make time to put down the putty knife and moving boxes for a while to go for a long walk. In the near future, maybe I will start blogging more, read more books, get more pedicures, lock up the blow dryer and grow out my hair, watch more goofy chick-flicks, buy some sheet music for our new $100 yard sale piano, eat more gelato and aged cheese (my weakness), cook healthy again - or even just go to the store to buy a vegetable, which would be a novelty in itself as of late - and even maybe I will paint a picture! Sounds funny, but I feel I have this inner artist inside me. It might be just enough to draw a damned good stick figure, but we do have a huge wall that needs a large canvas on it. I have actually thought of having an excuse for doing an abstracty thing like this for years, so I might just have to seize this moment and go for it! In general, I need to find more fun, humor, and "me" time this new year, since it is now becoming painfully apparent (literally) that I have not been doing enough of that.
