Friday, December 31, 2010

Okay, here goes...

Some good friends, friends I trust, friends who have only my best interest at heart and who sometimes know me better than I do, suggested that I start a blog. I was hesitant to do this. I am not sure why. Maybe it was the fact that my thoughts would be made public and therefore subject to ridicule and snide comments. Maybe I was afraid no one would read it. Maybe I was afraid to commit to anything for myself because almost nothing in my life is about me anymore. Whatever the reason, I trust my friends. And I trust my own heart, which knows better than my head, where my fears are created in the first place. So, my daughter is in bed, (my bed), sleeping soundly; my husband is at work, and my stepdaughter is at her cousin's, so no one is bitching about my excessive computer use, and I am blathering blythely to no one at all about nothing at all, because I wanted to get a head start on my resolutions before the year is through.

This has been a rough year, to say the least. Ironically, Sarah's cancer was the least of our worries! She went through hell and back with a smile on her face, and made everyone so proud. We had to let go of our oldest son, who just got to be too much. Our marriage hung on by a thread, but hang on it did, as it always does, because at the end of the day, no matter what we say to each other, we have never said that we were not in love anymore. I didn't work all year, Mike worked too much, and I could not remember when our last date night was, which sent me into a mini-depression for a few hours because somewhere along the line, that became okay for both of us. So, yes, a rough year. But a bad one? I can't really say that it has been. To me, life is life. You come in crying, that's not enough of an indication that it's going to suck, at least part of the time? You do what you have to do, and you get on with it.

That being said, I know there is always room for improvement, so I make the resolutions every year, with the "committee" (Kathie, and sometimes Nick and Mike, when we invite them!) just so that I've said it aloud to someone else and I can get a realistic opinion on whether or not the resolution will stand the prerequisite two weeks before I am allowed to give it up without getting any flack for it! :) We usually get together for this, but we got busy this year, so Kathie and I had a phone conference, and the committee has spoken. The resolutions are as follows:

1. Write more/work on novel
2. Lose weight
3. Be more active
4. Start a blog?
5. Focus more on Sarah's education

Okay, now the explanations, the methods to my madness:

1. Write more/work on my novel: 
 I have been working on my novel for about five years now. I am still only about 30 pages in. I rarely work on it anymore, and when I do, it's mostly character development stuff, working out plotlines, or nitpicking at the same 30 pages until they're "perfect", but very little actual new writing is going into it. I need to get on with it already. Then the fear of actually finishing something sets in, and I start making excuses, the main one being that I need a quiet environment, no interruptions, and time in order to write, and I have none of those things. This is not entirely true. After Sarah goes to sleep, I spend a great deal of time on facebook, and FarmVille, which is secretly addicting...If I have time for facebook, I have time for writing. Sarah is getting better at sleeping through the night now, so the uninterrupted part should get easier, as should the quiet part. Also, these very good friends of mine have suggested that I start telling my story, about what I have gone through with Sarah's cancer, that the journal I keep for her would be publishable. I was unsure about this also, but now I am thinking, since the suggestion has come from three different people who all know me well but don't know each other, that it may be possible and something I want to pursue. We shall see what comes of it.

2. Lose weight
Okay, I know that this is on everyone and their mother's list, and I have kind of grown accustomed to the many ways my body changed after the failed pregnancies, the surgeries, and after I had Sarah especially. I wear the same size now as I did before I had her, so I didn't really notice, and my husband doesn't seem to be complaining, not to me, anyway, so I didn't really make my weight an issue or a priority. Then, the nurse's assistant came in to weigh  Sarah one morning in the hospital, and left the scale out and on...I don't know why, or what possessed me to do this, but I figured, just for fun, let's see what I weigh! Yeah...that was NOT fun! I will not tell you what I weigh exactly, but it's the same as I weighed when I was nine months pregnant with Sarah, about 50 pounds heavier than I was in high school...NOT COOL!!! So, yeah...losing weight...

3. Be more active:
This kind of ties into the whole losing weight thing, plus it's more of a stamina thing...I noticed how run down I feel lately, and I think it's because I spend a lot of time in the car, in waiting rooms, in procedure rooms, in rocking chairs, basically, a lot of time on my ASS!!! So, yeah, I figure being more active will work twofold in helping me lose weight and helping me feel better in general.

4. Start a blog?
 As I said in the beginning, I was a little apprehensive about doing this, and I'm still not really sure why. It feels good now that I am doing it, and I am glad that I decided to bite the bullet and just get on with it, but that's why it had a question mark. I was still unsure. Obviously, I have started a blog, so I guess we can cross this one off the list, or at least amend it to read "Keep up with blog/write some shit no one is going to read at least once a week"

5. Focus more on Sarah's education:
As a mom, it seems that this one should be first, especially as a cancer mom that can't send her kid to preschool, but I put it last because Sarah is three. She is three and she is SMART. She knows all her colors, all her shapes, even the obscure ones like diamond and oval, she can count to 13 before she gets stuck, she is learning one-to-one correspondence, and she can even read a few sight words. I put it last because I know that pushing her too hard will give her an aversion to learning and a tendency to rebel, which is why I haven't pushed it to begin with, but it made the list because I know it's important, and I know I can make it a little more prevalent than I have been. Plus, now that she's three, she can handle more information than she could before and she can sit for longer periods of time. It is also on the bottom because I realize that play is also an important part of her education right now, and it teaches her a lot about the world and about herself, and I want her to be as well-rounded as she can be, especially since her socialization with children her own age is limited right now. Limited, as in, slim to none. So we can hit it a little harder, but not too hard.

So, yeah...those are my resolutions, I will keep you posted as to how they are going! Goodbye, 2010.










 

1 comment:

  1. I love it! I am so proud of you....and I can't wait to see what this year has in store!

    ReplyDelete