my real age?

So I guess I am "really" 28.4 years old...6.3 years less than my biological age...now THAT made my day--Merry Christmas to Me!!! Here's the survey. They email you your results based on a series of health and lifestyle-related questions.

http://www.realage.com/ralong/entry4.aspx?

I guess I was just bored...!

Christmas with a twist...

'Twas the eve before Christmas and all through Vienna
Not a creature was stirring
Except Mom with insomnia.

The stockings were hung on the chimney; one, down it fell...
I can't seem to make it stay up--oh, what the hell!

The children, nestled up next to Mommy all snug,
"Enough! Stop kicking!" "But I just want to hug!"

And the whole family trying to get over this cough,
To try to get some sleep around here sure can be tough.

While we waited all evening for the clatter outside
Of Rocking Santa, through the streets, on his firetruck ride

But he never showed up, and the children became quite sad.
And Daddy and I, with two disappointed kids, were quite mad.

We heard him get close, so near that we ran to the street
With the children shouting about how this was so neat!

Yet he turned a corner left, not right, I do fear
And thus, it turned out, he would never appear.

So as we awaited and tried to keep the kids mellow
I made us all hot chocolate topped with marshmallow

Reassuring them, saying, "Santa could not forget us!"
But it appears that this year, it was Orchard Street hiatus.

The question then: tomorrow will Santa have come down our chimney?
Perhaps...but with the flue closed, we should leave out a key.

We are hoping Santa does not follow a diet gluten-free
So he can enjoy at least one homemade Christmas cookie.

Yet my children, so wise in their years, know of Christmas the art...
That the Santa spirit is the giving that comes from the heart.

It is a spirit that long lives within and surfaces each year
Yet should not be limited to only when Christmas is near.

Yet it is only at Christmastime that such spirit is referred
to as Santa, to maintain the young wonder and mystery preferred.

So yes, on Christmas Day our children's eyes will shine bright
As they see gifts that appear with the morning's first light.

And perhaps there will be a little something in the tree...lo!
For Mommy and Daddy too...what a surprise! Ho Ho Ho!

Now here I am, wishing all of you *other* insomniacs so dear
A wonder-filled Christmas and a joyful New Year!

Feliz Navidad

The year has flown by, and here we are again, Christmas right around the corner. My daughter is now officially on Winter Break for the next week, Christmas cookies are being gobbled up left and right, and we are jolly and happy.

We have been successful in avoiding a great deal of the Holiday Hubbub this year, which has made this season all the more enjoyable. It has been refreshing to focus in more on family, friends and the New Year rather than what is next on the sometimes seemingly interminable List of Things To Do.

Professionally, I have my new in-home classroom all set-up and ready to go, with a little straightening up of Play-Dough, paper scraps and coloring books, with a couple of well-placed pieces of cloth to cover all those trite details. I am preparing for my next Perú trip in 11 days (who's counting????) and hopefully there will be a good fit with the school down in Lima. I am officially done at George Mason...and that does feel good, although I know that I will miss the students.

Personally, I am on the mend after my emotional breakdown of last month. I have the official word on my allergy to soy, plus I am to avoid gluten. I am now on a thyroid complex that hopefully will even out my slightly hypothyroid, and am treating my adrenal stress with a sunbox, a withania complex and a vitamin coctail taken with a glass of sea salt water--which tastes, suprisingly, really really good (if it does not sound good to you, that means you are not in adrenal fatigue!). Last night I slept through the night for the first time in weeks, and it felt really good. Today I feel like A New Woman. Just in time for Christmas.

Watch out, world. This desperate housewife will soon be desperate no more!

A desperate housewife and a Scrapbook Fairy

Here we are. She works creative wonders. I wonder how to creatively work. We're the perfect team! I love this picture of the two of us.

Thanksgiving Blessings

So much for which to be thankful, today and always.

Blessings to you all!

severe adrenal stress

Only because we always need to title our maladies. I guess that is good so that the root cause can be treated, not simply the symptoms which won't end up helping at all. So couple that with post-traumatic stress disorder and, my friends, I have some work to do.

So yesterday I took an all-day saliva test (yummy) that I'll send off this morning to the lab, the results of which should come back to my doctor in about 3 weeks. This will tell me definitively if this is adrenal and not thyroid, as the two issues mirror each other greatly, but hypothyroidism can result from adrenal stress; and if adrenal, which of two types it is for appropriate treatment. Today I'll start a homeopathic-herbal-vitamin regimen that could make significant differences, so we'll all have to stay tuned and see.

The only thing I do now that really makes me feel good is yoga...unfortunately I can't spend 13 waking hours in various yoga positions, so it is time for me to do more for myself than just a once a week class.

Regarding the ptsd issue, who knows. I don't want to talk about the accident anymore, I just want it to go away. It's hard to say if my issues stem back from the miscarriage and even my father's death...the adrenal numbers were very off post-miscarriage 3 years ago...perhaps it is something I have dealt with since puberty? Or just since Life started dealing me blows that my body just can't seem to process well. I don't know, and will probably never know that answer, but I can at least now try to do something for myself.

just a big wimp

It was, in fact, raining and windy and just downright cold this morning. One of those mornings that just make you want to crawl back in bed and throw the covers over your head...which is precisely what I did at 6:30 this morning when my alarm went off to go turkey-trotting. Then C awoke at around 7 and I knew that a decision would have to be made...do I go walking through the cold, wet streets or do I just stay home and row?

I decided on the latter. I don't want to get sick now, the week before Thanksgiving. I didn't want to set the chill from which I know my body would shudder the entire day by doing something that was supposed to be fun. Okay..okay...I'm just filled with excuses. But to my credit, I did get my butt out of bed and rowed my sore yoga muscles out hard for 30 minutes...in the comfort of my own basement, with Bob the Builder motiviating me on (Can we do it? YES WE CAN!). And I didn't get chilled!

I guess this means I am not the Oregonian I once was. But then again, I'm also not as young as I was when I professed my Oregonian-ism!