'Tis the Season to be fat and happy

Merry Christmas!

I know I tend to get a little negative here, and vent a lot about things, and I also know that Thanksgiving was last month and to do a blog about things that I am thankful for is a little late, but you know what? I'm much more thankful for things at Christmas than I am at Thanksgiving.

Things I am thankful for, 2013:

1. My family.
1.5. My dogs
2. My friends.
3. Love eternal.
4. Wibbly- wobbly, timey-wimey.
5. Music.
6. Life.

Let's break it down a little.

1. My family. I don't just mean my immediate family, like my husband and siblings and parents. I mean my cousins, and aunts and uncles. I mean my in-laws. I mean family members I don't even think about until I get out my Christmas card list and see them on it (admittedly, there are a couple, and no I am not naming names.) I haven't really been close to my extended family because I've always lived three thousand miles away from most of them, but I really am thankful for them. Family is important, and even though they are the people who are most likely to drive you crazy, they are also the people you are most likely to have things in common with, the people who are closer to you genetically than a stranger on the street, and the people who just might message you on Facebook when you're having a shit day to let you know that even though you're not close, you're family, and if you need to talk they're there to listen.

1.5 My dogs. I put them here in the middle because to me they are family, but I know not everyone gets that. Besides, they're more than family, too. They're protectors, they're children, they're best friends. My dogs are always following me around the house like an entourage. If I'm upset and crying they are all of them trying to lick my face and make me happy. They love me unconditionally and I feel the same way about them.

Besides, they're adorable!

 

2. My friends. I would be lost without my friends. I have friends all over the world, friends I email daily, and friends I visit with whenever I get to be in their neck of the woods. I have good friends that are more like family from Seattle all the way to England. I have friends I've known since I was in elementary school, friends who grew up in the same neighborhood, and friends I've not even met in "real life." All of them are important to me. There's a line that has always stuck with me in the song "Thankful Heart" from The Muppet Christmas Carol- "And if you need to know the measure of a man, you simply count his friends." I have a lot of friends. I may not have a lot of them close by, but I have a lot of friends, people who I have seen come together in a common purpose to do amazing things for one another, people who have gone out of their way to pick me up at the airport or change their schedules so they could see me, people who have taken me into their homes and let me stay for the weekend- you know. Friends.

 

3. Love eternal. For some of you this makes perfect sense, others need an explanation, and the only one you're going to get is this: It's a Blockhead thing.

 

Sometimes being called a Blockhead is a compliment.

 

 

4. Wibbly- wobbly, timey-wimey.

 

Technical.

 

So, for those of you who don't watch Doctor Who, you should. Not because it's excellent Sci-Fi about a Time Lord who travels through space and time with mostly Earthling companions saving the universe over and over again with a bit of whimsy and a lot of intelligence (even though it's all of those things) but because there is nothing that gives you as much hope as the thought that a brilliant and amazing alien sees so much potential and good in mankind that he continues to save us from decimation again and again. If The Doctor thinks we're worth saving, then maybe we should think the same.

 

The Doctor.

 

 

5. Music. I pretty much can't live without it. I haven't listened to a lot of it today and I can tell you I've been a lot quicker to snap over things than I would if I'd had music playing in the background. I love all kinds of music- you already know I love New Kids on the Block and Maroon 5, but I'm also a fan of Puccini, The Beatles, Bing Crosby, the Monkees, Brad Paisley, The Carpenters, musicals, Aerosmith and Eddie Daniels (he's a jazz clarinet player.) My tastes are varied (much like my taste in movies) and while I tend to spend most of my time listening to pop music, there are days when I need to listen to country, or I need to put on classical and just mellow out. And my all time favorite song?

 

Words and Music by Jeff Moss

 

6. Life. If you're not thankful for your life, even if it's full of senseless crap like there being no way to stop your hated Google+ account that you almost never use from being connected to YouTube even though YOU DO NOT LIKE THIS and WOULD OPT OUT IF GOOGLE WERE NOT STUPID AND ACTUALLY GAVE YOU A CHOICE (like I could get through a blog without a rant?), then frankly, you're missing the bigger picture. That we exist at all is incredible. Whether a higher being or dumb luck created life as we know it on this planet is irrelevant- we exist. And while the universe may not give a damn about that, we should. Yes, I have diabetes. Yes, I feel like ick right now because I need to lose a few pounds and my blood sugar is 207 and climbing. But I'm alive. I'm alive and so are you, to quote Bill Murray in Scrooged.  And holy crap that is amazing.





Musings

I'm waiting for Star Wars: The Old Republic to finish updating...considering how long it seems to be taking, and the fact that Pinterest doesn't want to work for me, I thought I'd blog. Of course, Google is being a pain in the butt and the Blogger site isn't working as it should, either, so maybe this will be a loss too.

Sorry if I'm a little downer today, but I'm still reeling from Paul Walker's death, which undoubtedly you've heard about even if you're not a fan because it's pretty much a given that if a guy who was in the "Fast and Furious" franchise dies in a car accident, the news media is going to have a field day writing about it. Frankly, this is only adding to and not the lone source of my melancholy, but it's one of those things that just reminds you life is short and those you love may not be here tomorrow, or even later tonight, and it's making me upset because it is one more thing I have absolutely zero control over. I'm not as upset about Paul Walker as I am from thinking that it could be my husband wrapped around a tree someday, and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop that from happening... I hate when I get the mean reds like this. Holly Golightly could swing by Tiffany's, but my go-to happy place isn't somewhere you can just visit for free.

Though it is really pretty at Christmastime...

I know I've been dealing with depression stuff, and I don't always put in here what's making me depressed (because some things aren't relevant or I just don't want to share), but something about this last few months has been gettin' me down. It's kind of funny, actually, because my husband told me today one of our co-workers has a handout from a "motivational" presentation I did a couple months ago hanging at her desk, and she thinks it's awesome and she looks at it everyday for inspiration. I'm way flattered, and glad to know that "do as I say don't do as I do" still works, because lately I'll just start to cry at the drop of a hat.

I feel a little overwhelmed is all. We'll get through it.

On another note, and totally switching gears, I realized the other day just how much waste I produce. Not that we don't recycle (we do), and not that I don't try to reuse things (I do), but diabetes wise...there's a lot. I mean, I knew the blood testing strips and things added up, but then I changed my pump setting at the same time that I changed my CGM sensor setting...and just wow.

I didn't think to take a picture until after I'd thrown a bunch away, too.

That's a wet erase marker in the upper left hand corner. Typical pen size, about five inches long. All of that is medical garbage. Plastic pouches, needles, alcohol wipes, old settings...every six days I toss out that much trash. Every three days it's half of that. And this doesn't include the test strips for every blood test I do (2-3 a day), the tissues I throw out that I use to stop my poor stabbed fingers from bleeding, or the empty test strip bottles, the boxes that the pump and CGM supplies come in, or the boxes that those boxes come in. It's a massive amount of non-reusable garbage that I throw away every single day.

It just kind of blew my mind. I mean, multiply this out by the number of years I've been using the pump (pushing ten) and the number of years I've been using CGM therapy (I think two? Not sure anymore), and then add in all the years yet to come...holy crap! And the thousands and thousands of needles I used before this? And the thousands and thousands of test strips and alcohol wipes I've gone through?

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, and he wasn't too broken up over my HbA1c...it was a 7.2, which I know is relatively good but for me feels like utter failure. That is definitely adding to my melancholy. I know I can do better. The rest of my blood work was good, too. Cholesterol is down, blood pressure okay...Even when I skip out on exercise, eating right, and using the CGM I end up doing all right. Which only goes to prove I can do better if I actually try. And of course I want to try right in the middle of Christmas. (It's like I'm setting myself up for failure. Eesh.)

Anyway, that's my musings for you. I start off thinking one thing and then the mind wanders someplace else entirely. Star Wars finally finished updating and it only took an hour. Now I don't even feel like playing, but if I don't then it will be a little like I wasted an hour...of course I won't have to update the next time I play, so there's that. And I did get a blog written, even though Google was trying to thwart me at every turn. Which means, in spite of my negativity this evening...

Carla wins.