Plan of Attach

It feels like I'm always in a state of transition, but I think I'm entering a state of transition.

I feel restless all the time, and while I'm really happy with a lot of how my life looks, I am apparently dissatisfied with a lot. So what to do.

I've been thinking a lot about how to take on the big things through the daily things, and I heard an expression today that suits both the task and my preference for the ridiculous: Lick by lick, the cow ate the grindstone. Tonight I got halfway through watching Creed, the updated Rocky movie. It is alright- Michael B. Jordan is great, and the fight scenes are intense and shot in many long takes, but the love story is cheesy and unrealistic, and I just can't have that in an overcoming all odds story about the guy who may not have the same physical prowess as the bad guy- but all the heart- and his inevitable, feelgood win. But Sly says "Yo Adrian" at one point, so it's all worth it. Jennyway, during the training, Rocky keeps telling his protege "one punch, one round," reminding him that you only win one punch at a time.

The game of chess came up earlier today, and again at tennis, when I relearned how to serve. My coach talked about strategy, and I was reminded about why I quit playing tennis. I did not like the competitiveness- what felt like mean-spirited moves. I found it made me mad, and then I would play worse. My coach smiled, and asked me to think about it in terms of a mind game. I closed my mouth and swallowed back my usual chorus of "I'm no good at strategy" and "I don't want to play like that" and tried to think about it as exercise for the brain. He promised that in tennis, you're planning less moves in advance, but you are thinking about challenging your opponent, and knocking them out of their groove. I'm wondering why I like tennis so much. Is it because I learned it young? I do like the lines and aesthetics of it, but maybe there's something about the strategy I also like. Isn't that a basic theme of all sports? On another possibly unrelated sidenote, I sent Sarah a picture of my progress on a puzzle she'd given me, and her husband remarked that I was very strategic, which surprised me. Two things I would have never anticipated being called this past year: strategic and sporty.

The regular deal with me is that I would most often rather be passive, because my assertive goes straight to aggressive. I know that may look wrong to my family, but that's because I'm very comfortable with you. In my daily life, I give in. I love to drive, and will absolutely take the wheel, but if someone's grabbing it, I'll let them take it. My other tennis coach is constantly after me to hold my ground, because when I do, I am a force to be reckoned with. And Tracy said something to me the other day about speaking up that was really funny- her example was if some creep tried to carry me off, the time to disagree is not once I'm already tied up in his rape lair (I must specifically credit her for the words "rape lair," because that's still cracking me up).

So I get these things, and am seeing them everywhere, so now it's about how to incorporate them. Another saying I just found is: A Sunday well spent brings a week of content. Yeah, I know- I'm rolling my eyes along with you- but I'm trying to figure out what this means- is it about being an ant, or is it about being a grasshopper?

I recently heard from both a resiliency class and a happiness podcast a warning about the danger of stockpiling. Keeping enough of whatever is not going to help in a crisis. What's going to help is your ability to adapt. A brief disclaimer, of course, that of course you need some things on hand, but this was specifically about the excess. That was Ant's criticism- if I wrote that part. He said I was very organized, I just had a lot of the same things.

I have some things to do, but the processing helps to clarify and solidify. In my mind, I've got three main things to do- and I found a tool for thought yesterday on how to break those things down into steps. The bottom line is my favorite Joan Rivers quote:

It doesn't get better. You get better.

It's not going to get easier, or less complicated, or more beautiful. I do want to get better- it is my constant quest. And if I want to get better, and to accomplish the things I have in mind, I'd better repurpose my daily time.


1) Practice calmly holding my ground
2) Use what I've got and purge what I don't need
3) Write and edit

Screw you, soup.

I can't make soup.

I'm feel like a failure and I hate everyone and I want a cigarette.

I'd settle for an afternoon and a few chapters

I know I'm a big liar about the damn glass blog and I'm trying to get there but good grief I feel like I'm all over the place. I'm having a rough time managing everything and it feels like lately my life is just get through the week, go see a couple friends, rush to prep for the week, then start over. I hate this feeling, I hate hating Sundays, and writing about this- all rushed as I'm trying to get to bed- is boring.

I ate this carefully crafted dinner tonight because I have a fasting lab tomorrow, and now I'm crashing, of course, because that happens every damn time I try to plan to not crash. Like today for tennis. Do you know how hard it is to crash, suck down a couple juice boxes and try to recover fast enough to play without crashing again? If you manage to do it right (which I did, though it took 80 grams of carbs, 10 minutes of rest, then 20 minutes of half-assed tennis before I could start really running around again), it makes you REALLY tired, which is not what you need. And if your answer is you just need to prepare better, remember that EVERYTHING affects your blood sugar, and all the preparation on earth won't always prevent this crap from happening, though you've been trying to figure tennis out for almost a year now.

See what I mean, Mom? I am in a very cranky, frustrated, bad place at the moment, and I need a quiet, introverted day with a book. Urgghh. So there's that, and it's time for bed now. Gotta go get some rest so I can be less of an asshole tomorrow.

ONE chocolate chip cookie, ah ah ah

What is one to do when one wants a cookie?

Bake some- but what if one does not want 3 dozen?

Buy some- but what if one does not need an entire box?

Buy one- but they are always enormous and one never anticipates wanting a cookie and therefore did not bring a ziploc bag to store the other half, hence that half gets eaten or folded back in the bag to become a purse cookie- or, more accurately, purse cookie crumbs punctuated by the occasional warm, smushy chocolate chip that globs itself onto some corner of your wallet or phone.

These are not acceptable solutions. Now, some people like to tell me that I can't eat desserts, but I like to direct them to my dietitian who is also a certified diabetes educator, who will very sweetly inform them otherwise. I can have a cookie. I have to think about that cookie, I have to plan for it, I have to measure it, and I have to time it right, but I can have a cookie. I can even have a few. I should not have 3 dozen.

I was super excited to find this bag of frozen cookie dough in the grocery store tonight. I'm sure I could have done this myself: avoided all chemicals, made the dough, portioned them out, frozen the bag, and let it sit there for 8 months like every other mysterious ziploc bag that's buried in my freezer, but instead I bought a bag of almost made cookies that's ready for me to bake one when I have a hankering for a warm cookie. It's inconvenient enough that I'll really have to want it and be willing to wait for it, but it's a nice option for single diabetic people.

Hurts so good

In the most ridiculous version of The Saddest News Ever, our glass creations were not ready to be picked up today. My guess is that the cooling down oven needed to be fired back up for someone else's stuff, but we're on for tomorrow. That means instead of telling you about a fun appointment, I can tell you about a not fun appointment.

I have been going to the dentist so regularly that we discuss love lives and good sushi restaurants.

So far they've removed my wisdom teeth, done a deep cleaning, a regular cleaning, and a whole mess of cavities. Today was supposed to be a regular cleaning and whitening trays, but apparently the bone loss in all those years of being too broke to go to the dentist is working against me. Add to that the crashes in the middle of the night when I'm sucking down juice and straight sugar, then immediately falling back asleep, and we've already got a recipe for disaster. The dentist and I had a hefty conversation about the fact that I already need another deep cleaning, despite the good job he swears he can see I'm doing. He had some good advice on the dental aspects of crashing blood sugar, and then I went to the counter to receive my options.

I stood there hearing register sounds as the treatment plan got a lot longer, and was having an old familiar moment of despair when I suddenly realized that I have been making these kinds of aggressive payments towards my debt... I can swing this. The insurance won't cover another deep cleaning for two years, so this is the cash price. I want to go review my budget first, but I'm so happy to be at this point. I'm mad to be derailed from my debt plan, but it doesn't derail me much. These are no longer crippling numbers. I can absolutely do this.

The cosmetic stuff will have to wait, and even though my gums are sore and my teeth are sensitive from the fillings and I feel like I live at the dentist's office, I am still thrilled to be able to go. I got the best dental insurance offered, and that still won't cover everything I need, and I've got to buy a better electric toothbrush too, but look at me, paying for the dentist. Today was not a fun day, but it was a proud day. Now where's the Tylenol?

You should feel that heat, though.

Five years after Book Arts at UNR, Lena and I finally went to do another art class together.

I'll write more about it when I have the pieces to show you, but we each made two. We made paperweights, which is what I'm holding in the second picture before our Finnish instructor (He introduced himself, then said "Good luck pronouncing that.") removed it from the pole, which I will describe poorly tomorrow.

We also made flowers. Well, Lena made a flower. I told him I'd much rather make some sort of swirly mess. He was happy to indulge my clueless yet intrepid venture, and helped me layer it. He liked what I made, and said it's going to look rad. The colors look all different when it's hot, apparently, so I won't really see what they look like until tomorrow.

I AM SO EXCITED.

This was a ridiculous amount of interesting fun, and I left there exhausted. We want to go back for the next level, which is actual glass blowing. He gave us a demonstration of that, and all we could do was ogle.

At home, I had a brief moment of Sunday evening blues before I had to scold myself. My weekends are certainly not always this full, but I have no right to get whiny after this one. I found neat thrift store items, did yoga, played tennis, had a date, went shopping with a friend, went to a movie with other friends, went out to breakfast, did some reorganization, made two glass pieces and talked about art for about five hours.

That was a good time, and I cannot wait to see them tomorrow.

If only there was a two hour delay tomorrow...

It's already past 9:00! I don't think I'm going to do any editing today, mostly because I want to be asleep soon. I keep getting lots of praise and encouragement from my reviewer, so I am trying to take confidence from that and not be a perfectionist about it. What's hard is learning as I go- so I see things or change my mind regarding how something should be written, and I have no idea which questions I have already published a different way. But those things can be fixed later.

I realized today that each time I have take the DiSC assessment, I get a different secondary trait. My primary is always a D, which is dominance, but I'm all over the place on the secondary, which I giggle at because that's kind of totally me. I'll drive, but I have no idea where we're going.

I had my tennis drill tonight and it felt very good to be back out there. We're getting the Joint Commission visit at work, and today we caught wind that they were coming to our site, so that lit a fire under our asses. We all felt we were good, but kept finding things to fix. These are things like: no cardboard boxes are allowed on the floor. This is a cardboard-gets-wet-and-things-start-living-in-it kind of problem, not a we're-just-creating-things-to-hassle-you-about problem.

I used that motivation to get my desk under control and now it looks all pretty. That felt pretty good. I also found out that I already did one of those big awful euuurrgghhh things on my work to do list and handed it to the next person involved and found out today that it's well on its way! I was about to start it again because I had almost no memory of doing it. Sheesh.

So that felt good, and tennis felt good. My blood sugar was at 98 about halfway through, so I ate some straight sugar and made it through the intense part fine. It's hard to get enough straight sugar in in the first place, and then you need to wait before eating any complex carbs or protein to let your sugar come up while you're doing an intense activity. I ate dinner right afterwards, but crashed again at the tail end of grocery shopping. Apparently, exercise changes how much insulin you need, which means you could be a calculus wizard, and still be soundly defeated by diabetes math. HA! Now, THAT'S a college level math class!

I wore my new exercise capris with the pocket today. I may have purchased one size too large. I am not thrilled about trying other ones and outlining the contours even more, but nobody pointed and laughed, so there's that.

Mini is staring wide-eyed at my shirt, which makes me paranoid that something's crawling on me or she's just wigging out and is about to attack me anyway.

I dragged in all my groceries in one trip while still recuperating from the low, and with bags falling out of my grip. It was ridiculous. I am ridiculous.

Now I need to go get Riley out and answer these boys back about scheduling time to meet them this weekend. My hopes aren't super high, but they all seem genuine, and the plans are things I enjoy anyway, so it'll be good regardless.

Super busy, super tired, super happy.