10:15 on a Saturday night

5 great things.

5. Had the Pappum over for dinner last night. Lovely evening, although no one can be as funny and as mean I as I can at the same time. I'll let it go at that, but suffice it to say, you shouldn't proudly display your fake-leopard fur trimmed leather jacket and ask what year I think you bought it. It was a nice evening, they brought some really good wine, and unfortunately, my dinner was not up to snuff. This will be the last time I follow eBoy's suggestion that I make a WW CROCK POT recipe for a dinner engagement.

4. We almost adopted a Great Dane puppy, but Abby was NOT amused by the idea. I don't even want to venture what Molly would have had to say. The puppy search continues.

3. We went for a wonderful hike with Abby through Tryon Creek State Park. Nice find (nice find that I've known about for the last 3.5 years).

2. Went out for breakfast this morning. It's nice to go out exploring. Bagels and lox. Latkes too.

1. 150 Days of Health starts tomorrow. What's that you say? Stay tuned.

Best things that happened today...

1. emailing and FB'ing with friends. I became FB friends with a boy I secretly loved from 1975 through 1981, and we enjoyed a nice back n'forth how you been for the last 25 years over FB email. This is why I love FB. You have no idea how I loved him when I was 5. it's nice to see how some folks turn out. He doesn't look as much like Steve Austin as he did when we were 6, but still.

2. I only got two wrong on my Assessment midterm. That's cool.

3. I laughed out loud in my car to Stephen Colbert's audiobook I Am America, And So Can You.

4. I found out that my school's library checks out videos/dvds. Not just any old videos/dvds, but ones about DISEASE and MENTAL ILLNESS. So fucking cool. I checked out three.

5. eBoy came home safe and sound and we had steaks with carmelized onions and a whisky cream sauce. Totally WW.

I shall never change...

I wonder if I shall also get up at 6am and start/finish my dissertation on the morning that it's due. I know all of you are thinking, um it's a bit more involved than that, but I've seriously made an art of getting things started and finished in the wee hours of the morning.

hmmm....maybe I should set aside this time for studying every day.

Things that i am thankful for

Sometimes it just makes sense to focus on the positive instead of all the craptastic shit that swirls around. Because that, my friends, will always be there. Right?'

Although, I must say, I had a really good Thursday last week. All the right songs were playing on the radio (including Vacation by the Go Go's, which must be one of the greatest songs to screech along with in the car), I had a good workout at the gym and felt very proud of myself for that (although I was hobbled for two days afterward), and I seemed to say all the right things in class (which is statistically probable if you never shut up) - and, to boot, class was really interesting and mind blowing, and who doesn't love that?

But then things seem to go right back in the crapper, and your sense of time becomes foreshortened, and all you can see is the chunks of muck that make up the shitstorm. Time to refocus.

Of course, this is aided by a vicodin or two. Better that than I start smoking pot again or take up cigarettes. Although I'm hoping to do a complete detox after this is all over. Not the lemon juice and maple syrup nonsense, but getting off of sleep aids, pain pills, that sort of thing. Another stab at 100 days of health. AND I'm thinking of getting acupuncture, but I'll totally lose my scientist street cred, so I have to think about it some more. I'll write more on it later.

So, in the interest of trying to improve my daily mental health (and it's one hell of a slog through my cranium on a good day, let alone as of late), I've tried to get in the habit at the end of each day of making a list of the best 5 things that happened that day, including what was THE best thing that happened. Sometimes it's something like, well.... dinner was good tonight. Fair enough. Sometimes it's things like, I got to text with my best friend. And that makes a pretty good day for me. So if you're having trouble seeing the silver linings, start actively listing them, they tend to be easier to see after a while. Just my $.02.

So...even though it's not the end of the day, the top 5 things in the last 24 hours (in no particular order).

- Got to text with my friend that I miss

- Got offered a job doing part time A/D work

- Found out there's nothing *seriously* wrong with me from my doctor (the physical one, not the mental one. Let's not go there)

- Found an old pal on FB that i was just TICKLED to friend

- Got lots of affection from the husband, the dog, and the cat. Seriously, I get *affection* from the cat, and if you can't appreciate that, then you've never had a cat.

So things could be a lot worse. That's such a good list and I didn't even have to include the Biggest Loser being on two nights this week or the fact that Obama can speak in full sentences and communicate complex thoughts. Nor did I include that I've discovered Scrabble on facebook. My cup runneth over.

Maybe it's the blog of TMI

Because you can't really post personal information on facebook, because then everyone might actually read it!

I need to start writing my blog again, I know this is getting repetitive. But seriously, if i don't blog, I might go crazy because I don't actually ever talk to any of my friends.

Sigh.

So, here's the only thing going on, and I'm just going to say it.

Well, there are many things going on. I'm trying to keep up with my classes in a very impossible semester in which I can't seem to get get up my gumption enough to actually care about keeping up with my classes. This terrifies me. Strikes me as a blast from the past.

I need to listen to more Dolly Parton, it occurs to me. Just randomly.

So, also, I'm in the middle of another miscarriage. Oh yeah! So, three weeks ago I was 5 weeks pregnant, and then I started to miscarry, and GUESS WHAT, I'm still having that miscarriage that began three fucking weeks ago and has been 3 weeks of yucky crampy awfulness. I thought reproducing was supposed to be fun. And the last word is that my pregnancy hormones are actually going up. Who knows what that means? i don't? And guess what, heh, NEITHER does my fucking doctor, but it doesn't mean anything good or not weird, so I have to go in again tomorrow and have my lady parts poked at, and not in a good way.

I'm sorry, TMI? Sympathy. I can't believe you're still reading this anyway. Clearly I'm lonely and sad and taking it out on you. You're the strangers who don't know my phone number, and my friends who(m) I never call. It's not your fault. I'd talk about still trying to lose weight but I've received feedback that no one cares. Blah blah blah.

Okay, going to bed. Have to get up early and head to the doctor for the pokingness. I'm officially a circus freak.

Well...I guess you folks have known that for a while.



ps. I got a 99 on my neuroscience midterm. I guess that's not too sucky.

pss. I'm hoping to get a part time job either at Safeway or as a A/D counselor. Maybe if I have a part time job, I'll stop tooling around wasting my time on facebook.

psss. I also got into a research group, which is essential for getting more experience there. I'm focusing so far on getting into the health psychology track. I'm waiting to hear the results on my application, but one of my professors pulled me aside and said he's "in my court." From which, of course, I only inferred that perhaps someone is *not* in my court.

pssss. My first idea for research is looking at decision making with regards to bariatric surgery. My research advisor recently did a paper on why people decide to get B-surgery, I'd like to look at the reasons people decide NOT to. There's an obesity clinic in town that I'd love to do clincial field work with.


Okay. That's enough for now. I need to go to bed so I can get up early and go give more of my blood to Kaiser and then maybe go to the gym. Maybe.