A Gift From the Museum

So today we went off to the museum to see the Dinosaur exhibit that is closing next week. This time at home with my family has really made me think about the way I am doing my life and the things my daughter and I are missing out on. The way I do my life is 100 miles an hour during the week and then at a full stop on the weekends. In fact, there are weekends in which I will not step foot outside. I think I have been suffering from some depression that I am slowly but surely washing away and I think a lack of exercise is playing into my fatigue. I have been renewed as a mother having this time with my Little and have been reconsidering the things that I once thought were so important to me. My favorite part of vacation is that my Little will crawl into bed with me in the mornings and snuggle for a bit before we get up and start our day. I am really going to miss that when I go back to work. Going on day trips has really brought us to life and given us the opportunity to talk in the car and see new sights and enjoy new experiences. I don't think I need to plan my life out every weekend, but I think I am doing us a great dis-service by not taking advantage of all Colorado has to offer if I do not plan more for us to do on the weekends.

Vacation Diet of Chocolate and Real Meat - the stuff of GI Suffering

So Christmas came and went and it occurred to me that I had another 10 days of vacation. I don't do well on vacation unless I have a schedule. I eat poorly, I sleep too much, I do not interact with people - which is bad for an extroverted personality, and I find myself on the couch watching whatever the hell and then berating myself at the end of the day for accomplishing nothing. So once I started responding to email from work and answering calls, G started getting spooked that I would ditch the vacation plan and head back to work. Don't laugh, I have done it before. So instead, he got me addicted to a XBox game that had me as a sorceress shooting spells at monsters, trying not to die, and grabbing treasures to buy new, better gear. Yes, I spent two days doing this. The construction of the three story Barbie Dream House followed. I cannot tell you how big this house is, so I've showed you. Barbie and all her friends are hooked up. The top is a media alcove and G was in awe of her surround sound. Of course he is not happy unless I can hear the movie he is watching in the basement from my office on the 2nd floor. He gets less happy when I start yelling, complaining, and stomping of the floor of the various level - no one said being married to me was a dream right? All in all, vacation is going well - but I have to change my diet of chocolate and real meat to something lower fat. Stay Tuned.......

Christmas 2008

The rarity of this kind of Christmas will come to an end in the coming years and so I want to savor this. My Little came into our room this morning and crawled into bed. I cuddled her and covered her and warmed the little feet she put on my legs. I quietly whispered in her ear asking her if she thought Santa had come to our house last night. In her sleepiness, she had completely forgotten that it was Christmas morning. She had slept until a little after 7am. She put on her slippers and patiently waited for us to get out of the bed and warmly dressed. My daughter went to the tree and jumped up and down clapping at her Barbie Dream House and Tinker Bell Fairy Land and hoards of other gifts. She was orderly and put her wrapping paper in the trash bag. She was excited to see her older brothers who hugged and kissed her when they arrived from their Mother's house. Her Uncle Ken joined us for the breakfast feast I made for them.

People ask me every year if I got what I wanted for Christmas...Every year I smile and say yes. Little do they know that I got everything I wanted the minute she came into my life and I will get what I want every year so long as she is happy and healthy. My Little is the best thing G has ever given me!

The Best Kind Of Family

So in the Spring of 1998, I met them - G, Ken, and Gubby, the men I lovingly refer to as the triplets. I met Ken first in the Board room of my favorite client who had leaned pretty hard on their vendors to participate in the Relay for Life at Mile High Stadium to raise money for the American Cancer Society. G, I met the following day - in fact, the day that my now ex-husband, had me served with papers peitioning for alimony. It was the beginning of the event, in which a team member had to be on the track every minute of the event. There were enough of us that we were able to break the 24 hour event into shifts. Ok, so there was a boy's tent and a girl's tent and if you know me, then you know I ended up in the boy's tent. (G loves to tell people we slept together the night we met. He fails to tell people that we were on seperate sides of the tent, I was seeing someone, and overall, thanks to Mike Scroghem, I hated all men!)

Ok, so we know how this story comes together in that G chased me for almost a year before I would go out with him, he proposed, we moved in together, we got married, we had a baby girl, life is good. Gubby is Little's GodFather and if Ken believed in anything pertaining to religion, he would be too. We have gone through 11 years of living with one another and I love these men. So it is Christmas Eve, Gubby and his wife are going on an Austrian ski vacation and leaving on Christmas Day, so its dinner at their house. We relive memories - including the New Year's Eve that I was pregnant and the triplets decided I could not go out, so we stayed in - and we watched the Family Business marathon on Showtime,- we eat great food (Gubby's wife is a gourmet chef as a hobby), and drank fabulous wine (which after all this time, they let me bring!!! And I freaking rocked it with the wine - thank God for fine Italian reds). I told my Little on the way home that this was the meaning of family. People who know you and still love you. People you can know through good times and through bad times and still love you. They are the people that carry you when you cannot walk on your own. They are the people who want to celebrate a holiday with you before they leave town for their own holiday. They are the best kind of family.

There Are Worse Addictions I Suppose

So I guess there are worse addictions to have than FaceBook, but right now, I am obsessed. I have been a member for sometime now, but I have watched from the peripheral rather than dive in. Now that I am a full-fledged participant, I feel a sense of belonging, comraderie, pride, and nostalgia re-connecting with my former Buffs. It is so cool to see us all grown up - some look the same, some are balding, some are aging, and some are struggling for the first time in their lives. I feel like I want to be supportive of these people because I was quite guarded and superficial growing up and yet, most of them tolerated me.

I have also uncovered sad news in that a man who was admired and well-liked passed at the beginning of this year. (http://www.gregscancerfoundation.com/) He died 60 days after he learned he had colorectal cancer at the age of 36. He spent some of his final days just down the road from me last year and I was totally oblivious. This gets me thinking and internalizing. I have had my share of failures and celebrations and ups and downs, but so have the people I went to high school with. Life is so imperfect and yet we all go through it, mostly alone. The people I have reconnected with were not my best friends, because, in fact, I am still close with them, but they were people that I saw almost everyday of my life. The worse part is that they had no idea what I was going through at the time because I had a wall in place of real feelings. I drank and partied, and kept everyone an arm length away from me, when in fact, as I now realize, these people could have been the strength I needed.

I sent a friend invite to Mackenzie's father as we were high school sweethearts from two different schools. I realize now that we cannot be friends. We have been through too much to ever be friends. We are married to other people and have had children of our own that are beautiful and perfect. I think about him and I am so apologetic for so many wrongs I made towards him because of my own baggage and chaos. I am so very sorry that we lost our child, but that is where our relationship ends for now and maybe forever. There are things he gave me that I hold onto in my head and my heart that I can only appreciate now that I have perspective on healthy relationships and no longer live in my parent's home. I wish he knew that at least.

Vacation is not a four letter word.

So the reality is starting to set in - I have one more day of work and then I am on holiday. When I say that, I mean that I will not step foot in the hospital until January 5th. There are a multitude of problems with this plan. First off, I have not taken this much time off since 1999 and I did not enjoy it the last time I did. Secondarily, I have my email connected to my smartphone, so what do I do with that - especially since I am addicted to my email. Thirdly, we just opened a new facility and are still trying to adjust to that and all that entails. And finally, I am the go to person in our department in that we have an interim director and enough said about that whole thing.

Someone asked how I was going to handle having nothing to do. Ah contraire monfraire, I have plenty to do and have planned my days. There will be a trip to the Butterfly Pavilion, the Museum of Nature and Science, the IMAX, Zoo Lights, ice skating, movies, and a trip to the mountains. There will be winter cleaning and reading and writing and mileage. There will be some freaking mileage! There will be preparation of the New Year in which I will once again attempt to give up coffee and begin a plan for clean eating. There will be shopping for my Little who has had a growth spurt resulting in nothing but high water pants in her closet. There will be 5th birthday party planning and baking and lunching and lounging and lots of pajama wearing.

Oh My God, what have I done?

All Work & No Play

Madness does not even begin to describe the past two weeks. Well last week was just borderline busy. I spent the first two days in the Revenue Cycle Value Stream Analysis with some really interesting people and a couple not so interesting people, wrote and submitted my first Black Belt report to the CEO, and started working on two future reports that I hope will awe and inspire.

This week was all about planning the opening a portion of our new Emergency Department or opening a portion of our new Emergency Room. I say a portion because we opened 25 new rooms and are still building. By the time we open the whole thing, well, I cannot even imagine.
There were also holiday celebrations that required me to bring a dish. Thank God for whomever created deviled eggs - easier than pie! Now I have two days left before I am on vacation for the remainder of the year. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Good In Bed

My book club is reading Good In Bed

by Jennifer Weiner and I am loving it. The main character, Cannie, is a plus sized girl whose ex-boyfriend writes a magazine article titled Good In Bed, which is about her. It is a book that I relating to very well. I am plus-sized and all that comes with that. What makes her story so funny is the addition of her lesbian mother, her partner, and that they are all Jewish. Great book that I am not wanting to put down.

Interesting Conversations

I don't know how I get myself into the types of conversations, but they seem to take me places in my own mind. Someone I know is going through a divorce. He is one of those who cannot be alone, so he is already dating someone we work with. The thing is that he has not fully resolved his marriage and his feelings around that. He is, of course, angry and hurt and does not trust her since she was the one who left him, but he is still in love with her. Problem is that he also has feelings for ReBound Chick, which is truly what I feel the girlfriend is. So we have been talking through this and the topic turned to crushes. He does not understand how someone could have a crush on someone else and not act on it. I do not know how you can have a crush on someone and actually act on it.

Thank God for my Little

This is the time of year when I am so thankful for this little girl. I am so unbelievably grateful that I have this being. She is so funny in the things she says and such a love. I am so looking forward to our holiday together so that we can talk and play and cuddle and drink hot cocoa and dream and whisper and sing and laugh.

I have come so far that I can enjoy this..............

Fear of Success Part II

So continuing on the theme of fear of success, the next part of the article I am reading has this to say about the fear of success:

Fear of success can result in:
A lack of effort to achieve goals you have set for yourself in school, on the job, at home, in relationships, or in your personal growth.
Self-destructive behavior: tripping yourself up to make sure you do not sustain a certain level of success or achievement you once had in school, on the job, at home, in relationships, or in your personal growth.
Losing the motivation or the desire to grow, achieve, and succeed.
Feeling guilt, confusion, and anxiety when you do achieve success. This leads you to falter, waver, and eventually lose your momentum.
Your choosing to do just the opposite of what you need to do to be happy, healthy, and successful.
Reinforcing your chronic negativity, chronic pessimism, and chronic lack of achievement since you cannot, visualize yourself in a contented, successful life.
Denouncing your achievements and accomplishments; seeking ways in which you can denigrate yourself enough to lose what you've gained.

So to move forward, I have to change my behavior in the following ways to overcome my fear:

Learning to reinforce yourself for the hard work, effort, and sacrifices you've made to achieve success
Being able to honestly appraise your level of achievement, success, and accomplishment
Accepting yourself as being healthy, "together,'' happy, successful, prosperous, and accomplished
Not giving yourself any excuses for being unsuccessful
Giving others in your life permission to give you honest, open, candid feedback when they see you self-destructing or backsliding
Monitoring your level of commitment and motivation to reach your goals
Visualizing your life when you are successful
Giving others credit, recognition, and support for their personal achievements, successes, and accomplishments
Honest, open, realistic self-talk that encourages you to work your hardest to achieve the goals you have set for yourself
Accepting the compliments and recognition of others with an open heart and mind

There are questions I have to answer within the next part and will do so throughout the week. Wish me luck!

No Success for Me To Fear This Week

So I talked about my fear of success and I have found some information on how to start to deal with this. This is what I have found thus far:

• Fear of success is the:
  Belief that you are undeserving of all the good things and recognition that come your way as a result of your accomplishments and successes.
  Opposite of fear of failure, in that fear of failure is the fear of making mistakes and losing approval. Fear of success is the fear of accomplishment and being recognized and honored.
  Lack of belief in your own ability to sustain your progress, and the accomplishments you have achieved in your life.
  Fear that your accomplishments can self-destruct at anytime.
  Belief that there are others out there who are better than you, who will replace or displace you if you do not maintain your performance record.

The list was longer, but these are the ones that spoke to me. In addition, I suffer from the annoyance of my own failure. I have failed myself and subsequently others, much this week. I am not focused at work the way I should be and am not delegating tasks and so they are going unaccomplished. I am running extremely short-tempered and I am not sure if I am not sleeping because I am mad or if I am mad because I am not sleeping. There is also the possibility that I am hormonal. G's ex-wife wants more money - as if this seems shocking. My patience with the department in its current state is waning. We are about to make a huge change in our environment and the negativity surrounding this unprecedented undertaking is ridiculous. I am not exercising because it is cold outside, I cannot get motivated enough at night to pack my gym bag, and I am just too tired. I am eating terribly because I am tired and grumpy and all of this is a vicious cycle. If you have any thoughts as to how I can get off of this roller coaster, please send them over.

Rain Drops On Roses

I love the snow and the cold. I love the holidays and I love the hospital. I am still anxious and irritable, so I guess this makes me a bit bi-polar or something.

PMS, Patience, and Sleeping Pills Might Help

I have thrown fits this week, been irritable, am not sleeping at night, and eat salty then sweet until I am sick. If I am not in a full fledged PMS state then I do not know what is wrong with me.
This week has been frustrating in that I have had highs and lows. Monday brought me incorrect data suggesting that I would not get funding for school - which made me annoyed, frustrated, and determined to find a way. Tuesday brought me news that Monday's news was incorrect and I have the money I need to finish my degree. Wednesday has me yelling into my cell phone while driving home. On the other end, the poor soul that is interviewing for the Director position and my number one pick. I am sure I was clear that I need a mentor and to continue to learn, I need to drive forward, fixing all that is ailing in the department, and that I need some room to make things happen. I promised that I would make good decisions that included making him look good and would take the hit for anything that failed. Patience, I am supposed to have some patience.