on a lighter note...

Every once in a while, motherhood hands you a shiny button.

Friday is Good Friday and, as such, no school. In classic Andrea fashion, I made a mental note of this factoid back in January and started considering what G would do that day.

And then I forgot - oops - until last Friday. I talked to my mom who, as usual, graciously said she'd take him if we needed the help. I told her maybe, but that I'd let her know.

So G and I were talking and I asked him what he wanted to do on his Friday off. His first answer was "SLEEP IN", which makes me laugh. While I cannot drag his little butt out of bed before 7am on school days, he hardly ever sleeps past 7 or 7:30 on a day off. But hey, it could happen. ;-)

I said "Well that's good, but I mean what do you want to do THAT DAY? Do you want to hang out with Mom? Do you want to go see Grandma and Papa?"

"Mom, I don't care. Really."

"But if you had a choice, hon, what would you choose."

"Well...I don't want you to get in trouble. You do what's best for you, Mom. You know how busy you are, you decide what works the best for you."

"Honey, I am happy to hang out with you that day. You know me, I'm not going to do something that will get myself in trouble at work. I take my job seriously. Tell me - are you saying you want to spend the day together?"

"Yes, Mom - that would be SO FUN."

"I'll talk to my boss today."

Needless to say, when I came home and told him that I was taking Friday off with him, I got a high five.

I then got given an itinerary that was something like this:

- Sleep late
- Get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, you know all that usual morning stuff..
- Read for one hour.
- Dye eggs - all but 2
- Read for one hour
- Smash 2 leftover eggs on each other's heads. ** I declined this idea despite many negotiations as to why it was a "GREAT IDEA".
- Read for one hour
- Play outside
- Read for one hour

What a silly boy I have. But what I realized - the period of his life where he's excited to spend a day with me...it's coming to an end. So I'll savor it. I love that kid, and I'm lucky - he still likes me. For now.

retail therapy lends a temporary hiatus

I had a big decision to make today. Wednesdays in our house (for another month anyway) are late karate night, so the boys don't get home until 7:15 or so. This leaves it as "my" time after work. Of course, I usually work too late and then go to the gym and collapse at home 5 minutes before they arrive.

But my friend J wanted to go shopping tonight...it was a dilemma...I needed some gym time...but retail therapy, it beckoned me. She did a tiny amount of arm-twisting (LOL not really) and I decided the retail experience was better for my soul.

And, for that hour and a half, it was. We laughed at some crazy-ass clothes (a short, pleather, Members Only-type jacket was one of the highlights) and talked about the crazy bitches at work and just overall relaxed. I even found a friggin cool Marvin the Martian shirt for the little goober!

I needed the distraction. I'm back inside my own head again. Remember the grid, the one with the open boxes?

I'm filling them in. It's not good.

I'm mostly fine at work. I only get inside my head if I have a quiet few moments (which is very rare) - and I try to stop because I don't have the luxury of wasting time being distracted and introspective. But when I walk out that door - there it goes again. The whole ride home. I'm better again once home...until my boys go to sleep (and yes, despite not being true twins, they often go to sleep at the same time, LOL).

So here I am again. 9:26, American Idol is on, and I'm inside my head. Trying to answer the who, what, when and, most importantly, why and what's next - to things that probably have no answers.

I need to shut my head off and just BE. I just don't know how.

Maybe it's that I've been at this life cross roads for, what, 4 years now? It's about time I pick a direction...

adrenaline junkie

In my long list of personality flaws and personal problems - adrenaline junkie, in a non-traditional sense - may be one I tend to overlook.

I thrive on being overbusy and overcrazed. Until I crash and burn.

I had this realization today at work - not that it's anything new, but the series of events reminded me.

We released a brand-new system 4 weeks ago now. Painfully. Over some seriously strenuous objections (because we so were not ready) by my department. Now I am not 100% on that project but I am a SME (subject matter expert for the non-nerd folks) so I am involved in varying degrees. Things have come to a head post-release in the last week or so. It's just not working well. The business users - a group that generally (and sometimes understandably) does not enjoy let alone embrace change - are feeling very frustrated. Their frustration and anxiety is causing them to work against the system. It's just a mess.

So that's got me pulled in one direction.

Then, in an effort to support said new system, I have been trying to overhaul one of my limp-along, piece of crap systems. The data in this system feeds the new system and the data is, well, crap. Let's call a spade a spade here people. The data is complete shit. So I have spent the better part of the last year coming up with a variety of ways to de-stink it. It's slow-going and it's like chasing water uphill - you can't do it, since it's a living, breathing, actively-used system itself.

Needless to say, the shittiness of the data in this system is impacting the new system in a negative way. And every time it does, my phone rings and my email bings and suddenly I'm back up over 200 unreads.

But beyond that - I implemented several overdue mass clean-ups this weekend - knowing full well that one of them in particular would cause more chaos to erupt. I warned the team impacted and I prepared the two junior members of my team to handle these eruptions.

AND ERUPT IT DID!

And thus began the issues we had to address and the constant bitching despite the warnings and heads-up I provided.

So fine.

The junior members were assigned the issues. And had question after question after question (I SCRIPTED OUT HOW TO HANDLE THEM!!) and did too much research and then, in my truly crowning moment, complained in our staff meeting about how many they had.

Note - I then went back to my desk and handled the same number they had handled all day. In one hour. ARGH! I realize I'm more experience but come on people.

I trained them again and reminded them that we are servicing our customers but we are NOT hand-holding them or guessing about data when it is not provided. Really? REALLY?

This was my day.

So when I finally decided I was done around 5:30 and walked out - it took me a few minutes to realize that my breathing had changed. I wasn't panting out of exhaustion. I was suddenly tired, hungry, and my tonsils (which ache but seemingly only at night) were bothering me after being "fine" all day.

And it unnerved me! Until I realized - uh duh - I was coming off the adrenaline high fueled by stress.

I have a problem. As much as all that chaos drives me up a friggin wall - some fucked up part of me loves it, thrives in it, needs it.

A lot to say, and no clue where to start

I posted this quote as my status on Facebook, because I am in an introspective and confused place right now, and a lot of it has to do with fate.

"Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her. But once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game." -- Voltaire

I have this weird internal problem with myself, a complexity that comes up a lot. It is probably due in part to who my parents are, and how different their personalities are.

I am like a dual personality inside a single person. No, not in a "Sybil" way...just that I have these 2 very distinct sides to myself that occasionally do battle and definitely don't line up.

Ironically, until I was probably 28 years old or so (hmm...coincidence that this was around the time my child was born?), I was blissfully unaware of this split in who I am. I had no idea the one side existed. What I did know is that despite seeming to follow "the right path", I was battling a low level of unhappiness. It came out in subtle ways - a short foray with an eating disorder, some bouts of depression, covering myself in oversized clothing, etc. But it was always there. It was like an old shoe - it seemed like it was just supposed to be there.

So what's this split?

Well there is the obvious part of me. Serious. Responsible. Nerdy. Reliable. I follow the right, scripted, obvious path, happily, and am a good girl.

That's who I was for 28 years. It came naturally and everyone seemed happy that that's who I was. I was fine with it - except for that unsettled feeling.

I found myself trying to downplay how I looked. I shoved aside my worries and feelings of unsettledness as me overthinking things. I had my bad girl moments here and there, but they were fleeting and guilt-filled.

And then something in me snapped a little. It was slow - maybe more of a slight tearing - but I started to realize that maybe there was more to me than the good girl - and that's what had been nagging me all these years. I have an adventurous, somewhat free-spirited side to me. I'm never going to be the "cut loose without thinking" kind of a person - I'm always going to overthink everything. But I have a little bit of my Dad in me - the type of person who wants to live and learn and experience outside the confines of "safe".

It's been a long 7 or 8 years of thinking about this and wondering what to do with it. It's funny to think that some people know who they are their entire lives. They are confident in the people they are and they just ARE. That didn't happen to me. I had to have this mini life crisis, probably induced by a rather nasty year of post-partum depression. Great...

So now what do I do? This is my problem - hence the quote above.

I don't have any answers and I'm not sure I ever will. Instead, I have this odd inner dialog between Good Andrea and Bad Andrea going on sometimes. They don't really fight, per se, but they definitely have clashing opinions at times.

There is a reason I have come through this veritable life crisis and now get it. There is a reason that I feel in touch with this other side of me.

Problem is...the logical, rational, planner part of me wants to know what that reason is.

And I haven't the foggiest.

Sigh.

Ok, note to self - do not try to blog when having an IM conversation and a text conversation. My train of thought is gone. LOL. More later...from the bipolar runner girl...

3 more hats - plus brainstorming

I made 3 more hats recently - one for my friend's boyfriend, one for his daughter (who stole the first hat I made for him, LOL), and one for Kidlet's teacher's baby - it was admittedly pretty fun to make an itty bitty hat...although I am relieved that I am no longer responsible for a person so small that he can wear such a hat.

Pics below...

Now for the brainstorming.

My little sister got engaged last weekend. Little - sheesh, she's 31. I admit to be slightly jealous. Yes. I'm married. But someday I'll blog about what happened at my wedding, all those (11) years ago...and it will become clear why I am jealous. I'm also insanely happy for her and will spend the next 7 months helping her plan.

That said...I want to make her and her fiance something. It will need to be quilted, because she knits. But what - I don't know. I have a partially started quilt made of some gorgeous fabric I got on eBay a couple of years ago that would work but, honestly, I don't know. It needs to be RIGHT. That's why it takes me so damn long to figure out what to make people. I need a GUT feeling. It'll come.

sunshine and a mean mom

It's funny how you can catch these little glimpses of positivity in the midst of normalcy or chaos.

The kidlet has been fighting a cold - or we now think back-to-back colds - for about a week now. Started off as a couple of days of a runny nose, went away, and now it's back (or there's something new more likely) that closely resembles the hideously nasty cold that Hubby just had. The poor kid is hoarse!

We're also having a hell of a time figuring out if/when he should go to school. His "fever" isn't really a fever - highest it's been is around 99.5. He's just not a happy camper - and let's face it, when you have a cold, especially a bad cold, who is?

So today the school nurse called me late afternoon to give me a head's up that he had come to visit her and was mushy. Fortunately, we'd already made a doctor's appointment for him (to make sure there was no ear infection - they tend to creep up on him) - so I popped out of work early.

As seems to happen every year - since Kidlet tends to get sick around now a lot - I walked out the door and into 60 degree sunshine. WOW. It was lovely. And I wished I were sitting outside!

The irony - whether I was off to pick up my congested kid or not, I was going to be inside, missing the wonderful weather.

Eh, what can you do? Turns out, Kidlet is ear infection-free, sinus infection-free and has a cold/viral thing. Time, Advil, tissues, and hydration. SIGH. I hope it passes soon - I hate when he's sick. It makes me sad.

My mean mom moment, in the great irony of my life, came after I picked him up. Let's keep in mind that he WANTED to be picked up. So we get home and I explain that I have a late meeting I need to call in to. He wanted to go outside and play and, since he's almost 8, I had no issues with that - he can play outside.

He came stumbling - actually running - in a few minutes later to tell me that his BFF, our neighbor's daughter C, was outside playing. "MomcanIpleaseplaywithC? PLEEEEEASE???"

Now had he not come home from aftercare early - this would be fine with me. Buuuuuuuuuuut....

I said no. And he melted down. He told me I was MEAN, that I had taken his playmates away but not having another kid (dagger - meet heart) and then went outside and sobbed.

Note to self - dealing with an almost 8 year old's meltdown while on a somewhat tense conference call = not what I want to be doing on the first 60 degree sunny day in CT.

I know he was just angry and I know he was over it 10 minutes later but damn, that sort of comments sucks.

I'm not a poet

Definitely not. NOT EVEN CLOSE. But I had a lot on my mind today, and I was buried in meetings...which were frustrating me (understatement) - so this just came out. I guess it was better I jotted this down then tell any number of people to shut the hell up and start listening.

The poem sucks - but it means something to me.


You’re Complicated

You’re complicated.
I’ll throw that at you.
Not that you are.
It’s just that I can’t process anything.
Or face anything.
Or think about anything.
If it causes me to face
My fears
The truth
My anger
My guilt
It’s far too complicated for me.

The mundane
The busywork
The funny, the silly, the easy
Sure - that I can do.

But if it's serious, or meaningful, or unscripted
It's too complicated.
I’ll blame you.
You and your damn complicated mind.
I’ll make it your fault.
I know you’ll take it.
You always do.

It’s easier for it to be your fault.
You absorb guilt like a sponge.
You process it and deal with it and steer things another way.
It bounces off me.
At least temporarily.
And I can breathe again.

It doesn’t really fix it.
Never.
My guilt - about the deflection, about the issue at hand
It sits under the surface
It festers
It gets moldy and rancid
And I'll push it aside again.
And again.
And make it your complication.

Someday I know
I'll have to face everything there.
I know that.
And because I know that
And avoid it today
Really - I'm unhappy
I want to be happy
But happiness is difficult
You have to face your fears, your angst, your guilt
And your problems

I'm not there yet.
And you're - you're complicated.
But you're here.

lyrics...lyrics...

I love my Pandora stations. I heard this on my Sarah McLachlan station tonight...love Natalie Merchant, hearing her makes me zoom back to 1993 and college...ah....

Some of the lyrics in here are, well, appropriate right now.

------------------

People downcast, in despair
See the disillusion everywhere
Hoping their bad luck will change
Gets a little harder every day
People struggle, people fight
For the simple pleasures in their lives
But trouble comes from everywhere
It's a little more than you can bear I know that it will hurt
I know that it will break your heart
The way things are
And the way they've been
And the way they've always been
People shallow, self-absorbed
See the push and shove for their rewards
I, me, my is on their minds
You can read about it in their eyes
People ruthless, people cruel
See the damage that some people do
Full of hatred, full of pride
It's enough to make you loose your mind
I know that it will hurt
I know that it will break your heart
The way things are
And the way they've been
I know that it will hurt
I know that it will break your heart
The way things are
And the way they've been
Don't spread the discontent
Don't spread the lies
Don't make the same mistakes
With your own life
You never will let love survive
I know that it will hurt
I know that it will break your heart
The way things are
And the way they've been
Don't spread the discontent
Don't spread the lies
Don't make the same mistakes
With your own life
Don't disrespect yourself
Don't loose your pride
And don't think that
Everybody's gonna choose your side

and the silver lining

In addition to my sister's engagement, today was actually a good day for a couple of other reasons.

My little boy grew up just a little bit today. How?

After weeks of being a royal jerky spaz at soccer, and several long and stern lectures on the subject last week, he turned over a new leaf today. He was focused and played hard ("I'm SO sweaty Mom!!) and worked with his teammates.

I AM SO DAMN PROUD OF HIM!

It sounds so little but concentrating like that isn't all that simple for my little man. He did it!!

And I organized my knitting patterns.

Damn, you know you're an OCD dork when putting all of your patterns into a binder in an organization fashion makes you happy.

and so life spins on

My little sister got engaged tonight.

Sounds like I'm talking about a 7 year old, doesn't it? I'm not. My little sister is 31 - 5 years (nearly to the day) younger than I am.

But sometimes, she's still that annoying 9 year old who hovered in our - much to both of our disappointments - shared bedroom when I was trying to hang out with my first high school boyfriend. So when a big life moment like this happens to her, I get this weird twinge of melancholy amidst the happiness and excitement. Shit, I can't imagine what I'm going to do when she has a baby - probably cry, something I didn't do when my own kid was born! I'm a mess.

It's funny, the timing of things. I was having a somewhat anxious day (not because of the impending engagement - oh yeah, I should mention that I did know this was coming and I have been sitting on this secret for weeks).

No, the anxiety was my own, borne of the last several months and a whole host of introspection I've been doing - as usual.

I was thinking about how we deal with what's happened to us in the past - how we learn to deal with, accept, and heal from past experiences, hurts, you name it. I was thinking about this because I'm struggling a bit right now.

One of the things that is a challenge, at least in my Type A, detail-oriented mind, is learning how to accept that you may not ever fully understand the details of what happened, or why it happened, only that it hurt and that you have to figure out what to do about it.

My problem is, I don't process things well when I don't have all the facts or all the details. Every subject in my mind is like a grid - and I need that grid to be completely filled out, so I feel that I have a complete picture.

Yeah, that's great - except, let's face it, that's not going to happen in life. You're never going to have a complete picture and, for that matter, you're never going to get a full understanding. There will be gaps.

The gaps make me nuts. Why? Because my brain - my very OCD brain - wants to fill them in. It obsesses about the gaps. They make me, literally sometimes, crazy.

That's what prompted the introspection today. I've experienced something in my past that I have now come to accept happened and I can't control that it happened, as much as I'd like. I know enough details for the hurt to have been pointed and real and cause this ache in my heart that will be there for a long time, maybe forever.

But I'm ready to have that ache turn dull. It's becoming a bit duller than it was for a while. Slowly. That involves a lot of breathing and a lot of patience and - frankly, just time. The cliche that time heals all wounds is just that, a cliche. But I'll give you this - time at least helps the wound stop bleeding. That's something.

So in my quest to heal, at least a little...I've been processing.

I have this distinct disadvantage of being an overthinker and being extremely methodical and logical (which is totally contradictory to the fact that I'm also SUPER emotional). When something happens to me that makes me hurt, I just try to put it together and come up with logic to help me NOT hurt.

I'm having a hell of a time doing that this time. In fact, I'm an abject failure in doing it.

There's no fucking logic I can put to this one, and my super logical mind is screaming over it.

This, in turn, is driving me to try to fill in the gaps. This grid, in this instance, looks like an empty crossword puzzle. The only pieces filled in are those weird black squares (why the hell are they there anyway? Draw the damn thing differently!!). That's it.

That's not much.

The black squares give me the information I need to feel like shit. But the gaps...

.,..they're laughing at me. "You just try to fill them in. Go ahead. Torture yourself. What you've dealt with isn't enough. Go for it. Find the answers. You think you can. Do you really want to?"

So after doing this to myself for WAY too long, I came to the command decision today.

No more.

The way to heal isn't to torture myself with the questions for which I will never every have answers - or would never want answers. That's just going to give me much much more pain. I can't answer them and neither can anyone else.

I need to choose to look forward.

DUH, right?

This is so so so so hard for me.

And yet, finally, in my 37th year, I have realized that this is what I have to do - about so many of the things that have happened to me - yesterday, last year, 10 years ago, as a little kid. I have all these dark clouds, this half-complete grids - they are the ghosts that haunt me, taunt me, and make me lose my mind.

It's time to bury them.

I can't change what happened in any of those instances.
And dwelling on it, turning it over in my head, thinking of every minutae and trying to figure out the what and the why of it - it's getting me nowhere. Fast.

So I resolve, today - to be done with that.

Things happen. They just do. No matter who you are or what you do or how hard you try or how much you love or how diligently you attempt to avoid failure.

They do.

You can dwell on them and stew in them and break a little bit more each day. Or you can feel them and then try to learn from them and let them go.

I have to stop stewing. I've done so much of it, I'm stuck in a quagmire of shit, and I can't make decisions or breathe or live. No more. Period.

my child the challenge

I've said in here before - several times - that I don't exactly find motherhood to be something that comes naturally. I never really set out in life to be a mother. Unlike my sister - who by the way has some of the worst baby fever I've ever been first-party to - I didn't grow up wanting to have babies. I wanted to be successful. Babies were something other people had. I did a lot of childcare as a young teen, plus I had 2 younger siblings. Kids confused me. Hell, kids still confuse me.

Life doesn't exactly work out the way you map it. Mine sure didn't. Somehow, despite where I thought I was headed, I fell into the traditional good girl way - go to college, do well, meet a guy, go to grad school, move in with college guy, marry college guy, have kid with college guy. When I mapped out my life in my head at 14, 17, even 20 - this was NOT the plan. I don't regret it - but sometimes, even though I lived it, it surprises the hell out of me.

I got my wonderful G as the result of this path which is why, even if it isn't exactly what I planned and maybe not exactly what I wanted, I cannot and do not regret it.

Having said that, I got one hell of a challenge as a child.

I know I know. Maybe as a Mom I shouldn't say that. Or maybe all parents say that. I have no mode of comparison - I'm way too chickenshit to have another kid!! - all I know is, my child challenges me - my strength, my sanity, my self-confidence.

G is one of those kids who has always and will always march to the beat of a different drummer. In his defense, he does come by it honestly. Hubby is just like this. Conformity is, in Hubby's mind, something that other people do. Not him. And G is just the same way. Now - Hubby says that I have a bit of this myself. As I said in my other post, apparently at least one of my old, good friends views me as complicated. BUT I think in most ways, I'm a boring conformist.

So I can't exactly relate to some of the antics that my child does...and this leads to me being a hideously impatient mother.

G is a good, sweet, tenderhearted child. I have no complaints - despite a (TOO LONG) stage of hitting kids in daycare, he's outgrown this and is generally very gentle and sweet. He's the first kid to run over and comfort a friend who's gotten hurt - physically or emotionally. He's smart and he can sing better than either Hubby or I can, and he just had some of his art put into a town-wide art show. He loves to read and will spend hours aborbing history or science.

But you put him in a crowd and OY. He is a quintessential extrovert (I am an extroverted introvert...). People energize him - not always positively.

I sat at soccer on Saturday and, from the sidelines, tried not to scream. This is typical these days - G loves soccer, wants to be good at soccer, thinks he's good at soccer - and for an hour every Saturday, the soccer field is his stage.

Last week - cartwheels and yoga poses. Yes. During the indoor soccer game.
This week - pinney on his face - while receiving a pass. Refusal to play his position because he wanted to chat with a kid (who he didn't know) on the other team.

My problem is, my brain does not work this way. I can't even conceive what would possess someone to act like that. Oh it makes me insane.

It's tough because when I read it, even knowing what happened - it's giggleworthy. The other parents giggle when they see G do his yoga pose.

I cringe. I only giggle later.

In the broad scheme of things, of all the behavior issues he could have (and a few others that he does have) -- this is minor. It really is. But the older he gets, the more difficult it becomes. When he was 4 or 5, it was cute. Last year, it was tolerable.

This year - not so much. This year, it's aggraving his teammates. His BFF on the team, B, said to him on Saturday "G - we NEED you out there. Come on dude!" G told me this later and said "What does he mean, Mom? Does he not want me to play?"

I said "G....he WANTS you out there to HELP him. But your antics - they don't help anymore."

My problem is as a parent - how the hell do I nuture my child in such a way to embrace his silly, funny, gregarious personality in such a way that I don't squelch who he is, but I do teach him to conform enough to avoid frustration of his peers AND the endless stream of phone calls home?

Kids don't come with a parenting manual. I wish mine had. He is so like me in so many ways but this - this is all Dad. And I'm lost.

and the merry-go-round spins

It's funny - I was sitting here thinking that it's only 8:37pm and only Monday and I'm already exhausted when I realized - "only" is a qualification that really ought not apply to my life right now. My child turns 8 in 2 months. He just moved up to his 4th level in swim. My days are the morning run-around, 8, 9, 10 hours of work, an hour at the gym on a good day, home, dinner, keeping the house from looking like a bomb went off - maybe time for "me" in there. Lather rinse repeat. Phew. This is what my Mom meant when she said that kids make your life fly by. Crap. She had 3 of us. I'm amazed she's still sane.

It's been too long since I've been in here and I was wondering why. I think part of it is that I'm feeling too introspective. That seems odd, doesn't it? I guess my guarded self (and I am extremely guarded) isn't entirely comfortable airing my deep, dark thoughts and, more relevantly, worries here. I have a private diary in which I do that - and I've done a bit of that but honestly, I've mostly just stuffed things.

This is a mistake, and I can tell it's taking its toll. My morning stomach ache is worse than normal and seems to last well past my normal morning snack time. My jaw is achy in the mornings. I feel disjointed and a little moodier than usual. It's not good. I haven't had enough gym time - which will sometimes balance out my inability to deal with my feelings - either.

I was told the other day that I am "complicated". This came from a very good friend with whom I've been having some issues recently. And it's spot-on true. I don't think I was being particularly complicated in the context with which I was called that (actually, I was being rather clear and forthright and reacting like most any relatively sensitive person would) - but I know that I'm complicated in general and I SUSPECT the comment was more broad-sweeping and less about the conversation at hand.

In any event, I feel like I have a lot going on in my heart and head right now, and I'm struggling to sort it all out. Is this what being an adult is? Perpetual over-thinking and confusion?!?!?!

mutter grumble

As I posted on my Facebook page today - I hate hate hate hate hate - did I say HATE - nylons and tights. The problem is, they are a necessary evil through these CT winters. I don't want to wear pants from October - May. I like dresses and skirts. But bare legs in CT in - say March - not a great idea.

I went shopping this past weekend and picked up some great new skirts. I wanted to wear one today so I stepped into the depths of hell and put on a pair of tights.

By the time I was ready to leave work after yet another endless, meeting-laden day, I was so incredibly uncomfortable due to those fucking things that not only did I want to rip them off my body, preferably with a pair of very sharp scissors, but I also was so sore that I couldn't bear the thought of spending 1/2 hour or more on the treadmill. It was late (5:30 no thanks to my 4:30 meeting), I was tired, and I was achy because I can't really breathe properly when I'm wearing those damn things.

So no workout tonight and I am annoyed with myself. That was a shitty reason to bail on the gym. I've been trying to not use work or other stupid Andrea crap as an excuse - I've been better but this may be an all-time low.

SIGH. Tomorrow is another day. I have to try to not beat myself up for this one.