I am sick again – for the third time this season.

The first time was a cold, the second time was the flu and again I am battling with a cold. It seems as if no matter what I do I am destined to be always fighting off some bug or other. I comfort myself that it’s just that my body having been dried and burnt out in Texas for 2 years and not being used to this cold and wet climate. That it is just overwhelmed and that sooner than later it’ll be able to withstand the constant barrage of germs. That pep talk isn’t working.

I know that the greatest part of my problem is being sedentary and as much as I would love to run – yes, I think I would love to run – I just can’t do it now. I can barely walk. Yoga was a problem. Just going the 300 or so feet to the mailbox is an issue. Sometimes just carrying a laundry basket up the stairs here at home makes me winded. I am in bad shape.

I have never been very active. High school was the last time I was physically active and without batting an eyelid, I will tell you that high school for me was a good 30 years ago. Yes indeed. I am that old. And lately, I have been feeling it. Lucky for me, I think I finally figured out what is wrong with me and I am going to get it looked after. I sincerely hope that once this treatment kicks in I can actually climb the stairs here at home, at a brisk trot and not feel like I’ve run the marathon when I get to the top rung.

That being said, I refuse to let this cold keep me down for much longer. It’s kept me mostly stationary all weekend. There are so many things I should have been doing this last month. Not the least of which is spending time with my friend and her newborn. I am tired all the time, and I am sick almost every other week and I just don’t feel well. It has got to stop NOW.

School starts next month again, and hubby will be gone for 6 weeks starting the first. I need to get myself sorted out quickly. I can’t be alone and sick for 6 weeks whilst I take on extra work and school. So I’ve vowed to also include a dose of airborne everyday with my one glass of lemonade too. I think in a little while work will require me to be up for far later at nights and awake far earlier in the mornings and I need to prepare myself for that.

(P.S. By the way, I am loving After the deadline. )

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Just when you thought I was sticking with the theme I designed for myself, I go and change it again – eh? Well, here’s the thing – 40milesfromKingston was making my own eyes blur when I read the posts – the white on black was killing me. That can’t be a good sign. It needs some work, and so until I find the time to work on it, I am going back to a simple white background theme so I (and whoever else was complaining silently) can read it without giving ourselves the worst headache of all time.

What have I been up to? Hurting myself again and again – stretching when I shouldn’t be, being energetic and doing things I shouldn’t be, and over-exerting myself when I shouldn’t be. What else is new? No worries, the doctor advised me that it was perfectly understandable, I FEEL good, so why not do the things I would normally do when I feel good – right? I got more meds and a hearty “You’re doing great” and I drove my way back home through the first snow I’ve seen in Texas.

Speaking of snow – you cannot imagine what a panic that few inches of snow (that didn’t even stick to the roadways) caused. It was amazing to see people being stupid on the roads. I thought this kind of madness was for the tropics, where people seldom see horrific weather. Nope – apparently, the psychology of odd and off-the-wall weather is universal. There were 3rd and 4th lines of traffic on roadways with only 2 painted lanes, there were people speeding down shoulders, lines of traffic backed up to beyond oblivion, stop sign breaking, stop light breaking (I wondered where the MPs or police were – so many blatant road rule breakers) and you-would-not-believe-the-number-of-stuck-cars-on-shoulders.

Snow in Texas!

It was a little sad, actually – because every single snow fall that I have experienced here (except for 1 many years ago) I have shared with the hubby and giggled with him about how “noobish” I get about snow. Like a kid in a toy store, I am. Being that he was in the field for days at this point, and not returning for another few days saddened me. Whilst this was only a small thing, it brought it home to me that there will be so many things like this that I won’t be able to share with him whilst he is down-range. So many things …

It’s part and parcel of being a military spouse, yes, I know.  And while I get that, it doesn’t make me feel any better. I’ve had 2 people tell me recently that they don’t know how I do it and that they wouldn’t be able to. Each time I hear sentiments like that, I smile because I know that were they in my position, they just might find what it takes to “do it” too. It isn’t easy, it certainly isn’t even something you might choose, but when faced with it, you find the strength. I don’t deny that love is part of the fuel. For me it is the greater portion being that I don’t have that inbred fire to “defend our freedom” – where I come from, freedom is taken for granted and there is no fever to defend it because it isn’t often threatened. In this case, my friends, love IS finding a way.

In other news, it’s been a while since I mentioned WoW. I have rediscovered my priest, thanks to the Tankspot Weekly Marmots. Watching Aliena talk about priest healing just made me go pull Quae out of the archives, and level her almost exclusively in the new LFD tool to 80. In just about 8 weeks, she’s gone from level 71 to 80 and from a gear score of 2000+ to just over 5000. I am proud of myself and I have to say that as much as I love my other toons – the warlock, the shaman and the druid et al – my priest is still fun to play. I currently have almost 80 triumph badges and no idea what to do with them. Hubby suggested a PvP or a Shadow set – but frankly, I just don’t see myself being DPS on her.

I’ve been reading the posts over at Pugging Pally and I have to say that she makes me want to write a WoW blog separate and apart from this one – simply because there aren’t too many of my readers who play and when I go off on a WoW tangent I lose most of them. In fact, I may just do that… look out, folks, a separate blog may just spring up somewhere on fyrfli.net with my forays into Azeroth. Thanks for the idea and the motivation, Vidyala. =)

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IMG_5947, originally uploaded by ~fyrfli~.

I had a productive day today. I felt so good about myself that I decided to actually unplug for a while and go do something other than stare at this screen. So I set up the little collapsible lawn chair outside and sat out with my Kindle reading. It was such a pretty day though that by the time I had read about 10 Kindle pages, I couldn’t ignore the day anymore. It was windy out, but such a blue, blue sky and nice and cool – not cold. I sat there with my face turned up to the sky for about 5 minutes, just enjoying the smell, the wind, the sun and then I got up, put the precious Kindle to sit on the dining table and grabbed the camera. Somehow, it seems that the only thing worth taking was the sky, though. The sky through the trees … and my usual lens flare to accompany this particular gem. I’d forgotten what joy I get just …. snapping pictures of random Mother Nature finds. /sigh

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The holidays were pretty weird for me. Especially considering what the 2 previous years have been like. What it boils down to, however, is that this Christmas and New Year’s is the last one the hubby and I have before he deploys. And we chose to spend it with each other doing what WE wanted to do. It sounds selfish, doesn’t it? I imagine a number of people might think:

What about the rest of his family – don’t you think they wanted to spend his last Christmas stateside before a deployment with him as well? Especially since you will have him for the whole time until the actual day.

The thing is this – from here on out, he will be stressed, exhausted, gone for days and weeks on end, irritable maybe, certainly under a lot of pressure. I won’t “have him” at all. He will have me. As for the rest of his family – that is what “block leave” is for come the last 2 weeks before “the actual day”. “Block leave” is when the entire unit goes off on vacation at the same time. And our plan is to head to Michigan so that the rest of his family can have him before he leaves. Christmas and New Year’s was for me.

I know a few couples might do it the other way around, and maybe the interests of tradition are better served by that strategy. And frankly, chances are if circumstances had lined up perfectly, we might have ended up doing it that way as well. It just didn’t work out that way. Besides, it allowed us to do some things we needed to do here that we would not have been able to do had we driven to Michigan instead.

Speaking of Michigan – I miss snow! I missed having a white Christmas. And I certainly missed the small-town Christmas. I have to say that every day there is a new reason (or a reminder of an old one) to despise this big army city of Fort Hood. Traffic, crime levels (can you believe that the have to lock up the baby formula and pregnancy tests at the nearby Walgreens?), noise and density of people and buildings …

Last night, the temperature hovered at mid-40F but the windchill made it feel more like 20F and I was cold, in pain, tired and dying to get home – yet we spent 2 hours at Walgreens attempting to get a prescription filled that my doctor wanted me to have to take immediately. There might have been other faster options, but Walgreens was our only one last night for the simple reason that my refill prescription – also due – is at Walgreens and they don’t rewrite “scrips” in this country apparently – they just keep the refills “on file”. All this after finding out that there “may be some auto-immune-thing going on with you that we have to check out” from the doctor and an exorbitant dental work estimate.

On a lighter note, I went to my first yoga class yesterday. I am so badly out of shape that I couldn’t keep up with the class – although I know part of that was (a) I hadn’t had anything at all to eat or drink other than a cup of tea before the dentist at 6am and (b) I need to pay more attention to hydration. It felt good, though, to actively be trying to be fit and healthy and I think I will keep this up. Also helps to know that someone I know attends the evening classes too – assuming she is empathetic, I might just find a “partner” to help motivate me in her.

The year hasn’t been off to an awesome start thus far … more challenging and encouraging than just plain “awesome”. I appreciate it, and I am lapping it up. I am ready for “twenty-ten” (wink-wink at Jo). In spite of what it will bring for me in the way of “most challenging life event for me evar”, I am ready. I am gathering my own personal army and arsenal and I am going to charge this year head-on.

How about you? You ready for what “twenty-ten” is going to bring?

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I really should blog more often… every week is really quite slacker-style. And the problem is that I really have so much to say on a daily basis that I SHOULD be blogging more regularly too. But somehow, I never have the time anymore to sit and type for long periods of time uninterrupted. Every time I bring up the page to start typing, the phone rings, hubby needs me for something, cats need me, someone texts or IM’s me (at least I am back on IM regularly, I guess).

It feels like whirlwind all over again. The difference between now and back then was I would deny myself food or sleep so I could spend time online with my blog or games … no more. Now I go to bed when it’s time, I eat when it’s time and to hell with the web! gasp Did I really just say that? “To hell with the web!” OMG! I am SO grown-up!

LOL

So, lets summarize the last week:

1. I spent Sunday with hubby.  I think we slept-in and just played WoW all day.
2. Monday, we both realized that his little BIG test is this week and so we started studying in earnest.
3. Little TV throughout the week, but no WoW at all. Lots of studying. I worked a lot of nights this week gone.
4. I was off on Thursday, but I think I spent much of the day doing housework.
5. On Saturday, I worked 9 until 5. On Friday night, we found a bug in the office. I think we came to the conclusion that it was a centipede and wasn’t to be touched: I still haven’t confirmed it for sure, but a decent number of people concur, so I am willing to bet that’s exactly what it was. We kind of skirted the area it disappeared in all day on Saturday and never saw it once.
6. The weather has been crazy again all week – 60s early in the week and back down into t he 20s this weekend gone here.

The good news is that on Friday morning, my doctor changed my allergy meds – I am now on Allegra. So hopefully I’ll see less misery with them than usual. I’ll tell you this. I took the first one on Friday afternoon after and I was feeling FINE all day. Typically, I’ve forgotten it every single day since, except this morning. I started to feel the headache coming on, so I ran and took it immediately. Hopefully I will be able to avoid the aches today.

I had off Sunday AND Monday this week. Yay. Spent all Sunday with hubby, we watched movies and chilled, played a little WoW and then headed to bed early. Cos Monday was an early day for him, if not for me. Of course, I spent all day Monday just chilling. I watched Andromeda Strain and then I cleaned house. I love the feeling of a clean house. Did laundry so now I have socks for work again. I’ve been borrowing hubby’s socks cos mine were all in  the wash. Having never had to wear socks on a daily basis (at least not since high school) my socks collection was at most 5 pairs.

Finally, today … and here I am. I got up with hubby and whilst he was off doing PT with his unit, I was walking around the block. Well, it took me all of 20 minutes – if that – but I think I did great and I just need to keep it up now. I feel good. I got a nice pleasant burn in my calves. After a couple of days, I’ll start walking with the weights and get that burn going in my arms too. I am convinced that additional to the fitness effect, I will improve my circulation too and maybe my feet and hands won’t be so cold anymore.

I’ve kind of rediscovered Twinkle with the advent of the iPhone. I think I really liked it when I had it before so I am going to play with a little now. I’ve also downed (and liked, for that matter) Nambu and Twitterfon… and I’ve tried out TweetDeck and DestroyTwitter (which I caught from a tweet from ThisIsTrue) and Pixelpipe. And I have to mention when I first downloaded Pixelpipe and set it up and used it, I got that one photo sent to ALL my services and it freaked me out. Especially when FriendFeed showed me posting the same picture something like 4 times. But then I figured out how to use it selectively and have since adopted that method instead. Sometimes when I take a photo with the iPhone, I want to send it to Flickr, my blog and Facebook… sometimes i just want it to go to Facebook, sometimes just to Twitter… well, you get the idea. The trick is in the tags…. uploading a picture with the tag @flickr sends the photo to Flickr ONLY and none of my other services.  So, now that I have found that I can’t email photos to Facebook mobile, I think Pixelpipe and I will become the best of friends.

Ooooh it feels SO good to be back in the mobile social network again! You cannot begin to imagine….

On a serious note, I’ve been thinking SERIOUSLY about my … career path. Thinking that maybe I need to scrutinize my skills and re-vamp them. I want to ultimately be able to work from home – that will solve my immediate issue with possibly moving around the country (and maybe the world) a lot whilst hubby is still in the military. It would be a kind of stability that I, as a creature of habit, could benefit greatly from in more ways than one. The problem with that is finding the discipline to find MAKE the time to dedicate to this cause. Eventually, it’ll come .. I know it will.

They are finally collecting the refuse from January’s ice storm. Of course the small branches are still laying on the lawn (such as it is), but at least there is a clearer path to our shed in the back now that they finally decided to pick up those huge branches laying on the grass. Nala had gone into “her room” to sleep but the wood-chipper was so loud and intimidating, she came right back in here to crawl onto my lap and listen to the grinding … I don’t even see Bear. He’s been incognito since the first dude walked around assessing the litter of leaves and broken branches.

In any case, I’ve said it all now … I am going to collect the mail and keep twittering and FB’ing from my couch on my iPhone.

YUSH

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