I have a very, very good excuse--er, reason--for not being here in like a month (give or take a day). I’ve been busy. Actually busy. Not procrastinating. I promise.
Lately I’ve been making daily To Do lists and pinning them up on my bedroom wall next to my bed. Seeing it on paper helps me to not put it off. I don’t get everything I want to get done each day, but I’ve been averaging about 80% - 90%, which is pretty darn good considering how much I want to get done every day. Unfortunately for my blog, it’s been falling in that 10% - 20% that doesn’t get done.
I actually used to blog an incredible amount. I was introduced to the wonderful world of blogging ten years ago today, actually. (Happy blogging anniversary to me!) I blogged at Open Diary for about eight years. At first I blogged many times a week, sometimes two or three times a day. I blogged about everything. I wanted to get a shirt that read, “I’m blogging this.” But as time went on I blogged less and less. By the time I finally decided to actually leave Open Diary I was only blogging once every few months. I’d lost most of my readers because no one seems to care about a part-time blogger.
I hope that I can find some readers here who can forgive me for my lack of full-time commitment to blogging. I am about to make a promise that I can keep: When I have the time and energy, and something to write about, I will be here. I also am very interested in the lives of people here, so I will be reading. Promise. When I have time. And energy. Good enough?
Which brings me to one of the things keeping me busy. I’ve been going to the doctor a lot more lately than I ever would have chosen to on my own. I’ve been feeling fatigued like you wouldn’t believe. While the day care kids were here I’d have to wrestle with my eye lids to keep them open, and the minute they’d leave I’d be, “Hello, bed!” But it wasn’t that energetic. It was more like, “Hey, bed… Zzzzz.” My body has also been very sore. My back was perpetually sore for about three weeks, plus I had other pains that came and went. Then, of course, there was the forty-two pound weight gain in a year--most of it in a matter of months. It was Ashleigh who suggested that I see her NP.
I’ve had all sorts of things put in me and taken out of me in the past month. The only thing that has been found so far is that I’m low in B12. Despite the fact that I’ve been eating healthy lately and swallowing a mama-honkin’ multi-vitamin every day, it seems that my body doesn’t absorb the B12 as it should. So the NP has started me on B12 injections. I went for the first on Monday. I generally don’t have a problem with needles. Of course, everything has an exception.
“This is injected directly into your muscle,” the NP said.
I was silent, but I was thinking, “Now you tell me. You didn’t tell me that earlier when I could opt out, did you? This is going to be bad. This is going to be awful. Needles normally go into the fatty tissue, don’t they? Where they just slide in, relatively painless. I have plenty of fatty tissue to choose from. Plenty! A needle into the muscle? No, that’s not good. Not good at all.”
Then she brought out the needle. Not one of those little teeny things that I’m used to. Nope. This one could go clean through my arm. Okay, maybe not. But it was at least the size of my pinky! Really!
Still silent, I thought, “This is going to be awful. This is going to be horrid.”
“You’ll come back for these once a week for a month, and then once a month after that,” she told me.
“I’m going to have to relive the horror over and over again,” I thought to myself.
“Okay, relax,” she said, probably reading the dread on my face. “Are you ready?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. But as I could feel my heart pounding in my chest I was thinking, “There’s no way out. Go to your happy place. Go to your happy place!” I felt it going in. “Not bad yet, but it’s about to get really, really ba--” Suddenly I felt cotton on my arm. I turned my head and looked at the cotton ball she was holding on my arm.
“Hold this,” she said. I took the cotton and lifted it a little so I could see what was beneath it. A tiny dab of blood. It was done.
“Hmm,” I thought. “I’m just an incredible wuss.”
