Discombobulated

Discombobulated:

Out of order, not working properly, contorting, blabbering nonsense, confused, dysfunctional, out of shape and out of mind. (This definition from the Urban Dictionary, which sums it up perfectly for me)

That's the word of the day.  Or, week rather.

Some might say it's the word that best describes my life.   :)

Lately I am in a constant state of discombobulation.  Say that three times fast.


Another way to describe it:  running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, which if you think about it is quite gross.  Why would a chicken be running around with no head?

Anyway, I digress.

I have been feeling very discombobulated.  Why, you might ask?

Things have been very stressful at work.


We are two girls down and I have been working a lot of overtime.  It's just me and my office manager up front right now, and that simply isn't enough to accommodate the schedules of three doctors and the influx of patients that we deal with on a daily basis.

Add to that the fact that I have not been sleeping, and you get someone who is exhausted.  And discombobulated.  I told you it was the word of the day.   :)

Here are some examples of stupid things I have done out of exhaustion/discombobulation:
I'm going to see how many times I can use that word in this blog post.

Today I got up early to go to a WW meeting only to discover that it hadn't been seven days since my last weigh in(you can only weigh in once per week), so they couldn't "officially" weigh me in, which sucks because I reached a milestone today(two actually) and was supposed to get my keychain and another charm.  Now I have to go to another meeting this week so I can get them.  I did"unofficially"  lose three pounds though, so I am thrilled about that because I have been stuck at the same weight for three weeks now.

Another example of my discombobulation: Twice this week I went  to purchase something, only to realize I had left my wallet at home.  TWICE.

And another:

I almost ran out of gas because for some reason I neglected to see that my gas light was on, and had obviously been for quite some time.

Bah.  I would like a do-over on this whole week please!



Speaking of being understaffed, you know that phrase good help is hard to find? Wow, is it ever true.  We have interviewed 12 people in the last two weeks, and while they did find two people to work in the back, we have yet to find the right person to work up front with us.  I can't believe the amount of people who come in for an interview with NO computer experience(like can't even turn one ON), or are dressed inappropriately(flip flops?? Skin tight skirts and hooker heels?   Really??).  It's partly because we are being very picky about it too.  If you have to sit three feet from someone for 45+ hours per week, you want to make sure you can get along.

Also, just an FYI for anyone looking to land a job working up front, if you come in for an interview and you are totally rude to the girl working up front, who you will be sitting right next to, you probably won't get the job.  Just sayin'.

Sheesh.

Things haven't been all bad though.  Last week my boss pulled me into his office, to which my first response was "Oh Crap!' given the fact that three girls have fired in the last 4 months.  He assured me he wasn't asking to see me because of anything bad(thank goodness!) and that instead they thought I was doing a fabulous job and they wanted to give me a raise.  A substantial raise.  I started crying right there in his office. I have been working my ass off, coming in early and staying late and it is so awesome that they saw that and rewarded me for it.  I can't tell you enough how much I love my job!

Other than that, I have been kind of down in the dumps this weekend, with Mother's Day and all.  I know, I know, it's just a day.  It isn't different than any other day.  I get it.  But it makes me sad.  And I am entitled to my feelings, even if you don't agree with them(or think they are stupid).

On Monday I will get up and not think about Mother's Day for another whole year.

But this weekend I feel sad.


I am hoping for a week this week in which I am feeling  less discombobulated(that was five times.  I think I could have done better if I wasn't rushing out the door right now to make it to an appointment).

If you are celebrating Mother's Day, I truly hope you have a wonderful day.

If you aren't celebrating, I totally understand and I wish you lived closer so we could all go out and have a margarita together. Sending virtual hugs to you guys.





P.S. If you are reading this K, please answer my texts.  I am worried about you.

Chin Up Buttercup

This time of year always brings me down.  Mother's Day is a tough one for me.

My mom is gone.

I don't have a child to call me mother.  I probably never will.

It is heartbreaking when you realize that something you wanted your whole life, and have tried to attain for 10 years isn't going to be.

I am really coming to terms with this recently, as many of my friends become closer to referral. I am happy for them(I really am).  But I am sad for myself.

Perhaps it's just a pity party.  Perhaps I should snap out of it.

Or perhaps I should just let the feelings come and allow myself to feel them until they pass(but not while I am at work.  Because crying at work is lame.  Not that I have done that.  I'm just saying that it would be lame to do that).

When I get like this I feel myself retreating and isolating, two things you shouldn't do when you are depressed.  But I do them anyway.  I can't seem to help myself.  *But I am trying not to do them.

So I get up every morning and drag myself out of bed.  Force myself to go to work, and then force a smile while I am there.  Throw myself into work so I forget about feeling sad for awhile, but feel the sadness creep back in on the drive home.

Pretty soon you start to realize that you are feeling sad more than you are not feeling sad.  Such is the nature of depression. Sometimes it sneaks up on you and you don't realize it until BAM-there it is.

One thing I love to do is browse pinterest and find inspirational words.  It is probably annoying for anyone that follows me there because I am a fan of the inspirational words and will pin as many as I can find in one night, flooding their boards with inspirational words.  It's comforting somehow. I suppose there are worse things to be flooding your pinterest boards with than inspirational words, but I get that it can be annoying.

Here's a good one I found to help me through the week:

Here is something I do quite often. Especially when I am in a funk like I am now:

This is a good one too:

But here is one that I have next to my bed:

I will be grateful for this day.  

No matter how sad I am.  No matter how stressful work is.  No matter how crappy I feel.

I will be grateful for this day.

The rest will fall into place and eventually I will stop feeling so sad.  

It is a pattern that I am accustomed to.

Here is a piece of writing that a popular blogger wrote about depression that very much hits home for me.  I cried when I read it. If you have a few minutes, it's worth a read.

**I am forcing myself to work out, and I know that will help.  I am trying to get out of the house and not isolate. Some days are better than others. I will probably step away from the internet for awhile.  At least until Mother's Day is over.

I will be o.k.  This too shall pass.

P.S.  My phone says I am always online on FB, even when I'm not, so if you instant message me there it's not that I am ignoring you.  I just don't see those messages unless I have my phone in my hand.  I wish I could turn off that feature but I can't figure out how.

The Flower Fields

Last weekend Joe and I went for a drive down south of us to visit The Flower Fields in Carlsbad.

It has been a few years since we last went. They are a beautiful as ever.

If you've never heard of them, they are fields of ranunculus flowers in Carlsbad, CA

Every spring they produce thousands of beautiful flowers that bloom every spring.  The fields are so large they can be seen from the freeway driving by.

Ranunculus is one of my favorite flowers.  It is second only to Tulips.  Roses would be a close third.  I miss growing some of the flowers we were able to grow when we lived in a downstairs apartment.


The flowers are grown in rows of color.  Joe's favorite is the multi colored row, which is is standing in front of.

I decided to forego the collages and just post all of them. You all don't mind scrolling down a bit, do you?  :)

Every single row we walked by I would say "Oh, orange is my favorite", only to walk by the red ones and say "Actually the red are my favorite", and so on until we had gone through all of the colors.  It was cracking Joe up.  They are all just so beautiful!  So vibrant.

The fields are in such a beautiful area, with a view of the ocean atop the hill

Gorgeous.

Flowers are Love's truest language 

                                           ~unknown

Flowers match my shirt!

Be like the flower, turn your faces to the sun

                                                    ~Kahlil Gibran

They had a greenhouse with orchids too.  We killed the orchid my Dad got us. I don't know how.  Usually Joe is very good at keeping things alive.

The Earth laughs in flowers

                             ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

They had a maze made out of sweet peas.  Sweet peas have the most beautiful scent.  You might even say it is aMAZEing.  LOL.

After much deliberation it was decided that the coral colored were, in fact, my favorite.

Where flowers, bloom, so does hope 

                               ~Lady Bird Johnson

They had beautiful roses too.  Love the color and the fluted edges on this one

Beautiful!

I WILL be making on of these.  I just need to find an old chair.  It's so cute!

More stunning roses

Happiness is to hold flowers in both hands

                   ~Japanese Proverb

It was a fun day!

Ho Hum

Do you ever feel like the days go by so quickly, and they kind of just blend together until another week has gone by and you wonder where it went?

That's how I have been feeling lately.  Same old routine every day.  Lately for me that has been go to work, come home and workout(4 days per week), watch some t.v. for a couple of hours and then hit the sack. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The weekends I'm so tired we usually just hang around the house, with a bike ride on Sunday after my weight watchers meeting and grocery shopping.

Speaking of WW meeting, people keep asking for an after picture of me.  There are a few pictures of me that I will be posting tomorrow of us at the flower fields but I'm covered up by a coat in most of them.  I'm just not ready for that yet.  Maybe after I lose ten more pounds or so.  I have so much more to lose that I am still very self conscious about how I look.  I am proud of the weight I have lost(24 pounds and counting) but I want to look even better before I show a head to toe picture here on the blog.  If we are friends on FB I have a couple there but even those are cropped so you can't see my whole body.  I need to work on being happy with how far  I have come and loving my body but it's a slow process for me.

Anyhoo.

Work has been  crazy busy.  I love my job.  It's stressful, but I love it.  It's probably one of the best jobs I have had, well, ever.  Don't get me wrong.  I loved the 17 years I spent as a preschool teacher/daycare director, but I got burnt out and the transition to the medical field was a good one for me.

All the girls from work went out for happy hour on Friday night, to say goodbye to my co-worker, who is starting nursing school next week.  I will miss her dearly!  We had a blast.  I work with a really great group of women.

We have had a high turnover rate in the last six months.  Partly because it is pretty stressful, and partly because they expect a lot from their employees and they don't keep people past their probationary periods if they aren't a good fit.  I like that about them.  They don't put up with crap and they don't allow people's drama to interfere with their job duties.

I can see myself there for a long time.  The pay and benefits far outweigh the stressful times.

Last Sunday we went to see the Flower Fields in Carlsbad.  It has been awhile since we last were there.  It's so beautiful!  I will post pictures but I want to make some collages before I upload them.  I took about ten thousand pictures and they are all so beautiful I am having a hard time editing them down to a handful for the blog.  Ranunculus have always been one of my favorite flowers.

P.S. on Friday we were reminiscing about some of our old job experiences, specifically how we had been treated by former bosses.  After our discussion I came back to my desk to find that my co-worker had pulled up this picture on my computer:

It's an inside joke.  And it is freaking hilarious.

Do Over

O.K., this post is really old, but again, it was in my drafts box so I'm putting it out there.  Plus, we are getting ready to hike this trail again, so it's timely in that sense.

Does anyone who still reads here remember this post?  If not, the gist of it was that we went on a hike and I had to be taken down the trail in an ambulance.  Embarrassing!

That was almost four years ago.  We haven't hiked that trail since then.  I have been too afraid, and obviously that particular trail was beyond my physical capabilities.  I'm not saying we haven't hiked since then(because obviously we have), but we have not gone in the same geographical location.

Until a month ago.  Like I mentioned in my last post, we have been trying very hard(and succeeding at) becoming more physically fit.  We have been walking or riding our bikes 3 times a week, and I have been walking on my lunch break a couple of times a week. I have also been doing the 9 week program on my Wii Active 2 game(it's like having your own personal trainer-it's hard!).  I can really feel my body changing.  Now instead of just fat I can feel a little muscle developing underneath it!

I decided I wanted to try hiking that area again.  It's such a beautiful area to hike.

So we decided to try a trail across from the one I failed at, but a bit more difficult than the last. The whole trail was 4.5 miles and reached an elevation of 1,100 feet.

I kept telling myself that it was o.k. if I couldn't do the whole thing, and that I should stop if I felt like it was too much.

The weather was perfect(not too hot, which was part of the problem last time).

Armed with hats and plenty of sunscreen and water, we started up the trail.

This trail was MUCH harder than the one we tried 4 years ago.  So much steeper. We climbed pretty much straight up for an hour or so.  We stopped to rest a lot.

The reward when you get to the top is supposed to be a view of the ocean but it was too hazy/foggy to really see it.

There were quite a few flowers in bloom.  I think they are confused by the mild winter we have had.

Finally when we reached the bottom, two and a half hours later, there is this lovely meadow

And a beautiful oak tree

I am so proud of myself for making it up(and down) the whole trail!

Next Saturday we're going to do it again!