Joey and I usually try to plan a vacation of some sort during that week, ever since our honeymoon in 2002; it’s funny…we planned our wedding around Thanksgiving break since we were both still in college and needed to plan it around school vacation:).  We’ve always been practical, I suppose.

Anyway, with as much stress as we’ve had lately, between my recovery of the “mental holocaust” of 2011 and our various work-and-school related deadlines and drama, Joey and I really haven’t gotten any time to just rest.  So, we’ve packed up the camper and gone to Black Mountain for a little R&R.

Here’s my attempt at looking thuggish in my newly knitted Slouchy Hipster Hat which is a fantastic free pattern from one of my favorite knit-bloggers, Crazy Aunt Purl.  It’s a little big on me, so I’ll probably knit another one with smaller needles, but it’s very cute, and it has come in very handy with how chilly it’s been up here.

A nighttime fire pic, as I take on every trip.  Everything smells like campfire right now, my clothes, my hair, the inside of the camper…everything, and it’s wonderful.  It’s like a little piece of heaven.

From this morning, while we were getting the fire started back up to cook breakfast:

Chef Joseph and the bacon:

And a plate of goodness:  3 strips of bacon (I pulled off the fatty parts and tossed them in the fire), hash browns, two scrambled eggs, one piece of rye toast, and some coffee.  Food tastes better when cooked over an open fire.

Yesterday, we found a funky local diner to have breakfast, it was called “Louise’s,” and it was definitely hipster-y grungy cool, but the food kind of sucked and the coffee came out of a pump caraffe, which is sign number one that the service and coffee are both going to be lackluster.  I’m not sure how much we spent, but I’m relatively sure it was too much.  But, it’s all good because that’s part of the adventure…finding little hole-in-the-wall places and new experiences.

I’m also bummed that we don’t have Ingle’s at home because it’s so much nicer than Harris Teeter.  We’re going to have to make our way out today because, among other things we’ve got to get, I forgot a hairbrush.  Yep.  a hairbrush.  The hat has gotten very liberal use as a result.

Now for a little chilling and doing this:

First, I’ll give you a cute-kins pic in case you want to stop reading now.  This was from her first year of life…she may have been six months old or so, so she was still lanky and gangly, and she was also still sociable to strangers and loved me

Anyway, as the title of the blog implies, sometimes I need to do a little navel-gazing and write an actual inner monologue.

I honestly can’t remember if I included this in my last blog, and I don’t feel like bringing it up to see, but, as we were on the way home two weeks ago, after triumphantly having survived “the wedding,” I received an email from my advisor….delicately telling me that I was going to need to defer graduation to the spring.  I felt two emotions simultaneously:  failure and relief…failure because I’d already had to defer graduation once and I was really looking forward to having my degree and being done with school, and relief because, deep down, I knew that there was going to be no way I was going to manage to get it done in one semester.

I really shouldn’t have felt the failure, I know, because my “mental holocaust” took over the latter part of last year and the first two-thirds of this year, and September and October have been consumed by dread of “the dress” and the stress of major, major changes at work.  I should have felt proud that I’d gotten as much done on my thesis as I did through all of that, and my advisor pretty much told me that.  Anyway, I’ve embraced the relief and am looking forward to having three more months or so to really get the thesis together and to just enjoy the research and writing process, while still being able to write on the blog and read books that I *want* to read.  I’m shooting for a February defense.

So, this brings me to the meat of the post today (I know, it’s been super-long already)…for the past several months, I have been pretty out-of-control…eating waaaay too much, living off chinese takeout and pizza (and thus pissing away lots of money), drinking waaaay too much coffee, not sleeping, not paying attention to my own well-being, picking at my arms and hands mercilessly, no longer cleaning the house, waking up feeling burpy, crampy, nauseated, and ashamed.  This is no way to live.

To top it all off, Joey and I were both so stressed that we completely forgot that our tenth anniversary was Thursday (the anniversary of when we got together, not when we got married, although for us, the former has traditionally been more important to us than the latter).  He remembered it at 4:45 this morning.

I also can’t remember if I mentioned this already, but I was diagnosed with PCOS at the end of September.  I’ve been having issues off and on all year, and I finally got checked out, and even though I’m not thrilled about the diagnosis, it explains some of my other health issues, and I’m happy just to know what it is.  However, I also know that the way I’m eating is only aggravating the condition.

As usual, I woke up early this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, although I can legitimately blame it on the time change (it would have been my normal wake-up time), and as I was laying in bed catching up on my Google Reader, I read my friend Allison’s blog post on True Repentance.  And I had one of those moments in the shower this morning as I really contemplated the way I’ve been treating my body for the past year.  Obviously, I’ve also been neglecting my soul, pretty much ignoring my Bible and tossing out quick prayers each morning for protection for my parents and Joey and healing for Phil and my friend Tiffany’s mom.  Talk about getting shamed first thing in the morning, right?

So, needless to say, I’m turning away from all of this.  And it’s going to be painfully hard to break the past year’s worth of habits.  But it’s going to happen.

Thanks, guys…I really do love my few and faithful readers.  And, for those of you who powered through this, here’s another Kins-pic for you as a reward:

If you’ve been following the blog for the past year, you know how much drama the “dress saga” has created for me.  It started last December after my humiliating fitting and has continued on through my failure to lose much weight (due to circumstances both in and out of my control).  Well, it’s finally over, and I survived it, despite feeling uncomfortable both physically and emotionally.  Shannon was a beautiful bride and the wedding was lots of fun, and, as you can see, I used Joey’s tuxedo jacket to cover up during the reception.

It’s actually strange to have this all behind me.  Although I’ve been excited for my friends, personally it’s been this kind of “D-Day” that I’ve been counting down to because of “the dress.”  Now that it’s over, I almost don’t know what to do with myself.

Also, since this is the first wedding where Joey and I have both been attendants…I wouldn’t say that we were unprepared for the cost, but I don’t think that we had mentally prepared beforehand for what the final cost would be.  Needless to say, the last two months of the year are going to have to be a major crackdown for us…no more frivilous expenses.

At any rate, I’m enjoying the newfound sense of calm that’s come over the Weaver household..for now, at least;)

Shelli vascillated between napping on my lap and napping on the arm of the recliner.  At 10, I almost decided to just forget about going to bed and passing out on the couch.  But I decided that, since I never get the chance to sprawl out right in the middle of our double bed, I would go.  And I couldn’t get to sleep.  So, I read more Cracked.com articles and checked Facebook every five minutes.  Even though I knew that everyone else was smart enough to go to bed.  I don’t know when I actually got to sleep.  When my alarm went off at 6 to get ready for church, I wasn’t having it.  I decided that I’d reset it for 7 and just go to Life Group and sing in the 9:30 and 11.  And then I got overwhelmed at the thought of battling the parking lot by myself.  And I had a headache.  So, here you find me, skipping church, unbathed, with a kitchen that looks like a trash-bomb went off.  I think I’ll be able to get myself bathed in time to meet Mom and Dad for lunch.  At least I found some leftover Seattle’s Best and our French Press.  So I have coffee.

Incidentally, I found my poetry portfolio from my Creative Writing class I took in Spring of ’02.  I’ll share one with you that ended up getting published in Wingate’s Literary Magazine that year (Counterpoint)

It doesn’t take much, eh?  I’ve been having to use a stupid infrared optical mouse for the last week or so because my old trackball died.  My new one finally came.

In other news, Joey is capable of doing PhD work while serving as a cat-nap surface.

It’s been a strange week….lots of fires to put out at work (not literal ones.  Dad.), and I haven’t been very successful at it.  In happier news, the weather has finally cooled down enough that I can go down to the car and nap during lunch again:).

Or knit.

What I’m currently knitting:

I LOVE this yarn color…it’s actually Hobby Lobby’s I Love This Yarn! in some sort of autumny self-striping colorway.  Pretty sweet.

Progressively, I’ve been able to get myself back out to the outer rings of Hell, at least (hence the Dante comment)…as I definitely hit the Eighth Circle somewhere between Tuesday and Yesterday.  I’m currently sitting between the First and Second now, which I’ll accept.  Don’t worry…it’s all because of the afore-mentioned fires at work.

I wish Chuck Norris came in a pocket-sized version.  I’d love to take him with me wherever I go, to have him just in case I needed an impromptu can of WhoopAss to be opened.

I swear, I think I could drop dead right in front of her, and as long as daddeh was there, she wouldn’t care.  The sad part was that his hip has been bothering him (from his motorcycle accident ten years ago), and he really wasn’t comfortable with her laying on him.  And I was on the couch with a perfectly snuggly quilt, but she was noticeably disinterested.

Wingate is hosting the 2011 World’s Strongest Man Competition, and we went today to catch some of the fun.  We saw our US guy, Derek Poundstone, set a new world record in the metal block press.  He was great to watch…hamming it up for the crowd and everything.  We missed the Atlas stones, which is my favorite event, but it was still really cool.  One of the things that impresses me so much about an event like this is how “small” it is, for lack of a better term. Don’t get me wrong, there was a huge crowd, but we were standing right next to one of the British competitor’s wife, and the guys behind us were speaking some kind of slavic language and were definitly with another of the teams.  The Austrailian guy was out there with us all signing autographs.  I like that…these guys aren’t kept away from the crowds on a pedestal…they’re normal guys .  Derek is a cop in CT.  Anyway, here’s a pic of him making a new world record:

So, that was my day.  Now, I’m knitting something for a special Curly-Whirly friend of mine:)

1. I cry every time we leave for vacation because I don’t want to leave her.  This is one of the major reasons we bought a camper.
2. I kiss Shelli on the lips. 
3. Joey lets her lick his goatee.
4. I let her drink out of my water glass.  She’s not a happy camper now that I’m on a seltzer-water kick.
5. We put a litter box next to my side of the bed because she was peeing in the corner.  We attributed it to her feeling that it wasn’t fair that our bathroom was just a few feet away and hers was across the house. (she sleeps with us).
6. I dressed her in a onesie for our family Christmas picture back in 2008, I think.  She was NOT a happy camper, and the look on her face was pretty shocking.  I sustained injury after the photo was taken.
7. If a huge disaster was to strike, I would very likely rescue her first before helping people.
8. Shelli does this thing where she stretches out and grabs her perch and does this crazy pull-up.  It’s pretty badass.  We call it her Bruce Willis Move.
9. We have to play “Scarykins” every night where we shuffle around the house so that Shelli can hide behind something and jump out at us and then run away.  Sometimes, if I run away from her and jump onto our bed, she’ll follow me, jump up, totally freak out, and then run away.  It’s kind of awesome.
10. Her favorite toys:  her white fuzzy mouse, her catnip cigar, her chirping mouse (it chirps every time it touches a surface.  Freaks the crap out of us at night when she starts playing with that thing), the toe of a sock that I cut off and filled with catnip.  And my hair ties.  There are hundreds of ponytail holders around the house and I can’t find ANY of them.
11. We can’t put boxes or baskets out anymore because she thinks they’re litterboxes and pees in them.
12. I wish I could be at home because I could spend all day with her.
13. She smells really good.  Other cat people will understand this…there’s something about the kitteh smell that is wonderful.

Don’t judge me.

As usual, I woke up at 5:30 on my morning with no alarm.  I actually woke up at 5:25 and saw that my alarms weren’t set and freaked out, forgetting it was Saturday.  It hasn’t been too bad, though.  It’s 63* outside, so I’ve got the windows open and the breeze feels nice.  Shelli obviously likes it, too.

Today will be a thesis-filled day, which I research and write my first chapter.  The feedback on my introduction wasn’t too bad, and my advisor thinks that it’s headed in the right direction, so that encouragement has restored my self-confidence that I may not lay a steaming terd when this whole thing is said and done.

It’s been a rough week.  Phil found out Wednesday that surgery is not adviseable for his cancer.  Apparently the tumor is still too close to the vein to his pancreas, and doing surgery would just aggravate the cancer cells that are left and cause them to grow faster, so it would make his prognosis worse rather than better.  Even worse, he got the news during choir rehearsal on Wednesday, so he didn’t even have the chance to go home and process the news before having to tell us.  My heart is broken, and I’m having a serious crisis of faith about the whole thing.

What’s been pissing me off most, though, has been all of the “miracle talk” that’s still going on all over his Facebook.  Don’t misunderstand me, I do believe that miracles happen; I’ve seen things happen in my life that cannot be explained by any logical means without consideration of the involvement of divine intervention.  However, to continue to throw that talk out to him at this point trivializes the weight of his situation.  It’s flippant.  And it’s selfish.  I do believe that their intent is genuine; they want to see a miracle, and they want him to keep hope.  The problem, though, is that it does more harm than good.  Joey calls it “the Christian form of denial.”  Am I still praying for some kind of miracle?  Of course.  But, at this point, the definition of “hope” in this situation needs to shift and as such, so must the form of encouragement.

There are so many things that I think the Church (Big “C”) are getting wrong these days.  This is one of them.

This next week is going to bring us back into the nineties, which disappoints me.  I’m so ready for fall.  I come alive in Autumn and, for the past few years, in Winter, too.  It surprises me, because I used to have SAD so bad that I had to keep a UV bulb in my bedside lamp so I made it through the winter.  Now, the crisp coldness is a joy, and the few snow days that we do get are wonderful.  Precious few things are better than sitting in the living room with a steaming cup of coffee and the fireplace blazing while watching the kids sled down the never-treated roads of our neighborhood.  And the snow cream.  Can’t forget that.

Anyway, enough rambling.  Believe it or not, despite the tenor of this post, my meds are working quite well.  I am keeping perspective, even in my grief over the burdens so many of my friends are facing.  Once Joey (finally) wakes up, we’ll head out to Blessings Cafe for breakfast and pick up a track for the song I’m singing at James/Shannon’s wedding.  Then, thesis-thesis-thesis.

Here’s another Kins-bliss pic for your day:-)

P.S–the title of this post comes from a Monkees song.  It’s quite beautiful.

Anyway, with that behind me, I’m going to wait until tomorrow to start on the first chapter.  Now, some club soda and Destination Truth:)

She’s not sending you a terd.  I promise.

Anyway, I’m past my mini-meltdown from yesterday, I think.  I’ve decided that I’m going to let myself laze around until 10 or 11, and then I’ll hit my thesis introduction full-force.  Part of my anxiety over this is that I haven’t had to work on it since February when I got my prospectus approved.  Once I got that done, I had to focus on my class (Middle Eastern Lit), and by the time I was done with that, I was in the throes of my “chemical storm” )as my psychologist called it).  So, really, the past few weeks have been the first time that I’ve actually been able to get my brain back in gear again. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten most of what I worked on and now I’m left looking at the blank page and feeling overwhelmed because I don’t even know where to begin.  I’ll get over it, though.  I’ve got no choice.

One of the major things that I’ve discussed with my psychologist over the past couple of years has been my sense of practicality and how it pushes away anything else.  I don’t take care of myself because I’m so busy trying to take care of everything else.  My motto has always been, “the world’s not going to quit spinning, and I’ve got to do my job, so I’ve just got to suck it up and get over it.”  I’ve been so busy trying to “suck it up” that I forget that it’s okay to take care of myself, that it’s not frivilous to put up Christmas decorations or to want to re-do my living room in earth tones and owls…that knitting isn’t a waste of my time…that a day trip to the mountains to hike is actually good for me.

I’m glad it’s going to be rainy for the next couple of days.  It’s always easier to concentrate on writing when it’s rainy outside.   I have absolutely no idea why. 

On an unrelated note, Joey moved our recliner back into the living room from the office.  I think someone else is enjoying it more than he is, though…

It’s just a matter of time before she realizes that I’m not going anywhere today and crawls up into my lap, rendering me incapable of moving but desperately needing to get up to pee.