Getting close to February

It's hard to believe that the first month of 2008 is coming to a close already. February will be here this Friday! Ever since the end of the Christmas holidays, it's been really difficult for me to NOT think about what was happening a year ago. Every new day is a reminder to me of how ill my mom was at this time last year. For instance, this weekend last year was when my mom's older brother Joshua and aunt Bonnie and my cousin Bertha came to see my mom. I had called them and told them if they wanted to visit, to do it soon, because she was declining fast. I remember the whole weekend as if it was yesterday. I still have dreams where I'm full of anxiety because my mom's really sick and I couldn't do anything about it. God hasn't blessed me with any peace-filled dreams about my mom yet. I think after Valentine's Day (the day she went to be with the Lord) is when I will start to feel better about things. Not that I feel bad now, don't get me wrong. I can still appreciate everyday happenings and activities I like doing. It's just that several times daily, my mind will go back to a year ago and be reminded of the times right before my mom died. I think this is normal and it's part of the process of grieving, especially close to the one year anniversary of her passing. I had blogged last year about me being on medication for anxiety and panic attacks. I am still on the medication and will go back to my doctor in April to evaluate taking me off the medication. He basically wants me to be on the medication until past the one year anniversary of my mom's passing. I haven't had any panic attacks since last June, and I feel pretty good, but it's hard to know whether it's really the medication (I take the lowest dosage possible) or that I just started to feel better after a while. One side-effect of my medication is that I've gained about 4-5 lbs since taking it. The good thing about the medication is that I think at least in the beginning it helped me to not feel anxious. The bad thing is it has changed me so that I am less of a motivated self-starter than I was prior to the medication. It's a trade off. I can see the link of being a Type-A personality and panic disorders, can't you? My theory about my weight gain is that I have been a lot less motivated to workout consistently. It's just easier to sit around and read or scrapbook than to get up and run. As you also read in my previous blog post, I am trying to be more consistent with the activities that I want to do this year that are good for my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. I've been regularly working out so far in January, doing exercise classes at the gym at work, running, weights, DVD's at home, etc. I can feel a difference, even if the pounds haven't come off yet. Usually when I first start to get serious about my workouts again, I GAIN weight before I start to lose weight. I've read this is common because when you start to work out, your body retains more water (a good thing supposedly), and you get more muscles, which weigh more than fat. When the fat starts coming off is when you see the scales start to go down. This has been a consistent pattern with me, so this time was no different. I'm grateful to have a very encouraging husband, and some buddies to work out with from my work gym. I'm continuing with my one scrapbook page per day challenge at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I have uploaded one new page everyday in January so far, and it's almost over now! I'm proud for sticking with it, even though on certain days it was difficult to come up with inspiration for a page, or what to scrapbook about. It has challenged me to dig more deeply into why I scrapbook and work on my skills and journaling. I'm come out with pages that I'm really proud of. So, in the spirit of the Super Bowl this weekend, I made a page about Todd and AJ meeting their football "heroes".