Back in the Game...sort of...

    Whew! I don't do 'sick' well at all. Most women get sick and go about their day like nothing happened. I'm ashamed to say that I am not one of them. I think I was once, when my daughter was little and that's just how it had to be, but now I take a more 'manly' approach (sorry guys, but you know it's true;-) by whining and complaining. My poor daughter fled the scene for a couple of days, but unfortunately for the dog, he was my captive audience. The great thing about dogs though, is that they never seem to mind the whining as long as they can be with you. So my dog, my neti-pot and I weathered the storm together in a useless, self-indulgent heap on the couch.

   I guess I don't feel especially apologetic about being a little self-indulgent. I still took care of what I needed to, and as the parent of a now-adult child, I've earned a little 'me' time. Truth be told, I've earned more than a little me time. Unfortunately for me, it's not you that I have to convince. I found this amazing quote that spoke to me through the fog of my (not) serious illness. Maybe because I was so (not) close to death, this quote struck me as being especially meaningful:

Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.  

-Mark Twain

   Isn't that just awesome? I have to wonder though, what a person is supposed to do if they themselves are the small person belittling their own ambitions? It's like being your own worst enemy. Despite a tendency to have what some would consider a tenuous hold on reality sometimes (in a good way;-), I do have the occasional crisis of confidence. Sometimes it's because I'm over tired, and sometimes when I'm sick everything I write just sounds like crap to me. That's when I need to get realistic with myself. I don't mean the self-berating diatribe that I'm oh-so-good at, but something a little more akin to Mark Twain's sentiment in the above quote. It's not my nature to be a small person, to think small, to emote small to keep my head down and not make waves. NONE of that is me. It IS me to believe in ALL possibilities. Amazing things happen to people all the time, but rarely to people who don't believe in amazing possibilities. That's who I am; someone who thinks I can actually do something worthwhile in spite of 'realistic' evidence to the contrary. And not just me, all of us are capable of big things. I think it just takes a little 'crazy' sometimes to free ourselves from the constraints of 'being realistic'. Works for me:-)

  Okay, so I'm not 100% 'whine free' yet, but I'm definitely on the mend. I can feel the mental gears starting to turn again in an encouraging way (parallel to the non-encouraging gears, but I'll take it). My car has been repaired and is legal again for another year, my dog is licensed and I think my new SD harness is paid for. I noticed that both the new inspection sticker on the car and the dog-license tag are yellow...does that mean 2012 is a golden year? It can if I want it to I suppose. In any case, things seem to be looking up:-)