And Now May is a Wrap – Recap and Goal Check In

I think I blinked. How in the world are we to the end of May?? Anywho, for as fast as it was, I made it through and even got to check some things off of personal to do list as well as learn some things about myself.

I will start with the simple things – my list. (if you need a reminder of what is on the list I wrote my January post about what I was doing in 2021, or at least my TO DO list for the year)

Blog post for every month – check! you are reading Mays!

Book – check! I picked another one of the Reese Witherspoon book club choices, and although not one I would have picked with her seal of approval, I liked it. The Last Thing He Told Me… in a nutshell, it was about what a person would do to take care of the people they love, and what they are willing to give up to keep loved ones safe. Of course there was a bit of mystery, a bit of FBI stuff, and a successful artist in it, but the main idea is giving up what you love because the person you love asked you to. *as I was reading it I struggled with the main characters decision, but when you love someone and they ask you to let go, I guess you have to? Not a spoiler I promise.

New dish – omgoodness…. so before I tell you what we made, please know I am big fan of French Onion soup and as I have my favorite restaurant styles, I have really become a fan of the stuff we make at home. That being said, we found a recipe for French Onion Soup Pasta! It was so good that after we made it the first time, we had to invite family over to show them the glory of this dish…. craziness. (recipe found on myrecipes.com and just FYI, use Romano instead of parm!! trust me you will love it!)

So those are the check marks for the month, according to the list. That doesn’t mean I sat on my backside the rest of the month!

Angel and I got our hands dirty by doing another Wine and Vine. There is something about arranging plants in a big oversized pot and mixing colors and types of flowers that is just relaxing. I am happy to announce that we did this the 15th of the month and my flowers are still alive and perky! (I picked a lot of red because they draw in my hummingbabies and I want to make them as happy as I am!)

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  Audrey smelling the flowers I put together at Wine and Vine

Then there is work… I hate calling it that as I am finally living my dream of helping people through the home buying process and enjoying the showing so many different types of homes of all ages and the different styles of decor, it really is my passion… anywho in the month of May I believe I showed something like 50 homes?? It might sound like a crazy amount of windshield time (and it is) but seeing the face of a client when they find out their offer has been accepted – ESPECIALLY IN THIS MARKET – is a thing of beauty.

The grandbaby… what can I say about her except spending time with her just fills me up.She is so smart and definitely finding her own personality! Her love of music is definitely something her MiMi gave her, but don’t tell her Momma I said that, because she thinks it came from her! She is just so much love, stubbornness, adventure, and beauty in one very tiny human! I can’t believe that little monkey of mine is going to be a big sister here in just a few short weeks! I spent a little extra time with her in May and I loved every second of it.

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So what did I learn about myself in May? Actually it was probably more things that were reiterated rather than learned… I remembered how fierce I could be when there is something I want. How even when I am scared to death, I will put on my big girl pants and do whatever I need to do to succeed. I learned that when you are your own boss you can’t put the blame on someone else because you are that someone else. I remembered that I love with all of my heart, sometimes even when that love is not returned, but I refuse to let it be my downfall. Anywho, point is, with the world opening back up, I am being forced to look in the mirror and figure out what I want and how I plan to get it. I am not allowed to use the excuse that we are all quarantined and that is why I am not out there. As I would say before any race or big task “Its go time, Cupcake” and I am doing it.

So to end this months check in I will tell you what you have to look forward to:

1. I started a 90 day challenge: #autumnbod its a 10/10/10 x 3 deal – 10 sit ups, 10 push ups, and 10 squats morning, noon, and night – and every few days the numbers go up. I started that 5/28 and yes, I have missed a couple of work outs, but I was busy dead lifting a toddler to save her from disaster or sudden death, so that counts.
2. As I am doing more with my career, I am reading a Dave Ramsey book for June. I am NOT a fan of nonfiction, so this is a challenge all by itself.
3. There are already some new hiking places on the list for the next few weeks so I might have that part of my to do list checked off by the end of the month! **hoping that will also roll into a couple of 5ks!
4. Lastly, have been looking for some weekend places to get away and check off new places, so I will keep you posted on that as well.

As I always have to come full circle with my posts, here is the little #becomingabetterme plug – I will be 45 in 17 short days and since March of last year I have not really felt like myself. I know I am not the only one, and actually having covid for 90% of April didn’t really help, but seeing that I am checking things off my list, and even adding to it shows me that I have accepted rather than feared change or challenge. That I have not shied away for fear of failure, but rather tucked head and plowed my shoulder through whatever obstacle was in my path – or at least I am trying. For me and who I was just 5 years ago, that is a huge accomplishment. Thank you for taking this journey of #becomingabetterme with me.

So I Got Behind – March and April.

Well Hello Again. This has been a crazy few months for me!

March:

At the beginning of March Jenn and I went to Madison Indiana for a day trip. We planned to got to the Lanither Mansion and get pizza, but that plan was kicked in the butt by covid hours of the mansion. We still took a walk around the grounds and went to their winery (oh shucks we had to go have wine). We also took a side trip over to Clifty Falls and walked their trail that goes to one of their most well know waterfalls. We also walked up and down main street looking at the boutiques and just having a great day. (This checked off 1 new place/park to hike, Only 5 more to go)

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Also in March Angel and I took a new trail (new to us) in Plainfield. It was kinda chilly that day so it was only about a mile and half, but it counts. That makes 2 of my 6 for the year!

March also held a new recipe. The hubs and I tried a Scillian meat roll. Which is really like a mozzarella and prosciutto meatloaf. I would have loved to show the picture, but although it tasted good, it did not photograph well.

I also met my book of the month goal… I read The Girl He Used to Know – it was about a girl who runs into a boy she dated in college, and after being called weird most of her life she finds out she was on the autism spectrum and he helps her navigate her new found diagnosis. It was a good and quick read.

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Last big point for March was 3 closings! I was so happy to find 3 families their very own homes! Believe it or not, doing that made getting all of those other things in even harder!

April:

April was horrible… I got sick on April 4th, was tested for covid on April 6th, and got my positive results on April 8th. From there it was 3+ weeks of sleeping, fevering, not smelling, or tasting, and generally feeling like death.

Although there was no hiking, cooking, exploring new places, or even leaving my bedroom, I did manage to get my book read (albeit it took through the first month of May to get completed, but I stayed on task).

OOH!! and I almost forgot, I had a closing at the end of April too! It was a joy to get another happy family their new home on the heels of being sicker than a dog!

As it is the last week of May and I have plans for later this week and the weekend, I will be ready to give you a happy update on May as soon as the month is over!

I have enjoyed this holding myself accountable to these small 2021 goal. I know they are not anything special, but while trying #becomingabetterme its good to know I can still keep going even when life is not 9-5 anymore!

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February Check In

As I posted last month this year I have a TO DO list and I am already on it! We are now 7 weeks in and I have some check marks to report!

A recipe a month, January was bread. Yeah, you read that right. I baked. With the help of the hubs we made homemade bread. I was 1. very proud of myself. Yes, I had help, but still, it was something out of my comfort zone and I (we) succeeded. 2. surprised how I just jumped in without fear or anxiety, which I would have done in the past!

A book a month, to better track my books and the dates they were started and completed, I created an account on Good Reads (feel free to connect with me there if you want!) I am actually ahead of schedule!

January I read one – The Knowledge of Angels, Then February I read two books – The Whisper Network (which was a Reese Witherspoon book club selection) and then The Girl He used to Know. This one was really good. I cannot say that I related to any of the main characters, but (without giving anything away) the timeline was September of 2001 in New York and I remember how I felt seeing it on TV. Could not imagine having anyone up close to the situation.

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Hike and 5k’ing – although I have not done these yet (thank you Mother Nature), I have made plans and found locations that this will be happening! So I call that positive yardage!

Although not on the personal list, I thought I would share that in the last 2 weeks I have really been moving and shaking in real estate! There were several times in 2020 that I thought about throwing in the towel. I am so glad I pulled up my big girl pants and kept going because I have done exactly what I have wanted to do – help people find homes and happiness!

Also as an update, Miss Audrey is going to be a big sister and we now know the gender of the new baby:

I realize there is no big lesson learned or moral to the story, but sometimes while the process of #becomingabetterme the small accomplishments have to recognized just as much as the big ones.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and Now the Scary

I start a lot of my posts with this, but it is true. I promised when I started this blog I would share the good, the bad, and the ugly along the way… well, I didn’t expect that I would have to add scary to this journey, but I have, and here it is for you.

Let me jump back to about 2 months ago. Mid Aug I started heavy loading my calendar to make sure that I was caught up, even ahead at work since my anniversary cruise was the second week of Sept. At that point my husband started telling me that I looked tired. Well… YEAH! I was! 2-3 evening meetings a week, doing a little extra work on the weekend. Of course I was tired!

Then the cruise, dated Sept 9 – 16… for those of you who follow the weather, about 3-4 days before we were to port out there was a tropical storm/hurricane on the east coast coming in. We figured we would be fine since we were going to western Caribbean. Well, the first full day at sea was ROUGH! Not just a little, but stupid crazy ridiculous rough. So the second day when we went to port, it hit me hard. Sea sickness, the extreme heat, fatigue… I almost passed out on a wall in Costa Maya. So we went back to the ship, I took some med, and then slept. Then the next day on our excursion, I took a nap on the beach.  Don’t get me wrong, I like naps – but I NEEDED the sleep, didn’t just take them for the sake of vacation.

Fast forward to coming home. I had been back less than a week when I really started to feel crummy, so on Tuesday Sept 25, I decided it was time to go to the minute clinic. Head congestion, fatigue, dizziness, all around feeling crappy. She decided I had an ear infection (no shocker there – at least once a year since I was 5), and all of the symptoms of the ugly flu virus that was going around. She told me that I wasn’t to go back to work until I was fever free for 24 hours. OK, fine. For the rest of that week I ran a steady fever and slept pretty much 3-5 hours a day and then at night as well.

The following week, I went back to work. Walking to office winded me, but I chalked it up to the virus. Head felt swimmy, but I chalked that up to the virus as well.

Oct 10… things went BAT SHIT CRAZY.

I went back to the clinic because I was not getting better, but rather, seemingly worse. The more I tried to explain to the nurse what was wrong, the more she told me that I needed to go to the ER. She even refunded my copay for the office visit.

I called my husband and he agreed to leave work to take me. We figured, walking pneumonia or another more powerful virus. WRONG.

We got the ER and they started running tests, drawing arm loads of blood, they had me pee in a cup, attaching me to every machine there and as I am sitting there being asked a million and one questions the PA comes in and says “umm, we need to take more blood. We are concerned that we had a bad test reading and want to confirm.” I asked him what he meant and he said, “We checked your hemoglobin level and it came back at 4 and that concerns us.” I asked what that actually meant and he said, “your test came back as 4.2. Normal is 12. You should not have walked in here.” Then he started asking me about throwing up blood, blood in my stool (sorry for that visual), trauma, a car accident – ANYTHING. All of my answers were NO. Then he said it, “we have to give you a transfusion.  You are in desperate need of blood. We also plan to admit you, we are just waiting on a room for you.” I guess I should not have been shocked since my lips were a nice deathly shade of gray and my fingertips were an interesting bright white.

Admitted, 2 units(pints) of blood, 2IVs, a heart monitor, and several phone calls later I was sitting in my room waiting to see what the second unit brought my level to. It went up to 6.5.

The doctors decided I needed and upper and lower GI scan to see if there was bleeding, so Thursday I had the start the “cleansing process” (worst.thing.ever.) More blood work, an ultrasound (just to make sure the bleed wasn’t in my girlie region), and another unit(pint) of blood and I am finally over 7 (7.9 to be exact)  **side note, anything under 7 and they automatically give transfusions

Anyway, procedure done Friday morning with the only result of a hiatal hernia. The doctors had to go on deduction that I have been anemic all of my life and that a combo of a lot of things – late work nights, lack of gym time, less than stellar diet during the extra long days, being a girl and having a *cough period cough*, and even possibly having a virus that week after we got back. A lot of unknowns and a lot of speculation… but the bottom line is this:

Several of my nurses said the same thing – they had never seen such low hemo levels, and if it wasn’t for me being so healthy otherwise (being mostly diligent about my diet, going to the gym, being a nonsmoker, nondrinker, nondrug user all of my life) this could have been tragically different. Sure I have to take 650mg of iron a day for the rest of my life, and have to go in to my primary care doc to be checked periodically to make sure I am keeping my iron up, but that is a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

I know this was a long winded story, but it needed to be shared because for as hard as I try to continue  #becomingabetterme  I was leaving out a few key elements… you have to listen to your body and instead of writing off things like fatigue and a swimmy head, I should have known that was not my norm and addressed it immediately.

As a side note: I would like to thank those who came to see me, those who sent me well wishes, and those who cared enough to remind me that I matter and I need to take care of me. That did not go unnoticed. I promise. Because of you, my journey will continue.