Merging SpacyTracie.com

I’ve been thinking about it for a while and am pretty sure I’m going to merge all the posts at SpacyTracie.com with this blog.

This blog has been in existence in one form or another since 1997 (before “blog” was an everyday word) and has always been a smorgasbord of our lives, our kids, Jack, me, etc.

I created SpacyTracie.com just over four years ago thinking that I would be ranting a lot about my diabetes. I didn’t want to clutter things up here with my rants and raves about having diabetes, my weight issues, etc. But Diabetes has just become a part of my life and I no longer find many things to rant about or post about. Even if I did, I’ve come to realize that putting my thoughts and feelings about it here is fine and not really off topic. This blog is about Jack and I, as well as our family. After all it’s “JacknTracie.com” right?

I’ve been thinking about it a good long while, but haven’t gotten around to it because I knew merging the blog would be a pretty daunting task.

Today I updated our wordpress and discovered they made it super simple to import every post, comment, picture, and even the categories and tags right into this blog with just a few clicks of a button. How cool is that?

So soon, when I have the time to update the theme here, spacytracie and jackntracie will become one blog. And should be updated a LOT more often since wondering which blog to post on will be no longer be an issue.

The turkey was stuffed, but I wasn’t!

Ok so I lied. I was a little stuffed. But I did better than years past eating-wise on Thanksgiving. I only had one piece of pie the whole three days we were at Grandma’s house. Even turned it down for leftover lunch the next day. Although apparently my sister-in-law thought it freakin’ hilarious in a “you’re delusional” way when I said I’d stick with my healthier (than pie) spinach dip and tomatoes for my dessert. The nerve. But hey, overall I didn’t stuff myself to oblivion like I’ve done in the past and for that I’m patting myself on the back. I am pretty sure my BG levels remained pretty consistent. (I say “pretty sure” because I forgot my glucose meter).

We came home Friday night in time to unpack, clean up the house, and start some Christmas decorating. The rest of the weekend was spent decorating outside. What a CHORE! Thankfully we have wonderful friends that help us every year that makes it so much more fun and enjoyable.

My only gripe is I can never get a decent picture of our efforts. Our camera sucks at taking night pictures. The iPhone camera pretty much sucks too as you can see from the pictures taken with it of our decorated house below:

By the way, in my previous post there were two pictures. I edited them out just now because I was testing the Wordpress iPhone application and didn’t think about the fact that someone else’s child (my nephew) was in the pictures and I forgot to get permission from his parents before I posted them. They’ll be back once/if I get permission.

Holidays and Stress

The year 2006 was a rough one for my family. My mother was in a horrible car accident. My step father died. Some friends of ours lost their pet and much of their belongings in a house fire that my oldest son was witness to. I remember distinctly thinking that was one of the hardest years of our life and that things couldn’t get much worse, stress-wise.

What a stupid thing to think.

Granted, that year WAS a difficult year. But it’s crazy to think that’s the worst life could throw at you. Or that was our “share” of stress so we shouldn’t have more. It’s taken me almost two full years to realize that life in general is always going to be stressful to a degree and I need to quit dwelling on the fact that we had our “fill” in 2006. It’s like for the last two years, every time something has come up that’s stressed us out, I’ve felt like it wasn’t fair because, we had our fair share already!

I find myself looking towards the holiday season with a bid of dread. For me the holidays are always fun, enjoyable, and I absolutely love everything about this time of year. But there’s also always some stress and this year I discovered that I’m stressing about the fact that there might be stress. FFS! I used to be so easy going about stuff like this and take things in stride. Even the holidays.

There were holidays we hardly had a penny to put food on the table, let alone come up with presents for seven children. But we always managed and I don’t recall thinking everything had to be perfect nor stressing myself out like this.

I don’t know if it’s the state of our country and the economy, the new child in our lives, the family issues, or all of the above but it’s wreaking havok on my blood sugars and I really want to get back to the “take things in stride” kinda person I used to be.

Laughter is the best medicine?

My “big” doctor appointment went well yesterday all things considered. I had Jack go with me and that relieved a lot of my anxiety.

Yesterday’s appointment was a full physical … and I giggled through the whole thing like a total idiot. For example, my doctor asked if I drank alcohol. I giggled little a guilty little kid as I said no. He looked at me skeptically and asked, “not even occasionally?”. Oops. I admitted that I did drink occasionally then confessed I had one Mike’s Light Hard Lemonade (Raspberry Flavored) the night before. Then I had to elaborate and explain that my kids drank all the diet pop we had in the house and it was the only thing left.

He asked me, “what’s wrong with water?”

I giggled again as I felt a bit defensive explaining I drink water ALL THE TIME. What choice to I have? I even whined about how restaurants only have water or diet cola as the beverage choices for a diabetic… Not that any sort of alcohol is good for a diabetic.. but you know.. He caught me and I was rationalizing and acting like a goofy teenager or something. I also admitted to having a few drinks on the Fourth of July. He just gave me a disapproving look to which I giggled at of course.

The giggling did stop during the ‘female’ part of the exam. Imagine that?

Jack brought up basically everything I’ve been concerned about and that embarrassed me a bit. It was like being a hypochondriac by proxy. There were some things I wasn’t going to bring up. He meant well and I’m sure it’s all stuff I should have brought up anyway.

What was weird is my doctor’s attitude was completely that of a concerned doctor who wanted to hear everything I (Jack) had to say. Such a different experience than I’ve had in the past and not what I expected. Maybe because Jack brought some of it up instead of me? (Figures.. a man would listen to another man better… er. I didn’t say that.)

Now I just await the results of the blood work and most importantly, the results of the HbA1c. If it’s good, then life will continue as normal and I just need to get to back on focus for the weight loss. (Btw, I’ve lost 5 lbs since the last time I whined about gaining some back). If it’s not.. well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. So far everything looks OK now and my fears were mostly put aside. For now.

Posting when tired is bad

Seriously? Keeping score? Is that a good idea? I posted the “score” originally on a whim. Then I obsess on it, create a whole post about it and now today I’m like, “WTF was I thinking?”

If I am going to keep it real, yesterday I get no points. Nada. I was thinking I was going to go for a walk all day. That was my goal. I have been looked into getting some simple to carry self defense products since I’m doing this alone most of the time. But… I got sucked into work all day, then sucked into EverQuest, then sucked into the TV. I did nothing else. I did eat OK but.. just “eating OK” gained me 13 of the 50 pounds I lost. So… I can’t count that. But does that mean diabetes gets a point? See? It gets all complicated and now I want to kick myself for thinking this was a good idea, lol.

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