Step Away From the Cake

This quote came up on my meditation app this morning and I thought it was perfect.  Meditation has absolutely changed my life in many ways. I can no longer tell you how long I've been meditating. That's like asking me how long have I been breathing, it is that integral to my life at now. It took a long, long time to get here but it was completely worth the effort.  One of the benefits from meditation are that I no longer am moody. I get down definitely, but I think knowing myself so well has allowed me to not sink into deep depressions. I can see and feel when I'm getting down and I may even go with it for a day or so but then I pull myself out of it and move on with my life.  I also used to anger quickly and it would burn red hot. I don't get like that anymore. I do get angry, but then I ask myself why? Why am I allowing this to happen? And generally I can move away from it rather quickly.  I am not so quick to make decisions. I used to make snap decisions with litt...

 On Monday I started taking the ibuprofen twice a day. All week things have been good. Little twinges here and there but totally livable. Then last night I decided not to take it for some reason. I decided to see if things were really getting better. Well, it had only been 3 1/2 days. I slept really well last night, but when I got up this morning it's not great. It's not horrible but it is definitely not as good as it has been. So I think that tells me that I really do need to continue taking this. 10 days is not horrible and I'm not taking the maximum dosage so I should be good. I just hate taking drugs of any kind and I hate depending on them. But I will carry on especially since we will be walking a whole lot tomorrow.  Last night I came home and all I could think of was doing some Supernatural. I was so incredibly eager to do that. I walked Mavy and it was on my mind the entire time. It felt so good to move and sweat and just go crazy. I did a kind of long one, 20ish mi...

 I've been doing the happy back challenge and I tried rolling out my IT band and nothing has been seeming to work on my knee. On Tuesday I started taking 800mg of ibuprofen twice a day just because I could no longer stand the pain. That has been working pretty well. The knee has not been pain-free but it has been markedly better. After the challenge poses, the instructor has a Q&A session where he answers questions that participants have submitted. In my first challenge I loved listening to the questions because there was a lot of really good information in there. For the happy back challenge I haven't listened because I've been waiting to rather late to do the poses and the Q&As have been fairly lengthy. But for some reason on Tuesday night I decided to listen to the Q&A (these things always blow me away when they happen). Well, on that night someone wrote in about an IT band problem. They had been doing the hip and back challenges to try and stretch it out. Th...

 Wow, I had some of the weirdest dreams just before I woke up. First, at some point during the night I had taken off my wrist guards. Don't know when or why but they were off when I woke up. That also explains why my right arm was completely numb at one point. Then I was in a Mormon church!!!! Talking to some of my coworkers from school. One of them was apparently moving to Washington DC and I was going to visit like every other weekend. There was a shopping cart and DC was in the cart!?!?!?!? What???? My alarm went off around then and it took me a minute to figure out what it was. At first I thought it was bells in the Mormon church where I was. That was crazy. Haven't had a wild dream like that, that I actually remembered, in a while. Weird.  In other news, I finally broke down yesterday and took some ibuprofen. OMG!! I was pain-free for sooooooo long. It was amazing. I walked Mavy with little pain. I did some Supernatural with little to no pain. It was awesome. Being able t...

 I wrote the other day about my hip/back challenges and then foam rolling. That was Thursday. Since then I have not done any of the challenges or any foam rolling. Friday the knee was pretty good, Saturday it was pretty good, yesterday it was a mess. It was painful and when I walked Mavy both knees felt unused and creaky. It was strange. So I decided that I needed to do something. Doing nothing wasn't working. Doing everything wasn't working. But I needed to do something. So I did the Happy Back challenge. It was hard, that challenge is much harder than the hip one, but it felt pretty good overall. I went to bed and the knee was a little annoying all night. I couldn't seem to find the right place for it. But I woke this morning and it felt amazing. No pain. It works like it's supposed to. It's all good. Now I know that won't last and it is probably seizing up as I sit here typing this, but at least for a short time it was normal. That gives me great hope. So wh...

 Every one has them. They are not the same for everyone, I would venture to say they are not the same for anyone. But they are there. Many, most??, times they are completely fabricated. Among my demons are my so-called lack of money skills. I posted about that yesterday. I was never taught how to handle money so I just don't know how. I was raised in a family that was, for all intents and purposes, poor. Money was always an issue though we always had a place to live and food on the table. My parents lived paycheck to paycheck and when it was payday good things happened. We had a really good dinner. Or we got some sort of treat like candy or something. And we were told, Dad got paid today. So in my little mind, payday became synonymous with treating yourself. That is a hard mindset to let go of. I'm not in any way blaming my parents. They were two people who never finished high school and had 7 kids and were doing the absolute best they could. My mom was amazing. My dad left a l...