2009-03-17

I never think of myself as living the healthy lifestyle either until I get together with one of our sets of siblings. Only then do I realize just how many vegetables and fruits we eat every day. How much pop we don't drink, how much moving around we do. I suppose that I earned that shamrock shake I had today with my smugness. At any rate, I hope we always stay the oddball people.

But it hasn't been all sunshine, smiles and smugness here. Spring coming to Michigan seems to have brought out either the crazies or the paranoid parents. It is hard to gauge. At any rate, there have been several reports of various cars and vans attempting to lure in local children. My kids, who get walked back and forth to school every day are in the low risk category, but still I felt the need to go over the "rules". No getting in other people's cars, running from people who scare you, etc. It brought up the questions, because Amy and Emily always have a zillion questions--why would people do this, why aren't the police putting them in jail, why am I trying to scare them, What kinds of things would people do, what kinds of people are safe, and on and on and on. And then my mind went into hyperoverdrive. I don't really want to go into too much depth, but I started having these horrible thoughts envisioning Amy and Emily in horrible situations.
Now, I confess, I am a worrier. I worry about a lot of things I may never need to actually worry about. And I try so very hard to make that worry productive and stop it when it isn't. How can worry be productive, well let's say you worry that you'll lose your job, you then start thinking well, if I lost my job what would I do... and say you think that it might be good to have a savings to fall back on, or a network of people you can send your resume to. Then you actually begin building those things. That is productive worry, it produces a plan. So when I worry about them getting snatched and I talk to them about the car thing, and I make sure that I can always see them on bike rides etc, that's productive. Hearing them scream in terror in my head, not so much. There really isn't a plan for that, it just serves to upset me. I spent about three days with these thoughts (I almost call them visions, but that seems like jinxing--like visions might come true) including a horrible night in which I thrashed around and do not remember (thankfully) any of my dreams. Today I did three things to combat it: I prayed, I went to yoga, and I decided every time a thought like that entered my head I would replace it with a vision of one of my children happy. And I feel better about it. (I also talked about it in depth with husband although I didn't want it to be contagious, so basically I cried and he listened which is what he does well and then he changed his snot covered shirt.) I'm not sure I'm through it yet, but so far so good. I guess writing about it here also counts. So maybe I did five things.

Sometimes I'm afraid to write about things because I'm afraid I'll jinx myself or I'll cause things to happen. I almost didn't' write about my horrible thoughts because of that and I almost decided not to write about this either for fear something expensive will break. But Husband is mailing out the check that pays off the last credit card bill today. That doesn't mean it is totally empty, but it does mean that everything on it should be manageable. Now the big plans are, start to pay off MIL the money we owe her (she's got a lot better interest rate thank goodness) and contribute some money to my IRA (buy low sell high). I felt so good I wanted to go out and buy something! That's just a joke, but my yahoo payment and flickr payments are coming due soon.... At any rate, it feels good to not have to worry about being overwhelmed and also to know that like people who have made lifestyle changes instead of dieting, we probably won't get in over our heads again for a while.

OK, I should get back to the grindstone at work.

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