Monthly Archives: November 2015

A guilty pleasure is defined as something you know you shouldn’t do, but you do it anyway. Everyone has at least one. I have several including day-long movie binges and eating out of the ice cream carton. These guilty pleasures are just for me. I would never do any of them in front of another person. Then, I would feel the need to explain myself, or justify my silly choices.

Today’s question: what is my one guilty pleasure that is so good that I make no apologies? I think mine would be staying up crazy late on a work night reading my Kindle in bed. Tricia has probably fallen asleep half an hour ago, and I can barely keep my eyes open, but I’m going to keep reading until the end of at least one more chapter. Maybe more.

It seems silly when I write it out like this. There are so many other things that I could choose as a guilty pleasures. Sneaking an extra piece of chocolate after my workout, having one too many drinks, or even sleeping in for an extra hour on the weekends. Those, to me, require an apology or a justification. I worked really hard, I deserve this chocolate. Or I had a really long week, I really needed to sleep in today. Staying up crazy late to read just one more chapter? It makes work painful the next day, but it is always worth it. I will never justify my late night binge reading.

My fiance and I are getting married next month, and we are really excited about the future. We have been talking to my doctor about starting a family. He started me on a round of medication to see how I would respond. Today I went back for a follow-up appointment. The results were better than I could have hoped. Basically, no crazy hoops to jump through to start a family. We’ll be ready as soon as we come back from the honeymoon. It’s exciting and scary at the same time.

Thinking of the future reminded me of a conversation I had with a woman at a music festival the summer before last. I don’t even know how we started the conversation. We had been hanging out together, listening to music for a few hours when we began talking about our relationships. She was completely thrilled to find out that my girlfriend and I were planning to get married. Then she asked if we were planning to start a family. I told her we were crazy excited to have kids. Two please.

The next thing she said had a profound impact on me. She thanked me for being who I am, for choosing to exercise my right to marry my love. Then, she told me that my fiance and I are changing the world, by choosing to have children we are changing the way the world defines a traditional family. At the time I thought she was being a bit extravagant, but today I think I understand what she meant.

Not too long from now I will stand in my living room surrounded by my friends and adopted family, and not a single one of my relatives. I will marry the love of my life surrounded by love and peace because I choose happiness. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s what is right. Happiness isn’t always easy. Sometimes it means going against the grain, forging a new path. Sometimes it means saying goodbye to those who don’t understand and refuse to change. For me it means letting go of the past so I can follow my dreams. The future will be filled with amazing amounts of happiness, love, and family.

Today I took an eight hour course sponsored by the National Rifle Association. It was a basic pistol qualification course, teaching the fundamentals of handgun safety, shooting, and cleaning.

The instructor was in artillery for the Marines for several years. When his time was up he started teaching firearm safety. He was incredibly knowledgeable about firearms, and had an incredibly dry sense of humor. Even when he was demonstrating for the class using a rubber gun he would demonstrate proper safety by pointing the rubber barrel at the ground and “firing” to the side of the classroom. When he switched to guns using dummy bullets he carefully explained the mechanisms of the single-action revolver, double-action revolver, and the pistol. He would cock the hammer back, pull the trigger, and give an exaggerate “BOOOOOM”. IT was hilarious, but educational at the same time.

First he passed around the dummy guns so we could practice proper handling and sighting. Next came spent casings from various rounds and exploded bullets half-formed and broken into pieces. He passed around dummy bullets so we could load a magazine with .22, .40, and .45 caliber rounds. It gave us practice with safe equipment, and no fear of handling live rounds while we were still getting used to the safety portion of class. We learned what could go wrong when a gun misfires, and what only happens in Hollywood and cartoons.

By the time we got around to the range portion of class I wasn’t the least bit nervous. I stepped up to be one of the first to fire. Loading the magazine with live rounds for the first round worked just like it did with the dummy rounds. At each step he let us know exactly what we should be doing and the proper way to react when something goes wrong.

My first few shots weren’t on my 9″ target, but every shot after was dead on. He even congratulated me on my dead center shot. The first target was thirty rounds at fifteen feet. I did rather well after making a few corrections. My second target was another thirty rounds at thirty feet. I fired twenty from the same Smith & Wesson pistol, and the other ten with a double-action revolver. There was such a difference, and it was great to be able to try both side-by-side.

We took a written test at the end and were presented with our Basic Pistol certificate and patch. It’s enormous. I don’t know that I would ever put it on anything, but it is kind of a cool thing to have. I was told that I’m not allowed to hang up the diploma unless it’s in my closet. There is no gun in my near future, but I can always go back to the range to rent a lane and a handgun for an hour. I can’t wait to go back and fire an entire box of rounds. I already knew that I loved shooting. Today just confirmed that shooting is just as addictive as it was fifteen years ago.

In the last 48 hours I’ve only slept about five of them and not by my choice. I am exhausted and can’t think straight, but I’m completely wired! Wheee!! I came home Sunday, wrote a blog post, added to my Nanowrimo book, and went to bed to read. It’s a new-ish habit to go to bed, turn off the lights and open up my Kindle. It helps me get ready for bed and calm my mind. It puts me to sleep in a good way that reading books on my phone can’t possibly do. Plus, if I have to stretch out of bed after putting down my paperback just to turn off the light, I’m suddenly awake again. It completely defeats the purpose of reading myself into a calm, peaceful state – like blinking my eyes every other word and having to reread sentences because the words were too blurry to make out, or I just wasn’t paying attention to the words.

Good times. A friend of mine once said about people who fall asleep reading – “They’re doing it wrong.” I tend to agree. My problem is usually that I want to keep reading forever, but I just can’t physically stay awake any longer. It’s a good problem to have. Anyway, that isn’t exactly what happened two nights ago. I read for about twenty minutes, put my Kindle down and snuggled down into the blankets. I’m pretty sure that I had just fallen asleep when Tricia asked me how she was supposed to do the thing with the stake. Yeah. Sleep-talking is a new favorite for her. I rolled over, rubbed her back, and told her to go back to sleep. She sat up even straighter and said, “No. How do I make the crosses?” And motioned two fingers making a cross. Well, I don’t know baby. She huffed at me, rolled over and went back to sleep. Come to find out she was trying to make a door frame and wanted to know where to put the cross pieces. You got me.

I never did get back to a good sleep. I woke up every hour on the hour from midnight until 6pm and some times in between.  It made for an absolutely miserable Monday morning, but quitting time would come soon enough. I had two cups of coffee to keep me going – that’s pretty standard for me. Same routine when I got home yesterday – wrote a blog post, added to my Nanowrimo (November is hard work!), ate dinner and went to bed. I read for a bit, put my book down and fell asleep. I woke up at midnight. Again. Wide awake. Are you freaking kidding me?! After rolling over and snuggling back into the covers I was able to fall back asleep. For about an hour. Finally, at 3 o’clock I decided enough was enough. I pulled out my phone, checked my email, Facebook, played a few games, then pulled out the Kindle to read.

For a brief moment I contemplated going for a run, but it was crazy early, and there was no way to get dressed without waking up Tricia who would have called crazypants on me. That, and the fact that I haven’t run at all in two months, but (just to be sure) I checked the weather which convinced me to stay inside. Brrr!

I emailed work, told them about my miserable night, said that I would be totally useless, and took a benadryl to knock myself out cold. An hour later Tricia got up and asked how long I’d been up. No, I won’t be going to work. The benadryl was definitely not doing its job of knocking me unconscious, so I took a dose of Zzz-quil, too. A bit later I was able to sleep for fifteen minutes.

I quit. I’m wired, delirious, and incapable of driving myself anywhere. I haven’t had caffeine all day because I’m scared. BTW, decaf blows. No sugar, no nothing that could possibly keep me from sleeping tonight. There’s a bottle of wine in the fridge to go with a hearty meal of grilled chicken and brussel sprouts. I plan to have a few glasses, stuff myself silly, and pass out. Please make this work.

Oh, this is such a fitting topic for today. Earlier I talked about my struggle with Fibromyalgia. It is such a misunderstood disease, and only recently has been included in the list of chronic illnesses. I’m still in the camp of people who believe fibro is caused by something else – Lyme Disease, nerve damage, something. Anything other than I just woke up like this one day.

I’m luckier than some with this disease. My doctor was able to diagnose me within about 6 months. Several months after that I called him in tears because I was in so much pain. I wanted anything he could give me to make it stop. He called in a prescription immediately. The first meds he put me on were anti-depressants and a seizure medication. Talk about off-label use! Doctors still don’t know why, but anti-depressants have proven helpful for eliminating fibro pain. The seizure medication works on neurological pathways in the brain (they think) to dull the annoying neuro symptoms like facial twitching, muscle spasms, widespread joint and muscle pain, just to list a few.

The one thing these medications didn’t help was the fatigue. A large portion of fibro patients have problems falling or staying asleep. More than that, the body is constantly in pain, so it is nearly impossible to get a fully restorative night’s sleep. I remember I used to sleep ten hours each night during the week, and twelve or thirteen on the weekends. It didn’t help. I was still unable to hold me head up. I couldn’t think straight, form basic words, or even stay awake. It was a nightmare. I told my doctor, again, that I was ready for something new. There was a new drug on the market, Lyrica – the first to ever be labeled specifically for use with fibro. Of course, insurance fought me at every turn, but my doctor submitted every form they needed and then some. Before long I was shelling out exorbitant amounts of money every month for this amazing new super drug. It truly changed my life.

That was about two years ago. Maybe three. I was stuck on this medication that had so many restrictions. Plus, it was starting to cause me to be just as spaced out and foggy as I was without the meds. It was finally time to give Lyrica the boot. I’ve been slowly weaning myself off of it for about two months. Yeah, that long. Saturday marked the one week anniversary of being Lyrica-free. I’m officially off my meds! Well, I haven’t died yet. The pain is slowly returning. My face twitches like no one’s business, and the creepy-crawly-buzzing sensation is back in full force. So far no ice-pick stabbing sensations – always a bonus. But I’m still determined to do this. I’ve lived with this illness for long enough that I feel confident I can face it on my own (plus with the help of my friends and family, heh). I’ve changed my diet and am slowly getting back to exercise. Crossing my fingers that my body decides to cooperate.

Baby steps.