never be anything but loud
Resolution Review
With the year coming to a close, everyone is doing what we all do best at this time of year – taking stock of our lives, throwing out the old, bringing in the new and making resolutions.
Some we will keep, others we will fail miserably at.
Sometimes you do things you didn’t even set out to accomplish during the year. Sometimes you don’t do things you’d thought would be easy.
Resolutions aren’t set in stone for me. They’re more like guidelines, a malleable set of ideals or goals that I would like to accomplish during the upcoming year. Suggestions, if you’d like. In other words, my world is not going to implode if I don’t accomplish a single one of them.
Last year, I split them into two lists: Accomplishments and Resolutions. This was to give me some flexibility. Accomplishments are finite things, tasks that can be accomplished easily and have an end goal. Resolutions are more broad – they function as general ideals to implement into my life. Ways of living, thought processes and they usually don’t have an end goal. I think I’m going to use the same this year.
But in the spirit of reflection, let’s look back on the list from this past year (note: I had originally posted these on my old website but those entries aren’t public anymore so I’ll just recreate it here)
House of Horror
In this house, we do horror.
Horror is one of Steve’s favorite movie genres. It’s not my preferred one but I certainly don’t mind it. The slasher flicks are my favorite – I can sit down and watch a good old-fashioned knife-stabbing, blood shedding film any time of the year. The ones I have more of a problem with are the paranormal fantasy types because those scare the ever living shit out of me. (I’m looking at you Paranormal Activities). We are big fans of the classics and Steve, much to my chagrin sometimes, loves the B-movies – things like El Chupacabra takes Manhatten while Being Afraid of the Dark 1
We do Halloween. When we lived in Pennsylvania we spent the entire month of October visiting any haunt that was within in a two hour radius 2. We watched all of the scary movies AMC would play constantly. We spent weeks prepping our costumes, tons of money in the Halloween Adventure stores and went to as many events as we were invited to. This past year we dressed up for a party and to help my parents in their neighborhood haunted house. Steve was Jason Vorhees and chased kids with a chainsaw – loved every minute of it!
If you look back at that post, you’ll see Steve in his hockey mask. That mask was actually one he borrowed from my parents. It’s simple white plastic one that I’m sure they purchased from a costume store. We have one just like it somewhere. But for the longest time, Steve has been jonesing for a real one – one that looks all worn and authentic like in the movies but is light enough to wear. He thought he had been successful when he picked one up from Toys-R-Us, but that one ended up being a bit campy and really heavy.
- Not a real movie, but you get my drift!
↩ - Shocktoberfest, Arasapha Farms, Jason’s Woods and Field of Screams were some of our favorites – in that order! ↩
Conquering Everest
A few weeks ago, I get an email at work announcing the hospital’s annual blood drive. As my finger is hovering over the delete button, I stop myself.
Three years ago, on December 4, 2008, I was diagnosed with two clots in my lower left leg (deep vein thrombosis). The course of treatment to keep these clots from dislodging and moving into my lungs (pulmonary embolism) was to start me immediately on blood thinners. This meant that for two weeks, I had to get injections of Lovenox in my stomach while my PT/INR levels balanced out – this basically meant my blood had to be at a stable level of just thin enough not to clot and to help break up the existing clots but not too thin where I would bleed out from a tiny cut. Once my levels were stable, I was able to transition to an oral blood thinner but I still had to go in almost every day for blood draws so they could watch the levels. Since there were so many factors that could change them (diet, medications – including the pain meds I was taking – caffeine, etc.), they had to monitor where they were at so they could adjust my dosage accordingly.
It was fairly complicated but I eventually balanced out and they weaned me off of getting the blood drawn every day. I got on a steady dose of blood thinner and within six months, the clots had broken up and I was completely off the medicine and back to normal, for the most part (there’s a few residual side effects but nothing I can’t live with).
Regardless, before that happened, I was TERRIFIED of needles. I don’t know where the phobia came from but for as long as I can remember, it was like that. It wasn’t the pain, or lack thereof, that bothered. It was the act of puncturing the skin that squicked me out. If I knew I had to get blood drawn or a shot, my anxiety would be through the roof – pale, short of breath, sweaty, ready to faint. It just wasn’t something that I could conquer.
Christmas Wrap-Up
Y’ALL! (Or ‘YOUSE GUYS’ for my Philly readers!) Can I tell you about Christmas? Because Christmas was fantastic! I mean, literally the last week or so has just been so good that I want to cry over how happy and content my life is. Save for a few snags that we had in the middle of last week, our holiday went over so smoothly that I almost couldn’t believe it was Christmas. Forgive me, because this entry might be long and tedious but I want to remember every moment when I go back and read over it.
And sadly, I have like no pictures. There are a few floating around, probably on my mom’s or Steve’s phone but I don’t have the gumption to track them down right now. Guess I can chalk it up to either having too much fun or being too busy to pick up a camera. All of it relative to what time of day we’re talking about.
Merry Christmas to You!
MERRY CHRISTMAS Y’ALL!
From our home to yours, here’s wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Here’s hoping your holiday season is filled with peace, love and joy. Love you all and thanks for reading!
Kristy, Steve, Sammy & Baxter
