It's crazy I tell you....

It's official. Christmas is four days away and I've lost my mind. I know I had it yesterday when I left to run to the store... but I don't remember having it after I arrived home...

My nine year old daughter flew in last Wednesday from Colorado Springs and will be staying with us until January 5th and her and her brother and using every minute they have to its fullest. Needless to say this is not condusive to finding a quiet spot in the house to try to attempt to complete my exercises, but at least it makes it interesting!

I loved the visualization of the colors in this exercise. I am a very visual thinker and oftentimes find myself at the bad end of a joke because I can "see" what people are describing in their jokes and it becomes one of those, "Whoa too much information... thanks for the bad visual" moments.

On a scale of one to ten I would rate myself at about a seven overall. Physically I'm comfortable in my skin. I do have COPD at 34 but I am successfully managing it and actually working on improving my lung capacity so that I don't have to learn to live with it, but I can teach it to learn to live with me. I exercise regularly, I am now eating regularly (thanks to my hubby) after dealing with the after-effects and underlying habits of recovering from an eating disorder that effected me in high school, and I am able to get enough sleep every night so that I don't feel like it's another five-hours-of-sleep-for-this-week marathon. Spiritually I am very secure in my beliefs and can find the solstace and comfort that I seek in those beliefs. Psychologically, well right now my autistic son is standing behind me making his sound effects- which generally consist of car sounds, brake sounds, crashing sounds, things blowing up, machine gun sounds and whatever else crosses his mind. Remember, he's autistic and ADHD so it gets very trying sometimes. After the seventh time of asking him to just give me five minutes to focus on this, I turned around just in time to see him body slam an invisibile wrestler into our coffee table. Good thing he knows that's all faked on tv..... So yes, psychologically I am stressed out but I am still in control and I know that there is a light behind every darkness. I also recognize that stress is a normal reaction and that not all stress is bad. Right now I don't feel overwhelmed, just pressed for time a little bit. But I also can recognize the signals my body gives off when I start to feel overwhelmed. That's when I take a minute to step back and just breath, come up with a plan to deal with my issues and then act on it.

-Jen

Journeying On

I have to say I really enjoyed this particular exercise. Like the typical mom I of course had to plan this into my day and successfully found my son's "on" button, got him to school without a fight, got the fiance out the door to work, washed up the breakfast dishes and pulled my laptop down onto the floor with me. Before I even started playing the audio, I just sat there in the dark of the morning, realizing all at once how quiet it was... and then the cat promptly meowed to remind me I still wasn't quite alone.

The first thing I noticed was how calming the voice I was hearing was. It was not rushed, the gentleman spoke very clearly and I felt very comfortable following the directions he was giving. At first, I'll be honest, this mental workout started much like my physical exercise routine... start warming up the body while going over the "to do" list in the mind. I recognized what I was doing about thirty seconds into it and had to intentionally redirect my mind from the grocery list to redirecting my energy into this exercise.

I have to say I was truly surprised at the outcome. I did feel tired- tired probably isn't the right word, more like extremely relaxed. Which in turn may have triggered me feeling tired. I don't think my brain knew what to do since it wasn't trying to micromanage my life right then. Ultimately after I just laid on the floor for a few more minutes, the cat half looked at me and then meowed as she was walking away as if to ask if I was done yet, so I got up and I felt surprisingly alive. I am truly ashtonished at how this affected me both mentally and physically and am excited to see how I can continue to grow and flourish in the future.

-Jen R.

Welcome to the Insanity :)

Hi All,

My name is Jennifer but everyone just calls me Tink (short for Tinkerspell- something about me being petite and fairy like and being non mainstream with my religious choices- the blonde hair probably didn't help either... personally I think it's just another way for my brother to tease me:) ) and I currently live in the Tacoma, Washington area. I am engaged to an Army Medic and am out here because, well, it happens to be where Ft. Lewis is located- which also happens to be where he is stationed. Sounds logical right? I like to think so too! I have two children from a previous marriage, my son lives with us in Tacoma and my daughter lives with her father in Colorado. My daughter is flying up to spend two weeks with us on Wednesday so things are very hectic over here at the moment. Ok hectic is putting it lightly, it's more like spastic, frantic and just outright chaotic... yes that sounds about right.

I just wanted to take a moment and welcome you to the somewhat organized chaos that is my life! Fair warning I do love to write but alas seem to have the capacity to ramble on as well (I can honestly say my mother made me do it! She's a reporter with the newspaper in Clarksville, Tennessee- hey, I had to learn somewhere right?)

There will be times when it seems like I'm jumping topics- don't worry, it's probably becuase I am. I have an eleven year old son that is both Autistic and ADHD. This simply means I rarely complete any thought process before it's interuppted by another one (and they said he was going to have concentration issues ;-) )

I look forward to reading everyone's post and hope that all of you enjoy reading mine and leave with at least a grin if not a full blown smile:)