Life Gave Me Lemons But Left Out the Instructions For The Lemonade

You know how sometimes you feel like your life is finally coming together? That all the pieces are finally falling into place and you can finally take a moment to breathe easily cause everything is really OK? And then, you know that feeling of when life comes and just rips the rug from right under your feet and now you don’t know how to feel anymore? Yeah..that’s me now. Life just can’t be that easy after all.

So it’s nothing too serious, hopefully, but I swear I could not keep myself from laughing a bit when I took it all in. After all, this was me starting a new, healthier life. I’m all about eating well, being outdoors, keeping myself as healthy as possible. But who knew that that healthier life would also include a diagnosis for eczema. Wonderful. So let me just start from the top…

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a couple of dry patches that were particularly itchy around both of my ankles. To be honest, I didn’t think much of it. I know I have a nickel allergy that causes similar types of spots on me if I wear anything with nickel in it so I just assumed I had worn something, like leggings, with a zipper down there which may have given me the allergic reaction. Not a problem, usually clears up in a day or two and is a minor hassle. Work had been particularly crazy these last couple of weeks with a lot of big projects coming to an end and to be honest, I wasn’t monitoring it very closely. Another week goes by and I notice that the original patches are now bigger and redder and that the itchiness has now spread to other areas of my legs. Now I’m starting to get a little worried. Not to mention, trying to sleep at night had become a big problem. I couldn’t make the itchiness stop no matter what I tried and new rashes began to form. I made an appointment for a dermatologist and I don’t think I was even in her office for 2 minutes before she took a look at my legs, diagnosed me with eczema, told me I’d have to use a topical cream for 2 weeks, and then sent me on my way with a “See you in 2 weeks…”

Umm…what? Was this contagious? Will it continue to spread?? How did this even happen???

What Healthy Means To Me

So I came back to blogging about 10 days ago. It was at a time where I felt like my motivation to do anything really fell at an all time low. Maybe it was just the exhaustion from the move and renovation kicking in.  Add work and just life in general into the mix and I just didn’t have the energy to do anything any more.

I don’t remember why, but I opened up my blog posts from a a year and half ago and I started reading and I just thought – I want to be that girl again. I was pushing myself everyday to be better and I had felt so good. Stupidly enough, I let life get in the way and one week off turned to two and so on. It was so easy to fall back into a rut and I am so upset when I think about it now. All that effort and work just wasted.

Part of me thinks I stopped trying to be better because I stopped blogging. It sounds silly, but actually writing down my progress in a such a public way, not only motivated me to keep going, but helped me keep track of myself. My failure before was also focusing too much on the fitness aspect of being healthy. But being healthy is so much more than just working out.

Being healthy to me means finding that balance between work and life. It means not letting the stress from my 9am-5pm job carry over and  continue to wear me down at 9pm. It means opening up my fridge and putting together a home cooked meal instead of opening GrubHub or Seamless. It means making the effort to actually go outside and breathe in the fresh air, if only for a couple of minutes to clear my head. It means putting in the effort to be more physically active than I was the day before. It means finding the time to balance being a wife and a friend and a daughter. But most importantly, it means finding time for me to just be me.

I Know What I Did Last Summer: A Renovation Story

So as I have mentioned before, hubby and I have finally settled into our new home after months of preparation. It was probably the fastest and most hectic summer I have ever experienced. I finally summed up the courage the other day to look through some of the pictures I had taken during the renovation process and I must say, we have indeed come a long way.

Below are pictures of our Living/Dining Room Area under construction:

The first picture was taken immediately after the previous owner had moved out. It’s funny. When we saw the co-op originally, all decorated with furniture, we thought it was a fairly clean unit with a nice white carpet and we were impressed, especially after some of the other units we had seen.

Resolutions Don’t Have To Wait For The New Year

It’s Saturday morning here in New York and instead of sleeping in like everyone else in the world is doing, the alarm in body hasn’t seemed to figure out that I don’t need to wake up at 6:30am on the weekend. So alas, here I am, sitting on my terrace, drinking a cup of coffee to get my juices flowing, wishing it had been a sunny day so I wouldn’t be sitting in the midst of fog.

It’s a shame, you can’t even make out the bridge at all in this type of fog but It’s fine. I’ll forgive this weather for today.