Happy New Year

I know I've been a bad blogger lately, but December was crazy even before the holidays arrived. I'm actually looking forward to getting back to our normal work/school schedule. I thought I'd better post some photos of my Christmas cookies before we enter 2008. Taa Daa!

And here's the chip off the old block and her cookies.

Obviously, I helped a little, but the color scheme was all her idea and she did all the decorating.

We had a nice Christmas with my husbands family, and I'm looking forward to spending New Year's Eve with some very good friends. But all in all, I'm glad to be leaving 2007 behind. In many ways it was a pretty crappy year, and my husband and I are still not fully recovered from everything we've been through. But I'm trying to be hopeful and I'm looking forward to 2008 being a better year for us. I'll hopefully find out what, if anything, my new insurance company will do for us soon. I just bought airline tickets for us to go spend a week in Florida in February while my parents are down there. And on this last day of 2007, I just got my period, so at least in some ways my body is back on schedule and I hope to get the testing done in early Feb, so we get move forward on the medical front. Also, we started playing phone tag with the social worker just before leaving town for Xmas, so we should be scheduling our home study interviews and visits soon!

I hope that anyone reading this had a good December -- whatever holiday(s) you may have celebrated.

Happy New Year! Here's hoping we all have a great 2008.

Where's My Game Face? (child mentioned)

Well, I confess I am in full Christmas prep mode. Most of the gifts are purchased and I spent the better part of the last two evenings decorating Christmas cookies. This effort greatly annoyed my husband. I started the process last Friday night and worked on the cookies on and off through last night. In addition to taking A LOT of time, the whole project pretty much wrecks the kitchen while I'm doing it. But I really love doing it and this past few days it proved to be a really good distraction to everything that's been stressing me out. I'm pretty proud of my cookies and I make people praise them before they're allowed to eat them! I'll try to take some photos and post them soon. In addition, I'm prepping for a mini-Christmas party this Saturday. We invited 5 of my daughters best friends from her old childcare center over for lunch and a few hours of playtime. I got a little carried away and actually bought stuff to make holiday gift bags for each girl and I got Christmasy plates, cups, etc. We've also been listening to lots of Christmas music and I'm looking forward to the holiday in general. However, one thing is really getting to me, even though I do have a child (which definitely helps inspire me to be "into" the holidays) and will probably send some cheesy photocard (if I ever get around to it) of her, all the cards we've gotten so far are from families with three kids. All these photos of families with a bunch of kids just kills me. The other day one came in an envelope with one of those personalized return labels with little cartoon-like characters representing each member of the family. I did keep the card, but tore the envelope to shreds.

Which gets me to my point, despite the holiday related cheer--which really appears when I'm alone in the kitchen or with my daughter--my mood is still pretty blah. I can't seem to muster up the energy to put on a game face. It really hit home yesterday when I was meeting with my boss about my performance at work and my potential for promotion. I tried to psych myself into at least seeming cheerful and enthusiastic about work, but I just couldn't do it. She said nice things and nothing bad, yet I'm sure I came across as being very unappreciative and a sourpuss. I suspect my potential for promotion just moved south! I just can't fake it at all these days. And since even I am getting sick of my depressing mood and hearing myself complain about just about everything, I can only imagine what the people who have to spend time with me are thinking.

On the bright side -- yes even I recognize that there is one -- I've been to the gym 4 days so far this week and am doing pretty well with the we.ight wat.chers. I suspect that if I can manage to shed a few more pounds and not have to struggle quite so hard to find clothes in my closet that fit, then my mood may lift a little. I even managed to NOT eat any of the fudge that a coworker brought to me the other day. And since she makes it every year I know how yummy it is. I'm also actually really looking forward to having almost a week away from work over Christmas and then hosting friends for dinner on the 29th and spending New Year's with really good friends.

Lastly, we got a big envelope in the mail from the home study agency yesterday, but we didn't open it yet. It's exciting, but I'm getting nervous about that!

"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming..."

Dory's song from Finding Nemo describes pretty well how I've been lately. I'm just trying to get through each day and keep moving. It's not that I can't function and I'm not sobbing all the time, but I'm just feeling down. The littlest things make me tear up and part of me would love to just sit on the couch and watch bad television for about a week. There are bright spots however. One was the wonderful DC Bloggers cookie exchange party, hosted by the even more wonderful Leah. I won't go into too much detail since Leah described it so well here, but I will say that it was relaxing and fun, and I actually laughed! Oh, and I ate waaaaaaay too many cookies, but they were ALL so delicious I couldn't stop. I've even added some of the recipes to my Christmas baking list. And thanks to the lovely Sunny who gave me a ride and made me laugh the hardest.

So, I am trying to "just keep swimming" and not let myself get stuck in a funk. I mean really that's how I ended up gaining 20 lbs in the last nine months and I know that's only added to my bad mood. So I started weight wat.chers (again) on Monday and I've actually been to the gym 3 times this week. I am attending my office holiday party today and I'm pretty sure that I will actually enjoy myself. And I'll keep it up until eventually it doesn't feel like such an effort.