...but that's what life has been like for months now. I'm always running myself ragged. Between my inability to say "no" and my "if you want it done right, do it yourself" attitude - my plate is always full. Besides what I have control over, there is the "other" stuff - stuff like parenting, laundry and oh, taking care of all my father's bills and appointments.(I'm basically parenting him right now - and sometimes I even get called to the "office" when he misbehaves at his assisted living, pffff). I'm what is generally called a Type A people-pleaser. I want everyone to be happy. I want everything done expediently, efficiently and exceptionally well. And when life hands me lemons, you can bet that I'm making lemonade...or even lemon meringue pie!

So what do I do to unwind? I workout like crazy. I go for long, long runs. I tell myself it's cathartic, I tell myself that I'm "burning off steam." I'm a liar - I know the reality: I'm an adrenalin junkie. If I have to sit still and look at an empty calendar, I'm lost.

Notice, I said "Adrenalin Junkie" - not "Thrillseeker." They are not one and the same. You won't catch me skydiving, bungee-jumping, hot air ballooning.

Over the past couple of years (after too many episodes of over-training), I've made it mandatory to take one day a week of "rest" - at least rest from strenuous workouts. I'm not 100% compliant with that personal mandate, but I try. I've also been forced to "sit still" for up to two hours at a time while the girls have their figure skating lessons. Generally, I bring work with me, so I'm not actually doing nothing...but a lot of times, I sit and exercise my jaw. This has definitely helped with my stress levels (or at least my ability to cope with the stress I'm always under).

I force myself to do yoga regularly because it is controlled, because it is disciplined in a completely different way. Being forced to move slowly, to breathe deeply...this is hard, hard work for me. Of course, I try to pick the evilest yoga I can - my personal favorite is Tony Horton's P90X Yoga which takes 1 1/2 hours, the first 45 mintues are power yoga.

(Activities that aren't active like laying on a beach are sheer torture to me. No tropical islands for me thank you, my dream vacation is hiking in British Columbia and going to see Ogopogo, or at least somewhere that I can spy a moose).

All this to say that...wow, I've been under so much stress lately that I need something else. I take my calcium with magnesium & vitamin D, I eat my bananas with their high tryptophan content. I try to stop and do breathing exercises when I'm feeling overwhelmed... but darn! I think I've hit some kind of wall where about the only thing that's going to work is CHOCOLATE and lots of it!

If I were to catalog all of the major whammies that have occurred in the past two and a half years, it would be a major undertaking. Seriously. If I were to change that to the list of stuff that has happened in say, the past five or six years, I think I could fill a book rather nicely. I have a couple of friends who call regularly just to see whether a meteor has hit my house or something. :)

And what has me freaked out now? Would you believe it is something as petty as a lack of perfection? Yep, I've got two sisters dealing with possible ovarian and uterine cancer, a nutty father that I'm the care-giver for (see bottom of page), and my baby growing up and moving out... But nope, the straw that breaks the camels back is petty crap!

Besides the emotional stress of a whole slew of events/circumstances/people in my life right now, I'm taking a medical transcription course so that I can work at home in the evenings and bring in some extra money. I aced the first half, straight As. Now I have the textbook from hell, idiots that don't know good grammar and proper punctuation that are "correcting" my quizzes and every single time I send in a quiz it is a FIGHT. Sure enough, I sent in a quiz and got a lousy grade AND more than half of the things marked wrong actually were not. This means I have to argue point by point... I have won the past two times, but it has gotten under my last nerve. I have a chocolate cake in the oven right now.

~o~

Thanks be to God that I got in a great workout today - before I ice that sucker and inhale it!

Caren met me this morning and was ready to roll:

--Dreadmill - 8 minutes, 4.2 mph, 8.2% incline
Medium underhand grip pulldowns, 100 lbs, 25 reps
upright rows, 12 reps, 40 lbs
jump squats with 25 lbs, 10 reps
1-leg pelvic thrust, 12 each leg
--1 minute sprint on the Sci-fit
wide grip lat pulldowns, 3 reps, 140 lbs; 6 reps, 125 lbs; 10 reps, 110 lbs
squat swings w/8 lbs medicine ball, 20 reps
leg press, 20 reps, 260 lbs
--1 minute sprint on the Sci-fit
jumping lunges - 1 minute
plank rows, 10 reps each arm 15 lbs
supermans, 20 reps (During this Caren & I were laughing about "it's a bird, it's a plane" and when I said, "To Infinity and Beyond!" she had to get up and run to the bathroom, it made her almost pee!)
squats with bicep curl, 10 reps, 25 lbs each hand
--1 minute sprint on the Sci-fit
Hack squats, 20 reps, 50 lbs
leg curl, 25 reps, 100 lbs
hammer curls, 20 reps, 25 lbs each arm
--1 minute sprint on the Sci-fit
cross-over lunge with hammer curls, 20 reps, 12.5 lbs each arm
stability ball crunches, 30 reps
hanging abs, 15 reps (My gym got a NEW ROMAN CHAIR!!!!! It made these soooo much better, nice padded elbow rests...aaaahhhh).
Jump Rope - 2 minutes
--35 minutes HIIT on the Octane
--12 minutes on the dreadmill, 4.0 mph, 8.2% incline

I had to rush home after this, take my father to the doctor for a check up. He ASKED THE DOCTOR FOR VIAGARA!!! A) He is ancient and crippled. B) He has no lady in his life. C) He is becoming a dirty old man and I have been called to the office about his inappropriate advances toward very young nurses aides. D) He has some issues with dementia. Ick. I was able to grab the nurse ahead of time and warn that this was coming, then beg for the doctor to make up an excuse. Seriously, I'm afraid he'd get kicked out of the assisted living if his parts actually worked. The doctor called me out later and nicely set my mind at ease, told me not to be too freaked out and embarrassed that elderly men with dementia can really say & do things that are uncharacteristic of who they've always been and that I could calm down, he would never give him a prescription for something like that. It is traumatic to deal with this kind of stuff with a parent. It's worse than when he had me type a poem he wrote that went something like "Scrotum, pendulum, thumb..." Waxing poetic about a prostate exam??? Ick, ick, ick.