Stronger

Thank you to everyone who was so thoughtful and helpful in regards to my stress. I received lots of great advice here and outside of the blogosphere. I've tried really hard to allow myself time to take deep breaths. It has really helped me to be working now. I love love love my job and I get so excited to go to work every day. It has helped tremendously to be more busy.

My mom gave me a good piece of advice after I had a long talk with her about some things I was struggling with. She told me that any time I feel overwhelmed or guilty for something from my past, to consciously replace that thought with something positive and encouraging. It seems really simple, but it's been good for me. It has been good to force myself to look for a positive. Anyways, I just wanted to say thank you for the comments.

Moving on to another touchy subject. Weight. It's been discussed before on here. It's always been a huge part of my life, ever since I was the fat girl in elementary school. I bought TurboFire and I absolutely LOVE it. I've been eyeing it for months. It's probably the best and most fun workout I have ever done. I feel challenged and I basically am drenched with sweat by the time I'm finished. Pretty sure I will not be doing it anymore though and I am so sad about it.

I have thyroid problems as you might remember. After doing some reading and listening to my sister, it occurred to me that I probably shouldn't be doing such a high intensity workout. It just puts way too much stress on my body which I guess can actually make me gain weight instead of lose it. I want so badly to push myself and power through the workouts because I feel so strong. Afterwards though, I really feel the negative effects of what I've done to my body. I feel drained instead of energized from the endorphins. I just feel insanely exhausted all day and I wake up after 8+ hours of sleep feeling like I just woke up from a 30 minute nap. It's been so strange.

I really just feel like I need to take it easy on myself. It's so hard for me to stop the workout program because I feel like a quitter..but something just doesn't feel right. My body doesn't feel normal; it doesn't feel like it did back when I did P90X.

I decided that I'm going to try really hard to accept myself how I am. I don't need to be 10 pounds lighter to be a good person. I don't need to be as thin as the girls I work with to feel good. What I need to do is again focus on the positives. I need to be able to love myself at any weight. My body may not want me to be thinner and I can't help but think about the things I'm missing in life if all I can focus on is losing weight. I have let it consume my life and it needs to stop.

I definitely am not planning on letting myself go and allowing my health to deteriorate. All I'm trying to say is that I want to be a stronger person in ways that have nothing to do with my body. I still plan to try to eat healthy and go on walks, but I feel strongly that I shouldn't be working my body to the ground right now.

I have tried to have different thoughts when I look in the mirror. If I see something I don't like, I try to accept it the way it is and then find something that I DO like. This journey is going to take me a LONG time and I fully expect to have moments of defeat. But I will not give up. I'm going to find a way to accept my body whether I lose ten pounds or gain ten pounds. It shouldn't matter.

Stress and Relaxation

I need some advice. How on earth do you clear your mind and relax?

I am definitely a Type A personality. I get worked up over the smallest things, I am insanely hard on myself, I get easily saddened/tired, I am super paranoid about everything, and it's impossible for me to just sit, do nothing, and relax. I know those don't all describe Type A, but oh well.

In my Turbo Fire stretch video, she talks to the Type A's and asks us if we can allow ourselves to let go and relax. I try, but I seriously can't. The second I try to clear my mind, something else jumps in and I start worrying about it or I think about everything I want to do that day. I don't understand why it's so hard for me to just chill out.

I'm so used to being in school and being extremely busy, which helps distract me from lame worries (Seriously, if you heard the things I worry about, you would think I am ridiculous). Right now, I just stay at home in a basement apartment all day, sewing, and watching Boy Meets World. I'm really lonely and bored. Thankfully, I start work on Monday and I couldn't be happier to have something to keep me busy and keep me around people. However, that doesn't help me solve the real problem of being able to relax. It kills me to just sit on the couch and do nothing. I feel so lazy and unproductive and plus just sitting makes clearing my mind even more difficult.

I'm sure this probably sounds very pity-me, like I know some of my other posts have sounded, but I genuinely need some advice. How can I clear my mind and allow myself to relax? I need so badly to calm myself down.

Tutorial!

I did it, I wrote a tutorial....check it out!

http://ruffles-and-polkadots.blogspot.com/2012/07/tutorial-anthropologie-inspired-ruffled.html

Crafty Stuff

Remember how I mentioned I was starting a little sewing/craft blog? Well, it's up and running...with one baby post. Now that graduation is over, I hope to find time to REALLY get things going. But here is just a little intro: Ruffles and Polka Dots

Blessings

This past week has been quite the roller coaster. I don't think I felt so worked up and jittery in a while. As many of you know, Mathew has been trying to find an internship for the fall. His catalog expires next July so if he doesn't finish all of his classes, he will have a whole new load of classes to take before he can graduate. So, this fall was his last chance to do an internship in order to avoid catalog expiration. You can probably imagine the stress and anxiety I have been feeling. My schooling has just really taken a back burner. I just don't really care if I'm the top performer or getting straight A's for the first time in my college career. I know I will be graduating and that is all that matters on my side. All I have cared about this semester is helping him find an internship. He is so busy with school and works so hard that I couldn't just make him do it by himself.

*I do not want this to sound like an "I'm an amazing wife" post...I just am trying to convey the stress that I have been experiencing lately*

Well anyways, many many many prayers have been said, just hoping we would get blessed with an amazing opportunity....or just any opportunity. I was on campus a few weeks ago thinking about this internship thing (of course) and I had this surprising thought to text Angela. I wasn't sure why, I didn't know if she actually knew any engineers but I decided to listen to that little prompting. I sent her a text and within an hour maybe she had already called me with an incredibly perfect (like perfect as in Mathew's ideal area of mechanical engineering) opportunity. I was floored. I seriously could not believe it. The second Mathew got home, we searched the website and found out everything we could about the company and then he majorly got out of his comfort zone and gave the place a call. They asked for his resume so he emailed it and before the end of the night, he had an interview the next day. Again floored. His classes were cancelled that day (surprise? I think not) and so we made the spontaneous trip to Layton in the morning.

He was so dedicated and determined to do well in this interview. Interviews make him really nervous, they are basically nonexistent for working farm jobs haha. So he woke up early and went to a practice interview on campus. It finished just in time for us to get on the road. I literally drilled him with interview questions the entire way down (I guess Junior Miss came in handy), and he was so ready by the time we pulled up to the place. I, being the nervous wreck that I am, was crocheting my life away in the car while I waited. I was just trying to keep my mind as busy as possible while trying to hold as still as possible in the blasted hot car. He was in there for forever, so I figured it was a good sign. Anyways, so the interview went well, except he didn't get asked ANY of the questions we drilled, even the ones that I have been asked in every job interview without fail.

Fast forward a week. He submitted the application but hadn't heard anything yet. I was going crazy! She was so insanely prompt at first that the second it slowed down a bit, I was so nervous. So we began the process of checking out other options. Nothing was moving forward and I turned into miss crazy again. Then miraculously one afternoon while I'm sitting in textiles and monitoring Mathew's email (I know I am seriously insane) he got the answer to our prayers. The reason we hadn't heard anything was because the background check was being processed, and as soon as it was finished, he'd receive an offer letter and start date! I was about to cry in the middle of my class I was so happy. So yeah, after this massive long story, Mathew has a paid internship!

Then the apartment hunt began. This is something that stressed me to my max when we moved to Blackfoot last fall. I just knew we weren't going to be able to find a short-term lease in our price range. Miracle of miracles, I got on Craigslist last night and a girl had just posted that they wanted to sell their lease that ended in January...exactly when we would need to move back to Rexburg, and RIGHT by where Mathew would be working and across the street from the mall where I was hoping to work at JCP. I of course immediately called and it just seemed too good to be true. It could not be this easy. We worked everything out today and we are going to Layton again this weekend to sign papers!

I just feel like so many prayers have been answered and worries have been diminished these last couple of days. We were getting so discouraged after so many companies were saying no or not responding. I was feeling helpless. Even though I pretended there was, there really wasn't anything I could do. I couldn't call the companies for him. I couldn't interview for him. I definitely couldn't do his homework for him. But those were all things I was dying to do to help.

*Also, I definitely do not want this to sound braggy or self-righteous. That is not at all my intention. We just feel incredibly blessed at the moment and I have needed to get these feelings of stress and excitement out for a while.*

We are so excited to move to a new place for a while. He is excited (even if he doesn't show it) to work at such a cool place. Oh by the way, the internship is at a place called KIHOMAC and they redesign and rebuild airplanes for the Air Force. Now that this stress is gone, I'm sure I will find something else to worry about. Maybe someday I'll start worrying about school and my graduation speech...but not today. Today has been a celebration day.

NEW blog! Almost

I just wanted to let everyone know that I am working on a blog that I will actually post in regularly. I just don't post here like ever because nothing exciting happens very often. We are in school...I work...Mathew donates plasma...and I sew/crochet. Which is the inspiration for my new blog. It's going to be a sewing tutorial, crochet tutorial, all around crafty blog. I have been working on some fun projects and would love to share them but I don't get motivated to share on this blog because it's not really a craft theme. This new blog will be dedicated to all things crafty and anything else I want to post so get excited, because it should be fun! But realistically it may not be going until after graduation. That's right GRADUATION!!! So excited to be finished :)

Thyrooooooid

For the past year, my hair has been coming out in chunks. Every time I take a shower, I pull out handful after handful of hair. When I brush my hair, tons comes out. Even if my brush starts out completely empty of hair, by the time I brush through it a couple times, it's full again. No matter how hard I try, I can't keep our bathroom floor from being covered in hair (sorry I know that's gross).  It's always driven me crazy and made me worry, but I never really thought to do anything about it. I knew it was normal to lose hair daily, but I have been losing waaaay more than normal and my hair is about half as thick as it used to be. Last week, I finally decided to go to the doctor and get my blood tested. 

Well, the results came back a couple days ago and looks like I do have hyperthyroidism. Both my mom and sister have thyroid problems, so I figured I would eventually have the same problem...I just didn't expect it this soon. I'm so glad I got it tested though. It explains so much, like why I gain weight quickly, why it's so hard to get it off, even when we are eating really healthy and walking three miles a day to and from class instead of driving. Also explains why I'm so dang cold all the time and why I am always tired. Even if I get plenty of sleep, I always feel sluggish and unmotivated to do anything. They put me on medication and I really hope it helps me feel better and more energized. It kind of made me realize how careful I need to be too. I really can't let myself get out of control with my eating. I'm really grateful, though, that I was able to discover this early on. So yeah, I am officially on thyroid medication! Here's to hoping for less hair loss and more energy!