after. day 58.

when you finally hear for certain, after months and months of rumors, that approximately 30% of your company's headquarters location is getting handed their severance package in the upcoming months, one tends to eat one's feelings. and that's what i did today, starting at approximately 5:30pm. i ate all of my feelings... from sadness, to anger, to resentment, to quaking fear, to loneliness, to regret. i ate them all. but here's the thing. i can get away with this occasional descent into emotional eating without ballooning up over 200 pounds if i exercise consistently and make consistent healthy decisions about 80% of the time. so between the hours of 5:30pm tonight and 8pm tonight will have to be filed in that other 20%.

and thank you for your concern, but no, i did not get laid off yet. but the chopping block is likely hitting close to home (this i know at my manager's heeding to "just be ready. that's all i can say. just be ready. i know i am.") so it's time for me to start looking elsewhere.

much like when i started looking for a life partner after having babies and said "i thought i was done having boyfriends when i started having babies", i'm having similar feelings to all of this news: "i thought i was done looking for work when i turned 36." not so, my friends. not so. here's to hoping that my actual age of 36 looks more like 26 on my resume and someone wants to hire me for a job i don't hate at a salary that can support 4 people plus a dog.

on to today!

after. day 57.

i'm sure you've all been desperately missing me. maybe this picture will help you figure out where i've been:

alka selter cold. emergen-C immune +.
and my angry mug of coffee.

after. day 46.

4:00am. awakened by nash hovering over me, saying, "mom, i threw up in my bed." in my pseudo-slumber i kind of half-doubted her, that maybe she was just looking for an excuse to snuggle. so i replied with "no, you didn't..." "yes, i did!" the badger got up to assess the situation, and a few seconds later i heard him say "oh, she sure did." she isn't typically our vomit kid, so to say i was surprised would be an understatement.

i shared the situation with The Facebook this morning:

so yes, today was our anniversary. and we spent it intermittently cleaning up whatever nash expunged from her stomach and sleeping.

9:00am. i made myself some breakfast. this was supposed to be a pumpkin-protein-pancake, but something changed in the chemical makeup of the pancake with the addition of the pumpkin. so it turned into more of a "sweet scramble". but it was still good.

sweet pumpkin scramble. strawberries. water.
and we went through 2 pots of coffee today.

around 10am, nash said she wanted to "nuggle" with me and watch a movie.

this after insisting that i put on the movie 'brave' for her.
i dragged a chair into the bedroom, hooked up the laptop, got the dvd, turned it on,
and she promptly fell asleep.

1:00pm. i fixed myself some lunch.

again with the sweet potato hash.
and sriracha. i.p.t.s.o.e. (i-put-that-shit-on-everything)

i would've liked to have gotten in a workout today, but i didn't. i'm pretty exhausted from everyone being sick last week, the insomnia of this week, and the vomiting of last night. so instead of going out for a run this afternoon, i took a nap.

nash wouldn't eat or drink a thing all day other than a few sips of water, and then all of a sudden around 4pm, she decided that nothing had happened and she was fine.

kids are amazingly resilient. and mine will likely still need therapy as adults.

<insert brief pause in blogging while i... oh, um... uh, honey? get the bucket...>

so i guess she didn't really rally. at all. it was a very brief foray into health until about 5pm when she vomited again. at 5:30, she said she wanted to go to bed, and neither she nor i were interested in trying to feed her dinner. her because she's sick, and me because i don't want to clean up any more vomit today.

6:45pm. dinner. homemade chicken noodle soup. zeke gobbled it. nash slept through it.

lots of leftovers.

today's triple triumph's:

• i did not get on the scale today. on a day like this, who needs it?
• i slept when i needed to, even though my training plan said to run. no one is gonna die if my training plan isn't crossed off completely as scheduled. i needed sleep. i listened to myself.
• i drank a lot of water today.

until tomorrow,

ashley "down with the sickness" rebekah

after. day 45.

i did not sleep one wink last night. not one. i was supposed to have a 6:00am appointment with kj2 for a workout, so i was in bed with the lights out by 9:00pm. at 10:30pm, i decided to get up and take a benedryl because i still hadn't fallen asleep. at 1:30am, i decided to text kj2 and tell her that i would not be coming because i had not yet fallen asleep. and at 3:00am? well, now i'm just fucking pissed.

after. day 44.

day 44 could also be subtitled "i've been wandering in the dessert longer than jesus himself and enough is enough."

after. day 43.

i'm just warning you that today started out, on a scale of  "1" to "awesome", at a 3. for no particular reason, either. just general malaise and despair at yet again realizing that even after 30+ days of having some pretty consistent good habits with exercising and eating real food, my pants are still uncomfortably tight and i still cannot wear half of my wardrobe.

after. day 39.

after months of shared sickness and sleepless nights, the badger and i have taken to sleeping in separate beds. but last night, he finally got back into the "marriage bed", and we both slept like babies. big, fat, snugly-winter babies. welcome back, badger.

after. day 38.

so after i hit "publish" on last night's blog post, i shut down ye ole laptop, got my ritualistic glass of water that goes on my nightstand, checked on/nuzzled N & Z, and crawled into bed. and i laid there. i fucking laid there until 2am when i finally decided that all the deep breathing, attempted meditation and muscle-by-muscle relaxing was not going to help me sleep. i stumbled downstairs to the kitchen to take one of my favorite sleep supplements (it's basically melatonin) only to discover that we were out. but there was some benadryl, which always knocks me out in a pinch. so down the hatch it went, and off to sleep i (finally) went.