5 Book: Break a World Record

 Have you heard of the 5 Book?  I happened to run across it while I was lying around waiting for my POTS flair to pass.  (I had a lot of internet searching time!)  It asks the question, "Where Will You Be Five Years From Today?" and is filled with inspiration and ideas on how to make the next 5 years your best five years.  The idea seemed great, AND the book was pretty.  I mean, how can I resist something that's pretty?!  So I ordered it.

Since then I have been having a lot of fun setting goals.  The book suggests a lot of ideas; planning out dreams, visiting the home of your ancestors, trying new things etc.  I'm working on a couple of them, but am proud to say I officially finished one!

One suggestion is to attend a world class event, like the Olympics or to run with the bulls or something like that.  I'm pretty close to house bound these days so traveling to a large, crowded event wasn't an option.  However, I found something close to home that worked!  A girl at my school went a little crazy on her senior project and decided to officially break a world record!  She made the world's longest tie dyed piece of fabric (she's an art major which should pretty much explain the craziness of that statement). On the day she had the Guinness Book of World Record reps come to measure, she needed about 1,000 volunteers to help stretch the fabric for measuring.  (it was really long and really heavy!) Normally there's no way I'd use up so much energy on something like that, but it happened to fall on the day when I had my holter monitor. Remember that day? The Jessica-trying-to-over-do-it day?  It was perfect!

It was a lot of fun to get caught up in the excitement.  The official Guinness Book of World Records guys were there, along with news crews and pro photographers.  It really was exciting!  I can't wait for the Guinness World Record site to be updated so I can look at it and say- I was there!!!

I Feel Like a Robot

I was so excited this morning when I listened to this!  I have seriously prayed for these answers in this talk for 7 years. (see? tender mercies everywhere!)  Finally an explanation of how to balance faith in God and acceptance in His plan.  

On a slightly related note, I'm on a holter monitor today.  I feel like I am turning Borg. (have I ever mentioned that Star Trek is the best insomnia medicine?  Well, Star Trek and sleeping pills- neither works well alone.  I've watched the first 10 minutes of almost every episode.)    It's a silly idea, really.  I go in, tell the cardiologist that about once a year I have these crazy episodes and that I just had one a few weeks ago.  So what does he do?  Hook me up to a machine just in case it happens in the next 24 hours.... Apparently cardiologists don't have to take a lot math classes.

So I've spent the whole day trying to pass out so we could get it on record.  Fun fun!  Hopefully someone in my neighborhood is having a bad day and looks out her window.  At least someone would get a good laugh out of this!

Goodbye and Good Riddance!

I am so excited for February to be over!  We're already counting down the days until 2014 over here. 

February was hard.  My lovely kidney stone infection experience triggered a POTS flair at the beginning of the month. (my heart always has a hard time keeping up with me, but when I have a big flair my resting heart rate goes to about 165 and even with that my blood pressure is so low I can't stand up without blacking out...so I have to spend the entire flaring time horizontal. This time it lasted almost 3 days. )  In the 7 years I've been sick I've only had 2 other flairs that have been close to this bad; and they only lasted a matter of hours rather than days.  Both times the stress from the flair left my body at an extremely lower energy level that took about 8 months and hundreds of hours of disciplined physical therapy to get over.  And even then I just get back to my normal sick level.  

So basically, I know what I'll be doing for the rest of 2013.  

It's just annoying. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a game against the universe, all the time knowing that the universe will get the trump card every time.  Plus this time it happened a week after the 'you can drop your classes and get a refund' date at school.  So I'm double annoyed.  

So that's our life right now. I've been scraping by trying to accomplish something at school... or at least get to class.  We bought a freezer and filled it with easy meals.  There were still Christmas decorations out until yesterday when Doug took an afternoon off to clean the house. 

But now February is over and checking off a big chunk of time makes me feel positive   Every time I get really sick, there are always great tender mercies.  This time between my infection and my flair we had a couple of normal days when we were able to get all dressed up and celebrate my birthday. (my favorite outing every year!)  Another night when I was especially sick we cooked up our Destination Dinner and had a fun Korean evening without having to leave our CFS friendly home.  Someone in our neighborhood has been secretly shoveling our driveway all winter long.  About a week ago I saw that they made a movie out of a talk I love so much I practically have it memorized.  (the movie is at the top of this post, the text can be found here-Mountains to Climb by Henry B Eyring) 

I feel like I am constantly amazed at what the human body is capable of.  This month I am so grateful that it is complex enough to be completely frustrated and extremely satisfied all at the same time.  What would we do without a bit of joy during our sorrows!?