Pegasus!

Started this yesterday and am in love!!  Will post a full review upon completion.

Smoking Cessation--not my favorite ride at the park

Another one of my brilliant ideas all in the quest of my improvement of self.  Ack.  So, last Friday I went to the doctor, the first time to a GP in since I was like, 10---really.  And I started the conversation about how I wanted to stop smoking.  My fiance and I have discussed the idea, over a drink and smoke, but I've never really wanted to take any real steps towards this.  I did however, throw out the idea of stopping 6 months before our wedding.  Which would be around January of 2012.

Silly me, as I'm talking to my GP, the ball begins to roll and before I know it, I have a prescription for Wellbutrin.  Wellbutrin.....I had heard about it from one of my pill-pooping friends in NYC.  She described it in hushed tones and said it was like a superdrug.  Not only did it help you to stop smoking, it also helped improve anxiety as well as depression.

I had tried half-heartedly to get a prescription from my GYN, but like most things in the last 4 years, if it took more than a single phone call, then it just wasn't worth it.  However, now that I am an actual person again....this is something I thought might be worth trying.

So here is how it played out.

Friday got the prescription.  Went to the pharmacy and it was hell.  Literally, the pharmacist described my situation as being in insurance hell.  No one wanted to pay for this.  Not the state and not my primary insurance.  Which I later found out was because they didn't take down the correct information.... a duh.

Saturday took the generic, which is what the pharmacist gave me and noticed I had a low-grade headache all day but had also stopped drinking in the last couple of days as well had been pretty good about the low to no carbs. So figured it must be that.

Sunday, day two of all of the above and headache was more noticiable.

At dinner, that evening, my dad and his lady friend cook an amazing meal.  I tell my family of 10 who have gathered that I was no drinking, smoking and not eating carbs.  As expected that made fun of me, discouraged me and since I was only on day two and wanted to anyway, I caved.  On all of the above.

Monday: have the worst hangover ever.  I take the generic again, but that night have a serious panic attack after spending 2 hours online reading about how the generic is essentially created by the devil.

Tuesday: Am still feeling crazy and call my dr, insurances, and pharmacist and insist on going on the name brand, ONLY.  After only a couple of hours on the phone, I am finally able to get what I need.

Wednesday: Day 1 on the "real stuff."  I'm feeling a little foggy and out of sorts.  I'm also going to my first writing group meeting.  To say I was a little out of it, would be an understatement, but I felt like it was really important for me to go.

Thursday: I'm feeling okay, almost myself and also really wanting a glass of wine.  I feel a little trapped that I "can't" on Wellbutrin.  But I do, and I can and I wake up on Friday feeling fine.

Friday: I take it again and feel fine.  Not perfectly me, but mostly me.

And Saturday: today.  I'm going to do this for one more week, until I go to LA because even though my "habit" mind is struggling with this, I think once I get over the hump, this stuff is going to be good for me.  I am still smoking though....

but my doctor said give it two weeks.  So.  I'll let ya know.  And fingers crossed.  Because eventually, this body needs to be completely detoxed in order to make way for 'baby!'

Books I've read am reading want to read or have put down to start something else

I am a reader.  Through and through.  If I could only use 6 words to describe myself, I would probably say something like: reader, eater, dreamer, seer, lover, creator.

According to family lore, I was reading at age 4.  I'm not sure if that's impressive or not, but it is something that I used to brag about back in the days when that seemed like the type of thing that might bring me some school yard cred.  Please mind that I was an extremely insecure little tyke.

I can still remember one of the first books that I read.  It was a typical See Dick Run sortof thing, but I liked it.  I liked being able to put the words together and liked that I could do something "allbymyself."

I was a relatively active child, but reading was the one thing that could keep me in place.  In my old house, growing up, we had a room, we called the barn--mostly because it was a refurbushed barn my dad figured out how to attach to our house through a shed, which sounds weird, but was actually really cool.

I remember on the weekends, the family and there were a lot of us, would be spread out in the rather large house.  My grandparents were on the second floor.  My brothers were either out or up in the loft that was their ultra cool bedroom.  My father was probably tucked away in his little nook of an office, but there was usually a fire going on in the wood stove and there were shelves and shelves of books to choose from.

And I would challenge myself to see if I could read an entire book.  Which I was varyingly successful at.  I basked in my mother's rare words of praise because she noticed that I was being quiet and wasn't underfoot.  Not that I really ever was because we didn't get along and while I yearned to be close to her--secretly--in reality, it was always far more pleasant to be be away from her than in her proximity.

Later, I would read because I was grounded all the time.  Literally, I think in my 9th grade year, I was not grounded for maybe a total of 5 weekends.  The one place my parents let me out to go to was the library.

Looking back it seems ridiculous to think that if I could ride my bike the two miles to the library, it would make just as much sense that I would ride my bike to a friend's house, but tho my mother proclaimed me untrustworthy, she knew she had me by fear, so to the library I went and would spend hours choosing books to lug home in my backpack to read when I was wardened back into my bedroom.

Fifteen to twenty books a week would not be an unreasonable number of books to read.  I loved getting lost in those silly worlds that kept me sane through my teenage years.  I wasn't reading "important" literature like Jane Austin or Charlotte Bronte, though I did really like reading Charles Dickens even if I didn't understand it that well.  No, the books I read were the silly ones.  The girly ones.  The ones that had happy endings.

I still feel guilty for reading the books, I call "silly" because that's what I like to read, except, now I have swerved more towards fantasy than anything else in the past five years.  However, one of the best "lessons" one of my writing professors bestowed up on me was that it doesn't matter the type or style or genre I read and feeling ashamed or guilty about it was completely not important, because, and here was the lesson and the gift all wrapped up in one, it was all just reading.

Sigh.

So, as I'm sitting here, fantasizing about writing and rather than fantasizing, I think it'd be more accurate to say, I am brewing, concocting a story, a pretty big one right now, it is like this gigantic monster inside my head that is like, flailing against a barely controlled brainstorm.

I am -- I think going to write the story of a lifetime over this year.

But I digress:
The books I am reading, have read, or am in the middle of are:

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Freak Show by James St. James
Angelology by Danielle Trussoni
The Help: Kathryn Stockett
Room by Sarah Donoghue (horrifying subject.  hated that it hung on in my mind for awhile)
City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
The Magician King by Lev Grossman.  (Am upset about the ending)
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (I LOVE this guy.  He's a bloody genius.)
I loved, I lost, I Made Spaghetti by Guilia Melucci. ( a little too whiny for my taste)

The are books I can remember off the top of my head that have been in my life since late August, Early September til now.

And that's all.

My return to the gym, not so triumphant

I was excited walking into my gym because the last time I had had such a positive experience.  I loved the tiny, loud and demanding Asian instructor and was completely into the way she trained us.

However, the first surprise was that my favored instructor was nowhere to be seen and instead was replaced by a girl who....wasn't all that friendly and didn't seem interested in making us beginners feel comfortable.

I may be whining as I sometimes have a tendency to do, but I think a really important part of being a fitness instructor is making EVERYONE feel welcome.  Like, really.  Because otherwise we are in the middle of class feeling like shit and feeling stupid because everyone else knows the "routine" and you're standing there like an idiot.

That was me.

The instructor, much like some of the other instructors at this club had their followers who knew what was up and I, having returned after a too-long break, had NO IDEA what was happening!

Cross that with my lack of coordination, my shortness of smoker's breath and the sweat streaming into my eye, well, it wasn't the most fun class.

However, towards the end, my brain sortof kicked in and my body began to follow directions.  I left feeling like I got a good workout and I will return to this class, but man, oh man, did I feel inadequate at first!!!

The Goals....of Which I'm Sure Are Quite Flexible

Okay, it has been more times that I can count that I have tried to get this darn blog off the ground.  This, however, is the most IMPORTANT time, because I AM going to FOLLOW THROUGH, i.e. finish it, and that doesn't mean forget about it.  Finish it, means, complete it and that will I've accomplished the following goals.

(Disclaimer: These can be changed)

Ack.  See Above?  This is why so often I don't reach my lofty goals because right from the start I always give myself a back door.  I should probably talk about that at some point, but for now, let's focus on the goals.

I woke up this morning really trying to pinpoint the things I want, I WILL accomplish in this next year of me.

I think I will refer to this as Year 1.  ANYC (After NYC) or maybe BLRB (Before life really began.) I can tweak that.

In any event, these are the things I will do this year.

Become proficient in a second language. Again.
Read 365 new books.  Categories: Fiction--  200 modern fiction, 20 classic, 100 YA literature, 45 miscellaneous.
Cook 200 new menu items, perfect 100 of them. 50 appetizers and 50 entrees.
Go to the gym 365 times. (or MORE!)
Stop smoking
Write and SUBMIT 10 major drafts: 1 complete novel, 4 children's books, 1 play, 4 non-fiction articles
Meet 10 new people who I eventually call friends. (This is a HUGE leap for a "recluse" like myself)
Join a writing group and become active in it
Join a book club
Join the Burlington Cooking Club

And then the following are inevitable, because they are happening:
Get married
Move to LA
Find a new and satisfying job

Needless to say, it's a big year.