I miss.....

I miss the fit person I used to be. 

I'm not going to lie. I miss her. 

A lot. 

A LOT.

I miss her flat stomach and less-dimpled derrière. I miss her toned calves and wonderfully shaped shoulders from doing planks. I miss her strength. I miss her heart and lung capacity. I miss her doing HIIT intervals at 8-10 mph on the treadmill. I miss her not having back fat. I miss her flexibility and amazing yoga poses. I miss her endurance. I miss her powering through hills and 30 mph head winds while cycling with friends. I miss her creativity as she drew up class plans for 3-4 fitness classes each week. I miss her time spent with other women, all seeking to improve their health. I miss buying size medium clothes. I miss feeling good about how I looked in a tank top and shorts. 

Go ahead, judge me for missing that healthy, fit, thin-but-curvy girl I used to be. Call it superficial to miss physical attributes if you want. Call it egomaniacal. Call it selfish. Call it ridiculous. I don't care what people think, I miss her! I mourn the loss of her! I wish I could go back and tell her that she's not fat and gross like she thinks she is. She is strong! She is healthy! And I wish I hadn't been beating her up for all of those years. I wish I hadn't been so hard and unrelenting with her. I wish she had known how incredibly fit and strong she was and not taken it for granted. 

But, it's not just the physical "stuff" that I miss. 

I miss the simplicity and ease of life that she had. I miss the youthful energy and small amount of responsibilities that she had. I miss her go-get-'em, no-holds-barred attitude and her life lived without fear. I miss the smallness of her frugal life. I miss her laugh. I miss her friends. I miss her constant path of new discoveries. I miss her freedom. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the life I have today. I love my husband and my son and I wouldn't trade them for anything - not even for the girl I used to be. Even with everything I miss about her, she didn't have the wisdom or experience that I have now. She was foolish and selfish and immature and was still coming out of that dark place where childhood abuse had sent her. Today, I am happy, busy, stable, crazy, exhausted, and slightly overweight. I guess, maybe that makes me normal?

I have often said that if you're consciously making the decision to become a parent, don't be a resentful parent who thinks, "If I didn't have kids I could _____." Wait until you're ready to give up everything that you claim as your own - from your TV time to workouts to the thoughts that fill your head - before you become a parent. Trust me, you will find that you think less and less about yourself and more and more about your child. And I was ready to give all of that up, but I still mourn the loss of that carefree girl I used to know. I wish that I could find a way to bring some of her best qualities into the life I have today and be the perfect woman. Okay, so maybe perfect is a little over the top. Maybe, I'll aim for near perfect? It's a joke, peeps. Loosen up. 

When I gain a few more minutes in my day or learn how to manage my time to function on even less sleep, I will try to resurrect some of that girl. I will return to working out 3-4 times each week. I will regain my strength and improve my VO2 max. My thighs, butt, and waist will shrink. My arms will be defined. But, right now, I just want to hold my baby, snuggle and smell him, enjoy a big taco salad, and let my honey love on my muffin top. 

I have a booboo

You know how everyone has one of those "I was playing catch with my kids and somehow wound up with a stick in my a**" stories? Well, I have one. Not a stick in my a**! A story. I have a story. 

The short version is that I broke off a piece of metal under my thumbnail. AAAAAND I didn't even say a bad word when it happened! I'm really making some positive strides. The long version goes like this:

The small metal wire that goes through the spine of my wallet was coming out. 

Just ignore the receipts hanging out.

My wallet was laying on the counter and this little wire was staring at me and mocking me all day, and ruining my idea of a perfect world. So, I decided to push it back in and make it shut up. I grabbed a pen cap, because I'm smart enough to not use my bare hand to push the wire. Duh. And after about my third good "oomph", the cap slipped and the wire went under my thumbnail. 

Ouch. 

Ouch. 

Ouch. 

At first, I though maybe the dark spot was just a blood blister from the impact, but as the day grew long, I could tell that it was hurting more and I could feel the metal putting pressure on my nail. It was the size of a boulder! At least it felt like it. I tried to see if I could dig it out, but I'm apparently not that tough. Remember the guy who cut his arm off to save his life when he was pinned by rocks? Yeah, that's not me. I would have died, pinned under the rocks, and probably would have never been found. I can tolerate a lot of pain, but the thought of extracting a bullet out of my leg or cutting off my own arm or digging a piece of metal out from under my nail just don't sound like situations that I would be particularly successful at. So, off to the walk-in clinic I went. 

Ignore my nasty cuticles and pasty, dry whiteness. It's winter, in Oklahoma, and I have red hair. Dry and white is what I am. 

The black dot is the culprit. I swear it had a twelve inch circumference. 

And this is my nail after.  The doctor used a scalpel to slice my nail in two, then she used tweezers and forceps to pull it apart and to get a chunk of it detached so she could then use razor sharp tweezers to scrape the metal out. When she told me what she was going to do I asked her if I would at least get the pleasure of her numbing and deadening my thumb first. 

Um..........no. 

Say what?

She said the numbing process would be more painful than just doing the procedure without it. 

Say what, again?

So, no numbing stuff. Boo on that. I had my left knee bent and my foot underneath my right leg, so I stuck my fingers behind my knee to keep my hand steady, locked my thumb in place as best I could, and let the butchering begin. In all actuality, her slicing my nail in two didn't really hurt. When she put pressure on top of the piece of metal, that hurt. When she stuck the tweezers up under my nail, that hurt (and it bled a little). When she scraped that thing out ..... OMG!!! Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. That's what I kept telling myself. And then I let out a big, "Whoohoo!" when she was finished.

I got some ointment and a bandaid for my booboo and they sent me home. I'm so glad I don't have fake nails. That would have sucked!

And the doctor thanked me for coming in because it gave her something to do besides treat sinus infections. Hahaha!!