Not Perfect and That's OK

I have to say that last week of on-call (which wasn't bad at all) and then getting up at 4:00 am on Saturday to help get Bibianna ready for Rankin Speech/Debate, then driving to Rankin and back on Saturday, PLUS running 3.1 miles on Friday and Sunday (yes you heard that right) and I am behind the curve today.  I have been following a cleaning calendar the past 3 weeks or so and have been doing a great job of keeping the housework caught up.  Until last week.  And today.

Oddly enough, today at the Al-Anon meeting we discussed perfectionism and how much damage that character flaw can do to us and our loved ones.  I am doing something that I am not good at and that is to realize that it is OK that I haven't done housework in 4 days and that I am tired.

Five more days until my first 5K!!!!

Steps 1 - 3

Today in the Al-Anon meeting somebody said, "I can't do it, God can and I let him."  Those are the first three steps.  So simple.  I just wanted to write it down so that I don't forget it.

I also had a poetic experience this morning running.  I started worrying, again, about doing my 5K at Shannon on October 5.  I got so caught up in the worry that I passed my turn.  Later I thought about how illustrative that was that when I let worry get the best of me, I lose track of where I am and where I am going.  I went back to focusing on my breathing, the music and what a great job I have done at learning to run.  I really should be in the moment appreciating the fact that God gave me the ability and very few aches and pains so that at age 48 I can run.  At age 48, I may just be able to run a 5K.  I sure am going to give it my best.

Today, I wanted to get Bibianna an iPhone 5S and we had to order one. It will be 3 to 4 weeks before it gets here.  I guess Apple didn't aptly anticipate how popular the 5S would be.  Bibianna was quite upset, but as I told her, there isn't a thing she can do about this fact.

Last night for on-call.  It's been a good week but I am ready to hand over that pager tomorrow at noon.  By the way, I ran my second 30 minute run today.  Didn't go quite as far or quite as fast as I did yesterday but I had 3 13 min/miles and I am very happy.

No more Mothering, Meddling, or Manipulating

Al-anon is going great for me.  It is for me and all about me.  I am working on Step 1 which is to admit that I have no power.  Let go, let God.  That's probably hard for most people and it will be a long learning process for me.  This week, on Monday I went to the noon meeting and the reading was about letting the "alcoholic" have the dignity to live with his/her actions/consequences.  The group was large and every single person that spoke that day said something very meaningful to me.  C talked about how she knew once, and is learning again that verbal abuse is never ok.  I heard stories about how people learned to let go and let God and not try to fix the problems that belong to others.  Someone pointed to the words of wisdom on the board and said that the one that was speaking to her today was "stop mothering, stop meddling, and stop manipulating" and that as a mother to an alcoholic how hard that was.  I cried and cried because I kept thinking about last week and how I figured out a way, yet again, despite my awareness, to get her a bicycle and then to jump in a fix the problem of her not getting the right one when she got to Wal-mart to pick it up.  I was crying for me.
I got home and probably 30 minutes later my phone started ringing.  Carolyn was calling and she doesn't call and leave a message like most people, she calls, hangs up, calls, hangs up, calls, etc.  I sent her a text that said I was on-call and busy and couldn't answer the phone, and what did she need.  She needed her SS card.  I haven't had that in over 2 years and I told her so.  The angry text messages then began.  And a few more calls which I didn't answer.  And then another angry text about it's too bad that no one gives two shits about her....

And then, I remembered that the new ios7 I had downloaded for my iphone on Sunday has a feature to block people.  That's what I did.  I blocked her.  And I used the ODAT, I didn't worry about what that would mean for tomorrow.  I have unblocked her again and today I messaged her to see if Joey and I can come and visit on her birthday to take her to lunch.  She said that she will be in San Angelo for about 3 days.  I know that the sober house probably won't allow that and I was SO CLOSE to mothering, meddling, and manipulating and instead I said that her father and I would like to take her to lunch on her birthday if she wanted to.  That's ALL!  And, I am not going to worry one more time about what that means.  Today.  ODAT.

I ran 2.3 miles this morning.  I feel great.

Hello, I am Genna and I haven't been on FB in 30 minutes.

Today, I decided to deactivate my FB account for an unspecified period of time.  Because of all of the turmoil that I have been through these past 4 weeks with Carolyn, my emotions are all over the place and mostly irrational.  I guess that is the beauty of living with mental illness all my life is that I have become pretty good at recognizing my own irrational behavior but I am just not capable of stopping said behavior.

These past few weeks, everything on FB either hurts my feelings or makes me mad or both.  I have made comments on several posts that were just unnecessary and one was even down-right rude.  I know that the fact that I have to give up FB because it affects my mood is in itself perhaps irrational behavior.  I am learning at Al-Anon that I have to take care of myself, and right now, giving up FB is a good thing for me.  I didn't tell anyone except Lauren McCollum, Joey and Bibs that I was going dark so hopefully people won't miss me or if they do they won't think I unfriended them.