2012: A year in review (a bit prematurely)

I've been struggling with figuring out what the heck to blog about. As you know, I didn't blog much last year because honestly, I didn't have anything funny or positive to blog about.

So far, 2012 hasn't really given me anything to shout from the rooftops about either.

Let's seeeeee...

• My grandmother passed away.
• My great uncle passed away.
• My close friend's grandfather passed away.
• I found out adoption from India is basically an impossibility unless I'm willing to accept a child with serious medical issues or a child between the ages of 7 to 12.
• My work spouse resigned, thereby leaving me sad widow.
• I found out that the starvation diet of my past has essentially turned my adrenal system into a hot mess.
• As a result, I've not eaten carbs in a month. That pretty much puts a damper on one's mood...seriously. On a positive note, my 33rd birthday is next week. The thing I'm looking forward to most is eating a Babycake. This no-carb thing is really putting a damper on my cupcake eating. On a less positive note, who knows what that amount of sugar is going to do to me. Oh well...death by cupcake is probably not the worst way to go :)

That being said, I've still been trying not to get too caught up in what's going wrong and instead, focus on what's been going right.

Let's seeeeee...

• I've been trying to take better care of myself...Eating tons of protein and veggies. At this point, I've lost about 7 pounds in 4 weeks. Not awesome...but it's a step in the right direction, I guess. A nice spillover effect to eating healthier is that I've become quite experimental in the kitchen. It turns out that I'm not a half bad chef!
• I'm trying to focus on being more active. My mom and dad gave me enough birthday money to put a significant dent in the price of a treadmill for our home. If there's a pricey piece of exercise equipment all up in my face every day, I'm hoping I will essentially eliminate any of my current excuses of not going to the gym.
• I've connected with friends and coworkers who are also on their weight loss journey and as a result, have a pretty fantastic support system.
• I've been researching what our other options are for being parents if we can't adopt from India. It's all very overwhelming but I still have hope. I may have to sell a kidney on the black market...but I have hope.
• I've been thinking of all the great things I get to do because we're not parents. For example, we're going to Savannah to visit family and are considering a trip to either Hawaii or Cancun sometime this year.
• I've been trying to change my perspective. In the grand scheme of things, I tend to be pretty hard on myself. I tend to think "WHY ME??!" a lot. I often catch myself thinking "Life is so unfair..." As of late, I try to catch myself in mid-pity party and think about all the things that come easy for me. I have a loving, supporting, and kind husband. My parents are extremely supportive as well. Hell, when I was home last week, my mom simply held me while I cried like a lunatic. Oh, and they still try to give me money. I have a wonderful job, a wonderful home, and friends that you should be jealous of. I mean seriously, they're pretty awesome.

I haven't written off 2012 completely yet. I still have high hopes for it.
I'll continue to work on finding truly funny things to blog about. In the meantime, I may dig down deep into the archives of my life to share funny/positive stories from my past.

Can you smell the Patchouli?

So I said that I was done being all depressed and feeling bad about myself. I wasn't kidding, people. For the last few weeks, I've been doing damn near everything in my power to feel better about myself. I've been going to an endocrinologist and doing all the medical stuff (the labs, the prescriptions, etc...) I've also been abiding by a strict low carb diet and have lost 6.7 pounds in three weeks!

But in addition, thanks to the great invention of Groupon, I've been trying some other, um...how shall I put it?...New agey, wholistic, granola-esque, weird stuff too. Groupon was having a deal on hypnosis so I decided to buy three sessions. A few people have asked me about it and if I think it's working.  It's not like Office Space. There are no swinging pendulums. I just had my third session. I have no idea if it's working or if it's worked. I can't even exactly tell you what happens in the hour that I'm there. I can tell you what he says at the beginning. I can tell you that he counts down to 1 at the end and I open my eyes. What happens for the other 56 minutes in between is a mystery. All I know is that I wake up feeling like I took the world's most refreshing nap...

Then, a couple of my friends recommended that I try something called NAET treatment. I mean, every single time I try to explain this process to one of my friends, I can see that look on their face. The "I can't believe someone who's smart and educated would buy into this nonsense..." look. I tell you what though...I'm a believer now. I mean, it's craaaaaazy. Completely crazy. I'll try to briefly explain the process and what it claims but I'm sure you'd be better off looking at something legit. Don't be discouraged by the fact that the website looks like something my 13 year old cousin put together for a class project.

Okay, so here was my experience. I went in and the woman (who happens to also be a registered nurse) told me that the first thing she'd have to do is some muscle testing.  I had never heard of such a thing. My initial reaction was to ask if it would hurt (cuz that's how I roll). She assured me that it wouldn't. She pulled out something that reminded me of a Trapper Keeper full of vials that had clear liquid in them. Each one had a little label on it.

She had me hold my arm out and she told me to resist her pushing it down. I did. She couldn't move it at all. Then she had me hold one vial at a time while she proceeded to do the same thing. The theory is that if something doesn't make you stronger, it makes you weaker. For the first 6 or so vials, my arm was essentially useless. It was like I had noodle arm. I was sure that my arm was just tired so I told her that I didn't think I'd be able to hold my arm up for anything. The conversation went a little something like this:

Arti: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that my arm is just really tired and I won't be able to hold it up for anything.
Witch Doctor: Do you want me to prove you wrong?
Arti: Sure, I'd love that.
Witch Doctor: Taking the vial out of my hand completely.  Resist now.
Arti: Okay.
Witch Doctor: unable to move my arm at all. See? Your arm isn't tired at all.
Arti: Yeah, but I think it has something to do with the fact that I'm not holding something.
Witch Doctor: handing me a pencil. Okay, hold this.
Arti: Okay. Taking the pencil.
Witch Doctor: unable to move my arm at all. See? Do you believe me now?

At this point, I wasn't really convinced but I proceeded to do as she told me. She told me my biggest imbalance was hormonal. Shocking, I know. She said that she'd treat that first. She gathered up a bunch of vials labeled with strange things like, "worthlessness", "hopelessness", "guilt", "depression", "helplessness", "thyroid", "estrogen", "progesterone" and other things that worried me because I wondered how she knew I felt all those things. She plopped them in a jar, and handed them to me. I became increasingly alarmed because the hand holding the jar started to feel real funky.

She told me to hold the jar for 10 minutes. Then she had me hold the jar to my forehead as she had me do certain breathing exercises as she hit pressure points on my spine. At the end of doing that several times, she told me not to eat any meat or dairy that might have hormones in it for 17 hours, to hit my pressure points every 2 hours while awake, and to call her if anything strange happened. I still didn't particularly buy into all of this hocus pocus...but, I agreed and asked if there'd be any side effects. She said the only side effect would be that my period might be late or skip or be early. That seemed highly unlikely since you can set a watch by Aunt Flo's visits.

And then it happened.

She arrived 11 days early and she was pissed.

Now, I'm not a scientist, but that's pretty convincing. I have no idea if this stuff is helping or if it's just a waste of 45 bucks a week. I do know that it can't be hurting. I also know that I feel better. I feel more positive and energetic.

So... I guess I'll keep on keepin on and see what happens.

Turning the page...

I happened across a quote a while back that really had me thinking.

"If you want your life to be a magnificent story, then begin by realizing that you are the author and everyday, you have the opportunity to write a new page."

I've been terrible about blogging.  I tried to write when I had funny or positive things to share. In 2011, those things were few and far between. I've said it once, and I'll say it again; that year sucked and I'm not even a little sad to see it go. In addition to some tragic happenings, I struggled with my own personal and health issues. Maybe I didn't blog because I just didn't want my blog's pages to be filled with sadness, followed by depression, followed by self-loathing. That sounds like a less than magnificent story...

So even though I've really tried hard to not be a Debbie Downer in my blog, I think I'm in need of a little catharsis. It's not really happy. It's not really funny. It's not really positive. But it's the truth, and whether I like it or not, it's part of my story.  I promise if I can get through this, it'll be all rainbows and bunnies from this point on.

I had mentioned in a previous post that the hubs and I weren't necessarily "trying" to have a baby, but we weren't trying to prevent it. That was way back in April. The fact is that we hadn't been trying to prevent it for a while before that. At first, I didn't think much about it. You can tell from my post that I wasn't even completely sure it was a good idea. After a few months of not preventing and nothing happening, I started to feel sort of anxious about it.

In June, I decided that it was time to get checked out, just to make sure all our ducks were in a row and that we were both healthy enough to conceive. Turns out, I wasn't. The odds weren't in my favor, the deck was stacked against me, yada yada yada. I felt like Miranda from Sex and the City when she found out she had a lazy ovary.

But then a funny thing happened...

I went from not even being sure, to wanting a baby more than anything in the world. Maybe I like a challenge...Maybe everyone wants something the second they're told they can't have it... Maybe It was just the kick in the pants I needed to really know what was important to me. All of a sudden, I didn't care what obstacles were in my way...I was gonna make this happen come hell or high water.

And so it began...the doctor appointments, the thrice weekly ultrasounds, the inability to make plans because I had no idea what my cycle was going to be, the hormones, the clomid, the injections, the pills, the ridiculous mood swings, the hope, the desperation, the despair. Month after month...for 6 months...lather, rinse, repeat...

In the meantime, everything in my body was falling apart. I was gaining weight at an astronomical rate. My hair was starting to fall out in clumps. My face was ravished by cyctic acne...I mean, that shit hurts! At the end of 2010, after 4 months of prescribed anorexia, I felt better about myself than I had in my entire life. I had lost 50 pounds, my skin was clear, I felt confident and better than ever. Flash forward just one year later, and I had gained all of the weight (plus some) back and I've never felt worse about myself.

I do not like who I've been over the past year. I have found myself feeling envious, no...downright JEALOUS of everyone who has what I want. I have found myself playing the victim, saying "WHY ME??!!!" more than I care to admit to. I have been tempted to punch people in the throat for asking me why I've been married 5 years and don't have kids. I've cried to the point of gasping about things I have no control over. I have avoided seeing people that I love and that love me because I'm humiliated by my failures...

All of this stuff is enough to drive a person to a deep dark place, and to be honest, I've been in one for a while. I never thought I could cry so much or feel so hopeless. But before you stop following my blog because it's depressing, know this; I'm starting to come out of the dark. Don't get me wrong, my eyes are still adjusting to the light, but it's there and it's bright.

Everyone has their sob story. That's mine. But here's my silver lining...my hope for 2012. If my number one dream in life is to be a parent, then I'm 100% confident that I can achieve that. My goal is not to be pregnant. Sure I'd love to see what kind of genetic combination Sudhir and I would produce, however, there are so many paths that can lead me my ultimate dream of being a parent.

I've begun the long road to getting healthy again. I have all the hope in the world that I can do this. If in 6 months to a year, I'm in a better place, I'll give the fertility stuff one more go. If it's not in the cards, it's not. God knows who is meant to be in our family. If it's from my womb, great. If it's not, I'm not one to question His authority.

I am the author of my magnificent story. I hold the pen.

Consider the page turned.

The next chapter is gonna be a good one, dammit...

The Bucket List...

Okay, so maybe this will be my lamest post ever. Then again, maybe it will inspire one of my 3 readers. Either way, I feel like it's an important exercise for me. So here it goes.  It begins with a single question:

What are your dreams?

Okay, okay. So I bet at least a few of you have already decided that this is, in fact, my lamest post ever. Before you close the browser and vow never to read this blog again, allow me to give just a bit of background.

I don't make a secret of the fact that I am not one of those people who goes around reading self-help books. I also don't read many non-fiction books, period. Recently though, I was asked to read a book for a project I'm involved in for work. It's called "Dream Manager" and it's by Matthew Kelly. Yes, you're probably already thinking "Uh....Laaaaaaaaaaame." Yeah, I don't blame you. Before you start judging me, let me just say that I was with you. I read it anyway to be "responsible".

And man...am I glad I did.

At first, I thought this would be a book written for people who are managers. Not so. It's really about being human. And what makes us human? Our ability to envision the possibilities that will bring us joy...the possibilities that motivate us and bring us hope.

Then I realized something. I didn't know the answer to the question above. Sure, when I was younger, I would dream about the life I wanted. I wanted to go away to school, have a boy like me, get good grades, get a job, move to a new city, make new friends, fall in love, get married, have a nice car, buy a nice house...it wasn't anything out the ordinary. It all seemed acheivable. Good news: It was!

So now what? When did I stop dreaming?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had gotten so caught up with the notion of the daily grind...with going to work, getting a paycheck, paying my bills...that I simply didn't have the time or inclination to think beyond that. What's worse is that I didn't even have any idea what my own husband's dreams were. That actually made me feel pretty bad.

So, in an effort to commit to making my dreams come true, I've decided that I should probably have some. You may have noticed that I haven't blogged in quite some time. There are a number of reasons for that. I've thought about it a lot. I guess I figured that I didn't have many positive things to say these days. Truth be told, I've been downright depressed. There are lots of things that could have contributed to me feeling down. Rather than post the million things I could cry about, I figured I could write about the things that get me excited, that bring me joy to envision, that give me hope...

I've given it a lot of thought. I'm still not done thinking. My goal is to write down 100 dreams I'd like to achieve before I turn 40. That seems reasonable. In the meantime, I encourage you to try to answer the question for yourself. Without dreams, what's the point? What are you living for? I also encourage you to ask the people in your life what theirs are. Sounds cheesy as hell, but you might be surprised. If nothing else, it'll probably make that person's day that you care enough to ask.

Just sayin.

Youth is Wasted on the Young.

People tend to guffaw when I wax-philosophical about getting old at the ripe age of 32, however, I feel like I have some legitimate observations on this topic.  I was reading a book, "Water for Elephants", and the main character talks a lot about getting old and how it's difficult and subtle and before you know it, life has passed you by.  Yeah, pretty depressing stuff...but it made some excellent points. 

When you're young (i.e. before 30) and someone asks you how old you are, the answer pops into your head with surprising speed and accuracy.  The younger you are, the more precise your description of age is.  For example, 28 months, 3 and a half, 12 and three quarters, etc etc.  Sometime after you turn 30, someone asks you how old you are and you start doing long arithmetic in your head trying to figure it out.  I've certainly noticed it now that I'm over 30.

When you're in your 20s, life seems to be limitless and spread out before you.  You think you have all the time in the world to travel, to enjoy marriage, to finally get in shape, to be healthier, to have kids.  It's a pretty rude awakening when you realize that there actually is a ticking clock looming above your head. 

As I was looking through some old pictures of me from college and grad school, I realized something.  What the hell was I thinking feeling so bad about myself back then?  I mean, I spent the vast majority of my time thinking I was too fat, had too big a nose, too flat a butt, too big of boobs, I was too tall, my hair was too frizzy, my skin was awful, etc etc.  Truth is, if I could go back to those days, I would trade the me of my youth with the me of my present any day of the week.  I suppose hindsight is always 20/20 but it would have been nice if someone was smart enough to tell me that it's pretty much all downhill from that point on.

Looking back, my youth was pretty fantastic.  I just wish I would have spent more time appreciating it for what it was instead of always discounting it for what it wasn't.  I look forward and all I see are struggles, to get healthy, lose weight, get pregnant, have a healthy pregnancy, etc.  It's downright depressing.

So maybe, as a sanity check, I will try not to dwell on the past or obsess over the future.  Instead, I'll focus on the here and now...Chances are, when I'm 50, I'm going to look back at my 32 year old self and be pissed that I didn't spend more time enjoying life as it was!

5 Years in the Making...

As many of you know, I do a lot of traveling.  I mean, it's often not to super exotic destinations...it's mainly to see friends and family in locations such as Ridgewood, NJ or Gibraltar, MI or Omaha, NE.  Throw in the occasional trip to NYC, St. Louis, Chicago, and it makes for a relatively busy travel schedule.  I've never really complained much about the fact that we don't take real vacations.  I just say that I love to travel in theory.

In the middle of August, the hubs and I finally did it.  We went to Italy.  It was the thing we had wanted to do since we got married.  It just never really seemed like the right time.  Given our recent plans of having a kid, we figured it was time to get that trip in.

I plan to post a ridiculously detailed account of our trip, more for us to remember it forever than for the reading public's entertainment...however, maybe you'll find it mildly entertaining.  That'll have to wait for a later date when I have the time and patience to be meticulous enough to search through hundreds of pictures to do the trip justice.

Until then, I wanted to leave you with some tips in case you will be traveling to Italy in the near future.  I hope you will find them useful.

Tip #1: Travel with people who are hilarious.
And are preferably miniature versions of you and your partner, are willing to do whatever you tell them to do in pictures, and have similar habits to you.  The peeps we traveled with were basically the travel sized additions of the hubs and I.  We had the same tolerance for heat, walking, got sick of looking at ancient stuff at the same time, have the same affinities for Coca Light, same tolerance (or lack thereof) of alcohol, and most importantly, the same priority placed on eating delicious foods.

  

The pictures are essentially of our travel companions demonstrating their ability to follow instructions in picture taking.  Oh, and our love of Coca Light.

Tip #2: Don't get ripped off.
The cab ride from the Rome Airport to whatever hotel you're staying at shouldn't be more than 45 Euros.  Don't get duped into paying 60 or 70 Euros just because you don't know where you're going.  Also, if a Gypsy asks you to hold her baby, DON'T.  Their posse will just rip you off as you hold their baby.

If you take a train ride from Florence to Pisa, don't buy a first class ticket from the kiosk.  There's no such thing on the train, but they don't mind charging the chumps who opt for it 5 extra Euros each way. On the back of the ticket in tiny print, you'll see that you have to validate your ticket in Florence before you leave.  Do it or they find your ass another 10 Euros on the train.  Sne bit her thumb at the ticket.  Shakespeare would be proud.



Tip #3: Don't expect awesome service.
As a general rule, the servers in Italy don't get tips because the second you sit at their table, they get a service charge of at least 2 Euros.  The food prices factor in a tip so they have no real motivation to make you happy aside from their basic human decency.  Don't count on that too much, though.  I think in the 2 meals per day that we ate out over the course of 8 days, we had 2 servers that were really nice and helpful.  1 in Florence, and 1 in Rome.  Oh, and I probably could have made a tip out of this, but under no circumstance should you eat in an Asian Pizzeria.  You'll thank me for that golden nugget of advice...trust me.

Tip #4: Don't have ridiculous expectations.
Just like anything, it's better to be pleasantly surprised than horribly disappointed.  Case in point, the Sistine Chapel.  For some reason, I was under the impression that this painting would be spectacular, large, and the ENTIRE ceiling.  It turns out, it's relatively small, hidden among a ton of other stuff, and nothing to write home about.  I think these photos speak for themselves.

The Anticipation.                                             The Let-Down.

                  

Tip #5: Be prepared to spend a lot of money on Coca Light.
Randomly on about the 5th day in Italy, I started to really think about the amount of money we had spent on Diet Cokes.  On average, a can of Diet Coke costs 4 Euros.  I drank about 3-4 a day.  We were there for 8 days.  That's just about 128 Euros on Coca Cola Light.  Roughly translated, that's a little over $204.00 on soda.  Yeah, sickening, I know.  Here's the really crappy part; There are no diamonds in the bottom of the can.  RIPOFF!

Tip #6: Take in the local performers.
If you're in Florence, make sure you check out Ken Mercer.  He performs in Ufizzi Square every single night at 9:30pm to 11pm.  He's amazeballs.  Seriously.  Oh, but be sure to participate or he will actually get pissed, pack up and leave, leaving you very very sad.

Tip #7: If you meet really nice people, they're not likely locals.
Locals seem to hate tourists...especially American tourists.  I guess I can't blame them.  The only two things I could watch in English were CNN and the Jersey Shore.  I'd hate us too if that was all I had to go on.  It might also be because we're Indian.  It seemed like the only other Indians we saw in Italy were the annoying dudes selling roses while you eat dinner.  Anyway, we met tons of really nice people while were there.  A fantastic French couple from the Pink City named Alice and Jerome, A nice guy on a bus who was South African, A great couple of girls from NYC who were about to jump a girl who cut the line in St. Peter's Square, and a sweet couple from AZ who got robbed blind on the Metro.  We sure didn't have much luck with any honest to god Italians though.  Oh well, better luck next time, I guess...

Tip #8: Make sure you get a passport stamp in Italy.
You'll thank me for this one later too.  I think it's more of an effort to get a stamp than to walk out of the Rome airport without so much as a glance at Customs or Passport Control.  It's fine and good when you land in Italy and are excited to begin seeing the sights or go to the hotel...however, when you try to leave Italy and you've got some hardass German dude asking you where the hell you came from and how long you've been in Europe, you'll think to yourself "Hmm...maybe I SHOULD have gotten that stamp, after all..."  Learn from our mistakes.

I'm sure there are a million other things that I missed, but these are the things that stick out the most.  I hope it was helpful...

HAPPY TRAVELS :)

I'm not a Mac, I'm not a PC, I'm a victim of my circumstance...

The debate has been raging for as long as I can remember.  I'm sure we all remember these commercials with the nameless nerdy guy representing "the man" and their evil agendas and Justin Long representing the rebellious Gen X/Yer who refuses to conform to business casual standards.

I'll be honest, if I were going to decide what I was based solely on the above image,  it's a no-brainer.  Who wants to be the frumpy corporate schmuck?  Yeah, that's right...no one. However, like most people, I've been raised on the PC.  It was my first experience with a computer in high school, and it seemed to be the norm in college & grad school.  Then once I was a corporate drone, people were all walking around with Dells and Thinkpads.  It wasn't until my first job in NYC that I was given a MacBook Pro that would send most Apple fans into a state of bliss.  I couldn't deny the beauty of it.  It was simple, clean, and much much prettier than the crappy Dell desktop I'd been using up until that point.  Only the design team was given MacBooks and this made the act of sharing files or compatibility with other people's stuff relatively difficult.  In order to overcome this challenge, we all started running VM Ware so that we could have the MS Office productivity software, but still use Creative Suite on the Mac side.

So began my personal hell.

I understand that Steve Jobs has a vision.  I understand that a lot of interactions on a Mac are better than those of the PC.  What I don't understand is how any normal human being can switch between the two without being driven to complete and total insanity.  The interactions are just different enough to make me crazy!  (just as an example, copy & paste keyboard shortcut- Ctrl + C or V vs. whatever the heck that key is called that looks like a swirly square cubey thing + C or V - I mean, the keys aren't even in the same spot on the keyboard!  Cut me a break here!!) 

Not only that, but even their hardware is different (read: EXPENSIVE)  You can't just go to a Target and get a charger for your MacBook.  You gotta go to the Apple store and spend 90 bucks on one.  

After my first job in NYC, I had a PC.  It was an adjustment to switch back, but it was like riding a bike.  At my first job in KC, I was given a choice and I chose the MacBook.  I promptly realized that it was going to be a pain in the ass because the helpdesk didn't support Macs and switched back to a PC.  My next job was a Mac.  Trying to keep up was enough to make my head spin. 

At work, I'm currently using a MacBook with Office for Mac and no VM Ware or Parallels or Bootcamp.  I'm fine at work...but the second I come home and try to use my Toshiba laptop to blog, all hell breaks loose.  I use the wrong shortcut keys, I go to the wrong side of the screen to close or minimize windows, and I keep trying to use hot corners that don't exist.  It's infuriating. 

My point in this rant is to simply say this...

I know a ton of people who are die hard Apple fans.  I get it, people...I really do.  Their hardware and software is beautiful.  However, I'm not convinced that you're die hard Apple fans because it's the best designed stuff or that it's the most usable or makes the most sense. I think it's because it's just too damn hard to switch off of one.  

At this point, I am on my MacBook way more than my Toshiba laptop (mainly because I'm on the computer all damn day and I don't feel like staring at one at home too...)  That being said, I'm pretty much indifferent as to which one I like more.  I can say this:  I'd be 100% okay with never using a PC again if I could just deal with Macs and I'd be 100% okay never using a Mac again if I could just deal with PCs.  I'm not sure if that makes me a fair weather fan of one or the other, or just a victim of my circumstance.  What would be ideal is if everyone could just get along, decide what way is the best, and then EVERYONE does it that way.