Settling In

We've been back in our house for a few weeks now, and we have settled into a comfortable routine. The cats are beyond ecstatic to be in the company of humans again and have taken to sleeping on our bed constantly and causing me terrible allergies at night. I have sufficiently baby-proofed the upstairs against the tiny marauder who now terrorizes its halls on two legs.

The house has a few details that I have yet to iron out--such as there being a bunch of empty picture frames on the wall in the kitchen and the fact that there is not one working clock in the whole place. I'm half-hoping that people will just chalk up these trivialities to me being "quirky," so that I won't actually have to attend to them.

But not everything has been sunshine and unicorns. I've been struggling with some heavy anxiety for about a month now. My anxiety comes and goes, occasionally, but it has been years since it has stuck around with such longevity. There's no obvious cause for it, but of course I worry that it's a symptom of some terrible physical malady that I have not yet discovered. I try not to think about it, but I keep getting the nagging feeling that my body is falling apart before I even hit 30. Juvenile diabetes, hypothyroidism, anxiety, and bad knees... in my 20s? What possibly awaits me at age 50? Will I even get there? Whenever I have a symptom, I find myself scurrying around trying to figure out which of my illnesses to attribute it to. Today I thought I was about to have a panic attack, only to discover that I had low blood sugar that was causing me to shake and feel jittery.

For this reason, my mood has been a little unpredictable. On good days, I marvel at the resourcefulness of the human body and of modern medicine that has granted me this extra time I wouldn't have otherwise had. I feel that I can struggle on and maintain good blood sugars and eat healthily and model healthy behavior and lead a productive life. I think that I can conquer my anxiety on my own--by altering my thought processes or by deep breathing or by exercising, cutting down my caffeine, and drinking water. But on bad days, I struggle to leave the house because I feel disoriented when I drive around town--I would almost compare it to slight vertigo, except that I've never actually experienced vertigo. I panic that I am killing myself with my unhappy habits and despair that even if I put hours upon hours into my diabetes and maintain perfect blood sugars, that will ONLY put me up to square one, where everyone else is already starting automatically with no effort at all. It's disheartening how easily my outlook switches back and forth, these days.

And now, because this entry has taken sort of a self-pitying turn, I'll switch things back to positive. And of course positive is going to involve Q. She seems to have briefly set aside her whiny, defiant phase and is now soaking up all the words she can, largely through books. And I totally don't take the books I'm tired of and hide them from her, because that would be terrible. The other day at Nanners' and Grumpers', she pointed to the TV and said, "Hockey!" just as a news story about a hockey game came on the screen. I didn't even know she knew that word. I have taken advantage of her propensity to repeat everything in order to teach her that the fox says, "Hotty ho." She's also been learning a little bit about cleaning up, and I plan to get her a toy broom soon because as soon as I bust out the regular broom, she runs up holding out her hands saying, "Baby! Baby!" because she wants to sweep.

Sometimes I see the adventures of my peers on Facebook--usually single people--off in foreign countries, attending concerts, and seeing the world. And I wonder maybe if my life is less fulfilling because I stay in one place and do mostly the same things. But honestly, I really love it. Being a wife and mother has been the ultimate adventure.