Living Life Around Asthma

This week in Ed Psych the class topic asthma came up a few times. This is something I can relate to. I was diagnosed with acute physically induced asthma when I was younger, about seven if I remember. I remember at school I had to go to the nurses office in the afternoon and take an inhaler that sounded like a train if I sucked in too hard. As I got older, the less I went to the doctor and eventually I stopped taking my inhaler and frankly forgot about it. It never really bothered me again until I was about 15. I mean it bothered me, I would get winded in P.E. and when doing physical activities, but I just associated it with being out of shape. Then when I was 15 my brother moved down to Kansas City. There my mom and I would visit for a week at a time about once a month. While down there he adopted a dog, I’m allergic to dogs. I would get itchy red eyes and hives, but nothing too bad. While visiting I would sleep on an air mattress, and wake up in the morning with the worst chest pain ever. It felt like someone was constantly sitting on my chest, and when I would breath in it was very shallow. It got so bad that when we stayed the night, I would stop breathing in my sleep and suddenly wake up gasping for air, a couple times this sent me into an anxiety attack. This scared my mom, so she took me to an allergist.

At the allergist I took multiple tests for weeks, and eventually learned most of what I am allergic to. I was allergic the dogs, cats, dust, christmas trees and much more. It got all the way down to I’m allergic to almost everything pollen related, and I’m lactose intolerant. And to top off the crap cake, I had full blown physically induced, cold induced, and allergy induced asthma. Of course out of everything that someone can suck at doing, I suck at breathing. After learning everything, it was time to take action. I started with singulair, a pill I take at night before bed, and two inhalers, one I take twice a day, and one for emergencies. Over the years my body got used to most of the medicine they were giving me. So now days I am down to two inhalers and over the counter allergy pills I take when allergies bother me. After almost 5 years of living with it, I’ve got my routine down pat. If I know I’m going somewhere that has a dog, or something I'm allergic to, I will start taking my inhaler twice a day, two days before I go there, twice a day while I’m there, and pills at about 10 AM everyday I’m there. Doing this I usually don’t have to use my emergency inhaler, unless one of the animals licks my face, then I’m just screwed. Besides asthma bothering me when I'm around allergens, it usually only bothers me when it's cold and I have to walk up the hill from my dorm, but I avoid that by driving to class, ha.

A few class periods ago we talked about the benefits of breastfeeding and what can happen if you don’t breastfeed. Asthma and allergies were two of the things that could be more severe if the child is not breastfed. Being adopted, I wasn’t, so now I am left to wonder if I would have such issues if I had been breastfed. From the little medical records I have on my birth mother, I know that she had issues with allergies, and she had acute asthma. I can’t help but think about what would be different if I was fed naturally, maybe I wouldn’t have asthma or allergies, or at least they wouldn’t have been so bad. From my life experience, if breastfeeding gives my child the slightest chance at not having as server allergies as me, I’m going to take it. I wouldn’t wish this annoyance on anyone. 

I'm Happy

Today, as I recover from yet another weekend out with my friends, I discovered that I'm okay. Really, I am. I think about all the things that could go wrong in my life right now, and I'm not doing to bad. I have amazing family and friends that love me, I have a roof over my head, and food in my belly (trust me more food than I need). Sure things may go bad from time to time, like a ruined laptop, but life always balances out. Everyday that I'm here I catch myself growing as an individual. I can take care of myself and make my own decisions. I do the things I like to do and I've found people that like the same things as me. I'm also finding different groups of friends that help me indulge in different things I like. I have my friends I go out and party with, I have my friends that bring out my nerdy side, and I have friends that we just order a pizza and sit and watch movies. It's good to have different friends to hangout with and I feel good with not sticking to the same few people all the time. I'm the type of person that can get too much of people and need time away, so with having different groups of friends makes it very easy to find someone else to talk to until I'm okay. With these new friends I am able be who I want be, and I am the same person no matter who I am with. This makes me very happy. In the past I always wanted to impress people and would often hold my opinions and interests back so that I would seem normal, but who wants normal. Here I can be who I want to be, and I am happy. (:

Water and Technology Do Not Mix

Today has been...eventful, and not the good kind. I started my day with hitting the snooze button a few too many times and accidentally slept through the time I was supposed to pick up a friend from class (sorry Kirsta). Since I was running late I decided to eat lunch in my room and work on the homework assignment that was due at 1. Needless to say I never finished my homework. As I reached for my cup of water it hit the side of the soup and all of the water went right on top of my laptop. All. Of. It. In a panic I picked up my laptop and shook it upside down to drain the water out, then grabbed a towel and tried to wipe out as much as I possibly could. After getting all that I could out of the laptop I laid a towel down on my bed and set the computer upside down on top of it. Next I put out all the pictures that got wet on my desk and set the fan to blow on the laptop and pictures.

After assessing the damage I frantically called my mom. The first few words I said were, "you cannot be mad, you did this before." 5 years ago mom spilt a bowl of cereal on her laptop, and unfortunately  could not save it. I bawled my eyes out to my mom and asked her what to do. She told me to try to take it the Geek Squad at Best Buy and see what they could do. So I dropped Krista off at class, decided to skip, and dragged my roommate across town with me to try and save myself from this horrible day. At Best Buy the employee basically told me that water damage is not good, and I would have to pay 35$ to send my laptop away, and IF they could fix it, it would cost at least 700$. In the end it would be cheaper to purchase a new laptop. After looking at the prices I called my mom and told her the news. Ang and I went to lunch and I borrowed her laptop to research prices and talk to my mom about what to do. After Ang got back from choir, I dragged her out once again and went back to Best Buy, paid 962$ for a new laptop, and went back home with my tail between my legs. After we got home we went to the union because we both had group projects to work on. When we were done, she went to work and stayed in the room to check out my laptop. For some reason I decided to try to turn it on once again. And. It. Worked. Right now every part of my laptop works fine and normally.

So here I am, sitting in my room, with one fully functional laptop in front of a fan, and typing my frustration out on another. Let's hope my luck doesn't carry over to my two tests tomorrow.

A Week Gone By

I'm going to apologize in advance, this hasn't been the best of weeks for me, and quite frankly ended in a melt down.

School is going full force right now and the panic of tests and quizzes is settling in. I like the classes I am taking. Math is my favorite and since it is the beginning of the year it is still pretty simple. Human Geography and Humanities III are drags, as always, and Ed Psych makes me think that my parents were awful. (but they did the best they could (;)

The week kind of floated by in a blur. Making small talk with people that you see everyday, but not know their names. It's odd to think that you see someone in the same class and speak to them every period you have together, yet you know nothing about them. I couldn't pick half the kids I have classes with out of a crowd. For example, one night at the bars my friends and I ran into this nice group of girls, them being way more intoxicated than us, we made friends with them, well at least for the night. We even ended up adding each other on snapchat. I never saw the group of girls again, except for one. I have a class with her, and I've seen her at Salt (or Church), and it turns into that awkward situation when you don't know if someone remembers you, and so you make awkward eye contact and then your left with the question of if they remember, but you don't want to ask and possibly make it more awkward. Because in college you're around people ALL THE FREAKING TIME. And God forbid you land in one awkward conversation, because around here, 15 other people heard you make a fool of yourself as well.

On the topic of being a fool, today wasn't one of my highlights. I was fine for the night until one little thing happened. The hardest thing is my friends don't understand why I'm upset. They weren't put into the same situations I have. I have a constant fear of being pushed out. I often times don't like when a friend brings someone else into the group. There has been more than one time that I have had friends, and have just been left in the dust for someone better, and I'm not talking "oh junior high was bad," I'm talking, this is a very fresh wound. And it's not even that I'm worried about being pushed out of the friendship, it's more of a pushed out of the moment. Driving by yourself when your friends are in another car, or having to stand outside while your friends are in. It gets down to the point where I need to feel wanted. I need the confirmation of them asking me if I want to come, not assuming I will tag along.  I don't know, maybe I'm just needy. But what hurts, hurts. and theres no changing that fact that a friend shouldn't make rude comments to another, no matters who the other person is.

A Stangers Compliment

This morning I woke up with enough time to do something a little extra with my hair and makeup. This doesn't happen very often as I usually sleep in until 15 minutes til class. I tried a hairstyle that I've seen a few times on the internet. it consists of a headband going around your head and slightly over the forehead, the hair in the back is flipped into the headband making it an updo. I don't know if I really like it or not. I asked Angelene what she thought of it and she told me that its good and that I should keep it for the day, but why is it hard for me to find confidence in it when a friend obviously says its cute?

And why should we even care what our hair looks like? It's whats on the inside that counts right? Sometimes I just want to cut my hair short and leave it straight everyday, but I wouldn't be able to pull it off. It wasn't until a complete stranger told me she thinks my hair is cute, that I decided I like it. Why does it take a complete stranger to make me feel okay, rather than a friend I've known and trust forever? 

I guess it goes back to high school. There was a girl that I was friends with early on in high school, she would tell anyone when something looks bad. Now she wasn't a necessarily a mean girl, she would tell you if something looked good too. The bad thing was I constantly sought after her approval of everything. This didn't exactly build up my confidence. To this day I still talk to her, and I find myself snapchatting her to ask if something is cute. The other week I decided that I am not going to do this anymore. I need to find my own sense of what looks right and not. If I like something then, dammit, I'm going to wear it proud. But now I find myself seeking approval from elsewhere, like complete strangers. It's baby steps, eventually I will grow the confidence in myself to wear what I want and surround myself with people who don't care what the outside looks like.   

Home is Where my Mom Is

Today has been a day that is hard to find motivation for. Morning classes were cancelled, which is nice, but has no affect on me because my classes didn't start until one today. I woke up at 10:30, showered and did my homework for todays class, all the while trying to convince Krista to let us skip, it didn't work. Sometimes I hate her being a good influence. So I slumped around and got ready for class and as we were headed out to the car (yes because we drive to class and are lazy) we saw the drift behind my car was too high for my poor little focus to make it over. So we had to trudge to class in the cold. I guess it was a good thing we went to class because we covered material that I needed help on and we turned in our papers. After class we, again miserably walked back to the dorms and I laid in my bed before going to work a little longer than I normally do. The cooks in Rialto know that I usually get out of my class at about 1:50-55ish so I usually go to my room and take 10 minutes to change and pull my hair back in enough time to get to work at 1:15ish. But today I waited a little longer than I usually do, trying to find the motivation to put a smile on.

After work I laid in my bed a little longer, watching a little Bob's Burgers and looking on Facebook to pass the time. This is when I came across a post that my Mom had shared about being a mother, and the different views of different mothers. She had the caption "I've been a few of these mom's." I'll post it below because I'm sure not everyone will want to read it. This post hit me, hard. At first I thought about how my parents had gone through a tough time with money when they were trying to adopt me. Money was such a factor that they worried they weren't going to able to afford everything for the actual adoption. Then I thought about all the times my mom has had miscarriages. I don't know the pain, and honestly I hope I never will, but I saw a friend of mine go through it not too long ago and it hurt my heart. I can't imagine what my mother had gone through, losing 3 babies. The next part of the post was about a teenager who disagreed and argued with her mother. I had definitely done that more than once. I am just like my mom, which is wonderful and awful all in the same. I love my mom and look up to her, but man do we butt heads sometimes. Finally the post ended with a little old lady who tells the teenager to love her mom because she had lost hers 20 years ago. My heart is breaking right now I miss my mom so much. I have not seen her in four weeks and I will not see her until another four, this is the longest I have ever been away from home, and I hope i don't have to do this again. I'm probably going to go call my mom now and go to bed, Goodnight.

This is what my mom posted today:

A tired, new mother wears her baby through the aisles of Target, hair in a messy bun and eyes burning from sleep deprivation. She pauses briefly to pull a stylish dress from a discount rack, wondering if the flowy ruffles would conceal her post-partum pudge. “$25 is a lot of money,” she ponders aloud, placing the dress back with a frown. Then, she hears the giggles of two women. She watches as they mindlessly shop the same section with fresh makeup and smiles. Their carts are loaded up as they turn to the dressing room, hot lattes in hand. A pang of envy sneaks into her gut.

“I really miss that,” she whispers, pushing her cart toward the diaper aisle, kissing the hair of her snoozing infant.

******

The woman found herself walking through the sale racks, grabbing items and tossing them into the shopping cart. As grateful as she was that her best friend flew in from out of state, all she really wanted was to be home beneath the covers. This was supposed to be an outing to “get her mind off the pain”. But everywhere she looked, there were mamas with babies or growing bellies. She took a sip of her chesnut latte and threw a beige leather purse in her cart, pushing back tears. Her hand wandered down to the place a baby once grew. Oh, how she longed for a kick in her belly, or any proof of the growing life that once existed inside. Her eyes wandered toward a tired new mama, kissing her baby’s head and strolling toward the diaper aisle.

“I really miss that,” she thinks, heading to the dressing room with her friend.

********

A teenager rolls her eyes and huffs loudly. “Mom, they wouldn’t sell it in the JUNIORS section if it was inappropriate for my age. Gahd, I don’t know why you are so ridiculous about this. I can’t wear anything that’s cool!” Her mother hesitantly eyes the floral halter top, inspecting it’s spaghetti straps and short-length waist. “Honey, if it was just a little bit longer…” her voice trails off as her daughter storms away. She pushes the cart after her, throwing the flowery halter into the basket. As she makes her way after the angry teen, she hears a toddler squeal with delight. She smiles and watches as the toddler’s mother lifts him out of the shopping cart and nuzzles him close for a hug.

“I really miss that,” she thinks to herself.

*******

Toddler mama nuzzles her little man with a hug. After months of teething and sleep-deprivation, she was beginning to feel defeated. But last night Little Man slept 7 hours. Seven. Whole. Hours. She felt somewhat human after a ginormous coffee and a frantic, 2-minute shower. One good day almost wiped out the memory of 100 bad ones. Maybe, just maybe, they were turning a corner. She placed her son back in the cart with a kiss, and headed toward check-out.

“Thank God for one. good. day.” she thinks with a smile.

*****************

The little old lady with powder-gray hair fumbles for the Target dog sticker when she sees a young mom approaching. 60 years of hard work, and Miss Betsy still couldn’t find it in her heart to retire. Her joints ache from standing and scanning, but she still finds joy in the interactions she would otherwise not receive in her quiet, dusky apartment.

She offers a receipt and a sticker to the mom with a toddler. She blows kisses to the bouncy boy. He giggles in return.

She smiles at the woman with a full cart at checkout. “What a lovely purse you found! It will work with every season!”

She gives a knowing wink to the mother with a teenager, whose daughter has her arms crossed with a pout. (Mom decided against the floral halter, after all). The sweet old lady hands the receipt to mom, then addresses her daughter.

“Thank God for every day you have your mother. I lost mine twenty years ago, and not a day goes by that I don't miss the chance to argue with her.”

And as the teenager rolls her eyes and mumbles “yes ma’am”, Miss Betsy closes her checkout lane and clocks out for break. With tears gathering in her eyes, and memories flooding her mind, she quietly whispers:

“I really miss that.”

Snow Days are Good for the Soul

You have no idea how much joy I had in my heart when I looked at my email this morning and saw that we had no school. Being in college, snow days are almost unheard of. In my time at Wayne I didn't have a single snow day. Well, I should say school never called a snow day, there were far too many times when I stayed cozy in my bed and watched the brave souls trudge to class.

To celebrate the snow, Angelene and I spent most of our day watching netflix. I am on another Ghost Adventures kick. I know it's lame and a little weird and controversial that I, a proud follower of Jesus, watch these kind of shows, but they always catch my interest. It's the adrenaline and excitement I can feel when I watch it, and lets be honest, Zak Bagans is not hard to look at (;

Later in the day Ang and I talked about how our room set up blocks the sunlight out of our room and makes it look darker than it actually is. This is when Ang looked at me and said the most beautiful words I have heard all year, "Do you want to rearrange?" OH MY LORD, this is my favorite thing to do! At home my room is very rarely the same. At Wayne I annoyed my roommate with how much a rearranged my side of the room. I'm also pretty sure that my neighbors below hated me. Ang and I made our game plan on how we wanted the room to look and went into Krista and Ryleigh's room to see if they weren't busy to see if they could help. There we met one of Ryleigh's new friends and had an impromptu game of Mario Monopoly. Angelene and I are used the Mario world as we play our wii regularly, Ryleigh, not so much. Half way through the game Ryleigh asks, "Is this Mario Kart?" which lead to the three of us dying laughing. After we finished Monopoly we went into our room to move things around. Ryleigh's friend decided to stick around and help which is a LIVE SAVER. It's a little easier with four people instead of two.

Ang and I both love our new set up. Instead of my bed being underneath hers, she has her desk, and my bed on the other side of the room with my desk at the foot of my bed and the futon between both beds. I put up my two posters in a different spot and went to target to buy a third. The first two posters are of supernatural, with Sam, Dean, and Cas, and the other of The Walking Dead with my future husband Daryl. The third poster is a mashup of inspirational/motivational quotes and sayings, because Lord knows I need motivation to get out of bed some days. You could say this snow day was very relaxing, exciting, and refreshing.

Now fingers crossed school is canceled tomorrow too.

Let's Start Over

The start of the new year has already gone and passed us by. We now enter the second month of 2016 and I can't help but feel that I haven't accomplished anything. Now I know its only been one month and resolutions are dumb and forgotten about by now, but I still want to do something to better myself. I don't necessarily want to set goals for myself because I know that I will forget about them, or just not care and get that second slice of cake anyway. I have made the choice to start over my new year, but this time instead of goals I will just try to make better choices. Wether it be taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or maybe not taking that shot of whiskey thats going to flip my stomach in ten minutes. No matter what the decision I hope to make the better ones.

While I'm on the subject of starting over. I don't really know what possessed me to write. I am in no means a good writer. Often times I ask my roommate to check my papers before handing them in. Quiet frankly I don't even know if I'm going to keep up with this. Right now blogging is something to pass the time and force myself to sit down and think about what is happening in my life, or what I'm avoiding in life (like the two page paper I have due at midnight that I still haven't started). I remember when I was about 8-10 I started blogging on a site that was specifically for younger girls to blog and read about each other, and I am surprised at how long I kept up with it. Maybe this is just me revisiting my past, or I'm just a really good procrastinator.

Speaking of procrastination, I have a two page paper, two chapters worth of critical thinking questions, another 3 page journal entry for ed psych, and I have to print off my study guide for tomorrow. So I better be on my way, honestly I'm probably going to go procrastinate some more.