Boy am I cranky....

The term "hot flash" is a bit deceiving. It's not a flash. Not at all... flash would indicate "brief" or "quick"... but in reality they're more like hot waves. Big, thunderous, suffocating, crashing waves. Thursday was about the worse day and I thanked God repeatedly for creating the man who created the side-by-side freezer/fridge. Nothing feels better when overcome by the hot wave than to plunge your entire body inside the freezer. And given my underwhelming height of 5'2", I fit perfectly. Hot waves during the day have turned to night sweats, which actually have me desiring a cold room with the fan on (normally I'm bundled up under layers of blankets and pjs!). But there's good news in all of this: 1. Using positive imagery, I'm convincing myself that the sweat that is pouring out of me is melted fat and thus I'm getting thinner by the minute! 2. It seems as though the peaks of the flashes are diminishing and it's more of a regular state of overheated, so I think that means they're leveling out and 3. Thanking God once again that He gave me the wisdom to do this when it's not 120 degrees out. :-)

The other somewhat negative... ok, scratch that... the other very negative part of HRT withdrawal is the mood swings. Just ask D. He can't wait to put me on that plane for Denver tomorrow. I wake up in the foulest mood and I hate the world. Just angry and mean. And everything is an irritant. This is complicated right now by the fact that I'm so thoroughly fed up and disgusted with this whole ankle situation that I want to scream. This is the kind of foul mood that you can see you're in, but you're trapped in it. And when you think about snapping yourself out, that makes you even angrier. So I'll just keep praying and hopefully snap out of it soon.

So I'm looking for ways to counter-balance this anger, because quite honestly, life is WAY too short to be pissed off. And there is so much beauty in this world that you miss when you have wrapped yourself in a shroud of darkness. Guaranteed that eventually you come to your senses and you want to kick yourself for not realizing it all along.

With that thought in mind, some happy thoughts:
I'm totally excited that today I get to babysit my "granddaughter" Hailee for a few hours!! There's nothing that soothes the soul faster than a baby! Also, I leave for Denver tomorrow morning and I'm looking forward to the trip and the class. It's a new client and I'm looking forward to knocking their socks off!

We're also on Day 13 of the induction and I'm excited to say I've lost 6 pounds. I'm even more excited given the fact that I was only able to exercise for the first few days of the plan. I still have a ways to go... I tried on my absolutely favorite skinny jeans today and they're still not buttonable (is that a word?). But I'll pull them out again next week and I'm sure they will fit even better! D and I are going to keep going on induction for another two weeks given that we're both doing great on it, minimal cravings, and we're seeing results. It will be a little tricky given that I'm in class for the next two weeks, but I'll make it work.

And here's the big dream... I SO want to spend a few weeks in France this fall doing a home exchange. Interestingly enough, there's a cruise that goes from Rome to NY during that time frame that we could purchase with our VCA Barter Dollars (No cash!!). How amazing would that be?? A couple of weeks in France followed by a two-week cruise back home? And we have free companion tickets from TMobile that we could use for the domestic portion of the airfare, so we're basically just looking at one-way airfare from NY to Paris. A 3-4 week vacation for the price of one domestic ticket and two one-way tickets. No lodging expenses, no food on the cruise... And it even works with my training schedule. Chances it's going to happen? Probably slim to none, but it gives me something to work for and look forward to...