Merry Christmas!!

Hello faithful blog reader!! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and everyone you care about...and don't care about. :P

I secretly hate the holiday season. Not because it's busy, not because of all the merchandising around Christmas, and not because it's so darned difficult to stay away from food-like substances made with an abundance of butter and sugar. I have to say...this has been a very good holiday season for me. More than usual. Only a few times have I felt sorry for myself. Otherwise, I've felt content, happy, and thankful.

I used to hate having my family's Christmas celebration so far after Christmas (we usually do the second weekend in January). Now I LOVE it. That means I can spend Christmas truly relaxing and basking in the joy of Christmas. No, by "joy of Christmas" I do not mean a whiskey or wine induced state (LOL). I mean having time to really spend relaxing, reflecting, and lazing about. I've needed that a lot this past year.

Santa came a bit early for me and gave me the most unusual Christmas present. I have been feeling incredibly run down, tired, and (for lack of a better word) stupid lately. I attributed it to an overabundance of stress from work and working too much. While some of that may be true, I have modern science to thank for the most help in relieving that. So, I went for my physical this last week and after telling my doctor about my tiredness, etc and attributing it to job stress, she said, "well, there's no wonder you feel like you do, and I wouldn't attribute all of that to job stress....your vitamin D level is very low and so is your thyroid level." As we discussed my lab results further, she was clear that low vitamin D is a huge problem (I almost argued that it couldn't make that much difference in a person's health and she said, "yes it can, if a person is as deficient as you are"...oops.) and she rattled off a bunch of side effects of an out of whack thyroid and it matched every single one of my complaints. So I get to take 50,000units of vitamin D a week for 8 weeks ("normal" dosage is up to 14,000 units a week) and syntroid to regulate the thyroid. Wow. After 2 days of these prescriptions, I do not feel worn out, my eyes do not burn like they are too tired, and my constant headaches are gone.

So, santa brought me wellness this year -something I think we all need, if I were honest. He also brought me time to spend lazing around to recouperate and get back on the mend. I've got a week to "get better" before the rig-a-ma-role of work starts up again. Even though I have 3 days of office hours next week, that doesn't compare to the job when school is in session and teachers are there. Boy, am I looking forward to being back at 100%!!!!

Today I got up around 6am to take my synthroid, read a book, then have breakfast and coffee while I checked out the ads in the paper. I went back to bed around 8, got up again around 10 and back again until noonish. I'm kinda ready to go back to bed for a little bit again. One of the best Christmases I've had in a LONG time. Actually, since I was little I think!!!

My Christmas Eve was good as well. First, I slept in until I had to get up at noon, then I went to a service at my brother's church in DL in the afternoon. That was very, very enjoyable. He and his wife attend a nondenominational church and since my sister in law is 8-1/2 months pregnant, she was asked to play Mary in their outdoor manger exhibit with a live donkey. I got to hang out with my niece for a little bit and then I came home to read, watch some tv online, and sit around. Loved it.

For the rest of the day, I'm going to continue to read, snooze, and later when it gets dark I'm going to go for a drive to look at lights. I want to wrap Christmas gifts as well (I need to find one more gift for one of my nephews...I haven't found the perfect thing for him yet!) and take stock in my Christmas stuff to see what I should be picking up tomorrow when I hit the sales in all of the stores. Ok, in some of the stores. lol

So Merry Christmas to you and I hope you make this upcoming new year a year of contentment in your life and kindness to others. Enjoy who you are and what you do. You only have one life to live. :)