Seriously, How Do People Do It?

This post is mostly crowdsourcing...for me, and for you! 

I'm stressed out.  I haven't been on my Dexcom in weeks because I feel like it's just one more thing to worry about.  A large part of the stress is work, which also translates into work apathy.  Another part of the stress is looking for a new place to live.  Yup, we're planning on moving very soon.  We want to be closer to Philadelphia than where we are now in the suburbs.  This means rental-hunting and lots of considerations and list-making and deposit payments and--you get the point.

When you don't have a lot of time to relax, what do you do to unwind?  Can you relax and be productive at the same time?

Right now, when I get home from work, I just want to veg out.  However, in my vegetative "eat dinner and watch 2 hours' worth of Girls" state, I am still stressing because of all the work I'm not doing.  Didn't put clean dishes away first.  Could be cleaning the bathroom.  Could be folding laundry while watching TV except the couch needs to be vacuumed because of all the crumbs left by the kid I babysat.  I feel like I am full of excuses and zero motivation!  This is why I turn to you, friends and readers.

Let's have a discussion about beating stress, because for me, it sends my blood sugars to the moon, and when I last checked, my BG has not undergone astronaut training.

Happiness: deal with it, okay?

I realized that for being such a happy, optimistic, perky person, I am often my own worst critic.  I am a harsh judge of myself.  I am guilty of worrying about what others think of me, sometimes constantly.  Lately, it can be pretty easy to fall into a trap I've set for myself, ending up overly self-critical and generally down on myself.  I have a tendency to let comments and good things slip my mind if I'm having a bad week/month/year.

That is, um, if it's okay with you.

For example, I can't help but think that last year (2011) was a bunch of crap.  A lot of bad things happened.  There was a lot of stress.  Yet, through all that, I managed to have another awesome year of marriage.  I had a poetry feature in another state in which I also led workshops for school-age kids.  I had a poetry feature at my home venue in Philadelphia.  I did a lot of dancing.  I sang more karaoke than I have since my senior year of college.  I went to my first drag show.  I stepped in as secretary of the poetry slam.  I was published in two different literary magazines online.  I kept up this blog, despite feeling overwhelmed sometimes.  I stuck with my job, even through the frustrating days.  I bought a Dexcom.  I took a chance and dyed my hair red.  I went to a few really awesome events all by myself and had a great time.  I met some cool people and had some great experiences.

See?  I am a happy person from day to day, for the most part.  I sometimes feel like I don't show that to myself often enough, if that makes any sense.  I can say I'm fine, I will tell you everything is great, but on the inside it may be a different story sometimes.

It's so easy to get hung up on the negative, the disappointing, the discouraging, the bad news.  I am so guilty of it lately.  It's hard not to when bedbugs are causing stress at home, when my job is less-than-cool, or when diabetes is making me feel like garbage.  I have a friend who says when you are feeling down, you should write a list of 36 things you are grateful for, happy about, thankful for.  So here are some things that are happy in my life, just to remind me that in the grand scheme of things, I'm okay.

I have some truly incredible relationships in my life.  I have an amazing, supportive husband.  I have a supportive, loving family.  I have friends who treat me like I'm family.  Despite almost 22 years with diabetes, I have yet to experience anything more than the most minor of complications.   I can afford to work, eat and play.  I've held the same job for over four years now.  I am a blogger with over 60K page views and over 1000 followers on Twitter.  I know how to take a decent picture.  I have a pretty good eye for design.  I've got great love in my life.  I can make people laugh.  I was the only woman to compete in semi-finals this year for the Philly National Poetry Slam team. Even at 30, I have a pretty ridiculous imagination.  I've got great support out in the DOC.  I have people who believe in me and what I'm capable of.

So I just have to deal with it.  I've got plenty to be happy about, even when that little self-doubting voice in my head is trying to tell me otherwise.  Happiness is here, I just have to remember to look for it first, before I see the negative.  Just deal with it, Hannah.  

Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite, or How I Nearly Burned Down a Laundromat and Lost My Sanity

The late afternoon sun gleamed over the parking lot.  Matt sat next to me on the side of a planter, we sipped our sodas and chewed on some garlic knots from the pizza place next door.  We watched the first fire truck pull up, the first firefighters getting out and pulling on their gear.  Smoke was pouring out of the laundromat doors.  I had no idea what was actually happening inside.

"You know," I thought to myself, "if the whole place goes up, maybe that's not the end of the world.  Maybe it would just be easier to start all over again."

There was a perturbed woman in purple across the parking lot.  When it got quieter, you could hear her griping into her cell phone to whomever was on the other end.  "My baby granddaughter's clothes are in there!" she said with nearly the same emotional weight another person would use if their actual granddaughter was trapped in the building.  I rolled my eyes.  The entire launderable contents of her house weren't trapped in that building.  Her dryer wasn't the one that caught on fire, ours was. I had to wonder what articles of clothing or linens I was about to lose. 

Why all this mess, all these emergency vehicles?  Why was I doing so much laundry?

One bedbug.

We have only seen evidence of one bedbug in our house, but it was obviously biting our friend who was staying on our futon at the time.  The only evidence of said bedbug living in the bed was in one pillow.  We promptly threw all of our pillows away.  We've washed, we've sprayed.  Every day brings more washing, more vacuuming.  It's physically and mentally exhausting.  I am worrying if they will never be gone. 

We hauled every piece of launderable fabric in our house to the laundromat on Saturday, thinking we could get it all done in one sitting.  It would have been possible had one of our dryers not burst our laundry into flames.  I've never seen a group of people LESS panicked about a fire.  Matt was running around looking for water and fire extinguishers while the other people went about their business, mostly getting annoyed that their laundry wasn't getting done.

Seeing as how all of the dryers were gas dryers, we probably all should have been a little more concerned about the spinning inferno we had created on the back wall.  (Author's Note:  The Spinning Inferno is totally the name of my new band and/or horror movie script.)  I lost one of my favorite skirts, a couple of work tops that I liked, some socks, a pillow cover from Ikea, a sheet.  The laundromat owner took our phone numbers, just in case insurance needed to talk to us or something. 

I shake my fist at those little buggy bastards.  You know, I like cuddling in bed, but not with blood-sucking insects.  I can't think about them without itching.  I can't think about cleaning my house or spraying or anything without getting really tired.  Bedbugs suck so bad.  My stress level is high and so are my blood sugar levels.  I would never wish this on anyone.

And if you have had bedbugs at your place before, what did you do to get rid of them?