Usually I’m not one for year-end reflections and New Year’s resolutions, but I’ve felt a bit introspective lately and I find myself wanting to measure and tally my achievements and accomplishments as well as put forth some goals for the next 12 months.

So: The year in review.

2006 has been a year of changes on a personal level, more of them than I can remember in a long time.

On the material side of things, we replaced a number of old worn out items with new ones: our bed (12 years), my computer (4-1/2 years), a refrigerator (13 years), the vacuum cleaner (12 years). And we acquired a couple of things we’ve been wanting for a while: a treadmill and a new car. So it’s been a rather expensive year as well.

We also joined the local Freecycling group, and we’ve given away a lot of extra stuff that we don’t need or don’t use anymore. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but we also have ordered (and will receive in mid-January) two new office chairs to replace both of our old broken workstation chairs. This was a serious splurge but the way I see it, if we’re going to be sitting in these chairs for 12 hours a day or more (Doc) and have back problems (me), it’s totally worth it to have a good chair. So hello, Herman Miller! :)

This year has brought an onslaught of health issues for me. It kind of feels sometimes like I’m just falling apart and I don’t know how to stop it. My migraine headaches have returned after years of dormancy; I tore my rotator cuff; I fell a couple of times (stairs and sidewalk), thankfully not seriously injuring myself but enough to make me question my balance and stability; I threw out my back half a dozen times; I tore my left hamstring; I fractured my left shin bone; I got bad poison ivy; I got bad stomach flu; and I’ve been having some possibly serious issues with my girl-parts-down-south.

However, there are a number of things that I achieved this year that I am proud of:

• I tried to learn to ski
• I learned to scuba dive
• I played flute in a performance art piece
• My team won 2nd place for our short film
• I grew some vegetables to fruition in a container garden
• I designed a book that was published and nationally distributed
• I acquired a major freelance client
• I trained for a marathon

Out of all that, I think that the marathon training is what I’m most proud of. Even though circumstances prevented me from achieving the ultimate goal of running the race, I committed to the training and tried very very hard to do something that seems contrary to my nature.

One of the hardest things that I had to deal with this year was losing our Angster Prankster kitty. I still think about him all the time.

Some things I learned this year:

• I am the things that I can’t let go of.
• If I don’t start faking social norms, I am going to end up as one of those cranky old people that nobody likes.
• I don’t want to be one of those people that’s always being super cautious about everything: Oh no, I’d better not participate in life because What If.
• Forgiveness is accepting that you can’t change the past.
• I can feel myself getting older now. The first gray hairs, more prominent wrinkles, lessened appetite, lessened energy levels, and proneness to injury.

Personal Resolutions For 2007

• To not have as expensive a year as 2006 was, even with the addition of a car payment.
• Enjoy myself immensely in Belize, RELAX and RECHARGE.
• Read eight books.
• Write one good poem.
• Begin work on my 2nd cookbook.
• Participate in the 2007 24-hour Video Race.
• Lose fifteen pounds.
• Return to doing yoga regularly.
• Train for and complete the White Rock Half Marathon in December 2007.
• Complete four new paintings.
• Respond to e-mail in a more timely fashion.
• De-clutter the house even more.
• Get my reproductive health situation figured out and fixed.
• Sell the Saturn.
• Participate in my own Project 365: Take one photo a day for a year. This means that I’ll need to get a new camera.
• Take more time to appreciate the journey to all my goals, and the journeys that don’t end in goal completion.

I’m sure there will be more. I’ll add them as I think of them.

I got all my holiday shopping done today. I realized mid-morning that today was pretty much my only opportunity to do it, due to various commitments over the next 2 weeks. Not to mention, the closer to the 25th it is, the more doses of crazy get added to retail excursions, and I don’t much like shopping as it is.

I was out for 6-1/2 hours (insane!) but surprisingly I still had energy when I got home. Perhaps this was due to the fact that I only spent a tiny portion of those 6-1/2 hours at a mall. Malls are their own special version of hell, especially around the holidays.

Anyway, I had energy enough to bake and decorate sugar cookies for my office holiday party. From scratch, baby. They’re thin and chewy and have peppermint icing. Holy crap, they’re good; as K1 said, “hide-them-from-your-significant-other-good.”

I had planned also to make pasta with meat sauce, garlic baguette slices, and a spinach salad for dinner, but that is going to wait until tomorrow instead.

Yesterday we went with Kim, Brittney, and Chris to Six Flags. Like I’ve said before, winter is the only time of the year to go to amusement parks. I was shocked at how many people were there; I’ve never seen a crowd that big during the winter. The lines for some of the rides were really crazy long. I freakin’ love the Titan. The Spongebob 4-D ride was great too (not that I’m a Spongebob fan, but the seats moved and jolted you around in sync with the film and we got SQUIRTED at one point, it was nutty). We had a great time talking and laughing and drinking hot cocoa. I cannot believe that i paid $11 for a slice of pizza and a medium coke. Park food prices are absolutely insane; so is parking ($15).

Friday night (hey, guess I’m working backwards chronologically with this post) we went to my office’s Level 2 holiday party (the one I am making the cookies for is the Level 3 party — my department; next week is the Level 1 party, hosted by the president of the university) at the division vice president’s house. There were waaaaay too many people there for the size of his house. We made an appearance, ate some appetizers and wine, and then left to go to Times Ten Cellars for a drink and some relaxation (me and Doc, Brittney, Yvonne and Nate, Ben and Chelsea, and Chelsea and Helena). Yvonne had her first glass of wine since she’s been pregnant! (It’s fine to occasionally partake after the 1st trimester). It took her well over an hour to finish that one glass; she says that it’s strange how her body is changing so drastically in response to Le Cheetoh.

Yesterday I picked up my unrepairable sewing machine from the shop (it only sews backwards now! and sadly, cannot be fixed because they don’t make the 35-year-old parts anymore). I got it into the hatchback of the Prius with no problem, but as I scooted it back against the rear seat, a muscle in my mid-back went **TWINGE**. That crazy painful sharp pain that makes it hard to breathe. I tried to stretch it out a little before I got back in the car, and then when I got home I laid down on the heating pad for several hours. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it to Six Flags later that day or not, but it looks like this time is not nearly as bad as it has been before. I did OK at Six Flags (thanks to my good friend Darvocet) and today I hardly feel it at all. I’ve decided to start doing yoga on my own again. I think that the reason my back has been spasming a lot lately is because I’ve let myself go, strengthwise. Yoga will help strengthen my back and stomach muscles and, hopefully, this won’t happen as much anymore.

Today was the day of the White Rock Marathon. I did not participate. I feel all kinds of latent Catholic guilt about that, because I said over and over again that I would do it; in fact, I INSISTED that I was going to find a way to complete it despite my stress fracture. I realized, though, as the weeks went by this fall, that it would be a really really dumb thing to try to do. I would probably end up making my injury worse by keeping my training at that level. And even if I didn’t push myself with the training, if I’d tried to run/walk 13 miles today I know I would have re-injured that leg.

There is always next year. Yvonne says that after she has the baby in May, she’ll want to train for it as well, to get back into shape. I think that it’s a good goal to have and I’m totally supportive of whatever she decides to do, but I also think that she might be so tired from being a mom that she just plain might not have the energy. I plan to train either way, once my leg has a chance to get stronger. I’d like to start training in earnest in March. I hope that’s enough time. We’ll see.

It’s not that I’ve completely quit trying… but maybe I kind of have.

My marathon training has fallen back to April/May levels, if that. Part of it is that I was trying to give my stress-fractured leg a rest for a while, to see if it would maybe magically heal itself over a 4 week period. Part of it is that it really hurt to run. Part of it is that Yvonne, for her own reasons, probably won’t be running the whole thing either.

I have realized over the past couple of days that I’ve actually been forgetting about my training. Like, it doesn’t even occur to me anymore to exercise. I had gotten into the habit of almost daily doing a run after work, or in the morning on the weekends, more-or-less happily striving towards my goal. And now it’s not even entering my mental “to-do” list. I hate the feeling of realizing that I’ve forgotten something like that. It’s the same sick feeling I get when I think about one of my worst fears: forgetting to take care of something I’m responsible for, and having it die or other horrible consequences. Plants, animals, children, mortgage, etc. I think I have dreams like that a lot, where I realize that I’m supposed to have been doing something all along.

I also feel like my eating habits have been … what is the opposite of “improving”? Yeah, that.

I want to get back into a routine now, though. Leg pain or no leg pain, I have to do something. The weather is cooperating and has cooled down nicely (58 right now, I have the windows open and thick socks on), which will make outdoor runs much less painful.

Something occurred to me the other day, though, as I was trying to remember exactly when I first started noticing the pain in my leg. I remembered that when I went to Lubbock to see Bob graduate in August, one of his friends gave us a ride back to the motel or out somewhere in his giant pickup truck, and after I hopped out, I reached back in to grab my purse off of the seat, and I smacked my left shin hard into the running board on the truck. It hurt really bad and left a big bruise.

I didn’t think much of it at the time because I bruise easily and rarely remember how I got them in the first place. But I wonder if maybe hitting the bone against the edge of the running board cracked it. (The bone, not the running board). It was about the right place.

I’ve been working on my other website a lot this week so I haven’t had much time to write.

Last week kinda sucked, between feeling downright awful for several days (bad period) and some crazy shit going on at work involving deadlines and last minute changes and having to say no and things maybe not working right and the possibility of a trivia slideshow to be presented in front of 2500 rich people going down in flames (it didn’t, but it was nervewracking getting there) and talking to managers about lessening the craziness of the crazy shit and just generally being extra crabby.

It was a bad week for a lot of people that I talked to.

Also, I barely ran any at all last week; my leg is still not feeling any better. Now it’s doing this thing where if I put any weight on it, it feels like it’s going to buckle! Good times all around. I’m going to try to get back into it this week, maybe run some on the elliptical machine, which I like better than the treadmill and it feels better on my injury.

I got a slew of new freelance work and billed for quite a bit from September. I feel that the projects are coming at a good pace now. Nothing like the craziness of the book project. That should be printed and might deliver this week (thus the reason I was working on my business website; my URL is printed in the credits).

We did have a good time out on Saturday night with Kirk, Brittney, and Stan. We ate at a steakhouse and then went to the crazy bowling alley-slash-event and entertainment center. We didn’t do any actual bowling, but played some video games, then went to Steak and Shake for ice cream.

Thursday night was a lot of fun. It was Doc’s birthday, and I took him to Kostas (Greek food) for dinner. We usually only go there once a year on our anniversary, but I decided to buck tradition. He didn’t know that Lori, Joel, and Valerie were going to be there too. We had some great food, wine, and baklava, and I was really pleased that I was able to treat everyone. It feels nice to do that for my friends on occasion. We stayed at the table until after they had closed, talking and laughing. Lori gave Doc some fun little toys and candies, and we played “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans Roulette” where we closed our eyes, took a jellybean, and hoped to god it wasn’t the Vomit flavoured one. For the record, I got Earthworm, Doc got Sardine, Valerie got Grass, and Lori got Earwax. Doc voluntarily ate a Dirt flavoured one, and Lori was game and ate Soap and Booger. Joel ate Bacon and declared himself done.

Doc found an old Hi-8 tape of my trip to New Mexico in 1996 with Kathryn and Ginger. We have two ancient Hi-8 cameras; one of them only plays audio and the other only plays video. I don’t even remember this tape; I’m dying to see what’s on it! I caught a glimpe of my old Honda Accord in one shot. I miss that car!! It had some problems towards the end, but I miss having a manual transmission and I miss having a red car. I might send the tape to a place that will convert it to DVD for a hefty fee.

I forgot to mention in my last post, for those of you keeping up with Katy’s Health Watch 2006:

• My rotator cuff injury is almost completely healed.
• My torn left hamstring is healing… maybe about 50% there.
• My poison ivy is now just a series of fading reddish-brown dots on my arms, legs, and stomach. Only a few little scabs left. I’ll be rubbing vitamin E oil into my skin for the next few weeks.
• My stress fracture is still very much fractured. Running makes it feel worse; not running makes it feel better.

This has sure been a year for injuries. I’m amazed by the sheer number of things that have gone wrong with me this year. I hope it’s not a sign that the ol’ 34-year-old body is beginning to fall apart.

I have cut WAY back on my running, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it will give my leg a chance to start healing; bad because there is probably no way that I will be able to complete the half marathon on December 10 without walking a large portion of it.

I’m slowly coming around to acceptance of the fact that I’m injured, and staying on my previous training schedule is not only going hamper the healing process, it will undoubtedly make the injury worse. It is so frustrating because I really really wanted to do this crazy impossible thing; I’d set my mind to doing something quite alien to my nature, to challenge and stretch myself, and I was going along so well and making so much progress and I was in the best shape of my entire life and my successes were making me want to become even better… and my overeagerness has screwed me.

This week I ran 3 miles on both Sunday and Monday, and about 2 on Tuesday, and I have paid for it in pain. There is no question in my mind now that I have a stress fracture. I took Wednesday and Thursday off completely, and only went to yoga class today. My leg feels much better, better than it has in a long time, after feeling the worst it’s ever felt on Tuesday after my 2 mile run.

Had I not fractured it, I would have been running at least 9 miles at a time on the weekends. That’s not going to happen for a while. Yvonne and I think that maybe this is just not our year.

I AM STILL GOING TO COMPLETE THE HALF MARATHON ON DECEMBER 10. And I will run across the finish line.

I had a pretty good 34th birthday. Doc surprised me with a homemade miniature cake (red velvet and white layers, with cream cheese icing and crushed up cookies in the center) and a big Hello Kitty balloon. The balloon has actually been the source of a very entertaining revelation: Loki is scared to death of balloons, or Hello Kitty, or both. He hid under the bed for two days straight, and hasn’t been downstairs at all until just last night. The experiment that proved my theory left me with numerous cuts on my right hand.

Saturday night we had a little cookout party, which was a lot of fun. I wish it hadn’t been so hot outside, because I was hoping that we could spend the evening on the patio.

Sunday was a very different weather situation. I got up early to run around the park, and it was cloudy and low 80s, which was OK for running (humid, but OK). On my second lap, a reddish-brown medium sized dog fell into step beside me and ran with me for the next two miles. He had no collar, and no owner in sight, and he just silently trotted along by my side, only occasionally stopping to sniff at something or to meander out into traffic. I’m sure that people driving by thought I was his careless owner. He didn’t seem to listen when I tried to call him back on to the sidewalk. He stopped and waited for me while I stretched afterwards, then dutifully followed me home. I wouldn’t let him in the gate, and he looked sad, but then moseyed off.

Later on, I met Yvonne at the Farmer’s Market where we stocked up on fresh vegetables. It’s nice to go with a friend and split the goods, because if you have small families like we do, you often can’t eat the quantities that things come in.

It stormed all afternoon. We watched television for a while, then napped for a few hours while it rained buckets outside. The temp dropped into the 70s.

Then that evening, we went to see Aimee Mann do an acoustic show at the Lakewood Theatre. It was a fabulous concert! She played a good mixture of older songs and new ones. She also has really good stage presence and is very entertaining when talking to the audience between songs. Before “Save Me” she said, “Most people know this song from the movie ‘Magnolia.’ But I like to think of it as the one that lost an Oscar to Phil Collins’ cartoon monkey love song.”

At the end of the show, she said “This is the part of the show where we leave, and you clap, and we come back. Or we can just stay and play some more songs.” And then she took audience requests! And played several songs that they had not rehearsed in a long time and weren’t even sure they could do — I don’t think it was just an act because they did mess up at the beginnings a few times. On Driving Sideways, they told the pianist the first chord, and a few seconds later he asked “Ok, now what’s the second?” I did not shout out any requests, because she did three of my very favorite songs: Wise Up, Red Vines, and Driving Sideways. The only songs that I wish she would have also done were How Am I Different and Satellite. Other songs she performed included You’re With Stupid Now, Invisible Ink, Goodbye Caroline, You Do, Invisible Ink, Little Bombs, and One. There were several others as well which I don’t remember now.

Two big bonuses: I did not smell like smoke afterwards, and I was not deaf. LOVE the Lakewood Theatre!

Today marks two weeks from when I visited the doctor and she told me to cut my training in half. In the past two weeks I have only run a total of 25 miles, whereas if I had not fractured my stupid leg (or whatever I have done to it) I would have run 45.5 miles. So although it appears that I have run a little more than half my normal mileage, I have done no weekend long runs in more than a month. I’m supposed to be up to 7.5 by this weekend, and I haven’t even run as much as 5 miles since August 7.

My leg doesn’t really feel all that much better so now I have to decide whether to go back to the doctor or not. She’ll surely send me for a horribly expensive MRI. I KNOW my leg is messed up; do I really need an MRI to confirm that?

I think that maybe I should just continue my training to the best of my ability, being sure to listen to what my leg is telling me on any given day. Ice, heat, stretching, and being careful.

And completing that fucking half marathon in December even if I have to walk halfway.

I went to the doctor last Wednesday for my regular yearly checkup, and I also asked her WTF was going on with my left leg. She said that it seemed like my hamstring was definitely strained, and there is a possibility that I have a stress fracture in my shin. Stress fractures usually don’t show up on X-rays, but she sent me to get my insides photographed anyway (hello, deductible, nice to meet you, thanks for being so high). I am supposed to cut my training in half for two weeks to see if that helps, and it looks like that’s not going to be a problem because my leg is really only letting me do so much before it begins to scream at me to stop.

That’s one of the things that I’m slowly learning: how to interpret my body’s signals. Where’s the line between pain and discomfort? How do I tell if I really should stop or if I’m just being a big baby and need to push myself?

Anyway, I haven’t heard back about the X-ray results yet. I wonder if maybe she sent me to get them because it’s a prerequisite to having an MRI? Which is what she said I may need if it doesn’t get better and nothing shows up on the X-ray. I don’t think I want to pay for an MRI… they aren’t cheap.

Thursday I tried to run after work. I was only going to do 2 to 2.5 miles, half of what I’d normally try to run, but I had to stop after only a mile. Shooting pain was running up my leg from toes to thigh. Yesterday morning, I decided to try again (36 hours off… that should be enough time to heal, right?!). I was able to run 2.25 miles, and then my leg started giving me signals that I’d better quit lest something unpleasant happen. I decided to be smart and actually listen this time, because I’m pretty sure not listening is what got me into this mess in the first place.

I am definitely falling behind my training schedule (I was supposed to do 6.5 miles this weekend, but so far 5 is the most I’ve been able to accomplish). But I have time. The race is not until December. I can catch up, as long as I try to keep my endurance up while I’m recovering. Yvonne and I are ahead of schedule, anyway. Plus, she’s going on vacation to Mexico next week which will give me additional time to recover and catch up to her. She’s always going to be better than me, but that’s OK because it gives me someone to look up to, someone close enough to my level that I’m not discouraged, but enough ahead of me to give me motivation to attempt to keep up.

I made a decision the other day: I am going to complete the race, even if I have to walk more of it than run. I am going to finish it. No “but my leg prevented me from becoming good enough to do it!”; no “I got injured and had to quit!” No excuses. I am in the best shape of my life and am starting to actually become satisfied with my body, and I don’t want that to end.

I also had a minor epiphany related to training. I was freaking out because I know that I need to run probably 5x per week, but I also need to crosstrain in some way. I need to do some sort of stretching routine (such as yoga) to stay limber and strong but I also need to lift weights for extra strength and because it’s good for your bones, and also swimming would really help out the upper body that I’m ignoring by running. But Jesus Christ, there’s only so many hours in the day! How can I possibly fit all that in unless I’m at the gym 2-3 hours each day?! (And some people do spend that kind of time at the gym, but I am not one of them. I have better things to do.)

And then I realized: I am in training for a specific goal, and to that end, I need to focus on the particular activity that will help me achieve that goal. I need to run (primarily), and once or twice a week, do a different activity to crosstrain. I don’t have to do it ALL right now. Later, after the race, I can focus less on running and more on variety. Mixing it up like that will keep me in excellent all-around shape.

Friday at lunchtime I went to yoga class. I haven’t been able to go all summer because the summer classes are at 4 pm, and it’s hard to get away during the workday, and that’s actually just a lame excuse because the real reason has been lack of motivation. It seeemed like yoga was not going to help me increase my running endurance, and so I chose to run instead — getting the most bang for my workout buck. But I convinced myself to go on Friday… and it was freakin’ awesome. It was EXACTLY what my body needed. And now I realize that it’s probably been detrimental that I haven’t been going all summer. I desperately need this type of crosstraining: slow stretching and body weight resistance. So I have a renewed committment to go to yoga twice a week now.

Sometimes, though, it seems like if it’s not one thing, it’s another with me lately. I am way more prone to injury than I used to be. It was the torn rotator cuff this spring (which is loads better now, not perfect but I don’t notice discomfort on a daily basis anymore and I can lift groceries in and out of my car now!). And now I set this admittedly admirable goal for myself and try to do something really really good for my body, and I get the double whammy of hamstring and fracture. Maybe I’m just not being careful enough. But I don’t want to turn into one of those people that’s always being super cautious about everything, oh no, i’d better not participate in life because What If.

I guess that if the marathon can teach me to better listen to what my body is telling me, maybe that won’t happen.

I seem to have hit a brick wall in my marathon training. I got up to 5 miles a couple weeks ago but haven’t been able to top it. I guess part of it is that I went on vacation (although I did run 3 of the 5 days I was out of town, for a total of 8 miles).

I am having two separate issues with my left leg, one of which is likely either a bad chronic shin splint, or possibly a stress fracture. The other issue has something to do with my hamstring… I cannot stretch that leg hardly at all (toe touches are nearly impossible), and when I run there is occasional pain that shoots either up from the back of the knee through the thigh, or down to the toes. I don’t know that running is making it any worse, per se, so I’m just trying to stretch it a little bit when I’m warmed up, enough to keep as limber as I can without making it worse. Oh, also, my leg occasionally feels weak as I’m running, like it’s about to buckle.

The other thing is, I have had insomnia for a few nights, and I don’t have much of an appetite. My stomach constantly feels like it’s full of butterflies. Don’t know what’s going on there.

So, weirdness all around. But like I told a friend, I’m learning to work with the leg pain rather than let it stop me.

I was supposed to have run 6 miles last weekend, and didn’t, and still haven’t managed to this week. The most I’ve done is 4.5. I may take it “easy” and just do my 6 mile this weekend rather than 6.5, and basically fall back by a week. Maybe I just need a break, what with the leg and all.

I’m sure it will pass. But it’s depressing in the meantime. I feel like a failure.

I think that I forgot to mention, when I was talking about my Saturday morning with migraine aura, that there was a very strong smell of enamel paint or some other type of chemical solvent near one side of the track. It was so strong that I didn’t want to breathe through my mouth on that half of the track. I wonder if this contributed to the migraine? I probably shouldn’t have stayed, now that I think about it. Live and learn.

I ran my official 5-mile run this morning. It was harder to do than the 5-mile I did last Monday, possibly because it was morning instead of evening (less energy) and I was running by myself, but one of the crazy things about today was that I started getting a reverse migraine aura a little more than halfway through. I began having trouble seeing the screen of my iPod clearly but thought it was just due to glare from the fluorescent lighting overhead and the large number of “floaters” I have in my eyes. A few laps later I realized that it was because the center of my vision was disappearing. The little silver diagonal sparkle lines had started in the middle. I decided to keep going as long as I could, but to stop if I started to experience any pain or if my vision disappeared past the point where it was safe to run. I developed a plan for what to do if the pain started, involving finding a quiet dark room and a wet washcloth, possibly with the help of a gym staff member. The sparkles grew outward from the center of my vision in a donut-shaped oblong, slightly to the left of center with the right side pointing slightly upward, and I began to feel slightly nauseous. Eventually the aura reached the edge of my peripheral vision, and it disappeared completely by about 4.75 miles. I finished the run and cooldown walk, stretched, and felt well enough to drive home. My head has felt kind of funny all day, though; not pain exactly, but a strange feeling of pressure or like the pain is there right below the surface and if I thought about it, it would burst on through. So I’m trying to ignore it. Staring at this computer screen all day isn’t helping though (I’m doing freelance work this weekend for Arushi).

I called it a “reverse migraine aura” because normally my auras start at the outer edges of my vision and work their way to the center, completely obscuring my vision for a while. The past few I’ve had have been in reverse – starting in the center and working their way outwards, in a ring shape. I’m a little worried because I’ve had two real migraines this year and several more auras, and between my late teens and last year I have had maybe only half a dozen total migraines or auras.