Life is Beautiful

These days have been spent watching my grandson in the morning and spending afternoons walking my dog, obedience training, working out and sewing.  Everyday I feel better and better because of the drug therapy that I am receiving.  Fortunately my doctor sees my quite often to make sure that the medicine I have been prescribed is working.  

The hardest part of all of this is that I have suffered from anxiety since January and I have had to re-learn what is normal anxiety versus abnormal.  But, with May comes sunshine which is medicine in and of itself and I am feeling better each day and more like I used to feel.

The other hard part of this is that I have not felt at all like I have been as frugal as I could be.  When you don't feel well, you don't feel like making up a proper grocery list and such, but since it is just the two of us now, we are doing fine with what I have spent on groceries and eating out.  Yes, eating out.  The reason:  the side effects of the medications have suppressed my appetite to the point that I have lost a tremendous amount of weight.  In January I weighed 148 lbs.  This morning I weighed 132 lbs.  My thought is that with everything that I have been through there should be one positive thing that comes out of this.  I have to be careful though because with no appetite, I need to make sure that what I eat is good, wholesome and healthy food.  

I want to keep the weight off if at all possible so I am walking my grandson in a stroller a few miles a day and continuing to workout at Curves.   The result is that I can keep most of the weight off and the endorphins are also great medicine.  However, and I can't stress this enough, it would be easy for me to resort to an eating disorder if I am not careful.  I am being careful as I don't need to lose anymore weight.  My goal is to run a 5K perhaps this summer or in the fall.  I have always wanted to do that as my husband and sons have run, my daughter in law runs and I have never done it.  But if I don't feel like running a 5K there are always those 1 mile walks you can participate in.

Now I am busy getting ready for the busyness of summer.  Thankfully I am able to look forward to the future. We need to paint our house this year.  It has to be done.  But I am having great difficulty with the colors of the house.  Ten years ago we painted our Victorian house in a true color scheme.  Three shades of gold, three shades of green and 1 color of rust.  At my age I need to fine a simpler color scheme of 3 colors.

BUT - wait, wait, there is more.

We have made a decision to put in a vinyl privacy fence in our back yard.  Yes, that picket fence that I painted some 2 or was it 3 years ago, is rotting and we have come to the point that we need to make our lives easier if we continue to live in our house through retirement.  Saving up for this fence has been difficult while putting a child through college, but we have managed to do it.  However, the main reason for this purchase is just what it says:  privacy.  We live on a corner lot so our backyard is right next to the sidewalk that everyone walks by and looks in.  Our dog, Molly, runs the fence and people have been teasing her.  We are tired of it, so tomorrow I will visit with the City engineer to show our plans for where we will be placing the fence - about two feet in our yard from where the picket fence is and we will only be fencing in the back yard and not the side yards. .  In this way, the fence will be further away from the sidewalk (4 feet) and I can finally plant flowers in that area and in the side yards since they will be fenced off from our dog.

The other reason for the fence is that we are looking ahead to when our 3 month old grandson is walking and we can go outside and have the privacy that we need.  

The vinyl fence is white.  My house color scheme of golds, greens and rust will kind of funny next to a white fence so I have been busy trying to compile a yellow color scheme with some white accents.  

We have new neighbors that moved in next door to us in late December and when the husband saw us in the backyard measuring where the new fence was going in, he asked if his kids had been bothering us.  We assured him that no they hadn't but that this was in our 5 year plan of home improvements.  There kids are nice.

One other thing that has been interesting is that since we have gone to being Empty Nesters I have enjoyed the fact that we can eat whenever we want to eat supper, we can eat sandwiches if we want and we can finally have fish - something both my boys do not like.  

So, that is what is going on in my life.  Sorry I haven't posted much lately, but I have deliberately waited the 6 to 7 weeks it takes for my anti-depressant to kick in.  I am loving life again and ready to get back into my normal, daily routine of getting up, feeling positive about my life, my relationship with my family and God and ready to get projects done.