Happy medium between blogging and journaling

One of the things that I'm going to try to improve on this year is journaling. I've been keeping a consistent journal on my laptop for the past four years, and I usually write once or twice a week. However, my journaling has been harder to manage now that I've started a blog. My blog is kind of like a journal in and of itself, but I'm trying to find that happy medium between blogging and journaling so that I can have a great blog and a great journal.

Another thing that makes finding this happy medium hard is that I love blogging and have fun doing it, but I don't enjoy journaling near as well and I definitely look at it as more of a chore. It would be easy to ditch the journal and just stick to blogging, but the reason I keep journaling is because my journal is where I record my deepest thoughts and feelings; the things that are probably of the most value. So I'll keep journaling even though I don't particularly like it because I feel that maybe one day someone will find value in the things that are written in my journals.

2010: goals and highlights

At the beginning of 2010 I made a list of goals and other things I wanted to do throughout the year. Here are some of my adventures:

Cheesecake Factory: I'd never been to The Cheesecake Factory before this year, so I put that on my list of things to do. I went with my sister Chandra, my sister Laura and her husband and my friend Nate in April. I ate potstickers and Godiva chocolate cheesecake. I tried my friend's avocado egg rolls, and those were really good too. (I think that's what I'll get to eat when I go back.)

Baseball Game: I haven't been to a St. Louis Cardinals game since my car accident. Busch Stadium was rebuilt a couple of years ago, so I also really wanted to see the new stadium. I went with my sister Chandra and three of our friends. Although it was August, the weather was absolutely perfect and we had a great time. The Cards even one! Butterfly House: There's a great place to go in St. Louis called The Butterfly House. I'd always wanted to go, but I'd never been before. I was actually able to go twice this year, once in October and another time in November. Although it's hot and very humid in the dome were the butterflies are, it is wonderful to be in a place where thousands of butterflies flutter around you… and even land on you if you're lucky (which I was the second time!). 25 movies in the theater: I love movies and always have, so I thought it would be fun to see 25 movies in the theater this year. It was a lofty goal, but I thought I could make it if I was committed to the goal! I just barely made it, seeing my last movie on December 27, but I squeezed it in the made my goal. (I actually went to the movies 26 times, because I saw Shrek Forever After twice, but I only saw 25 different movies.) I saw lots of movies that I liked, but my five favorites were probably: One goal I made that I was not successful in keeping was to remain hospital-free all year. I was hospitalized twice this past year with kidney stones, or complications related to kidney stones, but that's the way things go when you're paralyzed! Stones are going to be the bane of my existence for the rest of my life! Thankfully, I made it the rest of the year without having any major health problems.

These are some of the best things that happened in 2010; the highlights:

We had a small "baby boom" in our family this year and I now have four new nieces and nephews: Rebecah, Aaron, Matthew and Amy, bringing my total to 16! I love being an aunt and it's always so exciting when my sisters have babies. I love being a part of a big family!

I was able to see all of my family at least once this year. Since my four older sisters and their families all live far away, family visits are always something I look forward to. We had company for almost three weeks straight at the end of May/beginning of June. I was finally able to meet one of my new nieces and two of my new nephews. It was wonderful!

By far the very best thing that happened to me last year was when my sister Kristin and her family moved in with my mom and me while her husband Scott was looking for a job. I loved every minute of it and I'm so thankful that I was able to get to know Kristin's four little boys better. I didn't know them at all before they moved here and it was great to get to know them on an individual and personal level. I miss watching them play and seeing their creativity come out. It was so fun to watch my five-year-old nephew Ethan always fighting imaginary bad guys around the house. He always made the best sound effects that were so entertaining and funny!

It was wonderful to have so much family around for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. As I've said in a previous post, this was my second favorite Christmas of all time, mostly because there was so much family here to share it with.

I'm still blogging! I made 176 blog posts in 2010. I love to blog, and it's especially fun when I get feedback from strangers, and even some comments from people all over the world. If you're one of my readers from another part of the world, leave me a comment and tell me where you're reading from. It's so much fun!

I've had a few people ask me what my goals for 2011 are. I decided that making goals and lists of things to do was what I did in 2010 and I don't really want to do that again. Not this year, at least. My one standby that will always be a goal every year for the rest of my life will be to remain hospital-free. Other than this, I just hope that my family is happy and healthy and that I remain full of joy!

Sick

I know when I'm feeling sick when… blogging and working on my computer takes a backseat since I'm feeling so crummy.

I started feeling sick last Wednesday. It first started out as a mild headache and muscle aches, but then it changed into congestion in my head and chest. As the days went on, I wasn't getting any worse, but I wasn't getting any better, either. I had a low grade fever of about 100° off and on, but I wasn't too concerned about it.

My chest hurt and it was definitely harder to breathe than usual. The pain in my chest actually felt similar to the burning feeling you experience when you run outside in cold weather. I had so much fluid in my airway and we were constantly having to suction it out. I kept feeling the urge to cough, but since I can't breathe on my own I can't really cough like a normal person can. (Just to explain… when a normal person coughs, they start by taking a deep breath. I can't do this since I have no control over the breaths I take since I use artificial means to breathe, so that's why I say I can't cough very well. It's probably hard for the average person to understand what I'm talking about if they don't have experience with someone who can't breathe on their own.)

My mom decided to call my doctor Tuesday morning to see what she would suggest. She called in a prescription and I was thankful that I didn't have to go into the office. I took the first dose of my antibiotic around 12 that afternoon. Not too long later I started shivering and I couldn't get warm. I covered up in attempts to warm up, but then I got really hot. I got hotter and hotter, and I felt worse than ever. My face was really flushed, so my mom decided to take my temperature. It was 103.9°, so now instead of feeling cold and shivery, I was so hot, hot, hot! I took some Tylenol to lower my fever and that helped a lot.

A few hours later I was thankfully feeling a lot better. I think I've finally turned the corner and am on the mend. I'm glad because I don't like feeling sick!

For the record, I totally blame my sick nieces and nephews who I saw a few weeks ago during the holidays. It's totally okay, though! I won't hold a grudge for too long! As horrible as it is to be sick, it's worth it because I love being around my nieces and nephews. ;)

Update on the Hawkins front

When I write on my blog about things that are going on in my life, I try to give as much of the story as I can for anyone who might be reading my blog for the first time, but not too many details that my regular readers already know. Hopefully I can catch everyone up on what has happened to the Hawkins family, while remaining brief at the same time.

Over the past five months I've written a lot about my sister Kristin and her family since they have been living with us while her husband Scott looked for a job. Scott finally found a job, so the Hawkins family packed up their belongings in a U-Haul trailer and left for California this past Tuesday. That night they stopped over at a hotel in Oklahoma City so that they could get some sleep. While they were sleeping someone stole the U-Haul trailer that they were towing behind their van.

They haven't lost all of their possessions, because they didn't bring everything they owned to St. Louis when they moved here from Utah, just the most important things. While all of their furniture, couches, beds and things like that are safe and sound, the things that they lost were the things that were most important to them for various reasons. Here's a list:

– Almost all of the clothing for the six family members. All of Scott's suits, shirts and ties as well as his nicer casual clothing. The boys each had a couple of outfits in their suitcases, but these were their play clothes and not the clothing/shoes that they wear to go out in public, to school and to church. It makes me sad because my sister had some really nice clothes. After I had my accident I had to get rid of the majority of my clothing because I didn't wear it anymore for various reasons. I gave Kristin lots of things, and these are things she still wears today. I always felt happy when she would come down the stairs wearing something of mine. It made me feel like the "old" me lived on through her.

– All of Kristin's jewelry. A few years ago Kristin started making jewelry, and she has quite a collection of necklaces and bracelets that she's made herself to complement her wardrobe. All of her jewelry was in the trailer, as well as all of the tools, supplies and beads that she uses to make jewelry.

– Kristin's family brought their TV, Wii console, Wii games, Wii controllers and all of the accessories that go with it. Kristin's boys love playing Wii so that's why they decided to bring it with them when they came to live here instead of leaving it in their storage unit. The cost of the TV, Wii and all of the other accessories is easily over $1000, so it's going to take a long time before they will even be able to start to think about replacing some of it.

– If you know Kristin, then you know how awesome of a cook she is. When Kristin moved here she brought a lot of her specialized cooking equipment. Her KitchenAid mixer, Cuisinart food processor, all of the things that she uses to make and decorate cakes, plus her digital food scale, her digital candy thermometer and a lot of other expensive kitchen tools that are going to be hard for her to live without. She's just glad that she didn't bring any more of her kitchen stuff like dishes, measuring cups and things like that because she's going to have a hard enough time replacing the specialty things.

– When my sisters and I were kids, my mom made stuffed dogs for all of us. Kristin had two of them, actually. Her boys thought they were really neat and liked having them on the end of the beds that they slept on while living here. So they took them with them to put on their beds in their new home. I also gave Kristin a small stuffed elephant. Of course this doesn't sound like much, but I have the exact same elephant, so it was sentimental. We thought it was a cool way to remember each other when we would see our individual elephants and know that it was part of a pair and the other one was in good hands, albeit across the country. My mom also gave Kristin a housewarming present that she was supposed to open when she got to California. It was a small, clay wizard that Kristin made my mom when she was in fifth grade. All of the things in this paragraph were of course in the trailer. These things sound silly when I see the words on my computer screen, but they meant a lot to my sister and her family.

– By far the most devastating thing that they lost was the piano that my late dad gave my mom 30 years ago. Kristin loves playing the piano and would sit down and play almost every day in the months that they were living here. My favorite was when she would play Christmas songs. My mom had a music book with all sorts of different Christmas piano music in it. My mom decided to give Kristin her piano as a housewarming gift since Kristin loves playing so much. In hindsight my mom wishes that she hadn't given it away because it would still be here waiting for Kristin. However there are no second chances when it comes to something like this, so we've all told ourselves that it's gone. I think it's easier that way so that were not sitting around hoping for it to turn up, safe and sound, when that's realisticly never going to happen.

Kristin and her family arrived in Ridgecrest, California, last Friday. They've moved in and are trying to make things as normal as possible. This would be a challenging time for them anyway, even if their things hadn't gotten stolen, because they've had to leave family and move across the country to a tiny, tiny town. I was shocked when I heard how tiny of a town Ridgecrest is. There's one grocery store, one Walmart and Kmart (neither of which are supercenters) as well as a few restaurants like Pizza Hut and Baskin Robbins. Everyone Kristin's met has told her that when you want to go shopping, you basically just have to make a day of it because you have to travel a few hours in one direction to get to any decent shopping.

I just miss Kristin and her boys so much. I could start crying at any minute if I stop and think about it long enough, but I know that doesn't do any good, so I just try to not think about my sadness. On a brighter note, I know that everything happens for a reason. Even this trial of my sister's belongings getting stolen. Right now it's hard to make any rhyme or reason of why this happened, or how any good could possibly come from it, but I have a feeling that someday we just might understand.

*By the way, Kristin called sometime on Saturday and told my mom that their U-Haul trailer had been found. It was empty, of course. Even this is fortunate, though. My brother-in-law Scott took out the maximum insurance on the U-Haul, but when he called to report it stolen, they told him that they wouldn't even talk to him until the trailer was either turned in or found. Who knows what, if any, compensation they will get from the U-Haul, but at least the ball has started rolling.

For anyone who would still like to donate to my sister's cause, here's the link: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14298

Post-Christmas blues!

My favorite day of the year is always Christmas Eve. The first few hours of Christmas are fun, too, but after all of the presents are opened, the rest of the day has a lackluster feel. The day after Christmas is one of the worst days of the year, in my opinion, because you realize that the thing you were so excited for and had so much anticipation for is over and won't come again for another 364 days.

I usually get a touch of the post-Christmas blues, but this year has been worse than normal because a few days after Christmas my sister Kristin's family left for California. The next day my sister Sharon and her family left to go back to Mississippi. Things are back to normal now, I guess, but I had gotten used to having Kristin's family living with us, so now things are too quiet, too clean, too boring and not nearly as exciting.