Goals, Food, Health and Happiness

It seems like I blinked and the year is almost over. 

I'm looking back on some of the goals that I started the year with and it looks like I'm doing pretty well, actually!

Goals for 2012:

• Complete the Couch to 5K training program to get back into running - Check!
• Read at least 18 books (progress can be tracked on my blog to the right) - I'm currently reading book #27!
• Complete a second Photo A Day project - So far, so good!
• Make a realistic budget with my husband and stick to it - Well, we made a budget. I haven't exactly checked our stick-to-it-ness but we're doing well financially and have made some changes that make financial sense so maybe I get half credit on this one?
• Actually finish the Bible Study I bought an embarrassingly long time ago - I've actually done two, including the above mentioned one.
• Get pregnant again (God willing) and have a happy, healthy pregnancy- Still a work in progress, but God willing...
• Blog more frequently - Well, this will be my 13th post of the year. In the history of my blog, this is pretty good. The only years that I've had more posts were during the planning of our wedding, our wedding, and some related posts so I think that I'm doing pretty well. 
• Spend more time nurturing relationships - This one is sort of hard to quantify, but I think that I've been able to build closer bonds with some of the people out here, as well as get closer to some of my favorite people from back home. 

So really, the only thing that I haven't been able to accomplish to some degree is getting pregnant. But, I can say that I have made strides to help with this process. Thanks to some awesome friends of mine, I was introduced to the book Taking Charge of your Fertility this summer. From that book I really learned a lot about how the female body works and how everything really has to work together perfectly for conception to occur. I've recently started charting using a great app called Fertility Friend, which has taught me a lot about how my body works. I'm hoping that this will help us to have a baby, but at the very least it has empowered me to be able to speak to a doctor with some authority about how my body functions if we have to get to that point. 

I also met with my own personal nutrition consultant, my sweet friend Kelsey, last weekend. She's incredibly passionate about nutrition, eating Real Foods, and is even studying to become a doula. What a great resource she is (check out her website: www.aderofoods.com)! She took the time to compile her own research about eating well, both in general and for fertility. And while I already do eat fairly well, she was able to speak to the exact nutritional value in different foods that I could add to my diet to enhance my health and wellness. So here are a few things that I have tried this week:

Organic whole fat milk: full-fat dairy is related to an increased likelihood of getting pregnant
Kefir: full of probiotics to help boost immunity and regulate digestion, also full of calcium
Organic butter: healthy fats!
Brussels sprouts: mmm, folic acid and phytonutrients ( I have yet to cook these so I hope I can make them taste awesome! Accepting recipes...)

Today I made and ate my first omelet in my almost 28 years. Eggs are apparently really good for you, despite the fact that I don't particularly care for them. So I added things I do like to make them better. I love love love tomatoes so that was a no-brainer. I also added organic baby spinach (yay iron!) and some cheese. And, as always, Cholula makes most foods better. I wouldn't skip straight to *liking* eggs yet, but they were more tolerable with these additions.

 Oh, and trying to drink ridiculous amounts of water-- good thing I have quart-sized mason jars to use as glasses. And, with my recent health issues, I'm more than willing to try things that can boost my wellness and maybe help me get over this!

Speaking of recent health issues, we still don't know why my skin has been freaking out for the past three and a half months. So far I've treated my crazy rash as ringworm (three times, in three ways). I've also had blood tests for various things, ruling out gout, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, previous strep infection, vasculitis, and inflammation which can be caused by autoimmune diseases. Or at least that's what Google tells me based on the tests the doctor ordered. Everything was within normal levels.

I also had a biopsy of one of my "spots." This was actually pretty cool because I could actually watch the procedure since it's on the front of my thigh. It was so interesting! It came back benign. No abnormalities of the tissue, so no cancer-causing cells. The pathological diagnosis shows chronic spongiotic dermatitis, which according to Google means acute eczema. (The doctor didn't actually tell me I have eczema, so I'm relying on Google for this.) I have another follow-up appointment on November 27, so hopefully he'll explain this to me more. The weird thing is that I've never had eczema before in my life, and I guess I didn't know that you can randomly get it after almost 28 years. Hopefully the doctor can explain this more to me, cause it's not going away. And there's a lot of it. And it's really ugly. I've had just awful luck with this biopsy site. I've lost three of my four stitches. They've just come untied and so I pulled them out. This scar is going to be gnarly. My skin also had a crazy reaction to wearing a bandaid over the site and four days later, it still looks like I'm wearing a pink bandaid. Why my skin hates me, I don't know.

Enough whining, there are happy things yet to come!

• Next week is Thanksgiving! Yay food and yay time with my sweet husband! And yay for 4 day weekends. And we're spending Thanksgiving with the Kleinhuizens, which is bound to be a hoot.
• After Thanksgiving means Christmas Tree buying time!! I love how Christmas trees make the whole house smell amazing and Christmassy and like joy.
• Then it's my birthday, which was going to suck because my husband will be in Phoenix for Brandon's bachelor party, but now is going to be amazing because I will be in Vacaville and will get to spend my birthday with my family and best friends! And I'm really really hoping to get some San Francisco time in my weekend. It's been too long!
• CHRISTMAS. Do I need to say more?
• New Year's and celebrating 6 years with the love of my life! He's so my favorite.