Cleaning Day

In the past week I have been threatening to hire a cleaning lady. I work 6-7 days a week and the hubby typically does not help, in fact, usually makes it worse and I end up cleaning more. Case and point, I do not touch his side of the room. I do not know what is clean or dirty. Our entire house is clean except two areas, his side of the room and his sink.
Usually when company comes over I stuff it behind his dresser. When you glance into my bedroom, nobody ever notices his pile.

Yesterday my threats turned real as I took a phone number of a cleaning lady from a friend. He noticed the hand-off told me that we did not need one. I told him that he had one week to help out and prove me wrong.

Well guess what my wonderful husband did today:

Washed all of our sheets

Cleaned our carpets

Cleaned out the refridgerator

Scrubbed all of our cabinets (I loathe the color white in our kitchen)

Completed four loads of laundry

Removed his infamous pile of clothes.

I may start threatening a cleaning lady every weekend.

I do not know about you, but cleaning makes us bicker. I tend to do it one way and he does it another. Not to mention my mother comes out in me when I am cleaning. Regardless, we always make each other laugh. Sometimes not even on purpose.

I watched him as he pulled out some rope and began manuvering around our kitchen. I just laughed to myself as I typed away on the computer for work. The way he decided to dry our comforter:

The worse part of this picture: I agreed for some reason to help him. He asked me nicely and I said, "No way, I did not sign up for this" and of course he pulls a "Yes you did, when you married me". Ahh! One valuable marriage lesson I have learned over this past year of living together is sacrifice. There are things I do not want to do, but I do them and vice versa.

Day Five...Day Six

Today marks 21 days since my headache started and 6 days since I gave up television. I guess I can tell the hubby television isn't causing my headaches. I am still going the next two weeks without it to prove a point and be more productive.

You know when they say desperate times, desperate measures. Well one of my members practices holistic medicine. While training her yesterday, she offered me a free session. I just wanted my headache to stop. Surprisingly it wasn't too crazy and the massage part felt good.

Except I still have a headache. She also mentioned I have a lot of "energy" coming off my feet. To this I responded, "That does not surprise me".

Speaking of feet. The past two weekends, I've worn my high heels or Nine West sandals and they feel heavenly! And my tennis shoes absolutely burn and kill my feet at times.

When I use to have the fancy, career woman job, I wore high heels or nice dress shoes and my feet felt so relieved in tennis shoes. I guess whatever the shoe, if you wear it 8+ hours a day for 5+ days a week, your feet might hurt.

My television detox as I like to call is still getting easier. It helps I wake up at 4:45am so I fall asleep between 7-8pm, ha! The husband has been calling me grandma, oh well. I always feel rested at least.

Days Three & Four

Today I finally dragged my (and the husband's) butt over to my primary care doctor to get a referral for a neurologist. He also prescribed some high dosage migrane medicine. Hopefully I can get some kind of relief.

Life without television is suprisingly getting easier. My trick is to take myself out of the house.

Yesterday I...

walked the dogs
visited one of our friends who just got a puppy
dinner with my boss and her husband
and picked up my hubby late last night from the airfield

I crashed into my bed...without the TV :)

In the past two days I have also caught up with two best friends. It was wonderful.

Speaking of one of my best friends....She is a newlywed and her husband has 2 kids from a prior marriage. They are at that difficult age between 8-11 years old.. She is struggling to keep her sanity and actually mentioned blogging last night. She hopes to join a blog community (similiar to this wonderful military blog community) of stepmothers. I told her I would see if anyone out there is either going through the same thing or knows of someone.

Day Two

I try to avoid being "Debbie Downer", but I did not sleep at ALL last night.

This means Day Two was not good either. I feel going "without" TV might actually make me sound pathetic to the blog world, but it's proving to be difficult so far.

Instead my mind was racing about work and many other things, so much so, I jumped out of bed at 3am and wrote down all of my ideas. My boss thanked me for not sleeping actually. I think this is why I enjoy TV, my mind actually shuts off because every other minute, its running 100 miles an hour.

I did do some things today I normally would not do. I took the dogs for an extra long walk, almost an hour, and I actually went shopping. I never go shopping just to browse. I always know what I want, but today I purchased a super cute bag from Target and a couple books from Borders: A nutrition book and Shutter Island, which we are reading for Book Club this month.

I also had a nice dinner with some of my favorite Book Club ladies. They made this whole coming home to an empty, extremely quiet house bearable tonight.

Day One Without TV

I think I am in trouble.

This morning I had to tell myself several times, "No, you are giving up TV, remember?" before turning on Sportscenter. This is something I have done every morning since high school.

And tonight? Well after working 9 hours with an awful headache (still), I just want to curl up on the couch and watch TV. I am actually tempted to take some Tylenol PM and just go to sleep.

Luckily I have some fitness magazines to read.

Tomorrow might be the true challenge. I realized when my dependency on TV reached an all time high...during his deployment. Tomorrow he needs to switch out aircraft in TX and will not be back until Thursday. Two days without husband and television...

I need to find a new hobby, ASAP.

Headache Expert

16 days later....I am still fighting this headache. These headaches really have not "sidelined" me from anything. I am still going to work, still cleaning, still trying to be a good, social wife. So either I have a high pain tolerance or they are not full blown migranes.

In the past two weeks I've been to two emergency rooms, a massage therapist and a chiropractor. I've had two shots of steroids in the back of my head (to loosen up one of my neck veins) and a ton of medicine through an IV where I felt extremely loopy for a few days, and managed to pull off 3,200 mg of Motrin in the past 3 days.

My headaches have become a hot topic at work. Some of my favorite members actually call me on their "off" days to check on me and of course everyone has a remedy. So are you ready for them? Here is what I've heard, from my members.

Chewing iceberg lettuce
Dark chocolate
Every kind of medicine you can name
Sex
Orgasms
Blow Jobs
Ice pack on my head
Eye doctor appointment

I haven't tried the lettuce, maybe this week. I also need to get my butt on the phone with Tricare for a referal to a neurologist.

My husband swears up and down its because I fall asleep to the TV. Everyone relaxes or kicks back in their own way, after working all day or cleaning the house, I love relaxing and catching up on the 100s of shows I DVR.

So to increase my productivity this week (and to prove him wrong), I am giving up TV for 21 days. Why 21? They say it takes 21 days to break a habit. I will (try) blog everyday and let you know how it goes. Wish me luck.

Headache

I have never had a headache last longer than a few hours in my entire life...until this week. I woke up Saturday with a headache and it has not let up since. SIX DAYS!

Drinking enough water?
Taking vitamins?
Resting?
Medicine?
Cracking my back?

I've done them all. I left work early this morning and my wonderful husband gave me some tylenol 3 and it did nothing for me.

Tomorrow I am trying a massage and a trip to the chiropractor. If that does not work...I will start to worry.