There is nothing like spending a week in a bikini to make you whole heartedly commit to a diet. However I also discovered the week after getting back from vacation is not the optimal time to give up caffeine, alcohol (dear seven pound eight ounce baby Jesus, help me), dairy, flour and sugar. It’s also a seriously bad idea to sign up for an intense two day professional training (the first day went from 7:30am until 11pm) the week you get back from vacation. It’s the perfect storm and it will mess with your mind.
It’s also a seriously bad idea to do any of these the week your children go back to school (yes it’s the first week in August – WTF?) and start up sports again after taking the summer off (yes this radical mom let her children do absolutely nothing this summer).
Which is why I found myself driving to work on Thursday wondering if I had a brain tumor. No joke. I’m being dead serious. On my commute to work I was strategizing as to how I was going to convince my doctor to authorize an MRI for me. My brain had become a sieve through which all – and I mean all – information that was received that week promptly flowed out. I also found myself struggling to remember simple words like “oven” and “backpack.” I had an excruciating headache which is rare for me. And to top it all off I literally felt like I was stoned. While for some feeling stoned may seem like a blessing I am one of those people who hates drugs and will grit my way through severe pain rather than take a doctor prescribed Percocet because I hate that under-water, out-of-it feeling. And boy did I feel underwater. Like I was down on the ocean floor with the Titanic.
When I finally made it to Friday I felt like I was crossing the finish line of an Ironman competition. I collapsed from sheer exhaustion. And as I napped my way through Saturday I realized that I probably don’t in fact have a brain tumor (although the crazy part of my brain won’t let me completely rule it out because I was such a freaking wreck last week), that I simply need to pace myself because I am not twenty anymore. I can’t drink my way through vacation, eat like a sixteen year old high school football player, then jump into an insane work schedule that includes a fourteen hour day two days after vacation ends. Partying like a rock star and pulling all nighters – or their adult equivalents – are not in my wheelhouse anymore.
I’m going to have to learn to pace myself. Which I’m sure is going to be a nasty process given that I’ve spent the past forty-one years doing whatever the exact opposite of pacing yourself is. And do I really want to admit that I am getting older, slowing down, not the woman I once was? Not me. Not me at all. But maybe that’s part of finally being a grown up. Recognizing and embracing limitations, weakness, my own humanness are scary, sure, but I have to be pretty tough to be able to look them in the face and come to terms with them. So I’m not a complete wimp, right? And let’s be honest it beats having a brain tumor. By a lot.
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