Domestic Geek

This is a hard thing for people, especially women, to do. I wish I could remember who says it, (Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil maybe?) You can't properly care for anybody else if you don't take care of yourself first.

My mother was like that. I swore I would never be like that, yet I find myself doing exactly the same thing. She would spend so much time doing things for other people that she put her physical needs last (I believe her martyr attitude fulfilled some kind of emotional need). As a result, my mother got sick a lot, ate poorly, didn't have nice clothes to wear.

You need to equate this to an automobile. If you don't take care of it — gas, oil changes, tires, wax, it will expire before it's time. It will fail you when you need it most.

How can you be there for your friends, you family or your workplace if you're a run-down, stress-ed out, sick mess?

I'm brainstorming on something I can do on another blog I'm starting to encourage women to take care of themselves first. I'll let you all know what I come up with and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I saw a post over at my friend Deb's site, Body, Mind & Solar, with the following video describing the differences of Type I & II diabetes. I didn't really know the differences and the video is well done and explains it quite well.

Do your eyes water when you yawn? Mine do. What's up with that? This is normally the time I take my Saturday afternoon nap, so things are going to be a little touchy for the next couple of hours until I get a second wind. Think I'll hit the shower after this post.

Anyway, as I alluded to in my last post: Procrastination is one of my biggest health-related enemies. I always mange to cause myself undue stress and worry because I put things off. I leave for work giving myself exactly the amount of time I need to get there on a good day. If any traffic jams or other problems arise, I'm late. It's that way with the food I eat, too. I put off going to the store until the last possible minute and then grab something quick and usually not too nutritious to just get some food in my belly. I've always put off projects until the night before they are due. Like last night, I was changing my template for Blogathon at 1 am to something to get me by because I've been dragging my feet on my redesign.

That leads to another stress causer: Perfectionism. I know in my head that perfect doesn't exist, yet I obsess over things being perfect and get really stressed and depressed if things don't work out just the way I wanted or expected them to. Crazy that I do that to myself, huh?

It's long been known that pet owners have less stress in general that non-pet owners. There's something therapeutic in stroking a big, fuzzy creature.

I want another dog. While we still have bunnies, it's just not the same as having a dog, you know?

I've been reading a fellow 'thonner and Colorado resident over at Tucker Talks Back (blogging for Max Fund). Tucker is a Siberian Husky. Made me think of my old beloved dog Ursa that was an Alaskan Malamute.

EDIT: If you haven't been around the last few years, I wanted to share a picture of my beloved dogs. We lost Skippy this last January (the brown Shepherd mutt). We lost Ursa (the Alaskan Malamute) back in August 2002. I miss them.

We live in interesting times, for sure. We've got the benefits from so many cool technological advances. It's hard to believe that just a few short years ago we didn't have the Internet, yet now just about everybody I know functions both at work and home in some capacity by using computers and the Internet (mail, surfing, etc). Then there are big screen TVs that turn your home into a movie theater and video game systems and all of it leads to us spending quite a bit of time on our butts.

We also live in dangerous times. Parents don't dare turn their kids out into the streets to play unsupervised. I remember as a child leaving the house in the morning and wandering around to different neighbor kids' houses. Except for a couple of meal breaks, we stayed outside playing until it got too dark to see.

It's definitely having negative effects on our health.