celebrate you

NSV.  It's a non-scale victory.  It's an opportunity to celebrate yourself because you should be celebrating something about yourself each and every day.  Find something about yourself to celebrate every day as well as with each person in your family.  What if we did that and wrote that down?  I'll bet our lives would totally change.  Hmm...this is a brilliant idea of mine.  I think I might just do this.

Well, here is what went down today:
I finally got the call last Friday that my insurance settlement money was in.  The money from the car accident I was in a year and a half ago.  This thing has been a mess I tell you.  I have had the worst time with the case managers even though the lawyers themselves are great.  I have been anxious to just get it all done and over with just because of their horrible lack of communication and follow through.  Well, my case manager and I set up an appointment for me to come in and pick up the checks (multiple because I had children in the car with me who were seen on dr orders as well).  We set a very clear appointment for Tuesday because she says she will be out of the office all day on Monday and isn't sure what the attorney's schedule will be.
So.... I drive 40 minutes to this lawyer's office (getting my boys' chicken nuggets because I went straight from kinder pickup in order to be there before her lunch break as arranged) to find she is not there.  She is at lunch.  A lunch she wasn't supposed to take for another hour from the time I was there.  The receptionist explains that one of the lawyers had them switch lunch schedules for the day.  Well, that's all fine and good except she could have called me.  I'm not leaving though because I know that this will not be resolved otherwise.  I need this to just be done with.  She is calling and texting this lady to get her back in the office with no response.  Anyway, long story short.... I waited for an hour with my 6 and 5 year old boys and a couch and a tv playing ESPN.  Let me tell you how much fun that is.  It's not.  I was furious.  My husband was texting me saying that I should demand that they pay me the equivalent of that girl's hourly wage.  Right. Well, at first I was nice.  I was being all polite and professional and practicing my mean glare.  Beware the silent and angry woman.  Then I was all 'no...my time is valuable too and I will not be just walked over!'.  Thanks PASG for teaching me that lesson.  It was sort of like my own little victory to say that for myself.  I could feel tears just below the surface when my actual attorney appeared and immediately said "Have you really been here for an hour?".  I cry when I get mad. I hate it.  So I remained as calm as I could because I didn't want to cry but my voice cracked a bit when I said that 'yes, in fact I have and yes, I did have a very clear appointment (as did the other guy that had been there waiting for the same lady).'  I made sure to let them know that I was not happy and I deserved better.  I'm glad PASG taught me that lesson- It's okay to be mad and upset and to express those feelings.  You just have to be sure that you are responding or acting mindfully instead of merely reacting to something.  My hands were shaking because I was so mad.

So I'm mad but at least I finally get my settlement documents and checks and I can be done with all this.  I'm still shaking because I'm mad about all this when I leave.  I want desperately to stop at that McDonald's there and get a soft serve ice cream cone (I heard they're only 1 WW point after all so they must be good for you!) because surely I deserved it after dealing with all that crap.  My boys certainly did.  Or I wanted a cookie from somewhere.  I really deserved it when I had barely gone down the road and an idiot driver in the lane next to me seriously swerved for no apparent reason and very very nearly sideswiped me.  No joke, had I not had both hands on the wheel at the time I probably would've jerked my car too far out of the way and into the car on the other side of me or over-corrected right back into his.  My poor boys were all scared all over again.  Where was I?  Oh, right.  I deserved a treat for all this crappy afternoon I was having.  Guess what though?  I didn't.  First, all I could think about besides the fact that I had so much adrenaline coursing through my body now and that my hands were shaking and I was so mad at my utter waste of an afternoon (which, obviously, was not a total waste) was how badly I had to pee!  Seriously.  Thinking about that reminded me just how much water I'd been sipping at to keep myself occupied while waiting and just in general.  That reminded me about my workout that morning and my accountability/fitness group and how I'd committed to doing really well this week and being done with my spiral of a weekend.  So I drove the rest of the way home thinking about the healthy treats I was going to have when I got home because that was what I deserved.  I had some vegan brownies I made yesterday and some greek yogurt with some PB2+chocolate in it.  I felt much better.  As I sat there feeling better I wondered if it had to do with the food.  Like how an addict needs a fix and calms down when they get the fix.  This has always been a struggle for me.  I feel like there is a lot of wonderful literature out there about my husband's pornography addiction and how it works in terms of the brain processes and chemicals etc.  I know that a food addiction must work the same way but you can't simply cut that out in the same way you can pornography.  So what do you do?  I realized at that moment that it wasn't about the food then.  I felt better because I had taken control of something that I really did have control of.  I was upset about my lack of control in a situation where someone did not hold up to their end of an agreement, at my expense, and then about my lack of control in a situation that put my family's safety at risk.  Then there's that whole lack of control of whatever the heck is going on in my body and having any knowledge about it.  I've always tried to shut out those feelings with doing whatever with abandon, which usually meant some sort of binge or eating something that would make me feel bad so at least then I'd later have that feeling to focus on.  Obviously that doesn't work.  But today I felt better eating something...something good for me....because I had control over something that I could have control over.  Ohhhhhhhh.......

Hey big guy.... Thanks for answering that prayer to help me make good choices today. ;)