It's been a long week. I won't say it's been a necessarily tough week, but it's definitely been long. Returning to work after a holiday weekend is always hard. It's ten times harder when you worked most of that "holiday" weekend. After returning to work I thought things were going fairly well, then I started feeling "off". I was crazy emotional and felt the urge to cry at the drop of a hat. This is not usual for me; far from it in fact. As most of you who have been following this blog for the past year know, Mr. Darcy and I have been trying to get pregnant for almost 2 years now. Feeling strangely hormonal can indicate that a woman is pregnant. Being the logical creature that I am, a small tiny hope crept into my mind - "What if this is it??".
Then, two days into my week, by basal body temperature dropped. For those of you who are not familiar with fertility and how a woman's body works, a drop in your basal body temperature towards the ends of a woman's menstrual cycle is usually a sign that any egg that was released was not fertilized and the uterus should start shedding it's lining in preparation for the next cycle. This is not good news for someone who is trying to conceive and is hoping they are pregnant. My ever hopeful self desperately hoped that the drop was a fluke and that the next day my temps would be back up and I could still possibly be pregnant. Tuesday was filled with more hormonal ridiculousness - headaches, nausea, high levels of emotions. Wednesday morning my temp was down again. It was a sure thing now. All hope of being pregnant was completely gone. All there was to do now was wait for this cycle to end and the next one to start. The headache and crazy emotions hung around.
Thursday morning I woke up to a searing headache and another drop in temperature. By this point I knew the headache was hormone related and all I could do was wait until my cycle started and hope the hormones would balance out. I took the first half of the day off so I could rest. While resting, I decided I had had enough of letting my body run my life. I got up, got dressed, and went to work. It was a slow day at the office and most of my clients ended up cancelling their appointments any way. By the end of the work day my headache had subsided substantially and I decided to go ahead and go running as planned. Physical exercise can help balance your hormones, and I was hoping it would help with mine. Plus, I have been running consistently now for that past 7 weeks and I was determined to not let anything get in the way of my continuing this, including feeling crappy. (Side note: I ran my first 5k on Thanksgiving morning. I actually ran 2/3 of the course and was super proud of myself for doing it. Big shout out to my wonderful husband who pushed me to do it).
So, after work yesterday, I went running. As I started running, I began to feel better. I hit a mile and barely felt winded, so I kept going. I kept going until I had done 2 miles, and when I finished I realized I had shaved 30 seconds off my mile time. As I was running, I focused on pushing through everything I had experienced this week. As my feet pounded the track, I imagined pounding into the ground all my frustration, all my fears, all my sorrows. Got a headache - pound, pound, pound. Feel like a weepy, weak lump of a person - pound, pound, pound. Still not pregnant - pound, pound, pound. I will keep going - pound, pound, pound. I refuse to be a sad, mopey wreck of a person - pound, pound, pound. I will fight to be the best version of me I can be - pound, pound, pound.
After my running/therapy session, I went home feeling super proud of myself and physically feeling much better. With the mental clarity that running brings, I found myself laughing at the humor in the long week. I don't know about any of you, but, when I'm tired or hormonal, some really silly things happen. So, despite the fact that this week was a long week, there were some really funny moments. Maybe you can relate to some of these:
It might have been a long day if you hear Dean Martin sing "Rudy the red-beaked reindeer" as something entirely different, and then realize with a sigh of relief that a song that old could not really be that inappropriate.
You might be crazy hormonal if you find yourself getting weepy-eyed over the words to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". That is a happy song, right?!?
It might have been a long week if you find yourself laughing gleefully and doing a little jig when your last client of the day calls 30 minutes before their appointment to say they are not coming.
You *might* have run away hormones if, while watching a documentary about Arctic animals, you start crying uncontrollably when a baby beluga whale is stranded on a beach and might die, and then what to cheer madly when the tide comes just in time to rescue him.
You might have had a long week and/or be hormonal if all you can think about is getting home to gorge yourself on chocolate and ice cream. Don't worry, I didn't do this, but it was mostly due to not having enough time to do it, rather than any great amount of self-control. :)
If you have no idea what I am talking about and have never experienced any of those things, well, at least you get to laugh at my awkward moments in life. And now, the long week is almost over. I have 3 days of rehearsals and a production at the end of the weekend to look forward to, and then this super long, super hormonal week will be over. I then get to have more long weeks with, I'm sure, their own hurdles to get over. However, as long as those weeks offer me more humorous opportunities to laugh at myself, I will be doing well. Happy Friday, everyone!! I hope your weekends are a celebration of rest and relaxation from whatever your week brought you. :)
