Wasn’t I Just 22 Yesterday? (A Birthday Meme)

Yes, today is my 32nd birthday, and I swear I’m having all these weird, funky feelings about it. One of which happens to be that I feel like the past decade has slipped through my fingers.

Before I get into that, I’d like to share with you some pics of zoo animals enjoying their birthday cakes, courtesy of HuffPo:

Gee, one who doesn’t know me might wonder why I focused on zoo animals there for a second… LOL Anyway, back to the meat (haha, “meat”) of this post…

There are many things that plague my brain on certain occasions. Birthdays, holidays, friends and family giving birth, people passing away, nothing really ever happens without my brain taking me on a whirlwind voyage through my own life.

Many times I find these thoughts sad, though there are many times I think about all the things in my life that I’ve done, places I’ve been, and people I’ve had the pleasure to know and it makes me smile. I’ve decided that today, for just one day, I’m going to work really hard at focusing upon those things alone, and try to forget about the fact that I’m getting older and have so many dreams unfulfilled yet.

32 Years, 16 Favorite Memories

Pardon me, but this list is lengthy. I was shooting for 32, but I have birthday events to take part in… :)

1. I once did a bellyflop on a 14 foot alligator who’d escaped her enclosure. The point was to try to stabilize her so the zoo foreman could jump on and bind her jaw, so she wouldn’t snap when we moved her back in. I honestly think she wouldn’t have anyway, as she didn’t really flinch or anything when the 15 of us picked her up and carried her around to the gate. But it was thrilling to me, for about 15 seconds anyway.
2. I’ve been in two movies, neither of which have been released. However because of this, I do have a profile on imdb.com. During one filming, I hung out with Mykelti Williamson (who played “Bubba” in Forrest Gump) and during the other I had conversation over lunch with Anthony Michael Hall and Chris Penn.
3. My first ever music concert was Janet Jackson (Rhythm Nation Tour) but my most memorable was Billy Joel (River of Dreams Tour) where he held my hand during the entire first half of  “She’s Always A Woman”. Later in life, I was told by a very dear friend that he always thought of me when he heard that song, despite my never telling him the story about the concert previously.
4. I was in Civil Air Patrol (CAP) from the time I was 12 until I was 17. My friend Lucas joined because of me, and we took a flying lesson together. It was a Cessna. Was probably one of the coolest feelings ever.
5. I spent 6 weeks in Italy when I was 15 years old, as part of a summer foreign exchange program. For four weeks, I was living with the greatest host family known to man, who took me on a tour of the whole country. The last two weeks was less fun for me, as it was at an “acting camp”, but I totally made the most of it. I was in a mansion in Perugia with 10 partying teenagers who would steal wine from the cellar and drink into the wee hours. An indicator of my “old soul”: They partied while I slept (or tried to), so I could have the morning to myself with tea, toast and marmelade, the sunrise and the wild horses.
6. My first (and only, thus far) trip to Vegas was last October (2008). I went for a blogger conference, and spent the majority of my time there with either my client (who went with me and shared a room) or with my friend/client Darren Rowse and the b5media crew. It was 4 days and wasn’t nearly long enough. The bonus? I came home only $40 in the hole.
7. My first trip on an airplane was when I was 10 years old. My father owned a travel agency, and this was the first of many vacations I got to have as a kid that took me on a plane. We went to California, and the first place I wanted to go (unlike most kids that age) was the San Diego Zoo.
8. I’ve worked closely with over 100 species of exotic animals when I was a zookeeper, many of which are endangered species. Animals that most people don’t even know exist. I know the scientific names for most of these animals, and can tell you precisely what they eat, how they live in the wild, and other information that most would consider entirely useless to my current occupation. Sometimes knowing this stuff is what keeps me alive inside.
9. Jack Hanna (a very famous zoologist – he’s been on the Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and Maury on hundreds of occasions, and had his own show at one point) once called my house after I somehow got in touch with his secretary. I called and they put me right through to her, and she didn’t understand how (I guess they weren’t supposed to do that), but was so impressed that she made sure Mr. Hanna got my phone message. He called on a Sunday morning at 8am, and helped answer questions I had about my Senior Essay for 12th grade English class. He is the reason I was ever a zookeeper, as he told me which school to go to, and how to go about doing it. I told him that if he ever needed an assistant on his voyages to Africa, to give me a ring.
10. It’s a silly memory, and you may have had to be there, but when I was in 4th grade I had a huge crush on a boy named Jason Mabb (in fact, I crushed on him well beyond 4th grade). We both got in trouble during lunch for talking because he was making me laugh (which is a trait I’ve forever desired in a man) and we got sent up “to face the curtain” which was on the stage in the cafeteria. I think they used that as a way to embarass us into good behavior, but it didn’t ever really work. He continued to make me laugh, and our teacher made us hold hands walking back to class from lunch, because we’d gotten in trouble. I remember both of us pretending not to enjoy it, however upon turning the corners on our way back to class, he’d then pull me closer and give me a kiss on the cheek. Every. Corner. Was so damned cute.  I wonder about him a lot.
11. I’ve had a lot of really great first kisses. Every girl has these chick-flick ideas of a great first kiss, and I’ve had some that really were chick-flick quality. Sure, there have been some really awful ones (that in fact, never got better even with 2nd or 3rd or 10th kisses if I ever let them get that far) but I can’t help but blush and smile and get the warm fuzzies when I think of a few key first kisses that literally made my knees buckle.
12. One Spring Break during zoo school, I spent 3 days at the National Zoo in D.C. with a gorilla named Mopi. All my friends were in Mexico or something, and I was hanging out with Mopi. We interacted between an enormously thick piece of glass, but I journaled the entire thing like I would if I were Dian Fossey in the Virunga Mountains. At the end of the trip, one of the primate keepers who had noticed my extended presence took me behind the scenes to an orangutan (I think his name was Willy) and I hand-fed him celery. He would take it and then blow raspberries at me.
13. I fondly remember what I called “Daddy-Daughter Days”. It was usually on a Saturday, because back then Mom was a retail store manager and she often worked those mornings. He’d make me scrambled eggs (with ketchup, which the thought of makes me gag now) and I’d sit in my cardboard-box-playhouse eating them during Saturday morning cartoons. Later in the day, we would go fishing or something cool like that. We’d either head across the street to the creek, or over to a “special fishing spot” we had. One of his favorite pictures of me is when I caught my first fish.
14. A few years ago, my friend Tina and I (with our moms) went to a magazine model search competition. We interviewed at the same time, side by side, with different judges. They chose 7 (there was a mother-daughter team they felt they just had to include, but it was only supposed to be 5 winners) out of hundreds that showed up. I remember sitting in the room while they announced winners, and they got to choosing the last person and we all figured we hadn’t gotten it. The two judges I interviewed with were fighting over who got to announce the next winner, because they were both so excited. I listened as they said, “She’s a volunteer firefighter, a certified zookeeper…” and my eyes widened, my mom and I both teared up, and I finally heard my name. I remember only thinking, “Don’t trip… don’t trip…” on my way up. The next day we had a huge fashion photo shoot, however the issue never made it to print because the magazine sold out to another company that discontinued the model search.
15. I once almost spent the night with Josh Duhamel. (Fergie’s husband now, he played “Danny” on the crime drama “Las Vegas”.) We met at a Make-A-Wish Foundation benefit, and Tina was dating his best friend and then “All My Children” co-star, Cameron Mathison. ‘Nuff said. *blush*
16. When I was in elementary school, I was part of what was then called the “Gifted and Talented Program” (Which has since been demolished because apparently it’s not “PC” to acknowledge smart kids) and we had a kind of science fair. My mission was to build a bridge out of toothpicks, that could withstand 100lbs. of weight. Other kids had a mission to wrap an egg in something and drop it from various heights without the egg breaking, etc. Despite my task having nothing to do with eggs, my mother made me wear a costume, that looked like a fried egg. I was the only kid who showed up in any kind of costume. I think I was a little too young to be truly embarrassed by it, but looking back, it was probably a highlight on a list of embarrassing events in my life. I would’ve won the toothpick bridge contest had I had the guts to put all the weight on it, but I chickened out. Believe it or not, yes, looking back on this memory does in fact make me smile.

I know if I had more time, I could come up with 32, but I figured that half as many would suffice. :) Besides, I’d expect many to be bored reading all that as it is… LOL

Here’s to another year of life, and dammit, this one’s gonna top ‘em all!

Diagnosis: Type 2 Diabetes. Now What?

March 9th, 2009 will forever go down in my life history as the day my health kicked my ass. No, I’m not dying. I’m actually feeling more alive and motivated and inspired than ever before in my near 32 years.

A Little Back Story

Two days prior to the “Day of Dawn” for me, I’d been sitting at my desk and noticed that my left hand had these weird, jerky twitches going on. Not like your everyday eyelid twitch or that rhythmic thumping twitch, no… it was the fingers on my left hand moving around in strange, unbalanced movements. I got a little weirded out so I called the doctor’s office and they set me up for a 2pm appointment.

Now, I need to explain here that prior to all of this mess, I’d never EVER been much of a breakfast eater. I’d wake up around 6 or 7 and drink coffee with 2% milk and equal until about noon-thirty before actually putting something in my mouth that required chewing. I had a feeling they were going to draw blood, so I didn’t even eat that day until after the appointment.

So by the time I got to the doctor’s office and the subsequent lab for a blood draw, I had gone 21 hours without anything but that day’s coffee in my gut. More on that thought later…

The next day I get the call that my doc wants to see me to go over the bloodwork results. Okay, so there’s clearly something wrong, since if everything were okay he’d have called to tell me that and told me to keep an eye on the twitching stuff and let him know if it gets worse or more frequent.

I go into the office and the PA comes in and asks me why I’m there. (In case you’re wondering, I’m not a big fan of any of the PA’s at this office, but whatever…) So I tell her and she leaves and comes back with that finger pricker thing but never says a word. I see her putting it together and I mention that I really hate it. Like, I have a ridiculous reflex against it, have since I was a kid. It’s uncontrollable by myself alone, so I’m hoping she can hold my hand steady enough.

She couldn’t. Or rather, she didn’t even bother to really try. She kind of cupped my finger in her hand like she was holding an egg.

I wound up with an inch long gash on my finger that wouldn’t stop bleeding for hours after I left the damn office.

Doctor comes in and tells me that my cholesterol levels are “perfect”, my proteins and all that other stuff are normal, but my blood sugar was really high, at 183. This slash test just now (also about 18 hours since the last time I’d eaten, by the way) showed 186. He was sending me for a Hemoglobin A1c, which tests for the percentage of sugar bonded to proteins in the blood, and which is a defining test for Type 2 Diabetes. He said that 6% or lower was normal, 6-7% was borderline, and 7% and above was definite T2.

So back over to the lab I go, pulling up the sleeve of the other arm and since I know the hematologist, having a discussion with her about how I’m now officially nervous.

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

I came home and my mother came down to spend time with me. I made a stir-fry dinner with brown rice and we talked about all the things the doctor said. Basically what he told me was that right now, regardless of the test results, the only thing he wants me to focus on is a 1200-1400 calorie per day diet, low in carbs and zero refined carbs, and 30 minutes of exercise every day. Heart-pumping exercise that is, to get the heart rate up.

I’m thinking, “Okay, I can do this. I’ve been wanting to do this, and now I have to do this, and I can do this.”

So the next day I get a call from the doctor’s secretary or PA or whatever, and she tells me that my A1c came back at 10.6% and she is going to make me an appointment to see their CDE (Certified Diabetes Instructor). Um, but the doctor said he doesn’t want me on a meter, doesn’t want me stressing over anything at all, just to focus on calories, content, and exercise. I tell her this, and she says, “Well, let’s set you up with the appointment anyway and if the doctor says no, we can cancel it.”

That, folks, is another long story, but the bottom line is that I didn’t see the CDE, and when I spoke to the doctor about it the other day, he was fine with it.

So Here I Go

I’ve been tracking every morsel that goes into my body with SparkPeople and have really tried to get on the treadmill every day. I’ve not succeeded, but every single morning I tell myself that I’m going to do it. It’s been over two weeks, and I’ve lost 4 pounds thus far.

I’ll be writing about this whole process in great detail of course. My next appointment with the doctor is on April 21, 2009 but don’t worry, I’ve got lots to say even before then… ;)

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Spoil Yourself: Use the sauna for health

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I love the most at the gym is the sauna. I’ve used them on hotel visits and such, or when I’ve gone for a massage, but the thing about using it after a workout is that you’re not only pampering yourself, you’re also helping your body. I wish I had the money to own one!

Did you know?

• During a 10-20 minute sauna session, your heart rate increases by 50-75%. This provides the same metabolic result as physical exercise. The increased cardiac load is the equivalent to a brisk walk. There is a nominal effect on blood pressure because the heat also causes blood vessels in skin to expand to accommodate increased blood flow.
• When taking a sauna, skin temperature rises to 40°C (104°F) and internal body temperature rises to about 38°C (100.4°F). Exposure to the high heat creates an artificial fever state. Fever is part of the body’s natural healing process. Fever stimulates the immune system resulting in increased production of disease fighting white blood cells, antibodies and interferon (an anti viral protein with cancer fighting capability).
• Spas and other such therapeutic facilities utilize saunas and steambaths in conjunction with massage to loosen fatty tissue and assist in the battle against cellulite.
• Many regular steam and sauna users claim that a “good sweat” at the onset helps relieve and ward off the most severe symptoms of cold or flu.
• Blood vessels become more flexible and there is increased circulation to the extremities. During a sauna, blood flow to the skin increases to as high as 50-70% of cardiac output (compared to the standard 5-10%). This brings nutrients to subcutaneous and surface tissue resulting in glowing healthy skin. (source)

The reason I say “spoil yourself” is because I think that sometimes people don’t understand the true benefits of saunas. Sure, there are all the health related reasons I posted above, but I also tend to find myself feeling luxuriously spoiled when I use a sauna. Some great ones offer aromatherapy too, which can double your efforts in the luxury department! Grab a sauna with lemon and evergreen in the morning to loosen you up and get you pumped up for the day. Use the sauna with lavender and mint and soothe away the day’s stresses. Let your mind wander away from your troubles and transport you to a far away place. It’s like taking a vacation! Just don’t fall asleep without a timer though… more than 20-30 minutes in a sauna can actually HURT your body.

Tools to Life Review

Image via CrunchBase

“Change” has been a huge buzzword lately, what with the election of US President Barack Obama, the new year with resolutions abound… I think 2009 is going to be called “The Year of Change”. That said, I’d like to talk about a website that features self help programs to encourage this change within yourself, Tools to Life.

Tools to Life is a 100% free online program that claims to provide you with all you need to help make changes in your life. To “create YOUR best life” according to the site. I do like the fact that it’s completely free – as you know, I’m a huge fan of free!

Sign-up was easy and took seconds. Create a username and password, give your birth date, and you’re in. There’s lots to see and do, but don’t get overwhelmed. You might want to begin by filling out a complete profile. Add your schools, jobs, a photo, set up your notifications, and write a little about yourself.

Once you’ve filled out your profile, check out the inspirational motivation podcasts, or join one of the several life coaching support groups there are. There are lots of challenges you can join too, everything from adding cardio workouts to your daily routine, to keeping a clean house, to avoiding alcohol or fast foods. I love how diverse the membership is on this site! You’ll find people from 16 to well into their “golden years” all working together to support and encourage each other to reach their goals, one step at a time.

Fair warning: The goals and challenges are extremely diverse. You’re going to find people who have addictions to more than just drugs or alcohol. I ran across a couple challenges that were sexual (avoiding pornography, for example). Please try not to judge those with issues if they’re different than your own. We all have things we’d like to walk away from and the way I see it, if you’re working on becoming what you perceive to be “a better person”, then good for you! For some it’s a more “PC” addiction like fast food or even smoking, and for others it’s often more “harsh” than that. If it’s not an interest of yours, just skim on past to find something more closely related to your own needs.

There are some great programs on here too. Being that I’m trying once again to lose weight, I joined the Body Makeover program. I’m really excited to join this program, and maintain my “contract” by logging in daily and keeping track of my progress.

All in all, I have to say that I’m really very pleased with the Tools to Life site. It seems a lot more in depth and better organized than some other free sites I’ve seen out there, and I truly encourage you to take a peek and sign up!

[Sponsored Post]

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Finding Yourself (Again) Through Goal-Setting

(This is an update to an old post I’d written after my breakup at the beginning of summer 2008. When I took all my old posts down to revamp the site, I vowed to revisit everything and use it to create fresh, new content. This post in particular hit me pretty hard, because it was originally written in July 2008, and while I’ve stuck to some things, others need to be revisited, and what better time than when you’re working on resolutions to look over some old goals? So here it is, in all it’s updated glory.)

It’s so hard to remember that you’re a whole person when you’ve come out of a relationship. It’s amazing how much of ourselves we often compromise or set aside because we want to make room for another person and their hopes and desires and wants. No, it’s not always a bad thing to be that way, but when the relationship fails, and we’re on our own again, there’s a lot of… space… that needs refilling.
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