I just rearranged the posts that I’ve written today.

I’ve written three four today (Jan. 1, 2009).  I moved 2008 A Review to look like it was written first, even though I wrote it last.  Then there is the one about me having to clean my room, and then is the post about my plans for 2009. (In real life, I started the Plans for 2009 several days ago, and started the 2008 Review tonight at 4pm).

I realized that moving them around like that might be confusing for people, and they might miss the 2008 Review!  Which would be awful, because I spent hours on it.  So make sure you read all three of them.

That is all.

Oh, and I’m still kind of interested in that whole “go to sleep with the sun” thing.  Where I’d go to bed around 9, and wake up at 6, just so I’d have more time with the sun.  Now especially that I’m done with Destare, I could do it every day!

This is me, wishing you a Happy New Year!  (this is the first photo I’ve ever taken with my built in web cam! It’s pretty poor quality!)

I don’t know if I want to call them resolutions, or challenges, or what.  Maybe “things I will try harder at.”  That might be good.  Let’s see….  I think there’s a lot that I’m thinking about.

• Drink more water (three of my camel backs a day…. 68 ounces or so)
• Carry water with me everywhere. I almost broke down and bought a Diet Coke the other day when I was out running errands because I was so thirsty.  I did not.  I haven’t had Diet Coke (or anything else with fake sugar) since Sunday when Megan was here.  12 days.
• Eat less crap! I’ve been eating cookies and stuff like they’re grapes!  I know that it’s because of the holidays, but still, it’s awful.
• Eat more good stuff.  Eat more vegetables (I eat enough fruit).  I’ve recently found that I love butternut squash, and Megan made those awesome baked vegetables that were fantastic!
• Keep exercising every day.  I’ve been kicking butt at exercising, and when I can’t go to the gym, I run outside (except for when it’s too damn cold - like today we’re at 12′F!!).  I want to get up to maybe 5 miles a day, that’d be cool.  I need to map out a course.  I should do at least one hour at the gym.  I need to do more with strength training, but I want Eric to make me up a plan that I can do at home with the stuff I have.  I have a Pilates VHS that I want to start using, now that we have a new VCR (my dad had to buy a new DVD-VCR combo after taking apart our old one - there was a BattleStar Galactica DVD stuck in it). Oh, and Megan has The Firm in her room on VHS I can do!  She made this great little schedule for it and everything, and never used it.  I’ll one up her and actually use it.
• If I’m going to be out and about, I should carry good food with me.  I can keep a bag of apples in the car, and because it’s winter, they’ll stay fine for weeks!  That way, when I get hungry,  I’ll have something good to snack on.
• Continue to cook dinner for my parents. Do more interesting things, not the same old over and over.
• Start keeping a medical journal! I have had soooo many medical problems in the last 7 years, that I won’t even list them.  Of course, I have no records of my own.  Nothing that lists how I feel, my symptoms, my medicine.  Nothing.  That’s stupid of me.  I need to start.  I do have a great day by day journal of how I felt going off of my medicine in May when I had my radiation.  I kept track of how I felt, what I was doing to keep my spirits up, and how much I weighed (cause going off the medicine can cause weight gain).  I also noted how I felt on a scale between poor, good, very good, and excellent (or some such scale).  In the new one, I’ll have it be a number scale from 1-100.  You have more options with a 1-100 scale than a 1-10, because no one would ever choose 6.7, but they would choose 67.
• Read more.  Read both for fun, and books that relate to Mental Health. I could read books about family therapy, or working with couples, or working with kids who have ADHD.  Books that I will learn from, not just escape reality from.
• Be more attentive to my wasting of energy. This morning, it was sunny in the living room, but I reached to turn on the light.  There was no need; I could see perfectly (I stopped myself, and didn’t turn it on).  I should focus on things like that, and not waste energy when I don’t need to.
• Keep it up with the 10,000 steps. If I can’t do 10,000 every day (because sometimes it’s just impossible), I would like to average 10,000 steps a day in a given week (so at least 70,000 a week).  There are some days when I’m at 20,000 for one day, and the next I don’t go over 5,000.  I’m okay with that, because the two average out to be 12,500.  That’s pretty good!
• Continue with keeping lists on my calendar of what I do for steps, and what I do for exercise. It’s great to keep track of things.  (If only I could find a Twilight calendar… they’re sold out everywhere, and they cost $60 on eBay and Amazon.com.  Seriously.  I’ll have to settle on Harry Potter.  I don’t think they make X-Files ones anymore).

I can’t really think of anything else.  There’s probably more I’d like to work on, but I can’t think of anything right now.  I’m too tired to think.

I think I’m going to do January as another Buy Nothing Month.  Soon I’m going to be sans employment, and I’m worried about spending money.  We’ll see, I guess.

My sister is doing Buy Nothing New Year.  She can buy used stuff, but nothing new.  That doesn’t include food.  Hopefully, she’ll blog about it, but she hasn’t posted since December 8th.  She’s a deadbeat.

First on my to do list for 2009 is to clean my room. But first I have to go clean up after Brew Years Eve!

This picture, the thing in the front corner of my vanity that looks like dust?  That’s my hair.  I cut my own hair, and left it there.  I have been too busy (or too lazy) to vacuum it up.  Hahahahahaha.  That’s hilarious in a gross way.

I’ll do a real 2009 post later, when I’m back from cleaning.

This is my song for 2008 - It’s called A Drop Filled With Memories (how appropriate!) and it’s from the movie Paprika.  Feel free to listen to it while you read my long post.  (Megan, don’t listen, it’s that song you don’t like).

2008 was a crazy, crazy year.  Absolutely insane.  Let’s review all I’ve been through.

I rang in New Year’s 2008 at Destare.  I came back from medical leave early so I could work. It was a lot of fun, but I teared up at midnight cause Steve was home alone, and I couldn’t spend it with him.  He spent the night playing World of Warcraft.

January 2nd - I had surgery on December 17th, and went to get my results from the endocrinologist and found out that the tumor on my thyroid was cancerous.  Not only was it cancer, but it was follicular cancer, rather than the more common papillary thyroid cancer.  Follicular is a more extreme of cancer, and tends to spread throughout the body while papillary always stays in the neck.  The reason they couldn’t be 100% sure about the cancer from the needle biopsy was because it was follicular, and that one they can’t tell just from a biopsy.  I needed to have another surgery, and I was only two weeks post-op from the first. Seriously, I find out I have cancer on the second day of the year?  That’s not a good start.

March 3rd - Surgery number 2.  I wasn’t really worried about this one (cause I had already done it once), but this surgery was scheduled in the middle of school.  I had to miss only one class, I think because I was still in the hospital when class met (Surgery was always on Monday, and I stayed over night until Tuesday).  For this surgery, I got out, and they put me in the recovery room, but my room upstairs wasn’t ready, so I had to stay in the recovery room all afternoon.  I got out of the OR at 11, and didn’t go up to my room until 5.  I was on morphine which was awesome, but they wouldn’t give me any water, only ice chips.  People in recovery kept getting X-Rayed, so they kept throwing a lead vest on top of me.  I think it happened about 6 times.  If I didn’t have cancer before, I most definitely had it after that. My parents kept coming in and out of the room, but for privacy reasons, they couldn’t stay.  My mom brought me my book and I was reading.  I was most definitely ready to have my own room.  I finally got upstairs and I had my own private room!  I was also really alert and able to hang out with my parents cause I was doped up.  In the middle of the night when the morphine was worn off was when the pain finally hit. I was awake on and off all night, and Steve spent the night on the floor to keep me company.  He kept having to help me move or adjust, or go to the bathroom (I had an IV in, and had to work around that to go to the bathroom).  Notice the awesome pen marks on my ear and neck in the bottom picture.  That is to say “CUT HERE”  and “THIS SIDE.”

Sometime in March - I was really really stressed out and sad.  I broke up with Steve because I felt like I couldn’t deal with anything anymore.

May - Radioactive Girl!  I had to go on a crazy low iodine diet for three weeks, and then go into Boston and get a mini dose of radiation, and then two days later, a major dose of radiation!  It was mixed with strawberry Kool-Aid. Yum.  Any of you ever been tested with a Geiger counter before?

Senator Kennedy was at Mass General the same day that I had my radiation.  I had two appointments scheduled.  I got my whole body scan (me lying down) at 12, and then didn’t go get my radiation until 2pm.  Between those times, we came downstairs to the lobby of the Wang building at MGH (that’s where all my appointments were).  Senator Kennedy was being released just as we were in the lobby.  We got to see him walk out of the hospital, and everyone in the lobby stood and clapped for him.  Here’s my dad live on CNN that day, his twin brother happened to be watching it live on CNN in Ohio, and hit record on his Tivo.  Then, he called my dad, and said:

“Uh, are you at some hospital in Boston?”
“yeah, Robin has her radiation today.”
“Are you wearing jeans and a blue shirt?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“You were just live on CNN!!!”

My dad was also on the cover of the NY Times the next day.

The reason I was having such a hard time with the diet was because I was just picking at food and not eating real meals.  I finally was able to change that after a few days, but here is what I would have for lunch:

After receiving the radiation at the hospital, I had to then come immediately home and be isolated from my family for three whole days.  It was crazy!  I was having trouble sleeping because I was off my medicine, so I had to hang a blanket over my window so it would get completely dark in my room.  I also had my laptop, my pile of books, and my remotes!  Bill let me borrow 30 Rock, which was awesome because I had never seen it before.  This was the first day I was allowed to be off my diet, so I’m enjoying my first bowl of cereal in 3 weeks.  I was so excited about it, I had to take a picture (on timer mode, cause I had to be alone).

July 2 - Turned 24.  Pretty uneventful.  But I went out with friends! (Jeanne, Bill, and Paul)

July 6th - I went to the Boulder with Amy cause her friend Kyle was playing in the band.  It was the last night of the Longsjo, and I met Emiliano! (he’s the one in the yellow and green all the way to the left)

I was sitting on the curb with Amy (the band was playing in the blocked off street), and these guys come walking up to the bar.  One of the Lonsjo volunteers says “Oh, these are guys who raced today!  They’re on one of the best teams”.  I looked up, and I noticed one of the guys had bright yellow socks with weird red suns on them.  I recognized the socks as the state flag of New Mexico, because I used to live there.  I jumped up from my seat, and ran up to him and the convo went like this:

“I’m sorry… are your socks the state flag of New Mexico?”
“Yeah, that’s where our racing team is from!”
“I used to live there!”

“what part?”
“Santa Fe”
“That’s where I’m from!”
“No way!”
“Ok, I’m going to go grab a beer, and I’ll catch up with you later.”

So then I went to sit down, and the older gentlemen who were sitting near us said to me, “Wow, you don’t waste any time, huh?”  He found me later, and we hung out all night, and I just knew that he was this cool guy that I HAD to get a picture taken with, so I ran to my car and grabbed my camera to get some pictures before I left.  He had busted up his hand pretty badly in the race earlier in the day (notice the awesome wrap job).  Emiliano and I have become great friends, and he does my blog for me.  He doesn’t write it, but he does everything else.  Check out his awesome web design site, Pushing Buttons.  Go to him for all your web design needs!

July 25th - X-Files: I Want To Believe came out.  I had waited 6 years for this movie, and Bill and I went down to a midnight showing in Marlborough (a 45 minute drive). I brought my action figures with me.  I was so excited, that we kept having to re-take this picture because my smile was so big I looked like an idiot.

July 27th - Dad and I get caught in the rain while running.  We knew there was a huge storm coming, but I wanted to go for a run anyway.  We were almost done when it started down pouring.  I had my mom take the picture, because I think it shows our dedication.

July 28th - Megan and Mac came home to prepare for their wedding!  They didn’t do so much preparing, as much as they did lollygagging around and picking berries with me.  I love picking berries.

August 3rd -  Megan gets married! Mac and his parents fly in from England, and we have a great time!

At the wedding (and during the receptions) Sally and I went a little crazy, and took hundreds (literally, hundreds) of pictures of us goofing around.

August 13 - 26 - I fly out to New Mexico and hang out with Emiliano for two weeks.  We went hiking, hung out in Santa Fe, cooked a lot, took artsy photographs, watched a LOT of Weeds, and I got Strep throat, and had to go to the ER.  It was an all around great trip.  I got a little really homesick for Megan, and felt bad that she was in the US, but I wasn’t with her.  I think I got a little cranky and sad because of that, but Emiliano put up with me!  To apologize, I will include this picture (on the left), because it is his favorite, and it makes me look like an idiot.  He kept scratching this one spot on my back (scratching it in just one place, so the spot would get raw), and it was driving me insane.  I was still getting over being sick (I spent about 2 full days in bed), and I was very irritable.  This is him driving me insane on purpose so he could take a funny picture.  He looks very pleased with himself.  But seriously, Emiliano, tell them how sick I was!!!  I was incredibly sick.  His step mom was giving me Vicodin to make me feel better.  It rocked.

Emiliano was also kind enough to go on a horribly long car ride with me to Roswell, NM, home of the infamous 1946 UFO crash!  Everything was UFO themed, it was awesome.  We even went to the International UFO Museum and Research Center.  Pretty interesting stuff, definitely worth the 3 hour long ride.  This was also my very first blog post!!!  (I had backdated other cancer related stuff - but the Roswell post was the first, cause that’s when Emiliano set up my blog!)

August 27th - I flew back from New Mexico on the 26th, and the very next day, we flew out to England for Megan’s wedding party over there.  It wasn’t too bad, cause all my luggage was already packed!  I just had to grab fancy stuff for her party.  We had a lot of fun, but we weren’t there for long enough!

September- I got a pedometer, and went a little crazy.  Such as the time when I jogged in place for 2.5 miles to get to 10,000 steps.  I still wear it religiously every day, but I’m only at 4388 now (at 8:45pm), and there’s no way I’m jogging in place for 2.5 miles tonight.

October 1 - 31 - Buy Nothing Month!  It was awesome, and I’m going to do it again this month. (I bought a new laptop September 28th, only days before BNM started)

October 4th - I ran my first 5k!  (I haven’t seen that recycling shirt in a few months.  Uh oh.  That’s why I have to clean my room!!!)

October - I started picking up trash around Fitchburg.  I did this many more times, but I had to stop cause it’s too cold out and there’s snow everywhere.  Niles and I will commence in the spring.  I will try to get more people involved, and to expand the area where we work.  I think we should have T-Shirts made.  Here’s me and Niles celebrating our trash accomplishments:

November - Started to get fed up with Destare.  Started back at Macy*s for the holidays.  Thanksgiving with family friends.  I met with the Brew Year’s Eve crew twice a week to plan BYE.  We decided on our production company name, Beers For Good, and started our own website.  From August through November, I get sick for one week every single month.  It started with Strep in Santa Fe, and continued.  I am immuno-compromised.

December -  More planning of BYE.

Quit Destare.

Huge ice storm hit North Central Mass, and we lost power and heat for 11 days.

I got a 4.0 in my class this semester, leaving me with a cumulative GPA of 3.93.  I have only one class left.  w00t!  (this portion added for Megan).

Megan came home for Christmas.  We got walloped with two ice storms - 18 inches total in 72 hours.  She loved it.

Dec. 31st - Brew Year’s Eve!  It went great, and we had tons of fun.

That’s it.  2008 in a nutshell.

I clearly lost steam after October.  I figured that because I started blogging in September, I only needed to update peeps on the things that happened before then.  Plus, that’s when all the important stuff happened.  But if you want to learn more, read my friggen blog.

I am done.  This post took me 3 hours to write!  It was all the pictures that were slowing me down… but I think they’re great!

I realize this wasn’t a review.  It was a synopsis.  Here’s my review of 2008:  it sucked. Too many bad things happened.  Sure, there were good parts, but there were also not good parts, and I think the effect the bad parts had on me out weighs the good parts.  Disagree?  Too bad.

Questions?  Comments?  Leave ‘em.