Kittens and other such things

I know you have all been anxiously checking your blog queue all day, and you probably gave up hope, but do not dear friends! Do not!

Today was the first day of my eating challenge, and it went very well! I even made cookies tonight and did not have one taste, one lick, one morsel....oh no, not one.

I am a determined woman! Anyway, I ate my salad and liked it too. I will try to post some pictures of the yummy food I am eating soon, but for now, just know in your heart that this is a good change for me.

SOOOOOO, the real reason you are reading this blog is to know what the crap I am talking about with the whole kitten business.

Well, I had a dream last night which I think might put a smile on some of your faces. I often have very strange dreams, but they generally aren't amusing, so this was a nice change. Even better, I remembered almost the whole thing when I woke up this morning.

So, to start out, when I come to in my dream, it appears that I am in labor. This is nothing new, I have had so many babies in past dreams, I think I likely have enough children to fill Rhode Island, but this time things were a little different.

The baby came out, no big deal. I told the doctor to hurry it up because I had to get to class and I only had a 10 minute passing period. He did so, and I got to class. At some point, it occurred to me that it had now been two nights since I had that baby, and I had no recollection of feeding it. So, I took the U of U Campus Shuttle the hospital...so maybe this was happening at the U's Hospital??? Who really knows, and when I arrived, I remember looking at all the babies in that big room with lots of babies like you see in the movies and trying desperately to find mine. I was somewhat frantic because my brand new baby hadn't eaten in a day and a half. A nurse came toward me and explained that everything was fine, and they had given the baby some formula. Feeling worthless as a parent and realizing that we would never be able to reclaim that post-birth bond time because OF COURSE, I just had to GET TO CLASS and didn't have time to stay and recover like normal moms that have just had their babies, I decided to go and get my baby girl and take her with me this time. I did so and started my walk to school.

I then looked down and realized that my child was in fact A KITTEN. And somehow, in the dream, this seemed perfectly fine to me. I remember thinking that my professors would NEVER understand this or give me extra time on things because they would discriminate against my child for being a kitten. I remember thinking they would never take her seriously, and sure enough, they didn't. Feeling dejected and sad that no one loved my new baby...kitten, I walked home, and as if in Harry Potter, I was home in 2 seconds. As I walked across the West Bowl Field, nearing my house, carrying my new cat-child and feeling especially low, I came to almost our front door, and there was Parker.

He was standing there looking at someone running across the playground toward us. Then I realized it was Julia Jensen, our Resident Assistant, before I could even think about why she was coming toward us, Parker turned and yelled to her, "Julia, we know we aren't allowed to have a kitten in our apartment. We are working on it."

At this point, I screamed out in the agony of my soul, "WHY CAN'T ANYONE UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS MY CHILD..." And that is when I woke up!

Progress.

Getting a picture of just your eye that doesn't look creepy, is pretty hard, and I think that I failed. So, sorry!

I have been contemplating what to say in this post for a while. But, I haven't had the courage to write it. So, here I am, putting off homework, sitting on my couch, and I suppose now is as good as any time to dive right in :-)

The picture above is important because of my eyebrow. Look how nice and full it looks, how it's living up to its potential as an eyebrow. This is new for me.

For most of my life, my eyebrows have always just quit at about 2/3s the length of other peoples. Just ended. My mom's eyebrows are the same, so I figured it was a familial trait, but much to my surprise, this is not the case.

For the last year or so, I have really struggled with fatigue. I figured that I was just tired because I was working so much, tired from working out too, tired from stress, and yet, there was really never a moment when I didn't want to sleep. Never. I could sleep for 12 hours straight, get up, and want to just go back to sleep.

My appetite was funky too. I was very rarely hungry. Like almost never. I would of course eat, because HELLO food, I love food, but I was not really hungry for it except maybe in the morning.

Also, I am not sure if any of you noticed, but I did a bunch-o-athletic stuff, in other words, I worked my little bottom off running, working out, etc. I saw the slightest bit of weight loss from this, but it was minimal at best. This was not only physically frustrating but emotionally taxing.

I also am somewhat of an insomniac. I am sooooooo tired often that it is hard for me to think, but when I lay down at night to go to bed, it takes sometimes hours to fall asleep.

The list could go on of weird things that I figured were just Bekah-isms, but it all comes down to this.

Something is up with my body. I have begun the process of figuring out what that is. After some preliminary tests, the doctors have diagnosed me with Hypothyroidism.

The hypothyroidism really explains all of the symptoms just described, but not all of the symptoms that I have. So, there is more testing to come!

Who knew that hypothyroidism could cause eyebrow loss? Not me, but I do now.

I have started medication for my hypothyroidism, hence what appears to be the new eyebrow growth! But, I do not think the dosage is quite right yet, so the fatigue is still there.

It also appears that I have had this for some time. The normal scale for what your thyroid should test at is .45 to 4.5, per usual, I am an overachiever, ranking at 14.4 :-) Now, this is not nearly as bad as it could be, and for that, I am super grateful, but it will still be a process to figure out the correct dosage for that.

Here is what I would like to end with. First, as a result of the millions of things that your thyroid controls in your body, I have truly not felt myself for a very long time. On Tuesday night, I came home, and Parker and I were talking on the bed, I don't recall what about, but I started to laugh, and then kept laughing and laughing and laughing. I felt a sensation of elation that I have not felt for a very long time, and I realized that the old me was coming back, that at least for those few moments it was there, and I would be myself again in time.

Second thing, the medicine I am taking has a small side effect of some hair loss. I was naturally a bit concerned about this. I have not noticed it too much on my head, but let me tell you what, my pubes are going like hot cakes...probably too much info, but who can't find that funny? I know I sure do, every time I wipe.

Third thing, I KNOW THIS IS NOT A UNIQUE STORY. So many other people have this, it is a very common disorder, and pretty easy to treat, so that is wonderful. I am more concerned about the unsolved mysteries of my body still to be discovered, and I am very grateful that this one is at least decided. So, please do not think this post was to call attention to myself, to make you think I feel that I am dying, to alarm you or create pity in you for me. NAY. I just figured it was time to be real about one of the struggles I am dealing with in my life.

Fourth thing, in an attempt to help out my body, I am doing a 30 day challenge with myself. This will mostly involve diet and exercise. Making sure I am only taking into my body those things that are packed with nutrients as a way to hopefully help it to heal itself in some measure. As a result, I plan to eat within strict guidelines, but I figured a good way to keep myself on track with that, would be do a daily update of what deliciously healthy things I was treating myself to.

In this way, my struggle can become an adventure, and one we can all share together :-) Bring on the new phase of my blog: PROJECT UTOPIA will commence Monday. SO STAY TUNED.

Commraderie

So, I know that I owe you all a law school story. HERE IT IS, my second week of law school, we were working on this MEMO. For it, we had been given a hypothetical situation where we had to defend this 18-year-old punk wealthy kid. As one of the exercises for the class, we got to interview this hypothetical kid (our professor acted as the kid)....so as I was walking to class the day of that interview, I ran into my teacher. He was wearing jeans, a sloppy polo shirt, and sneakers...I looked at him and said "Dressing the part huh?" To which he responded, "NOPE, this is actually how I always look." AWESOME. Nothing quite like telling your forty something year old LAW PROFESSOR that he looks like he dresses similar to a 18-year-old rich high school student.

WATER!

Okay, so my physical ailments in life are of course no where near that of Helen Keller, but I can sympathize with her in some ways, and I similarly hold a special place in my heart for WATER. This story came about while I was running the RED ROCK RELAY, and I am only sorry that I have not gotten it up on my blog sooner.

As referenced in my Imagine Dragons post, I am sort of stubborn about my use and wear of contacts. I have them....oh I have them. But as I do not generally spend 30 minutes on my entire appearance, it is difficult for me to justify using 30 minutes to get that stupid clear piece of clearness on my eye, and because I hate it so much, I have not gotten any faster, more efficient or PROFICIENT at using contacts...so generally, I don't. This on the whole does not affect me, but...

I would like you to imagine. You are on your third of three legs in a running race. You have not eaten in the last ten hours, to this point, you have run about 11 miles in those other two legs, and now you are on your final 5 mile leg. It just so happens that you are running late in the morning in ST. GEORGE , UT. There is no cloud cover. The map which you perused scrupulously before beginning your run, failed to note the massive uphill at the start of your run, in the sun, and hotness. Additionally, as you waited at the exchange point to begin this last leg, the runner immediately before your teammate came through the checkpoint, turned, and puked all over. So these are the conditions at the start....oh yeah, and you definitely DON'T HAVE CONTACTS IN, so you can't see perfectly.

Your support vehicle is a WHITE MINI VAN, no special markings, no team decorations, just the snowy white color of a 2010 Dodge Minivan. You may not have figured out great hand signals for things, assuring your van that if you had a need, you would definitely communicate it to them.

So here you are, you are running, your legs are tired, the sun is hot, you are sweating...and then it hits, THIRST. SUCH THIRST...you look out, and then you realize that the runner is ME. That's right, I was tricksie and put all of that in the second person, but we are now back to first person....so anyway, here I am, I crest the hill, start coming downhill....and there it is. THE WHITE VAN. I see my team mate standing out by the driver's side door, talking. I think, why has she not asked what I need, but realizing that she is probably just so engaged in conversation to notice me, I just start yelling WATER, WATER, WATER. This is my subtle signal. My friend yells out to me, "Do you need something?" Thinking to myself that my friend is not to bright, I say again, "YEAH, WATER!!!!!!" There is a hustle to find a bottle, then my friend crosses the road to be on the side of the street where I am running. As she runs toward me, I think to myself, "My friend has changed clothing..." And then of course, the next natural thought, "She is NOT my friend."

So, some dear sweet support vehicle of another team supplied my water. The best part is their runner must have had a similar pace to mine, but been just behind me, because you better believe that I saw them 8-10 more times on my route, and every time I passed, she was sure to ask if I needed anything....never did I explain what I had thought, just took it in stride...small, weak, sad, slow, tired strides.

RED ROCK RELAY

So, we did this big race called the RED ROCK RELAY. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work. We had a team of 12 people, 2 vans, and ran a total of 185 miles in 32 hours. Each person runs 3 different legs. It was intense and physically draining, but a lot of fun!

Here we are at the finish. So happy to be done.
Dash and Zoe were a speedy duo on our team.
Here we all are showing off our stripes. You get a stripe per completed leg of the race :-)


This is my mother in law and my sister in law. The middle of the night runs were some of the greatest and hardest depending. I was so proud of everyone.
HANDS OFF LADIES, this one is ALLL MINE :-) Poor Parker got roped into doing this...I really thought he would get into it, and he really did, but I still think in the future I will let him sign himself up for races and not take that upon myself. I was so proud of him though, he ran further than he ever had before in his life! And that was just one leg of his race, so then he had two more after. He did great!

Imagine Dragons: The Real Deal

I had so much fun at the Imagine Dragons concert. It was so wonderful to see so many people that I love and know. I rocked out. And, I refuse to wear contacts...so my glasses are definitely brown and my shirt is definitely black...but deal.

And...you won't believe it, but I totally rubbed shoulders with the genuine famous of Utah...so be excited.

It was called the rooftop series and it was at the top of this parking structure, it was way neat.

This is my friend Celine. She is from France and she attends BYU. It was so fun to see her.
Well, yep, this is Bree, and this is more or less summing up our relationship, wild and crazy.
Bree busting more moves. Cassity was also in attendance, she is Bree's roomie, and my friend. Fun to see her there too.
This is Kat. She is in my ward. She knows ALL about Imagine Dragons because her husband was roomies with the lead singer's brother. AWESOME. I got to touch Dan's hand because of Kat.

And who is this??????????

Yep, David Archuleta was there too...so I guess he is my friend now too.

Imagine Dragons

So, obviously I owe you all a huge post about law school, and probably right now, I should be studying instead of writing this, but let's be honest, it is Friday. It's been a stressful week, and I am ready for a break.

So, in honor of the break, please listen to the song below and just know in your heart, I am hearing them live tonight for free, and it will be bliss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d712Th-4y0Q.

Pictures to come.