These are a few of my favorite things...

I could go on forever about what I hate, and what hurts me.  There will be days that I will.  Today is going to be a day of pure positive energy.  I've said that people with Fibromyalgia and well, all those suffering with chronic pain and chronic crap really, love comfort.  Mmmm, just the word makes me feel comfortable, and safe.  When I think of comfort, I think of fantastic pajamas.  Fuzzy socks, my heating blanket, lots of water and a good game or book.  I love gaming.  I love just sitting and playing a good game.  I'm a crazy fighter in Skyrim.  I own all the guilds, I wrote the book on Dovakiin, call a dragon to my aid, all the good stuff.  I've spanked that game.  We're seriously so poor, we just now got Fable 3, for twenty bucks.  That's been my new game lately.  Working on beating it a second time.  It's been fun just to sit and rot my mind.  Then there's Star Trek online.  Ooooh, mamma.  That one's fun period, but if you're a total dork like I am, then it's extra nerdalicious.  I've been watching Star Trek for years.  Sometimes even in my daily talk, I use Star Trek lingo.  It's pitiful really.  Hot showers are beautiful.  My showers are so hot my skin is bright red when I get out, it's kind of painful sometimes, too.  My legs can tingle from how hot I make it.  Hubby and I were convinced one of our kids would come out not quite so right because of my showers.  Manicures and pedicures.  I am a make-up artist, and a seriously girly one at that.  My mantra growing up was "beauty before comfort."  I've passed the law onto baby sister.  Now, it's "beauty as fast as I can before Fibro kills me."  Doing my nails makes me feel like I can take on the world.  When the details are polished, everything else just sort of falls into place.  I invested in one of those nail gel thingys.  Ya know the gel nails that you have to cure with a UV light?  The ones you do in the salon?  That's what I have.  What a difference it's made!  I am forever grateful for my gel polish.  Instead of doing my nails every 5 days, I'm now doing 'em every two weeks.  It's so much prettier, too.  Looks thicker, more professional, cleaner, and lasts longer.  I do the gel, then Konad (if you don't know what Konad is, you must not know me at all.  Google it, you'll thank me!) and I'm all set for two weeks.  Lookin' sexy, too.  You'll never, ever, I repeat, never see me without my toes and fingers done.  I don't mean "done" either.  I mean DONE.  Looking absolutely fabulous.  Winter, rain or shine, those babies'll be looking fabulous.  There is no other way.  It must be done this way.  :)  Now, this one's the most bizarre; shaving my legs.  I dunno, it makes me feel comfortable.  Not the actual shaving of my legs, that one makes me tired.  But I seriously feel dirty with nasty ol' legs if I don't.  I feel clean and comfortable with shaved legs.  It also makes me super horny, too.  I dunno, why let those smooth legs go to waste???  Exactly, I agree, those shouldn't be wasted!  Heat.  Oooooh, heat.  My lover, my best friend.  There is no greater comfort.  With seasonal depression, not to mention my serious love of the sun and heat, I go sit on my porch as much as I can.  There's nothing like letting the sun kiss your face.  Nothing.  I could sit in the sun for hours and be perfectly content.  Add a book to it, ahhh.  Add smooth legs, perfectly polished digits, fuzzy socks, pajamas, the sun, AND a book?  Heaven.  That is my heaven on earth.  Today I woke up feeling surprisingly better than I have in a looooong time.  It's surprising too, considering I only had five hours of choppy sleep last night.  I've had a migraine for a week straight.  Woke up Migraine free today.  Even with a migraine, I was grateful that it wasn't a Cluster headache.  You get migraines?  They're NOTHING compared to a Cluster headache.  Unless you've experienced both of them, a migraine would seem bad.  Google Cluster headaches. It is described as being worse than childbirth.  It's the worst pain anyone who's experienced them has ever felt.  It IS worse than childbirth.  I'm quiet when I'm in labor.  Hospital staff never believed me when I said I was having a baby.  They told me I'd be in a lot more pain than I was.  Eh, my periods feel like childbirth.  It felt like I was on my period, which hurt like Satan.  A Cluster headache?  No, there is nothing to compare it to.  I scream like banshee.  THAT is pain.  People commit suicide from these.  Death would be soooo sweet when you have one of these.  So, a migraine is a walk in the park.  Even one that lasts for a week or more at a time.  I was grateful for the migraine and not a Cluster.  You know you're messed up when you're grateful for the lesser pains.  Today, it's the lesser pain.  If you're healthy, PLEASE do not take for granted what you have.  Please, I beg you.  You could never even begin to imagine what you have.  I daydream of switching places with someone on death row!  Is that sick or what?  I think of how unjust it is that someone would willingly do stupid things and waste a perfectly good body, when I'd commit murder to have it.  This is a twisted world.  So many things taken for granted.  Just because I suffer doesn't mean that I don't take things for granted.  I often wonder what it's like on the outside, looking in on me.  What do people look at me thinking I take for granted?  I wish I could see.  It's funny how your mind can become so single minded.  Being in pain has made me seek out the good and comforting things in life.  What could I be missing from my aggressive side?  I am very aggressive, if I didn't have this dumb disease, I'd be out there finding out.  It looks like for now though, I'll only be seeing what's on this side.  And that's not all that bad.  I'm learning so much.  So much.  So much about human behavior, so much about myself, so much about the world.  The world that no one sees but those with chronic illnesses.  What a different world it is, too.  It's a beautiful one.  It hurts, but it's also beautiful.  Do you know I stare at the stars for hours every night?  That's also one of my favorite things, ever.  I could stay up all night star gazing.  I see so many satellite's passing by.  I use the Star Gazer app on my phone to find constellations.  This is hilarious, but I really do it; I plug my heating blanket into the outlet in the house, then sit on my porch, nice and warm, star gazing.  THAT is without a doubt, the most relaxing thing in the world.  It's very centering.  You're this speck, on this speck, that's not even a speck in the universe.  Very humbling, very eye opening.  Very relaxing.  Nothing centers me more than that, not even meditating.  If I end up being forced to live in a city, I shall miss the stars more than anything.  I wish you could see Idaho's nights.  The middle of nowhere Idaho's nights.  I've come to fall in love with this place, I will so miss it.  Mmmm, books.  Books are also another love of mine.  I wish I could live in the library.  What a quiet, peaceful place.  Then surround it with books?  Ach, it's perfection.  Sometimes I just go and sit in the library.  The silence, along with fascinating characters of a book, that's what it's all about.  I devour about two books a week.  When I was pregnant, only with the first mind you and had the time, I was reading a Robert Jordan book every two weeks.  I finished the Wheel of Time series in just a few months.  I devour books like my soul could never be filled enough.  I devour them like Honey Boo Boo set loose at McDonalds.  What, I told you I wasn't tactful.  Books are my life.  I treat them like members of my family, and any disrespect shown to a book in this house will earn you a one way ticket to outer darkness.  :)  I love books.  All of 'em.  I always finish books I start, and I always feel like I know the characters in them.  When I was a girl, I used to pray for the characters in my books.  Before I could even read, my mother was buying me the classics.  My mother would makes us read for an hour every day.  Her taking us to the library was a treat.  It was what we did for fun as kids.  My mother is the same way with books and it's obviously an inherited trait.  I will thank her for the rest of my life for creating such a fire in me for books and knowledge.  I love to learn, I'm the most curious person you'll ever meet.  I wanna know why, how, when.  I can't stand a mystery unsolved, I have to know it all.  My curiosity has put me into hot water more than once, and I'm sure one of these days, it will kill more than cats.  I get my fire and my passion from my mother.  We're so alike, sister included, that it's scary.  It's no wonder we argued so much growing up; people can't stand people like them.  At least the stubborn, feisty ones, that's for sure.  We're Israeli AND Italian, what can I say?  Fire's been passed through my blood.  I have a passion for life, a passion for love, for food, books, culture.  You'd think I was French.  :)  I love life.  I cannot figure out how anyone could see it differently.  I get depression, I wrote the book on it.  I've been to hell and back.  Maybe that's why it's so beautiful to me.  Seeing such darkness has made the light that much brighter, that much sweeter, that much warmer.  I would far rather be on this side than the other.  I would rather enjoy the pleasures in life, rather than fearing the evil that lurks everywhere.  I took the kids to get donuts and chocolate milk this morning for breakfast.  I ran down the isles, pushing the kids in the cart, running over almost every one.  Like I've said, I'm NOT tactful and I sure as heck could care less what anyone thought about me.  My six year old said, "you must be feeling good today, mamma!"  Yeah, I do.  It's not perfect, but it's functioning, which is a big deal for me.  The sun's trying awfully hard to shine through the snow clouds today.  I don't want to miss that.  When I wake up, I never know what the day will bring.  How this disease will either ravage my body, or show me a little mercy.  Today it was the latter, it was a gift.  One I plan on opening, ripping the wrapping paper open as fast as I can.  Enjoying whatever's in there, savoring it until my next merciful day.