Hello Blog

I must be made for cold climates. I forget what the actual name of the condition is, but some people need to have these artificial lights in climates where you don't get much sun. Otherwise, they get depressed. I think sunny, warm, summer weather has the same effect on me. I suppose it could be just coincidence that upsetting events occur at the beginning of summer, spiraling me into a period of deep funk for the rest of the season.

Anyway, I've spent all of June and July in a funk. I decided to take a break from church for the summer. It's been a long time coming. I probably will take the rest of the calendar year off. Perhaps even the following spring into next summer. I also largely took a break from my mom's group during the past few months. Not only did I not write in my blog, I thought about deleting the whole thing. The Best Friend when I told her I was about to delete, suggested that I just take a little break. I'm such a black and white girl, I immediately thought about deleting and taking a break didn't even occur to me as an option. But of course, now that I am climbing out of my funk, I'm glad that I didn't. So after some hermit like period of not seeing people, not praying, and not even sharing my thoughts on the internet, I did some things to pull myself out of the funk.

First, I joined a gym. The initial appeal was that they had a gorgeous outdoor pool that the family could enjoy during the summer. And we have gone to the pool enough to make it worthwhile. I've never belonged to a gym before. But after trying out the cardio equipment, lifting some weights on my own, and swimming laps in the indoor pool, I've found that I love the group exercise classes. The nerd in me responds very positively to having some sort of "teacher" up in front. I find that despite knowing that it's ridiculous, I push myself harder. After weeks of working out for at least 2 hours a day, I have lost an uninspiring half a pound. But "pregnancy plus twenty", here I come. I figure something has got to give eventually.

Second, I am going back to school. I decided to get a tax LLM. It's likely that I could practice law more easily as a tax specialist than as an immigration specialist in these parts. I was surprised that I could apply during the summer and things moved quickly enough to start taking classes for the fall semester, which will start in less than 2 weeks. Since I'll be going part time, the program should take me 1.5 to 2 years to complete, instead of the the usual year. Hopefully, the economy will be a little better by the time I finish.

I must be feeling better. Less funky. Except for in all the dance-based exercise classes -- hee. And maybe that will translate to regular blog posts again.