So Much for Good Intentions

Why is it so hard to blog regularly?  I love talking and I love writing.  Yet, blogging is a chore. It isn’t as though I have nothing to blog about either.  Heck, no one needs to have material other than day to day life!  But here I am.  Perhaps one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging is because all of my good intentions to change my lifestyle have not come to fruition.  My recovery from hip surgery was a lot longer than I anticipated and as a consequence, I have gained 20 pounds since my last marathon.  I also had a very busy semester so time was not on my side.  The upside is that I feel as though my hip is 99% recovered and I can run again.  I joined Weight Watchers online on Monday and plan to use it to help me through the silly season.

The easiest way for me to lose weight would be to give up my wine in the evenings.  During the semester breaks, this is easy, but during the academic school year, I have made a habit of unwinding with a glass of wine while cooking dinner and then usually another one with dinner.  And my glasses are no 5 oz!  What can I do instead?  That is really what I need –  way to unwind in the evenings that doesn’t involve alcohol.  Having two young children means that I am not free to just disappear and do whatever.  I have the Tony Horton Power90 DVDs and they have been instrumental in getting me back into some form of shape but the kids hate it when I do it.  They want my attention.  I even try to get them to do it with me, but they last through one set of exercises and then they’ve had enough.  So today I have two questions:

How do you maintain and not gain weight during the holidays?

How do you unwind after work?

The Old New Me

I was doing so well.  I was off the booze, off the Lortabs, off the Ambien.   Life was starting to look better, feel fresher and I was sleeping OK. My semester ended on a high note.  So what, you may ask, is the problem?

Put simply, I do not do injuries well.  When you take away my exercise, you also take away my mental health therapy.  Add to this the fact that the weight stacks on quickly when I am not exercising.  I have gained about 10 lbs in the last couple of months.  Fortunately, I have a consult with the orthopedic surgeon on Monday.  I want resolution.  I don’t want months more of conservative treatment.  Clearly, conservative treatment isn’t working.  I am ready to confront this thing head-on.  My MRA shows a labral tear and detachment.  Again, no mention of osteoarthritis.  I will be interested to find out from the OS if he thinks I have any OA.

So here I go again, time to spring clean myself.  Actually, if I am honest with myself, the booze hasn’t been much of a problem, and neither has the Lortab.  I take it because I am in pain.  The problem is that I am on a narc contract and taking it for the hip (which is not why it is prescribed) makes me feel like a junkie.  After Monday, I will be able to contact my neurologist and perhaps do away with the narcs for the time being.  If I am given a cortisone shot in the hip, I shouldn’t need pain meds for a while.  This would be good because if I need surgery, I don’t want to have any degree of tolerance to any of these drugs.

I really feel for those who are worse off than me.  This is the first time that I have ever been totally restricted due to mechanical failure!  And I am proving to be a great big baby.  Yes, there are other forms of exercise I could do, but I have a 3 and a 5 year old and most other forms of exercise take a lot more time than going for a jog or lifting weights in the basement.  Somehow, I need to find a happy medium.  I am still searching.

Savor the Moment

So many things lead to this point in time. Tonight/tomorrow we are expecting snow.  Yes, snow in April.  Not only are we expecting snow, but we are expecting accumulation of several inches.  Last weekend we were outside spraying each other with the garden hose!  Last weekend I rode my bike on the trail.  Monday just past, it was in the 90s for the Boston Marathon.  Tomorrow, parts of PA and NY are going to get over a foot of snow.  I am thankful I spent most of last weekend outdoors.  Just as my title says, savor the moment.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Exercise.  Many of us take it for granted.   Many of us don’t do it.  We always say we will.  But we never seem to start or if we do, we don’t continue. There is always tomorrow, or is there?  My hip is continuing to get worse.  I am still able to get about and I could still probably run or cycle but the payback pain isn’t worth it.  We walked for 3 hours with the kids at the mall on Saturday.  Today I struggled to walk around the supermarket.  For those who keep saying they will start tomorrow, my advice to you is start today and enjoy every moment of it.  I had hoped to train for my third marathon this summer and perhaps get a couple of short distance triathlons in.  Now I am wondering if I will be spending my summer recovering from surgery.  For those who can, savor the moment.

And how am I doing with the spring cleaning?  I devoured a bottle of wine on Friday night.  Not very pleased with myself for doing this but one slip up in about 3 weeks is pretty good.  I fought the temptation to refill my Ambien prescription today.  I have no reason to do this.  I don’t seem to need it right now and it wreaks havoc with my short-term memory.  It makes me sleep like a baby though!  Migraines/headaches have been responding well to Zomig and nothing has escalated to the point of requiring intervention from a health care provider.  This is good news.  Perhaps I am finally outgrowing my migraines!

Tomorrow it is back into the battle zone at work, but I do actually practice what I preach.  We had a fabulous weekend with the kids, even though the weather was miserable.  Littlest one fell asleep before 10 PM tonight which is a miracle!  Now I am going to savor some moments of responsibility-free time.

Life in the Fast Lane

Long time, no blog.  This isn’t an unusual phenomenon for me.  I have these wonderful intentions to write daily but life just gets in the way.  Take for instance, the fact that both kids got strep throat.  Before they had even finished their course of antibiotics, dear child number 1 wakes up with horrendous croup.  Several days later, dear child number 2 wakes up with even worse croup.  A day later, dear mom wakes up with a rotten sore throat.  And so it goes.

Work has been steady and ever challenging.  But this is a good thing.  I haven’t been as stressed as in previous weeks which means that I haven’t felt the need to self-medicate.  In fact, tonight, for the first time since, well, I am not sure, I would have to read back through my posts to see when the last drink I had was, I had some wine.  I bought a bottle (after much deliberation) to have with dinner.  I had one glass of wine with dinner and a second after dinner.  It was a very drawn out process though and it left me without any buzz whatsoever!  I had no desire to keep drinking to seek that buzz either.  This is a major breakthrough for me.  I wasn’t sure if I’d be capable of sensible drinking again and this gives me great hope.

Along with my sore throat, I have had really nasty headaches and so I have had to dig into the migraine meds the past two mornings.  But they did their thing – one pill each morning of the weekend – and I have managed to have a reasonable weekend.  I even wiped the cobwebs from my bike and went out for a ride on Saturday morning.  It has been a very long time since I have been on the bike.  It will be quite some time before I can sit on the seat again!  My hip pulled up sore after the ride and I continue to chase down a specialist who can give me a firm diagnosis for the source of pain.  Because the weather was relatively nice this weekend, I managed to get out into the garden to dig up weeds and plant new plants.  In a couple more weeks, I will head to the nursery to buy some seedlings.

I love to watch things grow.  Gardening is something that my boys can help me with too.  Last year, they each planted a gerbera daisy plant.  My older son delighted in watching it flower all summer.  I love gerberas so I plan to do this again this year.  They don’t seem to have much interest in vegetable gardening just yet!

Well that is about the sum of my life over the past few weeks.  I am proud of myself for not hitting the bottle and I am not feeling guilty for enjoying a drink tonight.  I never intended to quit drinking altogether, although there have been times when I wondered if I would need to.  I am still trying to figure out how to spend enough time with the kids in addition to working, keeping a clean house, and exercising.  Exercising has somewhat fallen by the wayside due to the hip pain, but the house still needs to be cleaned, meals to be cooked etc.  I wonder if working moms ever truly figure this out?  If so, please let me know how you do it!

Recent Travels

As the school year winds down, I find myself dreaming of vacations.  Of course, I cannot take any real vacations this summer since I well and truly overdrew the vacation purse over the past 6 months.  Fortunately, my last trip home was for a happy event.  This is where I witnessed someone close to me get married:

Only my husband and I went on this trip.  It is difficult to make the decision to travel without the children.  However, when each child costs over $1000 to fly to my homeland, it is difficult to justify.  We did take them late last year and my older son has been twice now.  It is unfortunate that it is so expensive to travel, but at least there are many things for us to see and do in the US.

Today is Saturday and although cold, it is a beautiful sunny morning.  Makes the ever so glad that I did not succumb to the desire to buy a bottle of wine last night.  This reduced alcohol thing is working out ok, even if I do have some fairly strong cravings at times.  I have had a dull headache for the past few days but that too is bearable.  We took the kids to see The Lorax last night and it was delightful.  Tonight, hubby and I will go to The Hunger Games.  We are not big movie buffs.  In fact, the only movie my husband and I have seen together at a cinema since we have been married is Race Across the Sky (I think that is what it was called – the Leadville Mountain Bike race?).  With two kids and no family to watch them, movie nights become expensive.  We have found a great sitter, which is lucky, be every time we need a sitter, we are spending at least $100 for the whole evening.  I guess one might argue that you cannot put a price on sanity, but sometimes I find it hard to justify paying a sitter.

And somehow I am back to the balancing of family and life again.  I keep hearing how important “me” time is or “couples time”.  And I totally agree.  My husband and I have quite a strained relationship and kids haven’t made it easier.  But stressing about money also puts strain on a relationship so where is the balance here?  Add to the fact that the kids are at daycare all day, and you might come to the correct conclusion that we don’t want to spend time away from them in the evenings.

I know you are hearing lots of complaints from me, but keep in mind that this is my outlet.  It is healthier to vent here than at home.  I tend to fall into a vicious circle – get stressed, drink too much, take too much migraine medicine and cannot sleep.  Take sleeping pills, brain gets foggy, coping abilities decline, stress increases…  and so on.  It has been nice to have a less clouded brain as of late.  The stress is still there and sleep doesn’t come as easily as I’d like, but I feel more motivated to do things well when I am a little more “sharp”.  For me, these things come in cycles.  With one month of the academic year left, I know I have three months of down time ahead of me.  While I will be expected to work, work takes on a different meaning over the summer.  The boys will still be in daycare, which sounds cruel but they get to do all sorts of fun stuff in the summer – like go to the local pool every week.  They get to do more stuff than they would if they were home with me (because technically, I am still working – gotta love a 12 month contract at a teaching institution).  But I will have the luxury of taking them late and picking them up early.  They can have the day off if I want to stay home with them for the day.  Yes, summers are my saving grace, my mental health care. I cannot wait!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

How often does your day start out well and then go rapidly downhill?  Fortunately for me, it isn’t too often.  And even more fortunately, my downhills are really only very small anthills.  It seems as though perhaps I could be labelled something like “Drama Queen” if I was to be totally honest with myself.  Fortunately again, there are only a limited few who get to see this side of me.  Most people around me think of me as the rational, stable one.  Boy, have I got them fooled.

So the good.  I went for my run this morning.  This happened despite the cold (weather) and despite the cold (virus).  I got the boys to daycare, got out on to the trail and got my 2 miles in.  It wasn’t fast or pretty, but I got it done.  Home, shower, work.

The work day started out well.  I had to relieve a colleague at 11 AM from her role as exam proctor.  So I got to sit on my butt for 90 minutes and do nothing.  Nothing included checking email on the iPad and starting a new free book that I had downloaded from Amazon at some point in time.  Since buying a Kindle, most of my stuff is on the Kindle.  Of course, that Amazon cloud thing is the best thing ever and I can put all of my books on all of my devices.  It even syncs it all up for me so I can start out on the same page on whatever device I am reading.  But I just started a new book this time.  The book I am reading on my Kindle isn’t that gripping.  Shortly after my colleague left, a student had a problem with her computer.  Between me and another proctor, we managed to hook her up on a loaner computer.  Crisis solved.  But before long, another computer gremlin attacked.  This time, I was the only faculty member left in the room.  The other proctors had no idea what to do.  I managed a half-arsed solution and in the meantime, resolved yet another computer issue by emailing my colleague who had already left. Things didn’t turn out so bad until I looked at the exam stats.  My questions sucked!  Seriously, they really, really sucked.  It means that either the students are dumb (unlikely since they are medical students), I didn’t teach the stuff well, or the questions were simply too hard.  My guess is that it was a combination of the latter two.  I have been teaching this section for several years and this is the worst my students have ever done.  While this doesn’t sound like a catastrophe to most, it is a big blow to the ego to me.

This brings me to the ugly!  Yesterday I blogged about my debate over buying a bottle of wine to enjoy tonight.  As you can imagine, my somewhat drug-dependent mind rationalized that I would feel much better after a couple of glasses of wine.  Just a couple because if you remember, two is my safe migraine limit.  Three is usually, but not always OK.  Any more than three and I can kiss tomorrow goodbye (unless I have a stock of migraine meds – which I do, even if it has almost dwindled away to nothing).  So I crack open the bottle as I put the pizzas in the oven.  Sit down with 3 year old to relax in front of some SpongeBob Squarepants, a favorite in this household.  Dinner is ready before I finish my first glass.  Doing very well in my humble opinion.  Refill not quite empty glass and drink with dinner.  I then rationalize that I haven’t yet had two full glasses so I fill it up again.  I tell myself that my very few blog followers will be expecting some sort of weakness or set back so I might as well go for it.  Older child wants to watch a different movie so we go upstairs to the guest room.  Pop in Toy Story 2 and I read from the Kindle while he watches Woody and Buzz.  Enter into the room a one year old miniature Golden Doodle at the same time as my husband.  Before I could comprehend who was in the room, the dog has jumped into my lap, spilling my full glass of red down my almost non-existent cleavage!  Since I am sitting on a white comforter, I leap up and break a record running for the bathroom.  Husband is laughing his head off.

I put shirt and my favorite PJ pants into a sink to soak and head downstairs to refill the almost empty glass.  But here is where things get very strange.  Instead of refilling my glass, I find myself rummaging through my plastics cupboard in search of a funnel.  Then, as though driven by some divine force, the remaining wine in my glass ends up back in the wine bottle!  I have had enough wine for one night!  What the heck has got into me?  I decide not to fight it.  Instead, I rush for my office and head straight to my blog!  Somewhere out there in cyberland, someone will understand what just happened to me!

And now, the grand finale.  I want to post a pic.  I got to see some beautiful pictures by PhotoBotos.com and they inspired me to put some of my less talented photos up. Since this is a blog about me, I suppose I should explain my pics, but for now, let’s just say, I really love these birds.

Day 4: Sunshine

Today was a good day. From time to time, it is nice to write something positive. Of course it is occasionally difficult to find positives when life has been so difficult but it does happen.

The day started on a high note. All 5 Zebra Danios were still alive when we woke this morning. Even though I have many years of experience with tropical aquariums, I have never had all of my Neons die so quickly! The two goldfish that we had prior to getting the Neons, lived a great life and grew to sizes that I didn’t know was possible for a 10 gallon tank. But Syd and Manny were strong and they thrived for a very decent amount of time for goldfish in captivity. Day 2 with the new tank set up and still all of the water chemistry is spot on. Phew.

The second high for the day was a 2.25 mile jog with a friend. Nothing makes me feel better than running, even when it makes me feel like crap. Does that make sense to anyone? Let me attempt to explain to the non-runners out there. Even a bad run feels good when it is over 🙂 Every day in which there is a run, any run, is a better day than a day without. Call it an addiction if you will, and I will! Of course 2 miles isn’t going to help with the weight but at least I am out there doing it.

My morning of work was from my home office. This makes life infinitely easier than having to travel to the not-home office. Plus, I have a window at home whereas my not-home office is windowless. It is cosy, and nicely furnished so I wouldn’t call it a hole-in-the-wall, but I have a very strong attraction to daylight.

In the afternoon I went to visit an old friend who, not by coincidence, is a chiropractor. It is a long time since I have felt as good as I did leaving her office. She couldn’t do much to the hip because there is simply too much pain and inflammation, but she was able to relax just about every other part of me and I walked away with a prescription for MASSAGE! I believe my insurance will be dropping therapeutic massage as of July 1 so I had better not do my normal practice of sitting on the prescription (not literally) for long.

I have to say, that appointment with my chiropractor friend made everything feel so much better and so less overwhelming (in the sports injury department). I set about running down my bank balance by purchasing some supplements that she recommended (and, by the way, so have all the other health care professionals – I sat on that advice too). I felt very proud of myself for having rather flexible hamstrings and quads – I don’t usually. This means that I have been doing my ATC-prescribed exercises – yay for me.

For the first time in a long time, I managed to stay fairly calm at home this evening. I am often at the end of my tether by the time the kids get home with my husband. And the first thing they do when they get in the door is dump their things all over the floor and start whining at me to get them this and get them that. But tonight was so much nicer. I don’t remember any whining at all! Is it just my attitude that has changed? Quite possibly. Could the washout of CNS drugs be responsible for the change of attitude?

Now on to the challenging part of things. I did have fairly strong cravings for a drink tonight. This isn’t unusual by Thursday. I always figure that Thursday is close enough to Friday to have a drink. But I will tell you again, I was held back because of you, my almost non-existent readers! I am posting on a public blog and I don’t want to let myself down by screwing up in the first week! So far, so good. No Lortab today either. I actually had no reason to take it. Sure, my hip was sore, but not as sore as yesterday. I could walk relatively easily today and only had to hobble a little. Tonight I confess to cough medicine. Hubby is in the midst of a snotty cold and it would appear that I am about to begin down the same path. Hopefully it will pass quickly. I hate to ruin a perfectly good weekend with the crud.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day. I do need to go to the office, but my duties tomorrow are mindless and easy. Can a task be mindless and difficult? Hmm, that is something to ponder, indeed. I would like to do another short run before I go to work. I have time so unless the army of little bugs that have invaded my respiratory tract multiply overnight, I think I will try to do this. Now, the other difficult decision to make is whether or not to buy some wine. Friday nights are typically pizza night. I usually buy a bottle of wine that lasts me the weekend. On day one of my blog I said that I wouldn’t drink wine during the week. I think I have done very well – I haven’t even had any beer and there is still that lone Mike’s Hard Black Cherry Lemonade sitting in the fridge in the garage. I tell you what. If I finish tomorrow feeling great, then a bottle will be bought. If I am not feeling great, then I won’t buy a bottle. I actually feel pretty good for not having drank all week. It would be nice to keep it that way. But a couple of drinks (and I do believe I promised you all that I would remain within my migraine-trigger limit) might be a nice way to end the week. I am not going to stress about this decision. It will be made on the drive home from work tomorrow.

Speak of the drive home from work, I am busy working through Pimsleurs Spanish at the moment. It is thoroughly enjoyable and I can say “Pardon, where is the hotel Bolivia” and “Pleased to meet you”, “are you from America” etc. Oh, I can also say “I understand…” or “I don’t speak…”. So I am fairly confident that I could at least start a conversation with a Spanish-speaking person without muttering “no hablo espanol”. The conversation might end quickly with a “hablo un poco de espanol” or “entiendo un poco de espanol pero no mucho” but at least that is a start! Please pardon my spelling as this is entirely colloquial Spanish and I have not seen a written word.

I must email my Dad. When I am feeling brave, I will tackle the topic nearest to my heart, the death of my mother. This sad event took place in December, 2011 so it is still very fresh and very upsetting. However, my Dad, who lives on the opposite side of the world to two of his three children (me being one of them), still needs us very much.

Buenas noches.

Day 3, The Irritables

If I could get any more irritable, I could be mistaken for a woman on Clomid (at least that is what my friends tell me about that awful, yet wonderful fertility drug). Combine PMS with perimenopause with low-grade detox with lack of sleep and that gives you an idea of what my poor husband has to live with at the moment. Today I was so irritable that had we stayed in for the evening, I’d have chewed through everyone! To disguise my infliction as best possible, I cleaned out our fish tank (all the Neon Tetras died) and dragged the family first to CiCi’s for dinner and then next door to PetCo for new fish. This time I got smart and read up on fish before buying them. Turns out the perfect fish for my 5 year old is the Zebra Danio. We how have 5 very robust-looking zebras swimming around a very clean tank. I am proud of myself!

I know you are all wondering how I did with the drugs today and I will tell you. Day three of no booze and day three of no Ambien. However, have I mentioned the arthritis to you yet? I am sure I have as my husband tells me that I repeat myself all the time. Anyway, here it is again. I have recently diagnosed osteoarthritis in my hips and possibly my knees. I suspect spinal involvement too but that is just me guessing. My sports doc told me to keep running. He’d prefer I did lower volume running than cycling or swimming. So I did my little 2 mile run yesterday and today my hip sucks. Since I am already maxed out on NSAIDs, the only pain meds I can take for it are the Lortabs. So I did succumb to the pain and took two of my precious migraine meds for my hip. The smart thing to do would be to have my neurologist and sports medicine team talk to each other so they can figure out a way for me to treat all of my pain. Instead I am struggling to make what I have work for everything. I am not feeling guilty for taking the Lortab. But it does only leave me with 6 pills until mid-April. Despite the setback, I plan to do another 2 mile jog in the morning. If exercising is what I am supposed to be doing, then that is what I will do. Let’s face it, the best prophylaxis for my migraines is running.

Let’s talk about my weight. I feel as though I need to start thinking about taking some very positive steps towards losing some. I don’t like my current weight (which is up 2 lbs since I first started this blog a few days ago). If I go public, perhaps I will find the strength to stop eating a pro-diabetes and obesity diet. So, the alcohol is mostly gone. Now I need to work on cutting out unhealthy snacks. I have been pretty good with this but I usually blow it on the weekends. I while back I joined Weight Watchers online. I was amazed at how good their current plan is. The free fruit and vegetables were such a clever thing to do. For those of you not in the know, this means that you can eat as many fruit and vegetables as you want and they don’t count towards your daily food allowance. As someone who would rather not eat fruit, this was revolutionary for me. I could snack all I wanted, as long as it was fruit! And, not being a fruit person, I didn’t over do it. So this is where I have to go.

I also decided not too long ago that if I actually paid extra to buy organic food, perhaps I would waste less and eat less. I am going to stick with this theory for a while because I think I might be on to something! I have just come off a bad weekend and this week isn’t looking too good so far so I will have to re-initiate this latest of my bright ideas. Since I already plan to have a breakfast casserole for dinner tomorrow (home-grown eggs by the way- or is that home laid?) so I will begin again tomorrow. I really need to see my weight go down. I am outgrowing my closet and before long, I will not even have my “fat clothes” to choose from. Sigh. Need I say it? YO YO!

New Beginnings

How many people start their blogs in exactly this way? Who am I to stray from the crowd? “Spring Cleaning” is a nice name for it. Perhaps “Dexoxing Mom” might be more appropriate. Makes me sound like a horrible drug addict or alcoholic, yet I am really neither of these. However, I am very impulsive and I do what I want when I want. This usually involves food or alcohol, and often, both. Long story short, tomorrow, this changes. Tomorrow, I get back on the proverbial wagon, although I have never intended, and still don’t, intend to remain on it permanently.

Who doesn’t love food? Well, to be honest, nearly every man who has ever been in my life (except for ones who I share various genes with), don’t really care less about food! I hear you gasping with disbelief, yet it is true. My very own husband eats to sustain himself, not for enjoyment. This is as foreign a concept to me as jumping out of a plane. I will never jump out of a plane and I will never be someone who doesn’t eat for pleasure. However, I have heard it said that even “foodies” can lose weight. Although I hardly qualify “Biggest Loser”, weighing in at a grand total of 134 lbs (my guess is that tonight, I would be closer to 140 if I dared get on a scale), my 5 ft 1 frame is not very forgiving when it comes to over-eating. Even the various height-weight scales put me at the high end of the “large frame” range. This never makes me feel good about myself. The second link I checked out after googling “height weight charts” told me that my ideal weight is 106-119 lbs. The last time I weighed that little was 3 months into a nasty bout of mono (glandular fever) at a time when my body was acidotic and showing signs of starvation! Oh, and I was only 119 lbs at that point! I cannot imagine weighing 106 lbs. I doubt that I have ever weighed that little, except sometime during my teens on my way up to where I am now (at a ripe old age of 43).

One pound a week. That is my usual goal. And it is realistic. I can usually achieve this for several weeks by making only one change – cutting out alcohol! I don’t consider myself to be an alcoholic, although I recently heard the term “functioning alcoholic” and wondered if I fit that definition. I have two little kids (5 and 3) and I work full time (as a college professor to boot!). I have never skipped a day of school due to a hangover, nor have I ever not looked after my kids because I am too ill from over-indulging. However, and yes, there is definitely a “however”, I have used LOTS of migraine medicine which one might argue was unnecessary, had I not lost count of the number of drinks that I had.

My migraine safe limit is 2 glasses of wine. Three is like playing Russian Roulette, but I feel the odds are in my favor. Four definitely tips the odds from me. I tried to implement a rule for 2012 – no wine in the house except on special occasions. It is now the end of March and I think I have only bought 3 bottles of wine since the new year. But, wine can be bought at restaurants and beer can be brought into the house. So I think a better policy might be “NO ALCOHOL DURING THE WEEK” and “NO EXCEEDING THE MIGRAINE-TRIGGER LIMIT (2)” on weekends, weekends being Friday and Saturday nights. Special occasions may be exempt if I submit an application for exemption to myself in advance. I will figure out the fine details later.

Being that it is late on a Sunday night, I need to go to bed and think about the new, spring-cleaned me.