Friday, May 28, 2010

Re-entry trouble...


That is not sorbet....

I promise over the next few weeks I'm going to tell you all about my amazing adventure in Greece in great detail. I took notes so I could blog properly about the whole experience when I got back (I didn't have a computer consistently or I would have just done it as I went along-- actually, no I wouldn't have because I didn't want to spend my vacation in front of the computer!).

But first I'm going to tell you that I'm having a hard time adjusting to being home.

For one thing I have a very strange lingering case of jet lag. When we got back on Monday it was 5pm in Seattle and approximately 3am in Greece-- we were exhausted and in bed by 8:30pm, and then not surprisingly, woke up at 4:30 am. Every single day this week my body has decided this is the routine we are going to stick to-- I can't stay awake past about 8:45 and by 4:30am I'm wide awake. It's ridiculous. If I could push it back an hour I wouldn't mind but there is no reason to go to bed before it gets dark in the summer time.

What doesn't help is that I have absolutely no structure in my days now. Marc went back to work immediately. I have no where I have to be-- I am so happy to be finished with my internship (SO HAPPY) but I don't do very well without structured time and I have a feeling it is going to take me a little while to find full time employment. I also need to start studying for the RD exam, which doesn't excite me terribly but my options for jobs are limited without having taken it and I need to hurry up and get it over with.

Today was the first day that I had any energy at all-- Monday through Thursday I pretty much just laid on the couch and caught up on all the TV shows I missed on hulu although almost every show seemed to end the season with violent murders/deaths (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Chuck, Brothers and Sisters)-- the Grey's season finale was so scary to my poor disoriented, jet lagged self that I had to keep taking breaks from watching it and finally went online and found out what happens at the end before I could finish watching it! Thank goodness for the cheerful non-violence of Glee to balance everything out.

Now I have to tell you the weirdest part of my whole trip. In Greece I had ZERO trouble with gluten (as in, I could eat it with no reaction) and very minimal reaction to dairy of any kind-- people, for the first time in three years I had pizza, ice cream and bread and was FINE (okay, the pizza didn't make me feel great, but it wasn't horrible). Now that I'm home both gluten and dairy are again giving me asthma, fatigue and headaches. WHY on Earth would these foods have such a dramatically different effect in Europe? I have no explanation. (BTW it started because the bread that came with dinner looked so good I had 1/4 of a piece. Nothing happened so the next meal I had 1/2, etc until I was easily eating a loaf of bread myself over the course of the day). I am stubbornly continuing to eat gluten even though it is giving me headaches and fatigue because I want to get a Celiac test before I go off it again (the antibodies only show up when you've been eating it) and because even though I feel like crap I'm not looking forward to having to be on a restricted diet again.

So you might think having the door open to any food (I had gelato almost every day!) that I would have had some problems maintaining my weight. At least until I told you that we probably walked 6-10 hours every single day. My feet hurt like hell because I didn't have supportive enough shoes (more on this later) but my legs are in good shape! And I lost 3-4 pounds-- the capri pants I took with me were falling off of me by the time we got home and a lot of jeans I have in my closet at home that were too tight to wear fit perfectly now! I'm holding my breath that I can maintain this now that I'm not walking as a full time job (at some point I'm going to have to get off the couch and get moving again!)

The day before I left for Greece I quit my gym-- they switched management companies right after I joined and I really did not like the changes they were making. So now I get to spend some time seeing how many free 7 day trials I can go through at all the gyms within a 5 mile radius before I join somewhere-- I'm hoping I can figure out where I'm going to be working before I make a commitment. But I'll tell you all about the gyms in Lynnwood/South Everett too in case someone is in the market for a new one.

So much blogging to catch up on-- I'll post again soon!