On the Lighter Side of Life...

After about a week of maintaining the 'woe is me' attitude since the geneticist diagnosed me with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I am finally starting to get my spirits back up to normal. The other day a friend of mine even complimented me for getting dressed! Nothing fancy, just jeans and a tee, but it was a vast improvement from the grungy pajamas I had been sporting.

Tomorrow is my first (and hopefully only) day of physical therapy to learn a home joint stabilization exercise regime and learn how not to hyperextend my joints. Something I have probably been inadvertently doing for years. I definitely hyperextend my knees when I stand, I just never knew what it was called before. It's so funny how suddenly putting a name to things can make you more aware of them. I never realized there was anything wrong or abnormal about the way I stood. No one had ever called it to my attention before. I recently stumbled upon an interesting blog about dance injury and hypermobility. It really helped to clarify for me how movement is linked to hypermobility and vice versa.

In addition to reading informative blogs about EDS, I have also been engaging in a little good old-fashioned TV-watching escapism. Seeing as it's nearly 2 am and I can't sleep, I figured I would post all about my Fall television schedule for your reading pleasure.

Mondays it's all about Being Erica. The fifth and final season promises to answer all questions and tie up all loose ends of the Erica time-travel saga. I watch this on CBC at 9 pm. The latest season is not available on any U.S. stations yet although rumor has it ABC is already slated to remake it...odd considering the Canadian version is in English. Guess the American way is to ruin, I mean remake, perfectly good foreign shows (Can you say, Skins anyone?)

Tuesdays I am sticking with Glee. So far this season is already much more promising than last season with the addition of The Glee Project winner/Celtic Thunder crooner Damien McGinty alone. He plays a foreign exchange student whom Britney mistakes for a magic leprechaun. He decides to play along with her fantasy by granting her a box of Lucky Charms filled exclusively with marshmallows. It was by far the most priceless Glee moment of all time.

Wednesdays I am hooked on Revenge and have gotten several of my friends hooked as well. I was a huge Brothers & Sisters fan but sadly ABC (what some call the 'Already Been Cancelled' network) aired the series finale unexpectedly last season due to a decline in ratings. Luckily Emily VanCamp had a newer and perhaps much more promising role up her sleeve. On Revenge she plays the duplicitous Emily Thorne, a young woman hell-bent on achieving the ultimate vengeance, artfully taking down her framed father's former enemies one by one in an elite Hamptons neighborhood she returns to as an adult, posing as the poised and innocent girl next door. The writing is smart, the acting is good, the plot is fraught with unpredictable twists and turns and the male eye-candy is currently unmatched on primetime TV. Three cute male main characters? That's what I call good television.

Thursdays I am not ashamed to admit that I tune into the new Beavis and Butthead on MTV. In my opinion, they are every bit as funny as I remember from watching them as a kid. Beavis and Butthead always make me forget any serious matters at hand and have a few good laughs. They are having a field day being MTV's resident reality television commentators. Listening to their humorously blunt commentary on Jersey Shore and 16 and Pregnant is endlessly amusing. They simply articulate what the rest of us are probably thinking when we watch the debaucherous Snookie in action.

On Fridays I will occasionally watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition but I can't say that I'm hooked on it. On weekends I prefer to engage in Smallville marathons with a friend who got me hooked on the series. We have been meeting for months now to watch the entire series together. We are only half-way through season three but it just keeps getting better and better. I am normally not a sci-fi fan, but this series is infused with enough good music, pop culture references and exquisitely built men to make me happy. And believe it or not, Clark Kent, later known as Superman, is actually a highly relatable character for those with chronic illness. His abilities render him different. He is essentially an outsider to his peers and only shares his secret with a very small group of people for fear of persecution. Kind of reminds me how getting sick has often made me feel like an outsider among my 'normal' friends.

When I'm not watching TV, I'm probably listening to Robert Schwartzman's new album Double Capricorn. I am a huge fan of him in Rooney, was a fan of Solobob, and now a fan of his latest solo endeavor as well. This album is slightly reminiscent of Rooney which is probably why I am so hooked on it. It definitely reminds me of happier times standing front and center in the crowd at concerts. I would give anything to be able to do that again without having to worry about passing out publicly. Maybe someday. Since Robert has yet to release a video for this album, I'll leave you with a video from another one of my favorite bands, Our Lady Peace. I heard this one during a Smallville marathon the other day and had forgotten how much I love this song!

Our Lady Peace - Somewhere Out There - C by Elemiste

Resolutions, Revisions, and Regrets

As we approach yet another new year, it is a time to reflect upon the last 365 days of life and how they were spent. This year I experienced a lot of changes in mine, both positive and negative. Overall, it was a good year mainly because I finally found a job I am both capable of doing and enjoying. However, I am still struggling with the fact that I am not where I want to be health-wise after suffering through three years of POTS. Luckily I discovered that my symptoms respond positively to weight-bearing exercise, so I am going to make that more of a priority in the coming year. Another resolution of mine is to phase out all chemical-based cosmetics, and personal and household products. I do not like to waste things, so I am simply using up or giving away the old, and when I replace a product I will replace it with something green and chemical-free. I hope that this shift in products will be reflected in my health. I also intend to gradually eat better and buy organics whenever possible. That's about it for my resolutions this time. I'm keeping it simple. I used to be a fan of elaborate lists and detailed action plans, but since work has been consuming so much of my time lately, I figure it's best to have a few basic, realistic resolutions in mind that I can actually stick to.

After recently finishing the first two seasons of Being Erica (in my opinion it's one of the best shows on television), I realized that I too, have a long list full of regrets--19 of them to be precise. For those of you who haven't seen the show, it's the story of a woman in her early thirties who just can't seem to get her life together, although she is bright, well-educated and has a lot going for her. She visits a "therapist" who engages in unconventional therapy sessions with her where he enables her to travel back in time to relive her biggest regrets. The show is what I would classify as a dramedy: Erica is a highly relatable character and the flashback scenes to her teen and college years are generally very funny. But the show also deals with some serious subjects and subliminally encourages viewers to evaluate their own lives and regrets.

Looking over my own list of regrets I couldn't help but wonder if reliving a few of them differently may have prevented me from getting sick. For example, if I would have not cancelled my wisdom teeth surgery out of fear my freshman year of college, maybe I wouldn't have developed the infection and cyst that resulted in an emergency surgery senior year. Or, perhaps I was destined to get sick anyway and having the surgery sooner would have only meant that I got sick even earlier in life (which definitely would have been worse considering I probably wouldn't have finished college if I had developed POTS as a freshman). On my list of regrets are some silly, some serious, yet living any one of them differently may have altered the course of my life significantly. My question for you, dear readers, is if you could travel back in time to relive any regret, what would it be and why? How would you do things differently and how would it alter your life today? Just something to ponder as the new year approaches. Perhaps the most important resolution I have for the upcoming year is to live a life free of regrets.