No, not yet another political blog… this is about moi, your genteel hostess (almost wrote gentile hostess, and I am that too). I will be out of touch for the next week. Not posting, no mail, very little to no iChat (and that only to communicate with my running buds Rob and Nina).

I have been doing The Artist’s Way for the past couple of weeks—mainly by doing the morning pages, three pages written in longhand first thing in the morning, often while I’m still in bed and bleary-eyed and periodically falling asleep over the book. But I’m doing some of the exercises too, and the big one for Week 4 is: Reading Deprivation.

Total reading cold-turkey.

I am the sort of person who has a book in her hand as she walks to school to get her daughter. This is going to be…interesting.

I’ve already come to the conclusion that I have to schedule the reading of blogs and websites, because I’m spending too much damn time on it every day to no other purpose than filling me up with a lot of tsuris* that, frankly, I just don’t need. My brain doesn’t need to be stuffed with data 24/7.

We’ll see how this goes, at any rate. I’m already looking around for a notebook to do my fiction writing in this week, just to avoid putting hands on the keyboard.

* No, I’m Gentile. Honest.

Months ago I told a doctor my usual quip, “Why does everyone say exercise gives you energy? It just makes me tired.” He sent me for bloodwork and determined my thyroid levels were low. I started on a thyroid regimen and felt better but not energetic. So he added a second medication.

And I felt really good.

Not manic good. I wasn’t bouncing off walls or awake twenty hours a day. But I was no longer falling asleep in the afternoons, dozing on the couch while the kids watched TV (waking me up every so often to put on a new show). I could take them out for the afternoon: the park, the fountain, somewhere.

In addition, I lost 30 pounds. Not bad, eh? I once told Tamar that I just didn’t believe that exercise + eating less would lead to weight loss, because it never seemed to work that way for me. But once I started taking the thyroid combination, BOOM! I started losing weight slowly and steadily. I went through my saved jeans at a fairly regular pace and was ecstatic the day I hadn’t done laundry and found that the size 8 jeans hanging in the closet fit me just fine. Not quite at the point where I could put on my Calvin Klein skirt. But I was definitely heading there.

I thought, This is how most people live their lives. They don’t feel run down all the time.

The effect seems to be wearing off, though. Just today I went for a run with Rob and Nina in the morning, then ran around getting the kids to their various activities. I came home and went upstairs to shower. But before I got in the shower I lay down on the bed “just for a moment.” You know how this story ends, right? I haven’t done that for, well, months. I had to force myself to get out of bed when I woke up at two hours, but even now I could go right back.

I don’t think I’m taking the kids to the park this afternoon. Maybe they’d be up for the backyard while I doze on the couch.

Of course, on top of everything else, I’m deeply worried about regaining the weight. Especially since I gave away all my bigger clothes.

I guess I need my blood levels looked at again. This tiredness is so discouraging sometimes.