running four miles fast and a lot of push ups...

can cure almost anything.

I've always been one to turn to exercise when I'm angry, upset, whatever. A hard workout, loud music and a lot of sweat have a way of getting rid a lot of emotions or at least helping you work through them. Running for me helps me keep my head on straight.

Yesterday was one of those days when I needed to run to clear my head and get me back on an even keel.

We switched our car insurance yesterday to a NC policy, and our bill dropped by about $60, which is cool because we've been paying WAY more for insurance than we should have been. But we had to pay them yesterday for the new policy, even though they just took out a payment last week for our old policy. And even though they are going to put most of the other payment back in our account, it just set me off.

This move has been so much more expensive than we ever thought. It has taken virtually all of our savings, even though we had planned initially that we would have enough money in checking to cover just about everything and not touch what was left in savings. The universe had other plans apparently. Combine that with the fact that I haven't brought in a substantial paycheck, and won't bring in a substantial paycheck until the end of next month, and we've been doing the fast money juggle and shuffle. We have a very small buffer for an emergency, but after being so good about saving for so long, it's hard to just keep see money flying out the door and seeing our available money until Tim gets his next paycheck get smaller and smaller. For a while, it was even looking like we wouldn't have any money to do anything for my birthday.

So paying an extra car insurance payment just really put me in a bad mood. I KNOW our money is going to be stabilizing soon. I know that once July starts and once I start at Duke, we'll be pretty much to where we were when I was working at OHSU. But in the moment, it was hard to see that. So I got on the treadmill, cranked up my shuffle and just ran. Set the treadmill on a fast setting and just sweated it all out. And then I did about 50 pushups.

Needless to say, the anger burned off, I was able to think clearly again and get my head on straight. And know that things really will be ok.