The Packers official website is currently featuring a short video narrated by Kramer himself, talking about the Lombardi Era, his place during it, and what being part of a “team” means to him.

Check out the video here.

Be sure and visit jerrykramer4hof.com and support the campaign to get Jerry Kramer into the Hall of Fame

The 2011 Green Bay Packers.

While it’s true this franchise best 15-1 team fell short in the playoffs, there is no denying that they were one hell of an exciting team to watch. Every week, were were glued to our TV’s, computers, and radios, waiting to find out what theatrics they would put on display for their fans. The offense, led by NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers, was an unstoppable machine, rolling up 560 points during the season, second most all time.

The defense…well, lets not go there.

I was thrilled to find this video, spotlighting some of the remarkable plays of the past season. It reminded me just how good this team was.

So sit back, and enjoy 15 minutes of highlights of the 2011 season.

Go Pack Go!

Nothing else like it.

I started to care less about things. I began showing up later and later to work. Would still put in a full day’s work, but dragging myself out of bed became harder and harder. I stopped searching for fun new Packers videos on YouTube. I used to come home from work, flip on SportsCenter, and search the internet for gossip, news, anything worthy enough to put in print. Now I was coming home from work and sleeping. Sleeping constantly.

I also found myself rather more emotional than normal. I am a self-admitted over emotional gal. But when I found myself curled up in a ball, sobbing for an hour after the series finale of Big Love, I started to think maybe something was wrong.

I was also gaining weight. For a woman, this is a rather touchy subject. Tell people you think you’re gaining weight at an odd rate and you get one of two reactions. 1. “Really? You still look great to me!” or 2. “Have you changed your eating habits? It’s probably because you’re doing something wrong.”

So here about two months after the best week of my life, I found myself fat, sad, and sleeping all time. And I really started to doubt myself. Where was the girl I knew? The girl who loved her job, worked 40+ hours a week, to come home and write for three different blog sites, record weekly makeup tutorials and somehow manage to keep a clean house? She was nowhere to be found.

Sure I still managed to show up and help moderate a few things here and there. And sure there was a couple episodes of Cheesehead Radio that I managed to stay awake for (although, truth be told, I was laying under the covers and began nodding off during the second half of both those shows). And I definitely wasn’t anywhere to be found on this website.

Was I pulling a Cutler?

Was this to be my future?

And then something happened. I missed my period. (I know this might be difficult for some of my male readers to read, as the concept and mechanics of a woman as child bearer are sometimes “icky”). Pregnancy test, negative. So I waited. Another month, another missed period. Test, negative, wait. Another month, no period. And then I started to notice other things. Like how I started falling asleep doing normal daily activities, like folding laundry, or sitting at my desk. I also noticed that I was in almost constant pain. My body was so tired from being awake, that it ached all day long. I would drive home from work (a five minute drive) and have to rest my arms before reaching for the door to get out of the car. Standing hurt my body. Thinking hurt my head. I found myself spacing out while driving, while talking, while working. Once I hit the “wall”, I was done for the day. I couldn’t talk; that took too much energy. I just wanted rest.

It was at this point I started to believe myself and stop believing the Cutler idea. Something was really wrong. What followed were weeks of blood tests, exams, inconclusive results and more waiting by the phone than a high school girl waiting to be asked to prom. I was poked in the same vein three times in three weeks. My arm hurt so bad on the last blood test day that I literally had to refrain myself from punching the nurse. Never have I hated another completely lovely person just for doing their job before.

But eventually the mystery ended, and it was determined that I have hypothyroid disorder (which I found out AFTER all these tests, apparently runs in my family). Simple anatomy lesson: your thyroid controls nearly everything in your body and mine had decided to stop releasing the hormone to do so. Therefore my body was slowly slowing down on me. It had been going on for a year before the symptoms jumped from being minor “women’s” problems, to actual medical warning signs.

And I thought back to a conversation I had with Corey Behnke on our last day in Dallas. He told me that he thought I’d be more of a road warrior. I answered honestly, me too. I couldn’t think that day why I had changed. And it almost seemed strange to me that I hadn’t really noticed the change on my own.

My disorder is completely treatable. And as long as the cause of the hormone decline is due to the random act of my body attacking its own thyroid, no further issues should arise. I just wake up every morning and take a synthetic form of the hormone every day for the rest of my life. I’ve been on the medicine for a couple of weeks now, and I do notice a difference. I can get through the day without a nap, I lost a couple pounds without changing anything, and I want to get up and do things. But I am not me yet. I will meet with the doctor in the coming weeks to see if this replacement level is right. And then it’s just a waiting game as each day it begins to work a little more.

So now I’m on the mend. Moving and building a house in Cincinnati, planning a massive nonprofit fundraiser for my work (raising $50K+ is a LOT easier than it sounds), and starting to find the energy to share makeup tips and sports news. So, like you all, I am sitting and waiting for something to happen sports wise, that isn’t another lesson in legal procedures. But I just wanted to let everyone know, that I am not “Cutler-ing” you. I promise. The dedicated readers of the Lounge and CHTV are sometimes a little much for a girl whose body was shutting down on her to keep up with. But as I continue to pump my body with synthetic hormones – the blogger version of performance enhancing drugs – I promise that the snark and the writing will return.

That is of course until CHTV begins drug testing us all.

Lounge Center

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