Almost there

I am almost through a tough week.

We have bern stressed about my father-in-law. He got sick while on the Viking River cruise. It looked real bad at first and Mom got off the cruise to take him to the hospital in Germany. He was in the ICU at first, pnuemonnia they said. He has advanced COPD, so that is serious. He has gotten excellent care! They are expecting to release him tomorrow! Woohoo! This means he will make his originally scheduled flight home Monday!

I can't quite relax until they are home though. My brother-in-law made it over there Friday, that turns the stress levels down, but that isn't rnough. We need to see them with our own eyes before we can finally breath that final sigh of relief. I have already posted here about how grateful I am about his role in this whole thing.

I had a Girl Scout service unit team  conference meeting today.  An all day meeting of the service units and council staff for networking,  covering the program year,  volunteer services and management, sharing of information between the service units and also council.  It was a good event, learned about and got some great ideas and take aways!

Today was also Helen's birthday. I stopped on my way home to pick up stuff for that. We had pizza for dinner,  per her request, then she had sugar free chocolate cake (yay! Publix!) and opened her presents.  She had a good birthday,  even though I missed most of it. She got to hog Daddy and Shara all to herself for the day.  Shara took her to the park for an hour,  they had fun.

I have lots to do this week. Need to make sure Mom walks into a pristine clean house,  make sure my own laundry is done, so she can do hers. I need to connect with a few people this week in person.  Follow up with a few others online and start putting together my training program outline for the next service unit meeting.  I am way behind on nursery stuff to.  Need to repair that one riser and replace a few valves.  We have made some decisions and now the talking phase is over. It is time to DO!

I am slowly but surely getting my time management on track with all the new things i have going on. I am no wonder woman,  but sometimes I come close.  On that note,  my tired babbling is done for the night!

February 26, 2015

Busy Busy couple of days! I got my baptismal certificate all turned in and now I'm officially all set for my confirmation! Woohooo!

Wednesday I got a lead on a job. I'm going down to Costa Farms Monday morning to apply there. I'll have to leave early or call off work for my appt with Dr Denham and definitely call off for my call-in court hearing. I'm not sure how that's going to play out.....but I'll figure it out. 

I spent most of my day cooking. I was originally planning on going with T to work to do some painting on his jobsite. Yesterday, I made Parm crusted Tilapia for dinner. I bought extra fish so I could make lunches to take with me to work. FISH TACOS anyone? So today, I actually put together my fish tacos and put them in the fridge. I also made Chicken Tortilla Soup for dinner, and the leftovers will also be my lunches. 

Because I know I'll be far away from my vehicle working out at Costa, my plan is to get the Atkins bars I like and keep them in a fanny pack on my waist. That in and of itself, is Na NSV because of the first time in, I don't know how long, I can wear one comfortably! How freeing it is to have that at my disposal! I have an option I've never had before! Anyhoo - all I have to do now is figure out after-school. I'm tempted to have Helen stay at Avocado after school until the bus for south-dade comes. I'm not sure I can do that though. I was supposed to ask about that today when I picked her up. I guess I'll do it when I drop her at school tomorrow. I won't get a paycheck for the next two days work - but I got to spend some money already. 

It's some crazy logistics but it will be worth it. I'm going bat-shit-crazy with boredom just sitting home on my ass. I've lost a lot of weight, I've gotten my health issues more or less under control and now I can't stand sitting on my ass anymore. I realize just how negatively this thyroid stuff impacted me. Now I can finally see it.  My mother always said, when I started having thyroid problems there was this HUGE dramatic drop in my energy level.  I never understood what she meant by that. She'd try and explain it that it was like I hit a wall and I didn't get it. Now I finally understand what she meant!! Holy cow! The difference between now and even 20 years ago is just so dramatic! Not nearly as moody, a bazillion times more energetic and I feel less manic and more ADHD - now I have the physical energy to match the mental energy. Unlike most people, if I felt manic - I didn't have the crazy "I'm Wonder Woman" kinda theme to my thoughts. Just thinking a million miles an hour. Oddly enough, my body catching up to my brain makes it feel like my brain has slowed down. It hasn't - my body is just able to keep up and moves on to the next thing. 

I will admit, I have lots of anxieties about going back to work. It's been more than 10 years since I've had a traditional job. I keep telling myself that I'm worrying about nothing. I was able to work a regular job back when I getting out of bed and getting out the door was a feat in and of itself and only happened through sheer force of will.  Oddly enough - me going back to work means less housework. LOL No one here to mess up the house except the dogs. They're easy - just sweep the floors every night,  keeping on top of the dishes in the morning and in the evening and I'm good to go! I'll have to do a lot of advance cooking on the weekends so I'm all set for week days but it is comforting that I have a strategy at my disposal to keep up with my proper eating every day! I know what to do and I CAN do it!  T said I can get a fitbit so I can track my calories burned so I know when and if I need to start increasing my food intake.  

I have been doing a lot of self-talk lately. Reminding myself to stop putting off moving forward over silly details. Reminding myself that I'm a smart gal who can think on her feet well enough that I can handle anything that comes up. I need to stay in the now and have confidence in myself that I can figure out anything that comes up. Stop holding myself back over these silly anxieties! Close my eyes and just GO! 

Girl Scouts is going GREAT! I worked on the image for the girls' T-shirts today. I took one of the Traditional Trefoil cookie wearing a GS sash image off the website and set it in the middle and put the Troop # over the top and the council logo under the cookie - and finally a "Camp Name". We'll have the girls pick out camp names at the next meeting - at the following meeting -the girls will get their shirts, logo and all. I'm so excited about this project. I know, I'm excited about a lot of things. 

On that note, it's late and I need to be up early tomorrow so I can get my carcass in gear on time! No BS excuses in the morning! 

February 13, 2015

I skipped my workout today but oh what a wonderful day I had. I cleaned my house. It's not completely decluttered but it's at least neat and tidy! The floors are clean, the bathroom is clean and my laundry is all put away and hubby's clothes are up on his clothes rod in the closet I can't reach! 

It just felt good to put my house in order and be able to finish it! In one afternoon! I tried to work on a crochet stitch but it's going to take multiple attempts to learn this new stitch. I am using a YouTube tutorial but it's difficult to learn in reverse. I'm left handed and I crochet left handed, so I have to everything backwards. I know if I stick with this I can figure it out!! It's the basket weave stitch I've been trying to learn for ages now! At least I've found a few videos to help me figure it out. 

Busy busy weekend planned. It's the last weekend of cookie booths and tomorrow we'll do our cookie booth, come home and then jump right into making Valentines and our little projects for the surprise for T. T and I have a romantic evening in planned. 

I still have confirmation class on Sunday morning and then we have our last and final cookie booth at noon. Then I have to run to a store to get a birthday present and then Helen is going to a birthday party. She hasn't been invited to a birthday party since pre-school so she's very excited to have been invited and that I'm letting her go. 

That gel I got from the doctor's office rocks!! I went for a run yesterday and afterwards put some on, slapped on the tens unit and wrapped up my knee in ice - ohhhhh it felt sooo good afterwards! It really has made a difference in keeping the inflammation under control. Works better than even Motrin does! 

I'm hoping to not be so sleep deprived come Monday morning that I can put my head together with Mr B and re-design my workout. I want to shake up my workout in a major way. I really am bored with it and he's already suggested that it might be time to do that. 

Here's to an amazing, fun filled holiday weekend! Woohooo!! 

February 12, 2015

The hunt continues! I heard back from the military archdioceses finally. They have NO record of my baptism. What does that mean? That means my parents went to a church off base for our baptism - because they don't have a record of my brother's either and we were done together. Recording First communion is optional and apparently the parish priest at that time opted to not record any of the first communions. Which stinks! Time to call around to try and track it down! It's only two or three churches in the area so it shouldn't be too tough. Fingers crossed that I can get it done. 

R went by the Homestead Police dept yesterday to arrange for them to come out to our meeting to accept their gift basket and check for their charity (Victims of Violence) and the community officer who was one of the ones who attended our big Safety and First Aid event, suggested that they would love to make time during the presentation portion of their 5k race for the girls to come up on stage and present their gift basket and check. The Mayor will be there, and of course, the town newspaper. It would be GREAT PR for our service unit and Girl Scouts in general. We'd set up a recruitment booth but the issue seems to be that most of our troop is doing Thinking Day out in Coral Gables. There's some obvious conflicts but we'll try and work that out. In the meantime, at our meeting the girls had to wait for Metro-Dade Police who didn't arrive until almost 6:30. That went well, by the way. The girls had fun working on their project while they waited and great that we had multiple activities for them to work on while they waited. I'll collect the rest of my parents $ this Saturday at our booth and we should completely sell out by Sunday. All in all, they did pretty good for themselves! 

I'm hitting the gym today...it's ab and legs day and I decided for Lent, instead of giving up something I'm pledging to DO something positive. Be disciplined with my eating and workout schedule. I do a lot for my community just in my work through Girl Scouts and I joined the Women's club so I'm giving back even more and right now, I need to finish this weight loss thing. I'm down to the end and strict discipline is what will get this done! I've been fortunate enough have had that second chance to get myself in order and now it's time to finish that and move on. 

I'm looking forward to Saturday. I bought some stuff from Michael's and Helen and I will be making Valentines for everyone and then she'd going to be cooking our special dinner and going to Grandma's for the night. I'll be surprising T with a cute little nighty and sexy shoes when he gets home and we're just having a romantic night in. There's plenty of movies for us to watch on the DVR and there's no need to go out anywhere. The truth is we just need the alone time, the where doesn't matter. 

Life is good. Life is joyous. 

February 4, 2015

What a difference a day and change in circumstances beyond my control make! 

I got up at an unholy hour and got the kids up and off to school and made it back home in time for me to get my own kid off to school on time! The meeting went well. It was just an initial meeting, officially, her teacher "nominated" her to get the early testing for the gifted program. They have 70 days from today to test her, I'm sure it's going to happen closer to that 70th day than any time soon. Once they get those results and decide she is, in fact, gifted, then she changes classes to a gifted class. We aren't obligated to do that right away, we can wait until next year or whenever we want. We can pull hr in and out of the gifted program as often as we choose. They made us sign paperwork declaring that we were not denied the right to bring anyone we chose to the meeting. I knew that was from them being sued over that. 

My friend's baby girl was released from the hospital this afternoon to finish her recovery at home. After the meeting, I ran by the house to drop off a replacement box of cookies and leave the house key for my friend to get back in her house. Then it was off to meet R to try and talk about get on the same page with where we wanna go with the troop. We are going to involve our Moms more heavily than they are. We have one in mind to be treasurer and serve as that fiscal accountability role. We decided we're going to bring all receipts for all troop money for her to initial and keep with the rest of our accounting. We want another parent to take charge of outside events. Be the one to organize getting permission slips, collect the money from the other moms and just coordinate that for the troop. Thankfully, council and the service unit put out their event calendars at the beginning of the program year and we'll have our own events to add to that and it's a lot when we're also running the actual meeting. R brought her oldest along and she's re-joining us as an adult volunteer. She rocked that badge work stuff when she was an Ambassador, and we're going to take full advantage of that fact and put her on the case. She really needs to be a leader but hey, we'll start with Adult volunteer and when we grow this troop so it needs a third leader, then we can make M upgrade her. LOL She's really good at this stuff even on a larger level - like service unit level and I know more than a few of our events will end up being service unit events. Works for me. It's good for the Service Unit and it's good for us. I'm so excited! Her daughter is mouthy and that might put some people off, but I like her. We did some shopping as the girls are presenting their cookies to the county police dept next week. We decided to make our Gift of Caring service project the Police Dept because first, the town police dept put on this amazing show and second, all the news about so many police depts having trouble with "bad" cops - we wanted to show our appreciation for our own depts that GET IT RIGHT! Let them know we noticed and are front and center to say "Thanks!" 

I'm up late doing catching up on cookie paperwork and tomorrow I'll be catching up on more household stuff. I want so bad to go back to work but I need to put this house in back the way it belongs! I won't be able to manage Girl Scouts AND working if I'm not back to my regular household schedule and tidy organization. My house isn't trashed - just disorganized and in such a small space, it's difficult. I will finish all the cookie paperwork that I can do at this point. I've done a decent job of staying on top of everything as I went along, so it's not that tough. I've been keeping spread sheets for each girl so the girls can do a "Self assessment" exercise. It's a little extra work but it will be worth it. 

For now, I am focused on getting back on track with the eating, I did some grocery shopping today so that will go a long way towards making that happen! I will get back into the swing of the working out thing soon. I don't know when, but soon. I need to get that control back before I add anything else. Following that "change one thing" principle. I changed the GS situation, I'm changing the household clutter situation and there's time enough for the rest of it. 

February 3, 2015

The burden has been lifted and in a week, I have my Ortho appointment and I'll finally know if I'm medically cleared to go back to work or not. I have concerns that to get a decent job I won't get the kind of hours I want (early in the day) but worrying about it now won't do me any good now - in fact, it's going to make things worse for me.

I've been struggling the last few days eating on time. My sleep schedule is still off and that exacerbates my food issues which is further fed by the stress levels from this drama that I don't want to get into in such a public forum. I don't cope well with drama, and we'll leave it at that.

What else do I need to do to get myself on track again? Not much, let me tell ya.   

January 30, 2015

Holy Cow! Things are moving faster than I expected soon the drama will be over, the troop meeting is being cancelled and T and one of the Moms will be doing cookie business over by the playground. A different meeting will be taking place to resolve all the issues.

I'm both excited and nervous about this meeting. Excited because I want the drama to end and nervous because that stupid part of me is fearful that I have somehow screwed up. Mostly excited. I just hope it doesn't get too melodramatic  - I just can't go on dealing with it. 

I just want this crap to be over. Get on with troop business. I've got my hands full with cookies and trying to find a job. I hope to be over this congestion soon and be back to the gym next week.

My house has been a wreck lately - and I've been putting some time into putting it back in proper OCD order. It's slow because I've been thoroughly cleaning as I go de-cluttering everything. This weekend the Holiday Decorations are being put away! Once and for all - it's gotta go. I'm sick of looking at it all. We're almost done with cookies and in a few weeks the cookies will be gone too. I can reclaim my living room. Of course, this sudden need to clean and be crazy orderly with my house is a straight reaction to dealing with the drama. The chaos is driving me insane and I feel the need to surround myself with the comfort of order. Broken somehow, but oh well, I'm in the mood to indulge my brokenness so I feel better. Granted, I'm not letting it take over my life, so as long as it doesn't become all consuming, I'll willing to indulge myself because I am keeping it on this side of sane. 

I'm hoping next week to get back to the gym. I'm unhappy with my workout schedule, so I think I'll be signing up for time to sit with B and figure out a new routine. I'm not sure I want to keep working out at the gym. I keep finding myself looking at at-home stuff. Or things I can use at the park. I can't tell if I'm just bored with the workout at the gym or what. we'll see what that consultation says. I think I'm going to see the new girl about this though. B is just too used to me. lol I'm not sure. Maybe I"ll see them both and do both who knows? 

As anxious as I feel right now, I also feel hopeful. I can see things starting to come together in that vision I have for my life. I know I just have to keep doing what I'm doing and I'll get where I'm going. I'm feeling that drive to get it done. NOW

January 15, 2015

Today is actually a special day for me today. Eight years ago today, I met my husband for the first time. We knew each other from online chat rooms and when my friend and I decided to take a road trip in Florida to relax and unplug after a long hard run on a work project - he offered to  show us around and let us camp at his place.

I got lost on our way to meet him. Like lost in Big Cypress Swamp, driving up and down US RT 41 and trying to get cell service in the swamps. He did find me eventually! We had even better in person chemistry than we did online. Ever meet someone and you just clicked with them?? Not just physically - but it was like they instantly "get you". Yah, it was like that.  Wasn't just a physical connection but a mental connection too.

I just realized this when I went to write this post. It was exactly what I needed to remember today. I'm having a bad bad day full of stress. After my surgery, I said, "When you hang onto your blessings, no hell can touch you". Yah, realizing today is our 8th anniversary of just meeting - it made my stress level drop.

The drama within our troop has reached a breaking point.. Me losing my insurance and being stuck paying for insurance that costs more per year than our annual income is a problem I can find a solution to. I don't have to take that one on by myself. I have a true partner and we, as a family have a support network we can rely on. I need to focus on working in the nursery today and Tommy and I will find time in the next few days to try and hammer out a solution. Or at least what we're going to do in the short term until we come up with a long term solution. 

Stay in the now and embrace those blessings!! 

January 13, 2015

Today is my Lucky Day! It's my father's birthday! Yay! I still have my Pops around to celebrate it!! I'm super lucky for that!! My father is a Cancer survivor so I'm extra grateful for that!!

Today is going to be a quick drive-by type post. I'm still stewing on my "Master Plan" but some things are starting to come together in my head.

Tonight I have a Girl Scout meeting and we're handing out cookies. The situation with my co-leader continues to worsen as any and all attempts to talk with her about the situation is met with silence. Someone from council will be meeting with me and my co-leader R and we're going to talk to her about the overall problem and what council intends to do about it and what resolution we're looking to get. Also we've decided what will happen if we don't get that resolution. We'll see what happens, I informed the missing co-leader that we were meeting at 4 and asked her to come - she was told that the meeting is NOT about attacking her. It's not, I'm over it and just want to get down to the business of scouting and freaking cookies!! 

On that note, it's time to start loading cases of cookies in my car so I can make this meeting on time! Woohoo!! We're officially underway as of today!

January 11, 2015

Another day moving towards I don't know what. I'm still feeling lost. The fact that I don't have any career going or contributing to the household finances is starting to bother me. While I am in fact, under a court order to get a job as soon as I'm medically cleared to do so and there's a process for me to follow to get out of that if my ortho doesn't medically clear me; the pressure I feel is completely internal. It's my own innate needs that drive me. Getting a job is easy - I need to figure out what I'm going to do with myself as far as an actual career kind of thing goes. Thinking of my overall financial future, 65 is only 20 years away. Seems like a lot, doesn't it? It used to be 40 years away! I need to make some hard choices and I don't intend to make those choices alone. I'll be sitting down with my husband and we're going to be starting a discussion about this. 

I have cookie and Girl Scout drsma. I will admit, I'm a bit resentful about the whole thing. I could let it go and am willing to let it go - but ONLY if it's dealt with. We will ultimately have to have a meeting between all five of us. 

Yah, now that I've got that out of my system, I need to get to bed. I feel better about that coming to some kind of resolution. Whether that resolution is what I want it to be or not, we will just have to see. 

January 10, 2015

That wasn't so bad. I had cookie pick-up first thing this morning. This is my first year being "cookie mom" and being in charge of cookies. I keep hearing all these horror stories about how awful it is, not just from people all over but people around here. Not a hitch. My husband was my driver, and we pulled in, checked in and pulled up, loaded up and checked out. Our time slot was 8:07 and we were done by 8:00 am and driving away with our truck load of cookies. 

Yah, T had to run off to work as soon as he parked the truck and the little one slept over at Grandma's last night so we could go hang out with friends and do cookies first thing this morning.  I unloaded all those cookies by myself and got them upstairs in the house. Surprise workout!  I'm definitely ready to get back to work - maybe need some kind of prescription anti-inflammatory stronger than ibuprofen - but I'm ready. My knee held up just fine - and after a hard week of working it at the gym.

I've pretty much spent most of my day today doing cookies and Girl Scout stuff. I have to have a day to focus on the GS stuff and that's going to be a key to moving forward with my plans to be a Leader AND a working mom. 

Speaking of plans....Yesterday I took advantage of a coaching call with Christie. It was a great call but one of the things we talked about is Daily Affirmations. She gave me an excellent example and the theme of our discussion was now that I'm done running from the painful health issues and am trying to run toward the positives in life....What exactly am I running towards? I think the lack of direction in my life right now is why I'm not nearly as driven as I was in the beginning of my weight loss journey. The health issues didn't entirely disappear but they are looming just enough to keep me from backsliding - but not close enough to propel me forward. 

Yes, I want to keep doing Girl Scouts, especially after today and last night. I volunteered to help out at the Cookie PJ Party and what little there was for me to do - I genuinely enjoyed it! Sure I'd like to complete the Boston Marathon some day. Be at my goal weight. Stay at my goal weight. I need to have some actual career and make money for myself and my family...doing what? I don't know. Do I go all in with this nursery gig or take a more traditional stab at the nail thing again?  A bunch of goals but they seem to disparate from each other. There is a lack of overall direction - a master plan. That is what I need to sit and think on this week. What's my master plan here?? j

Unlike when I was 18, and I feared getting locked into any situation and desperately wanted to keep my options open, I'm not afraid of that anymore. I'm somewhat late to the commitment party - but I'm here now! I told my husband we need to set aside some time to have a deep discussion about my master plan and what it should look like. Not just for me, but for us BOTH, as a couple and individuals. That discussion needs to not happen on our way to a party. We'll set aside a date night and bring a pen and paper. 

Now that is out of the way, it's time for some FOOTBALL!! GO PATRIOTS!! 

January 9, 2015

Yay! Thank God it's FRIDAY! Ok, I say that every day. Thank God it's [Insert Day of the Week]! LOL It's been a crazy busy week!! Not bad, in the least!! I managed to get it together enough to conduct a reasonably organized meeting with my girl scout troop, had a few last minute solutions and technology challenges but it was a GREAT week!! 

Yesterday turned out to be way more crazy than I thought it should be!! I goofed off all morning and then since it was so darned cold, put on pants and a t-shirt and a zip up hoodie and put my workout clothes in a bag...along with my shopping list and went to pick up my little one. I hit the gym and met the new trainer. I really like her a lot!! We did abs first and then I did 10 minutes of cardio and then we did legs and then I did another 40 minutes of cardio on the treadmill. Since today was leg day, I just walked but I put the incline on 10 and just walked as fast as I could stand it on that incline. The idea being to work that ACL without the major impact of running. So the theory goes from my physical therapist. 

After that, I hit up a few grocery stores and then ran to go pick up the little one. I made one more quick stop at a grocery story to buy the family some dinner and then I went off to my Girl Scout leader meeting. Weeee!! More cookies booths! LOL My previously full booth schedule is now looking kinda empty. Part of that is because one of the location. is now allowing TWO tables at each entrance, so I have room for more girls. We have a possible second location doing the same thing - so we will see what we will see. I still have lots of girls who have not yet signed up. I'm super stoked about all of this as it's looking like my girls will EXCEED their goal. 

Today is looking no less busy. I wrote this last night and I'm currently working out at the gym! Today I'm vowing to make this a "Last Chance" workout! Upper and Lower Body strength training and then an hour of cardio/conditioning. I have my coaching call with Christie and then a little time to finish up my laundry before I run off to my Cookie PJ Party. I volunteered to help set up and will stick around if I'm needed to help with the girls. After that, the hubby and I are headed off to hang with some of our friends. Our friend who owns our doggie house guests is one of the people we'll be seeing and I want to give him an update on how the dogs are doing and to make arrangement to get my washing machine from his old house. If all goes well, I'll get that this weekend! Woohoo!! My own washer and dryer again! 

I'm super stoked about my shopping trip today. I have decided that I need to stop with eating so many bars! It's ok to have them sometimes - but I need to eat FOOD, actual food! I can't make every single snack a bar. I've been eating them 2 and 3 times a DAY. It doesn't impact my losses but I need to eat more actual food. After spending a week actually eating food 6 times a day, I decided I need to fit that back in! Make the time for it and do the advance prep to make that goal a realistic possibility! I've talked about these big plans for canning and freezing stuff - well I am ON THAT! Starting NOW! 

January 7, 2015

I did my weigh in yesterday. The damage is only 6 lbs. I have to be honest and say my reaction to that was "That's it??" I said I wasn't going to worry about a gain and I was surprised to discover that I wasn't the least bit worried. I have, after all, lost 80 lbs so far. Seriously, what's six pounds compared to that? Not a heck of a lot - let me tell ya!! A few weeks and I'll be right back down to 180. One of the first times in my life, I truly have complete confidence that I can lose it. It's not an unrealistic expectation, I know exactly what I need to do. I planned to indulge and indulge I did and now it's back to daily life and back on the weight loss train. 

I thought about not weighing in. 
"Wait til next week," that lying little voice said. 
"It's not Monday, it won't be a true weigh-in"

HA!! Yah right. It's a true weigh in. I logged it on the NS site so now it really counts. Even though I have all that stuff hidden..."Nutrisystem" knows. Something about logging it on NS' site makes it REAL for me. I'm admitting it here and coming clean and I'll be doing that in the Facebook group soon too! Shout it from the rooftops as much as I dare! Some part of me is also a little happy. I did something normal and mundane - I gained weight from eating too much of the wrong things. Not some weirdo, thyroid, under-eating with a screwed up metabolism thing - just plain old overeating bad stuff. For so long something has been wrong with me...now nothing is wrong with me. If I overeat or eat the wrong things, I gain weight just like every one else. I'm not special or different and it's the best feeling in the world. 

I see a shift in the way I look at my weight now. When I started, it was about getting healthy. Getting all that metabolism and blood sugar stuff under control. Yah, now it's under control. I'm in no danger of going back to that with a slip up here and a slip up there. There's no health threats looming large over my head. Now my focus is being like everyone else. Watching what I eat because I SHOULD! Do what I'm supposed to do because I'm supposed to do it! Wanting to do it for no reason other than I'm supposed to. That's actually motivation enough now. When did I become that person who has willpower to do things like that?? Me? Wuuuut?! 

It kind of smacks me between the eyes sometimes. I'm that person. I can say,

"No, thanks. I think I'm going to have [insert a healthy option here] instead."

I'm not just accepting that I can't have certain foods, I just don't want that stuff anymore. Sure I still like quick and easy - but my standard for what I'll eat quick and easy sure has changed. I'm all about the crock pot cooking now. Cooking up a bunch of healthy food and having it in the fridge to just heat up when I need a fast option. Making my own frozen meals!! I keep seeing those plastic tv trays with lids and thinking I should buy some and start making my own frozen meals. Canning my own foods also. I make a great chili. It's ridiculously a lot like NS' chili except spicier and has no carrot cubes hidden in it. How awesome would it be to open up a jar of my own home-made chili......made with veggies from my own garden.

Grandiose thoughts for sure. Well, grandiose in the way I'm thinking the thoughts - but they can become reality. It will just not happen overnight - but it's a way of doing things I can work towards. I can work out growing a veggie garden. I can save up my cash to get the supplies to do canning. I have some of what I need and the rest can be acquired. I'll have to set aside time on the weekends to do cooking and then my canning and freezing. I can see the path. In the meantime I can make use of my crock pot and fridge to have healthy meal options always available even if they are "leftovers". Because that's really what this is....grandiose leftovers. LOL 

This year will be different and better than last year. I will be working, and hopefully full-time work. I have one more goal to add to my list and I'll end today's post with that goal. 

Short Term Goal: Save up and purchase Rosetta Stone's Spanish program and learn Spanish!
Long Term Goal: Speak fluent Spanish! My hopefully-on-day-sister-in-law speaks Spanish and she's offered to help me be more fluent! If nothing else, learning the language will help us be closer! she's a sweet gal and I'd love to know her better! I will admit, it has it's professional uses - and will help me with getting work and advancing.  

January 6, 2015

It's official now, I gained 6 lbs! It felt like it was three times that, I swore I wouldn't be unhappy with the result and I'm genuinely relieved. I know darned good and well I had things like creme broulee and giant cheesecake slices every night and some nights I had it twice so the actual result is way lower than I expected it to be.

I've taken my thyroid meds and am now playing my daily waiting game. Enjoying a cup of coffee and getting my blog on. Trying to figure out what I want for breakfast! I definitely need to do a little grocery shopping today - just to pick up a few things I'm going to need like coffee creamer. LOL 

Lots to do today! I have a Girl Scout meeting tonight and I need to stop by the ATM and get a balance on the account so I can start keeping some kind of accounting of our funds and what we're doing with them. I'll see if there is someone at the bank who can help me log onto the bank's online banking so I can keep the books. Poor Laura need to get that off her shoulders. Starting Saturday I need to also start keeping track of who has what cookies out and who has paid for what cookies. Weeeee!! Everyone else gets so stressed out by cookie season but I really am not. It could be that I am not intimidated by the mountain of details that comes with cookie season. We're gearing up for the booths at the grocery stores and a week from Friday we have a our first booth at Winn Dixie and that's going to be fun because Winn Dixie allows us to have a table at each entrance because it has two.  One of the other stores has two entrances but they've declined to let us put a table at each one. The girls have been doing great with their sales so far and now their sales numbers will really shoot up! They'll get to see what a difference the two tables vs one table makes with booth sales. I've really been making the focus of this cookie sale to learn business skills. Safe online marketing, tracking sales, etc. I'm definitely one happy camper. This job really plays up to my skill set most of which have a limited range of applications. 

I've just about got it together for the day, I've got my to-do list in hand and now it's time to go get it done!! 

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us ~Thomas L. Holdcroft