This Week... The Update

So, I've made it through a full school week and my new workout plan is actually working time wise.  Even on my busy multi-appointment mornings I'm able to squeeze it in.  FYI I'm stepping (believe it) while watching West Wing episodes (I never watched it the first time around) on Netflix.  I'm digging it.

I looked for my scale but I think it is too far into the mouse zone (basement) so I had to bail out on the mission.  I've been doing this for 9 days and I had started to wonder if maybe I should weigh myself so I can monitor my progress.  But maybe it is for the best.  Maybe I'll be in a healthier mental place and less likely to end up sabotaging myself if I really don't know how successful I am/or am not.  You know?  So far, I'm pretty successful and it really hasn't become a stress or an issue and maybe it is best to stick with what is working.  Maybe weighing myself gets my extremist juices flowing which also gets my inner saboteur going.  Okay, I've just said the same thing 7 times.  We all get it.  I'm going to not weigh in.  Wouldn't it be awesome if I never did & when I go for my physical in the summer it's a big reveal?  Yes.  That sounds good.

This week I also stepped up lots of the good stuff:  I made homemade chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and cloverleaf rolls.  I'm calorie counting everyday and emailing it out for accountability.  I threw Baby a fairly elaborate tea party on the spot when she asked for it (without putting it off, or saying I was too busy)...

 

I changed out all the bed linens (I hate doing this!).  I've been doing a pretty excellent job of adding in small cleaning tasks every weekday (laundry room baseboards, wiping down the handprints & paw prints on the walls, dusting the dining room ceiling... thanks to the fly lady cozi app).  I went to the used clothing store and snagged a couple pairs of snowpants, snow gloves, & boots for the Korean students that don't have any.  I even scheduled a weekend play date with one of Kid's favorite Korean friends... which I had been putting off since the logistics were complicated (and I have social anxiety... what can I say?!).  I also asked the other mom at Baby's dance if they'd like to have play dates (another big social anxiety breakthrough!).  On top of the usual... breakfast, lunch & dinner prep x 7, dance, gymnastics, homework, library, appointments, cleaning, shopping, bill paying, driving 90 miles a day, etc, of my daily grind.  AND I'm super close to organizing my craft closet and clearing off my bedroom chair... so close... really.

So all in all I'm telling you I'm getting my groove back and am feeling much more in control of my life and not just treading water.  Woah... 2012 was a tough year and it was really wearing me down and dragging down my quality of life.


Dinners:
Sunday: Pan seared Chicken breasts (used this same seasoning... so good), rice pilaf, peas

Monday: Tomato & Meatball Soup (oh yeah, we still have this all the time)

Tuesday: Weird impulse buy: Whole Foods frozen take out style Chinese
(cheaper & healthier than take out... way too much trouble heating up so many things... it took forever)

Wednesday: Tortellini bake (we have this once a week, Mr F says "Oh I love this dinner!" every single time like it's the first time he's ever had it... maybe if I get really organized I'll post the recipe), broccoli

Thursday: Chicken noodle soup, cloverleaf rolls, salad

Friday: Lentil soup, pita, salad

Saturday: Pizza

You Know What Time It Is

That's right, time for a list of our random (boring or not, you decide... probably boring) daily doings!

#1 Today is my grandmother's 100th birthday.  Happy Birthday, Nana!  You mean the world to me, and I am SO happy that you are in my life. Your constant love and support has been a blessing to me.  (I wish I could know all your life secrets.  How do you maintain so many friendships?  When did you have your first Pepperidge Farm cookie?)


#2  Kid had me laughing so hard last night, when I was showering her.  I had a good couple of minutes of hunched over silent hysterical laughter.  That is one step before EXTREME laughter which passes by silent mode and enters into crying and making a weird Roger Rabbit throat closing up squeal sound (I get it from my mother) and falling to the ground.  Does anyone else just go limp and fall when they laugh?  It is so fun... try it.  Anyway, Kid is hilarious... really.... I don't have the time to document it enough.  But her humor is so sophisticated and she is so quick witted that she often surprises me with it.  God, it is such a gift to be that unassumingly funny.  She is going to be a very popular adult.  (If she isn't living on her secret location historically accurate pioneer farm, as she plans)

#3  I am taking better care of myself.  I am back to food journaling and calorie counting (around 1300 calories), and so far so good. I had really eaten all the cookies, etc., I could ever need and so it doesn't even feel horribly restrictive either.  I am also trying to workout while I watch something on Netflix every school morning for 30 minutes.  So far so good on that front as well.  All in all, this is a sane and much less extreme approach than I usually take... and that is probably a good thing.  I didn't even weigh myself before I started.  I don't even care anymore.... I just would like to not hate myself so much for letting myself go... and I'd like to feel better physically and mentally and sabotaging myself does not accomplish that.  The realities of my current life and schedule are that I can do this and I need to start where I am at and not set myself up for an ultimate perfect program I cannot maintain now.  Hopefully, soon, strangers will stop asking me if I am pregnant (Yes, that happened!).

#4  We de-Christmased on Sunday.  It felt so good.  I did an especially anal repacking and labeling of bins... so they are all ready to go next year... and, damn, that was satisfying.

(I re-did our piano *mantle* with some things I say can go all the way until March... so it wasn't so stark up.  Mr F cried out "ooh!" when he saw it.  He'll be happy I let you all know that.)

#5  School started.  It has been ROUGH.  I truthfully hate almost everything about the whole getting them up and to school, the commuting (really hate that) and the homework.  It is just so exhausting and time consuming and I feel like our whole lives are spent just hurrying from one thing to the next in a manic state because THERE IS NO TIME.  It kind of sucks.

(Kid was Baby's Kindergarten class' Library Mystery Reader this week.  She was the first sibling to do it and we had to get special permission.  She knocked it out of the park.  I was so proud of her!  She was having a lot of anxiety about it but she worked through it and did an amazing job.)

#6  I signed up for a FlyLady Cozi calendar app on my phone/iPad/computer.  It is awesome.  I'm into it.  I love/hate FlyLady and definitely hate/hate all the emails and this allows me to get the cleaning missions on my daily calendar without the junk mail pile up... so far it's been good.  Plus I really enjoy using this calendar.  I've got a lot of things to schedule and I like that all my peeps can be color coded and I can tell at a glance who's got what... which is a step up from the iCal.  It is free for what it is worth.

#7  I've got a ton of big organizing projects I'd like to hit.  That is some of the other stuff I have let pile up (literally) and bring me down this past year.  It is so hard to find the time, and our evenings are just off the table as an option with homework management, dinner, showers, bedtime.  But, I'm feeling more hopeful that I can find a way to get them taken care of and stop using not taking care of it as a way to punish myself.  You know what I'm saying.  This has been a bad year.  The commute is taking up every spare moment I might use for stuff like that... I need to figure this out, though.  I'm ready to feel more in control of my life again.

#8  We ordered a new fridge.  This is big time.  We have a 20 year old fridge that makes poisonous ice (for real... the ice maker coating chips into it) and we've been picking out the *good* ice (we hope) for 2.5 years.  The gig is up.

#9  You can thank me for the sudden winter warm up, around here. We just spent roughly 1K on new snow tires and wheels for my 10.5 year old smelly mini-van because of our fears that we'd all die on our winter highway commute.  The weather instantly turned practically balmy.  Awesome.  I guess it was worth it.

#10  White vinegar as your rinse agent in your dishwasher... holy crap... it's a miracle.  For the love of God... use it.


I think that's it.

P.S. I don't think this shot shows it clearly enough... but Baby's backside (which is well endowed... as in she has to wear 2 sizes bigger in underwear than in her clothes... for real) looks like she has butt cheek implants when she wears her new gymnastics leotard!  I love it :)