Road to Recovery, Creative Mojo, Age of Enlightenment, and other Random Stuff.

I've had this blog post rattling around inside my head for days now, but between being sick, work, two 7 hour round-trip drives to Susquehanna University, and just spending some family time on Easter weekend, I just haven't had time to put it together. Now I've got a free 1/2 hour before I head to the airport so here goes...

Road to Recovery: Yes, I've been noticeably absent. Because I was sick. For two weeks. I had the sore throat, cough, congestion, body aches, all I want to do is sleep thing that's been going around. And trying to sleep propped up so I could breathe aggravated my sciatic nerve so then my back hurt so bad I could barely walk. I finally did three nights of Nyquil-induced coma and I'm feeling much better, thank you. Does mean I missed a solid week of Curves and my strength dropped, so my workouts have been less than par. And I stayed away from Treadmill for awhile, so I'll be back to square one there. But I will be back.

As soon as I get back from Portland that is. Yes, heading out for a four day work-related trip to Portland. Don't envy me. I get to spend all day Wednesday in a hotel conference room with 25 other attorneys talking current issues facing our MLS businesses. Yawn. I'll try to hit the fitness room while I'm there. The upside to Portland - I'm going to the read the last of the Twilight series books on the flight to/from. Yeah! Escape into vampire world!

Creative Mojo: So I think maybe my Creative Mojo is coming back. I feel right now like I'm back in college juggling a full course load, but I'm LOVING this! I'm currently enrolled in three Big Picture Scrapbooking courses - Life Well Crafted (year long), Library of Memories, and Wellness Journey. The Wellness Journey one just got started and it is all about embracing fitness and getting your body moving. I NEED this class! I'm also taking Type + Writer at the Jessica Sprague site. Type + Writer is a combo journaling/digi-scrapping class. Check out my first two layouts!

The Age of Enlightenment: Now this second layout is interesting because it comes at a time when I'm also doing a "read-along" with author Brene Brown on her blog following the book "I Thought It Was Just Me". This book is about dealing with shame and moving into shame-resilience which is a hard concept to explain, but very eye-opening work. At any rate, I've decided having gotten into all these online courses and what not that the 40's definitely is the Age of Enlightenment. It is that point when you finally realize that trying to be the person everyone else wants you to be just isn't working for you and you need to learn to just BE YOURSELF. You need to take all those versions of yourself that you've created to meet everyone else's needs - mother, wife, friend, employee, etc. - and incorporate all those selves into one authentic whole person. And even more than that - a whole person who takes the time to nurture and love herself and meet her own needs. I'm working on it. But man, what a concept. And why does it take us this long into our human existence to figure this out anyway???

American Idol - I'm thinking Adam has a good shot at winning, although he's really not my thing. Lil has a great voice but she isn't doing a very good job at showcasing it. Love Danny Gorkey, but don't think he's the best. Personally I'm having a hard time deciding between Matt and Kris. What do you think?

Wii Fit - so we got this game for Easter. And knowing NOTHING about it or how it works I get on and my kids click me through the fitness test. My brain has a really hard time translating how those pictures on the t.v. are supposedly telling me how to adjust my weight right vs. left foot. I finally got it, but apparently too late. The Wii tells me "So the balance test isn't your forte. Do you find yourself tripping over your own feet?" Aw, come on - give an old lady a break! It also told me I'm "obese" (okay, I knew that) and that my Wii Fit age is "49" - not so bad considering I'm almost 48. But my 50 year old DH has a Wii Fit age of 37. God, sometimes I hate men. Anyway, after Portland, I'm going to try the yoga and stretching stuff on Wii. Anyone out there do this? Does it work?

Time's Up! Okay, gotta run now. Airport and Twilight, here I come!

your favorite workout music?

Treadmill - 12 minutes, .62 miles. Baby steps. Small victories. And so it continues. But, honestly, being on the treadmill is BORRRRRING! So now I'm thinking if I'm truly going to stay motivated to continue this mind over machine quest, I need to put some good workout music on my iPod (right now it just has BPS class audio downloads). Where to start? I know I need to go to iTunes and download some stuff. Any suggestions? What is your favorite music to workout to? Help!

in the ongoing battle

between WOman and machine - Treadmill tried really hard to oust me after just 3 minutes today. But I hung in for a total of 8 minutes, .43 miles. Baby steps. Small Victories. Loving myself for having stuck with this for four days already. Treadmill, you are going down!

Small Victories

I have a friend who is big into couponing. She can go into a grocery store and come out with $600 worth of merchandise, yet pay only $75. She carries a 3 ring binder, indexed by category, filled with trading card protectors that are stuffed to the gills with coupons. It's amazing. Awe-inspiring. And a lot of work. I don't have the time or inclination to be that fanatical about couponing, so I have to settle for small victories. Here's my victories for this week. Giant had individual packs of Stride gum on sale 3/$2.00. I had a $2.00 off coupon.
So I got these FREE! SCORE!

Even better - Giant is running a sale on Luden's cough drops 10 packages for $10.00. You must have their store card to get this price, but you don't have to buy the quantity, you can buy any quantity and it is $1.00 per bag. I have a $1.00 off coupon. Cool. But - I ALSO have a coupon that allows you to DOUBLE your $1.00 off coupon.

Meaning Giant paid me $1.00 to take these off their hands! Now my thrifty friend would have had ten or twenty coupons like this stuffed in her binder and would have really made a profit "buying" these - but you can't get away with that around here. Giant limits you to four doubling coupons per household and it's tracked by that card that you have to use to be entitled to the sale price. Plus, you have to purchase at least $15.00 worth of stuff after all discounts to use the doubling coupons, so they are guaranteed a $15.00 purchase for their $4.00 in doubling coupons. Ah well, I'll take the small victories.

Speaking of small victories - here's another one. I've been faithfully going to Curves three times a week (well, most weeks) and working out pretty hard when I'm there. I'm not eating everything I want either - but I'm still gaining weight. I know this is simple math. Burn more calories than you eat. Ugh. So on Friday, I got re-acquainted with Treadmill. I haven't visited poor Treadmill since this time last year when I first started training for the Breast Cancer 3Day. Treadmill paid me back for my neglect by totally kicking my ass! I made it 5 minutes and .25 miles before I was winded. Which means Curves is NOT meeting my needs for cardio workouts, no matter how hard I'm pushing myself there. So now I'm at war with Treadmill. I've challenged myself to go just another minute or another tenth of a mile each day. Monday I made 6.5 minutes, .35 miles. Okay, it's a very small victory, but I'll take it!

Here's today's results. 7.5 minutes, .4 miles. Take that Treadmill! Ah, small victories.

Electric Buzz

The hum was back on after a 45 minute outage. No idea what caused it, but it was back in time to catch the last 15 minutes of Idol and to reset all the clocks in the house before going to bed. We did discover that we have 3 working flashlights and quite a few candles when needed. Becca got to brush her teeth and get ready for bed by candlelight, while I managed by flashlight. Normally without t.v. or computer I would easily fall back on reading, but did you know you can't read without light??? No wonder our ancestors got up with the sun and went to bed with the sun. Not much to do when the lights are out (okay, so not much that I'd blog about anyway).

Quick Post - No Power

For reasons unknown, our power has gone out. And the whole neighborhood as far as we can see through the windows. Usually it is out for a minute or two - not this time. It's been a half-hour already. I've got whatever battery power is left for the UPS before I run out of computer life as well. And I'm missing the American Idol results show. Funny how you don't know how fully electricity affects you until you don't have it. :)

I'll let you know how it goes later.

More Monday Musings

Monday - it's a snow day. The first REAL snowfall we've had all season. No school. But I've been working and I'm exhausted already. I had to be up and out on the roads early anyway. my Monday
7:00 a.m.: breakfast, check e-mail, deal with some work stuff
7:45 a.m.: shower, dress, get ready to run
8:30 a.m.: drive to the orthopedist. In the snow. Rachel got her cast off. Her wrist is stiff and sore and won't bend. I'm led to understand that is normal and will ease over the next few days/weeks. Anyone with experience care to chime in?
10:00 a.m.: drive Rachel back home, pick up Sarah and drive (in the snow) to dentist appointment.
11:00 a.m. - drive home (in the snow) from dentist, start laundry, grab lunch
11:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.: work from home, including the odious task of submitting medical receipts to flex pay which involves babysitting the fax machine - feeding through one sheet at a time. Ugh.
3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.: shovel snow - including the 2 foot wall that the snow plows left at the bottom of the driveway. Hopefully that makes up for the fact that Curves is closed today.
4:00 p.m.: hit the internet. Yeah!

Okay, I know I've been MIA for too long and I can't tell you I have any great excuse, other than that life has been busy (see above) and I've been, well, kind of depressed lately. Not any one thing I can specifically point to, but rather a laundry list of little reasons to be down in the dumps:

• a general distaste for winter - I'm really looking forward to Spring!
• the feeling that controlling my weight has become a life long chore (and not a particularly successful or gratifying one either - witnessed by the recent climb in numbers on my scale),
• feeling deeply for my good friend's recent loss of her sister,
• feeling overwhelmed with the number of projects in front of me, the lack of time in which to accomplish them, and the general discontent of feeling non-productive and having no idea where to even begin,
• in general, missing that feeling of being truly creative and being alive.

Having identified at least some of the source of my discontent, I guess it's now up to me to do something about it. First things first. I'm letting go of Project 365. I've imported my Project 365 blog posts to this blog so I don't lose the work I've done, but I don't have the time or energy to maintain a separate blog for it. I've also found that it gets boring quickly when all your photos are of "things" rather than people. With three teenage daughters who WON'T let me take their picture, and a husband who doesn't want to document everyday stuff like me cutting his hair, but only wants photos of birthdays, holidays and vacations - well, you can only imagine how frustrating it gets to take a daily photo of nothing. So Project 365 is getting shelved in favor of ones that will bring me more happiness and satisfaction.

As for the rest, I think I need to sit myself down with a planner and break down some of these projects into baby steps and set some goals and deadlines for myself. Or maybe give myself a swift kick in the butt to get into gear.