(Maintaining Me) RE-Creating Me

I am seriously considering changing the title of my blog.  I am not maintaining myself, and I don’t mean just weight.  I mean my usual habits have changed - healthy cooking, cleaning, time with kids, etc.  I need to get back to it.

Food today has been good, although I feel I am more hungry AFTER lunch than I was before it!  Anyone else ever experience that?  Breakfast was special k, 1% milk, half banana, coffee.  Snack was fiber bar.  Lunch was LC panini and an apple, which I am trying to hold off on eating until around 2 or so.  Drinking my water.  Dinner will be an orange chicken I have marinating, will make in the grill pan, and a carrot rice.  Those are both new recipes I am trying from allrecipe’s ‘healthy eating’ section (or whatever they call it).  Plus more veggies.  I really need to do this - buckle down - not just for me, but for DD.  She is heading right in my footsteps, and not the good ones.

Last night after food shopping, 18 degrees out (much colder with the wind chill) and intermittently snowing, my car died.  I have never had that happen to me my entire life, so I freaked out.  Ended up calling my boss (lol) who drove out to see if it was my battery and give me a jump.  He ended up cleaning the battery connections and the car started (and has started several times since) … but I still may need to replace the battery.  Always something.  My feet were so frozen I was nearly in tears, I seriously thought I had frostbite.  So after that ordeal, the last thing I wanted to do was go home and cook so I caved and got the kids McD’s.  Blech. 

After finally getting the groceries away, I made a pot of butternut squash soup for during the week.  It is DELICIOUS!  I didn’t bother adding the cream at the end, it was awesome without it!  Might have a cup of that tonight with dinner also.  DD thought it was yummy, DS13 said he would try when he is “hungry”, and DS6 saw the color and ran in the other direction. 

8 days till classrooms open up for next semester, but it doesn’t officially start until 1/19.  I always like to get a head start though.

Exercise for the week:

• Monday: Firm DVD
• Tuesday: DVD or treadmill (or both)
• Wednesday: Break, Girlscouts
• Thursday: Firm DVD
• Friday: Break
• Saturday or Sunday: Exercise one of the days

Okay, plenty of work to get done!  I need to stop browsing the American Girl website.  I am taking DD and her BFF (and my friend, her BFF’s mom) to lunch at the cafe for a Birthday Luncheon and then a photo shoot next month, at the NYC AG shop.  I think I am more excited than DD!  Okay not really, but I am pretty excited for this.  She is getting Elizabeth for her b-day.

Have a great day ladies!

A couple days late, lol, but better late than never.

I tried to get here to blog last night, I was really upset and actually tearful but didn’t make it here.  I don’t know: the combination of Max (who isn’t really responding to the medication) and the naked Christmas tree as I took down decorations.  I have felt less inspired lately, and surely less inspirational because I am not accomplishing anything in terms of health and fitness.  I feel like a blob and I just haven’t found a way to strike the balance between work, family, school, and health.  It’s like I can only manage to be good at one or the other: school or health/fitness, and I am such a perfectionist that when I focus on one it has to be PERFECT and I can’t fit the other in at all.  My therapist asked me what would happen if I didn’t strive for perfect with school, if I settled for a “good enough” grade.  To me, that is shocking, unacceptable, just … no way!  If I do it, I have to do it all the way.  Just my personality, and yup, it isn’t always a good way to be.

So I have been on break for 10 days, getting through the holidays.  Do you think I have formally exercised at all?  Nope.  I am always ’starting tomorrow’.  I only have two classes this coming semester though, and I should be able to figure out how to exercise 2 - 3 evenings per week, plus one weekend day.  In addition, I have to start cooking healthier again.  The problem is with being busy, I am turning to convenience foods too often.  I need a fresh batch of HEALTHY 30-minute-meals.  Suggestions?

I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow.  For the last month, I have not worked a full week!  4 days, 4 days, 3 days, 2 days.  Using up some vacay/holiday time.  Tomorrow is truly back to reality.

While putting away the Christmas decor (in my horrible, horrendous garage that you cannot even WALK through right now) I came across a frame my aunt had bought me her last Christmas alive.  It has been in the box ever since, I think I only briefly looked at it .. and actually went to throw it out last night and then fished it back out and opened it up.  I probably won’t use it … it is engraved Christmas 2004 and that was my first Christmas alone with 3 kids, it was a blur and a very bad year for me.  I don’t even know where the pictures are for the Christmas, let alone one I’d want to display.  The twins were toddlers and XH slept over that night to mantain some resemblance of a normal holiday, I suppose, but left at 8:30 am to spend the day with his new GF and her 3 kids.  Anyway, the day after xmas I was supposed to drive down to dinner at my aunts, but two hours away in snow with 3 kids myself after that crappy holiday, I cancelled and she was mad at me.  She didn’t speak to me until June 9th, the night she called to apologize and say that she understood me not wanting to make the trip in the bad weather with the kids.  And then she died an hour later, they found her the next morning.  I guess thinking about all of this depressed me last night too … amazing how things work out, how she called me the night before her trip to Scotland as she was packing for us to reconnect and make plans … and then she passed away.  But if she had never made that call, I would have felt horribly guilty for the rest of my life.  A lot of what I do, I do for my aunt.  She reminds me of myself … only she had it even harder.  In a family with 8 brothers she had to help take care of because her parents both died when she was a young teen, worked her way through college and opened her own accounting firm.  She is the only one of them that ever graduated college.  I think many people misunderstood her, I think many don’t realize how much she did for her family.  I miss her.

Okay, chin up.  Today’s plans: take down naked tree, find somewhere to put it away in the craziness of the garage.  Finish cleaning (mopping, etc.) and some laundry.  HEALTHY food shopping.  Perhaps a trip to Target.  And a workout, no reason to put it off until tomorrow. 

I don’t have any New Years Resolutions.  I feel like my life, every year, is a resolution in progress.  No need to wait until a new year to make one!

HUGS!

Am I actually bored?  Why yes, I am!

School is over.  Kids are with XH … coming home tomorrow, but they have been with him since Saturday.  It is truly bizarre to get ready for work and come home from work to an empty house and no kids to shuttle around, no one to feed (but myself), no fights to break up.  :-D 

I spent Saturday with SBFF and despite the horrible cold and icy rain, we had a great time.  Sunday was spent hitting the after-xmas sales and cleaning house, Monday I completed the cleaning after work and the house is in tip-top shape for our NYE shindig, just to get all dirty again. 

Work is so quiet.  It figures - the last couple of months have been SO HECTIC.  Now school is done, and I don’t have anything to do!  I am literally sitting in my office watching kardashian clips on hulu.  I probably shouldn’t announce that, eh?

Rewind to Christmas - it was the best Xmas.  Ever.  We had just a wonderful holiday.  Everyone was super happy with their gifts and we had such a fun day cooking, playing games, watching a movie.  I got a beautiful beautiful beautiful white gold diamond green amethyst ring that I LOVE.  And a flip video, and a bunch of other little things that I wanted.  The kids made me the most adorable  homemade gifts, always the best kind.  Mom was thrilled with her stuff, as was dad.  No catastrophes with my dad.  Great holiday.

I am off the rest of the week: 5 lovely days off.  If this snowstorm blows in, I will be super-ticked because I have spent a TON on food for NYE.  Crab and Lobster stuffed mushrooms, Caprese skewers, sweet and sour meatballs, cheese platter, and more … all homemade.  Oh and pineapple upside down cake and kahlua choc cake too.  And a yummy frozen champagne drink.

Clearly, this is my last hurrah for 2009.  NO SNOW!  At least until after, say, 1 am NYE.  No make it 2 am, make sure everyone gets home safely.

Taking the train into the city tonight to see how the renovations are coming along at R’s.  Dinner out, staying there, then scooping up kiddos on the way home tomorrow afternoon.  Everything will be back to normal at this time tomorrow.

Hugs!  I hope you all had wonderful, beautiful holidays!

So far I have made zero progress on my final paper for Global Climate Change that is due in - oh - 9 days.  7 pages, 9 days.  Clueless.  So I am here, stalling.  Or confessing.  Or both.

With Christmas comes gift giving and family, and with gift giving, family and entertaining comes baking.  With baking comes cookies.  Rainbows, raspberry almond thumprints, butter, shortbread, chocolate macaroons.  Cakes and pumpkin-y desserts.  Etc. etc. blah blah blah.  I love baking, LOVE it.  This is my favorite time of year.  I love creating beautiful cookie platters, wrapping them up in shiny cellophane and tying them up with christmassy  ribbons.  I get satisfaction from that.

Tonight I had to bake 4 dozen cookies for the twin’s presentation on family tradition for school because tradition in our house is, plainly put, cookies.  This weekend was filled with truffles: homemade, hand rolled, dipped in semi-sweet or white chocolate truffles.  For the teachers.  (They are frozen, they are in the safe zone … for now).  More baking Friday when the REAL countdown begins: the platters.  That is when I begin the rainbows, the almond crescents, the thumprints, and whatever else I decide on this year.

I have eaten too many this weekend, and I am sick. And I am PMSing.  BAD THIS MONTH.  As in I HATE EVERYONE, F word every other sentence (in my head), etc.  Yesterday was realllllllllllly terrible.  I had zero patience, R bought these beautiful and way-overpriced filet mignons and I bitched about cooking them and the clean up because I had a paper to write.  In fact, I bitched about EVERYTHING.

The paper.  Yeah, the one I am supposed to be working on right now, although the last twenty minutes was spent perusing food blogs and looking at cookie porn.  I could have been working out also - I hit my 3x goal last week.  This week definitely won’t make that as I NEED TO GET THIS PAPER WRITTEN.

I woke up this morning with an itchy, swollen eye.  Not pink eye, it is allergy related.  I even had the little hives around my eye that I normally get when I have a pet allergy reaction - extremely weird!  It is still a little swollen but responding to my allergy drops.  Maybe I had ferret fur in my eyeball. 

Then, in a mad dash out the door to make the school bus in time, I was chanting to the kids, “Don’t run! Don’t run! Just go but do not run!” and WHOOSH!  Wiped out right on my ass (ICE) … business bag and coffee cup and all.  I actually cut my hand and scraped my knee.  So the kids stop and freeze and look at me, the school bus is sitting in front of my house, and I probably gave everyone a good laugh.  I assured them I was fine and to head off to school.

I have gotten a lot of work done this morning and am excited about my day off tomorrow.  My plan is to do some wrapping from 9 - 12 while I wait for the furnace repair person, then head off to Target ISO this cute apron I saw for SBFF.  I may also stop at the grocery store because I am unsure of what we are having for dinner.

• B: 100 cal EM, cherry preserves, coffee
• S: Pear
• L: LC Lemon Chicken
• S: Apple or Yogurt
• D: Unsure, maybe burgers

Exericse: Tawnya, since you mentioned it, I will do Get Chis’ld.  I swear, I work much harder with that DVD than I ever have at the gym! 

Last chapter in Algebra homework/quiz almost wrapped up … then it is on to final paper.  Same with Global Climate Change.

Have a great day ladies!!!!!!!

Working at home.  You’d think I might have a minute here or there to accomplish some other things during the day, no such like.  3 pm and I am just slowing down.

• B: EB EM, coffee
• L: tuna on light honey wheat
• D: breakfast dinner tonight, prob same thing I ate for breakfast, lol

Since I am home I will workout tonight.  Have to clear out a corner of the garage for repairman to take apart my furnace, laundry, and lots and lots of algebra.  Good times.

Must drink more water.  Back to work!

Good afternoon everyone.  I have run out of catchy titles. 

Did you ever get so hungry that when you finally ate, you were only MORE hungry?

I did my workout last night, woo hoo!

• B: Egg beaters on 100 cal e.m., coffee
• L: LC Panini, yogurt
• S: Animal crackers (bag that had 2 servings, ate too much!)
• D: Stuffed clams, veggies

Tonight is gymnastics for DD, no workout.  Lots of cleaning to do.  Have to find an HVAC repair person AND someone to look at my dishwasher, need to get started on that now.

Need to drink more water.  Goal for tonight: NO evening eating!

You ladies are right: if I must let some of the exercise go, I HAVE to eat properly. 

For the most part, I had a good weekend food wise, except late Saturday evening when I went out to dinner with a group of friends.  I ate too many appetizer chips and then a really yummy (but probably not healthy at all) Quesadilla Salad.  The rest of the weekend was spent juggling schoolwork on the train and Xmas shopping.  This was the last weekend I had sans-kids before Christmas … if you can call it that, it was actually only 24 hours I had without kids.  Anyway, I did get a lot accomplished.  PLUS I took a couple days off of work, so the next FOUR WEEKS I don’t work one full week!  WOO HOO!

Tonight I will be doing a Firm DVD at home.  I have a lot of algebra work to do, but I am ’scheduling’ my workout from 6:30 - 7:30.

• Breakfast: Honey Kix (new, pretty good, but left me still hungry), Coffee
• Snack: Banana
• Lunch: LC Tortilla crusted fish
• Snack: Apple
• Dinner: Chicken piccata, veggies
• Dessert: .5 cup Edys light peppermint, yummy!

Anyone have any suggestions for a bunch of leftover pot roast meat?  Some sort of casserole or something?

Christmas shopping is really coming along … I am entirely done with kids, parents, R.  Still a few gifts from kids to XH’s family (which every year I say I am not going to do because HE should be the one taking the kids out to buy for his mother, his sister, his BIL, etc. … he doesn’t even take them out to get something for me, but I end up doing this anyway) and then teachers, etc. 

Okay well back to work.  I’m hungry … lol.

I am here, but I have no time for this.

I have no time for anything BUT complaining about how little time I have, see?  I am at work with a headache, a long to-do list, and my school work swimming around somewhere in the back of my head - a constant reminder of what needs to be done.  But my bra is tight.  Yes, my bra.  Well - in all honesty - ALL my clothing is tight.  But it is really very disconcerting that my bra is so tight that I can’t wait to get home and remove it each day. 

I need to make time for myself.  Clearly, I NEED to be a little selfish sometimes in order to keep my health and my sanity.  I will not go back to size 24 Kelly.  I am now a VERY tight size 8 Kelly, and I will NOT be purchasing size 10s.  I see myself slipping into old habits … I have the opportunity to go out with some friends Saturday night, actual face-to-face adult conversation and drinks … but I don’t want to go because I don’t like the way any of my tight clothes fit.

I spend so much time sitting now.  If I am not sitting at work, I am sitting at home doing schoolwork.  On the rare occasion that I find a free moment … there is housework.  And oh yeah, I have three kids that I would like to see once in a while, somewhere other than the dinner table.  Lately that is the only face time I have with them.

Phone, ringing.  Ignoring.  Gotta love voicemail.

I need to get back to the schedules.  I need to hold myself accountable.  I need to allow myself 15 minutes per day to journal - sometimes here but at the very least over at the Daily Plate to log my food.  I can’t remember the last time I did that.  I need to reel myself back in.

And let me tell you - it SUCKS to be ‘reeling in’ in the middle of the holidays!

I won’t be able to exercise like before, but I think I can squeeze in 3 days per week, maybe even 4.  So, here goes my schedule:

• Saturdays/Sundays: At least 1 workout, try for 2
• Monday: Workout at home
• Tuesday/Wednesday - commitments with gymnastics/girl scouts, no w.o.
• Thursday: Workout at home OR kickboxing class
• Friday: Family time, No W.O.

Every night this week after work I have been running around like crazy.  Tonight is no different; home briefly, quick dinner of tilapia, and then off to GS Xmas party.  Home, schoolwork, bed .. up by 7 am, taking 8 am train into city to meet XH with kids.

I am going to print this all on a Cozi calendar for home.

I will NEVER have the time … I am just going to have to create it.

HUGS!

I am really missing coming here daily to check in.  Well, I miss the old journals, but I sort of miss this too.  (Speaking of old journals, has ANYONE ever received their file?  Hmmph)

So, my furbaby has Adrenal Gland Disease which is very common in ferrets 3 years and older, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me.  We are off the the Vet to discuss options on Saturday.  There is surgery (very risky, very expensive) and medical management with meds (doesn’t cure it, but stops tumor growth and they can live the reminder of their life comfortably but not as long of a life as an un-infected ferret, and STILL expensive).  No idea what we are going to do at this point.  He is my sweetie, my little furbaby.  He sleeps in my bed with me.  He follows me downstairs each morning and patiently waits by the cabinet that houses his raisins for a treat.  He is a mischevious little devil, but he is my baby.  Sigh.  I haven’t told the kids yet, and won’t, until I decide what treatment route I am going.

I have a weekend ALONE this weekend.  Well, it is never a full weekend … but, about 42 hours alone.  Saturday, I am up early for the vets and the afternoon I am taking the car in for new tires.  In between, school work.  At some point I’d like to see Full Moon or The Blind Side.  And, just sit and soak in peace and quiet.  Oh, and brave the lines at the supermarket for final shopping.

I just got home at 8 pm tonight.  Work, then DS had an asthma check, home to feed kids, out to parent-teacher conferences … still haven’t eaten dinner but managed to eat crappy snacks while feeding them.  Still have work to do, packing, showers, cleaning, then finally hit the books … zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

HUGS!