One Step at a Time

http://maryanna24.blogspot.com/2010/05/enjoying-rain.html

http://maryanna24.blogspot.com/

Student teaching is over! And so is my required “daily reflection” which suck all of my blogging juices out of me. So here I am… on blogger… hope you wil all forgive me for abandoning you!

http://maryanna24.blogspot.com/2010/05/so.html

I just suck … haha. So my life has gotten out of control, including my eating habits. Super. I need to dig my feet in and start back in the direction I was going before the “career change”. What I decided I needed was a “motivator” if you will… a reason to really stick to dieting.  I was looking at what has been motivating me lately, and everything is about art adn education. So… I’ve started a new sculpture project based on me “transforming” myself.  Its going to be a transformation project of sorts. I made a plaster cast of my torso this morning. Nothing can made you feel fat like a 3D rendering of your body! In 25 lbs I’ll do another one, and so on. I want 4 casts at 25lbs increments. I’m thinking that adding a journaling element to it may be cool - so that may keep me on track with blogging. Ugh - you must all think I suck so much! I feel like everyone s so dedicated and I’m just the invalid who can’t follow through with anything she sets out to do in 2010. Blah.

…which means Bones is on. Woohoo!

I am completely exhausted. I’m not sure why. I’ve been sleeping enough, I’ve been sticking to my calorie plan, I’ve been exercising… but I just can’t stay awake!  Getting up in the morning is even worse - it’s completely evil.  Today I got up at 6:55.  I need to be at school around 7:15 - DEFINETLY before 7:30.  The school is twenty minutes away if I speed the entire way there.  Yeah - not so good.  But somehow I got up, showered, and got there by 7:25.  Score one for me, but man is that a frantic start to the day.

I was so tired, I wasn’t going to go to the gym.  Or do anything.  Then hubby wanted to go to the gym (I need to go with him, as it’s my college’s gym and he has to enter with me as my guest).  I went begrudgingly, and decided to walk for 30 min.  After 15 min I decided to run the rest - so I ended up doing what I had planned on anyway. My shins hurt still, but it’s a different hurt than before.  I can run through this - and it subsides part of the way into the run. Before it hurt in a way that got worse and made me have to stop.  I’ve been going up by 5 minute increments each week.  Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be at a place where I can run for 30 min straight.  Thats my goal.  I don’t go that fast - only 5.0 mph, but still - it’s something I suppose.

So now I’m working on lesson plans… one on shading and value to be exact.  Then one on grid portraits and Chuck Close. My goal for the end of the week is to NOT let my To Do list reach 2 pages.  Hahaha, good luck me!  Oh well. Half and hour more to go and Bones will be on - and I’ll allow myself a break (not that this isn’t one, but you know…)

Hope everyone has a great night/day.

Just checking in since I didn’t get a chance to yesterday.  Diet has been good both yesterday and today.  Run/walk for 30 min yesterday, and a 45 minute walk today.  Busy busy busy! Hope everyone had a great day.  I’m off to write up a couple of lesson plans, work on examples for class, revamp my resume, find my old college transcripts, and perhaps even get t burning DVD’s of my BIL’s wedding picks so they are ready to mail to family.  Hooray!

I’m wondering if following a “doing what I feel like doing” exercise plan is a good idea.  Like today - I had planned out that I would do 30 Day Shred.  I got into the first circuit and realized I wasn’t feeling it… and if I wasn’t feeling it, I knew I’d - in Jilllians words - phone it in without even thinking about it.  So I decided to hit the off button and hit the elliptical machine instead.  I had a great workout there.  Maybe I can just go with that.  Plan out my food, and only plan on doing at least 30 minutes of exercise a day.  Then I can do it when I’m feeling it, or when I get time to do it.  Any if I can’t get to the gym to use a treadmill - no sweat.  I can just do a video or use the elliptical right? Hmmm…  is this really a good idea? I’m not so sure.  Not having a plan to me seems like an excuse somehow… I mean as long as I burn the calories right?

I have so.freaking.much.to.do. tonight. I have to write up a Professional Development Plan for my internship, fill out a bunch of IRS forms for an application to substitute teach (so I get paid if the teacher calls out sick), email people for letters of reference, finish a cast mask project, develop a lesson plan for montage portriats, develop a worksheet detailing sketchbook requirements for the classes that start at the beginning of the semester, and come up with some lesson plan ideas for the advanced ceramics class. *BREATHE*  Haha, I just want to go to bed!  At least I made some “me” time today where I could workout and blog.  That always makes e feel better.  Now the challenge will be continuing to do so!

Have a great night ladies.

Oh - I really want to read this book… Fat Girl: A true Story by Judith Moore.  I’ve been eyeing it for a while and now have some gift cards to spend.  Has anyone read it or have any input?

I will not become a once a week blogger, I will not become a once a week blogger…

I’m truly amazed at how changing “jobs” has totally disrupted my schedule! I had a meal plan down, and an exercise plan down - and it was working then POOF - everything isupside down! This needs to change! 

At a advisory meeting we had last week, my internship advisor made a point of saying we need to make sure we schedule in time for ourselves.  Yeah, easier said than done.  But I know this is something I need to do!  I ran yesterday (well, walk/run) and it felt great! First time in a week I’ve done it because I get so caught up in everything else.  I think that was something I liked most about my old job.  It was a set schedule and it was a job that left me with no desire to do anything for it outside of work.  Now I’m like makng stuff for lesson plans, and finding cool stuff I want to include in lessons… I can only imagine how much this is going to get out of control when I actually have my own classroom! So I need to schedule in exercise time and blogging time everyday.  I NEED TO.  I’m going to.  Schedules are key, and I need to work out a schedule.  I think that Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday should be run/walk days with stregnth trainning in the morning… which entails bringing clothes with me to work so I can hit up the college gym after work.  Then Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays can be in house elliptical days in the am (I have meetings after work on these days that will prevent me from going to the gym right after work.) Yes. This is my schedule.  And blogging.  I used to blog at work - and that’s not an option now… so I need to make time for it at night. 

I dislike the feeling of drowning

Pictures from the BIL’s wedding can be seen here: http://community.webshots.com/user/MaryannShaw

Well, about 1/3 of the anyway… the link is also on http://loudhamburger.wordpress.com

I’m full, as I ate too much for dinner. Whoops.  One of our computers died last night. Talk about stress?  I had a meeting today with my advisory group for student teaching, and had 1 paper (8 pages) and 5 jounral entries (2-3 pages a piece).  They were all on the computer that died.  I was ready for a night from hell last night.  But luckily hubby is my hero and got the comp up and running long enough to transfer the files I needed.  Hubby also got put in charge of dinner last night, so we had pizza.  Who didn’t see that coming. 

I ran yesterday and felt really good afterwards.  I woke up REALLY late today so I didn’t get to do strength training before school. Had a few meetings after school so I didn’t get to the gym.  Tomorrow I NEED to get up early to work out before work, because I have to get a state inspection done on my car after school tomorrow (I also have to be in early - eeek.)  Yeah, it expired in December - I totally forgot to get it done.

This weekend is going to be interesting.  Friday we leave for CT (3 hour drive), then go to Philly Sat morning (5 hour drive) for my brothers wedding. I’m the photographer, hubby is the best man.  Then Sunday its another 5 hours to CT, then 3 hours to Maine.  Thank God we have Monday off! Not sure how good the diet is going to be seeing as there is so much to do and so much driving.  I don’t think I’m going to be perfect, and I think the exercising will leave something to be desired. Whatever the outcome -  I’m recommitting or continuing (depending on whether or not I self destruct) on Monday and will kick ass from there on out!

Hm. I kind of want to go to Borders…

So… here I sit at Panera with no motivation to write.  Kind of defeats going to a writing group, doesn’t it? Ha. But I was out of state for the past two weeks and didn’t go, and I’ll be out of state next weekend - so I felt I really had to go this weekend.   At least there’s coffee.  I woke up really late and ran out of the apt without eating breakfast, so I had to get breakfast here.  I got a cranberry walnut bagel with plain cream cheese, which isn’t the worst thing to get.  Actually, I’m pretty sure it was my best option.  I did ask for reduced fat cream cheese but didn’t realize until after I ate it that it was regular.  That plus skim milk in my coffee = 533 calories.  That’s much more than I normally eat for breakfast so I’m going to have to be really careful for the rest of the day.

The vegetable dip got me yesterday (I made spinach dip for my hubby and his friend) but I didn’t go overboard.  I really don’t think I even “went over” by much, but it took some effort.  That stuff is freaking good.  Speaking of good, can I tell you how hard it is to sit in a Panera while hungry? The bagel did nothing (as carb breakfasts never keep me full), and now I’m counting down the minutes until lunch time when I can go home and eat something real!

As far as the writing is concerned… So I’ve mentioned I wrote this story.  5 people have read it, 4 really like it.  Well, 5 people have read SOME of it.  [This does't include anyone who read an excerpt on my other blog.] My husband asked me to let his mother read it because she’s a published author.  [Note, I felt very uncomfortable with this.]  She read 22 out of 250+ pages.  It’s a rough draft, mind you. I haven’t done any rewrites.  So she basically starts picking apart things like one of the parents not being mentioned in a scene that they should be in, or she doesn’t like this one line because of the word choices.  Also, she asked me what the point of two of the characters were because she hadn’t really seen them take a big part in the story. HELLO. You only read 22 pages!  I mean, I can take criticism - but when it’s obvious your criticizing things and asking me questions because you don’t feel like reading the whole thing… Ugh.  It seems to have really ticked hubby off, as he always makes time to read her manuscripts and she wouldn’t take the time to read mine.  Not that I wanted her to, but he wanted her to so…  Yeah.  At first I was like ok I’m a sucky writer and I just kind of… had my writing bubble deflated.  But a day or two later I realized I couldn’t really take it seriously.  I know there are grammar errors and little inconsistencies.  That’s the nature of a first draft.  What I wanted was an opinion of the overall story.  You can’t get that from 22 pages.

So, the real reason I think I “need” to be here is that I basically decided I wasn’t a good writer because 1/5 people who read SOME of my story thought it needed a lot of work.  And that one person spent most of her life being rejected from publishers… so really maybe I shouldn’t get discouraged. If she read the WHOLE THING and thought it was bad, then fine. Or if one of the people who read the whole thing thought it was bad, then fine.  I think that I have a few things to clena up, but don’t read 22 pages and infer that I need to rewrite the whole thing. Or maybe I just suck. Bah, who knows.

She does seem to like my artwork a little too much though… it’s strange.

Oh well, c’est la vie.