grrrlish

Mondays are minimum days and the kids go home early. The cherry on top was that our staff meeting was canceled. I worked in the room for an hour and then cut out early to go to the gym. Got home, did my home blessing hour (any Flybabies out there?) and now I’m getting ready to take a much-deserved bubble bath. The funk is still there, but exercise, good weather, and a clean house are helping to chase away the blues. I just love that elliptical machine at the gym. I don’t know exactly what it’s called, but it has the handles that I can push and pull. Love that thing.

Exercise Log

It’s been almost exactly two years since I’ve posted here. That little baby in the picture, my nephew, will be 4 next month. I’ve actually lost quite a bit of weight, and I’ve got quite a bit more to go. My husband and I have been trying unsuccessfully to have a baby through IVF. We’ve given it two tries, and the doctor just told us that the chances of us conceiving with my eggs and his sperm are pretty much nil. She gave us a pretty good chance with donor eggs and sperm, so there’s that. So… I’ve been in this funk that I can’t seem to break out of. I’ve decided that tomorrow I really need to get back on track with the gym as well as with general household maintenance. Both will help my psyche. I want to be as healthy as possible when we decide to proceed.

 Someone recently sent me a buddy request and I rediscovered this site. Thank you for that. I am looking for some friends and positive energy.

That’s it. That’s my real age according to realage.com. My calendar age is 36.4. I actually a little relieved that it’s not sooo bad. I mean I’m not blind to the fact that I’ve made poor lifestyle choices. I’m almost 300 pounds (but losing!). I just thought it would be worse. I can’t do anything about the calendar, but I can turn back the clock a bit on this “real” age. The site certainly gives me a lot of suggestions. I am going to focus on exercise and blood pressure for now.

I went to bed with a sore throat and woke up miserable. I’m being a big baby, but I just feel awful. My throat hurts, my head hurts, and I’m congested. Wahh wahh. I can tell you right now I’m not exercising today. I don’t feel like eating anything, so at least I don’t have to worry about sticking to my diet.

I didn’t do so well with the eating and exercise last week. Even then I didn’t go totally out of control like I might have done. I weighed myself and I’d lost a considerable about of weight. The weight tracker warned me that I was losing too fast, but I don’t think I am. The starting weight was one from the gym about 2 weeks ago, on a public much-used scale. I also weighed in the evening instead of in the morning. So I know I’m losing weight, but I don’t think I’m losing too quickly if that makes sense.

I’m still completely bogged down with work and school, but I feel good. I made it to the gym. The kids and I are conducting a deep cleaning of the classroom during recesses. I’m getting lunches made and managed to eat out without doing too much damage.

 I know I am putting off my research, but I just do not feel like doing homework. I rescheduled the meeting with my professor so I could have the weekend to work on it. I wish I wasn’t teaching after school club, although it’s easy money and the kids are sweet. I just relish time at home.

I’m pursuing a masters in educational technology. It’s kind of interesting attempting this in my district because we are pretty behind the times technology-wise. Our school is low performing, low income, high priority, Reading First, and program improvement. We’re renegotiating our contracts at a time when the nation is in an economic crisis, and the district is playing that for all it’s worth. They want to take us from 80% benefits to 45%. Morale is seriously low, particularly among my fellow fourth and fifth year teachers. Many of us are pursuing higher degrees with an eye to what else we might do with them.

A financial planner came to school today to talk to us about maximizing retirement. Apparently this means 25 more years of teaching for me! My mission is to find a way to work smarter not harder and enjoy my kids more. They’re a great group. I had most of them last year and took them on to third grade. It has been such a rare opportunity.

Oh… the financial planner gave me a sandwich, but I didn’t eat it. There, I have made it back to weight loss at last.

I just happened on this site, so I’m going to give it a whirl. I would really like to make some new friends and to just have someone to share in the day to day trials and tribulations. Of course I do have my husband, and he is a wonderful partner. It’s just that sometimes I need something just for myself, and that will be this site for now. I’m getting to the end of You on a Diet. I appreciate the science and we’ve done the fridge/cupboard purging thing. Bobby was an incredibly good sport about it. We’ve been whole grain sugar free people for the most part. I did have a few minor slips, but I don’t find the cravings to be what they once were. My biggest problem is not so much the diet part as the sticking to it part. I’ve got so much weight to lose that smaller losses aren’t all that noticeable. I feel very fortunate that despite my size I’ve been relatively healthy and medication free. I can perform low impact exercise without difficulty. As is probably true for many of us, my biggest obstacle is my brain.

 I also need to sort out some nighttime issues. I know you’re not supposed to eat right before bed, but we get home so late some nights. It is really not unheard of to have dinner at nine. I know that’s not such a great thing so I’m going to try to whittle away at the problem somehow over the next several weeks. In my ideal world I would eat my dinner at 4:00 because that is when I am ravenous and I still have to wait two hours for my husband to get off work. I am unwilling to have dinner without him.

 I am pretty good about lunch. I make bento boxes for us and fill them with a variety of healthy items. I don’t know if anybody else does bentos? They are so much fun. Here is one I did last summer when the nasturtiums were in bloom.

  I miss my garden. We didn’t do any winter vegetables this year and it’s just a sad looking pile of dead things right now.