Working Out!

This is what 13 burpees, 110 crunches, 48 leg raises, a 70 second plank, 7 burpees, 20 booty presses, 20 bridges, 10 squats, 6 burpees, 20 bicep curls (5lb barbell in each hand), 30 overhead tricep presses (5lb barbell), and 15 standing chestflys (5lb barbell in each hand) makes me look like...

I sweated my butt off, but man am I proud of myself! These 30 day challenges are keeping me on track, for sure! It also helps to have my lovely girls from Wife Behind the Fire reinforcing my good habits.

Normal Day - What's That?!

Here's the post that jump started this post: http://wifebehindthefire.com/do-people-have-regular-days/


I decided a while ago that I'll never be normal, and that's really okay by me. There is no "typical" day. The days vary wildly, thanks to the custody schedule, L's full-time schedule, L's part-time schedule, my job, school (mine and A's), and football (for A).

It seems like the times my days go according to plan are when I've got 50 things I need to do, and I decide I'll do "some" of them. If I leave myself a ton of flexibility, and if I'm the only one working on these "things", I've got a decent shot at stuff going at least somewhat as planned.

My job is 70 minutes away, and in the afternoons that 70 minutes can easily jump to 90-120 minutes. Having things tightly planned after work nearly assures me that traffic will be awful. Over the years (I've been there 10, and living here 5), I've learned to check the traffic before I leave, and I've learned that the Friday before a holiday I need to leave right after lunch, or just give up on getting home before bedtime. Luckily, I have flexible scheduling that mostly allows for those mornings where the interstate is shut down because a guy jumped in front of a semi-truck (yep, this has happened) and other variations of oh-crap-I'm-going-to-be-WAY-later-than-planned.

A's school is right at 80-85 minutes from work, without traffic. His daycare is right at 90 minutes. I've not only learned all sorts of alternate routes to get there when traffic is terrible, I've also made it so that I usually can have someone on back up to scoop him up if need be.

L has a crazy schedule, and i tend not to factor him into the equation with school/daycare couriering. Timing for shift change between the two jobs, and locations, etc, just makes it difficult to let him be a factor. It never fails, if I am waiting for him to come home so I can go to work, he'll run a late call, the BC will stop by to chat, he'll get sent to another station for the last part of the shift (which is ALWAYS on the other side of the county it seems!) or some other minor-to him major-to-me holdup will occur. When that happens, I'm crazy stressed and pacing, and nobody likes a stressed out pacing Missy!

Football owns our world for 4 or so months a year. We practice four nights a week, with games on Saturdays. Even when A is with his father, I still show up to pretty much every single practice. I'll never miss a game, either. Fridays and Sundays become my only "free" evenings, and then I'm really doing catchup around the house it seems. It never fails though, that something will go all to crap in the middle of the week, and I'll need to race from work to practice to something else.

I'm a full time student, but thank goodness it's an online (accredited) school! I swear every time I'm planning to do homework there's a sick pet or kid needing attention. Or the router and modem aren't working. Or I suddenly need new tires (this happens more than I care to admit).

My ex and I share custody of A, and that just adds another layer of not-normal to our 7 layer dip.

One thing is for sure, on the days where I have the most planned and the least amount of wiggle room, Murphy is sure to show up, laugh at me, and flip things upside down. Why? Well, Murphy's a jerk...this post addresses him a bit more: http://missy-of-all-trades.blogspot.com/2014/12/murphys-law.html

So Far, So Good!

Food:

I’ve been eating low/lower carb, overall. I’m not going all Atkins crazy, I really feel it is unhealthy for me. I’m just seriously limiting my carbs that aren’t from fruits or veggies. I’m also increasing my protein, which helps me not want as many carbs, and makes me feel better overall. I am working on dealing with how my food allergies affect my food choices. I’m allergic to soy (beans, oil, protein, flour, sauce, exceptions are refined soybean oil and soy lecithin), peanuts, and tree nuts (think almonds, hazel nuts, coconuts, cashews, etc). I’m also sensitive to chick peas we think, but I am going to try those again, possibly. I miss hummus! I’m doing fairly decent with my choices, and only had one real moment of upset over my diet changes, regarding ice cream. I was also a touch hungry, and pretty exhausted, so we’ll blame that ;-) I’m on a huge apple kick, and have figured out the key to not getting bored with them is to essentially pick up one of each type that I like, as opposed to a bag of all one kind. Variety is the spice of life ;-)

Activity:

I’ve taken 1.25-1.75 mile walks every day but yesterday. I jogged some on Friday, and gave myself a mild case of shin splints. This led to some shoe shopping at a running shoe store. They had to order my actual size, but by Saturday night, I should have GOOD shoes. That’s very exciting to me! I also got some actual exercise clothes yesterday, and cushy running socks to help prevent more foot blisters (the combination of extreme cold, the blister popping on the bottom of my foot, and lingering effects of my migraine added up to me skipping yesterday’s walk). I want to start Couch 2 5K soon, my only concern is that a lot of my walking needs to be done at work. Otherwise through the week, I wind up walking really late, and then that doesn’t help my sleep issues, at all. I’m also doing exercises, daily still. I’ve added in a burpees 30 day challenge, today was day 2. So counting January 1^st, (I started walking the day before all my other work out stuff), I’ve walked over 11 miles (not counting what I will walk today!). Since January 2^nd, I’ve done 70 crunches, 70 leg raises, a total of 112 seconds in planks (these all gradually increase, and there is a rest day every 4^th day – so today was my second rest day), 63 booty presses (each side), 63 bridges, 16 side leg lifts (each side), and 10 squats. I decided to add some weight exercises on Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, using my 5 pound hand weights. I’ve done a total of 60 bicep curls, 90 overhead tricep presses, and 45 standing chest flys. I had decided to add in burpees on Tuesdays/Thursdays/Saturday, too. So, I did 5 burpees on both Tuesday and Thursday. Then last night we decided to do a burpees challenge for 30 days, and I did the 2 for it last night, and 4 for it this morning, bringing me to 16 burpees so far.

Organization:

So far, so good! L folded laundry, and picked up on how I fold my shirts (they only fit in the drawers a certain way), so I was able to just put my laundry away, which was awesome. Typically I leave it go, because I need to refold most if not all of it, to make it fit. The kitchen is staying fairly not-cluttered, dishes are staying done, and the dining room table isn’t cluttered either. The bar down stairs has a few things on it, like the reflective safety gear for my walks, my ear buds, etc, but they aren’t a huge mess by any stretch! I’m definitely making and maintaining progress, in my opinion.

School:

I’m officially done with my term! I feel awesome, I flew through my last class without ever looking at the material!! I got approved to add on one more class, since I have some time. I’ve already taken the pre-assessment, and passed it. I’ve got some studying to do, but it should be no problem to get through this class. My term turns over at the end of February/beginning of March.

Weight Check-In:

I’ve lost 5 pounds! I’m really proud of losing the weight, and I know the first week or two is the easiest, but I feel really good about this. In total, I want to lose 40-60 pounds, but I am going to celebrate each time I make progress! Now to come up with some rewards as I go :-D

New Year, New Missy

I'm not usually a resolution kind of girl. They tend to be cheesy, and are easily broken. However, I am totally cheesing it up this year, by making a few.

1) Get Organized!
I started this towards the end of 2014, and now I've got things under better control than I've ever had them! It helps that L got me two kitchen islands, with storage space. One of our big issues has been that when we do grocery shop, we (I - I'm the one who puts all the groceries away) tend to just shove it in the pantry, fridge or freezer, and keep on moving. So, I took this past Saturday (while he was on shift) and made some magic happen:

I also purged a ton of stuff that we aren't going to eat, I'm allergic to, or was freezer burnt beyond being edible.

2) Exercise
I've gotten really lax on physical activity. So, I'm working on that. I even joined Pinterest to help me! I've found 2 30-day challenges to work on this month, and I've walked over a mile every single day. I'm even taking the dog with me some - she could use exercise too! I jogged a little bit, but have to wait to do more jogging, as my not-meant-for-exercise shoes caused my shins to hate me. Here are this month's challenges:

3) Loving Myself
I definitely go through periods where I don't love myself nearly as much as I should. I don't set aside any time for me, and I basically just spin in circles, trying to make everyone else happy. I also get sucked into other people's negativity and drama (although this is becoming less of an issue, I still get aggravated if people are only negative). I'm going to work on not always expecting or assuming the worst, and I'm going to budget my time better. Hopefully Resolution #1 above will help with that! I try to be positive most of the time, especially to "the world at large" (AKA, social media, and friends I am not very close with), and I think sometimes that is why it bothers me when people can't ever seem to find silver linings. This year I am going to love myself enough to be more open with those I can trust, and let them see that my life isn't always rainbows and sunshine. I'm also going to spend less time in groups or on sites that perpetuate negative posts.

4) Eating Habits
I'm working on having better habits and attitudes when it comes to food. Tracking is really difficult for me, so I'm not doing that yet. I have food issues, and when I track it often causes me to way under eat. It also causes me to meltdown if I can't figure out the exact calorie/carb/whatever content of something. So, for now, I'm just making better choices. I'm also not drinking for a while, which will help. I like girlie, sweet drinks - they aren't exactly low calorie, haha! I'm hoping to get to a point where I can track without the downward spiral that has always come with it in the past. I'm not rushing it, though. It is much more important to me that I work on the habits, than track everything to death.

5) Blogging
I need to get back into the habit of writing more. It's really a great outlet for me.

6) Baby Steps
I'm going remember that every step in the right direction counts! Every walk, every "better" choice (even if it isn't the BEST choice, BETTER still counts!) they count, and I should be proud of them. I'm going to work on not letting anyone rain on my parade with my baby steps. I'm also going to keep in mind that once those baby steps start really adding up, it'll be HUGE. Progress and new habits take time!

Murphy's Law...

This is in response to this blog post:http://wifebehindthefire.com/murphy-bastard/

Murphy enjoys breaking cars and me while L is on shift! Two summers ago, my brakes locked up, and I hit stopped traffic. I totaled my car, in the county he works in (the county we live in is bordered by it).

He was coming off shift, but I couldn't reach him. He'd already left, and was on his motorcycle. I called the station, just in case he was still there. His Lt answered, and promptly sent half the county county it seemed like! I refused to let anyone look at me (no serious injuries, lots of airbag and upholstery burns) until L got there.

Fast forward about 18 months, and I'm sitting on the interstate, in stopped traffic, and some fool is gawking off too the side of the road, and hits a car, which hits me, and I tap into the person in front of me who was also stopped. That was the beginning of November, and he was coming off shift, over an hour away. It took until the end if February to get my car in to be fixed, and then 2 (!) months to get it back.

During those two months, I got hit in the rental car! My sedan got hit by a giant Yukon driven by a little old lady, who said she couldn't see me. L was headed on shift at the PT job, but I was in the county bordering that county, so he got the guy coming off shift to cover so he could check on me.

All of my ER visits since meeting him over 5 years ago have been while he's on shift - 'nuff said!

Small (?) Catch-Up

I didn't realize just how long it had been since I'd posted. Tonight, I'm home sick with a virus, and feeling pretty rotten. I've been resting so much that I can't sleep, so why not blog?!

We made it through tackle football, go us! Minion says he wants to play again next season, but we'll see. He is SO MUCH smaller than the other kids! This pic is from Homecoming, and probably one of my favorite pics of us!

He's in the center based gifted program this year, and that's been a HUGE adjustment! Oy! New school, first time having a male teacher, etc. It will be interesting to see how it all comes out in the wash. I really miss his old school, and him not having hours of homework every single night, including weekends and holidays. 

Things are pretty much the usual, otherwise. I can't seem to get into the Christmas spirit, but I have at least gotten nearly all my shopping done!

The only real negative lately was a supposed friend that turned into a snake in the garden. That really sucked. However, I'm thankful I didn't waste more time on this "friend", and I'm thankful that it hasn't messed with any of my "inner circle" friends.  Just like in high school, those who don't come to me about rumors, really weren't my friend in the first place!

School is coming along fairly well, thankfully! It still seems like that light at the end of the tunnel is light years away, but I know each day I'm stepping closer to it. Or at least that's the mumbo jumbo I'm telling myself ;-)

Easter - Part 4 - Family!

What's a holiday without family, right?! With my brother's wife and kids in town, and my mom living more or less locally, I geared up to have a nice family lunch. I invited a couple friends, too. We wound up with 5 kids (2, 6, almost 8, 11, and 12), 5 adults, a dog, and two kitties! We put on an egg hunt, with each kid having a certain color bucket. They could only get their color eggs, and everyone had the same number eggs. I was trying to make it fair, and it worked out, since one of the eggs was really well hidden and definitely would not have been accounted for had we not counted! My dad moved several states away about 4 years ago. It stinks, honestly. We weren't close growing up, but once I had my Minion, we got a lot closer. I lived with him for a while after my divorce, even. He's never met my 2 year old nephew, because not long after he moved, my brother and his family moved several states the other direction. We went from all living within an hour or so of each other, to living 9 or more hours apart. So, I made a phone call after the egg hunt. He had no idea that my sister-in-law and the kids were here, nor my mom (they are still close friends after all these years). It made my heart swell when he said that getting to talk to all of them was the best Easter gift he could have ever gotten. We don't get many chances to get all the kids together, so we try to take advantage of it when we can, and get some pictures.