moving day 1..

I don't like moving. At all. It's very stressful and frustrating. And that's all I'm really going to say about that. I took 3 loads to the house today and then took a load to the recycling. And I went up and downstairs probably close to 50 times. My knee is not my friend :( And I'm sure I got a good workout in today! Needless to say I took a well deserved bath with some epsom salt tonight...and the great news is I get to do it all again tomorrow!

Well minus recycling.

At least we will get a break and go to a surprise birthday party at 4...

But we have people coming to look at the house we are currently in to see if they want to rent it. I'm really not fond of the way my landlord is doing this and I wish I had gotten more of my stuff to my storage unit...but that's the way it goes. I would have preferred people to come look at an empty house and not with all our stuff in it. She doesn't have a property manager here and she lives in California..so she is just having people come and I think we are supposed to show them. I'm really not a fan. So instead of moving most of the day we are going to end up cleaning the house so it looks presentable for people to come look at it. Do you know how hard it is to move and keep the house clean? Just about impossible.

And I'm off to bed so I can do it all again tomorrow!

One down...

hopefully not to many more to go! Boxes of things packed that is.

I'm fully convinced now that I'm a hoarder. I have such a hard time separating myself from the stupidest little things. I just want to keep all of it and move it to California where I won't have room for it!

Uh....no.

I think I'm slowly but surely being talked into a dreaded yard sale. When we moved last year I swore up and down with major cursing that I would never have one of those again. And here I am a year later about to move again...and my friends keep telling me I should do one and they will help me and we can get people to donate things...And the more I need to get rid of stuff the more it's sounding like it should happen. I just need to clear some things with my Pastor to really make sure we can use the church parking lot and it might be a go :) Yikes. My friends must really love me :)

And a youtube video saved my life tonight. I searched for why itunes wouldn't recognize my phone and all it took was a video showing me how to update my driver on the phone and voila! My phone showed up in itunes. Thank you Jesus..I love my iphone..but I seriously hate itunes!

And I'm trying to figure out the appropriate way to sell the paintings I have done recently to raise money for my trip to Worship School. I mean can I just make an album in my facebook pictures and call it good? And how much do I charge for them..And all that stuff. Oh boy. :)

I wish I could be so brave like some of my friends and move taking as little as possible. And not be attached to so much stuff. It's just stuff. But its my stuff. It's who I am. It's a part of me. And some of it I will still be able to get rid of. But some of it I won't. And that's ok. I am just going to need to be in a season of figuring out which is which. What can I get rid of? Or what is an absolute keep?

It's all about letting go...

Trying something new

Well tonight I tried a sweet potato...I know..I'm weird..I've never tried one before, but I chose it as one of the things I wanted to try, because I forsee myself eating a lot of baked potatoes, and I wanted to see if I would like one. Nope. I did not. I even put chili all over it, and that did not help haha!

But I tried it. And I ate about half of it before stopping. I just couldn't choke down anymore. I hadn't cooked it all the way, and I am a big texture person when it comes to eating...so yeah..but I tried :0)

I also have been making progress on burning my cd's to the external hard drive. Tonight I got about 50 of them burned. It's really time consuming but it's gonna be worth it when I can declutter my room. Speaking of that, I also started going through the utility closet in my room. That sounds odd to say, but when I had my own apartment at my old house, I had a big closet/cupboard thing in my walk in closet. It used to just hold a lot of junk that I didn't know what to do with but I wanted to keep. Well now it holds all of my toiletries, and well the rest of the junk that I want to keep but I don't know what to do with. I'm still paring it down thought. I emptied it out tonight and I am once again getting rid of stuff that I don't need or want anymore. I'm still pretty sentimental and want to keep a lot of stuff. I guess I'm gonna just have to get used to that fact about myself. So now I just need to come up with more ways to organize all my sentimental stuff and get it properly taken care of and stored away. But I'm getting there..I've found a lot of paper stuff tonight that I am shredding or recycling and a few things for the garbage here or there..but I will feel better once I get it all put back away..Right now my room still looks like a tornado hit it and it's 12:05 am. I've got a bit more to go before I can go to bed tonight haha!

The fun thing about burning all my CD's is that I am rediscovering all the music that I own. I literally haven't listened to any of my CD's in months if not years. The cd player in my car never works and every cd player I would own would skip after a while, so I moved on to whatever I had already put on my computer or Pandora. Even youtube :) So after looking at what I have it will be fun to play my music again...it will be like buying new cd's...except they are all old songs ;)


I'm feeling pretty good so far this year! I feel like I'm getting stuff done, and it's tracking that way too! I can be such a nerd sometimes ;)

Cleaning out life..

Today was one of those days where I wanted to get so much more done than I actually did. I have had the last two weeks off for Christmas Break. Did I do much? Nope. I hardly even got out of my pajamas for most of it. My bed and I have been very friendly. I have taken the word break very literal. That's for sure.

And of course in my life when my room is a mess, I seem to be a mess. So a lot of times when I feel the need to clean out my life it always ends up being a spiritual cleaning as well as a physical one. But today I was focusing on the kitchen during the day. The counter and the stove have been driving me crazy, so I took everything off of the counter and wiped it off really good and put everything away. Then I attacked the stove. I mean took burners off, elements out and lifted the top up and cleaned underneath the stove part. I was scrubbing grease out of that thing for over an hour! It was crazy. But the stove looks much better now :) It was almost like spring cleaning..in the winter haha!

And then tonight I sorted through some of my clothes and finally started burning my cd's to my external hard drive so I can start getting rid of them. I now realize this is going to take forever! Oh my gosh. Of course tonight I had to figure out where I had left off. I started this process before we moved back in May, so it was time to restart. I got the ones burned that didn't want to work last time and then about 15 more..and it took me almost 2 hours. Yikes. I have somewhere around 350 cd's. So this is going to take a while. But I can't wait until it's done and I can make some space in my room and get rid of all the tubs holding cd cases. It kind of saddens me though. I love music. I loved buying cd's and reading all the cover art and stuff..and I don't get that when I buy them on Itunes. So it's not the same kind of feeling for me. I will more than likely have a better chance of listening to all my music when they finally all get on the drive. Click click and I am there :0)

Stayed dairy and gluten free again today. :0) But I'm hungry! I definitely need to get to the store and get some more food I can eat. I'm pretty limited right now because my family loves gluten and dairy. Of course. Breakfast still is a struggle for me. I just have no idea what to eat that early that is easy to prepare and healthy. And doesn't involve dairy, bread, or eggs. Shoot..let's just take away every breakfast item known to mankind and make it off limits for me. Thanks body.

Well I better be getting to bed. I am pretty determined to get to water aerobics at 9 am. Which is still earlier than I would like to be up on my last Saturday of break, but I put it on the workout calendar :) So that must mean I should go!

Wednesday Weigh in week 77

Not much to report on the weight. I stayed at 243. I am not doing a picture today because I am still trying to get my new computer all figured out and I wasn't going to battle with Windows 8 this late at night :0) When we moved in and it was the hot week from H....and the air conditioner was broken it fried what was left of the battery in my old laptop. So I powered on for a few weeks with it flashing at me, until it finally beeped at me and told me it didn't recognize the battery. Oh. joy. So I begrudgingly ordered a new one and it came on Monday. But I have been so busy organizing the house from the move that I haven't played on the computer too much. But I can say it's an amazing feeling to not be attached to a cord again. I'm enjoying a battery that will last me for 5 hours and not a cord plugged in for all of time. I just need to find the time to get files switched over and the likes of all that. It will happen, I just have other things that will happen in front of it :)

I started and mostly finished a huge project today. With the help of my mom and my friend. I will talk more about it later, and maybe even post a before and after picture. But for right now I'm tired and need to get heading to bed...the alarm is going to go off way to early, and my project took up 12 hours today! Oy.

A couple of friends and I decided yesterday that we are getting back on track :0) All 3 of us. And we shall be reconnecting :) Just like on our sparkpeople page! Except we are doing a lot of it on FB too. Haha..

I have other thoughts swirling around in my head of things I want to post, so I will probably be posting more often :) That's a good sign of me being on track too, haha..more than one post a week.

:0)

Wednesday weigh in week 70

Well now that we have officially been telling people, I suppose the cat's out of the bag. We are moving houses. This has caused a lot of stress over the last year, and frankly has been the cause of a lot of my overeating. But it's one of those things that you don't really want to talk about you know? I'm not entirely too happy to be moving out of this house after 23 years into a much smaller house. But it has to be done. So we are in the (horrible) process of going through an entire house and deciding what can be kept and what can't. Oh and we have about 2-3 weeks to do all this. Oy. Vey. And throw a yard sale in there somehow.

At this point I am just trying to maintain all the weight I have gained back. Funny thing to say huh? I am only 4 pounds away from what I was when I started this blog. That doesn't excite me very much. But I know that it's just a season. That I will get back into a more motivated mode. Right now it's all I can do to work and try to pack and sleep. Except I have had things to do every night this week because I am leaving tomorrow for a wedding 4 hours away. Bad timing to take a trip for sure. But as of right now I have everything packed except toiletries. So I feel like I'm doing good sort of LOL!

So right now my life is full of boxes and clutter and busyness. Not really where I wanted to be right before the end of school, but it's where I am at. Hoping to stay on track.

Wednesday Weigh in Week 54

Whew! First weigh in of the year and....

It was a success :0) I have no idea how I did it, but I lost almost a pound. And I'm just gonna go with it. (And notice the pretty nails? Grandma took me and my sister out for pedicures yesterday. It was quite the grandma/granddaughter affair. I like the idea of a pedicure and I like how my feet feel. I just feel sorry for the person touching my feet :( Hopefully this year I will get my bad feet under control and will be able to enjoy maybe a monthly pedicure :) And I took full advantage of using my teal nail polish from Mary Kay! :0))

Anyways. I have done my darndest to avoid dairy since the beginning of the year (haha..2 days). I even said no to mac&cheese for dinner (!!) This saying no is going to take some getting used to. But it will happen. Now I just have to get rid of the dairy as much as I can permanently. I guess the eggs doesn't seem as hard. As long as I don't have a lot of things that have eggs in them I should be ok. And yes I do missed a good fried egg sandwich every now and then. But I want a healthy body! I'm pretty resigned to no peanuts by now. It's been 6 months. I guess I can't really say if I miss it or not? I'm gonna cave soon and get some almond butter. I am just gonna not care about price, because I do want to experience an almond butter and honey sandwich. I miss being able to just eat a sandwich quickly when I am hungry and need something to eat. I have been eating way too many ritz and graham crackers. I am not going to go completely gluten free here, but as much as I can I will be avoiding bread and breaded things. But I can't avoid everything sadly enough.

I need to start tracking my beef and headaches though. I've had some headaches and I can't tell if they are happening on the days I have beef or not. So I am gonna make sure that I start being more aware of the days that I do eat the beef and what happens later in the day. Because if that's the case I might as well stop eating it altogether. I have a feeling chicken and turkey are going to be my friend :)

Other than that, I spent today getting all the Christmas decorations put away. I have to head back to work on Monday, so it needed to get all done, plus I was ready to have the living room back to normal! As much as I would love to entertain the idea of just leaving the Christmas tree up all year! I think that would be fun one year to leave it up. You know, just as a conversation starter ;)

I am loving my garmin. It's fun to come home and upload my workoout! I am still trying to figure out the heart rate monitor though. The day I got it to work it told me my heart rate was 35 beats per minute..and I thought that was a little low LOL! Especially when I knew I was breathing harder than that. I do have to figure something out for the chafing however...I want to wear it and not have it rub me raw :/ I have done 3 workouts with it. And I love being able to go to my garmin connect site and check all the stuff out. 

I always seem to snap back into it during January. I just feel good about it this year :) I have a lot of things I would like to see happen. So I am just plugging away at it :0)

Spring Cleaning

Sometimes when we do spring cleaning I think we end up cleaning more than just a room. Maybe it's just me but when I clean I feel like I am cleaning the inside of me as well as the outside room. I have been in high cleaning gear this week since it's Spring Break. Now I haven't exactly gotten every single thing done that I wanted to. But I have done a lot. I have emptied and dusted and vacuumed and rearranged two rooms. (With help!!). And I seem to have it pretty surface-y cleaned. But it's the things with doors that close and drawers that close that get me every time. I have shoved things into my closets and buffet of things to look at later, to go through later. Mainly things I just don't have room for, or papers to put away. Things I just don't want to deal with right now. Or projects that I think will take a long time to finish. So I avoid starting them. Sound like anything in your life?

It's amazing how much lighter I feel when my room is cleaned and organized. It's like a never ending stress has been lifted. Although I know I still have a lot to organize and get rid of in my room, I feel like I have won part of the battle. This week I got rid of 4 pieces of furniture in my room. My full bed, the nightstand that goes with it, a filing cabinet, and a media cabinet. And my rooms seem so much bigger (especially going back to a twin bed), and I don't feel so stressed. Yeah, yeah, maybe I'm weird like that ;)

So I got my new shoes yesterday!! I'm very excited about this. I switched my shoes from the Brooks Ariel to the Brooks Addiction. And my feet were much happier on my run yesterday. I was able to run the entire time and that mental block that I felt the other day was gone. I also ran a different course on the trail at the park. So that might have helped too? It's less crowded I think.

I was looking at my mapmyrun app and it showed my splits on my miles. I was amused that my first two miles were exactly the same! And my third mile I was trying to make myself run faster. Just little bits. I ended up 40 seconds faster in the last mile. But I also ran a little bit longer and did a shorter cool down walk. Right under 53 minutes for 3 miles. Which is awesome for me! I'm pretty excited about that. I battle this feeling of thinking I am running too slow and then super excited that I have that fast of a mile. I'll settle for being happy.

I'm in serious mourning right now. I have to give up my coffee. It's becoming too much of an addiction, too much of an idol. And for me to be serious about my weight loss it has to go. I am really hoping that later down the line I might be able to start having it again. But right now I just don't know. So after my syrup is gone that I have, the leftover coffee is going to my friend and I am going to nicely tuck all my coffee stuff away and move on. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice some things to get where you want to be. Considering I haven't been drinking it that long I should be ok with it. But it definitely doesn't take too long to be building habits, and so hopefully it won't take too long to get it out of my system. I can't be where I want to be by doing the things I always do. 

Got on the scale this morning :) This isn't a new thing. I usually weigh myself every day, but won't officially change the ticker until Wednesdays. It was back down to the number I was at before the wedding at the beginning of March. Which means once again I weigh what I did when I graduated high school. Which is scary and sad all at the same time. But I can wake up every day and say I weigh less than what I did when I was 18. From now on it's I haven't weighed this little since high school. I can do this. Especially when I want to give up. And eat bread or sugar or keep having coffee. I don't want to be like this for the rest of my life. Always fighting the same battles. Slight little motivators to keep going and push through weeks like last week.

Spring always makes me think new beginnings :) And I am ready for one for sure!

Spring Fever

I made it through last week very successfully not running at all and eating very carelessly full of gluten. My stomach was killing me last night! Blah!

I am ready for this week to start so I can get back to a normal running schedule and get back to eating better

and

Spring cleaning!

I really have no idea why I am so excited about this. It's Spring Break. I have a whole week off! I have the boys in the morning while Mom is at work, but I'm sure I can put them to work doing something for me :) I just got done shampoo-ing the carpet upstairs. And my downstairs is full of everything from upstairs.

I decided recently to go from a full bed back to a twin. My room isn't horribly small, but it's hard to get around in with my full bed. I haven't rearranged my room since I moved in about 5ish years ago. And I was getting the itch to redo it. And conveniently my friend who got married had a great twin bed that her dad built with 6 drawers in it that she was getting rid of so I snapped it up :)

Now I am waiting for that to dry so I can get everything back up there and then get totally super organized this week. My room stresses me out horribly, because I always ignore it and either do nothing, or go help out other people and my room definitely suffers. I am gonna go through my stuff and get rid of a ton of stuff! I mean I live in a 500 square foot apartment..and I have a lot crammed in here! I plan on getting rid of some furniture stuff too, so yeah. for some reason I just shouldn't have this much stuff!! LOL I think I am really craving a simplistic life right now.

And on that note it's time to crawl into bed. hmm..I took that apart...Or the couch. Or the mattress on the floor? I haven't really decided which LOL! I need to go fill up my water bottles and clean out my coffee maker for the morning.

Any one else excited for spring cleaning?

Almost there

Whew. I can't believe that I am still up for one thing. Today I had to kick it into high cleaning gear because of the bridal shower tomorrow. It amazes me the things we can choose to focus on or not. Having a clean house has never been our strong point. I always have the highest intentions of getting it cleaned and organized and keeping it that way. Has that happened? Um nope. We joke that anything that has a flat surface deserves to have piles of stuff on it. We even have a counter from Hell in the kitchen. No joke. It was almost piled to the cupboard above it earlier this week. It usually has stuff that needs to go down to the basement on it.

So. Since I am such a last minute person, today was the day to clean the house. I mean like dust and vacuum and OMG mop the kitchen floor. I have dusted and swept and vacuumed and moped almost our entire main level of the house today. I am actually waiting for the kitchen to dry before I go put things away in there. I seriously can't remember the last time the kitchen was mopped. Yep. We are that bad good!

I didn't get an actual official workout today. I came home for work and did our monthly grocery shopping with my sister. AKA: Spend 2 hours in Walmart buying groceries for the month and then having to come home and put it all away. I think that is the worst part about grocery shopping. I hate putting it all away. I mean it literally takes me almost 45 minutes just to do that! And then almost immediately I started cleaning. Ok. I admit. I didn't clean the laundry room. But nobody needs to be going in there anyway right ;) I cleaned the living room, dining room, and kitchen tonight. It took me about 3.5 hours And I haven't even cleaned the half bath yet down on this level. I figure I will have to do that tomorrow along with my living room and then finish getting the decorations and games and food done. I really am only about half done. :(

But.

I have every intention of getting up and going for my run tomorrow. It looks like I will be doing it in the rain! I have decided that two days on a treadmill are entirely enough for me. And since I really don't want to be invading the Grandparent's house by 8:30ish tomorrow morning; I will be heading outside. And it has been cloudy and raining off and on all week. Really? Where is the sunshine? I am ready for it. C'mon Spring. Come back to the desert! Ok what the heck? I just checked the weather forecast for tomorrow. Rainy in the morning and a high of 50? For real? Too bad I have to go run in the morning since the Bridal Shower is at 3! Oh well.

Less than a month now until the wedding. I'm not losing the weight as fast as I would like to right now. But I am still losing, so that's at least a plus. I would love to be able to lose a good 20 pounds by then. But I just know realistically that's not going to happen. But 10 would be awesome too! And that might be achievable. Who knows. As long as I get consistent in my workouts besides the C25K, I should be able to do it.