Mr. Right? Damn straight he is.
I either need Shazam For Birds or I need an experienced birder to come sit with me and identify the dozen distinct bird calls I’m hearing.
Dinner and Dessert
I made new-to-me recipes twice in one evening! First, I made Ginger-Sesame Oats with Mushrooms and Charred Green Onions for dinner. My five-year-old son, of course, hated it.
After he went to bed, I made Cinnamon Roll Muffins. (He already knows he’ll get a muffin for breakfast tomorrow.)
I was pretty pleased with both endeavors, and baking after my son went to bed kept me from snacking, so that’s a win, too.
I’m well on my way to cooking/baking 50 new-to-me Recipes in 2017!
I feel funny when people are so impressed by the fact that I grew these tomato plants from seed. I’m figuring it out, but I’m no master.
So far in this week’s tomato exodus, I’ve given away four Early Girl, four Yellow Pear, and one Sun Sugar tomato plant. Twelve more to go!
Kalanchoe In Bloom
[Taken 4 June 2017]
Strawberry Fayre Foxglove
[Taken 3 June 2017]
May 2017 Weigh-In
May 16, 2017: Hopefully not a day that will live in infamy.
I do believe that might be the first time I ever skipped a weekly weigh-in just because I knew I had gained. I justified it by saying that I needed to eat breakfast if I was going to go to my fitness class at 12:30, but the truth was that my preview weight at home was 180, which means I’d gained almost FOUR POUNDS since the last week’s weigh-in. I wasn’t about to face that at the scale.
I’ve been having a really rough time focusing on eating right and planning ahead. I’ve gotten much better about not binge-eating in the evenings (usually), but I’ve shifted to eating poorly during the day and failing to track, which is much worse.
My attitude lately has been to retreat to comfort food, and damn the consequences. I’ve also been engaging in (unbudgeted) online retail therapy, which is not a good idea, no matter how much I would like a new laptop bag or a new dress for work. I’m feeling like there’s too much to do at home, I can’t focus on what I need to do at work, and the workouts that were once invigorating and revitalizing leave me unsatisfied. So I eat and I shop.
Well, I should take that back: my workouts have been increasingly more positive. April was bad, but May was better. There were more classes offered at the work gym that I enjoyed, like kickboxing and yoga and core fusion, and the times I lifted weights were physically positive but disappointing from a performance standpoint (i.e. I’ve lost a lot of fitness by slacking off on working out). I also went running at the very end of the month, and managed a 20-minute run at just under a 13-minute mile pace with no walking.
My weight is hovering around 180, which is ten pounds above my lowest weight, and 20 pounds from my goal weight. My clothes don’t fit right, my face and arms feel extra fat, I no longer feel comfortable in my own skin (again), my knees hurt, and my moods swing like stupid. I’m such a delicate flower, especially when I’m tired.
I’m not sure what’s going to make me give a shit again, but I know something needs to turn around, and soon. I’ve been saying that since October, and nothing has changed. I have days where I’m totally on point, but I have more days (or unfortunate hours) where I eat my emotions and fuck all.
I’ve started keeping a handwritten journal over the past few days, logging my emotions, hunger level, and fatigue. The very preliminary findings, unsurprisingly, are that I eat my emotions when I’m tired and alone and emotionally vulnerable and something sets me off (like, say, my son not staying in bed like he was asked). Also, afternoon walks are more effective than afternoon coffee for a pick-me-up.
Perhaps if I keep up this journaling, painfully obvious though the results may be, I’ll figure out a battle plan for out-thinking my tired lizard brain ahead of time.
I just know I’m tired of feeling fat and frumpy and, well, tired. I need to take control back from my lizard brain, and I need to do it NOW.
Bitchfest
I took a break from posting daily to the blog when I decided that pulling something notable out of my ass before I went to bed at night just wasn’t worthwhile. As usual, I have a backlog of relevant topics to write about — my son’s Pre-K graduation, my monthly “weight loss” update, various camera tests from months ago — but I just can’t get enthused enough to sit down and blog.
My son has regressed to getting up several times a night after lights out (we had been down to once max). That irritates me at a very vulnerable point in my evening: I’m winding down and anticipating those glorious 90 minutes of my day that belong only to me. When that time is interrupted, I get cranky and I yell and I eat and I don’t do anything I had wanted to do because now I seriously am not in the mood and fuck it all anyway I’m gonna watch Good Eats and mess around on my phone instead.
(Edit: I also somehow smashed my right index finger when I turned off the bathroom faucet after my son left it running, and my legs are way stiff and sore after yesterday’s 20-minute slow-ass run for the first time in nearly a year, plus did I mention I’ve gained like ten pounds in the last year, so I’m uncomfortable and my clothes don’t fit right.)
On top of that, now I’ve got a hair up my ass to update my professional website so it actually reflects my current skillset, instead of what I did ten years ago. If I can’t make time to fart around on my personal blog, how am I going to squeeze in PHP coding to surface visualizations based on relevant Google Sheets data?
What the hell is up with me? I don’t know.
*checks menstrual calendar app*
Well, fuck. Yeah, I guess I do know. And being told you’re PMSing by your phone is only mildly less irritating than being told (or having it ever so gently suggested) by your significant other.
Work meeting first thing in the morning, so I’d better wrap this up so I can lay awake for an hour, exhausted, like I have for three of the last seven days.
Beautiful Day in Downtown Toledo
