Diary

Tonight the last words to my children were, “Goodnight! You guys are the best kids in the world and you should know I am done parenting for the night! I love you!”
Then I closed my bedroom door. I considered locking it, but then I thought about emergencies and fires and scared little kids running from the boogie man and I decided to leave it unlocked. You never know.

I’m just really tired this weekend. I love my students this year, and I often say I’d much rather have sweet, busy kids than mean, mellow ones, but this year that statement is really being tested. I’m one busy teacher with a room full of busy third graders, hopping around my classroom, teaching, sharing lots of love with these people. This past week was crazily difficult after the four day weekend, after the music performance, after the glow party… and it left my head just spinning. Cross that over with my second formal observation for the year coming up on Tuesday and you might as well smack me upside the head and prescribe a few nights of no sleep with massive worrying over what might/could/probably will go wrong. ACK! I know it will all be fine, but still, I have to worry, I suppose. And I have to over-prepare, over-plan and be as shiny as possible. So I’m tired.

Does that mean I get to stop exercising and eating smart?! NO!
What if it snows? NO!
(It actually snowed all morning and, while it didn’t stick, I wasn’t interested in running in it.)
Around 10:00 this morning I sniffed out the kind of day that was bearing down on me and I decided I had better work out before I started laminating paper, planning my week and altogether avoiding that whole working out thing.

So we did the Jillian Michaels again. Today I was not feeling it at all and really had to force myself to stick with it with actual effort after 45 minutes into a 57 minute routine. Jillian asked, towards the end, why I would do all that hard work in the beginning to finish weakly? She told me to finish strong, and I really needed to hear that right then because I busted out my best and hit it hard. I’ll admit it; I was being a little lazy for a few minutes before that. Afterwards I did a little Bowflex too, but seriously, I was not into it. Just wiped. Out.
But glad I did it, as evidenced by the pictures Bradley snapped during the cool down phase.
*
This weekend my goal was to eat smart and avoid gaining back anything I lost. So far I’d say I’m doing ok. My daughter made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. If I have a weakness secondary to ice cream, it is cookies. Add peanut butter and m&m’s and I am a goner. I have eaten two cookies and one gob of dough. Considering what could have happened, I’m calling it a success!
Tomorrow, we run!
I weigh 209 right now. I’m not sure I’m going to make my diet bet. I’m not sure I care. Is that terrible?!?
***
I posted this then took it down in the middle of the night because I get worried about posting such immodest pictures. Unfortunately, these are the only pictures that I’m taking lately because I’m working out inside and wearing clothing that goes with that warmer, more private environment. The thing is, I don’t really worry about people seeing my body as long as they are not snarky about it. I liked these pictures because of the way my legs look. 🙂

Oh my. There was a glow party at my school last Friday.
It replaced the beloved Sock Hop- since the people who hopped in socks are now the grandparents, the sick hop was confusing. It was funny to watch the little second graders dressed up in their tie dye and hippie skirts or neon workout gear with the shoulders cut out for fifties day. Eventually we gave up and called it ‘Decades Day’ so no one was wrong and anything fit in! But I digress. The Glow Party, as the name suggests, was dark and glowy and the perfect scene for any kid looking to get wild right under their parent’s nose. And boy did they. It was mad , good time for all those little bodies!

As a relatively old person in the crowd, I couldn’t see anything! Remember- these are elementary aged children, I’m not being insulting. An 18 year old is almost elderly in that crowd. But seriously, first, it was dark, then all this dim glowy stuff was everywhere and eventually it was like there was a white, gauzy cloud shimmering in front of you. It was trippy- not the effect they were going for. I couldn’t see anyone or anything at all, and eventually just stumbled over to a wall and stood there watching for Jude. Seriously, only 40 here.

But still, for the kids? A mad success and so fun. It was epic! Were I eight, (or ten or five) I could have died a happy death that night. There was glow swag- hats, necklaces, wands and more- along with pizza, soda, tattoos and a comprehensive array of good candy. Not just the tootsie roll bag, if you know what I mean. The good stuff. My kids walked out loaded down with enough glowy goodness, gum and candy to last the ages… And, lest we forget, they had the best time shaking it.

It’s kind of fun to look at my numbers a different way. Today I was watching The Biggest Loser and they were talking about total percentage of weight lost. I got to wondering- would I be a contender?

Turns out that I wouldn’t have won anything, but 38% definitely would have put me in the running. Cool, huh?
***
I’m keeping it short and sweet tonight. I have a long work day in that my students are singing their little hearts out about colors to their parents so I need to turn around and head back out about now. I haven’t worked out either yesterday nor today, but I’ll catch up tomorrow. There’s a dance at my school and I’m gonna shake it! 😉
update
I came home from the musical and rode e elliptical for 30 minutes and Bowflexed for 15. I’m dealing with anxiety again and really need to do everything I can to get some solid sleep tonight!

It’s been quite the weekend. The rain, OH the rain, how it fell. The wind blew a lot, so we went to the park to fly kites during the few moments the sun peeked through… Despite that I still managed to get out to run in it twice, to do the hill twice. In fact, this was a great weekend for exercise all around. My goal this weekend was to exercise like a maniac, to exercise so much that my return to work is a sore return, to exercise hard every day! I did it. My muscles ache in a satisfying way. We did Jillian workouts every day except today, I rode the elliptical every day except today and I did weights every day except today. Today I ‘only’ ran 3.6 miles including a hill with 485 feet of altitude in half a mile. That now I run halfway up. I’m that guy now. Ha ha! But I really am feeling happy that I took my fitness so seriously all weekend long. Warrior week should be good and pumped up now, thanks to this crazy, long weekend!

I’ve started using an app called, shockingly enough, Heart Rate, to track my heart rate. When I woke up this morning I was at 51, which puts me in the ‘athletic’ zone for heart-rate. Who woulda thought? While I was working out, I was between 130’s-140’s, which is the sweet spot where I want to be. It’s been fun to have a new tool to noodle around with and track my health! Sometimes it seems excessive to monitor so much, but frankly, all these toys and tools help to inform my practices and refine what I’m doing so I can be even more successful.
***
Tomorrow I return to school for a three day week. My kids are off all week, though, so I’ll just pretend it’s like summer and I just have to go to school for a little while to work in my classroom. That way I can feel like I am cruising on vacay for the rest of the week!

It is the four day weekend and I am loving it. It’s so fun to arrive to Sunday night and not have to do ANYTHING to get ready for a work week.

*my daughter thinks wearing a sports bra and capris is a super cool exercise look and begged me to don this number so we could be twins. 🙂
It has been a really exercise-y weekend. I knew I was going to the spa today- a traditional Korean Spa with all the heated rooms and stuff- so I pushed myself really hard. Yesterday we cleared the room out to make our family room look like a yoga studio, and my whole family did the entire Jillian Michaels Burn Fat and Build Metabolism workout. Even my five year old stuck with it for the entire 57 minutes! I was so proud of him! My husband kept saying we were ninjas, punching the bad guys here and climbing a wall there. It was pretty cute. My daughter is just charmed to be working out with Jillian from the Biggest Loser. After that, I still needed to get 3000 more steps on my meter, so I hopped on the elliptical for a ‘few minutes’. A few minutes stretched to thirty minutes as I finally got to 10,000 steps! I was a wee bit tired, I assure. All of this was followed up with a few arm curls and free weights.
This morning we went for a run and did the big hill. By the time I got into the spa, I was so ready for the pools, the hot stone rooms, the salt room… Except I was so hot from getting my blood pumping that I think I spent more time in the cold rooms.
I’ve never done the salt scrub thing at the Korean Spa (we went to Bella Luna, it was fine, but not my favorite) and it was exactly as described. The ladies pull you out of the soaking pool. You wear nothing while they are dressed, literally, in lacy underwear. You get up on a table that is just kind of off to the side of the bathing pools and lay there, quite publicly, for an hour while they scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub then rub oil all over you. You lay on your back, on your front, one side, then the other, then do it again. I almost slid off the table a few times, so did my friend. Then she washed my hair (?!) and put cold, grated cucumber all over my face. My skin is pretty smooth and I feel pretty good! I liked it. The spa was a good thing, and something that is fairly new to me. Last year at this time was my first spa experience. I suppose you could say I’m a convert!
***
I weighed in at 207.
CHEEZE!
So happy. 😉

Just a taste of my Valentines’ Day. The pictures were my valentines to my kids- they each got a Valentine themed lunch or snack, which they were both nuts about, and coupons intended to let us spend a few moments together. My son immediately got the foot rub taken care of. He loves coupons like this and will redeem every one. 🙂

The last one is of a tired teacher sending the husband an, “I’m so glad to be coming home to your arms,” text, and, believe it or not, this is the one I looked the least tuckered in. Valentine’s Day on a Friday during a full moon right before an extended weekend is a rough day, but we were awesome. My kids were fabulous and we had a fun, yet truly educational, day. At the end there was a lot of candy and baked goods, but I have yet to partake. I’m proud of myself and considering staying the course.

When I got home I weighed 208.6.
208.6
I may be walking in a winter Onderland before I know it…
Happy Valentine’s Day, indeed.

Today I came home to see that I finally broke past 210. I feel like it’s been ages, after the Christmas debacle, but I’m back on track! Yeah for warrior week!
I’m feeling much better. I slept like a person in surgery last night- ridiculously deep. I used the meditations as I crashed out and they worked like a charm, along with the exercise and everything. Here’s hoping that tonight is the same! Off to elliptical!

I’ve been struggling over the past couple of days with anxiety. It’s so silly, thoughts will grab ahold of my brain and just hold me hostage. Something will happen- a conversation or interaction of some kind and I can’t get it out of my head. I once saw a meme that said something like:
“Remember that stupid thing you did? Yeah? How about we remember it over and over to make sure you feel terrible and never forget!”

That is me. Like, I have, what I think, is a reasonable conversation with someone and then, later, I start ruminating over it until I find a little kernel of something I said which, in the right (or wrong) context could mean something offensive and terrible. I then consider a million different possibilities in the other person’s perspective which all end with me worrying that this person will end up hating me (or, really, thinking I’m a bad character)because of whatever I said. The next step is always for me to send an uncomfortable text, email or approach someone awkwardly to offer up and explanation or apology. Despite the fact that, without exception, no one has ever taken the crazy version of our conversation, my apologies usually end with me blushing apologetically for looking like a weirdo while also feeling an immense sense of relief at having cleared the air in my headspace.
It doesn’t help that I like to laugh a lot and am not too fearful of many topics of conversation.
I’ve been working a lot on being intentionally mindful about how I’m processing information these days. There is a lot of awkwardness among my working community right now as we are collectively working on becoming a stronger staff. We are being vulnerable and open with one another, and that is so hard for me, especially with my tendency to overthink and over process everything. Being mindful means that I am trying to compartmentalized my thinking and give actual credence only to thoughts that are relevant to the greater picture. To living where I am and not over processing what has happened. I shouldn’t focus more on a small issue that happened at work over something my kids or husband are doing right now. I don’t live at my job- I work to support my family, my life is not all about my job. My job shouldn’t be allowed to infect my nights and time away from work with worries about my students, my parent community or my colleagues. I’m working to look at things with a perspective of common sense and what is normal. I’m working to keep things in perspective. I’m working on mindfulness.

To that end, I’ve been having a hard time of that lately. I had another sleepless night on Monday night that resulted in a half day absence on Tuesday. I can’t do insomnia. I’m way too busy for that, so I came home and thought about how I could solve this problem and came up with a couple of things.
First: I think that exercise is directly related to my anxiety and depression. When I go a day without getting my heart rate up, I find that I have trouble sleeping at night and I often get sad/depressed/sensitive or I get anxious. Or a combination of the two. If I skip two days, the issues compound and, while I may be more tired the next night, I still repeat the pattern. No matter how sore I am, I have to get some exercise in daily. It is tremendously preventative when considering my mental well being.
Second: I found some meditations* on mindfulness, on sleeping and on weightloss. I know, it might seem a little new age-y and crystals around my neck and you might want to ask when I check into the ashram, but I find that having someone guide me through a meditation gets me relaxed and focused elsewhere. While I have my own strategies in place for when my mind runs away with itself, I found these tremendously calming and very helpful at redirecting my thinking when I felt incapable.

Today was a better day. It was good to step back into my routine, even though I yawned a lot today and felt extra grateful for caffeine. Tonight I dragged my buns home, ate dinner, played with my kids then rode the elliptical for 32 minutes. Yep, 32. That’s significant because I meant to only do 30 and accidentally went over. Ha ha! Anyhow, I feel accomplished that I have planned so well. Tonight should be a good night’s sleep and, hopefully, I can put this cycle of insanity behind me.

*I found this as the easiest link online, but I got the freebie through the iTunes as an app. Now I’m trying to decide if I want to buy more. They are expensive but I like them!
***
I feel frustrated because wordpress published this draft and deleted my final publish copy. If this version seems like a lame article, let me assure you it was way better before that annoying-ness happened. Grrrrr.

I’m so happy to report that this morning I awoke to find myself weighing in at 210.8! I’m finally back at the weight I saw on December 24th. You would think I would have learned my lesson in 2012 when I gained 20-something pounds and had to spend the next several weeks burning it off. Then I did it again this year too- when I went from 210-227 in two days over Christmas. I spent almost six weeks getting rid of that 17 pounds! I hope I never see them again. Here’s hoping I can sail on past 210 and have an excellent warrior week, starting today!

I celebrated the return to 210 with 40 minutes on the elliptical followed by a solid altitude rich walk that is about 1.8 miles and the last .8 climbs 350 feet. With my goal to gain some footing on the virtual Grand Canyon I very intentionally chose that walk. It’s a pretty awesome workout. I love the way it works out my thighs- the backs of them have that delicious sore/achy feeling that implies a good workout. I also was able to get enough steps that I beat my Hawaii race! My mii is now the proud owner of a Hawaiian shirt. H ha! While I hoped to get to my weights today, I decided to forgo them. I’m tired from a lack of sleep last night. I’ll hit them had tomorrow since it looks like any working out will be indoors. Why, you ask?

It started snowing tonight!