I'm back

Hi there, I'm Kathy and I'm a lapsed dieter and exerciser. I joined this blog and was gung ho for a little but life got in the way and it was easy to ignore my resolve to eat healthier and move my body some.

But it's a new year which means I get a fresh start, right? I turn 40 this year. I know, I know, I don't look a day over 25 :-) Granted my birthday isn't until November but I don't want to be 40 and fat. I've been eating healthier and have lost 3 pounds this year. Now, if I can figure out a way to get some exercise in, it would come off more quickly and I'd be getting healthier as well.

Any tips? I work outside the home and have 3 kids. I'm generally gone from 7:30-6:30 daily--after I get home it's the dinner/homework/bath routine. I stay up way too late because I can't sleep but am scared to work out late at night in case it keeps me up longer (I seriously go to bed at midnite or later most of the time) so getting up early to work out doesn't work for me right now. Blah, blah, blah. . .

Kathy

It's Monday! Woo!

Good Monday, everybody! How was your weekend? How go the resolutions and the goal-making?
I've decided that, in addition to pounds lost and food eaten stats, I'm going to share how far I run each week. Hopefully that will help me stay on track. I'm going to be training for a half marathon that takes place in May following the schedule I found on this great website. It is a six week training program, so actual training won't start for a while, but until then, my goal is to run at least 30 minutes 5 days a week. Hopefully, that will help my body get used to motility. We'll see. Right now, I run about a 10 minute mile, so I also want to see if I can get that any faster. You know, just fast enough so that sloths will stop passing me and laughing...

The best thing about me? My humility and lack of self-centered-ess, of course!

Are you a resolutions type? I am, in a huge way. I start off every year with a grand plan to completely overhaul everything about myself- to basically become an amalgam of all of the people that I admire and less like the person that I already am. And, as you can imagine, I have never succeeded with these resolutions, not even a little teeny, tiny bit. After 27 years of this self-sabotaging behavior, I am done. Over the last few months I have slowly come to realize that I like being me. So what if I'm not super-organized, skinny, domestically gifted, especially reverent and studious, or any of the other million qualities that I have always thought I should be? In so many other ways, I totally rock. So my resolution this year is to be braver about being myself. To embrace the things that I love, do the best I can with the things I don't so much care for, and to stop, once and for all, trying to force my life to fit into someone else's model. And, yes, I know that successful resolutions are specific resolutions and that mine couldn't be more nebulous, so I made a few specific ones to help with the ambiguity.

1. Take some classes. I am tired of being jealous of my husband and his classes, and new school books, and papers to write. So, I plan to take a few classes this year. Nothing major: photography, maybe a new language, possibly creative writing.
2. Complete at least one of the paintings that have been floating around in my head and my sketchbooks for the last million years.
3. Run more. I actually enjoy running, but I am so self-conscious about how I look that I just don't do it. Not this year. Everyone looks ridiculous when they run, right? So, I plan to do a 5k and a half-marathon with my sister, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law this spring and summer. Hopefully, being committed to not letting them down will help me get over myself already...
4. Organize my house in the way that works best for me, not an organizational guru. I finally realized that, as I am a visual person, my organization needs to be visually oriented. This is the "do the best I can" part. I'll take it one room or section a month and really concentrate on setting things up in a way that needs very little maintenance. Because I am really not a follow-up type of person...

I'm not going to resolve to be a better mother or wife, because I feel like I've been coming in under the bar in those areas mostly because I'm not focusing enough on things that make me happy outside of that identity and that doing more for me will bring more joy to my role in my family. Also, I'm selfish and want to do fun stuff, so there.

What about you? Resolute or not? Do you subscribe to the "new year = new you" philosophy?

Chocolate Christmas trees count as a vegetable, right?

No update this week. Just wanted to share an awesome internetty tool with you, Zafu.com. I have the worst time finding jeans that fit, and usually, after hours under harsh fluorescent lights staring at the worst parts of my body being amplified in oh-so-flattering ways, I convince myself that the last pair I tried on was made for me, buy the blasted things and go around tugging them up for the next gajillion years while I try to work up enough nerve to go jeans shopping again because they were 2 sizes to big to begin with. Sexy. So, this site? Helpful.

PS- sorry if this showed up twice in your Reader. I kept trying to link or imbed the "mom jeans" skit from SNL and failed miserably and gave up, but Blogger was all weird about it and didn't want to say goodbye to the first post. So, yeah. Sorry I am a dork...

I just don't have the energy for a clever title...

Bleh. I have the mother of all colds. Not to mention the cranky, sick three-year-old who has been waking up at all hours of the night demanding SOMETHING. He has no idea what he wants, but he knows he needs something. I keep trying to remind myself that this, too, will pass and that someday I will be able to lay in bed all frikking day if I really want to, but that is just not so comforting right now.
Anyway, I can't really taste anything right now, so eating is not all that tempting or exciting. Unfortunately, neither is exercising...
How are you faring this week?

Pasta Gluttony would be a good name for a restaurant, don't you think?

Yes, I know that it is ridiculous that the week after I swore not to neglect you anymore, my Monday review is a day late. I suck and I apologize.
Sooo, last week. Last week = not good. Last week, we went on an impromptu date and I blew a gabillion calories on some seriously, incredibly, almost laughingly sub-par pasta. I did not realize that tortellini could taste bad. Never, since the Great Tortellini Awakening of 2000, have I tasted such bad tortellini. And yet, I gobbled it all up, Alfredo sauce that tasted like it was from a jar and all. How gross does food have to be before I stop eating it? Anyone?
In other news of Last Week, a week that will live in infamy, I realized that, even though my doctor told me it was really important to come back in six months to re-check my cholesterol levels and see if I need some sort of medication to keep me, you know, alive, it's been almost a year since I totally listened to him say that and took every word to heart. Good thing you don't really need a heart to live, right? Geez.
The only good thing I managed to do Last Week was work in a walk after the Pasta Gluttony and before the movie portion of the date (my husband and I are very adventurous on the dates: dinner, movie. We like to think outside the box.). The bad news is that it's surprisingly hard to hustle and get a good brisk walk going when you a) are full of sub-par pasta, and b) have a desperate need to mock the emo teenagers who think they are hard core hanging out in down town Boise of all places. It's hard to mock and gasp for breath at the same time. Someone should look into that. Snarky people need to work out, too.
So that was my week. How was your' s? Do you waste calories on anything edible, or do you insist on some level of tastiness? Do you know of some revolutionary exercise technique that would allow me to snark and work out at the same time? Have you thought of patenting it?

I'm bringin' cranky back...

Yeah, those other curmudgeons don't know how to act...
I know I've been neglecting you guys horribly, and I'm sorry. I wish I had a good excuse for it, but I just don't. Lately a lot of things have converged to overwhelm me, and I've been feeling very discouraged with myself, with my goals, with people, and life in general. I didn't want to bring you guys down with all of my whining, but then I realized that this blog is for sharing exactly those kinds of feelings, soooo, get ready for some cranky! Well, not right now, but in the near future, I'm sure.
Anyway, enough about me, how have you been doing during my hiatus? Any breakthroughs, victories, obstacles, or new goals to share?
This week, for me, is honestly just about getting my head above water and I'm pretty desperately hoping to achieve even close to that...