Not a very interesting post...

But if I waited until I had something interesting to post I'd never do it.

I'm still on track.

Yup - that's about as interesting as it gets right now.

Top 3 reasons I feel like an idiot...

And why it's a good thing.

1) I got within three miles of the dealership Friday, all geared up for a fight. Then the light on the dash went out. I got to the dealership, and of course, they weren't prepared to look at anything. But you know what? It was probably a good thing, because they were going to ask me for $100 - fully refundable, of course, if it was their fault. Mmmmhhhm. So I'll give you money, and then you'll tell me if it's your fault or not. I may not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but I'm pretty sure I know how that's going to go. So now I've got a new plan. After some asking around, I've found a friend of a friend's garage who will look at the ABS sensor for free. Free is much cheaper than $100.

2) I ended up (though all kinds of a weird day) eating horribly on Friday. My old boss (who I love) called me and asked me to meet him at a Chinese buffet place for lunch, since he had some really good gossip to impart. So I went, and I ate. I didn't eat horribly, but I didn't eat great either. Then on Friday night I watched my friend's kids for a while (so she could do us a huge favor). She, in return, took us all to Pizza Hut so we could spend the kid's reading awards, and Chris and I ended up sharing some of a pizza between us. Yup - eating out twice in a day. The good thing? I felt so nasty by the end of the day I've been good ever since.

3) I was all geared up to go Ice Skating with the Brownies yesterday. We drove an hour to the ice rink, and then waited around (with about 100 other Girl Scouts) were told that the person who booked the event (a fundraiser) had screwed up, and the rink was double booked - with a hockey tournament. So now I get to drive there again next weekend. How was this a good thing? A bunch of us who carpooled ended up taking the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for a while, which meant we got to hang out and talk, and I got to know some of Iz's friend's moms a litle better - we ended up talking and laughing for a good two hours. Oh, and because it was Chick E. Cheese, I wasn't tempted to eat anything. Their food is horrible.

So, the weekend was a bust as far as plans go, but actually turned out pretty good. Maybe I should stop being so upset when plans don't work out.

Oh, and the best part of the weekend? Formula 1 is back! Awesome race in Bahrain - can't wait for australia in 2 weeks :)

Grrrr.

Not at the eating thing - I had a perfect day yesterday, and today is one of my easy long days at school.

The think I'm irritated about is a personal thing - you know how some people just take advantage of you, even after you've said no more than once? That's what I'm dealing with this morning. This is the one person in my life that has made me learn to stand up and say no when I need to (Iz's friends mom) and now she's just not even taking that for an answer anymore. So now I've rearranged my morning to suit her needs - I'm pretty pissed.

But I have a plan! I'm not going to get upset and eat because of it! At least, that's the plan - I'll let you know tomorrow what happens.

It snowed!

And snowed and snowed and snowed and - well, you get the idea.

I know that everyone north of Maryland is laughing at me right now, but I've seriously never seen this much snow - the picture above was taken well before the snow stopped, when we had to dig an area for our dog to go outside. The most snow I ever saw growing up in the UK was about 6 inches. I've lived here for 12 years now, but still nothing quite like this.

I have to say that I've also let all the disruption disrupt my routine. I've had next to no exercise, since this snow wasn't the light, cute fluffy snow we had before Christmas I couldn't even shovel it. In fact, shovelling was enough to give my super fit and only slightly asthmatic husband an asthma attack too. I've been holed up in the house. I've been baking cookies to keep Iz amused, since she can only stand an hour outside in the snow at a time. I've been trying to catch up on the school work I've missed through cancelled classes. It's hard to read textbooks at home, because there's always something better to go do. Like, erm, blogging. And filing my taxes (done!) and filling out my FAFSA for next year (done!) and cleaning the house (done!). The only thing I'm left with is laundry, and since it's way further down on my list than school work, I'm down to school work.

So I've been bad. I've not gone hugely over my calories, but I also haven't exactly been strict in planning and eating properly either. No exercise. No real urge to do anything good, either. I'm back to just not feeling it - need some inspiration back. I'll be back tomorrow with an HYC post that I can actually commit whole heartedly to.

Exhausted.

Didn't sleep last night because I was stressed about the snow. I had classes all day and a kid whose school closes at the merest mention of snow.

I got lucky - they were both delayed two hours so I got to all my classes and got Iz and her little friends to school. It's supposed to snow again Friday, so I'm really glad I have no classes then.

I ate OK today. I'm actually headed to bed in a minute, since I've got another insane day tomorrow - class then taking a bunch of Brownies to see Disney on Ice. I'll be so glad if it snows hard on Friday and I don't have to do a thing all weekend.

Whew!

So I survived. One thing about being super insanely busy all day was that I've eaten wonderfully - I didn't have time to do otherwise. Tomorrow is much more chilled out, I only have afternoon classes, so I'll have the morning to exercise and clean up the house, which looks like I've been away for a month.

Oh, and I'm going to sleep great tonight - 24 insanely wired small children made sure of that.

Ready, set.....

I've packed my school bag (OK, so I unearthed an ancient bag I could throw my books in), I've figured out what I'm wearing tomorrow, and what I'm packing tomorrow, and even what I'm eating for breakfast tomorrow, and I've even taken a bath to try and calm myself down because I'm keyed up beyond belief. Why? It could only be the night before school starts. I feel like I'm 10 years old again.

I've been so worked up today I've actually forgotten about being hungry. Sunday is usually my day of diet rest - the day I don't count calories but just try not to go insane, but today I've actually managed to eat less than when I was trying to eat less all last week.

I'd write more, but I'm busy pacing around the house. Does pacing count as exercise?

Ouch!

I just got my butt kicked in an unofficial family sit up contest.

Who came in first? My 8 year old who managed thirty without missing a beat and then looked at me like "is that all?" and proceeded to do 20 push ups.

Second was my hubby, who managed 20 with lots of effort. Slightly weird since he's the super fit guy - at least, he used to be. He got hit by a car while he was crossing the street this past August and has really lost a lot of his physical conditioning - he was out of work for nearly three months.

I managed *drum roll* 11. Don't laugh - 11 is actually 6 more than I thought I'd do. I've been doing lots of walking as exercise, but not really any exercises, as such. It's time to break out the Wii fit and play the section I've been avoiding since we bought it - the strength training section.

So yes, I exercised today. I walked, and I took part in the sit up contest - yeah, I know, not really exercise, but every little helps. And now I'm considering breaking out the wii, just because I'm curious as to how much pain I can inflict on myself. I've also opened a new excel page and logged our sit up progress - it'll be fun to see if I can catch up with the rest of the family soon.

I've eaten well today. I've stuck to my plan, even though this week my plan has been to deal with the munchies - I've allowed myself 2000 calories a day this week because I just can't deal with being drastic right now. Next week's HYC will involve moving down to 1700, I think.

I went out and bought some lunch solutions for next week to try out. Calorie controlled portions. We'll see how I do.

And this is me blogging! That's four days in a row! Three more and I'll call this week a success.

Just squeezing in...

It's 9pm, not my usual time for blogging but I did promise myself I'd blog every day so here I am.

I've been too busy to wander around aimlessly looking in the cupboards today, so my food intake has been OK.

I'm here, blogging, so that's two.

I walked for about 25 minutes today. It was exercise, but not exactly like I had planned. At least I was exercise I guess.

I've decided I'm definately going to do a larger breakfast thing at least on the days I have school. I've done it the last two days and I've actually eaten better and been less insanely hungry at lunchtime.

I know, not much to report today. Something struck me yesterday though, as I compiled a list of classes I have to take at some point in the future.

Phys Ed is one of them. I'm going to die. Now I know how the kids who hated PE in high school felt. I always liked it then, because although I wasn't the sportiest kid in the world I liked to play games and do exercises, but now it's going to be a completely different proposition. Hopefully it's a lot more theory than practice, but looking at the class description it's very, erm, energetic looking. Guess I'd really better get working on this losing weight and getting fit thing, huh? Yeah, I know. I'm the only person in the world trying to get fit for a fitness class. I suck. If we had a cleaning service I'd be the one obsessively polishing before they showed up every week, too. It's a sickness, I tell you.

Woohoo! Two days in a row!

Yup - I'm here again, fulfilling the easiest of my weekly goals - boring you all to death on a daily basis.

So today, in order to figure out what Im doing next week and the many weeks afterwards as far as lunch going, I'm eating a heavier breakfast, with a lighter lunch and an afternoon snack. So far I'm loveing this plan, but only because it's 10.50 am and I'm totally full from a huge breakfast. Lets see if I still love it when dinner time rolls around and I'm gnawing on my hair just to stay sane.

So there you go - food is planned (and I stuck to my plan yesterday - yay!) blog is blogged, lunches are being figured, and when I'm done typing this, exercise will be done.

And speaking of exercise, I got my daughter the "Just Dance" game for the Wii this Christmas. Well, she unwrapped it, I plan to play it as much as her. But since I've been playing it, I've realized something - it makes my arms hurt like crazy. If you don't know what the game is, you basically follow the dancer on screen doing all kinds of fabulous 80's dance moves, and they score you by using the controller you're holding in your hand. So of course, all the actions are insanely arm movement heavy. One thing I've learned is that all the walking in the world is doing nothing for my arm stength, which is apparently stuck at "weaker than a kitten" level. Maybe that'll be a goal for next week....

Where have I been?

Well, lets just say it's all rather exciting.

I might (big might) be able to go to college. Just community college for the first two years, but the plan is falling into place and the eventual plan is to transfer to another local university and finally get a degree. I spent yesterday down at my local community college finding out about financial aid (not much, but some) and what other pieces of paper they need to get me the money I'm entitled to. Today I have the harder task - finding the rest of the money I need to pay for classes. I have to move fast because most classes for this semester are already full. I don't need to go through the whole initial registration process since I've already taken a few credit classes there before. I do, however, have to figure out how to declare a major (social work) and figure out how to pay for the large part the government won't shell out for.

Talk about happy and busy! Only problem is, if this plan doesn't work out, then I'm going to be really really disappointed. When I was 18 I had the decision of going home to the UK and going to uni or staying here and getting married. I made the decision to stay here and get married, and although I'm always sure I made the right decision, I've spent twelve years wishing I could have done both. We've never had the finances in place to feel secure enough for me to go to school, and, well, we still don't, but as my husband put it last night, I'm not bringing any money in now, and since I've been looking for a job for over a year and not had any success why don't we work on a future where I might be able to do something meaningful instead of answer phones all day?

So now I'm a woman on a mission. It's actually pretty good for me, since I'll admit I'm intimidated by the whole college (especially college financing) process. It's good for me to step out of my comfort zone, and boy, if this all works out, I'll get the rewards.

Phew! So that's the whirlwind that has been my life since Tuesday. Pretty cool though, huh?

I'm officially back!

My parents left last night. Yes, there were some tears - it's always difficult for me to realize that I'm probably never going to live in England again.

But you know what? I was planning to have this day as a transition - to ease back into my way of doing things after so many days of doing everything everyone else's way. I don't need it. The first thing I did was to get up and plan out my calories for the day. Now I'm blogging. After Iz leaves for school there will be exercise. I actually like my routine - much more than I thought I did. I really thought it would be hell to start counting my calories again - not that I've eaten excessively, but just because it's a new level of strict that I didn't have for the last month. I'm actually excited about it. I've not even weighed myself - every time I've stepped on the scale it's told me I'm holding steady, so I'll weigh in like usual on Saturday and start updating from there again. I'm actually less bothered about losing weight at the moment - it'll happen if I stick to what I've been doing - no need to obsess about the numbers on the scale. I was planning a day of mourning for my food freedom, and I'm actually more excited about regaining the control.

What's the reason for that last change? There are two. First, I have a lovely new pair of jeans that are size 18 - with no "W" behind it! The W is significant to me. I know it's supposed to stand for "woman" but to me when I pick it up off the shelf it always stands for "wide" as is - "wide load". I know it's not much but it's a start - proof that my body is changing and that I don't have to flip out over every half pound lost.

Second was the discussion I had with my hubby last night. We were talking about how good my breathing has been in the super cold weather we've had lately. That's usually one of my biggest asthma triggers - going from cold air to a heated room or vice versa. This year it hasn't been a problem, and we've been well under freezing temps here for a few weeks now. Usually when the weather gets like this I have a horrible time, but this year I've done everything I've tried to without a problem. I couldn't figure out why, but then my hubby pointed out that the pounds I've lost and the exercise I've been doing have probably been helping my body deal with things that used to be a challenge. It's working - I have proof it's working, now I've just got to trust myself and my body. I'm not very good at that.

I think I was flipping out over every half pound lost because I didn't trust my body to respond appropriately to diet and exercise because of all those half-assed tries before. I've proven that it's responding, so now the scale truly is for once a week. I don't have to have evidence every half hour anymore.

So - trust is my new watch word.

Oh, and the New Years resolution - going surprisingly well. I've yet to have a proper flip-out about anything - and this is from someone who lost her car key last night in a bunch of snow in someone else's yard. My hubby was right - I did flip out about small things way too much. I've just got to trust that I can do the right thing in a sticky situation and that I can adapt when things don't go my way. Again with the trust - apparently it's my word of the new decade....

Another quick check in...

I promise I haven't given up blogging - it's just going to be hard to find ten minutes to myself until next Monday... the house is crowded and I'm not exactly good at blogging about my innermost feelings when someone's reading over my shoulder.

Still plugging along - my food intake today so far has been much more in line with how I should be eating, so I guess Christmas and New Years really is over.

As far as my one single solitary resolution, so far so good on that today, even though the last few days have been stressful, things that should have sent me into stress orbit are actually not bothering me so much. I even managed to not freak out at not sleeping well last night and having an early start this morning.

More later - I have to get Iz from the bus stop and then continue entertaining!

Just a quick post...

I'm still alive, I've just been running around like crazy. I managed to pull out another loss this week - this time 1lb.

I'll be back with more later, but I didn't want to disappear :)