I Don’t Know Where I’m Going, But I’m Making Good Time December 27, 2011

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Hello all.  Ok, so some of you might think that I’ve been taken back to my home planet or that I’ve run off and joined the French Foreign Legion (an expression of my Dad’s) or that I’ve become a goatherder at the top of some mountain somewhere.  Nope.  None of you are right, but thanks for playing.  The truth of the matter is… life is just busy, peeps!  What with everybody’s favorite ready-made excuse for everything, the Holidays (shudder) and changing jobs and all, things have just gotten away from me.  But here’s the deal:  I’m going to try.. TRY to start updating more often.  Shorter posts, more to the point.  I mean you guys don’t have to know every detail of what’s on my mind, just the highlights, right?

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With that in mind, the new job is going great.  Things got smoothed out fine with my old boss.  Misunderstanding.  All good now.  Crazy co-worker, not so much.  She sent me a Christmas card with a sort of perfunctory apology for all the junk that’s gone on between us, saying she missed me and she wanted us to still be friends.  And I said, “Whaa…?!”  So I wrote her a little Christmas card, which I also did for everyone there, and I included a little letter that said, in effect, that I accepted her apology, but she needed to know how she had made me feel most of this past year.  I basically thanked her for making the environment there miserable enough to push me to get out of my comfort zone and try to find another job (which wasn’t hard, because this one just sort of fell into my lap) because I am much happier where I am now.  I ended by telling her I hoped that she found something that made her happy and joyful, and that she was a good homemaker and a great mom, both of which are true.  Overall, best response I could have made?  Probably not, but she needed to know that “Sorry” doesn’t fix everything.  I am definitely happier with where I work now, so that’s all that matters.

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Job-related happiness aside, the children are causing all sorts of emotional turmoil for me at this point.  The girls are graduating in May, which is just one of those “Where have I been the last 18 years?” things.  You wake up one day and realize your job is almost finished, and you hope like crazy that you did it well enough.  Thankfully, I’ve still got…The Boy.  He is enough of a challenge to keep me busy for another three lifetimes.  His educational issues and mood issues and social issues, or rather teaching him to function in society despite those issues, is going to be the focus of my life for the next 10 years at least.  Getting him through high school alive and finding him a direction in life is going to be my main goal.

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Despite the challenges in raising them, the kids are a lot of fun.  We had an awesome 18th birthday party for the girls.  We hired a karaoke DJ and decorated a local small meeting space to look like a club, sort of.  They had a great time.  We all did.  I discovered that I make dorky faces and dramatic gestures like some kind of Diva Wannabe when I sing.  Except I knew that already.  I’ve been a Wannabe singer my entire life.

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Also under the category of Kids and Fun, I am really, REALLY looking forward to our vacation in May, when I take them on a cruise.  I could literally spend hours just looking through my planning notebook, staring at packing lists and flight schedules and touring plans.  I have read reviews of our ship and looked at hundreds of pictures, read Frommer’s Carribean Ports of Call backward and forward.  Just can’t wait.  Except that when it finally gets here, it means the girls have graduated and are now free to go make their own lives.  As tough as it is for me to let them be free, I hope they get where they want to go.

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So anyway.  Things are good.  I have been working on what I want next year’s theme to be, so be watching for a post on that.  Life theme, I mean.  This year was action, last year was transformation… I’ve been trying to examine where I am in my journey and where I want to get to from here, and that is never easy.  But hopefully with prayer and hard work, I’ll eventually make a start at it, at least.

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Until next time,

D.

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Night and Day, and the Difference Between the Two November 17, 2011

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Hello all!  Yes, I realize it’s been a dog’s age since I updated.  I apologize.  Really.  Things are so different now than they had been at the time of my last few posts.  Some things are better, some not so better, but right now I am on an upward spike in the old mood graph, so let’s just go with that, shall we?  The biggest, most awesome news  is that I escaped from my job!  Yes, Virginia, I actually broke free of the cult-like pull of a place I had been for 10 years and took a step in a new and different direction, and it’s not even teaching high school English!  The new job is kind of in a field all it’s own.  You could call it ministry, you could call it television/radio broadcasting, but basically I am the new secretary for an evangelistic tv program called The Gospel of Christ.  It is under the supervision of the elders at one of the churches of Christ here.  I have a wide range of duties, including your usual secretary stuff, answering phones, taking messages, but in addition to that, I package and ship all the CDs and DVDs that go out, I enter donations received and pay the bills and do payroll and taxes, I order supplies, I send the media to our tv and radio stations, I burn the discs from new master recordings, design and print the disc labels, send out supporter letters, etc.

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So yeah, it’s definitely a departure from the Trained Monkey world I was in before.  And best of all… no crazy co-worker who hates me!  I’m in a Christian environment, with people who are young and energetic and passionate about what they are doing.  I’m learning new things that challenge my brain, and I am literally working for God!  It’s pretty awesome.

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Despite its numerous advantages though, there are a few drawbacks, extremely minor in nature.  I’m now putting the same number of work hours per week into 5 days instead of 6, plus I am still at my old job on Saturdays through the end of the year.  That means I have to be at work earlier in the day, which has rather wrought havoc with my exercise schedule.  I have dropped out of TurboKick class for a month or two because I am trying to get caught up on bills while also saving money for the girls’ birthday and Christmas.  In addition to that, the pay raise looks great on paper, but only resulted in about a $50 per paycheck increase in my net pay.  Not what I was hoping for, but it will do for now.  (I expect that when things settle down around here after the transition, they will realize they can afford to give me a substantial raise.)  The major negative about this job is that it does involve a lot of sitting on my caboose, which was not something I got to do very often at my old job.  This in turn makes me worry about the likelihood that my caboose will notice an increase in mass and volume, translating to an increase in size, which will make me very unhappy.  More on that in a minute.  Another drawback is that certain relationships at my old work, long and generally amiable relationships, have, I fear, suffered irreparable damage by my leaving and the timing of it all.  Coming up on Christmas in the pack and ship business, it’s kind of a kick in the teeth to a boss you’ve worked for, for more than 10 years, to suddenly take a new job on only a week’s notice. (But in all fairness, it was a now or never kind of thing.)  Worse, I’m no longer as close as I was to the few people there I did like, and worst, I was left out of a raise that was given to everybody else the week after I stopped being there full time, even though I’m still working Saturdays through the rest of the year.  That hurt, let me tell ya. I still haven’t had a talk with the boss about that one, but will hopefully have a chance to do so while I’m there this Saturday.

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All in all, though, it has been a change for the better, I think.  I don’t know what to expect about how long I will be here or where this will take me, but I am hoping that eventually it might become a part-time job that I do in addition to being a Weight Watchers leader and writer.  I have continued to attend Weight Watchers meetings, even though I honestly feel I have been sort of “phoning it in” for a while now.  By that I mean I haven’t really, truly dedicated myself to staying on Plan, but have been eating almost whatever I want, not counting the points, and depending on the 4x a week Turbo classes to keep me out of trouble.  I realized with a significant degree of dismay that this was not going to work for me any longer when I dropped out of turbo and gained weight two weeks in a row!  (By the way, I know only two weeks ago I was all fired up about Simply Recommitting and getting back on track with WW, but unfortunately I had not been able to make it happen until this week.)

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In case anybody was wondering when I was going to get around to it, the title of this post is a figurative reference both to how much happier I am at this new job versus where I was before, and also the difference a little extra motion makes in my weight loss journey.  But I am actually trying to look at this short break from Turbo as a good time to get back to essentials on the WW plan.  I want to really re-familiarize myself with the PointsPlus values of foods so that the overall picture stays clear in my head.  That probably makes absolutely no sense to anybody.  But the title is also referring to the difference between yesterday and today for me, because yesterday was one of those days that I think we all have every now and then (I hope to goodness I’m not the only one!) where we just sort of hate ourselves and our lives and everything we own!  That sounds pretty extreme, but in all honesty, The Boy and his twins sisters have been driving me berserk lately with their constant bickering and fussing, their complete lack of motivation to be much help around the house, and their entitled attitude in general.   In addition to that, my car kept dying when I was taking the kids to school, I couldn’t find any decent clothes to wear, and I had lost my temper with The Boy before we even left the house.

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Today, on the other hand, I’ve been in a great mood, didn’t mind my clothes (or lack thereof), the car didn’t die, and I got the kids out of the house and taken to school without any major breakdowns!  Furthermore, today at work has been a lot of fun, what with the guys trying to re-build and decorate the studio set and a few other goofy mishaps, and I’ve stayed on plan with WW, so it’s just been a much better day than tomorrow.  And isn’t that always a blessing?!

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Until next time,

D.

 

 

Heartbreaking Beauty and the Chubbly Duckling October 12, 2011

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(Originally written last night- 10/11/11- 7:30 pm)

Hello all.  Right now I feel like going on a crying jag without the alcohol.  I feel emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted.  Everything in my world feels heartbreaking today.  Or more accurately, I feel everything with a heartbreaking intensity.  I received the proofs for my twin daughters’ senior pictures.  I had to force myself not to cry.  They are heartbreakingly beautiful.  I need a new job and desperately want out of my current one.  I feel like an animal caught in a trap there, like I’d gnaw my own arm off to escape.  It’s not a bad job.  I like what I do.  I’m good at it.  I like my boss.  Except for the fact that I’ve been there nine years and the others have been there five, four, and three years, and we all make the same pay rate!  And there is no employee discipline.  And my previously mentioned (repeatedly) co-worker is still the most unpleasant part of my entire life at this point. 

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And finally (and this is going to sound weird) I am stunned at the beauty of the girls I exercise with.  I see these women at 5:30 a.m.  No makeup, sweaty faces, funky racer-back workout clothes with miniscule amounts of back fat hanging out of them, and I still think they’re all beautiful.  Then they come in where I work, in their office clothes, hair done, makeup and all, and I am blown away again by the beauty of these women.  I don’t just mean they’re pretty, which they are, but there’s this incredible inner beauty in them that just slaps you in the face whenever you are in their presence.  My middle sister is one of them.  She is the fittest person I know, and so heartbreakingly beautiful. (There’s that word again.)  I just feel so honored to be a part of their group, so blessed to have found this place to work out, where they have accepted me, the chubbly duckling, and embraced and inspired me.  They remind me, without words, why I am doing this.

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I wrote the above at my mother’s house last night, using, as I often have, that physical act of putting words on paper to purge the emotions I was feeling.  Between the photographic evidence of the relentless marching of time that has turned my precious baby girls into beautiful women, and my relatively new association with the amazing women I exercise with, and the conflict of desperately wanting to escape my job, while knowing that a) I am very much needed there, and b) starting over after a long involvement in anything is really difficult and scary and pretty much sucks, I was emotionally overwhelmed. 

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But as part of that re-committing I was talking about previously, I am definitely moving on from those feelings today, trying to see as much in myself as I see in others, and maybe working on defining some goals and dreams that will take me out of my current job situation and on to greater things. 

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Until next time,

D.

Simply Recommitting October 10, 2011

Hello all.  You know, sometimes, when I’m going through my day thinking, “I REALLY need to write a blog entry, I really need to update, etc.” I’ll sit down and try to write an entry and nothing really comes.  Often, I will just keep writing, rambling, ranting, and I’ll post the result, whether it’s good or bad, like that’s a cure for writer’s block, but it doesn’t mean that what I wrote has any quality to it.  That post may not necessarily be my true voice.  There’s something wrong with that.  There’s something wrong with a lot of things, and I am in the mood to change that.

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I went to a revival-type church service tonight that was sponsored by my sister’s church.  I had never heard of the speaker, a man named Ken Freeman.  My sister attends a Baptist church, but I got the feeling this man was inter-denominational in his preaching career, meaning he didn’t just go to one type of church.  His message was about the difference between ‘good’ and ‘great,’ and how we have to let go of certain things in order to fully accept God’s grace and blessings.  I realized there were a lot of things I have been holding on to, and I need to let go and re-commit.  I need to re-commit, not just in my spiritual life, but in everything- my job, my parenting, my health and fitness, and even my writing here. 

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So that’s what I’m doing.  Starting tonight, I am re-committing my life.  I am going to re-dedicate myself to my weight loss, my writing, my parenting, and most of all to a life that is dominated by Love.  Love for God, and love for my fellow human.  I need to work on showing Jesus to others through my life.  I’ve been in an ongoing cold war with a co-worker for weeks now, and I’ve made weak, pitiful attempts to pretend I was reaching out to her, to delude myself into thinking I was the bigger person by praying for her, but in reality I wasn’t willing to let go and truly acknowledge that I haven’t always been the Christian I am supposed to be.  I gave it lip-service, but I wasn’t willing to completely let down the barriers.  I’m still not.  I know I can’t trust her to be real and honest.  She is an excellent actor and faker- I’ve seen it.  My point is that I can’t worry about that.  I have to just say ‘You know what?  I’m recommitting to living for Jesus, and because I am, I choose to love you.  You can think what you want about me, you can like me or hate me, but I choose to love you in Jesus’ name, whether I can trust you or not.’  And really mean it, because I didn’t before.  I wanted to mean it, but the selfish, immature part of me said ‘Why do you have to mean it?  It doesn’t make any difference.  She’s not accepting your overtures, your gestures, your attempts.  What difference does it make if you really mean it?’  But I know now that I have to forgive all that, I have to forgive what she’s done to me, the hurt she has caused me, and I have to love her in Christ, and I cannot allow myself to add anything else to that sentence.  My judgement of her is irrelevant. 

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In addition to this, I have to be brave enough to re-commit to my health and fitness efforts.  I have done well.  I can say that.  I have lost almost one hundred and twenty pounds in almost 2 years.  But I have not been fully committed.  I have chosen to take easier roads- skip workouts, eat junk food.  I signed up for another 5k mud run as a volunteer, knowing I would be allowed to participate in the race for free as a volunteer, but thinking I wasn’t obligated to do the race if I chose not to.  That wasn’t committment, that was fear.  I completed the first one, the Dirty 30, back in July.  I did it on adrenaline, not knowing what to expect, not knowing what kinds of obstacles I’d face, but determined to tackle them no matter what.  In this next race, I know what kinds of things I might see, and I feared them.  I was afraid I didn’t have it in me to put that much effort out again, but now- I know I need to re-commit.  I need to grasp the fact that I have the strength to finish that race, complete the obstacles (or go around them if I have to) and finish.  I can’t be afraid that I might twist an ankle or a knee- I just have to take the steps. 

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I realize this entry has had a serious tone.  I usually like to try to be funny here, and I hope I succeed at that sometimes.  But tonight was a night for seriousness.  I had a talk with my kids on the way home from the revival tonight, because I have been really concerned for them in their spiritual lives, because they have not yet obeyed the gospel and been baptized.  Despite what some people may say or believe, I truly believe what I have been taught, that baptism is the point at which we are saved, and I want my children to be baptized and commit to living their lives for God.  I believe it is on their heart to do it, but they just haven’t taken the step.  I am praying that they make that decision soon, but at least I took the opportunity to share with them what I want for them- the peace that comes with knowing they are saved. 

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I’m not saying I have it all figured out, or that there aren’t sometimes brief moments when I question everything I’ve ever heard and wonder if maybe, possibly, it could all be crap.  But when it comes down to it, I’d rather just believe what I believe than buy into “something from nothing, for no reason, with no purpose, and nothing after, and nothing matters.”  It’s just not enough.

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And in the middle of all this recommitting, loving, being brave, and trying to bring my kids to heaven with me, I am going to embrace all I can possibly accomplish in this life that is fun and joyful and meaningful.  To that end, I can announce that my daughters’ senior trip in May is a done deal!  I booked the airfare today, so Lord willing, we’re definitely going!  We’re going to be Royal Carribean cruising fools!  Wooo hooooo!  Allure of the Seas, here we come!

Until next time,

D.

Roller Coaster Mood Strikes Again! September 21, 2011

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Hello all.  I hate to have to say this.  Really.  I do.  But here goes:  I give you fair warning that this entry may contain ranting, raving, whining, self-pity, and just flat out pissyness.  EVERYTHING is irritating me today!  Facebook, for example.  Another day, another layout.  STOP already!  Weight Watchers.  I just realized I’m down only 6.8 pounds since the middle of JULY!  What the heck!?  I have been doing Turbo three times a week, but I guess I have only been marginally good about what I’ve been eating, or something, because I keep see-sawing up a little, down a little, and it is so hard!  Right now I’m just plain tired of struggling with it.  At this moment I am truly hungry- my stomach is literally growling, but after I got home from taking the kids to school I just walked in the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, stood there staring into its depths for a moment, surveying a narrow selection of “breakfast-y” items, then shut the door in disgust and left the room.  I am so tired of having to think about what I eat, so tired of trying to think of something “healthy.”  Like what’s that mean, right?  I have been trying to keep a detailed food log for this fitness challenge.  We are supposed to log every food we eat, along with its calories, carbs, sugars, fat, and protein.  And let me tell you- it is a complete crap shoot.  Every website comes up with different numbers.  Not to mention the challenge of doing a detailed breakdown of something made homemade in a local restaurant.  I have the lady’s cookbook, but I don’t know how many servings are in her recipes.  Unlike every other cookbook in the known universe, she doesn’t tell you what constitutes a serving and how many the recipe is supposed to make.  Cookbook FAIL! 

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Also, I was all set to rant and rave about how it seems like everything I own is an almost-worthless piece of junk!  My car, my computer, my slow-cooker, my tennis shoes, my clothes.  Yes, I know, at least I HAVE these things.  Grateful I am, young grasshopper, really.  It’s just that my car randomly dies going down the road.  Just cuts out.  I have to shift it into neutral and restart it and try to remember not to step on the brake so I don’t get run over.  Although I have to say, I’m thankful it didn’t die so far today.  I went from Lone Grove to Ardmore and back this morning for Turbo and it didn’t die.  Usually it’s good for at least two on that trip.  The other items I mentioned are really very tiny little issues that could easily be fixed with a few dollars.  Except the clothes.  Can’t get anything new yet because I’m still paying for the clothes I bought before our Disney trip, only now some of them are already torn up or way too big. 

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See, this is why writing or blogging or journaling is good for you.  I don’t feel irritated anymore.  But I still feel hungry.   I’m not completely over the “What breakfast can I make that is a)healthy and b)not a repeat of something I’ve eaten 6 times in the last two weeks?” thing.  I usually make scrambled eggs, which I try to ‘healthy up’ by adding sauteed veggies like onions, spinach, or broccoli.  (Yes, broccoli in a scrambled egg.  It wasn’t any better than it sounds.)  And I add turkey bacon or sausage and a piece of whole grain wheat toast, usually dry.  Sometimes I have a healthy cereal with skim milk, but that lasts about 2 hours and then I’m hungry again.  I could have a sandwich with some lean protein lunch meat and spinach leaves instead of lettuce, but then what would I have for lunch?  See?  Eating healthy seems to demand that I focus on food constantly, which is the exact opposite of what I’ve been striving for, which is to view and interact with food only as a source of sustanance and not an emotional companion or boredom-reliever or any other role you might assign it. 

Anyway.  I guess what I choose for breakfast doesn’t matter, because I’m still sitting here writing instead of getting up and choosing something, and by the time I get around to it, it will be almost lunch time and ‘get ready to go to work’ time, and I’ll have skipped breakfast completely. 

(The above picture, by the way, I just picked to stick in this entry because a) it happens to be a picture of eggs, which is what I was talking about, and b) it’s just cheery and yellow, and everything yellow always picks me up.)

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I’ve been thinking a lot the past couple of days about people from my past.  When I woke up yesterday morning, I had been dreaming about a guy I liked in upper elementary/early middle school.  Today I was thinking about the guy who was supposed to have gone to my class reunion with me.  I don’t talk to either of them anymore, and I guess I’m just feeling nostalgic or lonely or something.  I miss people.  Not ex-husband people, fortunately.  Just other people I never really got much of a chance to know as a person but still really felt attached to, you know?  I wish I could look into a crystal ball and see what the reason or purpose was for these friendships, and also see when or if I’ll ever have anybody in my life again.  Love-wise, you know.  On the other hand, maybe I don’t want to know, especially if I’m supposed to stay single the rest of my life. 

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Well, now I’m past hungry and getting sleepy.  Guess I’ll either go force myself to pick something healthy-ish for breakfast and just fix it, or I’ll say the heck with it and go back to sleep for a while until I have to get ready for work.

Until next time,

D.