I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Saturday night. If you have teenagers who are putting athletics first and academics last, go and see Coach Carter. If you want to believe that there are still good, hard-working kids out there who just need to be challenged to prove what they're made of, go and see Coach Carter. If you loved Stand and Deliver and To Sir, With Love, go and see Coach Carter. Finally, if you're struggling with what to do to motivate a teenager for whom you are responsible to work as hard in school as he does in the gym and on the field, do as I did and go to see Coach Carter.
I won't ruin the film for you, but I will say that I have given myself a writing assignment as a result of what I watched tonight. You will understand what I mean when you've seen the movie.
Saturday afternoon. It's been a full day here at Casa Denise and I'm not done yet.
This morning, bright and early, it was up and at it to get my paper put together and sent out for review. Yes, you'd be right if you said that I was supposed to have that done last night. I just knew that, when I got home last night, I just wasn't in the right mindset to write. Work for the last few days has really taken it out of me and my brain just wouldn't work properly. Instead, I got up early and did it this morning before leaving for Junior League. When I got home just now, though, the comments I received from one of my team mates sort of threw me, so I'm going to put it out to you. She says that I need to re-write some of my sentences to be less wordy and that I string them together with too many commas. While my paper is, obviously, a lot more formal than my writing here, it is very similar in mechanics and style. Do you guys think I use too many commas? I think I did that in my first paper and got an A, so I'm loathe to change too much from my "winning formula" but I don't want to get dinged for it. Leave comments if you have an opinion.
Today has been another "off" day, diet wise, but do you know what? I'll workout tonight for 66 minutes, I'll get all of my water in, there's no bingeing involved, and no one will die because I'm making poor eating choices. I'll be a size 16 (then 14 and perhaps even 12) one day regardless and it's so worth the extra calories to sit next to Alcott, eating a coffee lover's delight while he munched on his absolutely huge pile of cheesecake ice cream with strawberries mixed in. I don't regret a single calorie because 13 year old boys don't last and this one is really special.
Buying the extra large size ice cream at Coldstone is about $5.50. Spending time with a fabulous young man on a rainy Saturday afternoon is priceless.
Friday afternoon. Well, I have to have my paper out to my team mates for review by "end of day Friday", so guess when I'll be writing said paper? Oh, yes, that would be after I get home tonight. Now, to be fair, it's not actually due until Monday night, so I'm getting it done early, but only because I have to do that in order to keep faith with my team. Sometimes I wonder if I have any capacity to learn from experience, you know??? Moving along...
Today has already been not a particularly good one, health and fitness wise, and I'm not thinking there's a lot of improvement on deck, either. I'm just not feeling it today. Possibly it's the rain. Possibly it's stress. I'm not upset about it, I just don't feel like watching what I eat and I didn't feel like passing up the Brie and crackers at the company social tonight. No, I am going to be like an ostrich and bury my head in the sand temporarily. I think I'll probably get my 66 minute walk in tonight and I will definitely get my water in, so that's all good. Honestly, one day is not my health and fitness odyssey going to derail (or something like that).
Tomorrow, it's Junior League in the morning and Alcott's basketball game in the afternoon, so a full agenda. I also need to read a huge stack of stuff for class, so that will be Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. I can't get two of the required PDFs to print, though, and I don't want to read 52 pages online, so not sure what's going to happen with that. I wonder if I copied and pasted into Word if that would help? Let's find out, shall we?
Thursday night. OK, thankfully not on my head, but it is raining once again here in the lovely southern California. Perhaps we were not clear enough when we said, "no, thank you, we've had enough"? Oh, well, we will definitely have amazing wildflowers this year - they're already popping up everywhere!
It was a very long day at work and I think tomorrow will be another one, but I just had to pop in to tell you all that I'm alive, I'm happy, and I'll be back with something interesting to say...at some point soon. In the meantime, please entertain yourselves and, if the urge strikes, would someone mind hanging the new curtain rods in my living and dining room?
Guess who got an A on her first academic paper in over 14 years???
Wednesday night. Yes, that's right, after being subjugated to the needs of corporate writing and the occasional bout of creative writing, it turns out that my academic writing skills are not completely gone. Ha! I got 4.85 out of a possible 5 (yes, it's only worth 5% of my grade - so sue me for being excited) and there are only three very small marks on my paper. This after the teacher warned us that he was ruthless and that we shouldn't take all of the purple markings (he doesn't like red pen) personally because our first paper would be littered with them. Double ha!
Yes, I'm fat. Yes, I'm a procrastinator. And yes, I can still write a pretty kick-a@@ paper!
Wednesday afternoon. You know how you have those days every once in a while where you look at yourself and think "omigosh, how can I even leave the house every day??? Look at how hideously fat I am!" What do you mean, you don't have those kind of days? Am I really the only one? Oh, dear.
So, I woke up, had breakfast, went downstairs to get in the shower, looked at myself (naked) in the mirror and was just horrified at the state of the food baby. What's even more awful than just feeling hugely fat is knowing that I was even bigger just a few months ago! People must totally have looked at me and thought I was related to the GoodYear blimp on my father's side because I feel like a parade float right now. Remember all of that stuff about how I could stay at this weight and in this body forever and ever and be happy? Yeah, not so much anymore. Blech, blech, blech!
There are several things to be thankful for about this development. First, I'm not turning against myself with loathing and anger - it's all still good, it's just nowhere near to being done. Nowhwere. Near. The other thing that's good about it is that I'm now even more motivated to stay tightly on track than I was before. (I was pretty darned motivated before!)
Tuesday night. I'm so very tired. My eyes are burning with the effort of staying open, my lower back is sore, and my brain is almost pure mush. Studying until 11pm on Sunday, class until 10pm last night, up early today, four hours of meetings at work, a two hour book club meeting for Voices, and finally, a two hour meeting for Junior League, and this girl is pooped!
Tomorrow night is workout (premiere of the new and improved 66 minute walk) then 2-4 page paper to be sent to my team mates for review. Hopefully I'll be in bed by 10pm - that's my goal. Thursday is Alcott's brother's basketball game, but that will be over by 7:30pm, so I should be home and able to do some reading for school by 8:30pm at the latest. Friday night is a night off - thank goodness! - with a Junior League project (Libraries Now - donating books and bookshelves to new teachers for use in their classrooms) on Saturday morning from 9am to 1pm. Saturday afternoon at 2pm is Alcott's basketball game, which should be over about 3:30pm. I'm not sure if we'll do anything after his game, that's up to him. I think I'll be happy either way and a little extra vegging time wouldn't go amiss at this point. Sunday afternoon from noon to 4pm is time to do more reading for class and finish up my other assignments (if I didn't manage to get them done Thursday night), then I'm meeting some of my Junior League friends for a single girl pre-Valentine's dinner at 6:30pm at Dave and Buster's.
From nothing to do to nearly no free time in just four months - amazing!
How long does it take to write a 2-3 page paper???
Monday evening. Well, in a display of raw procrastinatory talent rarely witnessed in captivity, I managed to bang out what I think was a halfway decent paper tonight before class. I had all of the assignments completed and all of the readings done - I felt good. I won't be able to procrastinate the paper due next week because our study team assignment for the week is to read each others' papers and we decided to put a Friday end of day deadline to get them sent to everyone. OK, so, let's see...I've got a Junior League meeting tomorrow night until 8pm and Alcott's brother's basketball game until 7:30pm Thursday night, so I guess I'll be writing my (2-4 page) paper on my personal strengths and weaknesses (at least I've got a head start on that one, huh?) Wednesday night after I do my 66 minute walking workout.
Speaking of my workout, I've decided to start increasing my time each week again. Way back when, in June, when I first started this little journey, I could only walk 20 mintues at a time, so I just kept increasing the time by 10% each week until I hit 60 minutes. Now, based on the new governmental guidelines for losing weight, I need to be doing 90 minutes of exercise most days, which is going to be four or five days a week for me, I think. I've already started increasing the intensity of my workouts, so now it's just a matter of keeping at it a little longer. With Samantha, Miranda, Carrie, and Charlotte to keep me company, six extra minutes is no big deal.
Now, would anyone like to contribute to my paper for next week? If so, please leave your suggestions for my strengths in the comments. (I have plenty of material for the weaknesses, thankyouverymuch!)
Sunday afternoon. Gosh, there aren't very many new posts out there this afternoon and it's really quiet on the road by my house, too. Is there something going on?
Yes, I do know that the Super Bowl is on, but I'm just not into it this year. Actually, I'll confess that I haven't watched since 2002, when my beloved Oakland Raiders had their hats handed to them by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Yeah, that was pretty much enough to put me right off for a very long time.
In any case, thank you to all of the lovely folks who commented on my last post. You'll be happy to know - or, at least, I am happy to note - that I'm doing much better today. I think it was just hormones or something equally useless and transitory. Now that I think of it, though, that kind of thing would have knocked me for a loop and taken weeks or even months to shake off not that long ago, so perhaps it's really a victory that it was only one night? Hmmm, I'll think about that some more.
I have gotten so much done today while avoiding my homework - woohoo for me! Oh, wait...procrastination is not a good thing, even when I get a lot of other worthy things done in the meantime. I have a 2-3 page paper due tomorrow that I haven't even started, not to mention three chapters to read before tomorrow night. Gah! Seriously, anyone know if there's like a pill or operation or hypnosis thing that they can do to make you stop putting every freakin' thing in the world off until the last minute? Would a procrastinectomy be covered by my insurance, do you suppose???
Now, where's my vacuum? These floors are atrocious!
