Happy Friday, everybody! I am actually happy it’s Friday, though it’s been such a bizarre week that I’m not sure why…
Yesterday turned out to actually be a pretty cool day despite all the setbacks and chaos. YD was really very sick…she never did perk up, and as of this morning had only managed to keep down about six bites of applesauce. She is home with DH today – we take these sick days in shifts, it seems – and seems to be improving, though she is still running a slight fever. I am hoping she’s on the upswing.
But she was very quiet and slept a lot yesterday, which translated to a rather easygoing day for me. I really, really needed that…I didn’t realize how badly until I got it. Although I did have two days “off” earlier in the week, I was so sick that I mostly just concentrated on surviving. Not my idea of good downtime. 🙂 So yesterday was a blessing in disguise. I even got to spend some time just sitting out in the gorgeous, 75-degree sunshine and reading, which was beyond wonderful.
My eating was rather unfortunate. Not completely out of control, but definitely not what it should have been. That’s okay because I have written a little poem to remind myself of my motivation…it’s complete doggerel, but it appeals to my sense of the absurd. It goes something like this:
Not a bite of junk food shall pass these lips/’Til the Evil White Scale ‘neath 160 doth dip.
Silly, and completely unrealistic, but it made me smile. 🙂
I did have a great workout last night. My friend wasn’t able to stay because she had a sick child, but Elder Daughter took it into her head to work out and so I got to do some butt-kicking nonetheless. It was pretty cool actually, working out with ED – I watched her pretty closely as I was teaching her the exercises, and she’s got some great muscle structure. If she will tone it, she’s going to have a rockin’ bod. Which is distressing on many levels, but realistically speaking is a good thing. 🙂 She hated pretty much every second of the workout – but she did it, and she did great. She wasn’t particularly positive about it but then neither was I the first few times. I’m hoping she’ll do it with me at least occasionally; it would be really good for her.
And then I shocked myself by going ahead and doing a Couch-to-5K run after my circuit workout. I hadn’t planned to – I didn’t think I was breathing well enough to try it yet – but…for whatever reason, I just did. Partly it was looking at the treadmill and thinking, “God, I hate that I have a piece of exercise equipment gathering dust” because I’ve been doing circuits and not a lot of cardio. Partly it was because the circuit workout was lighter than usual – this week Jillian’s on 2 sets of 15 reps, which is very light compared to the 3 sets of 20 I’d been doing, and they’re all the “easier” exercises that I’ve been doing for months, though I have increased weights. So though I did get a decent workout, I still had quite a bit left in me.
So I just hopped on…I figured, better to try, and have to stop, than to not try at all. And I did the whole run! I’m not running fast – I’m actually jogging slowly! – but I’m doing it. My breathing wasn’t stellar but it wasn’t horrible either, and I think my lungs are clearing faster now as a result of the increased oxygen demand, so it could turn out to be a very positive decision. In any event, I did it. I’m counting it as Week 1 Day 1, since it’s been so long since I did Day 1 the first time. Basically a restart, and I may well repeat quite a few weeks here at the start. But we’ll see. I did a lot better than I’d expected.
So I feel great about the exercise, good enough to cancel out most of my angst about my eating. I also feel great about the fact that I found time to get through the latest revision to my novel, which is actually pretty profound. I fixed the ending – really fixed it, in a way that makes sense and works and gets in all the things that needed to be gotten in, as well as actually flowing very well; I think I finally have a beginning that draws the reader in, though who knows if an editor will agree or not; and I’ve got the awkward parts in the middle ironed out and flowing beautifully. So it goes to my Dedicated Reader today. He’s promised to try to get through it over Spring Break, which is week after next, and get his questions/ comments/nits to me in time for me to take it up to the cabin with me the last weekend of the month. Meanwhile, I will be doing a fine-tooth comb-through for grammar, syntax, sentence structure, and all the myriad writing no-nos of which I tend to be unconsciously guilty.
I’m very excited about this as it’s the first time I’ve made any progress on this since…well, since starting the second job in June of last year. The blasted thing is so close to being ready for submission, and I hate that I’ve been so close for so long. It’s time to get it done, get it out, and move on. I have about twenty other concepts in the pipeline, ready to be developed, but I can’t bring myself to work on anything else while this is so very close. So this is a very good thing, and it only took one day of quiet time to get it moving.
So all things considered, I’m pretty darned happy. I’m starting a new week and I avoided weigh-in today because (a) it’s been a very off week and (b) I neglected to take my blood pressure meds last night, which means fluid retention this morning. I don’t need to be discouraged at this point, so I just avoided the scale. We’ll meet again, no worries about that. 🙂
I hope that everyone has a great Friday and a wonderful weekend. I am going to try to post through the weekend as I’ve been so lackadaisical about it lately, but it’s going to be sort of a busy one so I’m not sure how much time I will have. But if I don’t “see” you all till Monday, have a great weekend!
The Diet Book 