Gyms, money, and life

I don’t know what to write. The weekend was so up and down it was unbelievable. It started off well. I went to bed at 4pm on Friday, slept til eight, got up, ate too many nachos, went back to bed and slept til 7am Saturday. I pottered about, then rearranged the bedroom. It’s now tidy and much better arranged. I managed to make an attempt at cleaning up the kitchen and downstairs was tidy enough for out visitors. We had a great evening with the visitors, probably drank a bit too much, but nothing to really worry about.

Just before we went to bed, Al told me he’d borrowed more money from his parents. He hadn’t told me because he was ashamed of not having money. Apparently they’ve been drip feeding him poison over the last few weeks, saying how his value as a man and a husband is nothing since he isn’t brining in any money. Well ok, he’s not and it annoyed me too, but he was doing his best. He’s signed up with so many agencies and now he’s signed up with one in particular, he hasn’t had a day off! OK so his first paycheck won’t be til November but that’s ok. We’ve made deals with the people we need to deal with to make sure we don’t lose anything. We covered all the bills eventually. We’re ok.

My husband was embarrassed to talk to me about this cos he was afraid of upsetting me. Well that balloon burst on Sat night. I was upset. I was more upset at the fact that his parents are being such bastards to him. He’s not a man, he’s nothing without a job, all his worth is in his job. I rang Mam at 1am Sunday to talk about it and she & Dad’re helping us out but I’m so angry and upset about the whole thing.

Then to add insult to injury, I stepped on the scales yesterday to see 19st 13lbs. This morning it’s dropped 4lbs thank God, but it’s still an upsetting number. This morning I am 19st 9lbs. 275lbs. According to the BMI scales I should be ~150lbs at the heaviest. Ideally, I can see myself aiming for a BMI of 30, which means losing 95lbs. Still a long way to go. See I know I eat better when I’m not focussing on weight loss but the initial weight gain is enough to make me cry. Added into the money woes and I’m a mess.

I have started reading the marathon training book. I need to work up to running/walking 3miles easily. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that. I do know I want to start swimming again, which means changing gyms. OK it will cost me more per month to go to a gym with a pool, plus the £150 to get out of my contract with my current gym, but sometimes mistakes cost money. That’s life. And if the new gym works, then it’s worth it. Plus I just rang my current gym and it’s all ok, I just need to wait til I get paid and it’s all sorted.

3miles is a lot to me right now. It usen’t to be and it won’t be again, but right now it is. It’s up to me to change that. Walking isn’t difficult for me, but at this weight, it is hard on the joints. It’s time to find something to help me lose weight, to help me feel better in myself, to feel better in my head.

I’ve had a lot of little upsets in the last few months. Chest infections, tummy bugs, headaches, migraines, lethargy…….you name it, I’ve had it. So, time for a change. Time for me to take responsibility for my health and move on. I can still do Beyond Chocolate because part of that is making choices. I know the foods that don’t make me feel well. I need to start experimenting now with foods that do make me feel well. I haven’t eaten breakfast for weeks cos I’m not feeling hungry. Well maybe I need to let myself get hungry then. Maybe I can dig out my old microwave porridge habit and set that going – it was a great way to start the day. OK expensive to get the pre-packaged stuff, but it tasted better and required less energy.

All these things I know work – well it’s time to get back to them. I can’t keep going the way I am and I can’t keep feeling like this. It’s time to change. Now.

Walk at lunchtime. I don’t have lunch with me so I can walk into town and get something from Greggs or Boots or something. Easy. 11mins walk according to the Fount of all Knowledge (or Bing Maps if you prefer!)

That’s lunch settled then. The rest of my life? Less so. 

A special Friday night

            Well today I’ve been mainly reorganising my office. Since I came to the new company, I’ve been in an office with two desks. Both desks faced the walls of the room and not each other meaning my back was both to the door of the office and to the other person in the room. This affects me, even in an empty room. When I was told yesterday that I would not have the office to myself for a further 6 months, my immediate reaction was that I needed to rearrange the furniture. I can’t handle working like this for all that time. So this morning we’ve been moving furniture.

We’ve got rid of two pedestals from the room and now the desks are facing each other. We’ve gotten rid of a lot of paperwork from the office and streamlined a few filing tray systems. We’ve reorganised the IT systems to make them suit us rather than the other way around. I have to say that I’ve also noticed the difference it makes to me. Sitting with my back to the wall and facing the room feels so much better than the old way.

I think I’ll do the same with the bedroom tonight at home. I’m not happy with the flow around there either. I might go online and have a look at some feng shui about bedrooms. I think we need a chair in there as well since the clothes just get dropped on the floor otherwise and the current arrangement with the mirror just doesn’t work..

Having had a quick look, our current arrangement could be the reason for my bad sleeping habits. We have the bed at a place where access to one side is difficult and we have the place cluttered with bits and bobs. So some streamlining is in order. We have a lot of junk in the room – old make-up, unused or not working appliances, wasted space with mirrors etc, clothes that are too old, too big or too small to currently wear. Stuffed wardrobe but empty shelves above them……generally a lot of clutter and not much to ease the mind.

So steps I need to take to make the bedroom more accessable:

1. Declutter clothes. Again.
2. Remove everything we don’t use from the bedroom.
3. Turn the bed 90° so it has easy access both sides.
4. Put a bedside table at each side.
5. Put the chests of drawers at the end of the bed.
6. Get rid of the various baskets and boxes in the bedroom.
7. Place one chair by the end of the bed for clothes.
8. Empty out the underneath of the bed and decide what is going where – and put it there.
9. Hoover and dust the whole room!!!

OK a lot of hard work. But if it makes the room more accessible and nicer in general, plus gives us more space, then it’s worth it.

So that’s my Friday night. Plus making up the spare room cos we have visitors coming tomorrow. The nice kind though – the kind that won’t be looking and judging etc.

The Happiness Project

I’m in a philosophical mood this morning – which is good cos I’ve managed to bamboozle my boss into seeing things my way through use of big words and long sentences already. I’ve also got to get my thinking hat on to persuade the admin ladies to change what they do…….that’s going to be difficult. Some of them are very stuck in their ways – even the young ones!

Anyway, I’m going to be working with them for a few weeks to catch up on backlog and allow me to gather some meaningful data in a time when it might be useful! Currently we’re running about six weeks behind and the boss has just received some KPIs he needs to produce that mean we need to be running in front.

In other news – I’m reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (her website) . It’s sort of self-help/memoir in that she basically takes a year and works on making herself more happy. Some of the insights she’s coming up with are extremely interesting and I can see how they’d work.. For example, not scoring points with Al – thinking of all the things he does for me on their own rather than then comparing it to what I do for him. He does a lot – brings me a cup of coffee in the morning when I get up at the same time as him, He always compliments me on how I look. He takes care of the grass so I don’t have to suffer through hayfever. He is pretty good at managing his own laundry.

Last night I felt hard done by since I cooked dinner, tidied the kitchen, cleaned up the living room, put away the dry clothes and he came home and did……well nothing. But that’s ok. He was teaching special educational needs people yesterday and that takes a lot out of anyone. So it’s ok. After all, he spent most of the weekend entertaining his parents and most of the week before looking after me…….

So I’m trying to take some ideas from Gretchen Rubin.

The last few days (well ok, two!) I’ve not turned on the telly as soon as I came in and it makes a difference to the evening. It feels like I’m doing things, even if that ‘doing things’ is only putting away a few clothes or tidying the kitchen, or burning a smelly candle. It makes the house feel warmer, tidier, happier somehow…..Of course it doesn’t change the fact that we have one shed packed full of stuff that needs to be sorted, but it’s a start.

Tonight, I’m going to try and sort out the bathroom – it really needs a deep clean, so Cilit-Bang and elbow grease it is. We’ve got hard water around here and the scale soon builds up on the taps and things, but it’s such a hassle to clean off.

I also need to think about our bedroom. We seem to have a ‘dumping ground’ for things that’s very annoying. Maybe putting the chair from the spare room there will help – but I will need to move furniture to fit it all in. Still, the place also needs a good clear out so maybe it’s time.  I did a good first go-through of my clothes a few weeks ago and it feels good to be able to get into my wardrobe now, but there’s more dross to be emptied out I think. Plus Al’s got some T-shirts that could go as well.

It’s going to be a cathartic Friday night for me this week – I can tell!!!

Compliments

One of the ladies in my office just complimented me on my choice of cardigan today. Initially, I just shrugged saying it was part of the top I was wearing (wonderful two-in-one jobbie from Next, similar to item 836-693-GX3). She looked almost offended and I remembered to smile and say thank you.

Accepting a compliment is hard. I’ll admit it. For many years, I’d brush them off, just as I did this morning, thinking the person offering this positive view of me or my accomplishments was either incorrect or wanted something.

These days, I try and take a different view. Try being the operative word in that sentence. Of course from  Yoda to Richard Bandler people say that there is no ‘try’. You either do something or you don’t. Using ‘try’ is a get-out clause!

I’m counting today a success. OK it wasn’t done straight away, but the ‘thank you’ and the smile came eventually. Accepting compliments was not something that was taught to me as a child. Modesty and humility forbad ever assuming the person complimenting you was right! I saw my mother, time and time again, after spending hours slaving over a nice dinner for visitors, brush off compliments with a ‘Oh it’s nothing’ or ’Sure it’s only a small thing’.

I learned, through both direct lessons and observation, that accepting a compliment was a difficult thing. Humility is meant to be at the heart of us all. Being proud is wrong. Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins  after all. Not even just a minor venial sin, a cardinal one! Accepting a compliment might be a sign of pride. And yet, we’re told to take pride: pride in ourselves, pride in our work, pride in our families. No wonder I’m so mixed up!

It’s a long way from a childhood blushing because someone told me I had a pretty dress on (it was my Communion Day, possibly the only time below the age of 12 I remember wearing a dress, but it was white and silky, they were sort of obliged to say it was nice!) to smiling and saying thank you to a co-worker for noticing I was wearing a nice top.

Acceptance of oneself, just as one is, is one of the tenets of Beyond Chocolate. It also seems to tie in with NLP and other practices I’ve been investigating over the last while. I find it easy to accept my faults – I’m quick tempered, I’ve got a foul mouth at times, I find it difficult to concentrate on one task for periods of time, I take my husband for granted……………the list could go on forever. Accepting the things I’m good at? Whole other story. Even when it’s other people telling me – after all, what do they know? J

Some weekends are meant to try us!

Busy weekend. In-laws staying with us. Or ‘Outlaws’ as my boss refers to them! Even if I hadn’t been ill all week, this weekend would have been tough.

The course (Intro to NLP) on Saturday was really interesting and will be useful. It was run by the Stress Management organisation and the man running it was very personable. I suppose he has to be in his job – but the whole thing made me feel better and had led to a support network for at least the next three weeks in reaching the goals we were talking about. A very long day though. I was exhausted on Sat night.

Yesterday was grand. I really could've done with longer in bed, but when poor Al got up at 8 I started feeling a bit guilty about staying in bed, so made it up at 8:45. Apparently this was an unholy hour to sleep in until. I didn't like to break it to them that it was probably the earliest I'd gotten up on a Sunday in quite a while! And then, they went out to buy bread for breakfast, completely ignoring the loaf on the kitchen counter. Apparently, home made bread isn’t right for them.

The  Robin Hood Game and Country Show was fun. We went on Sunday for the afternoon, mainly to get out of the house. We saw jousting and a few bits of archery and plenty of dogs for Gail to fuss over. Plus Al and I got a few mins to ourselves walking around as well. I loved watching the jousting. This young lad managed to squirm his way to the front, but then couldn’t see through the fence, so I held him up for the duration. His poor mother was frantic with embarrassment, but sure, he wanted to see the horses and he couldn’t from as close to the ground as he was.

Those horses were magnificent though. Really lovely looking!

Still, they bought dinner last night to say thank you for organising it. In the end we had to go to the Harvester and she managed to complain about everything in there, but it was her suggestion so nothing we could do. I found it quite nice – chicken burger followed by chocolate sundae. OK I was nearly falling asleep into my ice cream, but that’s ok, I enjoyed it and was full, slightly overfull but not bursting.

Anyway, when I got up this morning - the kitchen table was already occupied so I got to work slightly earlier than I had planned. I'm looking forward to tonight and relaxing and having the house back! I think Al feels the same way – I had an escape on Sat but he was full on for both days!

Gail wanted to do some washing while she was with us, but Al swears he put it on so all she got to do in the line of housework was some washing up and that was cos I wasn't there either. I think the message is getting through though. Bill wanted to fix our bathroom door (it wedges shut in damp weather) but I convinced him he shouldn’t since it was a rented house and any damage would come out of the deposit.

Roll on tonight, an early night, a nice dinner, maybe a glass of wine or something......

I'll post properly in a while about the course on Sat and the outcomes, mainly cos I want to publicise it while still keeping it private - but there are some things I want to do, so do them I will.

I've been sick

Well frankly, I still am. According to the doc yesterday, I've done a grand job of almost completely fighting off a case of chest infection. Wonderful. As an added bonus, if I don't feel better tomorrow, I get to go on antibiotics. Even better. needless to say, it will take a miracle for me not to feel better tomorrow.

So mainly over the last 3 days, I've been lying in bed/on couch/ on bathroom floor/ on kitchen floor, trying to gather the energy to get to the next place I'm going. During this time, as an indication of how sick I was, I didn't manage to finish one book. In fact it was worse than that - I still haven't finished the book I started LAST THURSDAY!!!

When I told my mother this, she was sure I was on death's door. It's amazing isn't it? Hearing me croak over the phone, the graphic descriptions of what I was coughing up (bright green), of how little I was eating (basically nothing), of how many night sweats I'd had (eight) and how many new pairs of jammies I'd had to buy (four) got a reaction of 'Oh poor you, I'm sure you'll be better soon.' One mention of having been incapable of reading a book and I get something akin to panic: 'I'll be on the next flight over, is Al there to look after you, does he know what to do'...... etc. etc. etc. Between that and the words 'chest infection' coming out of the doctor's mouth (words destined to put fear in mother's heart ever since the fever of '02 when our family doc at home was called out at 2am and told Ma there was no way on earth she should've waited til morning)...well my poor mammy was worried in the extreme.

And then the in-laws came calling.

OK to be fair, it wasn't like they were calling unannounced. The visit had been planned for about a month. But they knew I was sick. They knew Al had been sick last week. They knew our attitudes to taking time off work. All the signs were there that a visit was the last thing we needed. They even said on arrival they'd thought twice about coming since we were ill.

And yet they came.

And they're here til Monday.

So we're entertaining. I spent most of yesterday forcing the hoover across carpet that frankly could have gone another month or so without desperately needing hoovering. I dusted. I swept and mopped floors. I baked. I cooked. I washed. I dried. I did laundry. In short, I exhausted myself so that the first time my mother-in-law set foot in our marital home, she wouldn't have the chance to find fault with anything.

Why?

Cos I've seen the problems she's caused in her other son's house and I won't have that happening in my home. If that means I get up at 6am on my first day back at work to do the washing up and fold laundry - so be it. It's worth it for the security of my marriage. Do I resent her for it? Of course. Do I wish I could trust her to help out as I ask and no further? Of course. Is it going to happen? Hell no. They haven't learned a thing from the whole fiasco with the other son. They're trying to replay it all with us. I mean, who comes to visit people when they're both in work? It's plain unfair. It means instead of collapsing into jammies tonight when I get home and sleeping, I've to cook and play hostess.

So, another hour or so in work and then off I go. Home for a long tiring weekend.

Roll on Monday when I might get some peace and quiet!

Life put on hold.....

I've caught Al's cold. It came as a surprise to noone but myself, but I'm still miserable.

I've suffered through five hours at work and am contemplating going home early since I feel rotten and want to go home to bed and sleep. I feel miserable.

Lemsip isn't working very well, water isn't helping, my temp is going up and down like a yo-yo and I'm generally not feeling happy.

I think an early retirement from work today and a new start tomorrow.......