Sometimes the universe is good

This was my status update today because, it's true.  My dear friends just adopted their baby, a beautiful tiny girl they've named Penelope.  Of the many, many awful things that are happening in the world, this is not one of them.  This makes many other things seem small.

I'm late in my weekly update.  Looks like I lost 1 lb, which is moderately annoying since I want to lose, like, 5 every day.  But last week I hauled ass quite a bit and managed to exercise something like 5 out of 7 days.  I also took a great walk in the early morning of a saturday and that made a big impact.  It is Juneuary here in the PNW, so the rain that's been pissing down hasn't helped me get out and walk.  I did a little yesterday and I felt really good, but I do allow externals like the weather to get me down.  It's an SFC week (Sacred Feminine Cycle) so I spent a couple days eating peanut butter and chocolate.  But I counter that with massive and fairly delicious salads three days this week.  And I found my camelback bottle (on the back porch, forgotten)!  So I can drink more water again.

On Tuesday of the this week, husband was out of town so Sprog and I went to B&N.  It was freezing cold (for JUNE, I think less than 50 qualifies as "freezing") and my bones felt achy and I wondered if I had the flu.  This is when it hit me that, perhaps, it was not weight or cancer, but arthritis.  You know, the chronic condition that EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY SUFFERS FROM.  Because I'm 38 (almost 39) and maybe, just maybe, that's what's going on.  Makes oodles of sense, really.  And thus I refuse to truly accept it as true.

Smaller Sarah reached her goal.  I'm immensely happy for her, but as with everything in my life, annoyingly jealous as well.  (Sometimes intellectual ambiguity is a curse).  In some ways, it gives me hope, as her blog inspired my little semi-public effort.  But I so wish the road to health was not paved with a new found love of exercise and raw foods.

Herein, We Do This Again



Am I jumping next to a big rock? Dunno. 


All I'm doing right now is avoiding writing. 
How am I avoiding writing? By writing. 
This makes NO SENSE.

I heard a quote I liked this week.  I think I'll paraphrase as best as I can.
"While I was a Julliard, we practiced 14 or so hours a day.  We felt like any time spent not practicing was wasted."
While I don't agree with this totally, I think the gist of it works.  Especially if you replace "writing" with "practicing." I was both healthier and more prolific as a writer when I lived in England.  I had no TV, no access to one and I had to walk everywhere. So, some things are self-evident, but after the initial stuff drops away, you're left with genuine improvement. 

I took a couple walks this week.  Once around Greenlake and once around Maple Leaf.
I did *some* work this week.  Just a smidgen.
I continue to drink an obscene amount of water.  But I really do that no matter what.

I enjoyed a brief chat with The Young Woman who has finished her diss and defended this week.  Well deserved congratulations to her, but objectively, I'd like to rip her head off.  I REALLY want to rip the head off the Nitwit who finished, as well.  That one is just hopeless, however.  And even I recognize it is pure envy, not real animosity that drives this.  But it is a sick and icky feeling in my gut that I don't respect very much.

I am considering that perhaps I can seduce the Housemate into a juice fast experiment with me.  We'll see. 

Oh, and I've been taking ibuprofen to sleep.  Every night this week.  My joints ache and I don't think that's a good thing. 

Off to the land of the 19th century.

Accomplishments o' The Week (or, Where I Relay My Badassedness)

I've been reading way too much Victorian melodrama, hence the multiple titles. 
I'm working on acknowledging stuff that I do that is a success, an "I DID IT."  And my threshold for success is pretty low, so I feel like I should be able to count some things, but as I sit to write this, I find it really, really hard to think of what the hell I did this week. 

Okay:

I drank green lemonade for many of the days this week.
I made lists in  my calendar and crossed all items off.
I returned emails in a timely manner on two days.
I finished grading the latest set of student work.
I finished a garbage draft of a book review.

Obviously, I have not included weight loss related material.  I have ebbs and flows.  There are weeks when I couldn't give a rats ass about counting points, etc. and there are weeks when I'm nigh on obsessed with it. 

What I do have a strong, STRONG urge to do right now is to get rid of things.  Material posessions.  My urge to purge is strong and I have to use it as a reward for doing other stuff *coughdissertationcough*.  Oh yeah, I was a little sick this week.  Hmmm.  Well, onto jury duty next week.

Hunh?

I can't even manage to keep up my kid's blog, what am I doing this for?
Because if things aren't working, you gotta do something different, right?
I'm (unprintable number) overweight.  Have been for most of my life.  Annoying, tiring and now just fucking aggravating.  Since I'm OLD, as my students mere existence constantly reminds me.  And I'm frankly tired of everyone else's success.  I WANT SOME TOO. 

I really have two missions (you know, aside from being a decent human, feeding and loving my kid and hubband, taking care of the cats): I need to lose weight and finish my dissertation (aka The Book Report).  Things interfering with that process: see sentence begining with "being a decent human..."  Although, one might offer that taking time away from my dissertation work to, say, blog, might be what's contributing to the anxiety that fuels emotional eating.  I say, shut the fuck up one. 

How much weight do you have to lose, Biddy? 
A lot.  A small person's worth, I'd say. 

How are you going to do that? 
Freakin' WW, how else does everyone and their grandmother do it? 
(I HATE DIETS.  Having been on one for most of natural life, this whole process makes my skin crawl.  But what else makes my skin crawl is not being able to bend well anymore.  Getting winded walking to my car [admittedly, uphill] also makes my skin crawl)

How much dissertation do you have to do?
A lot.  Most of it.  Annoyingly.

How are you going to do that?
One. Word. At. A. Time. 
Possibly NaNoWriMo, as well.  Since a diss is a process, not a product, I'm stuck/gifted with just moving through it. 

I really, really do not want to turn 40 and realize I'm still 12, eternally 12 and feeling like she's taking up too much space in the world and can't finish her term paper on cats on time.  So, we'll see.