Fitting it all in

Kind of a late start today, even though I got up at the usual 6 a.m.-ish. (I thought you were supposed to be able to sleep late once you quit working at a regular job. Yes, taking care of my home is work, but it's certainly not anything I would call, um, regular! I am most definitely a lark when it comes to sleeping and waking.)

Anyhoo. I had a meeting with the owner of the garden center this morning and in order to be a good little wife I had to give up writing this morning to play a game of SuperScrabble with my husband. He's been on a roll lately, and I am not a very gracious loser, so it did start my day off pretty well to be able to STOMP him. Heh.

We take our SuperScrabble seriously here in the Middle of Nowhere.

Were it not for NaBloPoMo, I might have skipped writing today entirely, as I've very little to report. I walked yesterday afternoon and will walk again in a couple of hours. It's SuperWindy today, which is making the actual temperature of 29° feel like 19°. We're going to start out at 2 p.m., hopefully at the peak of the afternoon warmth. Got a couple nice pix walking yesterday, don't you think? Same barn from different directions.

We see this barn and outbuildings at the beginning of the walk.

Same barn from the opposite side, heading back to the car.

Last week I checked my weight every morning. That half-pound gain happened between the official Monday weigh-in and Tuesday, and I stayed the same all week. Perhaps that's helped me be able to accept the result this week.

I don't plan to weigh myself again until Monday, mostly because a weekend of restaurant meals is probably not going to look too good. But partly just to see how I react. I'm my own petri dish experiment, I guess, and in the end, I'll choose the method that allows me to feel the most OKAY on Mondays.

Honestly, though, I feel okay most of the time. I like the walking, I'm not hungry, I'm eating healthfully. I've not been very good about the yoga or weight training or drinking water, so there's a lot of room for improvement. All in all, though, the first eight weeks have been pretty good, both for me and to me.

Having something to focus on that I can't complain about: Priceless.

One foot in front of the other

Having and following a routine, a plan, a course of action is helpful when life gets, um, discouraging.

Things didn't work out well at the dentist yesterday because I didn't go to the dentist, as I had planned. Because he wasn't in. Which means the new appliance I wanted to have in place prior to an upcoming weekend getaway? Well, it's not going to be here.

I could have cried.

And the car? Remember the car that hit the deer nearly three weeks ago? It's apparently missing just one hose that was supposed to have been delivered yesterday BUT THE EMPLOYEE WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO PUT IT ON THE TRUCK FORGOT TO DO IT. The truck shows up at the auto-repair place with goodies for all the other jobs except ours.

You can't help but wonder about the efficiency, or lack thereof, in the modern workplace. I know I'm going to sound like an old curmudgeon, but back when I was working if something went wrong we fixed it.

I was an ad designer for a newspaper. We had deadlines. WHICH WE MET. I mentioned my schedule to my dentist last time I was in and he, I thought, made a note of it. And then he decided to take Thursday off. They're not open on Friday. My deadline for the procedure that needed to happen in order to be comfortable going on this trip was … yesterday. Thursday.

There's nothing to do but live with it, but I can live with it angry. For a while, anyway.

At the newspaper, the ad designers were the next-to-last ones in the office on deadline day. The client was king, and if the client didn't provide copy to the sales rep until the last minute, we ad designers were the ones who stayed late and finished it up and got it to the page designers so the paper could get printed and delivered on time. I don't think I ever, not once, clocked out on time on deadline day.

And the car? Well, back in the day, an ad designer occasionally had to drive to the client to pick up copy when the sales rep was tied up trying to get copy from another client. Or out with a sick child. Or sick themselves. You do what you have to do to keep the client happy and to make deadline.

The part needed for the car is in a warehouse in a city two hours away. Someone from that shop could have – should have – driven there to pick it up, bring it back, stick it where it's supposed to go and have that car ready when it was promised. (We have been told it would be ready every day this week. And the initial estimate for completion was February 13.)

I can only imagine what it's like to be an ad designer these days. The ability to transfer images and words electronically surely would speed up the whole process, right? More than likely it's squished those deadlines ever more tightly up against the printer's schedule. Nerve-wracking it would be, certainly.

I shouldn't be complaining. My life is good. I'm sitting in my toasty warm house in front of a fabulous and powerful little gadget dumping all my frustrations on both of you and drinking freshly made coffee from a handmade mug.

I haven't just been rescued from a crippled cruise ship. I'm not recovering from surgery. I'm not ill or injured. I haven't lost someone recently. I've been putting one foot in front of the other for 134 miles this year, and I'll add a couple more to that total today.

I have so much for which to be grateful. It would serve me well to remember what I have, instead of what I have not.

Progress, not perfection

So how am I going to measure my progress as I move forward in the current pursuit of health and wellness? (Oh, okay, and weight loss.) Well, this is the hard part.

The bathroom scale provides information, but all too often the number I see is all tied up with judgment and guilt and shame. Sometimes the number is 'good,' and I feel like I deserve a reward. Sometimes it's 'bad,' and I feel like giving up. In either case – good or bad – I go off the rails. This is not, of course, the fault of the bathroom scale. It's completely my attitude upon seeing that number.

Knowing what I know about my relationship with it, then, I clearly need to find a different way to measure progress. At the same time, I'd like to know what that number is. But only occasionally. (Okay, I'd really like to know what it is two or three times a day. But that's counterintuitive to the process.)

So here's the deal: I'm going to weigh myself on the 25th of each month. I weighed myself Christmas Day and right that minute started figuring out what my plan was going to be, in spite of Christmas dinner. I began tracking my food and exercise on the 26th. My daily goals are pretty simple:

Nutrition:

• 1598 calories/day (according to LoseIt! I should lose a pound a week at this level. I'd originally thought to keep calories at 1500, but I'm going to try 1600-ish the first month)
• Limit (but don't eliminate) sugar. I can't knock it out completely, but I can save it for Mondays (see below)
• Drink more water. I don't know if the old rule of six to eight glasses a day is still necessary, but I get way less than that. And, like chicken soup in a car wreck, it can't hurt. Right?

Activity:

• Monday - Free day (no intentional exercise, eat whatever, don't log anything)
• Tuesday - Walk outdoors or elliptical, yoga
• Wednesday - Walk outdoors or elliptical, dumbbells
• Thursday - Walk outdoors or elliptical
• Friday - Walk outdoors or elliptical, yoga
• Saturday - Walk outdoors or elliptical, dumbbells
• Sunday - Walk outdoors or elliptical

I will measure my progress between weigh-ins by noting whether I've completed each day successfully or not. Have I eaten at or below 1600-ish calories? Have I done the workout(s) I said I would do?

So far, so good. The dumbbell and yoga workouts have been short and sweet. I have an all-or-nothing personality, and am deliberately taking this slowly so I don't burn out. I also have NO desire to end up sweating for two hours a day, as I did 20 years ago. (I'm also, um, 20 years older than I was then, and it's, um, harder to sweat for two hours a day.)

With the 25th of the month being weigh-in day, I'll be weighing myself on my birthday when May rolls around. Already I'm thinking I'll be 20 pounds lighter by then. And already I'm wishing it would be 30 or 40 or even 50. Ten pounds a month, that's possible, isn't it?

See what happens when I start projecting into the future? That's why ODAAT is So. Damned. Important. And why perfection is so over-rated.