Settling for good enough

We all settle for things in our lives that are a little or a lot less than what we wanted or expected. If you've ever settled, it's something you've accepted as part of your life. You made the decision that it is "good enough".

That's what I've done with my weight. I've settled into this 176 range and accepted it as good enough.Yet it's a completely unacceptable weight for me. It's ridiculous that I've gained 20 pounds in the past six months. What's even more ridiculous is that I've tried to fool myself into thinking this it's okay. I use stupid logic with myself, telling myself that I'm a "little" overweight and that's okay. Most people are a little overweight.

Well, it is really isn't okay, and I'm ready to do something about it.

I complained yesterday about my exercise, that it was lackluster and boring. Last weekend I bought another strength training book. I cracked it open this morning and it's a really good book. I already own about ten strength training books, including NWLR4W (which I hate). This book is great because it's doing different variations of the same exercises I've been doing.

This morning I tried a couple new things. Bicep curls using a slanted board (much harder than my concentrated bicep curls). The other doing the lat pulldowns while on my knees. It's suppose to work the glutes in addition to the lats, and mine have been sore all day. Just small changes in old exercises made all the difference in the world. I highly recommend this book ($14.99 at Costco).

I bought new workout shoes on Monday, Asics Gels (GT-2150). I've had three pairs in the last three years and love them. These are a new, improved (and more expensive) model. I wore them Tuesday and wanted to amputate my feet after my workout. I tried them again this morning and they were like wearing pillows. I think I had the laces too tight on Tuesday (stupid me!).

I also made the decision this morning that if I really hate the treadmill (and I do!) I don't have to work it into my cardio routine during the week. I try to mix up my cardio, a couple days of the StairMaster (my favorite!), a day or two of the treadmill, the spinning cycle, crossramp and elliptical. On treadmill days I'm miserable.

The reason I hate the treadmill so much is that I can't jog anymore. I've never mentioned this because it makes me feel so old, but since I twisted my knee last year it's never been the same. Running is just out of the question. I can slowly jog (4.5 mph) for ten minutes then it starts to ache and hurt. I really don't like getting old, but this is a sure sign of becoming elderly. Bad knees. That damn treadmill rubs it in my face every time I get on it. The young twenty-somethings are running up a storm next to me. There I am, the old lady, walking (uphill, but it's still not as cool as running).

My decision this morning was to hell with the treadmill. I hate it, and I'm not doing it anymore. If I want to do the StairMaster seven days a week, then I'll do what makes me happy.

Now I'm back on track with the exercise, and I'm actually looking forward to trying some new lower body exercises tomorrow.

The next step is to figure out how to get back to tracking my food. I'm not settling for 176, that means I'm going to have to track my food. 176 is not good enough.

Pictures from my walk at lunch today...

This is so strange, but a lot of the flowering trees and bushes are blooming. It's still February. We've had snow in March in past years. I hope winter is really over, but like I said, it's February in Seattle (and sunny...a total freak of nature)!

View from the parking lot at my office, as I was leaving at 5:30pm. Just beyond the trees is the condemned trailer park, and to the right is the county detention center. It was still a pretty sunset.

My day and a few pictures

My eye was back to normal by last night. I even put on some mascara and went to the gym yesterday afternoon. The magic (expensive) salve did the trick. You've got to love modern medicine is all I can say.

Not a whole lot to report today, just a hell of a day at work because I've been on call for the last six days. Being on call is the worst thing ever. I hate it. Our team of nine has over 100 applications we support. For one week every nine weeks, I have to carry the on-call phone and if there's an emergency, I get called and have thirty minutes to respond. It's a bloody nightmare when something goes down because often it affects the operation of the airline. There's always a lot of pressure to get it fixed quickly. I had three calls at home over the weekend, and by noon today I had nine new trouble tickets assigned to me. Today is my last day of being on-call for another nine weeks. It's been a tough week!

I was at the gym by 6am this morning for another lackluster workout. My heart (literally) just isn't into working out any more. I go, I do my thing for an hour or an hour and a half (sometimes two), but I'm really fighting with myself about it. Every fiber of my being wants to stay in bed in the mornings. So far I haven't given in, but it's sure been tough lately. I have to have the conversation with myself every freaking morning...get up - get up - get up! One of these days I'm afraid I'm going to lose the battle and the fat chick in me is going to take over again. It's not easy making her shut up, especially at 5am.

At noon I went for a walk by my office and realized there just isn't anything very pretty by my office. I wanted to take pictures with my new camera but I'm about a mile from SeaTac airport.It's a rundown, sad area. We have a state detention center on one side of us, where they keep the prisoners before they go to the real jail. On the other side is a trailer park full of single wides that they've condemned because a new road is going to be put in. They're all boarded up and look scary. I started to take pictures of all the new graffiti I saw today but decided it wasn't even pretty graffiti.

So here's what I did see that wasn't too awful. :)

A tree in the parking lot of my work place. Please note the beautiful blue sky, in Seattle, in February and it was 52 degrees!

A tree on the street near my work, the street I like to walk because there's hardly any traffic. It's like a street to no where...they never finished it (but that's why they condemned the trailer park, they're going to finish it some day).

My most favorite airline! Check out that sky. The bluest skies are in Seattle!

The trees think it's spring time and are budding already..it's February!

A flag in front of an old house.

Same flag from the other side through the budding cherry blossoms.

The view from the county detention center, about 1/4 mile from my office.

The detention center doesn't have any windows. Sad but true.

That's all I could find to take pictures of today. Actually, looking at the pictures it looks a lot prettier than I thought.

A Valentine owie

Valentine's Day from hell
Valentine's Day 2010 will go down as my worst day so far this year and probably my worst Valentine's day ever. I had some sort of allergic reaction and my right eyelid swelled up so it was almost shut. In addition, as soon as my eyelid started swelling, I started sneezing uncontrollably for about twelve hours.

I have no idea how what happened, but my eyelid felt like it had acid on it and it hurt like hell. Not to mention I looked like a one-eyed monster with a red nose. Yesterday wasn't my best day.

The only good thing that came out of this is how sweet my husband was about the whole thing. He was really concerned, and kept checking on me after I took a couple Benadryl and passed out at 3pm yesterday.

This morning when I woke, my eye was even more swollen. It wasn't just my eyelid, but the entire socket around my eye was swollen and puffy. Without me even asking him, my husband called the doctor and managed to get a 9:30am appointment for me to see an eye specialist.

He drove me there, waited for me, took me to the pharmacy, got my prescription filled and was a carring and concerned spouse. I really appreciated this because I wasn't in any condition to drive and I felt awful. The sneezing had turned into a sinus headache and my entire head hurt and felt like it was going to explode.

The doctor didn't have any idea what was wrong with me, just that I was allergic to something. He rolled back both of my eyelids to look at the underside (which by the way, hurt like heck). He said I had eyes prone to allergies, they were "cobble-stoned" on the underside of my lids. Nice to know but this has never happened to me before.

My prescription was a tiny tube of salve, 3.5 grams (about 1/8 ounce), and it was $126.00 without insurance. Luckily I have insurance so it was only $25. Highway robbery but I would have paid just about anything for it. It seems to be working and the swelling has gone down considerably and the sneezing has stopped.

I'm even thinking about going to the gym, or maybe a walk outside. The sun is shining and it's 47 degrees. I got a new camera for Valentine's Day that I'm dying to try out. It's a red Panasonic Lumix and very cool. It even has a "food" picture taking setting. I love it but haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

In spite of the eye thing yesterday and Valentine's Day being a bust, I'm in a really happy mood. Not being in pain is always a good thing. Having a caring and loving husband isn't too bad either.

Thank you
I don't say this often enough, but I really appreciate everyone out there in blog world. Your caring comments mean a lot to me. I haven't been commenting as much as usual on your blogs, because I was so self-absorbed in my own sadness and throwing myself a daily pity party I just didn't have the time nor felt very like I had anything worthy to say. Those days are past me now (thank God, and I mean that literally). I feel like I can be supportive and caring about other people again. Just like you always are for me. :)

Picture of the day
I'm thinking about adding a picture of the day since I'm so in love with my new camera. I'm copying this idea from a few people's blog. I love pictures and taking pictures.

In the picture below, the white and orange cat is my cat, Mickey Mouse, the only cat I've ever met that comes when he's called and loves me the best. The other cat is actually our neighbor's cat, Bear. My husband let's him in the house all the time because he's so cute and the neighbor recently decided to make him an outdoor cat and they won't let him in the house anymore.

My husband has a bad habit of bringing home strays. I told him Bear isn't a stray, but even I feel sorry for the little guy when he's standing out in the rain, hovering on our front port, dripping wet.

Mickey Mouse will sit and watch Bear for hours. He doesn't touch him or hiss at him, he just watches him very intently. I often wonder what Mickey is thinking when he's staring at Bear. Probably something like 'who the hell let you in here?' or 'one wrong move and you're history!' or 'remember, I'm numero uno around here and don't you forget it!'or 'ummm, excuse ME, but that's MY pillow you're touching, they're all MY pillows!'.

"I'm watching you"

Happy Valentine's Days: Kicking depression's butt

Depression
I woke up this morning with a new attitude. I believe I'm responsible for my own happiness. I can't expect someone else to make me happy, just like someone else can't depend on me to make them happy. It comes from within, we can each control our own emotions. At least I believe that applies to most of us, but not all of us.

Some people have true depression, not just a few weeks of being in a funk, but months or years of deep sadness. They need mind-altering drugs to get through each day.

One of my nieces has been on a mixture of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics for several years. Unfortunately, her doctors have never found the magic potion to make her a happier person. Today she's a shell of the girl I knew twenty years ago. It's heart-breaking to watch, and I often wonder why she can't just "get over it", but after watching her suffer for the last sixteen years I realize she can't just shake her sadness. It has consumed her.

I, on the other hand, can do something about this sadness I've been going through. I've been in an unhappy place since before Christmas. I thought it was kind of a post-traumatic stress thing from my project from hell I was on at work. However, it had been two months since that project ended and the sadness seemed to get deeper and darker.

I'm not sure what happened overnight to make me realize I don't want to go through life wallowing in self-pity, but I woke up feeling optimistic and positive today. Even when it seems like things are bleak and happiness is impossible to find, half the battle is still having the resolve to fight back. I have the resolve to fight this depression. It won't consume me any longer. Life is short. I can choose to be miserable and sad, or I can choose to find the good in this life and build on it. I chose the latter.

Valentine's Day
I started the morning by  downloading a Valentine's Day card for my husband. American Greetings has a cool website where you can add pictures and customize the card. Since he gave me roses and a romantic card yesterday I thought I should at least give him a card. He said I seemed kind of down lately and he wanted to surprise me early. This from a guy that last year ran to the store at 4pm on Valentine's Day to buy a card and flowers.

I was going to make buckwheat blueberry pancakes in heart shapes for breakfast but my husband is on a new health kick and opted for scrambled egg whites and fresh strawberries.

Finally, after living with me all these  years and watch me count calories or Points for most of those years, he's getting on the bandwagon with me. Although I'm finding it a bit annoying to hear him tell me what he can and can't eat, especially when milk, bananas and olive oil are on his do not touch list. I keep telling him you can't believe everything you read, but he tends to not listen to me.

We don't have anything big planned for the day except I finally get to see the second Twilight movie. It's my turn to pick the movie, although I loved Blind Side, even though it was kind of about football. As far as Twilight, what can I say, guess I'm just a teenager at heart and still believe in young love (vampires...not so much).

We're also going to hit the gym this morning. My husband is starting to go to the gym with me. The only problem is on the weekends I tend to workout longer, usually about two hours. He's done in an hour and wants to leave. The solution is we go in separate cars. It's not environmentally friendly, but it's only three miles and it keeps me from resenting him going with me.

Food tip of the day
Did you know one teaspoon of sugar is equal to 4.3 grams of sugar? Did you know one Weight Watcher orange sorbet and ice cream bar has 20 grams of sugar, or almost five teaspoons of sugar! It's only two Points, but that's a lot of sugar. Not exactly a healthy snack (especially if you eat two in one sitting!). A Weight Watchers don't.

P.S. - By the way, if you think Jesus was just a man, check out this email I received. It was sent four days ago, but I didn't read it until today, after I posted this morning. I know this wonderful person has been praying for me. I'll leave the author anonymous, but wow, a rather profound statement!

Here is something that it took me years to learn. NO ONE is ever going to make us happy. Happiness comes from inside ourselves. No man, woman, or child will ever be able to 'give us the attention' we crave. My husband still comes home from work and sits in his recliner and falls asleep in front of the tv. But I now know that he isn't really ignoring me. It is just how he is. I know he loves me completely; and he knows I love him. How do I handle it? Eating was always something I did to 'fill the void' and I am struggling, as you are, to break THAT one. But I can now find joy, happiness as it were, in simply being me. Imperfect as I am. I am a special creation of God. That should be enough. It isn't always, but I am growing and getting better. The only one who will never fail you is God. He can, and wants to be your source of happiness. All you have to do is let Him.

Silence is not always golden

I haven't posted since Monday. That's very unusual for me. I've been posting almost daily for two years.

It wasn't because I didn't have anything to say this past week. I had a lot to say, but all of it was negative, sad, and depressing. I felt like I'd fallen into a pit of despair and self-pity. For some reason I just couldn't bring myself to share it with the world. I've never really suffered from depression for more than a day or two, then I'd always bounce back and all would be well with my world. This time it feels different.

I can't even watch the news without crying. Tonight at the gym I was on the treadmill trying to run, seeing if my knee would hold up (it did). CNN was on the TV in front of me, a special report on Haiti. Just what I didn't need to see. I was literally in tears and had to get off the treadmill and head to a different area of the gym (sans TV).

I'm short-tempered at work lately, which is totally unlike me. The co-worker I work with the closest pointed out to me that I was rude to him in a meeting last week. I didn't even realize it, but I remember he irritated me, and I said something I probably shouldn't have said.

It's been a string of things in the past few weeks that seem to be weighing heavy on me. Nothing specific that I can blame for this darkness in my soul. It's like a shroud of despair is hanging over me. I feel a deep sadness that I've never experienced.

I'm not suicidal but I do wonder about the purpose of life, specifically, the purpose of my life. Do I really matter to anyone?

I'm married but I really believe my husband would be happier with someone else. Someone who shares his same interests, his same beliefs. Somewhere along the way in the past 21 years we have grown apart. Sometimes I fear it's too far apart and we may never be able to fix our marriage.

I'm still hanging steady with my weight at 176. That's depressing me. I feel fat. My size 12 jeans are very snug. My size 10 skirt barely zips, and I can't even wear it in public. My size 10 blazers feel tight across the shoulders. Yet I seem paralyzed to do anything about it. I want to lose weight but I'm barely able to not gain any additional weight.

I guess you can see why I haven't posted all week. Who wants to read this kind of crap? It's not uplifting, it doesn't inspire or encourage. If anything I'm probably pulling you down with me.

Maybe I'll figure this out. Maybe it's just a phase and it'll pass. Maybe I should shut up about it now. Maybe silence IS golden.

Guess I'm not normal after all

I had a run-in with that damn cake last night. I know I said I wasn't even interested in it yesterday, but as soon I hit "Publish Post" last night, I thought, cake...yummy. (that's not the cake, but it looked very similar)

I fought the craving until about 11:30pm then thought to hell with it, I'm having a piece of cake.

It's not the chocolate cake I'm crazy about, it's the stupid frosting. It's a vanilla butter-cream recipe I found on FoodNetwork.com (5 stars by about 57 people). It's made with 2 cups of butter, heavy whipping cream, vanilla and powdered sugar. All for just one cake. It was the best frosting I've ever eaten in my life.

The big difference between me last night and me two years ago is that I didn't eat the entire cake. Just one piece. Seriously, in the old days I would eat an entire cake in one sitting. I was kind of sick that way.

I weighed myself this morning. 176.6. Up a couple more pounds. Drat!

I may as well face it, I'm not ever going to be a "normal" person that can have a "bad" food in my house. There is such a thing as a "bad" food. Vanilla butter-cream frosting on any kind of cake is a "bad" food for me. I can't resist it and it's nutritional bad for me.

The rest of the cake has gone to cake heaven, otherwise known as the garbage disposal. I'm referring to the garbage disposal in my kitchen sink, not my stomach.

I know who the Saints are now

The Saints are only the greatest football team in America!

We made it home from the 5th Avenue Theater by half-time. Downtown Seattle to our house, about 24 miles, in less than 20 minutes. A record.

The last half of the game was amazing!

Speaking of football, we saw Blind Side on Saturday. I agreed to go to it because I'd messed up about the Super Bowl. Best movie ever! I'm usually not into football movies but this movie was really good.. It's a must-see. It's based on a true story which makes it even cooler. I cried a lot and laughed a lot, my requirements for a great movie. A++

My husband and I had an interesting conversation at brunch this morning (where I ordered scrambled egg whites with as little oil as possible, and sliced tomatoes). I told him I felt guilty about dinner Saturday night. I had a large piece of prime rib, a twice baked potato (with lots of cheese), Marsala mushrooms, roasted Brussels sprouts where I didn't even measure the olive oil, champagne and two pieces of cake. I didn't like the chocolate cake, but I loved the homemade buttercream frosting.

He didn't understand my guilt about eating food. He seriously didn't get what I was talking about. He told me why would you feel "guilty"? It's just food. I told him it was because it was so many calories and it made me feel bad that I just ate whatever I wanted and didn't even think about the calories and fat. It was the champagne that made me nuts...when I drink I lose all common sense.

Something he said really hit home with me. It's not anything I haven't heard before on other blogs or in comments, but when he said it, it made it finally made sense.

He said, "It's not like you eat like that every day. You always eat healthy. In fact, when is the last time you had prime rib or a piece of cake?"

I really can't remember the last time I had prime rib, maybe three or more years ago. The last time I had a piece of cake, a real piece of cake and not just a bite, was probably at least two years ago too. When I weighed 240 pounds.

Today I'm completely back on track with my eating, and I worked out an hour and a half at the gym. I didn't have any sugar cravings or cravings of any type today. The big dinner with the cake for dessert didn't send me down some path of food debauchery and gluttony. I'm not even interested in having more cake. I had it, it was good, but I'm over it.

Is this what normal people feel like? It's a new concept for me--to actually eat a meal I would consider "bad" and not deeply regret it and beat myself up about it. Like he said, it's just food. What is there to feel guilty about?