Monday, October 24, 2011

Quick update

Sorry guys. I'm still all messed up, now firmly entrenched in a down cycle. Ugh. All the negative thoughts and hopelessness that goes along will it can wear you out, let me tell you! I thought if I could get through my monthly time that it would get better, but nope, still here. SO, now my plan is just to try to walk on the treadmill a few times this week and see if the exercise will act as a natural antidepressant. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of treadmill and needing to walk on it...I weighed in on Sunday and wow. I'm officially up 10 pounds! I have GOT to get a handle on my snacking. My meals aren't really that big of a problem for the most part, but I've definitely become a snack monster the past 3 or 4 months and it has certainly contributed to that ten pounds. I MUST try to get a grip. Truthfully, I'm not feeling 100% motivated to go back to counting calories or anything that drastic, but if I don't turn this around again soon, I'm going to have to do it because some of my clothes are not fitting right anymore! I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for the last month.

I know what to do....now it's time to actually do it, which is frankly the hard part, isn't it? Sadly, being in a down cycle means I want to fill up on comfort food all day long, so I'm fighting an uphill battle right now honestly. I keep telling myself at least my diet/exercise is perhaps the one thing in my life I can sort of control, so there's that, right?

Well, that's where I am right now, in a nutshell.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Time out

I have really been trying to post regularly again, but sadly I've hit a bit of an emotional down cycle right now and it's given me blog-block. I just some really crappy life circumstances that seemingly will never end and I'm feeling absolutely tormented by the whole thing right now. It's so hard to think of stuff to write here about, since I'm spending a great deal of time and effort just trying to plow through this (once again!) without imploding.

Please, please whisper a prayer for me, if you're so inclined. Oh, I know that I'll
eventually bounce back emotionally, but there's this part inside of me that I can feel dying and it is breaking my heart. Not to mention the life circumstances at the root of this problem desperately need to change, and it is abundantly clear that it will take nothing less than God's intervention. I am powerless and I feel so, so hopeless.

By the way, I disabled comments on this post, because I'm so not trolling for attention or trying to stir up drama. I just need to know someone is taking up this battle with me, even for a second. I have no one in 'real' life' where I live that I can turn to when I need support, so coming here and asking for your prayers is such a big thing. I really hope you know how much you guys mean to me.

Be back soon...

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Remembering how to lose properly

Sorry I haven't been posting much this week, I've been feeling a bit under the weather. It's a weird sinus thing...my nose isn't really that congested but my entire face and one side of my jaw hurts so bad that its really distracting, and I just feel pretty yucky overall. At any rate, I've been just laying low most of the week, only doing the bare minimum to get through each day. (No, workouts have not made that cut. Sorry, but being upright hurts!)

The only thing new this week is that my daughter's volleyball team finally lost a game on Tuesday (they were like 9-0 before that) and it was so upsetting for her! She cried off and on for like 2-3 hours, it was so sad. She so wanted to get through the season with a perfect record. She spent hours picking apart her own game, even though the few mistakes she made weren't the reason they lost. She made herself miserable instead of just realizing losses happen and moving forward.

I was really surprised to find that I wasn't too upset over the loss. Her team used to be so bad that they only won one game the first year, but they've improved so much over the past couple of years that now they've forgotten how to lose. In their minds, they became invincible. Me? I think balance is good. Losing means learning to properly deal with disappointment and it also adds a nice, healthy dose of humility.

Hmmmm. Betcha that can translate over to our lives, right? It's no secret that I often struggle because of God not answering our prayers and therefore allowing both big and small losses in our lives....but then I remember that when everything is awesome we tend to cruise along on 'us' power. We forget how helpless and dependent on God we really are! We sometimes lose our humility and our focus turns to the physical instead of the spiritual. We forget we're in a battle. We forget there is more to life than what we can see.

So, perhaps we need to be thankful for the losses in life, even though they definitely don't feel good and they tend to make us cry. Balance is good, and God surely knows that better than we do. Of course, this only works when we allow the loss to turn our attention back to God. Spending too much time focusing on ourselves (like my daughter was doing) only adds to the misery and replays the loss over and over in our heads.

Well, what do you know? Even through the grossness and inactivity of my week, God taught me a little lesson. So tell me...are there any losses recently in your life that have turned out to be blessings in disguise?

Monday, October 3, 2011

Weekend in review, cause I've got nothing else!

Well, I am officially the parent of a teenager...my daughter turned 13 on Friday. I like to tease her that it doesn't feel any different to be a teenager to her, simply because she's been acting the part for years! :)

It was a quiet weekend for the most part. We took the birthday girl to dinner Friday at Red Robin (I didn't get my own meal, just shared a bit of each of theirs) and went shopping for boots, her requested gift from us. She ended up finding some really cute ones at Kohls, which is one of my favorite stores but not the cheapest place in the world! I almost got sucked in to shopping myself, but luckily the hour was late so I came home empty handed. I seriously need to drag myself off to the second hand store soon though, to rid myself of this fall-clothes shopping bug! :)

On Saturday my mom came for a visit (yay!) and we went to the kiddo's volleyball game (they're still undefeated, but it was a super-close call!), out to lunch at Panera (I didn't do very good there, so moving on...), and then shopping once again! Saturday night my husband and kiddo went out of town to see my bro-in-law and his kids, but I stayed home and had a quiet evening to myself. There wasn't really any food in the house so I totally skipped dinner, but then proceeded to eat almost an entire bag of baked Lays later. When will I learn to keep the house stocked with good food and not to let myself get that hungry? Sigh.

Sunday morning there was a bit (okay, a lot) of mama-induced ugly drama (I was oddly super-hormonal feeling but it isn't at the right time of the month...peri-menopause rearing it's ugly head again, perhaps?) and I ended up staying home from church. After some quiet time, a few apologies, and a Chinese food lunch (kid sized, I'm making an effort), I was back on track though! The rest of the day was spent at home waiting for craigslist people who never showed (for FREE stuff...really, people?) and Hubs painted a new (to us, that is) dresser for the kiddo. (It turned out so amazing, by the way! Crazy what ten bucks worth of spray paint can do to a $30 dresser.)

Sadly, I didn't do my normal Sunday afternoon grocery run though, so now the cupboards are bare and that doesn't bode well for healthy eating until I finally do drag myself shopping. Not that it matters much, with two volleyball games (Tues and Thurs) and also church on Wednesday, we will rarely be eating home cooking this week. This schedule is killing my diet. Thankfully, it'll all be done in a month, and then I vow to get the healthy home cooking back to normal. Nothing like two months of scarfing junk food in the car to make you crave baked chicken and salads! :)

The sun is out finally after a couple of weeks of raining almost non-stop, so it's time to get the bikes out and go enjoy some exercise mixed with the beautiful fall colors! I'm so looking forward to it, if only we can find the time. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and can find time to enjoy the fall weather this week, too!