Procrastination...

Well, my original plan was to be blogging daily, but Dan said, don't put so much pressure on yourself, just blog weekly.  I thought, good plan. However, as you may have noticed, it's been over two weeks since my last post. Most of the problem is that I need to clean my desk, and sitting down to write is a not-so-subtle reminder, so I avoid writing. Unfortunately, now it is almost three in the morning, and I can't sleep, so here I am at my messy desk in the middle of the night trying to work out some kinks. I'll start with the health adventure and then on to the kinky stuff.

Of the last two weeks, the first was pretty much as I expected. We hit the gym three times, working around work and kids and it was a struggle but we did it. Food was a challenge as it will continue to be for a while, I'm sure. Maybe forever. Week two was a different story.

Week two started out with car trouble that made our Monday gym time impossible. We couldn't go on Tuesday because we were getting the car taken care of. Wednesday was a last minute extra shift at work that Dan had to do and so I took one too. Thursday and Friday I had trips that lasted all day. Dan made it to the gym on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, poor guy. I'm proud of him, but he is one sore puppy. I made it on Saturday.

This is not acceptable to me so I looked back to see what I could have changed and I realized it's my own perspective. On Wednesday, I turned down the extra shift they asked me to do because Payton had an orthodontist appointment and I was going to the gym, but then Dan didn't have a choice on his shift change because Wednesdays are weird work days for him anyway. So, once he said he'd be back at 12:50 (gym being from 12-12;45) I felt that I might as well be back because I had to bring Dan back and I was afraid that the gym wasn't a legit excuse to turn down the shift. They basically count on me doing this particular extra shift when it's needed because it fits in with my regular route and I usually say yes when they ask me to help out. So, I felt pressured. That's not to say they actually pressured me, but I felt pressured. I talked to Dan about this and I realized that going to the gym is vitally important. I have to take care of my health and this is far more important than an extra shift. It's not my fault if they plan on me saying yes and I choose to say no. That's my choice, not theirs. And if I don't take care of myself first, I'll end up with heart problems or diabetes and these could both cost me my CDL and my job. Me first; this is a hard concept for me to swallow. But I'm working on it.


Now, here comes the part where I work out the kinks that are keeping me awake. I can't promise great sense here, so proceed at your own risk.

Payton's move to his dad's is just over a month away. That in itself makes me want to cry. I'm so not ready for this. I know there were only two more years he'd be with me anyway, but this hurts in ways that are hard to explain. I've had the honor of being able to help raise five kids. My step-son lived with us for a year and a half when his mom took him back and we couldn't stop her. My neice lived with us from 13 to 17 and then ran away to get away from us. We let Ash go live with her other mom once her other mom finally wanted to be a mom and Ash felt torn. Now Payton's leaving. He's leaving to be with his best friend/cousin, Brian. He's leaving to work on a better relationship with his dad. He's leaving to try to have a better chance of being noticed by college football scouts. Mostly, he's leaving to spend a year of high school with Brian. I understand this. I know this was a hard choice for him. I know he's trying to be an adult and make adult decisions. I know he's still struggling with leaving. But he's leaving. He's not leaving me, he's going to be there, not leaving here. But he's leaving me. On one hand, four out of five kids I helped raise left me. A seriously heartbreaking track record. On the other hand, my baby boy is leaving. When Aaron and I split up and my depression was making life harder, Payton was my reason to get up in the morning. I'm his stability. I'm the one person who didn't leave him like the siblings. But he's a big chunk of my stability, too. I know people survive this stuff all the time. Livi's going to need me to be strong, but I'm not sure I can...

Getting started

We started our adventure this week and it's been ok, but not great yet. I had breakfast five days and took my meds four of those days. Considering that I haven't been taking my morning meds at all, I feel like this is progress. Now that we have our food stamps for the month, we can plan ahead for breakfasts again and this should be able to become a more steady habit. Cross your fingers!  ;)

We were going to start at the gym on Monday, but Dan couldn't breathe. He was using his rescue inhaler repeatedly and we finally did two breathing treatments with his nebulizer before bed and that seemed to help. Weather changes mess him up. We considered going to the UgL on Tuesday, but Payton had an appointment so we started on Wednesday. I'm still a little sore today.

The last time we went to the UgL, last May, neither Dan nor I was able to complete the workout. We had to give up and go home. We both felt a lot of anxiety about going back and whether or not we could do this. Melissa, our trainer, modified the workout and spent a lot of one on one time with each of us. We made it through, and we are both still a little sore today. But we know we can do this. You'd think that if you've already done it, doing it again shouldn't be such a scary thing, but somehow it really was. But we broke through the wall.

Today, I have a trip that starts at 1:30 and we're going to work out at noon, so I'm gonna sponge bath and change clothes and hope that's good enough. If not, I'll rethink this next time but we don't want to start letting inconveniences stop us already. They really worked to help us be able to do this financially, so I feel like not giving our best would be letting Melissa and Fernando and Erin down as much as ourselves and our kids. I'm trying to be very honest here in the blog too, even when we screw up or backslide, so I hope to be accountable to you all, too. 

Accountability is really hard for me. My depression grabs each minor setback and starts diving into that dark pit that won't let me out. Then I quit talking to anyone I should be accountable to because I don't want to be letting so many people down. I know that most of the people who read this love me. Why else would you be reading this? And you want me to succeed, so instead of reprimands, I am much more likely to get encouragement through my honesty, which is good, because I'm really good at reprimanding myself.

Our foods haven't been great this week but I just updated the budget for April and we don't have the money do to a lot of stupid stuff, like dollar menu or gas station hot dogs. Since we budget our money far better than our time or health, I'm trying to use that as a tool to help us in other areas. No fast food is a good tool. Also, our driver window on the car doesn't roll down, so a drive-thru is a big pain in the tookus. Dan's checking out cook books for cheap, healthy, low carb recipes and we checked all the grocery ads for good deals. We have noticed that there are not a lot of good sales on the things we are looking to buy now that we want to eat healthier. If anyone has some good recipes, especially crock pot stuff, let us know.  :) I keep thinking of freezer meals and stocking up but we just have our little fridge freezer and the idea of prepping twenty meals at a time kinda freaks me out. I don't even think we have room in our kitchen for a project like that.  But I was thinking that maybe if I could prep three or four meals worth of one thing, that would be a start and I could maybe build from there? I'm not sure yet. Guess we'll see how things go.