Failure

One of the movies I watch with my kids every fall is Disney's The Haunted Mansion.  Eddie Murphy's character, Jim Evers, is at his low point in the film when he and Jennifer Tilly's character, Madame Leota, have a verbal exchange.

Jim Evers:  ...I tried!  I failed!
Madame Leota:  You try, you fail.  You try, you fail.  But the only true failure is when you stop trying.
Jim Evers:  What do you want me to do?  Huh?
Madame Leota:  Try again.

Jennifer Tilly's lines are delivered in a wonderfully dry and sarcastic manner.  This was running through my head this morning as I stood on the scale and realized that I really did horribly this week with my eating, and therefore my weight.  I'm back up to 138.7.

But I guess it's not true failure if I try to eat right again this week.  I don't think there's any way possible that I can lose 14 pounds by Halloween like I'd originally planned.  But hitting my goal a little later is still better than never hitting it at all.  So I'm going to "try again."

I got some nice pictures in the yard today.  It looks very much like late summer now.  I know that I always start anticipating the upcoming season earlier than I should, but I'm getting really excited for fall and all its related activities (included the movie I talked about earlier)!

Spiderweb on the rose bush

Late blooming rose

Shadows on leaves

Flowers in the whiskey barrel

Greenery in sunlight
This area will be very colorful soon

Cherries

Bear Creek Lake Park

That title is not a typo.  We actually have a state park called Bear Creek Lake Park.  I think it's because there's a lake near Bear Creek.  But at any rate, that's where we spent the day with my mom and my brother and his family.  It was a lovely day and the kids got to go horseback riding.  Then we packed up when the afternoon rain started.  It's rained every afternoon for about the past week, which is unusual for us, but I'm very grateful for the moisture.

A horse named Tank

This horse is named Corona

My nephew got to ride on Hank with a wrangler since he's only 4

Riding off

We've got plans to spend time with family for the rest of the Labor Day weekend.  I am definitely in the "working for the weekend" mode these days, so I'm trying to enjoy myself as much as possible while I'm with my family.  Today was nice and relaxing, and I'm sure the rest of the weekend will be too.  I hope all of you enjoy your unofficial last weekend of summer!

Stress Eating

So...after a couple of weeks of being really focused and making some progress, I've been stress eating again for the last couple of days.  Which of course means that my weigh-in this week probably won't show much progress.  I guess that means reaching my goal by Halloween is pretty much out the window.  But I'm not giving up, and I still hope to be closer to my goal by Halloween.

Today when I was going for the food I was fully aware that I shouldn't be eating, and that I was only doing so for emotional reasons.  But I just didn't stop because I've been dealing with so much emotionally that I wasn't willing to be strong at that moment.  I know there are better things that I can do to treat myself.  I could read for a few minutes.  I could go for a short walk.  I could listen to a guided meditation session.  If I have more time, I could take a bath by candlelight.  I didn't choose any of those things today.  Hopefully I'll make better choices tomorrow.

I saw another red leaf this morning.  Summer is definitely winding down.

Moody & Photos

I've been a bit down lately.  I think part of my problem is that I work in a challenging environment with women who act like the mean girls I went to Jr. High with.  While I always try to take the high road and treat everyone with kindness and respect, it does get wearing to have to deal with the drama day in and day out.  This is on top of still feeling sad about my dad's death from this spring, and having to always be "on" with my son to help him with all of his issues.  So lately I've been extremely fatigued and I've had a difficult time with looking on the sunny side of things.

Since I don't want to wallow in sadness (borderline depression?), I thought I'd try to focus on some good things and share those.  This morning when I went on my walk/jog, I saw an owl up close and personal.  He was sitting on a street light and as I got close he opened his enormous wings and glided up to a nearby rooftop where he watched me go by.  He was a light tawny color, huge, and simply magnificent.  Then when I got to work I glanced out my window and saw this rainbow.  The picture doesn't really do it justice as it was very bright, but it's hard to capture that through a tinted high-rise window.

I've also been trying to work on smiling and laughing.  I remember from my physiological psychology class (one of my favorites, next to statistics, back in college) learning about the research that we often think of mood backwards.  We think we smile when we're happy, but it can actually make us feel happy if we just make the effort to smile.  So I've been trying to find reasons to smile and see if that helps me to feel better.  I've also decided that it's time to start trying meditation in earnest.  I downloaded a guided meditation app, and I'm going to start using it at breaks at work when I can feel my stress levels rising.

My kids started piano lessons back up for the fall tonight, and I got to take a walk with them one at a time while the other was in lessons.  We saw some beautiful flowers and sights, including a leaf which is starting to turn red.  It won't be long now before autumn really comes to stay.

Weariness

I had intended to post last night, but I was so exhausted that I couldn't form a coherent thought.  The newness of school has worn off, and last night was quite the battle to get my son to complete his homework.  When you're utterly weary, the last thing you want to do is argue about getting homework done.  Plus, when I looked in his homework folder last night, I realized that he already didn't turn in the homework he completed last Friday.  That's one I'll never understand:  He does the work and just doesn't turn it in.  I was hoping that 5th grade was going to be the year where he'd have a better grasp on his responsibilities.  Sigh...

I don't have much more energy tonight, but at least I feel like my brain is functioning.  Homework was a battle again tonight.  My son actually answered a question on his math sheet saying "because of the stupid factor."  I made him delete "stupid" and he tried to replace it with "freaking."  And this is math, which he actually likes.  I hope they don't have regular writing homework this year.  But it did eventually get done.

I read a great short story today.  It's called The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell by Mira Grant.  It's definitely not an uplifting story, it is in fact rather disturbing, but it's fun and well written.  So if anyone is looking for some short, well-written zombie fiction, I highly recommend it.

Here are a couple of photos from my walk with my husband tonight in a very light rain.

Weekly Weigh-In New #3

Since I started over on my weigh-in tracking, I thought I'd restart this weigh-in series.  I'm happy to report that I'm back down to 136 pounds, or where I started when I first starting trying to lose weight.  But it feels different this time, I feel more motivated.  So I'm hopeful that I'll make some real progress as the summer fades into autumn.

I've had a nice weekend.  I read two books, we took the kids to see The Giver at the theater, my daughter and I walked our 5K, and I'm almost done with all of my chores.  The movie was good and it definitely captured the spirit and the major story-arc from the book, but there were differences and of course the book was better.

I'm glad it was a fairly relaxing weekend, as I'm getting ready to head into a fairly busy week at work, and won't even get to work from home at all this week.  So it's downtown every day and nose to the grindstone.  But the good news is we're heading into cooler weather, and in only about one month I'll get to start reading my Halloween stories and watching horror movies with impunity!

I hope everyone else had a nice weekend and has a good start to your week.

MIA

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days.  My first excuse is that I'm readjusting to how full our schedules are during the school year.  My other excuse is that I've been reading during pretty much every spare moment.  So I've neglected the blog and I do feel bad about that, although I've admitted previously that I sometimes have a problem when I'm reading, and I guess this is just another demonstration of said problem.

I was ready to have some more structure back in our lives, so I'm glad that the kids are back in school.  But it's also difficult to transition so quickly from very few responsibilities and a very open schedule, to homework, evening activities, and a jam-packed schedule.  The good news is that my daughter has always been very responsible and on top of her homework, and for the first time my son seems to understand the importance of his responsibilities and we haven't been arguing about getting his work done.  Hopefully it isn't just the newness and won't quickly wear off!

I tend to forget how much "homework" there is for parents during the school year.  The first day back wasn't too difficult since I had taken a day off of work.  But starting on the second day, I got home from work, starting filling and signing papers, then had to run my son to his first fall session of gymnastics.  By the time I got back home that evening, I was ready to crash.  Sometimes I can't believe how many forms and papers the schools send home for parents to complete.  If you don't stay on top of it, it quickly piles up and the school tends to get irritated.

I'm glad there were only three days of school this week before we got a weekend to catch our breath again.  I know it won't take long before the rhythm becomes familiar and it isn't as hard to keep up.  But I'm grateful for this weekend to catch up again.  My daughter and I will do our 5K this weekend, and I'll probably spend the rest of the time filling out school papers, doing laundry, paying bills, doing dishes...and reading!

I awoke to a rare foggy morning and couldn't resist taking a couple of pictures of the trees.

First Day of School

I wasn't able to post last night because we were so busy with our second back-to-school night.  It started with me leaving work a little late because after my computer dying and having to be replaced last Friday, my printer died yesterday.  I can't print to a shared printer because I print such confidential information like employee salaries so frequently.  So after fighting that battle and IT finally giving up and just grabbing another printer, I finally got that back up and running.  My technology issues at work have been very frustrating of late!

Then after I got home and logged in to work for a little while longer, we left to go to my daughter's back-to-school night at her middle school.  I think I'm mildly agoraphobic, nothing debilitating, but I find those crowded halls to be rather uncomfortable.  It didn't help that after about 5 minutes my son informed us we'd been there for "5,000 minutes" already and he was ready to leave.  So he was very impatient with his sister visiting all the different classrooms so she would know where to go today.  But next year he'll understand when he starts middle school.  I was also really good with my calories yesterday, so by the time we were wrapping up at the school, I was very hungry and starting to get grumpy.  That doesn't really help stressed or bored kids.  But I managed, and I'm very glad that I'm making good food decisions again.

When we got home we still had to eat dinner, which my wonderful husband had prepared in advance.  He made green chili this past weekend and put beans in the crock pot yesterday morning, so we had yummy and fairly low calorie burritos last night.  Then I had to clean up from dinner, and I promised the kids they could have homemade scones for breakfast for their first day of school, so I had to make those before I could get ready for bed.  By that point, I just didn't have the energy left to write a post.

Scones and tea for breakfast

I took the day off today, like I do most years for the start of school, to be with my kiddos for the new beginning.  This morning I took my son to his last first day at elementary school.  I can't believe that was the last time we'll be starting a school year at elementary school.  I didn't get emotional in front of my son, but I did fight tears on the walk back home.  Luckily it was a lovely morning and our creek is just beautiful.

My daughter told me I could walk her part of the way to the bus stop this morning, just as long as I stopped before the bus stop was in sight.  She's at that age where acknowledging that you actually have parents is embarrassing!

I had taken a picture of a pretty plant the other day on a walk when it was dark out, and I really wanted to get a picture of it in the daylight.  So after I walked my daughter to the bus stop I walked up to get a picture.  I didn't realize that the corner where the plant is located is also a bus stop.  So I had to wait in a nearby park until the bus had come to pick up the kids, because I figured my daughter would be mortified if she saw me there snapping pictures.

Nighttime snapshot with my cell phone

Picture from today

Close up from today

I had a couple of hours to myself after I dropped my daughter off before my son came home.  I spent some time relaxing and took a short nap.  I also read a little bit.  I am reading a book right now that I'm too embarrassed to name; it's not a well written book, but it is pure escapism and helps me to de-stress.  I think I'll take the kids out for a special treat this afternoon to celebrate the first day, then tomorrow we'll all be back in the fall rhythm, even if the calendar isn't there yet.

Here are a few other photos I took while walking today, please enjoy!

Back to School Bonanza

We survived round one of back-to-school night, with another round to go tomorrow.  I will admit that tonight was somewhat difficult for me as it was my last ever back-to-school night for elementary school.  My son is starting fifth grade this year and next year will be at the middle school.  I did feel a little weepy a couple of times tonight walking through the halls, knowing that this would be the last school year I'd ever step foot in that school.  My husband went to elementary school there, and it's the school where I worked for a few years during and right after college.  So it's going to be hard to say goodbye.

I'm really exhausted emotionally from this, and physically I'm also really wiped out.  I couldn't sleep last night, no particular reason, which isn't actually that unusual for me.  But I'm normally so exhausted that I fall asleep pretty easily, and then just can't fall back asleep when I inevitably wake up in the middle of the night.  I usually only have trouble falling asleep when I've had caffeine too late in the day.  I didn't have caffeine yesterday after about 9:00 in the morning, so I have no idea why I couldn't fall asleep last night.  Then I still woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep.  So hopefully I'll sleep tonight since I desperately need some rejuvenating rest for both my physical and emotional well-being.

Progress Report

I wanted to report in on the progress I've been making since I posted recently about some things I'm working on.

First, the weight.  I actually held my own and did pretty good over vacation, but with the stress of recent job searching (fruitless), I started putting some weight back on.  So I'm starting my tracking fresh again.  Last week I got to my heaviest weight in about 4 years at 139 pounds.  I made some progress this week since I've started to get serious again, and I'm back down to 137.1 as of this morning.  I am trying to reach 125 by Halloween.  That means I need to lose 14 pounds in 13 weeks.  It may not be possible to lose a little over 1 pound on average each week, but I'm going to try to at least get close.

The next goal was to focus more on the positives and being grateful.  I knew this would be the hardest goal for me as I'm rarely content.  I think that it's in my makeup to constantly yearn for something better.  It's actually a very helpful trait at work as I'm never content to rest on my laurels, and am always looking for a better way to do things.  But it's a trait that can interfere with my happiness because I spend too much time thinking about how things could be better, and not enough time appreciating how wonderful my life actually is right now.  I think I'm doing better with this, but I need to really make sure that I'm watching my thoughts.  I do have so much to be grateful for, starting with my family and our relatively comfortable life.  So I'm going to keep my focus there and try to remain positive.

The final goal I listed was to spend more time with my friends.  I did have lunch this past Friday with a former co-worker and good friend.  I'm going to reach out to another friend and schedule lunch or happy hour soon.  I'm also going to set up a dinner with my sister-in-law when they return from vacation.  I need to nurture some of these adult female relationships for my own mental well-being.  So I got a good start on that goal.

For now I suppose I ought to get back to my chores.  That laundry isn't going to fold itself!

Funny Day at Work

Do you ever wonder if you're being punked and look around for the cameras?  I got into work this morning and when I logged into my computer there was a notification that an update was available for Adobe.  So trying to be a good corporate citizen, I went ahead and updated it.  But then I couldn't open any PDF files.  Which, ya know, is a bit of a problem.

So I did some research into how to fix this.  I'm not one of those people who goes running to IT at the first sign of an issue, I like to attempt to solve my own problems.  The first suggestion was to repair the installation.  I tried that and it didn't change the error message.  The next suggestion was to uninstall and reinstall the program.  So I unistalled it, but when I attempted to install it again, the installer was empty!

So I thought I'd take a break from this issue and do some testing on our HR system that I've been meaning to work on.  This is what I saw:

Seriously?!  At this point I began to wonder why I even came into work this morning.  I decided to try using a different browser and was able to get into the HR system.  So I was able to get some work done,  but I needed to be able to open PDF files.  So I  called IT, and not only could they NOT fix the Adobe issue, but then my computer stopped communicating with the network.  So they had to build me a machine from scratch that didn't have any of my settings saved. It was quite the comedy of errors, and not the most productive day. 

The day is over now,  and I was able to complete what had to be done today.   But man, it's kind of a problem how dependent we are on our technology.  It's like when there's a power outage and there's simply no work that can get done.  Sometimes I miss pen and paper! 

Dealing with Disappointment

I was hoping to have some news to share, but things didn't work out the way I had anticipated.  I interviewed for a new job that seemed to be a perfect match for my skills and experience.  But I didn't get the job, so someone else probably had a better personality and was better at selling themselves.  I'm feeling a bit disappointed, but I'm trying to keep a positive attitude.  The biggest advantage to my current job is that it pays well.  I would have had to take a pay cut to accept this new role, which I would have been willing to do for a better commute and schedule.  But it wasn't to be.  So I'm really going to work on improving my emotional response to everything that's been going on recently at work.

My kids have both had colds recently, and of course now I feel like I'm coming down with it.  Maybe it's just a sign that I need to take it easy this weekend and relax.  I'll probably have another glass of wine tonight, that always helps a cold!

We had a lovely weather day here in Denver.  It was overcast, which is a nice treat for us since it's nearly always so sunny here.  Then it rained this afternoon and left everything smelling nice and looking fresh.  Tomorrow is a new day, and hopefully my disappointment will be short-lived.

Nature Walk and an Evening to Myself

Last night I went on a walk with my son and we saw some wonderful nature.  Of course I only had my cell phone so the pictures aren't great.

Mushroom growing next to the path

Spider guarding its funnel shaped web

Snake in the grass

Some of the trees have started losing their leaves

After we went for our walk we came home and had dinner, then I did the dishes and went for another walk with my husband.

This view makes the dishes a little easier to bear

This morning I went for a walk/jog and really enjoyed the view of the moon in the clouds.  Since I woke up 25 minutes before the alarm went off, I had time to set up my tripod and my real camera when I got back home.  I like the colors in the clouds, but I'm not happy with the clarity of the picture; even with the tripod and setting the timer so I wasn't touching the camera.  But at least you can get an idea of how impressive the sky looked this morning.

Tonight my husband is at a work social event and my mom invited the kids over to spend the night.  So I am in my house by myself, drinking a glass of wine.  I can't tell you what a treat this is.  I'm going to watch a horror movie and just enjoy the solitude while it lasts!