Deliberate Choices

This morning I was very tired when the alarm went off and decided to try a workout recommended on the Skimble app called "Yoga for Anxiety." After I finished the workout I meditated for a couple of minutes and thought about how I wanted the day to go. I decided that I wanted to choose my responses rather than just reacting. I wanted to be patient, and treat others with kindness. There could have been more, but I thought that was enough to focus on for now. The thing is, through both genetics and upbringing, I'm wired to respond pretty negatively. So I think it's time for some intentional brain circuitry rewiring. My resolution for the day was tested fairly early in the morning when my boss emailed me to let me know she wouldn't be attending a meeting that she had requested, even though she'd been stressing me out earlier in the week about how important the work was to get done. But I slowed myself down and instead of getting upset, decided to just see it as a gift that the meeting would go quicker and be more productive without her.

This headline makes me feel vindicated for talking about the snow so much: It's Official - This is our snowiest February in Denver. It wasn't the most pleasant drive to work, although I put some music on, and just remained patient. I managed to keep my resolution for the day during the drive into work; one for win column! It started snowing again around 7:30 this morning, and while I don't like driving in the snow (well, I wouldn't mind if there were no other cars on the road), I do love having the snow. Walking home after my son's play performance last night (in which he was amazing!), it was cold at only 11 F, but it was also extraordinarily beautiful. Sounds were muffled and we could smell wood burning in fireplaces. The clouds were lifting so we could see the moon peeking out. The creek and all of the trees were covered in a sparkling blanket of white. There was a duck couple out for a late evening swim. It was the quintessential winter evening, and I couldn't help but think of Robert Frost.

The snow stopped and the sun came back out this afternoon when I walked my son home from school.

Petty Literary Critique and More Snow

I love the television show, Haven. If you haven't seen it, it's about a small island off the coast of Maine (though it's filmed in Nova Scotia) where the inhabitants have "troubles" which allow/cause them to do strange things. While I realize how petty this is going to sound, one thing I don't like about the show is the opening credits when it states, "based on The Colorado Kid by Stephen King." Some of the names in the book are changed in the show. For example, the newspaper editor and writer become brothers in the show, so Dave Bowie becomes Dave Teagues. Although in the book the other newspaper man is named Vince Teague, without the s. Police chief George Wournos becomes Garland Wuornos, with the u and o reversed in the last name spelling. Moose Lookit Island becomes Haven, and the Weekly Islander newspaper becomes the Haven Herald. There's nary a Steffi (or newspaper intern) to be found in the show, even though she's one of the main characters in the book. A little restaurant called the Grey Gull does retain its name in the show.

These are all small things, but the bigger issue is that this isn't one of Stephen King's supernatural thrillers. He published it through Hard Case Crime, and it's a mystery story with Stephen King's signature fascinating characters. So, why am I complaining about all of this (other than I'm clearly way to obsessed with Stephen King)? It's really because of two words. If the show would simply change that line in the opening credits to "inspired by..." instead of "based on..." I'd be placated. I'm fully aware that shows and movies based on books can't follow the books exactly due to the different story-telling platforms, and I don't have a problem with that. But when you change a story from a realistic mystery/drama to a supernatural thriller, it's no longer "based on" the original story. At that point the original story was just a jumping off point for a totally new and unique story. OK, pointless rant over.

We're living in a winter wonderland right now. We got about 8 more inches of snow yesterday afternoon and evening, and the current forecast is for more snow this afternoon and overnight. Which is probably accurate since it started snowing again around 12:30. This morning I had the local news website pulled up and just watched the count of closings and delays increase. It went from a little over 100 at about 6:15 to almost 225 by about 7:00 this morning. My kids' schools weren't closed, and of course both of them had morning activities today, so I got to drive on the snowy and icy streets. I was ready to start punching one of the other drivers on the road with me this morning, and figured I'd get the opportunity after he rear-ended me. This guy came up behind me so fast and drove so close that I couldn't see his lights. I couldn't physically go any faster because the cars in front of me weren't going any faster. I raised my hands into the mirror at one point in the universal "what the heck" gesture, which he responded to with the universal gesture for language I won't type on here. Luckily as soon as the road opened up into four lanes, he sped around me to follow too closely behind someone else. Unfortunately I didn't get his license number, and fortunately he didn't run into me.

Denver Public Schools did close, so technically my office was closed today, but my whole department just worked from home. Although I did take some time in the afternoon to rest since the past couple of weeks have just worn me out. My son has a play performance tonight at the school, provided it doesn't get cancelled due to the weather. My husband and I discussed it this morning and we've decided we're walking to the school. It's just not worth it to try and find a place to park when the sides of the streets are piled with plowed snow. I hope it doesn't get cancelled because the kids have worked so hard on it. Fingers crossed!

This picture is from yesterday afternoon, although it's pretty much what things look like this afternoon also.

This slightly blurry picture captured the snow sparkling in the streetlight this morning. It doesn't look there's very much, but it was about 4 inches deep when my husband shoveled a line down the middle of the driveway. Luckily the earlier snow hadn't stuck to the driveway since we have an eastern facing front.

The sun was out this morning and we had blue skies. But around 11:00 the clouds started moving in again before the snow and gray skies returned this afternoon.

I Haven't Been Choosing My Course

Looking out my window at the snow in the sun yesterday afternoon.

My new (old) slide ruler and drafting tools.

I started this blog to make a record of my deliberate choices to be a better and healthier person, and hopefully inspire others along the way. Lately it seems like I've been doing a great deal of reacting rather than choosing, and exhibiting a pretty extreme external locus of control. I find this interesting because one of the things that makes me really good at my job is that I believe in continual improvement. I do the best I can for now, knowing that I may be able to figure out a way to do even better the next time. But I don't feel like there's something wrong with me for doing the best I can with what I have at the time. I truly see it as a journey and feel good about where I've been, where I'm at, and excited about where I'm going.

In my personal life on the other hand, I seem to have this issue where I expect myself to be perfect now and I can't see the journey. I don't feel good about where I've been since other than about a year and a half, I've been displeased with my body ever since I had my daughter nearly 14 years ago. I certainly don't feel good about where I am, I feel very fat again. I'm also not currently feeling hopeful about where I'll be. I want to be in better shape, but I honestly feel right now like it's a pipe dream that isn't going to happen because I seem to be incapable of making it happen.

So maybe the first thing I need to work on is convincing myself that my personal health is as much a journey as my skills and talents, and it's alright not to be perfect right now. I also need to work on finding a better way to deal with external stimuli, particularly when it's stressful. I need to stop using food, or wine, or venting as my response to help me through difficult situations. I need to find a healthy reaction that will help me to regain that internal locus of control. Although today wasn't as tough as yesterday was at work, I'm emotionally raw and had to close my office door for awhile this morning as I fought tears. I don't have any answers tonight. I just know that I need to make some changes in my mind if I ever want to succeed at making changes to my body.

Yucky Day

We didn't get a snow day today, despite the fact that the Colorado House and Senate were closed due to the road conditions, and buses were delayed by 90 minutes in some cases. It was 10 degrees outside and snowing again this morning at 7:45, and kids were having to wait outside in that weather for 90 minutes! I'm ranting right now because it was such a lousy day at work, and then dumping this on top of it just really upsets me. My kids were fine because my husband dropped my son off at the Before School program, and my daughter arranged a ride to the bus stop with my father-in-law. But other people's kids potentially weren't fine, and that upsets me.

We had a layoff at work today. Since I'm the HR analyst, I have to do much of the front-end work on these awful events. Because we were short staffed, I also had to participate a little in the actual notifications today. It stunk! While I recognize that I'm luckier than the people who no longer have employment, it's not easy on this end either, especially as the job load increases. This is actually why I ended up leaving my last job. The company kept laying more and more people off, and my workload just kept getting larger and larger. The CFO said one time that I was surviving the layoffs because I was his "utility player". The problem was that I felt like he was asking me to play all the positions at the same time. Just doesn't work. Now it's starting to look like I'm headed down the same path at this job. Sigh...

My mom gave me this necklace for my birthday and told me that she wanted me to always remember how much she loved me. (My birthstone is amethyst.) So I wore it today to help me to focus on the right things. I wasn't 100% successful, but it did help to be reminded occasionally about what really matters in this life: family, friends, and relationships.

Snowy Sunday

I didn't have the courage to weigh myself this morning after seriously overeating last night, so I'm not doing a regular check in this week. Last night we were supposed to go out for my birthday dinner with my in-laws. In the afternoon we decided that the roads weren't too bad so we could make the trek down to the highlands area of Denver for dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant, La Loma. But then around 4:30 the snow really started coming down heavily again and the wind was blowing like crazy as the temperature was plummeting. The roads were awful but my father-in-law still thought we could make it. Fortunately, he realized pretty quickly that the roads were just too treacherous and we turned around and had dinner at their house. Luckily my mother-in-law had a plan B since we knew the weather was moving in.

After an extremely rough week at work, I decided that I was going to indulge in several glasses of wine. I've never really been drunk in my life (I know, I clearly missed much of the college experience), and last night I had 5 glasses of wine. I still wasn't sloppy drunk, but I was definitely more than a little tipsy. Not only did I overdo it on the drink, I also overdid it on the food. My mother-in-law is an amazing cook and she offered appetizers in addition to the main dish and dessert. So I was too chicken to stand on the scale this morning.

My father-in-law gave me the most wonderful birthday present last night. Back in October, I saw this article about the slide rule and decided that it would be fun to learn how to use one. So I asked my mom if I could have my dad's old slide rule. She and I had both forgotten that my brother had already taken that. I'm not sure why he wanted it, he actively hates math. But he wanted it and so I conceded to him. I looked online to see about getting one, but they're just too expensive to justify spending that money on a novelty. I thought I had found a reasonably priced one and put it on my Christmas list, but it turned out to be a t-rule. My father-in-law who worked as an engineer had two slide rules, the one he started college with, and a nicer one he got during his junior year at college. So he gave me that original slide rule for my birthday. Now I'm going to have to google how to use it so I can play with it.

I'm really hoping that we have a snow day tomorrow. We have quite a bit of snow, but that's not really the problem because we're used to heavy snow. This is a wet snow (which is a bit unusual for Denver) and the temperature is just sitting at the wrong spot where everything is immediately turning to ice. I don't want to try to drive in this weather during heavy traffic tomorrow. I'm also worried about the poor kids standing at the bus stop in the single degree temperatures if the buses have any trouble getting around. If our school district cancels school tomorrow, that covers everyone else in my family. Then I just need Denver Public Schools to cancel school, because our office closes if DPS closes. Fingers crossed!

Time Bound

This was the post I was planning on writing last Thursday before I had such an incredibly stressful day at work. Although maybe it was fortuitous because I saw this story and video this morning, which fit perfectly. This coming Monday is going to be another humdinger of a day, but hopefully once I make it through that day, things will return to the normal, "how am I going accomplish everything I've been tasked with?" type of stress.

The weather forecasters were telling us to expect a big snow storm in Denver this weekend, with up to 18 inches of snow. We had about 3 or 4 inches of snow when I woke up, and then there was a break in the system.

My husband tells me that this morning when I was in the shower, the sun came out briefly and lit up the snow-covered trees against the dark sky. Man, I wish I could have seen that. This afternoon it started snowing and blowing again. It's supposed to snow until tomorrow evening now that it's started up again. I realize this looks like less snow than this morning on the deck rail, but it's just because it's so windy now.

This weather, and my recent extreme fatigue have really started me thinking about how much modern society is bound by the calendar and the clock. I think that we lose track of the rhythms of our body and nature when we're so focused on measuring the passage of time, rather than experiencing the passage of time. This is actually one of the reasons I enjoy photography so much, because it keeps me focused on and in tune with nature's cycles.

I read a book once called The Weigh Down Diet which was written by a very religious nutritionist. One of the things she talked about that really resonated with me is that we listen to our bodies when we need to go to the bathroom or go to sleep, but we don't listen to our bodies when we need fuel. We just use the clock or social cues to feed our bodies. I think we're reaching a point though where we don't listen to our bodies for much of anything anymore. The video in the link in the first paragraph above explains this better than I ever could. I believe that this obsession with time is really creating problems for us as humans because we don't evolve as fast as technology. So we go through life fatigued and overweight because we're doing things on society's schedule instead of listening to what our bodies need.

When I woke up last Thursday morning, I was purely exhausted and my body was trying to get me to slow down and rest with nausea and achiness. But I couldn't listen to my body because there were meetings on my calendar and tasks on my to do list so I just had to keep going. I love the snow and winter time, especially when I can stay home and not have to venture out which is unsafe and uncomfortable. But we don't listen to nature any longer either, so I'll be heading out to work on Monday regardless of how big this storm turns out to be.

 There are things that I love about modern life. I love having a device in my pocket with more computing power than MIT had on its entire campus a couple of decades ago. I love being able to immediately find out about anything that I'm interested in. I love being able to use Excel because I can do much more math more quickly that way. I'm very appreciative of modern medicine and many other conveniences of modern society. But I still sometimes wonder if it's all worth what we've given up.

I'd really like to do one of those experiments where I went a year without calendars or clocks, to see if slept better and lost weight. Unfortunately I live a lifestyle which doesn't allow for such an extreme experiment. So my charge is to figure out how to live within the constraints of my calendar and clock, while still listening to my body and giving it what it needs, instead of what the clock says it should have.

Something Wintry This Way Comes

The mountains are disappearing behind heavy, gray clouds and the temperature is dropping rapidly. We may not get the extreme storm that the weather prognosticators are currently predicting, but I think we're definitely going to get something. I realize it's nothing compared to what some people on the east coast are experiencing, but I'm glad we're getting some real winter weather.

While I had another very stressful day at work, I'm doing a much better job at leaving it there today. I think part of it was that I got to have lunch with a former co-worker who became one of my dearest friends over the years. When we started working together, her daughter had just turned two and I didn't have any children yet. Her daughter is going to graduate from high school this spring, and mine is going to start high school this fall. Tempus fugit! It was so good to catch up and have some laughs together.

A couple of nights ago the last of the sunlight made for a beautiful evening sky.

I grabbed a picture of the last of the snow on the hill over the creek yesterday afternoon. It's good that we're getting more since this is gone today.

This afternoon the clouds started moving into the western sky in advance of the storm.

The sun peeked through the clouds briefly this afternoon and lit the trees up against the darker eastern sky.

My husband and I are currently watching Storm of the Century and it'll be so much more fun to watch with the snow falling and the wind howling outside!

Stressed Out

I had a thoughtful, coherent post planned out for today. I was thinking about it while I was doing my workout this morning and I recorded myself so I wouldn't forget what I wanted to write. Then work happened today, and now I don't have it in me to write anything meaningful, or for that matter, very upbeat.

Today was one of the cruddiest days I've had in a long time. I've got 4 huge projects going on in addition to my regular job duties; and my boss keeps giving me random updates on each of them and expecting me to stop whatever I'm doing and get her updated data and information on whichever project she's thinking about immediately. 'Cause that's not a recipe for errors. (We still need someone to invent a sarcasm font). Also, there's more sinister stuff going on at work which I'm not at liberty to discuss quite yet. But let's just say that it makes it even harder to deal with all of this given the background I'm working within right now.

I am currently self-medicating with a glass of wine as I continue to respond to work emails. Unfortunately there was only one glass worth of wine left in the bottom of the bottle. At this rate, I may have to break into the heavier stuff tonight. Or maybe I should just shut the computer down soon.

One good thing is that we're supposed to get snow this weekend, lots of it.

While this may put a damper on my birthday plans with my in-laws, I'm so excited to get a big snow and be able to be at home with my family in front of the fire!

Maybe tomorrow evening I'll be able to write the post I'd originally planned for today. In the meantime, I'd better get back to my work emails, although I've put in about 11 hours today, I'm going to have to quit soon because my brain is going to stop functioning properly.

Positive Accomplishment

I am pretty proud of myself right now. Things at work are at a fever pitch and rather crazy at the moment. But I've been approaching things from an objective standpoint and am keeping a positive attitude right now despite everything that's going on. I don't know if I'll be able to sustain this mindset and attitude long-term, but for the moment it's working and I'm able to be a better wife and mother at home since I'm not bringing my work home.

I also grabbed a few photos today and last night that I wanted to share.

This is my birthday dessert that my husband made for me. It's a peanut butter and cream cheese mousse topped by a dark chocolate shell and sprinkled with dark chocolate covered toffees. It was extremely rich, and extremely yummy!

This picture is the snow that has started to melt and refreeze on the deck. It made such an interesting pattern and I love the icicle sparkling in the sunlight.

I liked the way the shadows were laying across the snow on the deck as the sun streamed through the slats.

Snow!

We finally got another snow here in Denver. I was so excited that I took a walk with my son when I got home from work and took lots of pictures!

This picture is from this morning at 4:30 when I was working out.

Our recent winter weather has felt more like spring, so I couldn't resist getting out with my camera since it finally looks like winter again.

2015 Weekly Progress Report #7 and 41 Years

Weight: 142.4 pounds
Weight Change: - 0.3 pounds

I didn't do much this week, but the fact that I made any progress is actually pretty encouraging since my husband and I went out for our Valentine's dinner last night and had a fancy four-course meal. I think my new approach of trying to be sensible but less strict will work well, but that it will take longer. Although I suppose taking longer to lose weight is actually a good thing and more sustainable, so right now at least, I think I'm in a good place.

Today is my 41st birthday. I got to have breakfast out with my husband, and then he and the kids gave me a book about using Lightroom and Photoshop, along with a subscription to Photoshop (they got me Lightroom at Christmas). So now I should be able to do some really interesting things with my pictures. That is, if I can find the time to do so. Unfortunately this is a very busy time at work for me, so right now I'm not even taking very many photographs, let alone editing them. We'll be going to Estes Park in a couple of weekends so I should have some additional opportunities for some nice photos. Then this summer we're going to Ireland, so I'm hoping to get lots of pictures there. At that point work will have slowed back down so maybe I'll get to really play then.

I did take a picture of myself today to capture what I look like on my birthday. I know that I should be kinder to myself, but of course I see every flaw in this photo. Though my husband and daughter both liked it, so I decided to go ahead and share it. I used my tripod and remote trigger to get this picture. I took it in our front room because I liked the light.

Tonight we're going to my mom's house and she's making Santa Fe soup for dinner. Then tomorrow my husband is making lasagna and sweet and salty peanut butter mousse torte for dessert. It's basically a giant peanut butter cup in pie format. So I'm getting a yummy 41st birthday celebration!

I hope you all have a great week. I'll try to keep writing regular posts, though the next couple of weeks may be spotty due to my current demands at work and keeping up at home.

Music and Monsters

Sunset out my window

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know about my love of the horror genre. I still had to chuckle to myself this morning on my walk when I realized how many of the songs on my energy playlist were about horror topics. There are songs about vampires (Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde), werewolves (The Howling by Within Temptation), zombies (Living Dead Girl by Rob Zombie), and monsters (Monster by Skillet). Some of these songs are literally about monsters, and others use monster as a metaphor for our own personal demons.

It's been a challenging and busy week here, and I'm so ready for this weekend. My husband and I are going out for valentine's dinner tomorrow at a restaurant in the foothills outside of Boulder. The food is fabulous and the setting is gorgeous. My kids are spending the night with my mom so we get the whole evening to ourselves. I hope all of you have a great valentine's weekend also!

Just Checkin' In

Wow! It's been a crazy couple of days around here. We had parent-teacher conferences on Tuesday and Wednesday night, in addition to piano lessons, band practice, and homework. I'm still sitting on my work email tonight after getting to the office at 6:30 this morning because we're in the middle of a crunch time. Though I'm currently as caught up as I can be until two more slackers who missed the deadline get their information to me, so I'm taking a few minutes to write a post. To top everything off, I haven't slept through the night in about a week again. So I'm tired and I haven't had much time to check in this week.

I did have one very nice surprise today. My brother, who works as a construction foreman, is working on a job site that's fairly close to my office downtown. So he emailed me today and asked if I could meet for lunch. I was planning on working through lunch, but given the volume of work that's come in tonight I'm especially glad that I took the hour to go and hang out with my (38-year old) baby brother today.

I had a rough food day again on Tuesday, but the past couple of days have been really good again, even with the unexpected lunch date. I read an interesting article this week that really made me stop and think. I was so focused back in 2011 when I lost 35 pounds in 3 1/2 months. I started putting some weight back on after about 1 year, and have been trying since about mid-2012 to lose weight again, and haven't been able to recapture that success. So the question the woman answered about what's different this time is really resonating with me.

I'm still doing great with my workouts, so I feel good about that because I know I'm probably fairly healthy overall. I just haven't been able to get my eating under control. I've been trying a different approach for the past couple of weeks where I'm not counting the calories as much as being mindful about what and how much I eat. Other than my disaster on Tuesday, it seems to be working and I feel less like I'm punishing or restricting myself. I was thinking this afternoon as I drove home from the bus stop that I'm just uncomfortable at this weight, and I should be thinking of losing the weight as a gift to myself to feel more comfortable.

So, we'll see how this goes with a different mindset and plan. I have to agree with the woman in the article and say I don't know why this time should be any different, but I sure hope it is! I'm also hopeful that things will slow back down just a bit because I've hardly had any time to take any photos. I did capture these two on Tuesday afternoon, but haven't picked up my camera since! Oh, and we didn't get our forecasted snow on Wednesday. Bummer!

Unique Challenges

It's another sunny, warm, beautiful day here in Denver. If you happen to be in a place that is experiencing harsh winter weather, don't feel too jealous; this is coming to an end by Wednesday when it's supposed to get cold and snow again.

I feel pretty fortunate to have two children. They both offer such unique challenges that I never feel like I'm duplicating my parenting efforts. My daughter is so easy to deal with when it comes to responsibilities because she's so self-motivated. I never have to worry about anything that's going on at school because she's always all over it. She can be a moody teenager at times, but I still think she's easier than I was at her age. My son is much less responsible, and I have to constantly keep my pulse on what's happening at school so he doesn't miss something. He has a wonderful sense of humor though, and loves to explore which makes him fun to be around.

One other difference that I finally put a number to this weekend is in clothes. I do the laundry once a week, and when I pulled the empty hangers out of my son's closet there were 7. This makes perfect sense when considering the timing of the laundry. When I pulled the empty hangers out of my daughter's closet, there were 23. I kid you not, 23 empty hangers. That's an average of more than 3 shirts per day! I know she likes to dress in layers and likes to change sometimes (though luckily not as frequently as she did when she was younger), but I hadn't realized how much extra laundry I was doing each week. (Yes, I realize that I should probably make her do her own laundry, but there will be plenty of time for her to do laundry when she's older, I want her to get to be a kid right now). It's a good thing to be presented with unique challenges from each child.