Morning Nature Walk Along the Creek

I worked from home today and when my son asked if he could stay with me until school started rather than going to the before-school program, I decided to let him. He only has about four weeks of elementary school left after all. I was so happy to have the opportunity to walk him down the creek to school this morning.

In addition to the reward of time with my son, we got to hear and see lots of animals. We listened to the chitter of the squirrels, and the calls of the black-capped chickadee, the morning dove, and the crows. We heard ducks calling out as they flew overhead, and enjoyed the sight of the male mallard duck's beautiful blue-green head shining in the morning sun. We heard rabbits in the underbrush and watched them hop away as we got closer. We got to see the three baby owls and their mother who are nesting in a cottonwood tree along the creek this spring.

The phone camera did a good job with most of the pictures this morning, but I wasn't able to zoom in as much as I wanted to on the owls. There are actually two of the babies in the photo above, one is easy to spot because of the sun highlighting the face, the other is more hidden in the leaves and shadows. I was wishing I had brought along my actual camera when I saw these guys.

What a glorious way that was to start the morning off. I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to work from home occasionally.

On a side note: I'm currently rereading Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King because 1) I love that book; and 2) I'm feeling like a bit of a Luddite today and wanted to hold a bound, paper book.

Choosing My Quote #3

This quote was on the tag of my Celestial Seasonings tea bag and I found it very fitting for the struggle I've had with my food choices for the past year or so. Plus I realized I haven't done a choice quote in a long time.

I know what I need to do, I'm just having a hard time executing these days.

I did get a few interesting photos today.

A line of tall, beautiful lilac bushes.

A lilac photo that Google so graciously auto-awesomed for me, and I like the way it turned out.

I took a picture of some flowers this morning on my walk. I ran it through the watercolor filter in the Topaz plug-in for Lightroom. I do enjoy playing with these filters.

Daunted

One of my favorite songs is Undaunted by Adrenaline Mob. I feel strong when I listen to it. But lately I haven't been feeling undaunted, I've been feeling pretty darn daunted.

Work has been very stressful lately. I've spent a great deal of time frustrated with one of my co-workers, and with my boss for not managing the situation. Home has been really busy lately and my husband has been gone several evenings so I've been managing it on my own. For some reason I'm feeling very emotional lately about how quickly my kids are growing up. I haven't been sleeping well as usual and I'm worn out. With all of this going on, and having eaten out with my in-laws lately, I've derailed myself on my food choices again. I've put weight back on the past few days by stress eating and making poor choices.

I was almost to the point of throwing in the towel and giving up. But I don't think I've really reached that point. I just need to stop what I'm doing and make different choices again. I may not make good progress this week, but I'm not going to do a full reversal again either. So maybe I am feeling a bit more undaunted than I realized.

We've also been having beautiful and varied spring weather here. Sunday and Monday were soggy and foggy.

The sun was shining again today and the temperature was perfect for a walk this evening, which was just what I needed to reset my attitude.

Weekly Progress Report #17

I love the weekend. It's a beautiful, rainy spring morning here. I slept fairly well last night with the slight pitter-patter sound of the rain on the roof. I slept until 6:00 this morning and woke without the alarm. I did a longer weight session in natural light. I suppose I wouldn't appreciate these mornings quite as much if I had them all the time, so I guess I should be grateful for 4:15 weekday mornings.

Here are a few pictures from my rainy, overcast yard this morning.

Yesterday afternoon my daughter and I went for a long walk and the sky was just beautiful over the mountains .

I also did a workout yesterday morning, and finished it with some of the yoga poses on the Wii Fit. The cartoon yoga instructor told me that she noticed my right side wasn't as flexible as my left side. I had noticed that also. I'm starting to wonder if I need to work with a real yoga instructor to do something about my inflexibility. But I don't really have time for that right now, so I guess I'll just keep trying to get better on my own.

Weight: 138.5 pounds

Weight Change:  -0.3 pounds

I had a decent, though not great week with food choices. But at this point, I'm feeling pretty content to just take this slowly, because it is finally going in the right direction. Last night my in-laws took us out to dinner at La Loma, the best Mexican restaurant in Denver. It was a very belated birthday dinner for me since we had a terrible snow storm the first time we tried to go near my birthday. I was careful with my calories for the day, and decided I was going to indulge a little last night. So the weight isn't dropping as fast as it did the first time I did this.

I've been exercising harder lately, so I'm feeling stronger and healthier. My clothes are also fitting better. I'm still going to keep working because I know I'll be more comfortable and my joints will be less achy if I get back down to 125 pounds. But I guess I'm not going to worry about the fact that I'm not getting there as quickly as I'd originally planned. It's probably healthier to lose weight at a slower pace anyway.

Spring Storms

This marathon workweek is officially over! My son and I are at home now, my daughter will be home in about 15 minutes, and my husband will be home in about an hour. We're going to watch a movie together as a family tonight. Though we'd probably better keep it short or we'll just all fall asleep.

We've got some weather moving in so we may have some rainfall tonight.

I managed to embarrass myself this afternoon. I had to rush my son home after school today because we had a tree company at the house doing deep root feeding on all of our trees. I wanted to get back before they got done so I could pay them before they left today. Then after we got home I was reflecting as I was doing my chores and realized that there are only four more Fridays that my son will be in elementary school and I can walk him home. I resolved to let him take his time for the next four weeks and then teared up...and of course that's when the doorbell rang. I think the poor tree guy thought something was really wrong. Sigh...

We made it through this week and next week things should return to our normal crazy schedule. The big difference is that my husband will be home in the evenings so I won't be doing it all by myself. Which is a really good thing right now since my kids have been at each other's throats all week, and my daughter has been very teenagery lately.

My food choices have been okay this week. Not fabulous, but not horrible either. I think I'll have made some progress when I do my weigh-in on Sunday, but it won't be anything too amazing. However, I have managed to up the intensity of my workouts this week so I'm feeling stronger and my clothes are fitting better even with the extra weight I'm still carrying. I guess at this point any progress can go into the win column.

Quick Mid-Week Check In

I realize that you haven't heard much from me here the past couple of days. I'm doing the single mom thing this week because my husband has late meeting and concerts every evening this week. It's also a busier week than usual for the kids, so I just haven't had much time to sit down and write after work.

Last night my son's elementary school chorale group got to sing the national anthem at the Rockies game. The school has done this every year since my daughter was in fourth grade, so we've participated 4 times now, though this is our final year (yes, I'm feeling a little nostalgic and sad).

Here are the kids outside the ball field warming up.

Here are the kids on the field getting ready to perform.

We do have a beautiful ball field with a lovely background here in Denver.

Sorry about the quality of the pictures; they were all taken with my camera phone since I just met the kids and my in-laws at the ball field from work.

On a food note: I did save up my calories yesterday to have a Chicago dog for dinner. I really only eat hot dogs at ball games, so it's a once-a-year dinner for me that I thoroughly enjoyed!

Things are going to continue at this pace for the whole week, so I may not get another post up until this weekend. In the meantime I hope you're all having a great week!

Weekly Progress Report #16

Weight: 138.8 pounds

Weight Change: -1.3 pounds

I finally broke under 140 pounds again! I still have a ways to go, but this is very encouraging. Nothing breeds success like success. I mentioned previously that for whatever reason, I seem to have decided again that losing weight is more important than the temporary pleasure food provides, So I think I may (finally) be on track to get back down to my goal weight again.

I got watch two horror movies this weekend. The first was The Babadook since Netflix added it to streaming at the end of last week. The end was weird from a literal standpoint, and brilliant from a metaphorical standpoint. The scariest part was watching this poor single mother lose it while dealing with her child's behavioral issues. I fully admit that it was causing me to have flashbacks to when my son was younger and his problems were more pronounced. I definitely recommend this one to any of my readers who enjoy the horror genre.

My husband and I saw It Follows in the theater last night. It gets points for creativity and creating a permeating atmospheric dread (I can't stand slasher horror movies; I don't like to see people get hurt). Though the "rules" about the monster were weird and inconsistent, so it made it more difficult to suspend plausibility. I did like the fact that it was filmed in Detroit and showed the reality of the decay happening in that city. I can't strongly recommend this particular film, but it wasn't terrible either.

We had a squirrel in our tree yesterday having himself a regular feast. I'm not sure which part of the maple tree they eat, but whatever it is they sure seem to like it. As you can tell from the picture, it was overcast, and has been so here for several days. The sun has managed to shine intermittently today, but it's gray again as I'm writing this. It sounds like we have a couple more days of rain/snow this week, and then it's supposed to get nice again. I like gray days here and there, but when the sun is absent for too long I really start to miss it.

Snow and Science Fair

I'm practically giddy this morning I'm in such a good mood. There are several reasons for this.

• It's Friday; that's self-explanatory.
• I slept through the night!
• Netflix just added The Babadook to streaming and my husband and I might go see It Follows tomorrow night, so I'll be getting my horror movie fix.

I can't remember the last time I actually slept through the night because it was so long ago. It's amazing how much better I feel this morning compared to almost every other morning when I get about 5 hours of sleep, on a good night. There's a bounce in my step and I'm finding it much more natural to smile.

Last night we attended my son's science fair. The kids did a really nice job on their experiments, and some of those kiddos were really good at presenting their information. I'm a pretty extreme introvert, so those events are kind of hard on me. But instead of interacting with the other parents which wears me out, I just walked around and talked to the kids at each station. Some of them had done lots of research on their topics. Interestingly, I've never had any problem interacting with kids, and it didn't exhaust me the way it would have if I'd had to chat with the parents. I'm weird. But I guess this is why I've always worked so well with kids.

We had a mix of snow and rain all day yesterday, so it was very wet walking down the creek to the school last night. It was beautiful to see the see the new blooms covered in snow. The creek was rushing it was so full, and there were places it was about to overflow. Since the moisture continued all night, there are places where it is overflowing the banks today. All of this wet snow and rain will be really good for the plants.

I've been doing much better overall with my food lately. But it's still really hard. I never miss my workouts, but I don't always manage to eat an appropriate number of calories to create a deficit which will result in weight loss. I've decided that I'm not only fighting evolution and human biology here, but also Newton's First Law of Motion. This is the law which states (paraphrased) that objects in motion tend to stay in motion. It's not hard to start my workout because what else am I going to do at 4:15 in the morning? Once I start my workout it's easy to keep going. But the problem is that the same is true for eating: once I start eating, it's hard to stop. So I haven't been perfect with the food, though I have made a huge improvement.

Tomorrow night my husband and I are going out for a date night. We've been so busy lately that we haven't made the time recently to spend much time together. Though we have been trying to take walks in the evening, so we're not totally out of touch. But it will be really nice to spend some concentrated time focused on each other. My mom even offered to have the kids spend the night with her, so we won't have any responsibilities again until Sunday morning! I hope you all have a great weekend.

Searching for my Happy Place

It's been a rough work-week thus far. I've been trying to find my happy place, and have met with limited success thus far. I feel like Happy Gilmore when Shooter McGavin invaded his happy place.

However, I seem to have finally decided that losing weight is more important than the temporary enjoyment of food, so I'm making some progress on that front.

Manic Monday

It has been a crazy Monday, and I found myself thinking of The Bangles this morning and then that song played in my head all day long. When I went for my walk this morning, I was truly creeped out to be walking in the early morning dark for really the first time ever. I saw a police car running its spotlight around an area as I was walking towards it. Then the car drove off so I thought maybe it was just a random check. But then there was a second police car running its spotlight around on the other side of the park that I was rapidly approaching. At that point I did start to get a bit uneasy. What were they looking for, and was I about to create a hostage crisis? Plus, several of the street lights on my walk are out. Normally I kind of like that because it's easier to see the stars. This morning I wasn't so thrilled. I did make it back to the house without incident though.

Then the day just went downhill from there, and that wasn't even considering that it's the first anniversary of my dad's death. So this afternoon I walked around the neighborhood and took pictures of the different shades of lilacs that are starting to bloom, to focus on something beautiful.

These first two are the different shades in my yard.

These next two are in other yards in the neighborhood. One is almost blue and the other is a very bright, dark purple.

The creek is really getting green now. It won't be long before everything is leafed out.

Weekly Progress Report #15

Weight: 140.1 pounds

Weight Change: -1.4 pounds

For some reason when I weighed myself this morning I was feeling all disappointed and frustrated. I thought I hadn't made any progress this week after being really conscientious all week. I did eat more than I should have Friday at lunch, but that was the only time I strayed from the proper number of calories during the week. Then I realized that I did make some progress this week after all. So I'm feeling a little better now.

I think my issue was that on Thursday morning when I stood on the scale I had finally (just barely) broken 140 pounds. It said 139.8 pounds. Then it went back up 3/10ths of a pound, and stayed there for three days. Even though I was really good on Thursday when we had to get dinner out and got a salad and didn't even use the dressing. Last night we ate dinner at my in-laws because my husband's aunt is in town visiting. I kept having to decline offers of more food or wine from my father-in-law, who told me I "ate like a bird" last night. He means well, but it's frustrating when it's already hard for me to eat right and then I have to "hurt his feelings." My mother-in-law is more supportive and tries to keep him in check. I was hoping with all of those proper but difficult choices I would have seen some movement again. But I guess I still did make some progress this week, so I should be happy with that.

I really need to make some real progress over the next couple of weeks because my husband wants to start shopping for our Ireland trip, and I don't want to shop at this weight.

We've experiencing a pretty windy day here today, so our beautiful flowering trees aren't looking quite as lovely as they did. However, the rain of white and pink petals has been really gorgeous. I love this time of year!