Under a Blood Moon

This morning I went for my run under the blood moon.  The lunar eclipse was absolutely stunning at 4:30 this morning.  By the time my kids got up they could still see the earth's shadow on the bottom half of the moon, but it wasn't red any longer.  I attempted to take a photo, but was having some difficulties.  I started with my 105 mm lens and got a decent shot, but the moon looked so small.  So I switched to my 300 mm lens which brought the moon much closer.  But that lens is so heavy that I think any little breeze made the tripod wiggle, so I couldn't get a crisp photo.  I thought I'd try taking a picture from inside, but the moon was at the wrong angle to get a picture from any of our windows.  So unfortunately I don't have a great picture to share (and thank goodness I was working from home today so I had time to do that much).

It's also the end of an era, or at least a stage of my life that I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to say goodbye to.  Our neighborhood elementary school started hosting annual runs each fall in 2006, the year my daughter was in Kindergarten.  I've watched every race since then (2 races each year for several years), and today was the last "Pumpkin Run" we'll get to be a part of.  My son ran in it for his final time in 5th grade today.  This thing is a big deal now; they have Olympic runners join the kids and they have a police escort.  So it will still be happening in the neighborhood, but I won't be able to take time off to work to watch my children any longer.

2006:

2014:

Here are a some other fall shots I grabbed this morning.

All Work and No Play

This is a busy time of year for me at work, although not as busy as January through May tends to be.  There are just several things that get crammed in to this time period, which can't be started early because decisions aren't made yet, but once they are made, it's a mad dash to the finish line.  I've actually been super productive at work which tends to happen when I have this much on my plate.  Last week I was a bit worried about whether or not I'd get things done in time.  But after working some this weekend and really pounding some things out, I'm feeling like everything will come together.

The problem with this time is that since I'm hyper-focused on work, I don't get much downtime.  I know people who seem practically super-human who work constantly and never seem to suffer, outwardly at least.  I am not one of those super-humans; I need time to relax my body and my brain.  Maybe I'm just not as smart as those folks and so my brain has to run at higher RPMs to do this much thinking, or maybe I just don't push myself hard enough.  But I find that if I don't give myself a little downtime, I'll make errors.  I have found when working on a difficult formula or report before that walking away (literally taking a walk outdoors) for a short time helps because when I return it's immediately obvious what the problem is.

So I'm trying to balance my obligations at work and at home against some time to just rest and relax.  I haven't even been reading that much lately because right now it's taking too much mental effort, which is pretty strange for me.  This is also why my posts have been a little light on text recently; I just don't have the ability to string words together in a coherent fashion at the end of the day.  But this too shall pass and hopefully I'll feel ready to use my brain again on something besides work soon!

Monday, Monday

I had a very productive day at work for which I'm very grateful, and now I'm worn out and exhausted.  However, my job at home isn't done yet for the evening.  We did get through the homework and piano practice, so the wild-card events are out of the way!  Now it's just dishes and bedtime.  I did get out in the yard and take a couple of photos of the autumn colors.

Hopefully I'll have the energy for a meatier post tomorrow, but I'm feeling kind of brain dead tonight; like I already used up all of my intellectual capacity for the day!

Weekly Weigh-In #9

Progress!  I'm back down to 136.1 pounds.  I've still got about 11 pounds to go, but I'm headed in the right direction again.  I was a bit worried about my weigh-in this morning because my in-laws took us out to dinner last night to celebrate my husband's birthday.  My strategy of watching portion sizes when I eat out seems to be working, or at least not making things worse.

We've had a busy weekend at our house.  My daughter was gone most of the day today working on her Halloween costume with my mom.  She's also been spending hours practicing her piano because jazz band auditions are this week.  She already got into the district honor band playing flute, and now she's working on this.  I've never seen her voluntarily work so hard on her music.  I had to do work this weekend because it's going to be another extremely busy week and I wanted to give myself a head start.  Plus all the usual weekend household chores, I'm pretty tired tonight.

We did get started on our Halloween movie extravaganza.  Last week we watched Lady in White, this weekend we got in The Haunted Mansion and Monster Squad.  My husband and I started The Conjuring, and I'm hoping we'll get to finish it tonight before we head to bed.  I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Work and Stress

My job offers some really great benefits, including paying for the entire family premium on health insurance if we sign up for the high deductible plan and I take a health risk assessment.  Last year when I took the assessment, all of my numbers looked great, I worked out like I was supposed to, saw the doctor for my physicals (most years), and was overall in very good health.  However, the assessment did tell me I should eat more vegetables and manage my stress.  So I've been working on both, with rather limited success.  When I have to count my calories so closely, I only want to eat things that I like to eat and that are high in protein and fiber so my blood sugar doesn't drop.  While most vegetables fill the fiber needs, they don't provide the protein, so I still don't eat as many as I should.

Then there's the stress.  I know that it's self-imposed, and that it's really bad for my long-term health and my weight.  But I still can't seem to get a handle on it.  I stress out at home because I don't think I'm a good enough wife or mother, and I can't seem to keep up with everything that needs to be done.  I stress out at work because I expect top quality work out of myself in exchange for drawing my paycheck, and the workload is so overwhelming at times that I don't feel like I have time to produce the highest quality product.  My job is essentially writing and running reports, doing data analysis, and testing and configuring our HR system.  I actually really enjoy all of those things, most of them are like logic puzzles and incredibly fun (yeah, I'm weird like that).  All of those do require accuracy though, and it's VERY easy to put a decimal or parenthesis in the wrong spot and get an incorrect result.  So it takes time and focus to do it right and to run tests for quality assurance.

Last year during our annual performance and compensation cycle I produced 32 versions of the board presentation because I kept tweaking things per our CEO's request.  One time we had a meeting at 1:00 in the afternoon where he asked me to make several more changes before our meeting at 2:00 that afternoon.  Luckily that version never made it in front of the board members, it was only our executive compensation consultant who saw that one.  Because I didn't remember to make all the changes on every impacted chart in the half hour I had to work between meetings, so some of the data was off.  The next morning we met at 9:00 and our CEO again asked for changes in time for a 10:00 meeting.  I actually responded sarcastically, "oh, because that worked so well yesterday."  I couldn't believe that had come out of my mouth; as soon as I said it I wanted to smack my hand over my mouth in incredulity.  Fortunately, the CEO just calmly looked at me and responded, "alright, we'll just tell them to expect the changes when they see the presentation the next time."  I think that was my one get-of-jail-free card with him.  I hadn't ever done anything like that in the past, and I certainly haven't done it since.

This is where my work stress comes from:  I enjoy my work and take pride in it.  I want to do a good job and was taught by my father that if I was just going to do a "half-assed" job then there was no point in doing it at all.  I recognize that his obsession with perfection was not healthy, and while I logically understand that, I still have a difficult time changing my emotional response to imperfect work results.  So here I am, about ready to take the health risk assessment again for the upcoming benefits plan year, and I still don't really have a handle on my stress.  I have been doing some meditation, deep breathing, and yoga, which does help.  So I guess I'm not completely neglecting to try to make this better.  But if it's results that matter, I don't have much to show for my efforts.  I guess I'll keep trying though, since as Madame Leota said, "the only true failure is when you stop trying."

Here are some pictures of the leaves in my yard.  I know I'm incessantly taking pictures of the changing leaves, but the beautiful colors are so fleeting, especially here in Denver when it can snow any day now.  So I'm trying to take advantage while I can!

Pruning

We had our trees trimmed yesterday, and right now the yard looks a little bit sparse.  I know the trees really needed it and they'll be healthier next spring.  It's still hard to see them looking so barren though, especially this time of year with the colors.

This a picture on the creek behind my house.

This is a picture of our purple ash before it was pruned.  Luckily that particular branch is still there, and while there is less foliage, there's still enough that soon we'll have amazing color with this tree and the yellow ash in our neighbor's yard that sits right next to it.  That's always one of my favorite things about our house in autumn.

Here's a picture of our maple after the pruning.  Again, there are still enough leaves that I think it will look lovely soon.

I have no idea what kind of bush this is even though it's in my yard, but it sure looks pretty right now.

This is a handful of vibrant leaves I picked up on my walk yesterday afternoon while my son was at piano lessons.

Now to complete my autumnal immersion, I'm headed over to Panera bread for dinner where I'm planning to have a bowl of the autumn squash soup.  It's only 350 calories, so it fits in today.

Choosing Not to Stress Eat

It was an insanely busy day at work today and had to deal with several urgent interruptions.  I am responsible for both the HR system and compensation at work.  I had blocked my calendar off to work on configuring and testing the benefits changes for open enrollment in the system, but kept getting interrupted because we need to make urgent staffing changes, which requires compensation information.  I don't mind having two areas of responsibility, they are both very interesting and I like changing things up because it keeps me from getting bored.  However, I find it incredibly stressful when the two areas have conflicting deadlines.  I have yet to figure out to navigate those times without my stress level hitting max.

I was sorely tempted to reach for the bag of SunChips that was sitting at my desk (they came with a lunch sandwich one time).  Not because I was particularly hungry, simply because I wanted to chew on the chips as a form of stress relief.  But my scale has been moving down again this week (yay!) and I talked myself through it.  It's only a temporary relief that would cause me more problems later, and negate all the hard work I've been putting in.  So instead I tried deep breathing to calm down, and had some success.  I assume I'd be even more successful if I practiced it on a regular basis, so maybe that should be another goal.

On another topic, today is my husband's birthday.  I realize this is pretty sappy, but that is one area of my life where I always know that I made the right choice.  My husband puts up with me in good times and bad (and lately there have been too many bad times).  He stands by my side in parenting and all of the other difficulties we have to navigate.  He's a good father and teacher, and a wonderful man.  I can hardly believe that we're both 40 and we've been married over 15 years now.  I'm ever so grateful and he deserves an amazing day celebrating him!

My husband's eyes are red in all the wedding pictures because he cried after the ceremony.  You'll notice that I did not; he's definitely the sentimental one in this relationship.
If you can believe it, my mom made that wedding dress.  I think it cost us around $50 in materials.