I'm Back!

I'm back home from my long weekend out to visit my grandmother.  I can't hardly express how glad I am to be back in Colorado.  Maybe it's because I grew up here and so I'm just not used to that weather, but I find the heat and humidity in Arkansas to be very oppressive and uncomfortable.  It's a beautiful state with so much green, but I feel kind of lazy when I'm there.  I used to visit my grandmother in Illinois, but she's 93 now and can't really take care of herself any longer (or protect herself from my one remaining worthless, loser uncle) so she had to move to Arkansas to be near my cousin.  Colorado was also an option for her, and she's claimed that she wanted to live here here whole life; but if she actually did something she wanted to she'd have less to complain about, and we just couldn't have that.  Do I sound bitter?!  Spending time with that woman drives me up a wall, and makes me feel like a bad and impatient person.

I guess I owe my cousin big-time since she's with her on a regular basis and deals with all of this stuff.  I told my mom that while I'm trying to be understanding because I realize my grandma has lost three of her four children, I have a hard time with my grandma and her constant negativity.  My mom, who's a much kinder and generous person than I'll ever be, told me that we just need to be supportive because my grandma's had a really hard life and has been depressed for a long time.  Now, this is my dad's mother, so my mom's mother-in-law to whom she's so wonderful.  My mom's not even related to her by blood and she's nicer to her than I am.

But it was nice to spend some time with my kids and it was great to see my cousin.  She and her husband are building a house on a nice piece of property.  The only blight right now is that the woman from whom they bought the property insisted that her house remain up until she dies.

Here's their house and you can see the old house in the left corner.

The old house sitting in front of their new house.

The peaceful view from their family room with my daughter looking at paint colors.

I love the Crepe Myrtle flowers.

Arkansas does have some nice lakes and trees.

Of course the other problem I had on this trip is that we ate too much, and moved too little.  So I wasn't very pleased when I stood on the scale this morning and saw that my weight went back up.  I wasn't terribly surprised, just disappointed.  So I'm going to have to really focus on my food this week if I intend to show any progress with my weigh-in this coming weekend.

Traveling

I'm getting ready to go visit my grandmother with my mom, sister-in-law, my kids, and my nephew.  I won't really have time to post again until probably next Monday.  I'll leave you with a picture of our impressive thunderclouds until we meet again!

Managing Expectations

Some thoughts about my choices surrounding mental and emotional well-being.

I've been doing some additional thinking about what I read in Leo Babauta's Little Book of Contentment.  The main thrust of the book is that we need to let go of "ideals" that we create for ourselves which we can't possibly meet, and instead learn to appreciate life as it is in order to feel contentment.  I liked the message, and his writing style is very calming and soothing.  But I still have a hard time accepting that advice.  I was raised to always try my best and to not even bother if I was only going to something "half-assed."  My dad thought Yoda's line in The Empire Strikes Back should be our guiding philosophy of life:  "Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."

That philosophy made me reluctant to try things if I didn't know that I'd be good at it.  I think the way this showed up the most in my childhood was my unwillingness to do more than one new math problem without having the teacher check it to make sure I was on the right track.  Now, I'm actually really good at math so I was generally correct, and I imagine it probably drove some of my math teachers up a wall that as soon as they taught us something new I'd do one problem, then stop and get their approval before moving on.  As an adult I still see this cropping up problematically from time to time.  When I make the inevitable mistake, I really feel bad.  I turn red, I get all upset with myself, and generally want a hole to just open up in the ground.  I do take ownership of and admit my mistakes, apologize for said mistakes, and create a plan to reduce the chances of it happening again.  But it's never going to matter how well I plan, I'm a fallible human being and I will continue to make mistakes.  I know intellectually that it's alright to mess up and the important thing is to learn from the mistake.  I also know intellectually that I can't grow if I don't try new things and sometimes fall short of my own expectations.  But that knowledge doesn't really change the emotional reaction that I have to this day when I "try" and fail.

I know that I can manage my reactions better when I manage my expectations; I've seen this in action.  When I started at my current job about 2 1/2 years ago after working at my prior company for over 12 years, I had to deal with a great deal of change.  I had chosen to move on for several reasons, and I still think from a career trajectory standpoint it was the right thing to do.  But I had made some sacrifices:  The schedule didn't work as well for my family; the commute was longer, but I could use public transportation so I naively thought that would make the commute bearable; I took a fairly substantial pay cut in order to focus on one role instead of the multiple roles I had taken on over time at the last job.  But I thought it would all be worth it when I could work more reasonable hours and have every Friday afternoon off.  The new job schedule was 9 hours Monday through Thursday and 4 hours on Friday.  Of course I generally work more than 9 hours the first four days of the week, and I still get into work at about 6:30 on Fridays so I work closer to 5 1/2 hours each Friday.  But for awhile I wasn't even getting out of the office at noon on Fridays.  I was getting really upset and frustrated because my schedule wasn't meeting my expectations.  (And hungry, because I wasn't packing lunch on Fridays.)  But then I took a step back and realized that I needed to prepare for the possibility that I'd have to work past noon on Fridays.  I started packing a Luna bar in case I couldn't get out on time.  Managing my expectations curbed the frustration, and made me more appreciative of the days when I did get out on time.

So I do know that the way we mentally frame a situation changes the way we react to that situation.  Which means that it's highly likely that if I followed the advice in the book, I really would feel more contented.  I have a fantastic life filled with wonderful people and more blessings that I can count.  But I still tend to focus on the outcome and reaching the destination rather than enjoying the journey.  Although I will say that I've nearly always managed to just enjoy time spent with my family with very little concern for the outcome.  I just wish I could figure out how to enjoy the journey professionally.  I still haven't reached the audacious professional goals that I dreamed about in high school.  I found my old creative writing journal a few months ago and was reminded of what I'd written in response to a prompt about my plans for the future.  They didn't actually seem that unattainable at the time, and maybe I could have chased those dreams if I hadn't decided starting a family was more important.  Although I'll never regret that decision, so in some ways it does help me to experience gratitude.  I also realized in reading through the journal that I was under a great deal of pressure (probably mostly self-imposed) to be the perfect student.  Just more proof that I've always had an issue with my innate imperfection.

Summary of my choices around my physical well-being.

I was pleasantly surprised when I stood on the scale this morning,  My Saturday dinner binge didn't totally derail my weight-loss efforts.  Don't get me wrong, it didn't help, I just don't have to start back in a deficit this week.  My planned workout this morning didn't happen because I awoke at 3:45 in the midst of an acute allergy attack.  I'm not sure what it is that I'm allergic to, but my nose wouldn't stop running, so leaving the house wasn't really a good option.  So instead I did some activities with the weights and got on our Wii fit.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get in a good jog in the morning.

Back to Reality

My husband and I had a nice weekend away celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary.  I ate more than I should have though.  I really do need to figure out how to eat smaller portions when we're eating gourmet food.  Especially when the meal is served in courses that seem like reasonable portions taken one at a time.  I'm kind of grateful that I didn't have a scale to stand on this morning as it likely would have been very depressing.  But I'm really planning on focusing my efforts this next week and having encouraging results next Sunday.

This is a picture of a beautiful stone church between Allenspark and Estes Park.

But now it's back to reality and I've got lanudry to do and then back to work tomorrow.

Photos from the Hike

My husband and I got in a nice hike today, although it wasn't the hike we were planning to do.  You probably heard that Colorado had terrible floods last fall.  The trail to the old mountain homesteads was washed out and closed.  So we went up into Rocky Mountain National Park and attempted to hike up to one of the lakes, but that trail was also washed out by the floods.  You can see in some of the photos below how much erosion occurred.  Even the trail we finally ended up on had some diversions in places where the original trail just didn't exist any longer.

My husband teased me about how many pictures I was taking, but he was sure to point out some good photo ops to me.  I'm not attaching all the pictures I took, just a few of the highlights.  Enjoy!

Anniversary in the Mountains

I'm writing today's post while I'm on a weekend getaway with my husband celebrating our 15th anniversary.  This is going to sound really cheesy, but I'll explain:  I literally married the man of my dreams.  When I was in college and dating someone and the relationship wasn't going well, I had a dream about my future husband.  We were in the car driving home and I looked over at him and thought how much I loved him.  We'd been through our ups and downs but we were friends and partners and making this work.  We drove up to our house and our older daughter and younger son were playing in the yard.  I woke from that dream feeling very peaceful and knowing that the dream showed me what I really wanted out of a relationship.  So I ended that other relationship and held out for my dream.

My husband told me that when we first started dating I was a little intimidating because I was so direct about what I wanted in a relationship.  I just thought, "if I'm not getting exactly what I want, there's no point in continuing to date."  My husband recognized how strong I was and never tried to take over and solve my problems for me.  He was always willing to do half of the household chores.  He enjoyed hiking and spending time in quiet just as much as I did.  So everything worked out and we got married.  We did have a daughter and a son, just like in my dream.  We have had our ups and downs, but we are best friends and partners and we enjoy each other's company.  I also like myself better with my husband; he brings out the best in me most of the time.  So my dream did come true, and I'm so glad I held onto it and insisted that was what I wanted.

There won't be a weigh-in this week since I don't have a scale up here in the mountains.  Instead we're going for a long hike to look at some old mountain homesteads today (I'm sure I'll get some great photos to share from that hike), and we're going out to dinner at a restaurant run by a couple from Austria where they serve a delicious five-course meal starting with a heavenly cold berry soup.  I hope your weekend is wonderful also!

Some of the views from around where we're staying.

Last night we sat by the river and watched the stars come out as bats flew by overhead.

Moon Shadows

I didn't get a post written yesterday because I left work to walk the two miles from downtown Denver to the highlands and meet my family so we could take my mother-in-law out to dinner and celebrate her retirement.  We got home pretty late and I just didn't have it in my to write a post before crawling into bed.  The walk was really nice though, it makes me feel like I earned a little bit of my dinner.  It's completely uphill, after all, the area is known as the "highlands" for a reason.  I also have to use a pedestrian bridge over I-25, so it's noisy for part of the walk, but it's still kind of nice to use your feet to get around.

This morning I noticed how interesting the light patterns were on the floor, so I decided to take a few minutes and make a photo.  The brighter light is from the street light outside, and the dimmer light is from the moon.  Of course I starting hearing Van Morrison's Moon Shadows in my head.  I decided it would be worth it to take the time to set up my tripod and get the picture because it's such a rare phenomenon.

I set the ISO to 2000, opened the aperture fairly wide, and adjusted the exposure to +3.  The camera was set on aperture-priority mode so it automatically selected the appropriate shutter speed.  I looked at the image that I got and it beautifully captured the shadows and shapes, but it was really red due to the overexposure.  So I changed the image to black and white, and was able to basically capture what I was seeing to share with all of you.

I also wanted to share a photo that I took a few weeks ago of some our blooming ground cover that I ran across again and liked, and a couple of pictures from Sorrento, which was my daughter's favorite stop on her European tour.