Something went Awry

Let me paint you a picture:

Black flats from Target, red & white snowflake fuzzy socks from Bath & Body Works, white and black snowflake pj bottoms, white and blue Columbia jacket. Broken glasses (Bear broke one of the sides last year), newly highlighted and cut hair in a ponytail. Glass of Riesling, cigarette, sitting on my porch step looking at my two dogs, a yard full of leaves, sticks and dog poop.

How did I get here?

This morning I woke up earlier than I usually do on Mondays, my proverbial “day off”, and was highly productive. By 9 am all the laundry was sorted, the dishwasher loaded and on, Bella fed & medicined and down for a nap, Bear and I had breakfast, a to do list was made, eggs were cooking for dyeing.

Then something happened. Something went awry and sent me off kilter and I’ve been struggling to get back since.

I can’t quite figure out what it was. Was it that when I went to do the laundry I realized that the H had put a load of sheets in on Friday and they were still wet in the washer never being put in the dryer? Was it that when I incesentally called Athens he didn’t come and I thought he had jumped the fence? Was it that I stupidly checked my emailing awaiting the Prof’s response to the mistake I realized I had made end of the day Friday?

One of these things or all of these things sent me into my bed with chocolate and Desperate Housewives. Then I got a little of my mojo back. I got some laundry done, we finished our pirate easter eggs, the house was vacuumed, the fridge cleaned, the dishwasher unloaded, the kitchen counters cleaned. Then Bear went down for his nap, but Bella wouldn’t sleep. She didn’t want to sit, she didn’t want to play, she tugged on her ears and squirmed in my arms only wanting to stand.

I fought the urge to scream, “You can’t stand! I’m not going to hold you up all day.” I did however leave her in her room with her tea set and toy cell phone and told her to call someone who cares.

I hate this part of my personality. Something goes wrong, so slightly I can’t even pinpoint it and it spirals me into shutdown mode. Or eat three double stuff oreos and want to cry mode. But no tears come. I’m not a crier.

I drank some of said Riesling, felt stupid about it and dumped half of my glass down the drain. Bella’s sleeping now and so is Bear. I could and should work out. Something I had been so good about until this weekend. Now its been three days since the treadmill and I saw each other and I have no desire to go back to the basement except for another load of laundry.

I want to eat more Oreos or a hamburger, or anything. I want to go to the store and buy something, something/anything to make the children happy and relieve the guilt I feel for so thoroughly not wanting their company right now.

Fucking Prof scheduled me into a meeting at 8:15 am tomorrow to discuss the mistake I made. Really? It can’t wait until later? I’m sorry I relied on an inventory 3 months old. I’m sorry I relied on the Devo Assistant to mention to me that we were out of reply cards, which she didn’t. But is this something we need to talk about at 8:15 AM? Why do I check my work email on my day off? Why when I so passionately hate my place of work currently?

Maybe it was the email from the Dr. of Ops scheduling a lunch meeting with me and our other friends to talk about a big announcement. Maybe its the jealously that she got a promotion? won the lottery? … something I didn’t get.

Something happened and I can’t recover from it, so I’m stagnating.

Feb Resolution/Detox Fail

So another month in 2011 has come and gone and I have met no goals that I have set. I’ve decided perhaps I’m just lazy, selfish and irresponsible. What it comes down to is a fundamental  I don’t want to that dictates what I do and do not do. What I do not do is exercise, eat well or keep budgets. What I do is eat McDonalds, socialize with friends, lay around and spend money. I seem to be acutely aware of my transgressions but have no actual desire to change anything. Its an awful situation to be in (and realistically a probably easily remedied one) because I know everything that I do wrong, but I just don’t want to change it.

In essence I didn’t exercise once this month. I started out really good entering in what I ate daily for about 11 days and then I stopped. That was also the last time I weighed in — eek not looking forwarding to seeing how that number has fluctuated in the last 3 weeks. I’ve definitely accrued new debt. I’m constantly kicking myself for the fact that I could have paid of all of my credit cards but didn’t and instead accrued back debt that I had just paid off. Oh and back in November didn’t refinance the mortgage when the rates were 4.25%. FAIL. I did per the detox email The New Godmother weekly my spending and the first week there was definitely a feeling of nervousness of showing actual figures to someone, but that quickly went away after the first email. I feel inclined to continue sending it weekly to her, but I don’t feel like its having the desired outcome. She now is aware of the same thing I am — we eat out too much. I buy the kids too much stuff. These aren’t things I didn’t know.

Something new I’m going to try for March is not carrying credit cards with me. If I don’t have them then clearly I can’t spend. What I’ll wind up doing is maybe taking cash out and I can only spend the cash I have on hand. This will become effective tomorrow. Because I’ve already had two happy hours this week and tonight is a friend’s birthday dinner. Maybe better would be only carrying the card when I know I have to spend something like tonight’s dinner or next week when I’m having lunch with a co-worker for her birthday. We’ll see. Clearly I need to get back into the mode I was in last spring thru summer when I was a debt reduction powerhouse. I think what helped is that I didn’t pay daycare for almost 6 months so I had lots of excess cash and what doesn’t help now is that I pay 3x the amount in daycare than I did last year. We got our state tax refund last week and are expecting our federal one any day now and the H gets his yearly bonus in 2 weeks which is great, what would again be greater is that with that money we would be in a great spot, in a lets go on vacation great spot, but instead its just short of covering all of our debt. And not accruing more isn’t really in sight. We still have not figured out what to do about the fact that Squeegee died and the SIL is going to be needing her car back soon.

And exercise? Well yesterday I should have bought the Living Social deal for the Bikram Yoga studio in Woodbury, but I didn’t. As much as I complain every single day that none of my clothes fit me (which they don’t) another month passes and I’ve done nothing to remedy it. It comes down to the excuse that I’m too tired, too busy and work too late. Which are also all good excuses because when you don’t come home until 6:30 by the time you make dinner, get everyone to bed you’re: a) exhausted b) its 10pm and time for bed and c) rather watch Idol in bed and eat double stuf oreos.

I can’t wait until Bella is 3 before I get my ass in gear like I did with Bear. Mostly because when Bella is 3 I intend for her to have a 1 year old sister by then and if I’ve added more pregnancy weight on top of this pregnancy weight well then my friend I would be huge.

Referenced Blog Posts:

January Resolution Sum – up

February Detox

2011 Resolutions

January Resolution Sum Up

So let’s see how I did on my new years resolutions just a mere 31 days into the new year…

• Get back to pre-pregnancy weight.
  • Well I haven’t weighed myself in a long time but I can’t imagine after all the Chipotle, McDonalds and other eating out this month I’ve come anywhere near this.
• Exercise
  • I quit the gym… so no.
• Financial/ Career
  • Because of all the eating out done I definitely spent more than I should have this month. Plus with the baptism expenses, Valentine’s Day gifts and The H buying me a birthday present (even though I told him going to Chicago was my present) we did not achieve this.
  • I applied for my dream job and met with an upper level co-worker and asked him to write a recommendation to the CEO of the company I applied at since they’re friends.
• Take better care of my dogs
  • Well I’ve been sporadic with filling the Kong for the dogs, but they haven’t done anything too bad while we’ve been gone with the exception of eating Bear’s Megamind mask from the ZooBoo.
• Be a better Parents and apply some of these Mommy Resolutions
  • Bella sleeps almost exclusively in her crib during the day — woohoo. We still have not started a bedtime routine though.
  • We are better about bathing the kids — but not great.
  • Bear still watches too much TV, doesn’t wash his hands enough and cleaned his room every day until he didn’t.
  • We probably did have family dinner at least once a week.
• Me and The H Time
  • For my birthday we had dinner together even though friends invited us to go with them. I strongly debated this, but in the end decided for us to just have dinner and it was really nice!

All in all I would say I’m 50% ish on track. With the February Detox I have great hopes for the next 28 days!

 

February Detox

So detox is a little bit of an extreme word, but looking at people’s fb statuses it seems to be the fad word of the month. So I’m proposing a financial and health “detox” for myself in February. What I need though is two friends to hold me accountable. One friend who I need to weekly? Every other day? Submit my spending to in order to ensure that I stay within my budget. I feel like if I need to tell someone what I bought and how much I paid for it I’m much more likely to stay accountable and stick to my budget. I’m thinking the new Godmother for this task.

Next “detox” would be a food/exercise one. I would need to submit my log of what I ate (and how many calories it was) as well as how much I exercised to someone. Now this would be really embarrassing I find if people knew quite how poorly I ate. My Lose it app on my iphone can be programmed to email my food/exercise log so this would be functionally quite easy. I’m thinking hmmm I still haven’t come up with a name for her but she knows who she is! (Hi, McDonaldsHater / Ex-Gym / ??? ).

I’m wondering if I had this accountability I could do it. Once I have the motivation I think it will be more habit and perhaps for March I would still enlist the help of my friends but on a less daily/weekly basis.

Thoughts? Does this seem like a good plan?

Things I don’t want to do today

1. Go to the Gym.

2. Write 3200 words.

3. Stay home with screaming children while the H goes to band practice.

4. Not eat a bag of Oreos.