Checking In - September!

What an interesting month it's been! (Such a useful word, "Interesting.")I've had the opportunity to learn a lot about "over-goaling" this month and I'm actually spending a few days re-assessing. Far from being a sign of failure, I've learned this year that those times are crucial to success. I took on too many goals and put too much pressure on myself to excel at all of them all the time, and it's okay to acknowledge that and correct it. Forward motion is progress and sometimes that forward motion is pitching a fit and declaring that there's just no way that all of this can get done right now and, if fact, declaring Bill the Cat to be my spirit animal!! (Pant, pant, sigh, gasp.)

True.

But where's that leave me?

Well, the "good books" and "good movies" challenges are back-burnered right now. With work on the Babylon 5 book heating up already, I found myself overwhelmed and teary at the prospect of doing those things to mark a title off an arbitrary list. I'll get to them, but right now isn't the season for that. I've seen plenty of movies and read plenty of books, but not the ones on "the list" and that's just dandy.

Zone cleaning is sort of in the same boat - it's not a struggle to keep up with my morning and evening routines, but much of anything beyond that is proving to be monumental. I keep the book with the zones out and I read my daily challenge each day and sometimes it gets done and sometimes something else gets done. You know what? The house is still standing and remains in better order than it used to be.

The budgeting challenge hits full-force this month. As I wrote over Labor Day weekend, we had car repair bills that turned into "we can't resurrect her this time," which meant a certain amount of yike! We're mobile again and just fine, but those were not expenses were were prepared for. It's going to be a tough end of the year on that score, no doubt about it, but it'll all work out and hey - we're doing all of this so that soon (on the cosmic scale, anyway), money won't be the issue that it is now. Delayed gratification. Can't say as I like it too much.

Now to report of the 5K challenge, which I've folded into the first-stage-of-wrapping-up "You Gonna Finish That?" Challenge. This was designed to make me hard-core accountable for a number of habits, including diet, exercise, and self-care. (Remember what I said about too many goals?) I used SparkPeople as my diet and exercise tracker which I liked since it had exercise videos and recipes that linked directly to the tracker. I don't like tracking, although I'll admit it's useful to see patterns (I eat too many carbs, for example. Mostly "good" carbs, like whole grains and the carbs found in fruit, but still - that was eye-opening). I made sacrifices in terms of sweets, made sure to drink at least two liters of water per day (yep, I know where every bathroom is throughout my college campus), aimed for hard exercise at least three times a week, and have tried to get more sleep. 

Right at a month in, I can report that, while I still don't like tracking, knowing that I have to do it has made it easier to say "no" to some bad choices. While I'm trying to not give the scale too much authority (I still stink at that, by the way), I'm down four pounds. I've also logged 13 run/walk workouts this month for a total of 31-and-a-touch miles, with 22 of those miles being at a jobble or better. For someone who was staggering around a church parking lot seven months ago, that ain't too shabby! So I'm going to keep this challenge going another month and let's see what we see.

What I really want to add in now is more attention spent on taking better care of me - teaching is not a job that lends itself to being left at the office and researching and writing a book isn't exactly a side job, so my twin goals here are to (a) make the office more pleasant and (b) not be so hard on myself with deadlines that I set and that I know to be ridiculous. I had a small writing project that nearly drove me around the bend that I should have been able to handle with ease, but when added to the several other regular gigs I've got going on (which includes two blogs, a weekly movie show that involves watching and research before the cameras begin rolling, and a regular column over at the pop culture site BiffBamPop), I was perilously close to the non-whimsical version of "crazy." So I reached the conclusion that normal people would've gotten to a long time ago and I'm not taking on more work during this time. Let me keep working on spinning the plates I've already got up on sticks!

Onward!

Checking In - August!

It was just about a week ago that I checked in here regarding progress on the 2014 January resolutions, so I'll be brief on those:

Zone Cleaning Challenge - well, I've got my morning and evening routines down, but adding in the weekly zones is still hit & miss for me.  Now that the semester has started and is finding a routine of its own, this comes back to the forefront.
5K Challenge - who would have thought that I'd find out I actually enjoy jobbling? I have my first "real" (as in timed) 5K race this coming Saturday. I'm nervous, since of course I want to do well, but it's an excited kind of nervous. I'll be doing something that I couldn't have done when I first set these challenges and that has to be viewed as progress of the good kind.
"Good Book" Challenge - Just under the wire, I managed to finish Faulkner's Light in August before I ran out of month. I really, really enjoyed this and I found myself wondering what Faulkner's reaction to the events in Ferguson, MO would be if he were still around to talk with us about Southern mythology, class, and race - always race.
"Good Film" Challenge - Saw several good films this month; none were on my list. Well, it doesn't make me a bad person.
Budgeting Challenge - Doing well enough on this that we enjoyed a weekend away for Labor Day. That probably blew the budget (or perhaps the car repairs will - like Moses, our loyal Bonnie Bonneville didn't make it up the mountain to the Promised Land, but unlike Moses, her damage may be fleeting), but it was a sorely-needed trip and I regret nothing!

I think I "over-goaled" here trying to do everything at once, so I cut myself several breaks as I focused on one good habit at a time instead of trying to overhaul so many aspects of my life at once. But now that a few habits have, in fact, become habits, FryDaddy and I agreed it was time to tackle the elephant.

Eating.

See, I like food. I like white-tablecloth restaurants and I like fried chicken eaten on a tailgate. My comfort food is Southern - pimento cheese, Barefoot's homemade mac 'n' cheese, sweet tea, Krispy Kreme, and so on. I've been known to say (to a good friend, not on a job interview), "You gonna finish that?" while gesturing with my fork. I grew up one of those people who was picky enough of an eater that it seemed I could eat whatever I wanted with no problem. Well, like eight-tracks, those days are gone. Yes, I'm a runner, but I'm a baby runner, and I simply don't burn enough calories to eat like that.

Add to that the fact that my job involves a lot of sitting and typing, and the problem begins to emerge.

Add to that the fact that I deal with stress by eating and the problem comes into focus. 

Add to that the fact that I also do a movie show for local cable, and prep work for that involves sitting and researching the films and sitting in a dark theater to watch the films, which for me as a kid, meant treats like buttered popcorn and candy (maybe a Slushie), and I don't need a nutritionist to tell me what's what.

Oh, I've tried all this before; I've even bought the books and the hype. The result is the same - I'll lose five pounds, then reward myself with a Blizzard. So I've roped in FryDaddy this time to help me. Really, it's not a matter of me not knowing what a portion size is or not realizing that fried is less good for me than broiled, it's a matter of putting theory into practice.

I'm trying to be sensible - no cabbage soup, no "only eat tomatoes for three days," or any of that nonsense - and I know that this will take time, but dammit, I don't want it to. Sigh. Patience may be a virtue, but it's not one of my virtues!

Today has been all about getting ready - I'm eating a few things that will shortly be on the "verboten for now" list (Mickey D's really does have the best fries, you know) and I've done a massive grocery run. No kidding, this one's going to be hard, but for the next month, my plan is to limit my refined carbs (no rice or pasta as a side dish with dinner and no stuffed baked potatoes as dinner), no sweets beyond a touch of good dark chocolate or something similar (au revoir, Fuzzy Peach!), and (gulp!) no movie treats. Let them catch me sneaking in grapes and baby carrots. Let's see where I am in a month. I won't lie - the scale has power over me, but so does my wardrobe, and I'm tired of putting something on and offering up a muttered prayer that the button will fasten.

Deep breath. Here goes - and yes, I'm gonna finish that.

Summer's Waning

August has been a strange month here at the Nest. It's a month that tends to be syrupy hot-and-humid, so it starts by slowly crawling by, then suddenly, everything goes into turbo speed and it's the end of the month and I'm left wondering what the heck just happened. It's been a good month so far - a few days at the beach (FryDaddy and I swear we're going to get a solid week in next year) served as a break from start-of-school madness. (But not totally.  Seriously, this semester has gotten off to a rocky, weird start punctuated with all manner of schedule changes and curve balls. It'll settle and a rhythm will be found; it always does, but it's been a wee bit odder than most.) So I'm off my routines, but still wanted to check in once before the very end of the month.

Oh, and that's the lesson I learned this month - the term "routine" has a different meaning than "straitjacket." The idea behind routines is that I do those things way more often than I don't do them, and it helps keep the house running more smoothly as a result, but you just can't do everything every day. Sometimes work needs you a little extra, sometimes you have houseguests, and sometimes you need ice cream more than you need a fruit smoothie (it's true) - half a hundred things can happen and that's all okay. You just get back on it as soon as you can and, if you've been basically keeping up, it's not a big deal to get caught up. So zone cleaning (and healthy eating choices) are both ongoing goals, but there's progress.

So let's see -

I've signed up for my next official 5K race - I had the Color Run back in April (click here for details!) and I've done two "virtual" 5K races over the summer (you run your own race and post your time and other people in other parts of the country do the same thing), but this next race is local, so I figured it was time to run against the clock and see how I do. Today FryDaddy and I drove over the course and wow! are there hills! I won't be especially fast and I'm pretty sure there will be some walking involved, but I'll finish and that's way more than I could've said in January.

I'm working my way through Faulkner's Light in August for the book challenge and quite liking it. I'd been tearing through it - the language is so compelling and it's a great story - but I put it down to read this month's book club book (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler - fantastic read!) so I'm not done with Faulkner quite yet.

Speaking of which, Faulkner worked as a Hollywood screenwriter for a bit in the 40s and he co-wrote the script of Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not which was (very loosely) adapted from Hemingway's novel of the same name. This month, FryDaddy and I started writing a twice-a-month column for the pop culture website BiffBamPop.com. My first contribution was on that very movie and Lauren Bacall, who made her stunning screen debut in it. Check out the column here! Not exactly part of my film challenge (I'd seen To Have and Have Not before; it gets better with subsequent viewings), but hey - that's where I am for now.

Budgeting is going pretty well, actually. We're both working on that and working off a single budget instead of two separate ones is much easier! Sure, we still have work to do (groceries are always more than we seem to think they will be), but again - progress.

So here I am, at the very end of summer - a season which beats you into submission with heat, humidity, and the siren call of hammocks and shade trees. I hope you'll understand if I remove myself from the Internet to go enjoy a few of those last golden hours. Just tell me, and I'll write a note for you to do the same!

Checking In - July!

OK - time to check in.  As regular readers know, at the start of this year, I set five goals for myself, with the intention of making 2014 a true "makeover year" and I post these "check ins" once a month (generally on the very last day of the month or the very first day of the month) to both show how things are going and to keep myself accountable for these goals I set.  And make no mistake, these were some LARGE goals. The road hasn't always been smooth, but looking back, I can see progress, often in some unexpected ways. So - the goals were:

1. Believing that a sense of calm would come from a neater house, I wanted to get organized and stop doing "crisis cleaning" on the weekends. FlyLady had helped me get rid of (maybe literally) a ton of clutter, so I decided to take that system a little deeper and add "zone cleaning."
2. Money's tight, but I wanted to stop using credit cards and live frugally, with the idea of whittling away at the household debt.
3. I decided to watch 24 "good movies" that I really should have already seen, from a variety of genres, ranging from foreign classics to comedies.
4. I wanted to read six "good books" that had slipped by me.
5. I wanted to feel stronger, so I decided to train to participate in a 5K race this year. Thus, the "Dancing Sloth" was born.

Whew! Taken all at once, these goals were intimidating. But I've stuck to it (mostly) and can report the following as we head into the "dog days" of August:

July was interesting, since I was back in the classroom with my summer school classes. They're fun classes (at least I think so) and they went well, but boy howdy! do they take time. (I had two sections to teach, each of which met for three days a week for  just over three hours a session - yike!) Now that FryDaddy is home from graduate school for good, we're working through our "delayed honeymoon" period, which is an occasion for much YAY! but it also means we've been sorting through things that most couples would have sorted out at the beginning of the marriage. One thing I can thoroughly recommend for those in such situations (although I think this might be a good general rule) is to schedule "date time." We've been doing that, but we took it to a new level today and made all of today "date day" and it's been just lovely. We ran on our own schedules, ate out so no one had to cook or clean, saw a matinee (we chose Guardians of the Galaxy, which we loved, but pick whatever suits you), and took advantage of a rainy, unseasonably-cold day to lounge and snooze. It doesn't really matter what you do, it matters that you make time to do it together.

1. As to the housework routines, we're nearly there. I have a few things I do every morning and a few things in the evening to get things ready for the next day, pretty much without fail. I'm working to add just 15 minutes to that on the weekdays, usually just after I get home. I spend those few minutes in the "zone room" for that week, using the FlyLady "daily mission" and zone checklist for that day as a starting point. Hey - the living room windows got cleaned this week, which has to count for something!
2. We're back on the budget horse this month, making a strict budget using the Dave Ramsey system. (Yeah, he shoots his mouth off about the poor and makes some downright dumb statements, but his "debt snowball" system is sound. Take what works, leave the rest.) We'd used it before, but we were running off two budgets, since FryDaddy was at school and I was here. Now we're consolidated, which should make things easier. Fewer meals out, though - that's for sure!
3. The movie challenge -  I marked one off my list in July; the amazing classic Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. If you haven't seen this one - even if you're not a fan of Westerns - you owe it to yourself to see it. Incredible performances from Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and a story that'll just yank you in.
4. The book challenge - well, I picked heavy books for that list and I sort of fell into a crevasse about it. I've been reading (I actually finished five books this month, all nonfiction, ranging from a short series of vignettes about women explorers to a fascinating examination of the origin on modern forensic science), and I'm determined to start Faulkner's Light in August since it's, well, August. Check back in a few weeks to see how I'm doing on that.
5. As for the 5K challenge - I've had surgery to clear my airway (read about that in my previous post) and am back to running. A good thing, since I agreed with a friend - we'll call her "Bawlmer Hon" here at the Nest - to participate in next summer's Ramblin' Rose mini-triathlon. It'll be a hoot getting ready for that, let me tell you!

Huh. Looking back, I'd say it's been a good month. It hasn't always felt like that (surgery, school, chores, uncertainty), which is why these posts matter. There are days that are great, days that are good, and some days that are pretty much meh. The trick is to look at the overall pattern.

And hey - it's still summer!  Go enjoy it!

Checking In - May!

Yes, this post is a little bit late and I'll let my previous post (centering on my college reunion) serve as both my explanation and my apology. But here I am, ready to check in and report on my progress through the merry month of May.

Let's recap - the ambitious goals I set to work on throughout the year were:

• Keeping a tidier, less cluttered house. I just can't stand the chaos of "where that thing?" as I'm trying to dash out of the house. But I work full-time, on top of several other large scale projects this year, so this goal involved finding a happy medium of “clean and tidy” versus “doable.”
• Money is a sore point with me – as it would be with anyone who has spent years clutching the trifecta ticket of frozen salaries, disrespect, and rising prices – so we decided (this decision had to be a “we” decision, so FryDaddy is in this one as well) to keep a realistic budget to lower our household debt.
• To strengthen my body, I decided to train to participate in a 5K race sometime this year.
• To improve my mind, I decided to read six "good books" that had slipped past me.
• Also to improve my mind, I decided to watch 24 "good movies" that had slipped past me.

      To be honest, May wasn't a very good month, goal-wise. Between FryDaddy's graduation (no, I'm not calling him "master," in spite of the fact that he's got the funny sleeves), exam week, some required travel, and a host of other activities, it was a full-out crazy month. Lots of fun stuff going on there, but it seemed that everything took precedence over the goal-keeping. So what's that mean?

     

     Well, after a bit of a breakdown - I have a nasty tendency to see things as "keeping score" instead of "this is going to make things easier, but there will be setbacks" - I think I can report some success, although it's been more in this most recent week rather than in May. Therefore, I'm not going to talk about my set goals as much as I'm interested in talking about setbacks and how to approach them. After all, this is something I know a fair amount about.  (Read as - I know A LOT about setbacks!)

    

      Read this until you believe it:  the bad days and weeks and months are going to come. They just will. Unexpected expenses will crop up and play merry hell with your delicate budget and you'll think you're a failure because - golly gee, you could've saved money by recycling dryer lint into creative Halloween costumes but no, you had to go off and buy something. Food that's not especially good for you is cheaper and requires less prep work and it's tempting when the busy times strike. There's no time to clean and you can't settle down enough to concentrate on a "good read" and you just want to be entertained instead of watching a movie from your list. Nothing is working, you've gained ten pounds and you wonder what happened.

      At the risk of sounding like I have things held together with peace and calm instead of duct tape and the use of Anglo-Saxon words as adjectives (look, it's been a few weeks of me yelling at the cats, okay?), when nothing you're doing is working, do nothing. Just stop. Look around. Reassess your goals (seriously - I've had three different people advise me to skip Thoreau's Walden which was my scheduled book. So I decided to read Beloved instead and still haven't started it, although I've read six other things in this period of indecision) and make course corrections as needed. Growth is not constant - that's why we have winter. It's a time in the natural year to recover from expending all the energy it takes to grow, blossom, and harvest to hunker down and consider the Next Step. If it works for carrots and bears, why shouldn't it work for people? (That made more sense before I typed it. I'm still going with it.)

      For example, I went on a shopping trip with my mother this weekend. I mean a SHOPPING TRIP, the kind where you wind up with new everything. Here's the kicker - I asked my mom when the last time was that we did a trip like that. She carefully considered the timeline and said, "Right after you finished law school and took that job in South Carolina." 

      That was in 1998.

      So the deal was that I had to go through my closet and ruthlessly get rid of clothes that no longer worked. I just did that and it was hard - I want to think I'll be that size again and/or that I'll be able to wear that style again and it's hard to be realistic about that sort of thing. (And there were a few things that are getting thrown away rather than being given away - I'd crossed the line from "frugal" into "cheap." Shame on me.)  But I'd rather wear clothes that actually fit me instead of clothes that fit me in 1998 (and yes, I had still had some of those). I'll drop them off at Goodwill in just a little bit - the clothes will work for someone else and I believe in karmic concepts enough to think that giving away creates room in my own life for more good stuff to roll in. I'll get back to drinking water instead of diet soda and my other good habits. Sometimes life demands to be noticed more than the dust bunnies.

      It's okay. Really, it is.

Checking In - April!

Back at the start of the year, I decided that 2014 was the Year to Get Calm (not as trendy as the “Year of the Horse,” but what can a girl do?) and, while that was/is a truly worthy goal, I had to figure out just what that meant.  How could I increase calm and joy in my life, which is often a madcap whirl through the backstage of the circus sideshow?  After some heavy pondering, (and you can read the reasoning behind it, along with the books and movies on my list, here), I decided on five long-term goals for the year, which are:

• Until May, I have a commuter marriage as FryDaddy finishes graduate school.  That means a lot of travelling while teaching college full time, so the house gets short shrift.  I needed to find a happy medium of “clean and tidy” versus “doable,” so I decided to work "zone cleaning" into my housekeeping.
• Money is a sore point with me – don’t get me started on frozen salaries – so I decided (this decision had to be a “we” decision, so FryDaddy is in this one as well) to keep a realistic budget to lower our household debt.
• To strengthen my body, I decided to train to participate in a 5K race sometime this year.
• To improve my mind, I decided to read six "good books" that had slipped past me.
• Also to improve my mind, I decided to watch 24 "good movies" that had slipped past me.

It’s an interesting report this month. There’s been huge success, but I’m learning that you can’t maintain everything at "Level Ultra" all the time. Here’s the valuable part of that lesson – IT’S OKAY TO SLIP! As the sportscasters say, let’s go to the tape.

The 5K goal has been reached!  (Yay, cheer, crowd goes wild!) About two weeks ago, I “jobbled” my first 5K and had a blast – please read the previous post for details. I plan to keep running, but this was also my first lesson in “Level Ultra.” Truly, there’s only so much time in the day and, while I’m MUCH better about carving out a sliver or two to take better care of myself, some days you just can’t fit in a run. That is especially true as the end of the semester nears. Also, while reaching this goal has given me the kick I needed to make some changes to my diet as well – again, you can’t always live at Level Ultra.  I hate that a number on a scale has so much power over me, so I finally (with FryDaddy’s loving assistance) got up the courage to try saying, “Take a hike!” to the scale. This will probably be an ongoing issue with me, as it feels almost weird to not be freaking out over scales and numbers and lists, but I’m really trying to focus on eating real food, drinking plenty of fresh water, and exercising regularly, while remembering that food is more than mere fuel.

Also a lesson in “Level Ultra” – just after the 5K challenge wrapped up, FryDaddy and I were thrust into book launch madness.  (Oh, you didn’t know we wrote a book?  Allow me to enlighten you – click here, buy the book, then tell all your friends who enjoyed Breaking Bad that they need the book, too!  And tweet about it!  And write a nice review!) Remember, while all of this is going on, we’re both still swamped in our everyday responsibilities.  Yeah, April’s been nutso.  

So with all that going on - how did the housekeeping challenge come out?  Well . . . really good, in a way.  Because I’d been working at this for the better part of a year, routines were (mostly) in place, so when I had days where I had to skip things, the house didn’t fall apart.  Mind you, it needs a solid clean and I’ll do that in my usual FlyLady 15 minutes a day, five days a week, once things calm down next week. No, it’s not perfect, but I’m not flipping out over it, which I view as a triumphant success.

The budget. It’s funny how trudging along can suddenly lead to a “wow” moment.  For me, that came with the windfall of a tax refund. FryDaddy and I waited a few days, then sat down with our debt list and allocated money in several categories. Some bills were comfortably paid and another debt has a big, honking red Sharpie line drawn through it as we eradicated it from our list of burdens.  Wow, indeed! (I still want to be a brat and go dance in the rain with wads of cash, so please – buy a book or three! Available for purchase at Amazon, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble and any place quality books are sold!)

Good books – Finally finished Dumas' The Three Musketeers, which was a flowery romp.  His language is so florid and extreme that I skimmed a bit and sometimes had to put it down to pick up something else, but I enjoyed it.  The next book is going to be Thoreau’s Walden and I’ll start that soon.  Again – must get to the end of the semester first.

Good movies – This month I went in some interesting directions.  In addition to movies from my list (the Astaire/Rogers confection Top Hat and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal), I also started going to a local performance space that features classic movies on Thursdays for the princely sum of two dollars.  I took in the original Tarzan and my very first Shirley Temple picture (The Little Princess).  Quite a month for movies!  Let’s see – Tarzan made me cheer for the crocodiles (seriously – that movie’s depiction of non-Europeans is just awful.  I know, I know – the time it was made, yaddayaddayah.  It’s still awful), Little Princess made me appreciate Technicolor, Top Hat has a tissue paper-thin plot, but you forgive that for its sheer loveliness, and Dark Crystal I’m just too old to see for the first time. 

A good month.  Quite possibly made better by having to acknowledge that I can’t live at “Level Ultra” and have all areas of my life run purring-smooth at all times.

On to May!

Checking In - March!

Here it is, the end of March, which means I've been working my plan for three months now.  Some things are much closer to being habits now and there's some exciting news to report, along with an update on things that haven't turned out quite the way I envisioned back in late December.

I decided that 2014 was the year to Get Calm and I had to figure out just what that meant, since I was pretty sure that a year-long escape to some tropical isle equipped with a full staff just wasn't happening.  So what could I do to Get Calm and still live in the hectic, messy, glorious, beautiful world I inhabit?  That took some thought (and you can read the reasoning behind it, along with the books and movies on my list, here), but finally, I decided on five long-term goals, which are:

1. A messy house stresses me out and costs me valuable time as I hunt for whatever-it-is I've misplaced, so I decided to work "zone cleaning" into my housekeeping.
2. Money is a sore point with me, so I decided (with FryDaddy) to keep a stringent budget to lower our household debt.
3. To strengthen my body, I decided to train to participate in a 5K race sometime this year.
4. To improve my mind, I decided to read six "good books" that had slipped past me.
5. Also to improve my mind, I decided to watch 24 "good movies" that had slipped past me.

Keep in mind that these are MY goals; it was crucial for me to not take on anything that had my happiness hinge on what someone else did.  Therefore, the budget item had to be undertaken very carefully and as a couple.

So - 90 days in, I can report *mostly* success.  Oddly enough, the housekeeping one has probably been the easiest.  I spent huge chunks of time last year de-cluttering the house - drawers, closets, cabinets, etc. and while I still have some to do, even the attic is much better than it was a year ago.  It's true what the organizing folks tell you - you can't organize clutter.  Go through that stuff a little at a time, toss and donate with glee, then take a clear look at what's left.  I spend about 15 minutes a day, five days a week, working on "house stuff" and our home is far tidier and calmer as a result.  For me, it's been all about the FlyLady system, but there are other ways to do things that won't have you weeping in a corner. I've still got my trouble spots and my chores that I dislike, but it surely is nice to come home to clear spaces.

The budget. Wow. We're making progress here - good progress, too, as my non-breakdown over unexpected car repairs this month can attest - but I still stress here. We're paying debt down, but it'd be so much more fun to spend the money on other things! Sigh. Growing up is hard and my inner child is a brat. Still - when you work two years on a book, you sort of want to celebrate that instead of putting the final advance towards student debt, you know?

The 5K training is going great! The eight-week "Couch to 5K" program I used (you can find that here) took me thirteen weeks, but yesterday I completed the final week.  My first 5K is in about two weeks and I've had so many friends offer encouragement and good wishes on this journey! I'm still very slow, but I can "jobble" for a full 30 minutes at a stretch, which was a far-away dream three months ago. And I don't think I'm going to stop after this first race. Seeing myself take strides toward making this goal has given me the *oomph!* I needed to make some other changes as well - first, I cut out sweets until race day. Last week, I added in drinking at least 80 ounces of water a day (I've had a single Diet Coke in two weeks), and I just added in eating two servings of fruit/veg at each meal. In two weeks, I've lost four pounds, which is nice. Run. You can do it and it really does feel GREAT!

Good books - I'm deep into Dumas' The Three Musketeers, which is a hoot and a half! The language is so flowery and over the top that I find myself skimming sometimes (I don't think Dumas would mind), and I've put it down to pick up other things this month.  I'm enjoying it - more so than I did the Forster I read first for this challenge.

Good movies - well, there was bound to be a misfire.  I watched Lucille Ball in Mame recently and it's just bad. I think the show itself is actually pretty strong and fun, but Lucy just didn't have a strong enough voice to carry off the role.  It's not a complete waste - Bea Arthur as Vera Charles is great fun, the costumes are gorgeously over-the-top, and grown-up Patrick is Bruce Davison (he'd grow up to be Sen. Robert Kelly in the X-Men franchise, among many, many other roles). I plan to get the non-musical Auntie Mame soon and watch Rosalind Russell instead. Also, this month, that's the only "list movie" I've seen, although I very well may watch another one tonight, which would still count for March. Then again, maybe not. So much of this whole plan is to get me over my perfectionism. No, my house isn't spotless.  No, my budget isn't zero-balanced. Nope, I'm not really a "runner" just yet. Uh-uh, my "great books" might not be someone else's great books. And my movies certainly aren't. But I'm trying hard to not let my fear of not being perfect keep me from trying.

Onward, Team Sloth!

Checking In - February!

My 5K team - the Dancing Sloths!

Another month has gone by, so let's see where I am with my five challenges for 2014.  To recap those challenge:

1. To give myself some "soul calm," I decided to work "zone cleaning" into my housekeeping.  An ordered house is calmer and less "hair on fire!" for me.
2. To further contribute to some "soul calm," I decided (with FryDaddy) to keep a stringent budget to lower our household debt.
3. To strengthen my body, I decided to train to participate in a 5K race sometime this year.
4. To improve my mind, I decided to read six "good books" that had slipped past me.
5. Also to improve my mind, I decided to watch 24 "good movies" that had slipped past me.

Zone cleaning, while not quite a natural part of my everyday routine, is showing signs of having staying power.  Every week, a different room is the focus and I have a checklist of things to do to give that room, if not a true "deep clean," at least a mid-range clean.  I don't hit every item on every checklist (my wooden living room floor could really stand a cleaning instead of just a thorough sweeping), but it's better than it was. Further, I spent a chunk of this past month decluttering the attic.  The trick there is (of course) Babysteps.  One box at a time and one 15-minute session at a time.  I laughed and cried and pitched and tossed.  It's not totally done yet, but I have to say, I'm really pleased with how much I did manage to accomplish.  I even got some digital photos organized - another long-term goal.

The budget continues to be a challenge.  We're doing okay in that regard, but need to get serious, especially about eating out.  We do that too frequently and almost always wind up eating food that isn't good for us, because, you know - eating out.  We can do better and we both want to do better, so we WILL do better!  Having car repairs this month didn't help, either - but what can you do?  Neither of us has a car payment to make and with the commuter marriage, travel is a necessity, so repairs just have to be dealt with.

The 5K training - well, here's the fun part for this month!  I've continued to train three times a week and am now up to three 12-minute "jobble" (that's a cross between a jog and a wobble) sessions with very brief walking recovery sessions in between.  In the last week, that's started to add up to 5K territory, so it was time to Pick a Race.  I chose the April 12 Color Vibe and paid my money down, so this is going to happen!  I'm hoping to get drenched in color as I stagger around the course (my team of one is called the "Dancing Sloths," by the way) and I might even make one of those no-sew tutus.  I'm going to look ridiculous anyway, so I figure I may as well embrace it with a tiara and tutu!  Honestly, I've been so gratified by the level of support I've gotten from Facebook friends and real-life neighbors - it's heartwarming and I mean that.  Maybe this old-ish dog has a few tricks left.

The "good book" read - I just started my second "good book" (I read other stuff in between, you see) and selected Dumas' The Three Musketeers for this one.  So far, I'm just loving this!  It's so over the top and the language is so flowery - it's like literary curlicues!  We'll see if it maintains my attention for the next 400+ pages, but so far, so good!

And lastly, the "good movie" challenge - this month was Rent and Bad Day at Black Rock. (Not a double feature, by the way!)  I wrote about Black Rock on another blog earlier, so I won't say anything here.  I watched Rent during the mid-month snowstorm.  I'd had it on my shelf for quite a while (probably picked it up when the local Blockbuster closed) and I knew it vaguely follows the outline of Puccini's La Boheme, but that was about it.  I liked it and I'm sure that if I'd seen it in my early 20s, when I was living my version of the Bohemian life, I'd have swooned over it.  Now, I'm a bit more cynical and world-weary.  Still, it's hard not to be moved at "Seasons of Love" and I've been fortunate to have known an Angel-like character and I wept that he no longer walks this earth, for the planet was a better place with him on it.

So overall - not a bad month.  Work still remains to be done and there's plenty of room for improvement, but I'm liking how things are shaping up in 2014 so far!

Checking In - January!

Near the end of December, I set five goals for 2014 (they're all laid out in this post) that are all designed to create some lasting changes in how I approach things. None of these are quick changes - I've tried those and I've never had much luck with them. I had to get very specific about what I was hoping to accomplish, so I looked at three areas that needed work (body, mind, soul) to develop my goals:

1. A cluttered house is easy to lose things in and that causes me to run late and stress out. So to give myself some "soul calm", I decided to work "zone cleaning" into my housekeeping.
2. Stressing over money causes me to fret, worry, and fail to live in the present. So to contribute to some "soul calm," I decided (with FryDaddy) to keep a stringent budget to lower our household debt.
3. Although it's inevitable, I lament the fact that I'm getting older and particularly that I don't feel strong. So to strengthen my body, I decided to train to participate in a 5K race sometime this year.
4. I have always loved to read, but (like all readers) I know I've missed many, many good books, so to improve my mind, I decided to read six "good books" that had slipped past me.
5. I love movies - I even co-host a movie show with FryDaddy on the local community college TV station - but an astonishing number of good movies had slipped by me. So to improve my mind, I decided to watch 24 "good movies" that had slipped past me.

Now that I've got a month under my belt with these resolutions, let's recap and see where things are headed.

Zone cleaning hasn't been too bad at all - regular readers here know that I discovered FlyLady last spring and I have to say that it's really turned around my concept of caring for my home. Now that the house is decluttered, it was time to add in the zones. With the zones, you concentrate on one room a week (usually - sometimes it's more, like the home office and the bathrooms) and there's even a checklist to get you started. You don't worry about doing everything at once and I haven't done all the rooms "perfectly" - there was no way I was washing windows when the wind chill was a non-balmy 8 degrees Fahrenheit! - but anything is better than the nothing I had been doing. It's off to a good start and I'm calling it a win.

Budgeting - woo, boy. January is a tough one. We muddled through and we're on track to go forward into February. On the plus side, I sat down yesterday and roughed out the bills, and we're caught up and even paid off a credit card we'd been working on! So I'm calling that a win.

The 5K training - wow. This has been hard. I wobble-jog (jobble?) during the "run" intervals. I'm using a "Couch to 5K" podcast called 5K101 that talks me through each session. I repeated Week 3 and I'm in Week 4.5 now, since I didn't feel quite ready to jump up to 8-minute intervals, so I'm using the supplement which calls for 6-minute ones instead. It's hard, but I really feel a sense of accomplishment with it and my friends have been fantastic about supporting me during this challenge. I'm slow and a little clumsy, but I'm lapping the me who was on the couch, so again - this is a win!

The book challenge - I started with E. M. Forster's A Passage to India because I've read and thoroughly enjoyed other works of his. Alas, Passage didn't work quite as well for me. Others, I'm sure, have read it and loved it beyond the telling. I found it a bit of a slog - competing narrators and nary a likable character in sight. Well, I read it, so that's a win.

The movie challenge - this month I saw both Touch of Evil and Moneyball. (I know, two very different movies - whatever; it's my list). Touch of Evil was stylistically gorgeous, but deeply flawed from a narrative standpoint. To be honest, the plot is pretty much a hot mess, and I saw the restored, this-is-what-Orson-Welles-wanted version. Well worth seeing, but I so prefer The Third Man. Now, Moneyball was a different story. Aesthetically, it can't hold a candle to Welles' work, but it's a fun, feel-good underdog story about that most American of sports - baseball. I see why Jonah Hill earned an Oscar nomination and I'd recommend it be included on any list of sports movies. A win.

And let's keep in mind that I'm also back in the full swing of the spring semester. Far from making me Wonder Woman, effortlessly juggling all these competing goals, obligations, and responsibilities, I spent a chunk of this past week just grumbly, out of sorts, and generally snappish. So - not a win there. Progress is being made, but it's in steps, not leaps.

But I can see the path.

Halfway - January!

Last year, I had a lot of success with posting "halfway through the month" check-ins to keep me accountable for my progress and my "course corrections," so I'm going to continue that - don't mess with what works, I say!  (And no, we haven't gotten that sort of ice you see in the picture; but it's been COLD!!)

For 2014, I set five goals (they're all laid out in this post) - but in brief, they are all designed to help me be calmer, happier, and healthier.  Tall orders indeed, so I got specific with these five goals:

1.  Work "zone cleaning" into my housekeeping
2.  Keep a stringent budget to lower our household debt
3.  Train to participate in a 5K race sometime this year
4.  Read six "good books" that had slipped past me
5.  Watch 24 "good movies" that had slipped past me

So - two weeks into the New Year, how's it going?

I've been told that success is rarely total in science.  The same can be said for resolutions, but there is progress to report, so yay.

I'm working in the zone cleaning, although it's going to take a while for it to become an automatic "thing."  The FlyLady system gives you a daily task to do Monday through Friday and I'd worked those in (they're easy, quick to do, and yes - you feel like you've accomplished something when you take ten minutes and tear through your overstuffed sock drawer to get rid of the orphan socks!), but I was intimidated by the longer checklists for the "deep cleaning."  Turns out - pshaw! - just keep in mind that anything you do is more than you have been doing and move on.  For instance, last week was the "kitchen week."  I did really well in there - even cleaned the baked-on gunk in the oven - but didn't get everything done.  Well, that's okay; I'll get it next month when I'm back there.  I also didn't insist that I do the whole thing in one day.  By picking a couple of small things off the checklist each day (mornings are best for me), it wasn't so bad.

The budget.  Sigh.  January is a harsh month.  There were a couple of large unplanned for expenses (such as paying my annual fee to access an unlimited amount of legal continuing education seminars - a great deal, but a limited time offer) that have set me back this month.  But there's light at the end of that tunnel.  I've been employed at my state job long enough to qualify (for the first time ever!) for something called "longevity pay."  Essentially, it's a annual bonus given to employees to reward them for not running screaming into the night before certain benchmarks have passed - in my case, ten years.  (Bureaucracy at work - last January marked my ten-year anniversary; you wait another entire year [the anniversary of your anniversary] to be awarded the bonus.)  I had hoped to put the entire thing toward bills, but that's okay.  It'll get us back on track when I receive it at the end of the month.

The 5K training - okay, here's some joy.  I started an app called "Couch to 5K" and have been huffing and puffing around my neighborhood and the college's walking track for three weeks now.  The third week was just about to kill me, so I reluctantly decided to repeat it.  At that point, I also found a similar program in podcast form, which allowed me to put down the iPad and use a much smaller iPod.  (No smartphone for this girl.)  The podcast talks me through things, instead of just serving as a glorified stopwatch and yesterday (Day 2 of the three-day session), I managed to do the entire thing without stopping.  Mind you, there's not much grace or power involved and my speed resembles a three-toed sloth much more than a lean cheetah, but I've been reassured that it'll come, it'll come.  And the support I've received with this goal has been amazing! Thank you all!

On the book side, I've picked my first one - Forster's A Passage to India.  I'm in the middle of finishing The Round House for my book club, then I'll start on Passage.  I'm looking forward to it; I've always enjoyed Forster's work.

On the movie side, I've watched Orson Welles' Touch of Evil and I have Bad Day at Black Rock recorded (thanks, TCM!).  Honestly, Touch of Evil confounded me a bit.  Typical Welles - it's gorgeously shot, with intricate framing and (of course) that incredible opening one-take crane shot.  (We watched the restored version - Welles was famous with fighting with the studios over editing and apparently the studio wanted opening credits to roll over that crane shot - Welles was right to fight over that one.)  I have to say, though, despite the subject matter being interesting - race, corruption, border turf wars - the plot's just a mess.  Charlton Heston said that one of his biggest mistakes as an actor was not using an accent for his character in this movie - his Mexican D.A. sounds all Hollywood Hills, so I have to agree with him there.  All in all, an interesting film that I'm glad I saw, but I'm not entirely sure I'd recommend.

Not bad for two weeks in!

Nine Month Check In!

A few new things to report.  September's been an interesting month, with the Wanna Cook? book project entering overdrive for the final push - by the next check-in, the entire book will have been drafted and the final bits will have been turned in for editing.  Breaking Bad wraps up its broadcast run this Sunday and next week, I have a paper to present on Saul Goodman and legal ethics at a conference (said paper is still - ahem - in a state that can most kindly be described as "rough draft" form.  Saturday's a busy, busy day!).  FryDaddy is also presenting and we both have school/work obligations.  As you can imagine, that's a lot of plates to spin.

This is the very reason why routines matter so much.  By now, housework has (mostly) gotten to a groove - laundry and dishes are caught up and the house is reasonably free of dirt (although pet fur is a constant accent to our decor) and that's a comfort in the busy, busy days that have been September and that will continue for another two weeks or so.  I scaled a few things back this month - I realized I was overdoing it and then beating myself up for not hitting every goal, every day.  A "star" day right now is exercise 30 minutes total (doesn't have to be in one fell swoop at 6:45 in the morning), drink 70 oz. of water, eat 5 servings of fruit/vegetables, limit the junk food (twice a week and only reasonable portions then), and do something positive for my overall mindset (I've discovered short guided meditations just before bed to help my crazywhirly brain settle and unwind from the day).  That's enough, I figure.  I'm a little less stressed, even though I'm in the midst of a very stressful period, so I'm marking this down as a win.

The big change this past month is that FryDaddy and I got serious about a very taboo area - finances.  Like many Americans, we have credit-card debt and were working from a budget that was more of a glorified checkbook balance than an actual plan.  We'd gotten tired of the stress associated with constantly being on a shoestring and we knew that we ought to be doing better - our income is decent and, while I still have a big chunk of debt from law school (and he'll soon have grad school loans to pay - but not undergrad, thankyouthankyouthankyou Mom Squared), we don't have car payments and our mortgage is quite reasonable - but it took us a while to commit to change.

Now we have.  We're just at the beginning, but already, I see a difference.  We've got a budget that tells our money where to go, instead of wondering helplessly where it went.  Any change in the budget (like when I forgot to include a couple of items and when we underestimated the amount we'd need for grocery money) requires us both to sign off on re-jiggering the columns, which still have to zero out so every dollar is accounted for.  We've committed to not using credit and throwing every extra dollar that comes into our paws at our debt.  It won't be short, and it won't be easy, but it's going to be SOOO worth it!  I hesitated to bring this up here (while nearly every American has debt, it's not something I find easy to talk about), but the point of these monthly check-ins is to be honest and accountable and, for me, debt is a dirty little secret.  It feels great to have a plan, instead of just drifting along, hoping that I get lucky with Powerball or some fairy dust hits my retirement account.  (For those interested, we're using the Dave Ramsey "Money Makeover" system.)  Again, it's not a quick fix, but we didn't get into this mess overnight, so it stands to reason that it'll take a while to sort out.  Journeys start with the first step, right?

Right.