I am slightly to moderately stressed out.  Why?  Because I threw food away!  No I’m serious, I don’t  throw food away!  I’m back on a fitness routine ramp up and I found my motivation and I’ve set my calorie limit for the day while I experiment with what I want to try and test in terms of food.  Day one , yesterday, went well.  Today went well Even when I switched dinner a little I was still under calories which is great!  I’m bound to be good, and I’m thinking of Food as fuel instead of Entertainment.  This means  I Eat when I’m hungry and I stop when I’m not hungry any longer.  Tonight that meant I had food left on my plate that I didn’t eat.
WHAT????? Who the hell is this person?  My whole life has been finishing my plate on most day but not because I was hungry for it all …. I ate it because it was on my plate.  New habit?  Maybe.  It was really weird but a little amazing at the same time.

I haven’t run since October of last year by choice.  I kind of threw it out the window in lieu of walking.  I was tired of running for the last 10 years and I didn’t “need” to run any longer.  My reasons for running aren’t there any longer plaguing me, haunting me, taunting me.  I’m happy walking and using my stationary bike and my rower…… until I recently caught wind of Ethan Suplee.  Now if you don’t know who that is, it’s the huge kid from Remember the Titans.  Yup Lewis Lastik (character name) is no longer a huge kid.  HE”S JACKED!!   This guy lost 300+ lbs naturally and looks totally amazing!  He’s driven, honest, funny and for me, motivating!  Holy crap I want to be like this guy!  if he can lose that much weight then I can get back on the stick and start working with resistance bands, light weights in addition to running again and using the stationary bike and my new rower.

Until now, I lost all motivation for anything but walking.  I’m still working on the running but right now I’m happy running 2 miles 3 days a week.  I have no desire to run even 3 miles at a time.  This may change as I begin to regain my shape and however long it takes, nothing can be as hard as losing more than 300 pounds so there are NO excuses!  I like Ethan’s comment that he needed to think about food as fuel, not entertainment.  Until I read this I didn’t realize that it is EXACTLY how I think of food!  OMG I have a problem and I need to rework how I think about food.  Food is a fuel which in part means I need to eat when I’m hungry not because it’s break time.  I have to be in a caloric deficit to burn calories which I knew but it’s part of putting together my formula and my plan.

Ethan has a podcast which I am listening to and enjoying.  He also has an Instagram page @ethansuplee and one of the things I like most about him is that he isn’t out to collect followers or sling bullshit.  He is out to achieve his own goals, share lessons along the way for those struggling as he has / is and to stay fit to spend as much time as he can in this life with his wife and kids.  Now that is someone who in my book is someone I admire and want to follow.

So as of now, it’s back to work setting goals and working hard to get where I want to be.

I’ve been walking a LOT lately.  Partly because I stopped running and need to do something and partly because I am participating in my work’s step challenge for May.  I won the first week because I pretty much set my mind to winning and I wanted the gift certificate!

Well, I won hands down by a LOT which made me feel happy.  So now I cannot WIN but I’m playing anyway for fun.  In order to motivate myself to keep walking so much, I’ve turned it into a game with myself.  I want to see if I can beat last week’s steps.  I had 103,285 between Monday and Friday last week.  This week it looks like I’ll have no problem beating myself.  Today being Friday is the last day.  I need + 9564 steps to beat last week and so far I have 4,478 in the books.  It looks like it will be another successful week!

I’m reading the book Indestractable and one of the ways they tell you to get rid of distractions is by making a not so fun task fun.  Not necessarily so it’s actually FUN but make it a game of sorts or make it a challenge and it becomes less daunting.  Without a reward behind my efforts this week I had to make it fun by trying to beat myself.  I like a good challenge so I’m up to the task.  The next two weeks might be more difficult but even one step beyond my goal is a win!  it’s all in how you look at it and these days of being in the house all the time, having fun, and finding ways to make the days less monotonous is key!

I spend many minutes during my daily walks talking with God.  I still read the Bible every day and pray as well, but the walks seem to find me working some real stuff through with Him.  It’s peaceful outside by myself and because He’s always listening, I can just start talking about whatever is on my mind.  I find that talking out loud, for me, helps me really hear what I’m saying.  I know that the Lord doesn’t need me to talk out loud because he can hear me always, but sometimes you need to hear yourself in order to really give what you’re going through some real-world perspective.  I pretty much throw it all out there from frustrations with age-induced weight gain to questions and concerns about family, menopause, marriage, work, family, etc.  I’m always happier and I feel better at the end of our daily talks.  Whether it be 1.25 miles or once around the block or my longer 3-mile walk, He listens to me the entire way.  I find the things that bother me the most take up my entire 3-mile walk!    He never tires of hearing the same concerns and he never interrupts me.  I do laugh a little bit at our daily sessions because I am like …………SQUIRREL!  I can be all over the place and I get distracted regularly.  I envision Him laughing at me when these occurrences happen because it always does.  I think that I amuse Him sometimes just because I can be a lot of work to stay with during our chats.

I’ve prayed throughout my entire life in different capacities.  I’ve always believed in God, even when I was little most likely because my mother taught me to believe.  I’ve always known that God is near me.  I’m pretty sure he protected me from really bad things when my parents were going through a divorce.  I feel as though He helped my mother find my stepfather and a place to live.  Basically, He has had a hand in making sure I’ve always been ok.  I’ve developed a much greater relationship with him since getting married and having children.  He was there for me when I was at my lowest, taught me the lessons I need when I was at my stupidest, and he’s rewarded me when I was most in tune with him.  I can say that since August I’ve taken a much deeper dive into knowing Him and discovering what He wants me to do with my life.  I’ve been humbled, crumbled, and fumbled in front of Him and he always picks me up.

This year I will finish reading the Bible cover to cover.  I will say that my life is enriched at having done so as I feel that I have a much needed and greater understanding for the story of Jesus and our Lord Almighty in Heaven.  I will re-read for understanding when I finish.  I feel like the second time around you catch things you missed the first time.  It’s been on my bucket list if you will, for a while.  Some people want to see the Grand Canyon (I do too) and some of us want to read the bible and gain a better understanding of it.

Sometimes during my daily walk, I just think about what I’ve read and ponder some of the ways of old wondering what He thinks of how we as a species behave.  Sometimes it’s a quiet walk just thinking to myself without talking.  I love having that time to myself and although I’m no longer running, I feel good about the walking I’m doing.  I get a lot done out there as I’m putting up 10K, 15K steps in a day.  Walks can be useful and productive so I guess I’ll keep walking and talking with God.

I have found that Psalm 86: 1-7 is a great daily prayer

Psalm 86

A prayer of David.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything here.  I’m not running but I am walking nearly every day.  I’m not lifting weights but I do still ride my bike and now I row since I got a rower for Valentine’s day!  I do need to use that more often than I have been.

So this is week 5 of the Covid-19 quarantine aka Corona Virus quarantine.  Everyone that is non-essential has been told to stay home.  I will say that the list of “essential business'” does seem strange in part.  My local bait shop is considered essential?  I mean really?  It’s not a wholesale distributor selling to commercial fishermen who supply grocery stores with fish.  they are a tiny little shop but I understand they probably just need to stay afloat.  I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same if it were my bread and butter on the line.  At the moment May 4th is the date set to return to normalcy.  I’m not so sure that is a good idea since we are in the height of the pandemic with many new cases still surfacing and many still dying from this virus.  Thus far here is where we stand locally and in the world with cases -recovered – deaths.

It’s a very scary virus but not so much so that we should all be panic-stricken.  There are panicked stricken people out there.  They are wearing masks in their own cars for goodness sake!  All we need to do is pay attention and do the right healthy things.

• don’t touch your face in public
• wash your hands when you get home from being out near other people or touching shopping carts etc
• stay 6 feet away from people.
• If you’re elderly or sick or you have an infant, you should be extra cautious about being in public or visiting with people because these groups are more susceptible to contracting the virus.

This is real life and something to be taken quite seriously which is why we are all home right now.  I’ve been home for 5 weeks now working on my kitchen table and occupying 95% of it so mostly my family has to eat dinner in the living room or their bedrooms.  This is not bad because we do that anyway honestly but normally they have the OPTION of sitting at the table IF they wanted to.  Not now!  I have my entire set up here including triple monitors, stand up desk, phone, headset, filing rack and catalog rack for the important stuff should I need it.

There are many upsides to working from home (WFH) like I don’t have to wear shoes all day and I wear jeans every day with a sweatshirt.  Something I would never wear to the office.  I am also 6 feet away from the fridge if I’m hungry, I have a heater next to me to keep me warm, I can see out my living room windows and I can easily take a 3-mile walk at lunch.  I’m rarely late for work now that I have a zero minute commute, I’m saving money because I’m not shopping at lunch or buying lunch.  The bathroom is never occupied when I need it and I can do laundry while I work.  I’m also getting so much more done because I’m not having sidebar conversations with everyone and it’s quiet here.  I also have everyone home every night for dinner barring when my son and daughter are working.  I am able to start dinner so we eat at a normal time too.  If I need to look something up for work at some late hour I also just need to walk 25 steps to the kitchen and BOOM! it’s at my fingertips.  I’ve also learned how to Zoom and use Slack to communicate with my teams so I’ve learned new skills as a result of staying home.  So many bonuses to being at home working.

The downsides to WFH are that I never leave work.  I’m always at work so my scenery never changes. I’m with my family all the time.  Now, this for me is really a plus but there are times when they forget that mom being in the kitchen is really Mom at work.  I have a red button to tell them when I’m on the phone which has worked wonderfully for all of us.  Rather ingenious I think and yes I’m patting my back on that one!  Other downsides are looking at the dishes pile up during the day.  We all have things to do and the kids do help me with stuff around the house but during the times when I can’t do dishes and they can’t do dishes, it bugs me to no end to watch them sit there.  I’m also not moving around like I was.  Well, actually I’m moving more because I walk 3 miles a day but I don’t move around from 8-5 like I was.  I guess it’s actually a positive because my steps per day went from 5-7K a day when I was working in the office somewhere between 17-21K per day.  No weight change however which is a bummer.  The biggest downer to being at home is missing my friends and having contact with people at work.  It’s easy to get isolated and to feel sad.

I don’t know what the future will bring and what my employer will do when the time comes to open the offices back up.  Maybe they’ll offer WFH as an option or maybe not.  I’m fortunate to have a job and work for a company that didn’t miss a beat when switching from a brick and mortar company to a mostly WFH workforce.  They were prepared for the change and led us into the unknown with great leadership and guidance.  Not everyone will be or was so fortunate.  Not everyone will go back to work and not every company will open their doors again.

The world is changing and some things are for the good.  Look at Los Angeles for example.  Here’s a before and after picture of the city.  Smogless because people are not driving around and companies are not polluting the air.  Bodies of water are cleaner because boats are not stirring up silt and debris and polluting the water.  The world over we find people and companies coming together to help one another.  That alone amazes me the most.  In a time of trouble people are being kinder to one another and companies are doing generous things to help us all get through this.  Major manufacturing plants have purchased the equipment to make masks for the healthcare workers that don’t have them.  Restaurants that cannot open for sit down dining are offering free delivery to your door.  Just some amazing things that give you just a glimmer of hope that we as a people of God can really do the right thing when we want to.

It’s kind of funny to be figuring out who my friends really are this late in life but I am.  I guess I’m figuring out what characteristics the friends I want to keep really possess is more like it.

I’ve spent my entire life trying to make other people happy.  Like many people, probably ladies mostly, I have spent an exhausting amount of time saying things just the right way so they don’t get mad or offended, doing what they wanted, not getting mad if they canceled plans, being super happy and not complaining about my life and other such nonsensical behaviors.  These days I have taken to thinking about what I  want every day and IF I want my friends to join me I invite them.  Interestingly I also get invited without being the one to have to reach out and say “hey how are YOU?  What are YOU doing?  When can WE get together?”  I mean it always seems to be me me me that shoulders all the responsibility for the friendship and only on their terms.  This does not include all my friends but seriously there are just some over my life that have taken way too much of my time trying to be friends with.

Something happened just the other day that has stuck with me like glue.  I was having an electronic conversation with someone I’ve known electronically for about 6 months.  We were chatting and they mentioned going away for a couples weekend.  I composed a rather lengthy reply to them explaining why I wouldn’t be able to do something like that as my relationship with my husband doesn’t include stuff of the romantic nature for the most part.  I started listing and justifying the reasons why it wouldn’t happen and then making sure they knew that I was ok with the”why” and that my life as it is, was, is and will always be my choice.  After writing all of what ended up as very unnecessary responses, it still did not seem like enough of a justification that would make my old friend models happy.

Then I got their reply and it stunned me because I wasn’t prepared for it.  It was kind of like when you threaten to run away as a 5-year-old and your parent says “go ahead” or “good luck”.  I was stumped and really pleased with what they offered to me instead, for a response.  Their (her, just for the record) response did not include buying into my explanation nor feeling sorry for me or wondering why I live in circumstances where I am accepting of what I believed they thought was “less than the happiness they had” (which really isn’t accurate anyway).  The simple reply they offered was one of mere acceptance of me, knowing that I was ok with my reasoning and mentioning that they couldn’t wait to spend time with me soon.  Their focus in their life happens to be on a good and strong marriage and life long commitment, not whether or not you do weekend getaways.  This is a very weird situation for me but why haven’t I been here before now?   I was prepared for more justification and some emotional diatribe and discussion that just didn’t need to happen because they are ok with ME and my life the way it is.  I was prepared to make excuses and get sympathy that I was going to thwart but that also didn’t happen.  Hmmm, I guess friends accept friends for their relationship decisions and circumstances (barring danger) and that’s just that.  I felt weirdly supported and much better about my life choices and didn’t feel like I had to be on the defensive.  Maybe life really starts when you’re 50 or maybe you just stop worrying about everyone else and start living what most likely is your best life.  Maybe both.