8/27/13

I ended up working last week and have this week off instead. Geez Luis. Glad I don't actually plan on going anywhere in August. I finally got some writing done on Friday. Hallelujah! My running is going ok. Lots of different issues creeping up. My feet and knees are great, though Trouble with my lower back and inside thigh/hip joint area last week and yesterday, my asthma was giving me some trouble. The issues only appear when I increase my time/distance. I typically just run through the pain but I did take some time off last week. I AM getting older and at some point I'm probably going to just have to accept that and the pain that comes with it.

Soooooooo

So much for my vacation. My boss called Sunday in a bind and asked if I could work Monday thru Thursday. Of course, I said. I've had a backache for three days and I blame my week off last week for it. I over did it working out and spent a lot of downtime relaxing in my bedroom catching up on television.

Day 3

This is definitely harder than it looks. I know, oh, poor me, I get time off from work...mind you, this is time off from one full-time job only, as I'm not taking time off from my other job, OR time off from watching Bella 45 hours per week. I don't really know what I'd do with myself with even 24 hours of me time, let alone a whole week of it. I'm not a stay-cation kind of person. If I'm on vacation, I want a VACATION. Hotels, meals out, sightseeing. The whole 9. It rained all day yesterday so any outside activity wasn't happening for Bella and me. Plus, she had a very cranky day, after a cranky night...runny nose, congestion, CRANKINESS...not sure if it's her big teeth coming in or just a cold but HOLY!! Finally after resting and watching movies all day, she turned back into her sweet self around dinner time. I'm going to try and get some reading done today. I've totally been sucked into catching up on my favorite tv shows. Errands to run today with Zach, for Zach. I will be finished just in time to pick up Bella for our 7 hours of fun time. Aside from 3 hours, tomorrow is mine. Same goes for Friday as well.

Day 1

I'd say this morning was a good start to my 3 weeks of slower pace life, that is, 3 weeks before life gets all crazy busy again. I like the busy because it keeps my mind occupied but I recognize that I need to do some healthy things for me and I need to learn to be able to enjoy the slow, so I can continue at high speed without burning out. I thought that might mean sleeping in this morning. My body had other ideas. I've been up since 6:30. I slept in on Saturday so maybe that was all I needed. I took a 1/2 hour run, followed by a nice shower. I will workout my abs and arms later. I've decided I'm going to treat these three weeks almost like a rehab, except I can drink and eat what I want! Three weeks to focus on eating, exercising, experimenting with different teas, coffees and wine, reading, writing and meditating. Good plan!

Finally...I get some time off. I do not have to be anywhere till 3pm on Monday. I do not even have to talk to one person today until around 4, when I pick up Bella for the weekend. I slept until 8:30 this morning. I finished two books last week. I finally saw The Conjuring last night. I did manage to squeeze my workouts in last week, but I'm definitely looking forward to being able to spend a few weeks getting my healthy ways back on track. Pre-football season has started, which means 16 hour days for my husband and means more often than not, I'm dining alone, which also means I'm not dining. I do not eat when I'm alone. I will graze. A few slices of cheese. A handful of crackers. Occasionally a bowl of cereal. I will cook Monday night because Kayla, Bella and Zach will be here for dinner, but I'm foreseeing a lot of lean cuisines in my future for the next few weeks. So big plans for my day today...whatever the Hell I want to do!!! I think I'm going to organize my closet because school will be starting after Labor day, and it'll be back to over full-time work for me. I also think I will sit in the sun for a bit and read. Maybe I will clean out the fridge and scrub it down. Gosh, I live a thrilling life!

8/4/13

Spending the day with a wild child named Annabella. Not sure what we're going to do today. Quite possibly we will just hang out here, in the back yard, swimming in the pool. The weather is quite nice for today. High 70/low 80 as a temp with little humidity, so it'd be nice to have an adventure. Then again, managing Bella alone is always an adventure. Almost done reading In Cold Blood. It was a fast read for me. I have enjoyed the writing. Gearing up for our last week of summer programming at work and finally, finally, I should have a few weeks off to do absolutely nothing but work out, read, tan...of course, I will still have work at my other job and I will have Bella 4 days a week per usual, but a break from our summer programming is huge. School starts around here after Labor Day and then it's the countdown to our first holiday break! :)

8/3/13

Happy (?) August. July is a frenzy in this beach town in the summer. Come August, most of us who live here year round have the same grimace and attitude. Things do slow down in August, as it appears most folks take their vacas in July, but come September, the beaches are empty, except for us locals and we LOVE it!!! And I do get lots of beach time September till December. I'm having a relaxing day today. It's overcast and I don't have Bella until around 4 so I'm just hanging out, watching some old Shark Week episodes, contemplating getting my workout in and getting my nails done. Wonderfully boring.

7/20/13

Eight days till my birthday. I have most of next week off. I slept for about 12 hours last night. I think I am more exhausted as a result of my summer schedule as opposed to the regular school year. I'm enjoying our heat wave. In all of my years living in Rhode Island, I have never felt the ocean as warm as it was on Wednesday. If I wanted bath water, I guess I'd move down south. Even our pool is at 95 degrees. That's more than the temp of a therapeutic pool. I'm trying to get through From a Buick 8 by Stephen King. Not his best. My least favorite book of his, I suspect. Or maybe I'm just not as into it after reading 11/23/63 and Under the Dome...both books I finished in about 2 days. Bag of Bones was my favorite, followed closely by Tommyknockers. It is chilling to realize he started writing the book (Buick) right before he was almost killed in a car/pedestrian accident...he being the pedestrian. A classic life imitating art imitating life conundrum. I just finished JK Rowling's A Casual Vacancy. It took about 100 pages for me to get into it simply because there were so many characters, and it took at least that many pages to get to know them and want to stick with them till the end of the story. I also feel like she would throw in some random vulgarity to remind readers that this was not your Harry Potter and for someone who professed to want this book to NOT be compared to Harry Potter, I think she was better off letting readers get lost in the story and not constantly remind them of what she didn't want us to do. She could have possibly benefited from a better editor. All in all, it makes you wonder why some authors can go on and create wonderful stories and characters time and time again (Stephen King) to great reviews and some who seem to struggle after their "swan song"...then again, Stephen King didn't create Harry Potter.

7/8/13

Well last week was a blur. I'm almost ready for the more tranquil days of early fall. Empty beaches, water warmed by the heat of the summer and glorious sunsets. I enjoyed six days off from work. I don't think I've driven anywhere since last Tuesday! I'm not really a stay cation kind of person. I do love a long weekend at home but anything longer than that and I begin feeling a bit bored and resentful and a whole list of other thoughts and feelings that being busy at work keeps at bay. My house is freezing. I have to go outside to warm up. I think I'm colder in the summer than winter with all the ACs running everywhere I go. I love the heat. The hotter the better. I love hot and humid weather. It feels like you're always covered with a nice warm blanket. We had quite a few friends and family over for the 4th. It was a lot of fun but I was glad to have the quiet back when everyone left. We had a cookout, fire, fireworks, lots and lots of alcohol, swimming in the pool and some good laughs. Next Monday is Hayley's birthday but it is also the middle of July!!! Crazy to realize that.

6/26/13

This summer has just started and I am so busy it already feels like it is flying by! Life is excellent though. Work is pretty great these days. Even on my busiest days, I'm usually smiling. That is huge for me. I'm reading like a fiend. Bella is starting to be more fun than she is work. We had so much fun in the pool together yesterday. She was laying on a float and I was on another and we were throwing a sponge around and splashing each other with it. We bought a new car. A Nissan Maxima. Totally loving it more and more. The first two days were spent getting used to everything. It's finally feeling familiar. My treadmill is amazing!!! Totally had a great workout this morning and for 12 minutes straight was able to keep up at my old (fast) pace before I had to slow down for the remainder of the workout. Next week, I'm going to increase my distance and take it slow. Once I acclimate to the new distance, I will work on speed again. I'm also running at an incline of 5. On a regular road, there will of course be hills and valleys, as well as good flat stretches, but the temp has to cool down before I take it outdoors. Next week is the FOURTH!!! Excited to spend a long hot day bickering with my perfect husband! ;)

6/22/13

So I'm running again. Two weeks in. Feeling pretty good. I'm definitely one of those people whose body responds quickly to the activity. That's a good thing. I tone up quick. I'm also doing ab work, using hand weights and doing squats, as well as push ups and jumping jacks. Right now I'm doing this to help maintain a healthy lifestyle, but I may look into a few 5Ks this summer/fall and *maybe* I will entertain the thought of a 1/2 marathon. I mean I used to run at least 3 5Ks a year and do two triathlons a year when I lived in Maine, so this isn't foreign for my body. I just need to get back in the saddle again. My treadmill is awesome. Still prefer the outdoors. I will probably incorporate some outdoor runs in another week or two. I'm also trying to maintain 1200 calories per day. I never consume 1200 and at the very least, I should be because of the running. I also need to get my water intake back up. I was doing so well and then work got busy and I didn't want to run to the bathroom every 20 minutes. Ah well. It'll work itself out with a little effort.

June 15, 2013

Hello there!!
I haven't blogged since Zach's birthday! Rest assured we've just been busy with work and with Bella and that i haven't quit blogging. We have the pool already and I enjoyed a couple of hours in it this morning. The first pool day of the year for me! This is just one of those months where I have too much to say so I end up saying nothing. Oh well. Hubby and I enjoyed a nice dinner out at one of our favorite restaurants last night. I got a new treadmill and have been racking up the miles this week. Loving it! We took a not relaxing mini trip to Maine last weekend. This is our first Saturday in a few weeks in which we've been alone and so we are simply enjoying being together. Bella will be here for the night very soon, so back to the grind for us, even if it is a good grind. I have a ton of pics but I'm just not in the mood to do a phone dump sooooo till next time...

5/12/13

Happy Birthday to Zach!!! We're going out to eat tomorrow night to celebrate. 19 years old! I swear, it seems like I just had him. Gosh I miss those "easy" days sometimes. I didn't have to work. Just stayed home and took care of my babies. This weekend was super busy. Quick trip to Maine. Took my niece Lexi out for lunch. Bella had a ball playing with my nieces. She was pretty funny on the drive back to Rhode Island. I will post pics sometime when work slows down. Looks like that won't be till summer. I was able to see my mom and grandmother for Mother's Day, so that was nice and special that Bella got to spend some time with them both.

5/7/13

I'm working too much to post regularly these days. Summer is coming. Summer is coming. Summer is coming. 

4/23/13

Bella went to the doctor's today and she has double ear infections...poor baby girl. She started her antibiotics today. A little different than the norm, as she's allergic to penicillin and amoxicillin. Around dinnertime, she started to finally play! She hasn't really played much at all this past week. Yesterday was THE worst Monday that I've had in a long time and I'm so grateful for good friends at work that helped me out. Today was a pretty nice day, and rightly deserved I think. Looking forward to another chill day tomorrow and Thursday/Friday will be their usual super busy selves BUT hey, it also means it's the weekend! Tomorrow is supposed to be gorgeous as is Saturday and Sunday! I'm spending the weekend laying out and reading. I have three library books to finish. I'm almost done Ape House by Sara Gruen of Water for Elephants fame, and I have Flight Behavior by one of my personal favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver and I can't think of the other book I got, and I'm too lazy to get up to go look on the counter. I'm also surprisingly loving The Host by Stephanie Meyer. Who knew. I got it on sale for my Kindle and I forgot to bring Ape House the other night, so I decided to start it and it's great. Well the writing could be better but the plot is excellent and I'm sucked into the story at this point so I'm happy with it. Sometimes you just want a story...not a life changer...in a novel. Tonight we're having BLTs for dinner. I'm excited. For some reason I'm craving them tonight. After dinner, we're going to bed early to finish Django. We both fell asleep watching it last night, not because it wasn't one of the best movies I've ever seen, but because we were exhausted! It is a fabulous movie. I'm a huge Quentin T. fan anyway, but wow, I really wasn't expecting to love this movie this much. This was a great year for movies for me...Django, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Rock of Ages, Here Comes the Boom...also a great year of shows...The Walking Dead, Supernatural, Dr. Who, Game of Thrones, American Horror Story, Downton Abbey, Parks and Rec, catching up on Weeds, Arrested Development, Ugly Betty and Parental Guidance on Netflix. Life is good!

Happy 3rd Birthday Bella!!!

We are having her party tomorrow night at her house, and I hope the poor girl is feeling better soon! She has some kind of nasty virus (cold or flu) although I think she got her flu shot so it is probably a cold. Yucky nose, fever, achy. I'm not feeling terribly great since I sent her home, so that's exciting news to start off the new week! I'm so glad for a regular work week! Vacation is over thank the freaking lord! I've never worked so much during a vacation week! I'm feeling cranky. I don't mean to be. It was just a crazy week and the weekend went by too fast

4/18/13

So it's been a very crazy week. Boston got bombed. I had friends there and it was heart wrenching to watch the events unfold and having to wait to hear from them. Boston is a huge part of our life. We celebrate our 4th of July every year in this great city. I briefly thought of canceling our celebration this year, but I think this is the year we will make our celebration the best ever! I refuse to let terror win. In better news, Bella is THREE on Sunday!!! THREE! Totally crazy how quickly three years have raced by. Her birthday party will be Monday night. One more day to get through and finally it'll be the weekend! I am so ready for it!

4/14/13

I'm having a super crappy day. Bella was awake till 2 am last night and when she did sleep, it wasn't well. Her little nose was stuffy and she was restless. I'm also irritated because I had hoped for some time off this week and found out Friday that I will only have Tuesday off now. I'm trying to stay in a positive mood about everything and try to keep things in perspective but seriously, I feel like crying. My friend Sara's son and his girlfriend had their baby yesterday morning and the baby died minutes after. It's just been a yucky day and it isn't even MONDAY yet! And of course, my car is on empty, so I get to leave for work even earlier than I have to leave, which was already earlier than my regularly scheduled work week and I get to drive the flipping wheelchair van at work tomorrow and I KNOW that needs gas first thing. See what I mean about perspective??? It's just an inconvenience for me, nobody has died, I really shouldn't be so upset. Hormonal I think. Last week it was my anxiety. So I guess I'm just going to watch some Nick at Nite, read a little and pray a lot and hopefully get to sleep early. Here's to a good week!

4/13/13

This has been an incredibly busy busy 2013 for me. Work has been wonderful but I'm definitely ready for a vacation. The weekends fly right by but the work weeks are going by even faster! So Miss Annabella's birthday is coming up next Sunday! I already ordered her American Girl doll. I think we're doing her family party either on the 22nd or the 29th, at her house at 7pm, so we can all be there. It depends on if her doll arrives on time or not. I should have ordered it last week, but I'm a procrastinator. I'm waiting for my new glasses and new contacts to come in. Love when I get new ones. My doctor loves when I get new ones too! :) My blood pressure was taken last week and it's 124/80, so that has me feeling pretty good. I figured it'd be sky high because of all of the changes that have taken place recently, but my body's handling it well it seems. We all know that even positive changes can be stressful. I'd like it a little lower but what can you do? I have always had myself on a low/no sodium diet since around age 19. I don't eat a ton of red meat or processed foods and when I do, it's a burger out or in some kind of pasta dish because I can not stand the taste of turkey burger anymore... or a steak about once a year. I exercise regularly, at least 30-60 minutes per day. I sleep fairly well...at least 8 hours a night. If anything can be said about my diet, it's that I usually consume less than the recommended daily allowance. I usually top out around 900-1000 per day and I should be at 1200-1500 per day. My point is, I appear to be doing all of the recommended things to keep blood pressure low, and it's still 124/80. It isn't high enough to treat with medication, but any reading over 120 and under 130 is considered a pre-high blood pressure reading. BUT then I find out that that is the number only in America. In Europe, anything under 130 is perfect and considered low. America leads the world in heart disease and that is why we're stricter with our numbers. What exactly is America doing wrong? I'd check on the pesticides and additives in your foods and lack of exercise. America also leads the world in obesity and in diabetes. Sad way to live ones life don't you think? For me, I can't imagine not having been able to play with my children (tag, baseball, skiing, swimming, hiking) and I certainly would hate not being able to play with Bella. Being a sideline parent or grandparent is not for me and the thought of that is all the motivation I need.

One Week

It's been one week since the girls have moved into their new place. I've had one week of a clean house. I've had a week of quiet zen-like moments. I've had a week of being able to pick things up and have them stay that way and a week of getting used to being able to put my iPhone or iPad down without a sweet two year old picking it up and adding/deleting apps. I'm really liking visiting her and seeing her so excited when I knock on her door. She comes racing around the corner yelling, "is it Nana, is it Nana? It IS Nana!!!" We will pick her up at 5 today and keep her until tomorrow afternoon. I will be able to get my hugs and kisses in and it'll give Kayla a little break. Mitch and I do have to remember that she is doing this alone (with lots of help from her family of course) but that is certainly different than having the other parent helping out. Even when I was doing it "alone" with my kids, I received child support and got a break on the weekends, with the kids going with their dad or with my parents. I do want to mention that as they got older and turned into really really cool kids, they spent most weekends with me by their choice, and we spent those weekends swimming, hiking, skiing, traveling, and making lots of fun memories. I was speaking more of when they were Bella's age and I remember loving those little breaks I'd get when I didn't have to get up every two seconds to get someone a drink or put a movie in or clean a mess or wrangle the kids and our very bad puppy. Having survived it all, I'm able to understand just how short of a time it is in the big scheme of things and yeah, Bella can be a handful, but she's our handful and she will be going off to college before we all know it!