Holly Jolly Christmas

So today marked 4 weeks of me going to the gym. Remarkably, and much to my surprise, no one threw a parade or even a party! Not a single balloon dropped down from the ceiling and no one patted me on the back. I did up my 30 min on the treadmill to 35 though. So I suppose that is something right?

Actually I’m really surprised by the whole actually having finished a month of doing it.  And proud of myself. I haven’t seen any real changes in my body, but I notice things. I have more energy, I am not so out of breath when going up stairs and thats what I am aiming for so I am pleased with how things are going. I am also getting used to the satisfaction I feel when I’m walking out of the building, body sore but good. It’s weird though to turn on the a/c in my car in december but I am often so overheated it seems necessary.

But beyond the smug self satisfaction I am feeling regarding my diligence in working out, things are plugging along here..Finals are next week and I am tired already from all the studying. But I slog on, though I am taking a break for tonight because otherwise I might just eat a book and those things are dreadfully expensive.

The party is being planned enough and tomorrow I will begin to clean the house for it. I have begun to decorate, the tree is up, the windows are covered with stickers, the door has a long white hanging and a wreath and sometime soon there will be lovely colored icicles hanging off of the gutter so that we light up the street along with the other houses. I love having children when christmas comes along, Hunter is over the moon with excitement and has spent the past two days practically climbing up the wall. We’ve broken two balls, one a worthless bit, the other..hand blow glass I’ve had for nearly ten years. I am really sad about the latter.

It has taken me like three days to finish this thing.

This studying for finals thing is kicking my ass. I have actual chips on the ground crunched up into the carpet from my attempts today to keep TT the second off of my homework. I only say this because once I am done and hit the publish button I will go vacuum, so you can’t have big judgy thoughts about me but it is a fact that right now there is food ground into my carpet so that I might study in peace.

It’s not totally all lord of the flies around here. We’ve gotten hot food on the table, baths have been issued, laundry done (though it lingers in baskets waiting to be folded and put away in all honesty) but I am just crazy overwhelmed with notes and chapters and this and that. So if I go quiet next week, you’ll know why.

Right now though? I have to start a roast..and get the carpet vacuumed and then go back to texas legislature and how it is awesome!!! AWESOME.

Right. At least there will be mashed potatoes.

Motivation

You  know you’re truly motivated when you go to work out even if you’re hurting already.

Now it’s not a really -big- hurt, just my back was already sore and while I promised myself that I was going to take it easy and I did by not pushing myself past boundaries I had already established myself last time I worked out, I had to laugh as I stretched out and felt twinges. A year ago? if I had a twinge it would have been ‘OH my god! Pass me a bonbon this is serious!’  Now one short month into this program I’m telling myself ‘It will be better if you work out. Might even make it feel better.’ For the record it didn’t. I’m still sore and tender, but it’s not worse and I popped some advil to make it go away anyways.

I also managed to figure out what is going on for dinner, do some laundry, take care of the littlest TT (Monkey edition for your refrences) and laze about playing Farmville nearly obsessively (I am so going to make a freaking villa mine. You hear me? Mine! muwahahahaha). Next week is finals week and so far I’m non plussed. I know I should be all a twitter but frankly I’ll start wigging out somewhere around Wensday. Though I plan on doing some early wigging out regarding Art Appreciation tonight. The normal ‘write down the pictures names 15 times in a row compulsively’ thing that I did last time. It served me well and I’m loathe to let it go.

I then will have to figure out what I’m doing beyond the normal study thing for Pysch and there’s some sort of test in English that I can not even fathom what he is going to do (to say this man has a deep and abiding love for youtube is an understatement) and of course there is the whole petrification of what my Government teacher is going to do. But I think I have her figured out this time.

I will just do each thing as I come onto it. See where it gets me.

Beyond school and pushing myself at the gym, tomorrow I am going to begin needling poor Loren into hiking up the Christmas stuff, not only because I am a sucker for christmas stuff (and I can not believe that I haven’t gotten Christmas songs playing right now) but because even Hunter is crawling up the walls about getting the christmas things out. I think it’s mostly because he can’t wait until he has toys and Santa and all that but still this is one of the reasons I had children, was to have someone who is excited about the christmas season. Maybe this year, when I am on break I will finally make my grandmother’s gingerbread cookies.  It hurt too much last year after loosing her, plus having the baby, but I want my kids to have the memories that I have of those cookies and the sense of tradition that I had with them.

Maybe I’ll finally do the lemon bars and all from my mom as well. It’s actually the one thing that I remember the most from her and I will be off of school for a whole month. I know from experience that I will be gnawing at the walls by the end of the first week. I have too much motivation lately, which I am not complaining about but yeah, I think giving myself cookies to bake and a ‘christmas experience’ to make might make me ok until after the first of the year. Then it’ll be WoW and knitting until I’m in classes once again.

Maybe I’ll try going to the gym 4-5 times a week that month, to make up for the whole cookie making feasting that will go on. I am considering making alfredo and lasagna for the kids party..I have to work that off somehow.

Alright my pretties. I am off to go get Dinner started and work on my art appreciation stuff.

May you all have enough motivation in life.

Post Holiday noise

So I’m home.

I’ve been home since Friday afternoon, but frankly after being in the car for four hours with the boys I was not up for much besides reacquainting our family with ‘The Hut’ as it is now known and getting us unpacked and the house nice and clean. Then yesterday was still working on the house and then the gym since I missed it on friday and finally I was felled by a migraine that left me whimpering and not “walking too hard” because some how..my heel hitting the ground was painful to the top of my head.

I popped enough advil and tylenol to perhaps damage an organ and made myself eat and crawled into bed.

So! now that you’ve had my woes and excuses, beyond that the holidays were fine. The trip down was a little more than I expected but then again I am a fool and forget that -everyone- wants to go somewhere on the day before thanksgiving. We had a lovely time with the family, the food was good and I am sure everyone is glad to be home.

Now I am staring down the barrel of Finals week, getting ready for the Christmas Rush and of course, Gabe’s Birthday. I’m holding that party on the 13th which somehow I’ve deemed to be far enough away from Christmas as to not be ridiculous and yet close enough to his birthday (three days fyi) that we can be all cool. Of course this party is more for us than him, he won’t care/know what is going on. But I would like for all of us to get together and have some fun and relax after finals. I plan on doing Pioneer woman’s lasagna and perhaps her alfredo, I was thinking of doing some shrimp as well, burgers, and hotdogs and of course the chips and all that.

I am at least going to provide a decent spread for those who are brave enough to come out and do a kids party. Which will basically be the kid getting loud noisy toys and us standing around and eating. Good times.

I am surprisingly not all that worried about my finals. I mean I’m going through the regular level of nervousness and determination, but since so far none of my finals are going to be comprehensive it shouldn’t be any harder than the exams I’ve already had. So I’ll be up to my nose in studying for a lot of exams but I am fairly confident if I do my normal over done over blown study routine and I will do alright.

This week of course will be finals review in classes and all that. I have a presentation to do for english but that should be easy and on tuesday I am hoping that Lissa and I can go to see the Pioneer Woman when she comes to town. And of course the cleaning and rearranging for the party and putting up christmas decorations. Should be enough to keep me insane!

I am also going to try to get some pictures of the knitting I’ve been doing and get them updated on revelry and here. So yeah, lets see how much actually gets accomplished and how little I manage to do. I always do this, make huge huge plans and never have any ability to get them taken care of. I have my priorities though and will focus on them.

Right now, I’m going to go change a butt and finish watching Night at the Museum 2  Have a good day!

From the Trenches

I should be studying.

Right now I should be going through my Drama Essay which is already written, and hand writing out the pysch notes concerning abnormal syndromes. I am however, not, I am doing the ridiculous thing that I barely dare admit to…playing in facebook. I am addicted to Farmville thanks to my family and friends and I have made the entire house addicted to it as well.

So yes, instead of being a true over achiever and immediately coming home from a Gov exam and an Art Appreciation presentation (including art project, power point presentation and paper) I am letting some of my brains leak out of my ears and planting blueberries. Oh and writing in here. Because I meant to do it yesterday however, that whole paper-project- presentation-test combo plus working out was a huge kick to the shins and I never managed to pull myself out of the reason for a two party system in texas.

I did go and work out, upper body and treadmill again, marking the third week I’ve drug my happy but there,slapped on some earphones and some harry potter, and promised myself it’ll all be worth it as I make myself sweat and hurt. I am disheartened, as most lazy people who are forcing themselves into activity at the lack of instantaneous results. But I am also exposing myself to the pride element in talking about it publicly and then backing my butt into a corner so that I am forced to do it. I am also getting better about making healthier choices with food, switched entirely to diet soda and am eating more and more salads (though yes I allow cheese on them..come on people I can’t give everything up all at once) and even today I had a diet soda, grilled chicken breast and salad for lunch. So I am not just working out and hoping for the best. I’m taking my vitamins every day, starting to move my tush and taking care in the choices I make about what I put into my body.  It’s time I grow up and start making myself feel good and healthy and not just waiting for magic to happen.

However, I did say that I would talk about knitting this entry and I had planned on having some pictures to show you all. That was not how it worked out. I don’t have pictures, so You’ll just have to wait. I did finish the beach socks ’09, and am now working on the second of a pair in Tosh’s Aegean. I finished another Noro scarf which you will not get to see because I used it as an art project and I forgot to take a picture before giving it to the Art teacher who was thrilled to have it.  I am getting more and more done on the blanket and while it is slow progress now that I’ve gone from the lovely little small blocks to bigger splashes of color it is still being worked on.

So lets see, socks, scarf, blanket, socks…thats about it. I did get my final shipment of yarn from the Three Irish Girls and those are the next project I’m chomping at the bit to cast on. I’m thinking of taking a bit of it down to start  for more socks with my step mother.  But we’ll see how it all goes. I really do have to do more things than scarves, socks, blankets, hats and the like. I think I’m going to try some of the little fingerless gloves that Lissa has been churning out soon.

I do want to do that lace shawl that I picked out a while back. The knitting is spinning out and I’m starting to get good at actually finishing projects which considering the amount of yarn that is sitting in my closet is a great thing.

Well I can no longer avoid the work looming ahead of me. I will try to update before friday  but it might not happen. Either way all the Americans who might stumble past this have a happy thanksgiving.

Some changes around here

I have a really bad track record with blogging.

I am also completely done with apologizing for it. First of all I don’t deign to think that y’all give much of a shit one way or the other, but for the most part I keep apologizing feeling guilty and not writing. So screw it. I suck at being consistent at blogging and y’all are just gonna have to love me regardless. Or not, you know whichever you feel like is appropriate.

 

In the time since I last wrote, nothing major has happened. I started a new semester at school and have been busting ass to maintain a 4.0 gpa so I can go plunder the grants and scholarship world (memo to self, plunder grants and scholarship world)  and been dealing with kiddos and trips across the country and ect ect.  In fact next week I will be hauling my plump self down to Austin with the boys so that we can enjoy the hospitality of my step sister and her family and spend time with my Dad and Pat. 3-4 hours in the car with the dynamic duo should be -awesome-. You all are just jealous.

Speaking of the Dynamic duo I should give an update. The original TT (which I think I should call the original OGTT from now on, what? no?) Is in kindergarten (how the hell did that happen btw? wasn’t he 2 yesterday?) and is now finally excelling. Not that he wasn’t doing great before, he was just doing great at the things -he- wanted to do and not so much the things that you know other people wanted him to do. Like literally telling his teacher ‘No!” when she would give him instruction. That sort of fun thing. You see now why he is the Tiny Tyrant right?  However a few weeks in baby bootcamp in which his room was stripped down to nothing but a bed a table and a lamp and he was forced to spend a majority of his time in the bare room thinking about the fact that the show must go on and he must listen to his teacher has done wonders. He now is getting a good number of good marks and we’re moving forward steadily.

Except for the at home stuff in which the thought that I could potentially dangle him off the roof edge for a few hours routinely occurs. We’re still working on that stuff.

The newest TT (Tiny Terrorist) is now walking. Yes, you read that right, he is walking. He started to do that about a month ago which would make him a walker at 10 months like his brother. I am just as thrilled about that as I was when the OGTT did it. Hence why he is the Tiny Terrorist. Because he circles the room like a tiny tiger shark looking for something to destroy and get into. His preference is electronics, he’s already sent my laptop into the repair for a month because he disconnected the power plug from the motherboard (as well as some USB ports). He’s a genius really at destroying things. I am forseeing a great career in demolitions. Perhaps something involving C-4.  Only if there’s an electronic involved. He also is intent on the kitties who are just as intent on getting away from him and frankly are fairly close to performing a guerrilla attack on him. As well as all that fun stuff? he’s into his newest phase of ‘no one gets to touch me but those who live in my house’ which makes babysitting an..interesting. And something that does not happen often.

I have also taken to working out and even drinking diet soda and trying to avoid things with cheese and that have had an intimate encounter with a deep fryer. This is harder than you would expect and doing it right before the holiday season seems to be just asking for failure but I’ve promised myself that if I fall from the path of righteousness that I will not think of it, so long as I go to work out 3-4 times a week and continue to try to make better choices. I am really not doing this solely to loose weight though I won’t argue with it..I’m doing it because I am tired of being tired, I am tired of hiking all over campus and feeling fat and out of shape. I’m also trying out the theory that people who work out are smarter and keep their smarts longer. I’m thinking about Grad school people and I need all the help I can get to get into it and to get the money and funding to do it.

The long suffering and often not mention Husband is doing alright, he had a gallbladder surgery this past september which had some mild complications but healed well and he is starting to do the work out thing with me as well.

So that is where we are now. I am studiously avoiding two pages that I should be writing now and a government test next week that I should be studying for and trying to make this work again since I got a snark from Lissa about it last night. Here we go.  I am going to make this like my workouts. If I do it 3-4 times a week all good, any more is gravy.

Next time? I show pictures of -knitting-. You are forewarned