Just like that, another weekend gone!
It’s amazing how every Sunday night Steve and I find ourselves saying that. I don’t know if that’s indicative of whether we are doing something good or just wasting away.
We actually were really, really productive though so I definitely don’t feel like we wasted it. After yesterday’s cleaning and shopping marathon, I woke up with no REAL sense of purpose today. So I spent the first two hours watching trash TV (Rock of Love Bus is so boring now that the uber-skanks are gone!) then I decided that I might as well accomplish something. I hung a bunch of pictures, finished the loads of laundry (note: they still have to be folded, along with the past few weekends of laundry. Does anybody else hate folding as much as I do?) and picked up a few other things.
Then, about four o’clock, I was plagued with another sinus headache. I knew it was because it we ran the heat last night and it was so dry in here when I woke up. So I took one 500mg tablet of Tylenol, which the doctor has told me I can do, and I think that was a mistake. Not long after that, I started feeling nauseous and really dizzy and the pain in my head was excruciating. So I laid down for a bit and that didn’t seem to help. Then I took a hot shower and laid down some more with an ice pack to my head. By the time I got back up at 7, I felt much better but I was still out of it. Fighting a headache like that has always taken a lot out of me. The pain can go away but it takes me hours to feel back to normal.
I hate having this problem because I always feel like “I have a headache” seems like such a lame excuse. But it’s not just a headache – it’s pain in my face, in my temples, underneath my skull that just feels like whole head is going to explode. It’s nausea, it’s dizziness, it’s weakness. Light and noise makes it worse. I can feel when there are pressure and temperature changes in the air. It’s something I’ve lived with all of my life and I’ve learned to sort of live with and control. Even when I’m in the throes of it, I feel self-conscious that people think I’m making a big deal out of nothing or that I’m faking, but it’s merely that I’ve lived with it for so long that I’ve learned to mask it, to push it aside until I’m absolutely at my breaking point and only then do I realize I need to just go home, take a hot shower, pop some Tylenol and sleep in a cool, dark room with an ice pack to my head.
It’s genetic and it’s something that can’t be fixed. I just have to learn to live with it. They’ve taken MRIs and injected my veins with dye while doing so to make sure everything is ok and the all came back normal and fine. I’ve taken Imitrex but haven’t gotten it replenished in years, partly because it’s expensive and I didn’t like the way it makes me feel.
Regardless, after that ordeal, I couldn’t force myself to do much more. Steve made dinner and we watched Lakeview Terrace which was pretty much just eh! Kind of what we expected it to be. (I Love You, Man, which we saw on Friday, was far more enjoyable, albeit a bit awkward to watch because Paul Rudd is so awkwardly adorable in it. Definitely go see that movie though because it was good – not just funny but a great story too.) Then we ate some ice cream, watched the season finale of East Bound and Down and did the last few loads of laundry.
Now I’m in bed watching Chelsea Lately and preparing for another week at work. My house is clean and organized and ready for our visitors on Friday, and I’m ready for the time off.
I can’t believe it’s almost April!
I just loaded my site to login to WordPress and I saw the picture of that pizza that I uploaded last night. My mouth started watering as I remembered it’s gooey deliciousness. I haven’t eaten anything all day. And I just sat down. Literally. I have been running and running since 9am.
The house, as I’ve been saying for weeks, is a wreck. And since we have guests coming in next weekend, I needed to do a top to bottom cleaning. It is not pretty much spotless. I still have to fold the laundry and put away some shoes and hang some pictures but it is clean and it smells nice. There is a great satisfaction in sitting down and looking around and knowing the house is clean.
Then, I needed to get some things from the store so I head out around six. Three hours and some bit of money later, I finally got home and unloaded all the stuff. Then I spent another two putting everything out. My house now looks a little more like home because I finally picked up a few things we’ve needed since we moved in.
I probably could have spent the day outside and enjoyed the weather but I didn’t. But seeing the house nice and clean and knowing things are organized and ready for next weekend makes me feel like I didn’t really waste a day. I’m exhausted and hungry and my feet and back hurt but I’ll sleep well tonight. And I’ll have all day tomorrow to relax and enjoy the rest of my weekend.
For now, I’m going to make some dinner, take a shower then crawl into bed and read or watch TV for a bit. This is another lazy post but it’s the only time I’ve had to really even breathe today.
Hope you had a good Saturday and here’s to a restful Sunday!
Friday Night, originally uploaded by kallure.
As soon as I got home from work tonight we headed out to our semi-local pizza joint (I say semi because its 20 minutes away). This is their large. Notice the size compared to Jeff’s hand. We split that among three people. Now we’re on our way to see I Love You, Man. So I’m blogging from my phone because I don’t think I’ll be home in time today. I just wanted to share the size of that pizza. AND its delicious!
I’ve heard the key to forming effective habits is to spend fifteen to twenty minutes every day concentrating on the task for at least twenty-one days.
While I see the validity in that point, the problem lies in the word “concentration”. At least for me.
I find that when I actually concentrate on something, I overthink it. I analyze, I schedule, I plot and then it turns into a chore. And I don’t want to do it. So I abandon it and it never effectively becomes a part of my daily routine.
So to use the words popular but perhaps overused catchphrase coined by that sneaker company years ago:
“Just Do It!”
I know, it sounds horribly cliched and lame. But it’s what’s worked for me. And it basically entails just deciding one day to do what you want to do different and then waking up the next day and deciding to do it again.
If you don’t want to do it, then don’t agonize or feel bad because you’ve “failed”. Because you haven’t actually failed since you never set out to do something for twenty-one or thirty or eighteen days. You merely did something different from the norm for that one day and you just might do it again, be it the next day or the next week.
This technique has proved to be most effective for me in three aspects of my life in the past six months or so.
- Quitting Smoking. I had quite smoking much the same way in March of 2007 and stayed smoke free until February of 2008 when I made the mistake of picking up a cigarette one night after a few drinks and then it was all downhill from there. But when I got sick this past December and knew that the smoking could have possibly been a factor in what happened, I just decided, then and there, that it had to stop. And I didn’t have another one that day. And I woke up the next day and decided again that it had to stop. And the next day. And I haven’t had one since. There have been a few days here and there where I have kind of really craved one but it was then that I forced myself to stop, move past the craving, realize that I didn’t need it and after awhile, it just got easy to not do it, to not smoke and to not even crave it.
- Getting Up Earlier. I’ve been working on this for years. I am not a morning person, have never been. I would purposely schedule late classes in school so I could sleep in. But that started not looking good and I started feeling like such a sloth and slacker, both at work and at home. And for years, I would say, “I’m going to get to work before 9am for a whole month” or “I’m going to jump out of bed early tomorrow and get out of the house on time!” But a few weeks ago I just thought, “I HAVE to get in early because I’m really far behind” and I asked Steve if I could commute in with him because I knew if he was waiting on me, I wouldn’t drag my feet. And I did this for a few days and then it just started happening without us needing to commute. And now, I am at work on time. I used to leave my house at nine and be like “No big deal” but now, if I’m not out the door by 8:10, I feel late. Like really, really late. And that kind of feels awesome because I am so much more productive and I’m even waking up earlier on the weekends. Yay for early birds!
- Blogging Every Day. Like I said earlier, I didn’t set out to do it this month. I just wrote a post on March 1st, then wrote another on March 2nd and so on and so forth. It’s been nineteen days, the longest I’ve ever blogged consecutively, probably in the entire eight years of this site. And I think I’m not at the point where it’s such a habit that I really enjoy doing it every day and miss it if I don’t try. I don’t know if I’m going to stick with every day but I will at least feel the need to just post regularly again because I realize how much I missed it. It does help work through things and is nice to have a regular history of things to look back on and remember the month of March 2009 (because it was so very exciting!).
So that’s my tip for making some life changes: Just Do It! Don’t obsess over it or force yourself. If you can’t find any interest in doing it day in and day out then it’s probably not time to make the change. And definitely don’t try to force so many changes in such a short period of time. The three above happened with a few weeks, if not months, in between. If I had tried to do all three at once, I wouldn’t have followed through.
(Though, when I got sick, I did manage to quit drinking, smoking and birth control all at once. Successfully! If you could call uber-PMSing with no vices to substitute a success!)
Of course, I need to apply that same principle to the whole eating healthy, losing weight, and exercising philosophy. Baby steps! Baby steps!
Since I still can’t drink or smoke, I have to find some way to channel my stress. Right now it’s food. I’d love to convert it into exercise.
And with that, it’s off to bed, since 6am comes early. I’m gonna lay there with Steve and the dog, enjoying the cool spring breeze and watching Obama on Jay.
Tomorrow is Friday and the first day of Spring – the perfect combinfation in my choice.
Happy day!
I made pigs in a blanket for dinner. That was the most interesting thing that happened today.
I’m still readjusting a bit to the news from yesterday. Again, it’s nothing major or life changing or awful, it’s just some readjustments that need to be made to perspectives and routines.
Thanks to an awesome bubble bath last night I actually got a decent sleep and had an okay day at work. I’ll super busy. I’ve got major cleaning to do in the house as we have visitors coming in next weekend and I can’t have this place look like a shithole. Plus, our yard is starting to look like a jungle.
Now we are just hanging out, eating munchies and watching Sex Drive, which is absolutely hilarious. We watched Role Models last night and I think this one is actually a bit funnier.
At least we are over the hump and tomorrow is Thursday. I’m also over halfway done with this month which means I’ve probably posted more often these past few weeks than I have in years.
Not giving up yet!
