so tell me, shopping does count as exercise right?

if it doesn't, it should!!

I spent a good chunk of today shopping. Not just holiday shopping though, some of it was of the household goods and grocery variety. I got a lot done and right now, my feet are killing me so that must have burned some calories!!

All though November, around here anyway, the produce in the stores was overpriced and underwhelming. Things in the produce section were looking up this morning though, I guess it could be because of the holidays. Whatever the reason, it was good to see fruit and veg that you actually want to eat, on sale. I also stocked us up on yogurt, seeds, healthy snack stuff... no chips in the bunch!! I've gotten really bad over the past few months with the chips. They are a huge weakness for me and I've allowed myself to indulge just a few times too many.

This weekend will be quiet for us. I have some work I need to do (I do freelance transcription in my "spare" time) tomorrow. I really want to get it done tomorrow and have Sunday off with my hunny (he's working tomorrow too) because my deadline is Monday. Other than that, we should have a nice relaxing weekend. I'm definitely not going anywhere near the stores again until next week if I can avoid it!!

Today started out feeling a bit like a work day. A long time ago, before I had scheduled my holidays, I had signed up for a workshop for today. I'm working on a professional development certificate through work and I'm only 4 sessions away from completion so I didn't want to miss it. The session itself was good, I sat with some women I knew so I got to have a visit with them as well.

I had a couple of errands to do on campus so I was wandering around a fair bit before and after the session. Fortunately, the sun was shining and, while it was breezy, the breeze wasn't cold at all. It felt really good to be outside walking. I haven't done a whole lot of that lately. When I'm out walking, I can really feel how out of shape I am though. I can't walk quickly at all and too many flights of stairs can really knock me a bit (like more than 2 flights - the 3rd one is a struggle). Still though, a long walk in the fresh air felt good. I need to get outside (if it ever stops raining - we've had a lot of rain here just recently) and walk around the neighbourhood while I'm off from work.

As far as the cold thing goes, I'm feeling much better. I took it very easy for most of Tuesday and yesterday, the only thing I really accomplished was putting up the christmas tree and doing a small amount of housework. I'm just happy that whatever it was, has almost gone and it's just a little cough right now. There's a tonne of weird bugs floating around right now, I sure don't need to catch one of those!

my throat, she's sore.

I'm coughing and feel achey.

I think I need to go see my bed again...fun times huh?

Today was an expensive day. It doesn't pay to leave the house, let me tell you!

I ordered new glasses this afternoon. The ones I have now, which I love, are about 4 years old and the prescription has changed slightly. I really only notice the difference when I'm watching tv or driving at night (the illuminated signs are a little fuzzy for me now). While I was spending $400 on glasses, my hunny was spending a similar amount on prescriptions. Thank goodness we will get most of that back from the insurance company huh?! Unfortunately, we won't be able to claim for the $600 we're going to have to spend on tires this week but something is better than nothing, right?

My first weekend of vacation was quiet. As promised, I did get out and get groceries on Saturday. Yesterday, I had a bit of a lazy day, doing laundry, watching tv. I had intended to get my christmas tree up but that never happened. Tonight, I feel like I may be getting a touch of a cold. I'm a little stuffed up but hopefully, it's one of those things that will be knocked out by a good night's sleep. It is sort of funny how I've started to feel a little crummy just as I'm actually getting decent amounts of sleep and am eating better. Maybe my body is in a little bit shock!

I'm officially on holidays!!

As of about 4 p.m. today, I am on vacation until Monday, January 8.

The nicest part of this is that I have no plans whatsoever. Well, not entirely no plans, I need to get my baking done and have some holiday type gifts to buy and wrap...and then there are all of those cards that I need to get out but other than that, I'm home for four weeks.

My hunny is working so I'll be keeping the home fires burning. I joke that I can be a housewife in the 50's for a month but I doubt very much that I'll be taking any amphetamines or wearing a pointy bra anytime soon.

One of the things I really want to do while I'm off from work is to get into a more healthy routine. We've recently gone back to our bad habit of either eating out too often or eating "convenience" foods at home. Tomorrow, I'm going to go buy actual groceries. We'll be able to cook good meals, I'll have stuff to use for baking. It'll be good for us, more healthy, economical, smart. I'm really looking forward to getting some rest and just generally having time to look after myself properly for the first time in a good long time.

I have today off work. That's two Fridays in a row, neat huh? Two long-weekends. I'm lucky!

It feels weird to me though, that I'm not working head down, full steam ahead on multiple projects with looming deadlines. All year, I've had to juggle things at a frantic pace. It's hard work keeping all of those balls in the air. Unfortunately, all of that juggling doesn't burn any calories!

So today, my day off, I'm working on some hand-made gifts for my colleagues. Today's portion involves some baking activities. Next week is my last week in the office before my extended holiday break so I don't have a lot of time to get them together. Because I have all of that time off booked, I've not been too worried about getting stuff together for the holidays but it's creeping up on me now so I should get it started at least.

I'm having a wonderful day.

The sun is filling my living room, making it bright and warm. My mum and dad were over earlier for coffee, I have actually started prep for my holiday baking and my boxes of holiday ornaments are piled up in the kitchen.

Now, things haven't happened in the order I'd planned them so far but it all feels good just the same. I had great intentions of cleaning all morning. I started the cleaning (part of the basement looks AMAZING right now) when my mum called and said that they'd be over. I stopped cleaning, dragged the boxes upstairs and had a shower.

After they left, instead of starting up the cleaning again, I got into the prep part of my holiday baking. Right now, I'm waiting for my hunny because he's playing hookie from work this afternoon. We're planning a late lunch out somewhere nice. Later this afternoon, I'm going to clean the living room and do my window "light displays." We may get the front yard done too but if we don't, I'm not worried. It's still early and we'll get it done when we get it done.

Overall, I'm feeling more relaxed and healthy and happy than I have in weeks. Now that all of my major projects at work are finished up, I feel that a huge weight has been lifted from me. Life is good!

we recently switched brands of yogurt at home. for a couple of years now, I've been a Source by Yoplait fan. About 6 weeks ago, I saw that Silhouette by Danone was on special for a fantastic price so we tried it. not only do I like the flavours better than the Source flavours, the price is just terrific and it's a little lighter on the calories too.

don't you just love it when you find something like that?

I'm happy to report that I'm feeling much better today than I have since I got back from Toronto. whatever mini-version of food poisoning I got has finally gone. my system was all messed up for a few days. In a way, this is never a bad thing because it makes me eat less than normal but still, I'm happy to be feeling better. now, if I can just get rested back up and lose this achey feeling I've had in my joints for the past week or so, I'll be really thrilled.

because I was out of town for work on the weekend, I have tomorrow off. I'm planning to do my housework and get all the yucky stuff out of the way before the official weekend begins.

after today, I only have two weeks left in the office before my extend-o-holiday begins. I'll be out of the office for four weeks and hope/plan to clean up my act while I'm away. I know that it'll be the holidays but still, even I can figure out a way to work in more exercise during the break! there will be no excuses!!

I seem to be posting about once a week. This isn't bad, considering how infrequent my posts have become over the past few months.

The last week has been busy for me. At times, it's been easy to be "good" about food choices, at others, I've not cared too much. That's a by-product of the busy. The busy this week involved me having to travel out of town to help out at an event. While away, I think/know I got a touch of food poisoning and my stomach has been wonky ever since. Tonight, it's particularly bad but I'm hoping it'll pass soon.

I had a huge surprise at the end of last week. I think it was Thursday or Friday when I decided to step on the scale. Mostly, I check it to make sure that I haven't gained 20 pounds over night. Status quo is my friend right now so you can imagine my shock when the scale said I was down 6 pounds. I'm not sure that it's a legitimate loss, that it wasn't just from stress and fluctuations in how much water I'm carrying around. Either way, it made me feel good and kept me pretty much focused on good eating for a few days.

Speaking of which, here are some kind of neat NSV's that I've experienced this week:

1. passing up on a piece of homemade cheesecake in the office last week. It was brought in for a lovely friend's birthday but I just couldn't eat it, not before lunch anyway.

2. choosing a veggie omelet and toast when we went out for lunch, out of town, over the weekend. I really was jonesing for some pizza or a huge plate of pasta but I had the veggie heavy eggs instead.

3. I just said "no" to jelly beans, gummy things and homemade chocolate chip cookies at work too. I wish I could find it as easy to say "no" at home as I do at work.

This week, I'll be super duper happy if I have managed to maintain that crazy 6 pound loss. On the other hand, I'll not be suicidal if I gain it back this week. I don't really believe it happened anyway.

Over the summer, my hunny was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. Upon his diagnosis, we started to study blood sugar levels and nutrition and all of the other body chemistry that comes with it. I thought that I knew a lot about nutrition before and that I didn't have a lot to learn. Boy was I wrong. Oh, fyi, just because one knows a lot about nutrition doesn't always mean that one does what one should with that information!

We've both learned a lot about listening to our bodies more. Of course, it's one thing to listen to it, it's another to do what it tells you... the reason I mention this is that last week, I was hungry, like really hungry, most of last week. I'm now thinking it was because I wasn't entirely over whatever the bug was that I had the week before. Unfortunately, many of the times when I gave into the hunger, the lovely little clementine oranges I have with me all of the time didn't really touch it on their own. No, I would have an orange, and then a granola bar and then a huge handful of goldfish crackers... and water, lots of water, water all the time. The no snacking in the evening thing only lasted a few days. Thank goodness we didn't have any chocolate in the house last week. I would have just devoured it.

In between this all, I keep jumping on the scale. I feel like I'm gaining five pounds a day but my weight hasn't changed. I do know that I'm not feeling terrific with my fitness level. I might not have gained any weight this fall so far but I haven't really done any intentional exercise either and it shows. I feel it in my knees when I'm going up and down the stairs at work. I think I should be walking more quickly than I do when I'm actually walking outside.

Fortunately, the hunger issue is not as big a problem as it was last week (although I still feel like the bug is hanging around). Work is winding down. We have one more big event on the weekend and after that, it's not too bad for the rest of the year. I'm definitely making changes to what I choose to eat. Portion size is still an issue. I think it's better to eat larger amounts of healthy foods than it is to eat large portions of crap. I think that if I can find the time to start posting here a little more regularly, that will help me with my progress.

On that note, I think I'm going to take a little walk while I still have some time left on my lunch break.

we got home a little while ago.

I can't remember when I've been so tired. the funeral was yesterday morning and it was really nice, I think that LOG would have liked it, he definitely would have liked the rabbi. Fortunately, friends of ours had a connection to this fellow. The rabbi is married to their neice. He was a great guy, young, cool and very respectful of the way we wanted things to go. The whole process was made a lot easier by him.

Right now, I'm feeling really beaten up and tired. My whole body aches and I'm anxious to get into bed. Is 6 p.m. too early to go to bed?

...a couple of things:

1. I was off from work on Thursday afternoon and all day Friday due to illness. I feel much better now.

2. Before going home sick, I talked to my boss about my overwhelming workload and I've been given lots of help.

3. I have not cried at my desk at all this week.

4. I have not snacked in the evenings the past two evenings (I know it's only two but still, TWO!)

5. While I'm not 100% back on my original plan, I'm more focused on my eating and making a conscious effort to be nicer to myself.

6. I hope to be posting here a little more often now than things seem to be settled, or at least more settled than they have been recently.

how've you all been?

I'm still here, really.

It feels like I go all gang-busters and post for a few days and then disappear without warning. Really, what's happened is that the past 4 weeks or so have just been overwhelming to a scary degree.

In the days post LOG passing away, my work was really busy. Like, not normal busy, the kind of busy where you start to feel like you are actually some kind of crazy machine. Like a mad robot from Futurama or something.

Our team was working toward a big event on September 30. I really had it in my head that once that was over, things would settle down a bit. Now, I knew that the rest of the fall season would be still be hectic but I figured I would at least have time to say, pee once in a while or go for an actual "away from my desk" type of lunch break. Optimistically, I even made two lunch dates for that first week of October. The first lunch date was okay, the second one, well my poor friend had to put up with me blubbing and being a bit of a wreck.

Alas, my new job seems to have the better of me right now. The worst part of it is that I really really love what I'm doing, we're just woefully understaffed at the moment. I've had to work a few weekend recently and have not been able to take any lieu time that I'm owed...so I just keep working and working and I can't get any rest. Even when I take a day off, I'm not sleeping well because I'm dreaming about work. The little blue pills aren't even helping.

Today though, I finally had an opportunity to talk (briefly) about this with my boss. She's fabulous but she's going through the same thing with her MIL that we just went through with our LOG so I haven't wanted to trouble her too much with things. Anyway, I've been crying a lot. I do this when I'm frustrated. It's one of things that I hate about myself: when I get frustrated, or mad, I cry. I feel like such an ass when it happens but I know that when it does happen, it's bad. Right now, I feel overtired, overworked, overwhelmed. I'd much rather be overjoyed and oversexed or over anything else but tired, worked and whelmed. I'd also rather not be overeating and, admittedly, I've been sporadically doing that. I hate a huge ass bag of ketchup chips on the weekend and numerous chocolate chip cookies.

Hopefully, I'll be able to talk to my boss at greater length later this week and sort out some kind of temporary solution to my problem. Well, it's not just my problem, it's our team's problem....it is now anyway, because that's how it is supposed to be when you're on a team, right?

/emotionally stupid rant

boy, typing all of that made me feel better. I know too, that if I'd had some time to properly grieve about LOG I'd have a better perspective on things but that really seems to creep up on me in a bad way from time to time too... yikes! I hope that everyone out in shrinking blog land is shrinking and being all healthy and good. I miss reading everyone's blogs and being inspired by all of your fabulousness. I'll be back soon, being fabulous and accomplished and rested! ...just watch this space!

This week has been tough and long so far.

Work has been crazy busy, my back is feeling better but it's not 100% yet. I know that it's just all the stress. I'm really tired and feeling run down. It wouldn't surprise me at all if I ended up with a cold in a few days.

I've been trying to eat well through all of this. Not totally perfect but good, better than I had been. The exercise thing will wait until my back is better. Right now, I'm just trying to be as good to myself as I can. Once this week is over, work should settle down a little and my routine will get back to normal.

I'm looking forward to resting up and healing a bit, it's been a long month so far.

crap.

I'm up, I'm sipping coffee, I'm still crooked as hell.

Admittedly, I feel slightly better than I did last night but it still hurts to walk and I can barely sit up in the chair right now. I think I have to get back to bed and call in sick. I really didn't want to do this, I need to get back into the office (we have a big thing happening on Saturday) but I am worried that if I drag myself into work, that I'll be worse tomorrow and be totally screwed for the weekend.

Stress sucks, doesn't it folks? arrgghhh!!

LOG passed away last night, about 2 hours after we left him.

In an hour or so, we're heading to Toronto for his funeral. He has to be buried tomorrow morning, before rosh hashanah starts.

thanks for all of your good thoughts everyone. see you in a couple of days.

LOG's still hanging on.

At 5:15 p.m. today though, we really thought that he died. My hunny even went to get the nurse but by the time he was back in the room, LOG was breathing again.

It's still a waiting game, he could go any minute or he could go in a few hours.

It's been a really long day, sitting with him, but I'm glad that we did it. We're heading off to bed now, no matter what happens, tomorrow will be another long day.

don't get old kiddos.

well I managed to barely get through my busy week last week, it was really difficult but I made it. I'm still exhausted though and I don't see an end in sight for that. LOG is in the hospital and we don't expect that he'll make it through the next 12 hours. We've been with him at the hospital all day, he's very weak, his lungs are full of fluid, his heart is very weak and he has a serious infection that is out of control. He's on morphine and oxygen and is very very comfortable right now. We don't expect that he'll regain consciousness though. We hope to get a few hours of sleep tonight and get back to see him in the morning. This has been a long time coming but it still feels strange. I guess you never really know how you're going to feel about something like this until you're in the middle of it.

I probably shouldn't be here right now. By "here" I mean at home, in front of my computer, smelling the dinner that is being cooked for me right now, enjoying a breeze through my window. I should probably be at the office. I was there on Saturday and it didn't seem like enough. Yesterday, I put work out of my head as much as I could. Today, I worked 9 hours without a break and by the time 4 p.m. rolled around I was mushy. My brain was mushy, I couldn't think or concentrate. It was time to go home.

Tomorrow, I think I'll go in an hour earlier than I did today (which was an hour earlier than I'm actually due in). I can get more done in the early hours when it's quiet and no one is around than I can if I stay late.

Alas, the count down is on. At work, I mean... I think I have mentioned this before but I'll mention it again, I work in events... and while our team works on many events throughout the year, the biggest of the "big annual events" starts this Thursday. It's working on this event that has kept me from my blog and allowed me to give myself permission to be less than good. I won't say bad because I haven't been bad, I've lacked focus is probably the best way to describe it.

Now, even though I'm not 100% on plan these days, my eating hasn't been horrible. I've still not got a strong handle on the exercise thing but I plan to focus on that once this week is over with. I did hop on the scale the other day, to see how horrible things had gone and fortunately, I'd maintained. I was happy about that.

Right now, given how insane the rest of my life is, it's just nice to have something to feel happy about!!