double blogging

Maybe two blogs was a little over-ambitious. I honestly don't know how I even survive my day to day life much less find time to blog. By this I mean, I work full time as  RN. I am mother, which is of course more than full time. I am a wife, which is probably more than full time. I am currently obsessed with running and my physical fitness, which is emotionally a full time job.  That's four full times, if I can count correctly. Which of course, I might not be able to do, since I have no time left to learn how to properly count. Oh and I forgot the fifth full time: Student. What on God's green earth? I do not know. Some people might say I have more energy than the usual person. Which would, in fact, be an accurate description of me. I used to have so much energy that I would do things like stay up all night to sew a quilt or finish a book. That is a LOT of energy. Oh wait, they have a name for that. Mania. 

So when I got a little chubby (OK fat) my mania was replaced by an intense desire to sleep. My fine physician, who I adore and trust unequivocally, told me that my life's problems could be traced to one source. One. ONE. That is powerful stuff people. To know that everything that ails you might in fact be cured and/or eliminated by the removal of one tiny little thing. In my case the thing was sleep. More likely the thing was a bad genetic lot but we're blaming sleep because it's easier to fix than genetics. Anyway, melatonin blah blah blah. I guess humans are supposed to sleep more than like an hour a day. Sheesh. The nerve of scientific researchers to come up with these ideas. Sleep. I think we might have touched on this before, but then I'm probably confusing this with my other blog. 

This is typically how my week goes. Well let's do this upcoming week because it is an actual example of how my week will go. Today is Sunday. Which means church basically all flippin day. Don't misunderstand me, I like to get my worship on as much as the next dude, but dang three hours is a long time. An extension of the 3 hour church experience, we keep the rest of the Sabbath holy which essentially means I get nothing down around here except sitting here worrying about all the things I'm not getting done. Anyway Sunday. That's it. Monday I work. So Monday day I will futz around here trying to recover from Sunday. Go to the store to buy all things I realized that I needed on Sunday. Do all the laundry created on Sunday. Try to do the homework I avoided on Sunday. And a bunch of other stuff I could have done on Sunday, or made my children do on Sunday, if I weren't so busy keeping it holy and setting a good example and all that. Work out because I have to. And I will at some point, and probably unsuccessfully, try to nap before I pick the kids up at 2:27, 2:47 and 2:57. Then I will run around like a mad woman trying to help small people with long division and algebra before I quickly throw some food together that we can enjoy as a family because we do like to see each other for about 5 minutes a day. Then I will work all night. ALL night. I will get home at about 7 and throw some breakfast and lunch together and take the small people to school. After that I will go to the gym to physically torture myself for a minimum of an hour. This due to the health and fitness full time obsession. THen I will come home and drug up on some Ambien in the hopes of getting some sleep, which will of course be futile, because let's face it, people aren't supposed to sleep when the sun is up. I'll do the same routine and Monday afternoon, only I'll be a walking zombie. Wednesday morning will be a blur of exhaustion and more gym time. I don't work three in a row this week so I probably won't completely feel like dying on Wednesday. The rest of the week will be taking small people here and there and working again on Friday night. There will inevitably be three days this week where I get less than 2 hours of sleep. So you can see the issue. Sleep. 

For now I will stop because I am depressing even myself and, well frankly, I don't think blogging qualifies as keeping the Sabbath day holy at all.

and second blogger post...

I'm not sure why I am keeping two blogs. Could it be that I just have entirely to much free time on my hands? Hm.... let's ponder that. Let's see, I work full time as a Registered Nurse. This means 3 shifts of twelve hours per week, with commute that means I am gone for 14 hours a day on the days that I work. So no free time on those days. Plus I work the NOC shift (1800-0630) which means I am essentially comatose for several hours on my first day "off" and trying almost all day to nap on my first day ON. Added bonus. I am a mother of three children ages 8, 10 and 13. Oh but don't misunderstand, this leaves me tons o' free time. I mean they are totally self sufficient. They don't need me at ALL. In fact, while I type this one of them is cooking dinner, one is doing laundry and one is cleaning the house ;o) Oh and then they are all going to rub my feet. I almost forgot to mention that in addition to those two little things, and being a wife, or at least trying to be a pretty decent one, I am also in school full time. Because I don't have enough to do. Not nearly enough. 

Oh and I'm training for a 1/2 marathon. Not a full one because I just don't have time for that. I mean come on, where would I fit in 25-30 MORE miles of running a week? Right now though I'm only training for the couch olympics though on account of the fact that my leg is broken from the 30 miles a week of running. So NOW I have TONS of free time. Literally TONS. LOADS.

In addition to those miniscule things I am on Weight Watchers which means I am weight watching. This means trying to watch it decrease. This doesn't occupy THAT much of my free time though because I only obsess about my weight about 80% of the day. I used to be skinny. Isn't that what every fat person says?"Oh I wasn't always fat. That only happened after I got married, had kids, got stressed, _____________ ." (insert your life stressor here). But really though all that malarky is true in my case. I was literally the SMALLEST child in grade school. I mean 80 pounds in junior high. I finally hit 100 in high school. It wasn't because I didn't eat either. My great-grandmother, who was a product of the Depression era, and my surrogate mother (when my real actual mother was out clubbin', which in the 1970's meant being drunk at a bar, but that's another blog altogether) thought that because she had done without everything  

1. Everyone else had to Eat everything 

2. Everyone else had to  Eat approximately 5 pounds of everything 

3. Cookies were a food group 

4. Half and half was what you put on cereal. 

5. Twinkies were a food group. 

6. You had to to eat a box of Twinkies a week.

7. Grape soda was a food group and you could make an ice cream float out of it and anything else that you could find that was even potentially carbonated. 

God rest her merry little soul. I loved that woman. She literally worked her fingers to the bone picking cotton and altering clothes that were too big for other people because she was hoarding all the food for me, so that I could have all of the aforementioned food. I never gained an ounce. 

Oh but the happy times were short lived. I should have seen it coming. I went to Europe when I was 16. It was a wonderfully depressing time. I had never been so utterly alone. Legal drinking age in Europe was 16 so that's what I did. And I ate. Cheese. Bread. Other things that are not low fat. I cam home after 3 months and I weighed 130. Still relatively thin but that was a 15 pound gain in as many weeks. So... I got married? That's what you do when you gain weight, turn 18, graduate from high school, leave home at 17. That's doesn't make sense does it? 

Anyway I did the next logical thing. I quit my University education, because that's overrated, and had babies. Well that's what I wanted to do so it made sense at the time. I made it through one failed pregnancy and one successful one with a 5 lb weight gain. This is when I started to realize my destiny as an addict. Well lets just say that while clubbin' like my ma would have been a viable option, it wasn't my first choice. Food was. So I had yet another baby. That one left me a little larger. Maybe 155 pounds. Now I was on a roll. I couldn't get pregnant to save my life, then I couldn't STOP being pregnant so I had yet ANOTHER baby. Oh I love that little dude. What a great surprise he was. And the result... one adorable baby and 15 more pounds. 

So I did the only sensible thing. I threw the scale away. When he was 3 (in 2003) my MIL started WW. I thought for fun I would get on her scale. Uh oh. 178 pounds. How did I not know I weighed 178 pounds? Well I think the answer might have been spandex and sweat pants and some denial. But I started WW that day. October 2003. By February I weighed 138 pounds.

But that wasn't to be. I loathed exercise. Ew. Sweat. Exertion. Ew. And thus to maintain 138 I had to literally starve and let's not forget that I ate a box of Twinkies a week as a kid. SO I settled for 140-145. A size 10. I was feeling great. I became a RN. I started working nights. uh oh. I gained 5 pounds the first month. Oh geez I was too tired to care though. Unfortunately I was also too tired to care when 5 becamse 10 than 20 then 30 then 35. I gave away all the skiny clothes and bought new ones. Better to be fat and happy then skinny and miserable? Hm. Then one day, after working 6 days in a row (which is a little like suicide) I realized that my legs were in absolute agony. Not unusual. But after two days when they still hurt I said OK enough is enough. I pulled out the scale which had been hiding in the cupboard for about a year and got on.

178 pounds

Good grief. I was where I started. So I started WW that day.  Today I weigh 145 and I am training for a 1/2 marathon (or at least I was). I like sweat. I like to run. I am liking the new me. Not just the lower scale reading but the transformed thinking. I still have a way to go before I am "done". 5 years ago I never would have believed that I would weigh 178 I also never would have believed that I would run anywhere, except to Macy's.

first blogger post...

I have a blog here . It's about weight loss and my journey from chubby, lounging RN to cheetah-like running RN. OK maybe not cheetah-like but not lying on the couch either. But that blog is getting a little crowded and not everyone wants to hear about my crap that doesn't involve weight loss.