Motivation Monday

Weigh in day. 8 pounds down from last week. I'll take it!

Now it's confession time: I skipped Plyo and Yoga X last week. Plyo I can justify because I do enough jumping around in Zumba. Missing Yoga X is harder to defend. I can see in so many ways how it helps me. Endurance, strength, and of course flexibility. But UGH. I hate doing it. It's an hour and a half of trying to bend and twist and stretch and hold my body into positions it has no intention of  forming. But then again, the fact that it's so hard is also part of its appeal. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. Oddly enough, the very hardest part is getting my mind quiet. My mind does not like to be quiet. When it's quiet, it's unable to over-analyze and obsess. And really now, what fun is that?

Life improvement my way.

This has been one whirlwind of a week! 

I've been lucky enough to talk to Chris a lot in the past week. It's been completely amazing. And I've also texted more in the last week than I have since I started texting combined. At least I'm finally getting better at it. I can respond in under a minute now. Yay me. And to think I said a few years ago that I'd never text. Tsk tsk. I should know better. By the time my kids are both 18, cell phones probably won't even have actual telephonic features. Just social media apps. 

Sigh. 

So last night, things sort of started winding down. We mostly stayed around the house and for whatever bizarre reason I thought it would be a good idea to start de-cluttering. Which in itself is hilarious because for me to de-clutter I have to take stuff from somewhere and put it somewhere else and then pick and choose what I put back. Only when I start to go through it, the most bizarre thing happens and I find myself not able to get rid of all that much. So really all I'm doing is reorganizing. Eventually I get into a snit and just clean it all out. Last night was not one of those nights. 

I tackled the kids' toy closet. We had an old chest of drawers in there that we kept cars and dolls and smaller things in. But that chest of drawers is on its last, sad, press board leg. The metal runners that keep the drawers lined up are even slipping off so the whole drawer just sort of collapses which puts a lot of stress on the cheaply made drawer joints so now they are starting to come apart. And nothing says "tetanus shot" like ripping your finger open on a cruddy old staple. Not that I've ever done that before. 

Right in the middle of that I decide that I need official storage and organization stuff. So I set a plan in motion for today that I'd go to Target and buy the storage cube organizer that I've been coveting for years. 

And that's what the kids and I did today. We bought one for beside the front door and one for the toy closet. And then I managed to actually put them together without nailing anything to the carpet or stripping a screw or smashing my fingers. Although, the little plastic screw covers did manage to all pop off within an hour of being firmly smushed into the screws, but I'm chalking that up to a design flaw. 

Saturday night's alright for bolting

A couple of weeks ago, Tucker 'lost' the pen for his Nintendo DS in the backseat of the car. Now, when I say 'lost' I mean he dropped it and it got pushed down into the crack of the seat. 

It was quite the traumatic event.

I've dug around a couple of times in the back seat trying to find it, I've had no luck. I also get grossed out with the amount of sticky, crumbly, yucky stuff that's ground into the cracks of the seats back there.Of course, when I see that, then I start mumbling about how there isn't going to be any more eating or drinking in the car, which I know isn't true even as I mumble it.

For whatever reason, I decided today that it would be a good idea to take the backseat out. I might as well clean the car while I was at it. After I vacuumed and scraped and vacuumed and scraped some more, the interior was looking pretty good. The outside is, unfortunately, dotted with bird poop and it's way too cold today to wash it. One thing at a time anyway, right?

I was hoping the owners manual would shed some light on how to get the seat out. It didn't. So I googled it and figured out that either it would pop up if hit or it would be bolted in. 

Of course it was bolted. The bolt is inconveniently located in the crack of bottom and back seat. And lest you get impressed with my ability to figure this much out, let me just say it now - I called my brother who used to work on Hondas because I didn't have the patience to figure this one out for myself nor did I want to break anything. 

Bolt located, I then needed a 10mm socket and an extender because the location of this bolt is once again impossible. Well, after digging through three different tool boxes I finally found a 10mm bolt. Unfortuntely no extender. Bah!

In the middle of this process while half in and half out of the car and trying to make the socket wrench I do have work, I text a comment about the seat removal process to the wrong person. Hey, it was poor lighting and I was practically in an advanced yoga pose. It happens.

Frustrated that nothing was working as planned, I come up with the brilliant idea of having Tucker actually show me where the pen was when it got pushed down. He grudgingly comes out and says it was console in the back seat. 

Well now wait a second. That shouldn't have allowed it to be pushed down in between the seats. Is he sure? Yes he's sure. 

Hmmm. I've had my hand shoved in between the back seats covering every inch of available space and that pen is nowhere to be found. So I asked Tucker if he'd stick his hand in there and see if he could feel it.  No luck. 

I can only imagine where that pen is. And then I get the bright idea to check online and see how much a new pen would be. 

I can get a four pack for around $8. That sounds like a much better deal to me that buying an extender and trying to wrench the seat out. It would have, I'm pretty sure, sounded just as appealing if I had thought to check before I went to all the trouble of trying to take the seat out in the first place. Plus I already broke a nail and darn near shredded my finger on something.  

On the upside, I did get the interior really clean. That's gotta count for something. And somewhere Robert is doing a happy dance that he didn't have to be here for this little adventure. Who can blame him?

Adventures in eating

A friend of mine invited me to a cooking class on Wednesday. I'm not going to lie, she had me at "Would you like to...." and the icing on the proverbial cake was that it was a cooking class. On the menu? Winter salad, pannini, and chocolate covered strawberries.

When we got there and the class began, I was surprised to find we weren't actually doing the cooking. We were given the recipes and we got to eat the menu items, but the instructor did the actual prep, cooking, and assembly.

I'm not much of an adventurous eater, so this made me nervous. Because, really, how on earth am I supposed to leave off all the stuff I don't want if I'm not making the food?

Or - maybe this was an opportunity to break out of my comfort zone. Or maybe I was just really hungry and figured it wouldn't kill me to just try it.

Either way, I tried it all. And it was soooo good. The salad was mixed greens, blueberries, pears, walnuts, almonds, pecans and three types of oranges drizzled with an apple cider reduction dressing.

They ended up serving two sandwiches: the pannini and a version of grilled cheese with goat cheese, bacon, strawberries, fresh basil, and spinach. Oh. my. goodness. They were both delicious. I'd love to say I'd make them myself, but I just can't justify spending so much money on ingredients for a couple sandwiches. And I know there's no way the kids would touch them. 

Let's give 'em something to talk about

I haven't been blogging much lately. There's a reason for that. Okay, a couple of reasons.

1) Robert is away for a while and my focus is more family centered and less self centered. At least, I hope so.

2) My work out schedule is no joke. I. am. tired.

3) I was having a hard time coming up with things to blog about. True, the kids keep me on my toes and at least once a day I think "Wow. I should blog or twitter that." But I rarely write it down and I often forget it by the time I have a chance to send it out on Blogger, Facebook or Twitter.



And then something miraculous happened.  I'm not really sure this is my story to tell, but I can tell my side and hopefully protect the innocent.

When I was 21, I found out I was pregnant. It wasn't planned. I was seeing someone, but it wasn't a relationship that had any sort of future. And, as sometimes happens, things had already started to go badly.

I was barely supporting myself and there was no way I could support me plus one. No health insurance, no savings, moving back and forth between apartments with room mates and my mom's house...it was not the best case scenario in which to try to raise a child. I did some research and decided that adoption was the best of the possible solutions for me and the baby.

Fast Forward...

So, I had the baby. After a couple of agonizing weeks of trying to figure out a way that I could keep him, I could not deny that he would end up suffering for it, so I placed him with the family I had chosen. I still can't really talk about that phase of my life. It's too painful and too hard. It changed everything for me. It changed me. I also told no one unless I absolutely had to.

Fast forward 19 years. I knew I could write him when he turned 18. It took me an entire year to write the letter to him and to his parents. What on earth can you possibly say? I had no idea or no indication if my letter would be welcomed or rejected so I prepared for the worst.

I hadn't even seen a picture since he turned 5.

I sent the letters to the adoption agency and hoped for the best. A few days later I emailed to confirm that they had received it, only to discover that he had called wanting contact information for me the day it had arrived. He wanted to contact me. I was elated.

I just knew I would hear from him, so I waited. And waited. And waited.

::crickets::

I knew that he probably just wasn't ready. I had already found him on Facebook, but wasn't going to contact him unless he wanted contact with me.

In the meantime, I ran across some adoption blogs and there's nothing like seeing an adoptee write hate filled  words about bio and adoptive parents to give you a nice little wake up call. I had to face the fact that he may not want contact. Now or ever.

One way to find out, right? So I sent him a short message on Facebook. This was in August. And I waited.

As time went by and I hadn't heard from him, I'd check his Facebook page every now and then, but began to resign myself that I might never hear from him. At Christmas, I wished him Merry Christmas.

Saturday night, when I got home from the Zumbathon, I got the kids to bed and went to bed myself. I woke up not too long after that feeling really restless, so I went downstairs to get some water. My phone message light was blinking so I checked it and what was on there? A friend request. From HIM.

Back upstairs I went to get my glasses so I could freaking see, and I accepted immediately. He had just seen my message that I'd written back in August. Since we weren't Facebook friends, it had been in his other folder and he thought it was spam.  I messaged him back immediately and was surprised that he messaged me right back too. We chatted online for a few hours and made plans to talk on the phone the next night.

And the rest is history that we are in the process of making.

So, everyone, I'd like to introduce you to Chris (World, meet Chris. Chris, meet World). With his permission you'll be hearing a lot about him from here on out.

Motivation Monday

Weighed in this morning. I'm actually up two pounds. Crap.

It wasn't the start to the morning I had hoped, but I dropped the kids off at school and hit the gym. Time to keep on keepin' on, right?

So I really pushed myself at the gym today and I felt better. Then I went to Zumba this afternoon and felt much better. Because you know Zumba makes everything better. Or it at least makes you tired enough that you don't  care as much.

Now that I'm back on track with exercise and diet, next week should be better.

Zumbathon Saturday

I just spent close to three hours Zumba-ing. It was awesome. Details later, but none of my pictures came out - probably because I don't know how to use my camera correctly. Yes, I could read the instruction manual, but then I'd have no excuse for awful pictures. Ha!

UPDATE:
Here's a picture Michelle took at the Zumbathon. I was a wee bit sweaty.