Project Fitness Update

Really quick update tonight because I need to wake up at 4:30 tomorrow for an early flight up to San Francisco (though one perk of having a baby is that I'm completely on this morning-biased schedule and regularly get up at 5:45 anyway, so 4:30 doesn't seem as early) but this week was a lot better.  I credit it to hiking the three miles around the lake every day without fail, sometimes twice a day (if Hannah is really fussy).  I'm getting a lot faster.  It's a three mile trek around the lake, with lots of hills, and in my heyday of 2012, I could do it in about 36 minutes.  

With pushing a stroller it's a lot harder, having to navigate the hills and keep her from tipping over where the banking is weird.  Plus I was massively out of shape when I started again with her.  In the beginning, with the stroller, I did it in an hour and ten minutes.  Now I'm down to about 50 minutes.  Still a far cry from the high point, but fast enough so that J was impressed with my ability to push her up a steep hill, and not need to stop for breath along the way when he came along with us on Saturday.

I'm also really getting in the habit of not eating that much.  Now that I'm becoming mindful of what I'm eating, I'm realizing that I was just shoving stuff into my mouth before without even thinking about it.  A cookie there, a bagel here, some cottage cheese with blueberries now, and some chocolate in a few minutes.  That being said, I still need to work on finding other ways to deal with stress besides eating.  Today, for example, Hannah decided that, even though she was super tired, she wasn't going to take an afternoon nap.  Which led to her being fussy and totally unable to keep happy.  I had been at it for about 2 hours, and J ran an errand so I was alone with her.  She didn't want to be in the walker.  She didn't want to be in her safe play space (behind the gates).  She didn't want to go on my back and go for a walk.  She didn't want to eat.  She didn't want to play in the high chair.  I was running out of ideas.  And so I ate.  Cookies and cream ice cream, three spoonfuls of chunky peanut butter (choosy mom's choose Jif) and a spoonful of cool whip.  Yep, that was dinner.  In between her wails.  

It kind of makes me scared to step on the scale tomorrow, but I'll deal.  It's a new day tomorrow.

Granted, it's a day in which I'm going to walk past an Auntie Anne's pretzel stand in the Oakland airport.  But it's a new day nonetheless.  And maybe tomorrow I won't stop at the Auntie Anne's pretzel stand when we land.  Fingers crossed.

Project Fitness starting again

Jonathan and I were talking today about how having a kid has made us so much more productive.  There are a couple of reasons.  First, before having a kid, if I was "tired" I wouldn't do the things on my list.  Since having a kid, "tired" has taken on a whole new meaning.  If I stopped doing anything just because I was "tired", I would barely be able to get up in the morning.  I wouldn't have breakfast.  I wouldn't work.  Nothing would get done.  And the second thing that has made us more productive is simply that we have to be.  If you want to do anything outside of feeding, changing diapers, and being a human amuse-the-baby machine, you simply can't spend time thinking about doing things - you have to, in the famous words of nike, just do it.

So things are getting done.  The house is getting clean.  Projects are being completed.  Things are getting crossed off lists.  It feels good.

One huge project that I'm undertaking again is my fitness.  I had reached a point before Baby H where I was feeling really good about myself.  That all went down a Lucky Charms sliding board when I had pregnancy cravings.  And so I gained like 53 pounds.  I still have about 20 to go to get to where I was pre-baby.

I've been reading Julia Cameron's The Writing Diet (count words, not calories) which is a series of essays about creativity and food, and how linked they are.  I'm really clear that I'm not expressing my creativity in the way that I would like, and I wind up numbing it with food.  What's comforting about "comfort food"?  The essays all are thought provoking and have assignments - usually writing assignments, though there has been the occasional assignment to take yourself out to eat a really special meal to see what you really like, etc.

The one today was on taking one day at a time, like AA.  I don't know if I can commit to eating healthy for the rest of my life.  It seems so daunting.  But I can commit to it today.  Today is doable.  Tomorrow, I don't know about.

So I've gotten into this habit of stopping at McDonald's on the way home from my walks around the lake.  We all know I have this Diet Coke addiction, right?  I used to stop at 7-11 for my fix, but with a baby it adds extra steps of having to take her out of her carseat, etc.  The drive through seems way easier.  But then it's easy to get a McFlurry.  Or some other genetically modified crap that makes me miserable.  I know it's terrible for me.  But I keep doing it.

Today I was walking around the lake and started feeling really hungry.  I thought about what I would get at McDonald's; ie a small snack before dinner.  But then I remembered.  No, I've committed to being healthy today.  I passed by the ball fields where the little league game was going on, and I bought a diet coke from their snack bar, and then ate a handful of almonds in the car.  When I got home, J and I cooked dinner together while Baby H sat in her high chair.  We made a coconut tofu carrot curry, and nibbled on bits of tofu and carrots as we were cooking.

McDonald's was avoided.  Small Victory.

A friend of mine once told me that he could always tell that I was happy when I stopped blogging.  And when I was depressed, I spent a lot of time sitting at home emptying wine bottles, writing about how my heart was broken, and the guy who didn't love me back was an asshole (this was, I should note, in my Single Girl blog, which would be about 10 years old this year).

So if I go away for a while, it's not because I'm pregnant, or I got kidnapped by a crazy gunman at 7-11, or anything like that.  It just means that I'm out doing my thing.  Especially with springtime arriving, I have spent as much time as possible outside, walking around the lake, and getting some extra doses of Vitamin D.

That being said, I don't want to just disappear again, so here's a lowdown on the events of the past few weeks:

1)  I decided to go to Seminary.  But I don't really know why.  I don't know that I ever want to have a church of my own, and preach.  Maybe.  I haven't thought that far ahead.  For now, it's enough to know that I just belong in Seminary studying the Bible, and being part of the conversation that creates Doctrine so that, you know, Christianity can be more about loving people, and not so much about excluding people because they're gay or whatever.

2)  My husband is hemming my performance dress for choir.  If you fancy hearing some nice a capella choral music on Saturday, the Claremont Chorale is performing at 3pm and I'll be up there in my hemmed dress, looking fancy.  It's super-cool that my husband can hem my dress, I should add.

3)  I've boarded the fertility treatment train.  But I'm not going to get carried away with it.  I'm really going to try to be conscious of the fact that you can easily spend thousands upon thousands of dollars, and lots of time and heartbreak, getting IVF and all that stuff, and frankly, I'm not that desperate to have a biological child.  If that's your thing, it's great that it's possible, and I applaud people who do it.  For me, I just want to have a baby.  I don't feel the need to genetically breed, and there are millions and millions of kids in the world who just want a family that loves them.  To me it seems like a needless expense, but that's just me being judgmental.

4)  We're also starting to seriously check out adoption, and are signed up to go to an open-day at an agency in the summer.

5)  This summer is going to so totally rock.  We're going to NYC for me to go to Book Expo and negotiate with publishers about our ebook project for libraries.  Then PA for some Family Time.  Then London and...wait for it...I'm finally getting my ass to Iceland to see 24 hours of daylight.  I'm so stoked.

6)  In the Realm of Stupid Things I've Done to Lose Weight: last week was high up there.  I had a weight goal I wanted to make by Memorial Day.  As of Wednesday, I was still 3 pounds away.  So I went on a liquid diet.  Didn't eat any solid food for 4 days.  I made the weight (of course I gained it back since then) and had a fun day shopping at the Gap Outlet, which made me feel like I was 19 again, because their Muzak was Songs from the 90's, and nothing says 90's more than shopping at the Gap and listening to The Cure, but I digress...now I feel ridiculously dizzy, tired, and stupid for having done that.  But whatever, I have new clothes.  So...yay for new clothes...

My Day in Numbers

J has been away this weekend doing some sort of bachelor-party-manly-camping-rafting trip, and I'm home with the cats having Girl Time.  So here's what Girl Time looks like, in Numbers.

8: The number of episodes in The Kennedy's miniseries.  Also, coincidentally, the number of episodes that I watched last night, while laying on the couch not cooking dinner and not caring about the house getting messy.

2:  The number of dreams I had last night about living in the White House and dating RFK.

3:  Miles around our lake, which I walked around this morning.  I've been trying to do that 5 times a week.

2:  The number of Diet Cokes I drank today.  I'm supposed to be off soda, but I figure that J is having a weekend filled with debauchery, so I can drink some nasty aspartame-laced-infertility-causing diet coke.

3:  The number of Harry Potter movies I watched today in preparation for the big midnight IMAX showing on Thursday night.

2:  The number of walls in my home office that are now painted a lovely shade of bright green called Summerland.  That number should be all 4 after tomorrow.  It's nice and zen, and as an added bonus, it will be a cheerful gender-neutral color when this room gets changed into a nursery - when we finally manage to have a baby.  (sad, but kind of funny - though not ha-ha funny - story: the other night I was talking to J about names for the next baby when I'm pregnant with it.  Baby T and Mustard Seed are already taken, and I asked him if he had anything he wanted to call it.  He said he wanted to call it, "i hope it lives."  Cue tiny violins now).

27:  The square inches of my arms and legs that are covered in green paint.  I'm kind of clumsy and like to back into walls covered with wet paint a lot.

35:  The number of books that I decided are going to Goodwill and/or the Yard Sale Pile, and have been relocated from my home office to the living room floor.

3: The number of Tylenol I took for my back, which kind of hurts after the painting.

8:  The number of mayorships I have on 4square now that some punk took away my mayorship of the 7-11 this morning.  Dammit, I'm going to go on a slurpee diet to get that mayorship back.

1:  The number of sticks I peed on this morning because I've been feeling really nauseated and thought I might be pregnant.  It was negative, but this is ok because I'm still not ready.  The game is on again in September.  But right now, it's still the Summer of Heather.

2: the number of pounds I've lost this week, after having hit a somewhat discouraging plateau the past few weeks.  

87: the number of emails in my work inbox this morning.

5:  the number of emails in my work inbox tonight.  I'll knock those suckers out tomorrow for sure and start the week on an empty inbox.

Ok kids, I'm off to sleep for 8 hours now and cuddle with 3 or 4 cats.  Here's a funny cat story - whenever J's away, I sleep on his side of the bed.  And the cats love to cuddle with him, so they all come under the blankets and start to get all comfy, and then realize it's me, and get really confused.  It's my way of tricking them into giving me more love.

Tuesdays Suck, and finding a Purpose in my Grief

Six weeks ago I was delivering my boy.  Tuesdays seriously suck.  Tuesday is officially The Worst Day of the Week.  I can't even watch Glee anymore because I hate Tuesdays so much.  I can't think of many things I hate worse than Tuesdays right now.

The upside?  I did 20 minutes of cardio today.  It wasn't much, but anything is something, and I hadn't done anything at all for almost 7 weeks.  Between being sick, then delivery, then the issues with my back, I had become quite the couch potato.  The doctor said I could start to work out again, but nothing too serious - just enough to get the heart beat up.  So I did part of a Dancing With The Stars workout disc.  Nothing like a little bit of Max to look at while you're exercising.

I've been thinking about my grief and how I feel like I need a break from life.  I was a little bit worried about myself, but then I read this on Pregnancyloss.info -

I don't worry about the women who write about crying and saying they can't go on. They are working through their pain and grief. I worry about the woman who just wants to try again, and doesn't mention or think about the pain of losing a baby. 

So I'm thinking I'm doing all right.

We are getting back on the Trying to Conceive train now, and it's nice to have something to think about - a project, as it were.  On one hand I feel like that's a betrayal to Baby Teysko, but I also know that he wants us to be happy.

I've been thinking about God and my faith in all of this.  I haven't written much about God, but I do talk to Him/Her/It every day about all of this.  For ease in writing, I will refer to God as a Him, but I fervently believe that God is neither he/she or it.  God, to me, is the energy in the universe, the life force, and our puny little brains can't imagine the overwhelming everywhereness of God, so we refer to God as a Him to make it understandable.  God is all of the love and consciousness of the universe.

So I've been thinking about why God would let this happen to me.  Especially given my last lengthy post about how I've always been a good person and I follow rules, etc etc.  I can honestly say that there hasn't been one moment where I've questioned this being God's will.  I don't like it, but I have to believe that I can't comprehend what God's will is.  And I have to believe that there will come a time when this will all become clear to me.  There might be lessons that I needed to learn out of this - what matters and what doesn't, the complete unimportance of everything that doesn't matter, patience, letting go, not needing to be in control of everything, dealing with grief...and the list goes on.  Maybe these were the lessons that I was sent to earth to learn.  Maybe these are the things I'm supposed to be dealing with.  Maybe before I came here, I had a talk with God, and he said, "I think this term we should focus on grief and letting go," and maybe I agreed to this.  Who knows?

One thing I do know is that I feel like I have a new purpose in life out of this experience.  I feel like there are so many women out there who have experienced this hurt - 1 in 4 according to the statistics - but nobody ever talks about it.  We talk about cancer.  We talk about AIDS.  We talk about heart disease.  But we never talk about the grief that 25% of the female population feels over losing a child.  It's such a deep, personal, painful thing, and I think people just don't know what to do with it.  It's ugly and it's horrific and it's terrible, but it's there.  And I want to be one of the people talking about it.

I also want to do something to help other people heal.  I've been thinking about starting some type of weekend retreat for couples up in my beautiful mountains.  It's just an idea right now, but I was thinking that it would be lovely to have a healing place where couples who have just experienced this loss can go for a long weekend, and mix therapy with a bit of romance, so that couples can start to heal.  There are tons of church camps and conference centers up here, and I think that I should be able to get a location without much of a problem.  Then I'd just need therapists, child care, food, etc.  I could start a non-profit or something to raise money for it.

If I could do something like this, I would be honoring Baby Teysko's legacy of bringing J and I so much closer together and taking our relationship to a whole new level.  And I would be providing something for all of the women (and men) who are hurting and want both a place to get away from it all, and a place where their grief can be understood.

I think then I might understand what the purpose of this horrible mess was.

I'll keep posting updates to my plan here - but if you would like to be involved with this in any way, please email me or leave a comment.  This week I will share the idea - in its conception stage - with the leader of our support group, and also my pastor (who has a masters in counseling and also had a miscarriage).  So I will get some feedback from them, and refine the idea a little bit more.

Yay for something positive coming out of something horrific...

Food Stuff

In an effort to keep up with my new year's resolution (since the year is half over - ahem, see previous entry), I am going to be posting my daily food and exercise intake here on my blog. So here's the what's so for today.

Breakfast - 7:30am

homemade breakfast sandwich - 3 egg whites, slice of cheese on an english muffin

Activia yogurt

homemade iced mocha using skim milk.

Snack - 11am -

somebody brought chocolate covered toffee stuff into the office - I had one piece.

Lunch - 12:30pm -

pb sandwich

coleslaw left over from Memorial Day

container of raspberries

crackers that I nibbled on for the rest of the afternoon

5 hershey kisses

while driving back from the office - 4pm - a handful of chips, and a diet cherry coke from sonic half-price happy hour.

Dinner - 7pm

brown rice

catfish - baked, with a bit of butter, and seasonings

caesar salad with light dressing

fudgy pop

Drank plenty of water and took my vitamins.

Didn't work out though.

Check-in: done

Resolutions Schmezolutions

So here we are at another January and I'm doing more resolutions. Actually, I kind of enjoy it. Yesterday I listed all the ares of my life that are important to me, and what I wanted to accomplish with them this year. It's kind of fun to think about, and create the year. So here are some things I'm going to accomplish in 2010:

1. Write - like, seriously, like my life depends on it. Because, in some ways, it really does. I say that I want to be mobile and have a life that is split between LA, PA and London, with travel on the side as well. It's kind of hard to do that with a "real" job. So I really feel like writing is where it's at, especially because reading and writing have always meant so much to me. So this year, the goal is to write for 6 hours a week (that's an hour a day, give or take) and also to take my journaling seriously. Also, I'm going to finish, edit and publish my 2009 NaNoWriMo book, which is one that I'm really loving.

2. Exercise - like, seriously, again, like my life depends on it. Because in a much more real way, it does. I putter around on my elliptical 5 times a week already, but that's kind of lame because my muscles are already used to it, and it's kind of like sleepwalking. I don't do any weights, or core exercises, and that's important as I get (ahem) older. So I bought an exercise ball and have started using it, and am going to do push-ups - starting with my knees bent because I'm lame, but growing my strength so that by the end of the year, I can do 25 push-ups with my legs straight. That's the goal.

3. Go back to London more - At least twice this year. I get lazy because I hate leaving home, but really, that's where my soul belongs, and I need to spend more time there. I get inspired, I get in action, and I come alive when I'm there.

4. Financial - One thing I know is how to make money. Unfortunately, I also know how to spend it with the best of them. So this year, I'm going to try an experiment: I'm going to try to live off of half my salary and save the rest. That will allow me to do things like to go London a lot without charging it on a card. It will also allow me to build up a nice little nest egg for the time when Baby Heather comes along and we need to buy foreign things like diapers and cribs. Weird. And really, lord knows I seriously don't need more scented candles or faux-designer bags from Target. It's all just more junk to move someday anyway.

So those are four of my big resolutions for the new year.

And a funny thing happened during the keeping-of-a-resolution: I decided to go for a hike around the lake this morning, as the weather was nice and it wasn't too freezing. So I get there, park the car, and take my car key off the chain as always, and also as always, I tuck it into my underwear. This is what I have always done, since the days when I began running 15 years ago. Yes, I carry my car key in my underwear. So sue me. So it was slipping around, and I was like, "man, I've gotta find a new place for this key" and then reached in by my hip, and it was no longer there. I shook out my clothes, and nothing. I went back and forth along the path five times, and no key. What the hell, right? Right. So then I finish walk, call hubby and he gets our neighbor to drive him to get me because I have no key. We are going to walk the bit of path where I lost it again, looking more carefully, when suddenly I feel it in an unmentionable. It had moved around and I basically had key-butt. Which was funny because I'd had key-butt for three miles and hadn't felt it. Weird.