Discombobulated in a good way

Saturday is almost over and I feel like I have been running around like a crazy girl! I started out my day by sleeping almost three hours later than I do on a normal day, which is SUPER awesome. Sleep is so important and I never seem to get enough, so I love Saturday mornings with no alarm clock! But of course I feel all discombobulated as I am off my normal schedule. Still - hard to complain about being well rested!

I did my weight in and I dropped just over 2 pounds this week which makes me happy. I lost the weight I gained last week and a little more too, so WIN! I had a nice Zumba work-out after my weight in and then I took Emma outside in between storms and snapped a few pictures.

I went over to inspect our Strawberries and saw a flash of red! Yup! We have berries! Most of them are still green, but we have a few that are very red! I am going to leave them for my hubby to find. Strawberries are his crack. 

Our Peony bush is JUST about ready to pop. I suspect before next weekend we will have some really pretty blooms. The flowers are so pretty - but they have almost no odor which makes me sad. The scent of a peony is one of my favorite things. These are actually from Tom's grandma who lived here up until she died when Tom was only 1 or 2 years old. It's nice having plants that have been in the family for generations. When this gets too big for the bed I will split it and give half to Tom's mom.

Not long after I played Photographer we had another severe storm roll in  - this one has some nice sized hail along with heavy heavy rain. You can see the white chunk on our table on the deck along with the heavy rain drops making a splash. It's just been a wet wet day. Which means tomorrow when it is in the 90F/32C temps again it will be a steam bath. Yuck. We still have no air, but at least now we have the ability to open the windows in the living room. We had to take a hammer to one of the storms in order to get it out, but it is out and we can get better air circulation now. We should have done that 9 years ago when we bought this house. Yeah. Nine years of not being able to open the windows in our living room. I guess we just needed two really hot miserable weeks with barely any sleep to motivate us.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy your weather - what ever you may be having!

A return to normal

This is our last morning with our mother-in-law's Dog Minnie. She will be gone when I get home from work today. It's amazing how fast you get used to having another critter in the house. We developed a routine and I have to say I think I will miss the little beast. :)

Conversely I cannot wait to come home today and hit my Zumba! I have only been able to do it once in the last week with Minnie staying with us. Tom took Minnie out of the house for an hour so I could get a workout in. Minnie is a great dog but she is so excitable - we just new me flaying around like a crazy Zumba Warrior would cause her to go into fits - so I did more on the treadmill this week. I miss my Zumba!

I have had a lot of insomnia this past week. I woke up at 11:30 pm one night and could not go back to sleep. Last night I woke at 2:30 and could not go back to sleep. Hopefully that stop pretty soon. It's hard to not be crabby when you are sleep deprived. I suspect it's also hard on the diet and health in general. I am more prone toward a binge when I am in a Zombie state. Zombie eating is nobodies friend!

Monday in your face

Good Morning World. It's time for Insomniac Theater! Woke up at 1:00 this morning and could NOT get back to sleep. This always makes me so very happy. Nothing like starting out the week exhausted and crabby. **sigh**

I am pretty sure my neighbors don't appreciate my sleepless nights either. I put Emma out when I got out of bed at 2:12 this morning and she immediately ran to the very back of our yard and started barking like a mad dog. Nothing carries on a cold winter night like the sound of a dog barking. Then the sound of a tired woman in owl pajamas shivering in the doorway making kissing noises and whisper yelling "Emma!" and shaking the treat container. Yup. People know when I am up.

Then Emma curls up on her bed in the den while I amuse myself with the Internet, sighing a lot and getting excited for food every time I get up and go to the kitchen for more coffee. On a normal day when I wake up, it means the food will happen for the cat and the dog very soon. So when I wake up hours early - it's chaos. The cat has a timed feeder because she used to wake me up when she thought it was time to eat by standing on my sleeping form. Then the claws would come out when just walking on me didn't work. (ouch.) Then she figured out that I put my glasses on when I would get up, so she took to walking to my night stand and batting my glasses on the floor. That's when we decided to get a battery operated feeder.

 Here she is at 2:40 in the morning licking the empty bowl. She pretty much walks around glaring at me all morning because the food is not happening. Add to that I took her out of the bedroom where my husband is sleeping - so she can't go into that room. She will make the occasional walk to the bedroom door and claw frantically at it hoping she can get in. That makes for a fun game too. I will go and shush her away and when she hears me retreat and start typing again she will start back up.

Good times.

So that is what my Insomnia mornings look like. Add to that me wondering how early I can go into work for the day so I can leave early as I know I will be a wreck by around noon when I am up at this hour. I generally don't go in early on insomnia mornings - but I think I will today.

Insomnia days are just so hard. My brain is moosh. I can't generally knit much because I do bad things to patterns when I try. Any form of exercise is out. My diet takes a hit because I don't know when to eat and get confused about hunger and tired. (If I get up at 1:00 and eat breakfast at 4:00 do I eat lunch at 10:00 and and dinner at 3:00 and then second dinner at 7:00????) And if I go into work early THAT will throw everything off too. And if I go in early and come home early can I or should I take a nap or am I better off just going to bed early and trying to get a long sleep so I don't end up not being able to sleep a second night in a row? Meh. I know when I can't sleep it's going to be a long long day.

Wish me luck!

Checking in

I haven't been talking much about my weight loss goals and how things have been going. I am still working hard on my goals - but I have been struggling with the weight loss. When I weighed in yesterday (Zero loss/Zero gain) my weight watchers report told me I have lost 2.2 lbs in the last 4 weeks. Uffda. Something is not right here. They recently changed my daily weight watchers allowance from 29 points to 26. You wouldn't THINK three points a day would make that large of a difference, but it really has been throwing me for a loop. I used to have extra points every day, and now I am digging into my weekly allowance every day. Which has lead to me not wanting to track what I eat, which leads to only dropping 2.2 lbs this last month.

So I am heading back to the grindstone here. I have been exercising consistantly, but I am going to work harder on the food input and tracking. I am also going back to exploring recipies so I am eating some fresher foods that are more satisfying. As good as the frozen lunches I eat have been, they are still frozen meals.

I will also be taking a que from my Cat Izzi and trying to get more sleep!

January and February are always a hard time in Minnesota. It's cold. It's gray. There is no light. You feel like you are constantly bundled up and running from one warm area to another. We have actually had a very mild winter here this year, but it's still winter and it's still long, dark and cold. I know that affects my spirit. I am trying to not let stuff get me down, to take deep breaths, to slow down.

There will always be stressers in life. Always. So I need to learn how to shake them off and roll with the rough times. Something I have been trying to improve for awhile. It's not easy! But I am learning.

How is everyone else doing this winter? You all hanging in there? I know it's not winter everywhere, it's sunny and warm and awesome somewhere right now. I think New Zealand and Australia are in high summer now. Oh to be a Kiwi!

Maybe it's time to make an appointment to get a hair cut and throw some color on my toes. A little make-over might go a long way toward some much needed lifted spirits!

Climbing a Sleep Hill

Oh Insomnia. You Suck. I woke this morning around 1:30 and climbed out of bed at 3:00 to start my day. Here is the process of what happens when I have an insomnia night.

I wake up after 2-4 hours of sleep - usually with my head fully engaged in a thought. Often it's me being upset about work or some sort of hostile family scenario going through my head. I am not sure if I am dreaming about these things and wake up thinking about the dream or how that works. I just know that suddenly I am full awake and already yelling at a co-worker in my head.

I begin the dance of futility at this point. I start trying to empty my mind and play the "find a comfortable position" dance. While I start flopping and sighing the dog - who sleeps on the floor right next to my side of the bed - thinks me moving around is her que to move around too. Click click click go Emma's nails on the wood floor. Flop flop flop go her ears as she shakes her head. Achoo! The dog sneazes several times which is her" I am sort of barking but not - because I am a timid dog and I want you to know what I want but I don't want to trouble you too much...." My tossing about will get the cat up sometimes as well. She sleeps on a blanket at the end of the bed and generally my flopping about will only cause her to stand - stretch - and lay back down.

This morning after flopping around for well over an hour the dog got more assertive and actually put her front paws on the bed and nudged me with her cold nose. I knew I was doomed at that point. I waited several minutes for her to settle a little (I don't want her thinking she can do that and it means I will wake up and take her out whenever she wants. Our dog cannot tell time even a little and she would be nudging me all night!) and then caved in and got out of bed.

Outside the dog goes - with me praying that there is no wildlife in our yard or nearby. I have had to run out and grab the hose and spray three baby racoons and a mama racoon off the bird feeder with a snarling Emma standing by at 4:00 in the morning in the not so distant past. (we don't fill our feeder in the back yard anymore....) I also pray she will not be out there barking her furry butt off. Nine times out of Ten I let her out and it's Bark Bark Bark Bark. Thank goodness our neighbors haven't flipped over this.

When I let her back in she is all juiced up and ready to play. So she digs her toys out of her bin and starts dragging them around the house.

I Snapped this shot of her after she had pulled two stuffies, a chew rope and a cat ball out of the toy bin and brought them in the den to work on. I also found three destroyed Kleenex laying all over the floor in the living room. Such Fun!

 Meanwhile - the cat starts going bonkers. Just like Emma, Izzi cannot tell time. I typically feed the girls shortly after I get up - so when I get up hours before feeing time, it confuses the cat something terrible. She starts chasing her balls around the house and pawing at doors and chirping her kitty chirp. Above is a shot of her staring down one of her cat balls.

 More staring down the balls. I think she batted this one down the hallway and was watching it move.

If you look you can see Izzi has turned on her lazer beams and is now levitating a ball to her. She is pretty lazy and often wills things to just come to her.

In this one Izzi is angry that I am photographing her telekinetic abilities and is going to launch a ball at me and my camera. I stopped taking pictures at this point and had the urge to clean myself and chase a toy mouse.....

So the pets go bonkers. And I find myself looking at strange websites like Justin Timberlake Does Things and looking at knitting apparel on Zazzle.

I have Insomnia nights a few times a month. I will occationally have up to three days in a row of barely any sleep. Those are rough weeks. I can generally handle one day with a fair amount of grace - but it is a rough day. Today is a day at work where I have stuff scheduled for the last two hours of my day that I need to be on my toes for. I struggle with food on days like today. I was hungry when I crawled out of bed this morning because I had already been awake for an hour and a half. But I don't want to start eating at 3:00 in the morning.... Instead I had coffee and then around 4:00 had a banana. But it's hard to not shove food in your face when you are tired and you are awake for almost 20 hours.

Tuesday is also the start of my three days of exercise, so I am trying to figure out if I can or should exercise tonight. I try not to allow excuses and to push through stuff. (It is so easy to excuse oneself from exercise....) so I am already thinking ahead to that and how will I handle that? Meh.

No matter how you cut it - today is going to be a very long day.

Hang in there - It's almost the weekend!

My weeks are really flying by quickly lately. I think this is in part due to my increased work out schedule. I went from tread-milling three times a week for an hour (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday (still an hour a session) and added a 20 minute Wii Zumba session after each tread mill session. My days are just FLYING by!

That being said I am always so grateful for Friday to arrive. I am pretty tuckered out at the end of a work week and look forward to a little rejuvenation on the weekends. Sleeping past 4:45 am and getting more than 6 or 7 hours sleep is wonderful. I always seem to be short on sleep and I know I will have to work on that as part of my health quest. Being on Weight Watchers is helping with that as well - I have cut my coffee back to one cup most days with only an occasional Starbucks Skinny Cinnamon Dulce Latte as a treat. I have cut way back on my wine drinking (although I always like wine better in the winter - so we will see how that goes....) which seems to bother my sleep quite a bit. And I am training myself to be able to get up and use the restroom in the middle of the night and go back to sleep. I am increasing my water intake quite a bit - so this has become a needed skill. And I feel like the more I exercise the better the odds of me getting a good nights rest.

Sleep is so important but it is so readily sacrificed.