Pillowcases and Goals

How's getting back into shape and the running coming for me? 

Well I'll talk more about this below, but in short I am slowly getting back into it.
It's a tad more difficult right now since it's been so long since I have been able to do it. But mostly I am enjoying it.  I know it will get easier in the coming weeks. It will also get easier to wake up earlier, I won't lie right now it's not easy!

But I think we are starting to get into the spring type temps, 20's in the mornings and 50's in the afternoons. Meaning less chances of freezing temps and right now that may make it a tad easier for me!

How's work going?
Well I had an epic fail as a business owner. I hadn't had a voicemail message left in over a month, I am an idiot and didn't think much of it.
Then after 2 people told me they left a message and I saw no notification from it, I called my own number.
Ya, apparently 23 messages I never got. Why? Well I am the idiot who just assumed all old voicemails just auto deleted (They did with my old Blackberry) apparently not with my Galaxy. It only notifies you the first 150. I was over my limit.
I have missed out on so many wedding/event calls. I am kinda embarrassed by it.  Yup, like I said, EPIC fail as a small business owner!

Funny story this week about this guy who came up to me one day at work. (I am still occasionally working at now 1 library.)

HIM: "So someone puked all over the bathroom, it's everywhere and smells terrible.  Do you want to go clean it up?"
ME: "Gross, nope cleaning up vomit is far above my pay grade."
HIM: "Um, okay. Well then how much would you have to make to clean it up?"
ME: "To clean up someone else's vomit? Not enough money in the world, I don't do vomit!"
HIM: *Just stares at me.*
ME: "I'll go find someone who will do vomit though, meanwhile I'd just suggest not going in there."
HIM: "What if I need to use the bathroom?"
ME: "Well unless you can be quick and hold your breath, I'd suggest going somewhere else."

I mean I know he wasn't thrilled with me. But seriously, vomit and not my own, some strangers who decided to make a mess and not clean it up? Yuck, not gonna happen. I don't do vomit!

But on that note, allow me to just say, I give complete credit to janitors, as they do a job I could never do and they don't get far enough recognition for it!  As for the public who do things in bathrooms and leave messes and just leave before anyone notices it was them. Seriously people??? Ewe!!

My niece wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up. She's always creating designs. I've been promising for a few months to come teach her how to sew.
When she got home from school I picked her up. Took her to the fabric store, let her pick out the material she liked the best.
Then we went back and we started with making one of the first things I ever made. Which was a pillow case.
She likes to add flare, so I suggested we add a ruffle to the ends, so it wasn't just a normal pillowcase.
I let her do all the sewing herself, I just pushed the pedal on the machine for her, and occasionally stopped or re-guided the fabric to get her back on track.
She did pretty good!  I told her next time we could try a nightgown or an apron, as those are both easy new to sewing projects. I had a fun time teaching her too!

This week's reads. Well to be honest, I didn't get much reading time in, in fact I didn't have a chance to pick up a book until Thursday night. But The Golden Lily was so good I seriously couldn't put it down.  Dang that made for one late night, I finished it around 2AM.  We won't even talk about how fun it was to wake up the next morning, LOL
Then the weather was so beautiful Saturday it just felt like a great day to read another book in the sun, so I grabbed the next book in Richelle Mead's Series The Indigo Spell and read it.  I am seriously loving this series much more than I ever thought I would!

Okay, so this is something I've been struggling with for a while, but I need to work much harder at it. Last fall when I had to quit working out to deal with a worse than normal flare up on my foot injury. Then this winter dealing with my back pain and having to take it easy. Let's just say, I had some pounds to loose before all of that, and then well I am not proud because I gained quite a bit more during those lazy months.

So, I bought a selfie stick. Why? Well, you may or may not have noticed I don't post a lot of pictures of myself on my blog.

Truthfully, I hate to admit this, but it's because I've put on some weight and I just don't like pictures taken of myself right now.  Yes, yes I know I should be more confident. blah blah blah..
Well I should, but I'm not and the good thing about it all, is it's something I can do something about.

So that is where the selfie stick comes in. I am going to share my weight loss journey on my blog. I took a picture (you can see it above) with it just a few days ago. I'd like to share one with each 10 pounds that I loose to show off the progress.

No, you're not getting a fully body picture, but I did take one. Maybe I will share it later after I have dropped some weight, but for now it's just for myself. So I can see where I am, where I want to go, and use it to motivate me to work on improving with eating healthier and exercising more.

The great news is, right now I can get back into exercise, it's just something that will hurt a bit more because of my back issues. But I am choosing to tell myself even that may all be in my head. (Hey, it's worth a shot, mind control ha ha..)

It's going to take a few weeks before I can do a full great 60 minute workout and keep my heart rate up the entire time. But it will eventually come. I'm not going to push anything right now too much, I've dealt with way too many injury blows and I'm skirting the lines already with a couple that may never heal and I want to see how I can work around them for now, especially with my foot work injury. That one's just gone on way too long.

So my first goal, is drop 10 pounds.  But I have a few other goals, my other is to drop 40 pounds by June 1st. That may or may not be realistic, but I like to have goals like that, that skirt the lines of possible and impossible. But I definitely thing I can.

I am going to go at this a bit more drastic to start with. Since I can't burn as many workout calories just yet each day as I ease back into it. I need to compensate for the calories in other ways. So I am going to drop down to my intake of only  1,000 calories a day. Once the workouts can increase I'll bump up the calories a few hundred daily as needed until I am back where I'd like to be on a calorie/workout plan that I can actually do as a lifestyle change.

I'm hoping the significant calorie drop will help me drop the first 10 a little faster, and build up my motivation for it so I can get excited about less weight and improvements in the way I look and feel.

My reward, well besides better health. If I can drop 40 pounds by June 1st, I am going to reward myself with a brand new Stand Up Paddle Board. They are not cheap and the one I want costs around $1,200 on sale, so the money I save from not going out to lunch or dinner and stuff, well that is going to go into the paddle board fund.

Last, I am hosting a Spring into March Giveaway Hop, you have about 1 week to decide if you want to join up with us on it. I am leaving the sign up open through March 9th.
But the hop itself runs March 14th - 25th.  I decide to not go with a theme this time around, so bloggers can choose any giveaway item they would like.
You can find all the details and the sign up HERE.

That's a few little bits of my week and what I have going on right now.  With the Grow Your Blog hop, I have been a little off my normal blogging routine, and I am looking forward to getting back on track. We had 3 great hops, a few worked better than others.  I'll have to share a little more on those after I have all the analytics pulled together on them.

So tell me, what is a goal your working on right now?

I am linking up with HoHo Runs and MissSippiPiddlin today for their Weekly Wrap!