multipurposegoddess

I am FINALLY getting some dumplings made. I have cauliflower leek soup simmering on the stove with the dumping dough chilling in the fridge, along with ha chicken and some ingredients to make Chicken in a Pot. We'll eat well tomorrow, and probably for a few days after since I didn't cut the recipe down any...

Freezer is good and full of baked goods. It's time to make pancakes and bagels again in a few days, and there are still some in the freezer from last time! So Operation Sourdough is looking very successful. Passover is going to throw me all off, but I'll worry about that when I have to.

Operation Eat Out on Saturdays sort of got underway. We did go out last Saturday, but the new place we wanted to go to had a 45 minute wait, so we went to the Main Street Bar and Grill, which is actually a fancier place than it sounds, French fusion, maybe? Anyway, it's been our go-to nice place, we've been there q fair amount, but they changed the menu and the decor a little bit recently, so it wasn't too same-old same-old going there. And it's alway good. We'll make reservations this Saturday, I think.

( I don't mean to save up all my words and then go all tl:dr, but that seems to be how it works out... )

So, nesting is going well, I guess. I may be ready to branch out into other things soon, we'll see.

4.5 lbs down this month. That puts me at a lower weight than I have been for at least a year. It's a measurable difference in all of my, er, measurements - waist, bust, etc. - but I have yet to go down a size. Of course, today I am all bloated with extra menstruation weight, so maybe something that hasn't fit in a while will again, soon.

I was finally getting some consistency to my exercise routine and the this weekend I was just wiped out and barely able to stand, so I'm not sure where to aim for this week. I'm dialing it back a little bit in hopes that I won't wear myself out again, or whatever that was, but I don't want to cut back too much, either.

H sticking to a regular routine should help with that. When I know when he's doing what, I can plan when I'm doing things either with him or on my own, and I do love a plan, so I hope this trend continues.

We went from 7-days (all three meals for me, breakfast and dinner only for H) eating DietToGo down to 5 lunch and dinner. Adjusting to breakfast has been easy enough, I have a good idea of what kind of caloric levels work for me for breakfast at this point  and I've got a few stand-by meals that are generally satisfying. I really missed being able to eat out occasionally, so I'm glad to have that option back, but I'm not entirely confident that my choices for lunches and dinners off the plan are healthy ones. It's the trade-off, if I want the freedom to eat out I have to give up the certainty that the nutrition is all figured out for me. Going okay so far, I think.

I rearranged most of the living room over the last few days, and that meant moving around things in breakfast nook, as well. I think it's better. Still have to swap the piano and comfy chair, and figure out what to do with the thing H calls a divan (I think Target referred to it as a cushioned bench, it's got kind of a fainting couch aspect to it). It may fir where I want it, it may not. But I've got the crystal and purple glass on display where we can actually see it, which is nice, and the loveseat is against the wall so it won't keep sliding backwards like it used to, and I can see out the picture window while I sit on it if I just turn my head (which I didn't think would work, that's a pleasant surprise), and the rug still works, now with more room for Yoga. Seems like better chi flow.

What was happening with me yesterday? Oh, right:

• 11:14 Jaunting off to Golden Gte Park for a fe hours. #fb
• 11:17 losing letters randomly, yay
• 11:17 Jaunting off to Golden Gate Park for a few hours #fb
• 20:29 Fabuous day! Walter and I walked about 5 miles while Henry rode the bike that is probably going to be his, now, for several hours. Yay! #fb

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This is the type of outing that makes me love the Nike+. Henry was learning to ride a bike (!) in a 3-hour class at Golden Gate Park, so we drove over with the bike and the dog in the back of the station wagon. Walter and ambled around aimlessly - I've only ever been there to go to something specific, concerts or museum exhibits or whatever, so aimless wandering was a new and very fun experience - and when I got home and plugged the Sportband thingy into a USB port (I just love that, it seems so secret agent or living-in-the-future to basically pull the watchface off and plug it into a computer and have actual information get transferred) it told me how far we'd walked in our ambling and how fast we'd gone and now that I am all sore on Monday morning I can at least tell myself that it's because I walked much farther than usual even though I would never have guessed that absent-mindedly wandering around could be a workout.

I'm shifting my morning run to Sun-Tues-Thursday because there are classes at the new gym I want to take on Monday and Wednesday and it works out a little more conveniently with H's work schedule, anyway. So, I went this morning. Sort of.

First of all, I didn't want to get up at all, so I didn't until after 8. The I had a rough time getting my shoes on. That's right, putting my running shoes on was a challenge this morning. They're this tongueless wraparound design that is pretty comfortable once it's on, but a pain in the ass to actually get onto my foot. It's easier if I don't wear socks, which is why I have been experimenting with running without socks, but that only works for really really short periods of time. Like 5 minutes.

Then finding my heart rate monitor took a while, and figuring out how to carry the two iPods that are necessary for my current system since, no, none of my workout clothes have pockets,  and while the Nano clips onto a waistband ok the Touch most certainly does not.

Finally, I set off around 9, grumpy, sure it will be Too Hot, but grimly determined to get this damn workout in on schedule. The dog is happy and I have some music going, so it's not all bad. First run, I start at too fast a pace and can't keep it up for the full 90 seconds. Second run I go slower, still slow to a walk before I am supposed to. By the third run, I am ready to sit on a bench for a bit.

Walter is a sweet nonjudgmental dog and accepts that we are walking home from that point with good grace.

Which all would be much less discouraging if I hadn't had a much easier time last week. WTF, body?

On the plus side, my new sports bra worked great, is comfortable, and is even pretty, which I totally didn't expect.

What was happening with me yesterday? Oh, right:

• 09:18 Should go to Costco.
• 15:28 Went to Wild Birds instead of Costco. And now to the gym. Poor neglected Costco must suffer without me a while longer.
• 22:34 Thoroughly enjoyed Watchmen. I think not re-reading before I saw it was the right choice.

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So I actually went swimming yesterday, which was pretty much my purpose in joining the gym, to have a pool. 6 minutes. 2 laps. HR Zone 3. It's gonna take a long time to get me up to a reasonable amount of swimming as exercise. I think the most practical thing for me to do will be to make a dedicated trip in the middle of the afternoon wearing my suit and a cover-up so I can just dash in and do my tiny bit of swimming and coming home to shower and change, stick to the treadmill when I go with DH because the timing is easier to manage that way. Fortunately, the gym is 5-10 minutes away by car, so I should be able to get over my instinctive but-I-need-to-do-at-least-two-things-while-I-am-out-and-about. I don't even know where that comes from, to be honest. And I"m certainly not up to every day, yet...

I dropped off my prescription for Adderall at the pharmacist two weeks ago. They told me that my insurance wouldn't cover it without a pre-authorization from my doctor, and that I should call in 24 hours to see if that had gone through. So, I call them back and they say they haven't heard anything from the doctor, I should pester her. So I call the doctor, the receptionist tells me that it takes a bunch of time for these things to go through the whole process, call back next Monday. I called back today, and a different receptionist tells me that they never received whatever the pharmacy faxes to them (at least, there's nothing in my file to indicate that they did) to start the whole process, so we are starting over from scratch today.

So frustrating.

On the upside, I walked the dog down to Bab's today, which made for a nice 20 minute walk that didn't come close to burning the calories in the cheeseburger I picked up for lunch, but still, better than not going for a walk.

Naptime