The last two weeks I’ve been doing my best to get up and work out around 5am. Then I spend some time with my Bible and in prayer, then a nap most of the days. Been going good so far. I think I’m going to take it easier on the weekend, last thing I need is to get burned out. It can be hard to do this so early in the morning and then to chill out and get a nap, but this is the best time. I found out the first day that if I were to try and do any exercising at all during the late morning, it was too much of a distraction for Elijah during school. So to the early mornings we go, at least on school days. So far I’m told I’m down a couple of pounds, but I’m not sure how accurate that is. I’m also trying to quit soda… again. Some days I do really well, other days I fail miserably.

Part of this getting up early thing, too, is going to bed earlier. I’ve actually been doing well with that, too. My goal is to stop everything by 10:30 and be in bed by 11. In between approximately 11 to 4:30 then 6:30 to…?… I should have enough sleep. The schedules of my family members make it impossible for me to get a straight block of 8 hours anyway.

I failed with this the other night though, and was up until 1 working on mine and Stacey’s photography website. Of course, that found 4:30 nearly impossible and I only managed a weigh-in and body test before crashing again.

Speaking of photography, we now have 4 weddings for 2011 booked with another possible and a possible 2012, even. There was a 5th, but they canceled it last minute due to “military complications,” it would have been tomorrow. I know 4 doesn’t really sound like a lot but I think that’s pretty good considering we only really set this business up in September. We’re also booking other sessions and events, too, including the local women’s health fair in February. That will give us a chance to get our name out locally and start a customer base here. We didn’t think we were going to get into the fair at all, due to loyalties to this town’s one existing photography studio, but Stacey has quite the charm, and we’re in. So yay! :)

And just a little fyi, I am getting very tired of comment spam that tries to guilt me into approving comments! No, dearest spammer, I am sorry you have no page rank and “desperately need help,” but you’re not getting your junk comment on any site that I control!

I looked around and I see said “he” over by the weight machines just chatting with someone. He yelled back that he wasn’t finished yet. I kinda looked at the other guy like what? How freaking rude. I mean, he’d already done at least an hour and hadn’t been on the machine, at this point, at least 7 minutes, yet he expected to keep using it. How convenient for him that that was seriously the first day the dry erase board no longer had the text “half hour limit when someone is waiting.” I ended up going over to one of the exercise bikes ’cause I hate hate hate those stair steppers and I kicked the bike’s butt for a while. But dang, how rude can you be? If I had more guts, I guess, I could have said, “I don’t see your name on it, punk” in perfect Biff style. But that’s not me.

He came back a few minutes later and I overheard him tell the other guy that he does two hours of… something… and then two hours on the elliptical. FOUR HOURS!?!?! WHO has that kind of time!?!? Certainly not me! I just want my half an hour on the elliptical, if that, and someone else can use it and I’ll do something else if I’m not worn out. Heck, I am not even allowed to leave E in the tot drop for more than 2 hours at a time. FOUR HOURS!?

So, um, let’s see, what else has been going on?

I took E swimming this afternoon, also at the community center (photo not from today). We have a lot of fun there but we didn’t stay as long this time. I dunno what’s wrong with me, but I’ve gotten to where a lot of people overwhelm me real quick. We’d been there about an hour and 15 I think when these four women showed up, each with 3 kids. The kids started running into the water and going nuts and I just got all, ugh, I wanna leave, lol. Of course, it doesn’t help that Elijah is outgoing enough that I think he overwhelms other people. So because he can be instant friends with someone, he will just approach them and these other kids are like, DUDE, what!? And he would be happy to share his stuff (most of the time) so I think he assumes they would, too, and automatically he wants to use the stuff everyone else brought. I’m just like, ugh, let’s go get dinner, it’s time anyway.

Getting home, I saw Rimshot biting his thigh. Not a good sign. Yup, he had some fleas. The cool thing about it all, though, is that this is seriously the first time in FIVE YEARS that he’s had fleas. And I seriously think he only had 3, lol. Elijah and I ran back out and got some flea shampoo and treatment and gave Rimshot a bath immediately and there were only 3 dead fleas in the water when I was done. So I think he got a few when I took him out when I got the mail earlier. But now they’re dead. I’m happy. Elijah is happy. He found out, during the bathtime, that fleas are BUGS and I totally freaked “I don’t want fleas on ME!!!!” Well, yeah, Darlin, that’s why we’re giving the dog a bath!

Um, speaking of the mail, I got some from amazon.com today. A friend and I are going to read The Other Boleyn Girl. I kinda wanted to read it before watching the movie but I never did. I liked the movie though, we both did. It’s one of those things, we wanted to go see it together but never could get our schedules to match up. So her idea is to now read the book and try to meet together to discuss it. I’m kind of a dork though, in that I forget to check at our library for anything I want to read because I’m so used to them not having it anyway. So I ordered mine last weekend and it’s already here but now I gotta wait on her to get hers, that she requested from her library. :) I also got a couple of other books (hey, I am against paying shipping, I’d rather get some more goodies and spend $25 and get free shipping, HAHA) including End of the Spear which is another one I haven’t seen the movie yet. I’ve heard both the book and the movie are really good though. Hmmm, it’s not as if I don’t already have enough to read around here…

And hmmmm… Sahara is on TV… again. This is maybe the 4th time I’ve tried to watch this movie and I’ve never been successful. I think something about Matthew McConaughey causes me to ignore stuff… There’s just something about him I just can’t take seriously…

And hmmmmm… I have something else to say, but that will have to wait. Tomorrow or Sunday maybe (hopefully) :)

E and I went swimming this afternoon. I am back on schedule. Friday being a holiday screwed me up, but my schedule for the last two weeks is swimming on Monday and Friday and working out on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Not bad, so far so good. But ya know, when I went shopping earlier, I was going for a swimming suit. I never liked the one I have and then last week Steve threw it in the dryer so the halter strap thing is kinda cutting into me and I just hate it. But the store I went to apparently doesn’t carry swim suits (what the heck?) so I have to order it online and hope it fits. As of last Thursday, though, Elijah has finally started “swimming” on his own in his ring floatie. This is a great treat for me. Normally he was on my back, strangling me and yelling in my ear and not wanting to do anything fun. Now he even wants to go in the whirlpool so, yay. Hopefully soon I can promote him to water wings. Maybe soon we’ll get him swim lessons, too, who knows.

But suddenly I am very tired… and my jaw hurts again. Blasted wisdom teeth. Must do something about them soon…

But now, the wedding is over so I don’t have to think about that anymore, I can even cut my hair now if I want, heh. My body seems to have fully recovered from the miscarriage now, though people are telling me I still have to take it easy. I feel okay, though.

Well, I don’t feel that great about my body in general, though. So, it’s back to the gym, starting tomorrow. Ah, I guess technically that was starting today. Earlier Elijah and I went swimming and I went ahead and got a membership on monthly debit. It turns out to be more expensive than if you paid for the whole year, of course, but it also leaves me time to cancel if I need to and not lose out on 6, 8, 10 months, or whatever. Of course, I hope not to have to cancel.

Yes, I do still have that elliptical upstairs but it’s still friggin’ hard to do! I think that the stride is too short for me maybe. I still plan on using it from time to time but I think I’d rather get in GOOD solid workouts at the gym and then supplement here at home. Of course, I also plan to take Elijah swimming more.

I just wish that the hours would line up in my favor. Meaning that I have to go work out from either 8am to 12pm or 4pm to 8pm when the Tot Drop is open. I’ve only worked out after 4 once before and I really didn’t like doing that, I prefer the morning. What I’d love to do is be able to work out and then immediately go swimming after picking him up at the Drop, but open swim doesn’t start until 1pm. Theoretically, we could go home for lunch and then go back for swimming but I know that once I get home I’m going to have a tendency to not want to leave again.

Now that I look at their website though, they apparently have something called “Lap/Therapy, Mom/TotSwim” from 10:30am to 12pm on Mondays and Fridays. So I might be able to do that on Fridays, not on Mondays most likely, though.

One thing I really became aware of today, though, is that Elijah could really use some swimming lessons. Now, neither Steve nor I ever had any swim lessons. I know that I know enough to move around well and enough to, you know, keep my head out of water and apparently enough not to drown when trapped between a tree and a large raft. But Elijah just really acts like he doesn’t trust me. He’s pretty much only happy when going around on my back, squeezing the air out of my throat, and yelling in my ear which direction I should head. So I’m not sure if swim lessons at this point would really help, because he just freaks out if I even attempt to get him to do something on his own (and I had him in a life jacket today). Maybe when he’s a bit older and can chill a bit but until then, I’m required to stay with him everywhere in the pool until he knows how to swim. So I get less exercise than I’d like in there, but it’s still fun and somewhat of a workout.

(Not that I would just off and leave my kid alone in the pool, of course, but I can’t even leave him in the water that’s 2 inches deep — the pool starts like a beach, see photo left — and take a quick lap or ride down the slide or something, even though the life guard is literally right there.)

Well, anyway, it’s not all roses, Elijah did give me a bit of trouble in there (actually getting the whistle blown at him once) but that’s for another post. Probably one coming soon, oh, yeah. :P

But now, it’s off to bed, with the hopes of getting up early enough to get in a good work out tomorrow!

Something about it feels weird, though, and I’m hoping I just have to get used to it. But it’s like the 15 minutes I’ve done both today and yesterday totally killed me. Did my two weeks off cause me to be absolutely back to square one or is this machine harder? I don’t know. But oh well, 15 minutes is fine, especially if I do it at least once a day, right? Eventually I’ll work back up to a half an hour, when, hopefully, I get used to the blasted thing lol.

I also did some weights after that today. Elijah was totally freaking out about it and I said something like, be quiet, Mommy needs to be skinny. Heh. Then he told me he didn’t want me skinny that only bad people are skinny. And later on in the evening, when we were watching Hairspray, he said that Edna Turnblad was “pretty now in her dress with sparkles” after her make-over. Guess I’m lucky to have a little boy who sees beauty on the inside. :P

Of course that doesn’t change the fact I still need to get in shape!

BUT I weighed myself this afternoon and it showed me as 5lbs down from the last time I checked and so that’s good for the middle of the day, fully clothed, right? ;-)

So what’s been going on?

I’m here waiting for my friend to get here.  She’s got some appoinment here in my town and is coming over afterward, she should be here any minute.

I finally bought Hairspray on DVD the other night.  The local movie store had a buy two get two free sale again on previewed movies.  That’s about the only time I ever buy DVDs these days.  So I got Hairspray, Ocean’s Thirteen, Premonition, and Perfect Stranger.  Perfect Stranger is the only one I haven’t seen yet.  Saw Premonition when we had that girls’ party several months ago and enjoyed that.  I was going to get Deja Vu as I liked that movie, but thought Steve would like Ocean’s Thirteen better.  He kind of complained about it though, I don’t know what his deal is.  But we both ended up enjoying it I think.  Not bad when considering I’ve tried to watch Twelve twice and neither time have made it all the way through…

Um, been doing more digital scrapbooking, of course:

Also, today those three that I ordered came in.  They turned out great but one of them printed smaller at 7.25″ square instead of an even 8.  Not sure why that is.  But I think those that I printed myself turned out just as good.  Granted, if you really really look, you can tell they were done on my printer but for the most part, they’re great.  I’ve loaded all the pages I’ve done into a scrapbook now and they look awesome.

I’ve run into a bit of trouble with ink, though.  I used to take all my old cartridges to Staples and get a $3 voucher for each one of them, right?  Once I took in 8 and so I got $24, so I spent less than $10 on a pack of color and black ink.  However, recently, Staples instituted this new policy that you can’t use more than 3 of the vouchers at a time.  So the last time I only got $9 off my purchase and went home with $9 in vouchers that subsequently expired a couple of months later.  You see, the nearest Staples is about 60 miles from me.  So last week we happened to notice a store in a town half an hour from here that’s called Cartridge World.  I went in there last week with five cartridges and bought refilled ones, black for something like $9 each and color for $11.something each.  Of course, my printer totally freaked when I put in one of the black ones.  AND, today it was printing blank, I only used it a handful of times.  I certainly didn’t get $9 + tax worth of ink out of it.  So, yeah, they’re going to hear from me next time I’m in that town… :P

Did I mention that my friend is always late, no matter where she goes?

I’ve been selling Nutmeg & Cedar candles like crazy.  That’s always good.  :)  Have a new batch going now, it helps with that scent to always have some wax on hand ready to pour.  My big problem though, is that I’m under jar shortage.  The places I buy them seem to have stopped carrying them and now they’ve gone out of season.  I’m grabbing them from wherever I can get them but none are really the type I want.

A website and a few other things I did brought me a very lovely thank you card with a crisp $100 bill inside today.  I totally wasn’t expecting that and it was a nice surprise.  If you’re out there — thanks :)

Been trying to make Elijah clean his room up.  Seems that telling him to clean his room is the only sure way to get him to play with his toys.  Each time I check on him seems his room is messier than the last time… including the stuff I helped him clean up.  Guess it will be a never-ending battle.

Didn’t make it to the gym today.  I want to go back to going twice a week but honestly don’t want to pay for it.  :P  I still need to call our insurance to see if they cover memberships at all.  I keep forgetting during business hours.  But I know I can’t go work out on Thursday so I wanted to do Monday and Wednesday this week.  Looks like it’s going to be Tuesday and Wednesday or Friday.  :P

My class starts up again in three weeks.  I have until then to figure out what to do with the boys and my friend and I could work out together afterward.

Ohh think my friend is here…