There is no Alanna, only Zuul!

I kid, but it's true that I haven't been feeling like myself lately. All I want to do is overload on sugary carbs. Yum and yuck all rolled into one. At least now that I am conscious of it, I can try to manage it. I've got to start tracking, you know, like I should be doing because I'm paying for Weight Watchers. At this rate, I'll never lose the baby fat and I don't even want to think about the fat from before Alexander came. Yowzers!

On the upside of things, I did quit my big money gym and I joined Curves and am now paying less than half what I used to. I also have been going 3 times a week during my lunch break. It's a tight squeeze, but I don't have to do it in the afternoons when I prefer to spend my time with this little guy:

He's covered in green beans and bananas in this picture...but he's cute anyway, so who cares?

I also bought myself a new camera. My old camera was working fine, but the time between pictures was excruciatingly long for using with a baby, so my mom and I went to one of those big box stores...specifically the one that is going out of business and took a look at cameras. A nice man showed me a really cool camera that was on sale, but as it turns out they were out of them. I found the same camera online at Amazon for less. So I bought it and an 8 gig memory stick. I take tons and tons of pictures now. I'm loving it.

In other news, poor Reuben's OCD and separation anxiety was getting worse. When we would leave him alone in his doggy safe area in our new house, he would rub his nose on the door until it bled. When we put up a nice doggy gate, he bit into it and spent the hour trying to (and finally succeeding) jump over it. This is a familiar space to him... we spend time as a family in this space. We tried more exercise and spending more time in the doggy safe area to no avail. His vet decided to change his meds. My poor sweet doggie is now on Prozac. Real, human Prozac. He's been on it for almost 2 weeks and we see subtle differences: He jumps readily into the car, when before we had to cajole him a little bit. His turn and scratch OC behavior on his dog bed has lessened. What's even better is that he's the same silly dog that we all know and love.

This is all I can think of for now. Perhaps I will be back later!

Trying to be smarter

I am trying to be smarter these days about food and money. As I'm sure you all know, both are so hard to be smart about. I am taking good steps forward. Now that we're mostly unpacked, Chris and I have been cooking dinner at home, and bringing lunch most days. We even stopped buying cookies. Instead, if we want cookies we bake them ourselves, but not the whole batch. We freeze at least half the dough so we can't binge eat cookies. So food is getting better in that sense...and so is money as a result.

Money is a touchy subject for me. I feel as if things are out of control...they actually aren't, but with the move, the new house and Christmas gifts just purchased last credit card statement, things can seem overwhelming. I did quite my big fancy $102 a month gym (and that was with a discount) and joined Curves, which is much cheaper and I can go during my lunch...it's that close to work. I'm still doing Starbucks only once per work week...I will occasionally have some on the weekend if I'm meeting a friend for coffee or something, but that's still saving me cash.

I don't think I'm doing the resolution thing this year...I find that I never fulfill them and I find that depressing. I do want to set goals for myself. One goal for 2009 is to cut my non-mortgage debt down by a minimum of 20%. This included student loans, credit cards (with home construction stuff on it), personal loan and car loan. That is a lot of $$ and if I can make some of it disappear, I am going to do it!

Doors in the Men

Yay for Pumkin ice cream! I didn 't occur to me that Edy's would have a season ice cream for Thanskgiving...but hello, I read all about it on Sarah's blog Living to Feel Good. No less than 10 minutes after reading about it, Chris and I were in the car on the way to the store to search for some. We found 1 container left, encased in ice and it's been downhill ever since...but downhill in the most tasty way.

I also saw another World of Warcraft reference on TV today. I was (regrettably) listening to America's Most Smartest Model while I was using my sewing machine (Listen...I need brainless background noise when I use the machine). On it they set up teams of 2 models to do fake sunscreen ads...then at the last minute, they threw each team one "nerd" who has done nothing but "play World of Warcraft for the last 4 (?) months". They were pasty beings. I'm not sure how I feel about being a "nerd"...I prefer "gamer geek".

I can't wait until Sunday when I can reveal what I've been working on. It's for a friend of mine, and I'll be giving it to her on Sunday. I will be sure to take picture of the mystery item. I can't wait! Actually, I can't wait to finish it so I can make some evil sock monkeys for fun...and possible profit. I'm considering putting some on Etsy. I'll have to see how that works out, but that's to be discussed on another day.

On an exercise note: Today was back and biceps at the gym, and tomorrow will be a nice run...I have to do that after my reading team members and I interview another candidate. Should be interesting.

Save some funk for Sunday

I love Yahoo's subject-o-matique. It's a title lifesaver for me at times.

So, whooo, I haven't been here in nearly a week! I haven't exactly had blogger time this past week. The English teacher at my school was out until Friday afternoon, so either I was teaching English (I have the license, so I might as well pitch in) or helping the sub by giving her the class plans, removing disruptive kids, teaching the harder classes for her (there's no teacher aid to help out). Plus, I was doing my own job as best I could. I was keeping appointments with my scheduled reading students, plus, I was asked to write an unofficial reading report at the last minute. Yikes! It all got done...the district was happy with the reading information, determined they wanted him to get one to one reading and they are now paying my school extra for reading services. The kid is happy, the district is happy, and my school's billing office is happy.

I also re-entered my gym a couple of times this past week and I went running twice. I am a maniac....actually, that 's not true. I decided to stop worrying about nonsense and I decided to start training for the Webster Lake Danskin Tri that is held in July. I haven't done it in 2 years, and I figure if I focus on training for that I'll a) have time to sort things out mentally as I run...and that's when I do some really great thinking and b)I'll fall asleep quicker at night and won't have time to worry about useless things. It seems to be working.

So, between being tired from work, and then hitting the gym or trail, I have been too exhausted to do anything!

Deadly week

I'd like to start by asking, "Where the hell did the week go?" I was going to post on Sunday while I was working at the library, except the security guard decided not to do any rounds and just sit at my desk and use the other computer. I didn't feel comfortable writing in my blog with him looking over my shoulder every 5 minutes. I hate that. It makes me feel ooky.

I haven't been following core this week. I think about 3/4 of my meals have been core. Better than nothing, and I refuse to get bent out of shape about it. Next week is a new week, and it's not as if I've been shoving food into my cake hole. I'm fine with it. It's mostly done. Whatever. Tomorrow night is weigh in and we'll see what happens.

Today I took Reuben for a nice walk. We usually don't go for walks. Usually he runs around my parents back yard with their dog, Una. I was happy that I got him out. He got to meet 2 dogs. One was a little beagle whose owner was worried about the size difference between them. When I told her that Reu's new best friend is Rascal, the mini dachshund who lives next door she was relieved. The other dog was Jake, who came bounding at us from across the street. Unleashed dogs make me uneasy. I don't know if I've explained Reu's situation completely. Reuben suffers from OCD and anxiety. He's on anxiety meds. He's not terrible good at meeting new people, unless they have dogs with them. It could be that people who have dogs just exude dog confidence, or that Reuben is distracted by the possibility of a new buddy. Who knows. Not me. So, I've got this strange dog running at us at full speed. Although Reuben likes most dogs, he doesn't like all dogs, and this very well could be one that he will not like. The strange dog's mom is yelling, "Jaaaaaaake, noooooooooo". Reuben has his hackles up. I'm putting myself in between the 2 yelling, "Is your dog friendly?" Jake was very friendly. Reuben was not exactly happy with Jake, but he didn't growl or show teeth either. I think he was put off by the fact that Jake came bounding out of no where. Now we're sitting on the couch, I'm typing, Reuben is asleep ( a result of over-stimulation: mental, physical and anxiety).

Ooooh, one last thing. I finally made it to the gym yesterday and I plan to go tomorrow, too! Woohoo for me!

Day by day

I went to Target today and bought myself some stuff to help get back into gear. I got my self a small blue spiral bound notebook to use to journal my food. I also bought 2 athletic skorts! One of them is nice enough to double for work...like I can work and then just go running in it. How awesome is that.

I've decided that as part of this 600th new beginning, I'm going to take things in small increments....like 2 hours at a time.