Slurries and Goals

Adam and I began eating an invention of his father's, that we all just call slurry, in the beginning of January. Slurry is comprised of a mixture of natural peanut butter, sunflower kernels, wheat germ, flax seed, cocoa, black strap molasses and blueberries, wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla. It provides 100% nutritional value. I have never been a person to eat berries, really of any kind, so the blueberries freaked me out a little bit, but after a month of eating it pretty regularly, I've gotten used to it. We started eating two a day, breakfast and lunch, and then a healthy dinner. Now we both are down to eating just one during the day and a healthy dinner.

Due to the unseasonably nice weather we have been having, Adam and I sometimes take walks around our neighborhood in the evening, and a few times we actually got up in time to do this before work. He's participating at his work in a "Biggest Loser" sort of competition. He is doing really well. I am doing okay, but could do better. I've lost about 5 or 6 pounds this month, and I can't complain about that at all. I am hoping to lose something in the neighborhood of 50 pounds. I know it can't happen over night but I hope I hit a better stride than 5 pounds a month soon. I hope to lose at least 10 in February. Here goes!

This Happened

Yesterday marked the close of a chapter in my life that I can look back on with a myriad of emotions. In May 2007, I started my first 'real' job with benefits and yearly salary. Landing that job was the single best thing that happened in 2007 - it was otherwise a pretty rough year. I was so happy and excited to be a part of the company. I was so grateful to my cousin Erika for submitting the referral that got the ball rolling. I finally felt like positive changes were happening and I could finally climb out of the spiral I felt I was in at that time. It was exactly what I needed to move forward in life.

I rode the city buses to and from work every day for the first year or more. I shopped in my sister-in-law and mother-in-law's closet for business casual clothing to wear (thanks, you two), along with any steals I could find in thrift and discount stores. Even though they were paying me more than I'd ever made up to that point, there just wasn't money in the budget for an on-season wardrobe from Kohls or Macy's. During training, my new teammates threw me a surprise birthday party when I turned 26 - they brought in food and treats and I felt, in all the other tumult going on in my life, like I was a part of something. It was grounding me, because I could see from the other tenured employees that things were going to get better for me.

I threw myself into that job the first year. I wanted to sort of fast-track myself to bigger and better things. I took the elevator to the third floor every day and exited it with a smile and positive attitude, that is the truth. I felt so lucky to be there. When they asked for volunteers to learn a new process or business area, I jumped on board. In May 2008, things were much better than how they had started, and I had been promoted. I continued to volunteer for side projects and prided myself on being a team player. I had friends at work, in a few different circles. I was networking and people started to know who I was.

While I was being a total rock star at work, the US economy was faltering, and in early November 2008, I lost nearly all of my work-friends to the bleak economy. That was a hard day. It was scary. And it got scarier. Everything changed, seemingly overnight.

For the nearly three years that followed, I still wanted to do a good job, and I did a good job. But I started to feel like a different path might be better for me. I decided to go back to school to forge a new path for myself, while working as well. It was difficult to juggle full time work and at least half-time school, as well as taking care of my family, but we did it. And I couldn't have done it at all, if it weren't for my incredibly supportive husband Adam. I went to work, did my job, and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Until yesterday.

Because I have already begun forging a different path for myself, this transition isn't shattering. Now I can accomplish my goals just a little faster, which is great. But it is unsettling to know there is a place to which I used to belong, that I don't anymore. That whoever is left just keeps on trucking there, and my absence will go, likely, largely unnoticed. In the end, I was treated very fairly, so I hold no animosity. I am ready for Kansas City life v3.0 to begin.

My Perception of Popularity and Its Consequences

It has been a very long time since I concerned myself with the idea of popularity among peers, well over a decade for sure. So, after much time not agonizing over why someone is doing 'better' socially than others, here I am again, trying to figure it all out. I suspect that this is futile, but I am wrecked about it anyway.

I never spent any real time in the popular crowd. There were a few times I could have, but the dorkiness shined through too brightly for those small windows of opportunity to remain open, I guess. Often, once it was determined (at a meeting? I still don't know how...) that I was actually not very cool, whichever popular girl had befriended me for a minute (usually in the first few days of "new-girl-dom"), quickly turned her back on me and it was clear I was no longer part of their system.

Most of the time, this didn't bother me, because even if I wasn't one of 'the preps' (as the in-crowd was referred to in Camden AR... yes believe it or not, rural Arkansas has an in-crowd... something that still baffles me to this day) I still had solid friendships. They were not numerous, but we had each other, and for the most part, the preps didn't waste time making us feel crappy. They were just a larger and wealthier group, with cuter boyfriends. That's all. Not really vindictive, aside from the occasional mockery of our Walmart shoes. So I guess I didn't really have it so bad. Some girls had it so much worse looking back. There were the overweight girls, the generally ugly girls, the one with warts and scoliosis (poor thing), the girls who were really poor, the girls with weirder hair than even I, the smelly girls, etc. There was something about them, whether controllable by them or not, that the rest of the kids picked apart. I am so ashamed to say that I wasn't exactly above that sort of behavior at the time. There's no need to quantify -- making fun of people is shitty whether it's once or every day.

All of this back-story leads me to the now. When my only child, a beautiful and amazing ten year old girl, who does not possess even one of the qualities that I have witnessed in my life as being a catalyst for mockery and bullying, is bullied every day. She's skinny. She has straight teeth thanks to braces. She is clean. I am insanely jealous of her hair. She dresses in new clothes pretty much quarterly. Her parents make pretty good money. I never shop at Walmart. She is bright and all around awesome. She has style. But she has been mercilessly picked on since Kindergarten, and with age, it's getting worse.

I have seen these other girls, the ones who think they're better than her and put her down, and i don't see how they think they're so special. Some of them have the qualities found in the previously mentioned mocked girls. I don't think it's jealousy, I think that is something people say because they don't really know. I mean, I don't recall making fun of anyone I was jealous of. Except Britney Spears.

When we were kids, and others made fun of us, it didn't really extended past the school, or even that school year. But now, kids are making Facebook hate groups, posting lies, embarrassing stories, pictures etc. online, and there it exists forever-ish. Some may say that bullying is no worse now than back then, we all lived through it, not so bad, kids these days just need thicker skin, etc. But it is worse, because of the permanence and public forum for such things. And this is why I don't think bullying should be tolerated as part of growing up. But it is tolerated, and sometimes advocated by parents and other adults in a child's life, and they don't even notice that they're doing it. So I implore everyone, with kids or without, to watch the things you say about other people around kids. They pick up more than you think, and learning that its okay to be a bully is a lesson that should never be taught.

One Month: 3 Homes

So... the Smithville situation didn't work out. I wanted to make it work, I wanted it to be great. But there comes a time when you just have to walk away from a bad decision.

We took possession of the Smithville house in late June, and once we picked up the keys, we smelled trouble. Literally. It smelled like every cat in a 5 mile radius had taken up residence and litter-box territory inside the house. It was truly terrible. And I am not a super-smeller by any means -- most of the time I can't smell anything unless its either very strong or directly on my nostril. So walking in to this house and smelling what I smelled, I assumed that it had to actually be a lot worse than what I was experiencing. And it was bad.

So the first week we had keys, instead of moving stuff from our old place, we went over there every day to spread out baking soda on all areas of all carpets in all the rooms (good thing it was small and there were only 4 of these areas), and then come back the next day and vacuum, and spread some more baking soda. I even bought like $50 worth of air fresheners and smelly-goods, hoping that the combination of it all would provide some relief and the smell would settle. After about a week of this, we decided that maybe if we just got our stuff in there, and started living in it, the smell would settle. So we got a moving truck and with some help, moved our stuff in.

We waited another week, this time living there, with all of our stuff, and it didn't get better. In fact, with the heat in triple digits for most of this time, the smell got worse and worse. Then we began to experience other problems that we were willing to look over before, due to the great lake access and small-town atmosphere. It became obvious during this time living there for a week that the situation was not improving and we hated it there. We wanted out.

Adam called the landlord and explained the situation, and as much as this could have been an extra terrible situation since we had signed a lease, he was very gracious and let us out of it, and refunded our deposit in full. I had to scramble to find a different place that we could move in to pretty much right away, and after a few tries, I was able to find a townhouse community in the Northland near Zona Rosa, for a good price. With the help of some family and a truck, we were able to get moved, again. This time, for at least a period no less than 13 months. So far we really like our new place, and though it's in a different school district, Carisma won't be too far from some of her old friends from her old school. Adam is closer to work and I am happier as we are near all of the 'stuff.' We've started taking walks as a family since there are sidewalks everywhere, too. Good news all around.

I look forward to starting August off in a much better state of mind than I started off with in July.

Try, Try Again.

It's been a while. I'm a busy gal. Well, most of the time. Some of the time I am simply too lazy, or better yet, too overstimulated to formulate enough coherent and related thoughts to put them down. I need to center myself a little bit, and I suppose there's no time like the present.

At last posting, I was still hoping to start the nursing program with Penn Valley this fall. That's not happening - I didn't make the cut. I suppose they have their reasons, and all I can do is try to push forward from here. I plan to apply again in August to start in January, but after the upset the rejection letter caused me last time, I'm not holding my breath. At this point, there is little difference in the amount of time it would take to complete the Associates Degree Nursing program and a Bachelor's in Nursing. So whatever will happen will happen and I am prepared to move forward regardless of what the letter says this time.

After living in our current house for 3 years, Adam and I have decided to take up residence in Smithville, Missouri. It's about 6 miles north of where we are currently, but the change of scenery should do us all some good. Carisma is looking forward to starting fresh at a new school, and Adam and I are both looking forward to the relaxing atmosphere the town has to offer. Right now, our current street is under construction, the barricades are literally feet from our driveway, and there has never been a sidewalk so we feel often cooped up. The new area is an older neighborhood, and the house isn't exactly perfect, but it will do for a while. We are looking forward to walking the trails, hanging by the lake, maybe we'll even pick up bike-riding. Who knows. We are both looking at this move to a neighborhood like this as a means of getting back to healthy shape, as we are both far from that right now.

All my adult life, I have craved new-ness. Not necessarily new things - that I really couldn't care less about - but new experiences. I am not exactly the most adventurous person, but I really enjoy the feeling of a new, fresh experience. I have felt like I'm in "the waiting place" for quite some time. Even though I'm working towards a goal, it sometimes feels like I am running on a treadmill that is going faster than I can. I assume I still will feel that way for the most part, as it is, simply put, reality. But to experience a different waiting room is something I look forward to greatly.

Falling Off the Wagon Hurts

I have skipped two days of workouts. My back is killing me. I suspect the two are related. When I am working out I feel more limber and spry, and right now all I can feel is pain from my ribcage to my knees, radiating out from my lower back. See, this is what happens when you fall of the wagon. My body is totally like, "Eff You."

I clocked in to work early this morning so I could have time later to do the workout I skipped doing with Adam & Summer last night. I was mostly asleep at 10pm when they were ready to do it, and knowing I had to work today, decided not to get up and exercise since that would eat up the next 2 hours or so, an hour for working out and an hour for showering/winding down. So I just slept. I wish I had gotten up and just done it.

I'm going to do Shoulders & Arms after work, and then hopefully Yoga later on this evening. I must get back in the swing of things or I will feel and look like this forever, and that's just not an option for me anymore.

I Wouldn't Say That Was Easy...

Today marks day 8/90 of our P90X workout regimen. While Adam is away on business and making due with hotel fitness equipment, Summer and I are keeping it going here at home. Since its the start of week 2, we just do the same workouts we just did per day for last week. The switch-up happens in week 4. So we did Chest & Back again tonight, Plyometrics tomorrow. And you know what?

WE KILLED IT!!

Now its important to note that by "killed it" i mean that we both improved from last week. We by no means did as much as the psychos in the video. But we are proud of us right now. We didnt wear out as fast as last time, and we both did more repititions than we could do at the beginning. I feel a lot better and i am starting to feel a tiny bit more fit.

But there's somewhat discouraging news, too. I have lost ONE pound. Just... one. And that hardly counts as a person's weight fluctuates by 2 or 3 pounds each day. I know that i didnt pack this weight on in one week, and i know it will take a while to see the results I'm looking for. While I presently don't see the results, i can feel them. This is as much about health and well-being to me as it is about looking great (or gosh, even good) in a bathing suit, or even just a pair of shorts. So i am not going to focus on the weight loss, it will come with time. It's only been a week. I am not going to stress about that piece.

So I'm pretty proud of us right now for keeping our game faces on. It is not easy, but its totally worth it.

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