What’s new

We are planning a second trip to FTL over spring break to look at the Coral Springs high schools as well as drive around more neighborhoods there since that is now where our school/house search is focused.

Things at our house are coming along. The master bath is tiled and next week will see the back half of the house re-carpeted and the kitchen cabinets repainted. Calgon will be able to take me away again very soon! Also, we’re getting a couple of estimates on landscaping work this week. Target date for completion is 19 March.

Today is a certain somebody’s 16th birthday. Sadly, no license for him since you now have to wait a minimum of 12 months after getting your permit, which he didn’t do until April. We’re going out for a family dinner at his favorite Mexican restaurant.

My grandmother has pneumonia. I hope it’s her time – it’s been nearly a decade since she knew any of us, and years since she’s carried on a conversation or been able to walk. I know she’s been ready.

Spinning head

So, we made it back from our trip safely. It was truly an eye opening experience, in a mixed way. The schools were a pleasant surprise and the boy was very impressed. One school was clearly not an option, but the other 2 looked great. So I feel a lot better knowing that we’ll be able to get him into a really good high school. Then we looked at houses.

What a shock. Sure, the housing market in south Florida may have fallen 50%, but they are still priced higher than here. A lot higher. What that means in practical terms is that 1) we’re looking a little farther out than originally planned and 2) we’ll have to look hard and weigh priorities carefully. We’ll be able to find a house, but compromises will need to be made in terms of space in the house and/ or yard, age of house, etc. But the 2 cities I thought I wanted to look at were immediately taken off the table as options – we simply can’t afford either one. I mean, we can certainly find a house – just not one that we’d live in that’s also in a neighborhood we’d live in.

I posted for my job yesterday. That’s just a formality and once the paperwork is done the process begins. We can move whenever we’re ready, as long as it’s before the end of the year!! Since school registration is going on now and school starts mid August, the clock is ticking. We need to get there as soon as possible to get school registration taken care of. The house goes on the market 1 April. As of now, we are not planning to go to Pennsic. I just don’t see the logistics working out. Needless to say, everyone is majorly disappointed by that.

Anyway, still here, bumbling along.

Laughter is the best medicine

I’ve been so stressed out lately that it’s a wonder my head hasn’t exploded. Driving home from work yesterday I was talking to my mom about how much we have to get done around the house to get it ready to go on the market and how little time we have and how my husband doesn’t seem to understand how little time we have left. I decided that after dinner we really needed to sit down with a calendar and a list of what needed to be done and work on a schedule.

Then I got home and realized I was dealing with Captain Cranky Pants and quickly changed my plans. I know he’s dealing with a lot – we all are. Once Obstinate Boy got home I gave him permission to go to the mall with a friend to get new shoes. Then I made my husband sit down, drink a couple of beers (over the course of the evening), and watch a funny movie. We watched “Step Brothers” with Will Farrell, which is stupid but really funny if you happen to like his brand of humor. So I think it helped both of us to sit down & laugh together. There hasn’t been much of that around our house lately.

Between everything that has to be done and how much it’s all costing, we’ve all been on edge. There’s just so much uncertainty it’s hard not to be. But it was nice to sit down, laugh, and remember that life is good even when it’s tough.

Where I've been, what I've been doing

Let's see.... Home improvement continues, with the kitchen mostly put back together and the back of the house largely decluttered. Hopefully this weekend will see the floor finished and the front of the house completely put back in order.

Looking at houses and schools in Ft. Lauderdale in prep for our trip on thursday. Dealing with a realtor who doesn't seem to be listening. Not impressed so far. I'll meet with her, but I don't see us working with her for the actual purchase unless she totally wows me in person.

We've all had the flu. I'm doing better but still have a persistent cough. I can't imagine why my immune system would be depressed.

Right now I don't feel like I'm dealing with this stuff very well - I'm tired, overwhelmed, and tired.

I know it's not the end of the world or anything, but honestly for me to have my house as torn up as it is now is a huge source of stress. I am way to organized and OCD to deal with anarchy very well.

But... that's life. :-) Hope you have a good day!

Update

I'm still alive. Today will be my first full day at work since Thursday. I'm feeling better, but still tired.

House is slowly coming back together. Hub got a lot accomplished over the weekend - I did not.

We are heading to Fla next week to look at schools and houses.

Weight is the same. Hopefully I'll be up to exercising again in the next couple of days.

Sick

I have been sick since Friday with the nasty fever cold nasty hanging on cough things that is going around. I'm sure my stress levels + tiredness have contributed to a depressed immune system.

Anyway, I cam in for part of the day today because I had something I had to get done for my boss. Then I'm filling a prescription and heading home.

Quick check-in

Yesterday afternoon I went to the work gym with Lisa and did a tough 30 minute workout on the elliptical. She is getting married in May and wants to make sure she can fit in her wedding dress, so she is looking for a workout buddy and some accountability. Works out perfect for me!

I am working at home today (having someone come & do some work on the siding & cleaning the gutters) so I won't make yoga at lunch or the gym with Lisa. However, I have cleaned out enough stuff in my bedroom that I have room to do weights & exercises, so that's my plan for today.

Last night's dinner was white bean soup from the freezer with a big salad. I have stuff for the crockpot tomorrow and another thing of soup for Friday. The kitchen should be back online Saturday night, but I may do another crockpot meal just to be safe. I love my crockpot.

I got on the scale again this morning. Last week I asked Allan to assume I was the same as the week before (for the purposes of his weight loss challenge) because I couldn't find my scale and just didn't know. Yesterday I was a pound higher than that and this morning I was down to that weight. So, I've stayed the same for a week and a half. While this is hardly the intent of a weight LOSS challenge, I'm glad I'm not heading in the wrong direction!

I cleared a small workspace in the kitchen last night, so that's helpful. Honestly, I look around this house and I feel like I have so much work to do, it gets a bit overwhelming.

Have a good day.

The daily report

I went yesterday afternoon to the gym with my co-worker. I thanked her for inviting me and I intend to invite her today. While lunchtime yoga was not at relaxing as it normally is (it's very difficult to quiet my brain these days), it felt good to go and stretch and be quiet for an hour.

Dinner last night was salad and a baked spagetti that my mom brought over. The kitchen is still offline and will be for a while. Tonight hub needs to do siding. When he replaced the french doors last week, we discovered that the old ones weren't a standard size - they were larger. So the new openings needed to be smaller, which means that on the outside of the house we now have an outline around the door frames where the Tyvek is exposed and there is no siding. So the siding on both those walls needs to be replaced. Neither wall is big - thankfully it's a strange little L shaped "indention" in the footprint of the house around where the deck is. I think both walls are maybe 10 feet long. Nevertheless, we may get rain tomorrow so this is priority 1, with getting the kitchen up and running relegated to priority 2. We won't discuss the master bath as I would cry.

The plan for dinner tonight is a salad (a bit of a challenge since I have no work surface cleared to actually do any food prep!) and either leftover casserole or a container of vegetable soup from the freezer, with bread for the guys. Thankfully, the microwave is still accessible.

The guys moved a bunch of stuff out of the master bedroom and into the storage unit last night - I found my scale! I got on it this morning and I gained a pound last week. Not happy about that, but now at least I know so I can move forward.

Breakfast today was a veggie omelet. Snacks are 1) almonds & prunes and 2) 2 clementines. Lunch is a frozen Amy's organic tv dinner and dinner I already discussed. After work I need to pick up some more fresh fruit.

I plan to work out at the office gym today. There is water aerobics and spin at the gym tonight but this is the month that they are remodeling the women's locker room, so last week I had to empty my locker at the Y. I think the contents are in a grocery bag, but their precise location is currently unknown. So my swim suit and spin shorts are MIA.

Co-workers who have lived there keep telling me the schools in Ft. Lauderdale are terrible. Hopefully I can get some more specific information from a real estate agent when they are onsite this week. That is my current HUGE stress point about this move. I don't want my son in a bad school - even if it's only for 2 years.

Hub's stress point is how much work he has to get done to get the house ready to be put up for sale. I jokingly told him that the month of February should be subtitled "28 days of hell" since our goal is to have the house 99% ready to go at that point. I feel like mid-March is the absolute latest we can get it on the market if we want to get it sold.

Okay, enough whining! Have a good day.

Good things

1. The weather this weekend was beautiful, in the mid 60s. A taste of spring in the dead of winter.
2. Breakfast was a hollowed out bagel with an egg. It was yummy. Thanks for the idea Allan.
3. A girl on my team randomly asked me if I was going to work out today and could she go with me. She'll never know what that means to me. I do have yoga, but I might not have done anything else except I will now since she asked. My gym bag and yoga mats are in my desk drawer ready to go!

Hoo boy.

The first 7-10 days after we got the news about the relocation, I guess the best description of how I was would be 'shell shocked.' I was largely numb to my feelings. Well, I'm beginning to feel my feelings again which is both a good and a bad thing. I feel excited about this opportunity, I feel horribly sad about leaving.

My house continues to be a disaster. Hardwood is finished in the living room, halfway done in the entryway, and just started in the kitchen. Because all the rooms flow together (plus the living room being sunken), transitioning from one room to the next and keeping the look "seamless" is difficult. My kitchen has been offline since Saturday afternoon. Thankfully, my mom is bringing over dinner tonight.

The bathroom is in a holding pattern. The floor is prepped for the tile, that has been laid out but not stuck down (does that make sense?). So that room remains empty until ???. Hub shouldn't have touched it but he did, so here we are. I'm not going to give him a hard time about it, he's doing his best. But the hardy board is laid, the pattern is set, and the walls are prepped to be repainted - so actually a good bit has been done, it just doesn't look that way!

As far as the rest of the house - I made good progress this weekend. We have 8 large book shelves: 1 with movies, 1 with CDs, the rest with books. All of those are packed up. We took a couple of loads of stuff to the storage unit. I emptied 2 of my chests of drawers. I've gone through most of my clothes and donated, or packed up for storage.

One of the guys is coming over this afternoon and he and the boy are going to take a load of furniture & stuff over to storage, then load up some of the trash so hub can take it to the dump tomorrow.

I have given away 2 carloads of stuff to Goodwhill and have a huge bag of clothes in the backseat now. Having lived in that house for 12 years, we've accumulated a lot of stuff. So a good decluttering is a good thing.

Checking in

My house is a disaster area, with only the boy’s room unaffected by the work currently underway. Asking “how are you” at work has become a loaded question because you may get a real answer, spending 15 minutes in the ladies room listening to someone’s else’s struggles to decide what to do for their family. I’m not complaining. I met with my boss yesterday, he said I’d seemed down, and I got teary. It’s easy to talk with each other even if we aren’t bffs, because we understand in a way few others can.

Right now my life feels like it’s on hold until my house returns to some semblance of normalcy – I can’t even begin to declutter until stuff is back in place. Making dinner feels like an accomplishment. My plan for the weekend includes trying to find my gym back so I can at least get on the treadmill at work some to help deal with stress. Getting to the Y for classes seems like Mt. Everest.

Within the next 3 or 4 weeks I’ll have a lot more information and we’ll have made a decision. I’m hoping at that point I’ll start feeling a little more like my normal self, instead of living in this weird holding pattern.

Not good

I seem to be in a trough of my emotional roller coaster ride.

We spent $5000 this weekend - new hardwood flooring for the front of the house, 2 new sets of french doors and a back door, and paying 2 guys that work for hub when the company needs extra hands to come out & work at our place this week. (They haven't worked in a couple of months, so the one good thing is that we're at least helping out them). Hub took this week off work to do some of the stuff we were planning to do this year anyway.

We're also getting estimates on work we'd planned to have done over the next couple of years, but may need to get done in the next couple of months.

1000 sq ft of hardwood is A LOT. It is stacked in our bedroom, which currently looks a little like a tunnel system designed by the Viet Cong.

The front of my house is in various stages of packed up/anarchy/torn up. I rented a storage unit around the corner from the house so we have a place to sock stuff away while the anarchy is underway.

Mom was sick this morning and needed someone to drive her to the doctor. I can't do that if I'm in Florida. God I don't want to leave.

I did go to yoga Monday – having it at work is a real blessing right now. As far as food, I’m eating whatever is at hand. I’m not doing emotional eating – I’ve just been going along on autopilot, but it’s only working at 75% or so. I never brushed my teeth Sunday, which should tell you a lot about my mental and emotional state.

Anyway, I know I need to care for myself, right now I just haven’t gotten back to that place. I’m just mushing through, doing the things that must be done - which is more about getting my house ready and looking at details of my options than brushing my teeth or cooking dinner.

Anyway, not good.

You dropped the bomb on me

As you can imagine, work right now has a bunch of people walking around with dazed expressions. Most of us haven’t considered (at least in the short term) either leaving our job or selling our home, but for most of us, we’ll have to do one or the other. A few folks will be able to go virtual, but I don’t have either the option or disposition.

I don’t know which way the wind is blowing for us – we are still gathering information in order to make an informed decision. We have eliminated Phoenix as a possibility – Ft. Lauderdale is a drive away, but Phoenix is not. We have too much family in this area to go that far. Not to mention, we’d go nuts living that far from the ocean.

While there are several permutations within each decision, it boils down to staying here and searching for a new job or moving to Ft. Lauderdale.

We have a real estate agent coming tomorrow to give us a good idea of what we would likely be able to sell our home for, and what we would have to do to get it ready to be put on the market. We will be making a trip down to Ft. L (hopefully staying with hub’s friend AC) to take a look at the job market and for him to look around the area. The housing market seems to be a buyer’s paradise, and my dream of a vintage 1950s home with a carport and a pool looks like it would only be a signature away.

I won’t lie, I’m still in a daze. The boy is taking this much better than I expected. I'm grateful for the small things that are keeping me sane.

Today, my company announced they are closing their center here. My position will be relocated to Phoenix or Ft. Lauderdale, or I can stay here and look for something else. Lots of changes coming our way.

Back at work

I am back at work today. Needless to say, I have a long day with a lot of catching up to do. Le sigh.

How can I get sick and gain a half a pound? Weirdness.

I plan to go to yoga today, but I'm off everything else for a couple of days until my system settles down and I get caught up on sleep.

Have a good day!

Sick

I've been sick since Sunday - stomach & sinuses. Yuck. So I haven't been doing much of anything, including getting on the computer!

I'm feeling better today, still sort of headachy and not 100%, but better. I plan to take today off exercise and try to rest up - I can tell I need it.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Hope you have a good week!

Mich asked for details about yoga & kettlebells, I'll be posting that in the next day or so.

What I did

This morning I slept in later than usual. Since I have to get up and go to work during the week, on the weekends I try to let myself just sleep in and get whatever amount of rest I need. No problem, "sleeping in" for me means around 7:30, so still plenty of time to get going!

Anyway, I got up and got ready for yoga. Once I got the the Y, I realized that they were having a swim meet this morning - no laps for me today! The cardio room was fairly crowded and honestly the thought of the machines was NOT exciting, so I did yoga and then came home and did kettlebells - an excellent combo of cardio and weights. SO I got in 2 workouts and by doing weights today, I'll have a break before weights on Monday. Tomorrow I will either walk in the neighborhood (and take advantage of a relatively warm and sunny day) or go and swim. I will probably walk - the sunshine will do me good.

Anyway, just wanted to jot down what I did. Have a great weekend!

Good morning and welcome to Friday

I am in a good mood for someone who didn't want to come to work! You know how when you have a really big project getting started it feels a little like trying to eat an elephant? And that whole "the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time" analogy rings true, but you can't seem to take the first bite? That's a long way of saying I have this big project and it's so big that even laying out a roadmap in powerpoint seems HUGE, so I've been working on other stuff and avoiding it but now I pretty much HAVE to start on it and I don't wanna. Oh well, I haven't won the lottery so I guess I'll suck it up.

In other news I had a good workout last night. I went to the Y early and did a hard 30 minutes on the elliptical then quickly changed and went to water aerobics, where we did a very tough workout! I was panting. I would have been sweating but I don't think you can sweat under water. After that I sat in the hot tub with the ladies (and one gentleman) from class, then took a quick shower and off home for dinner.

With the boy out of town and plenty of leftovers in the fridge, I declared last night "forage for yourself night" - I had eggplant, spinach, and vegetable soup. Not like at lunch (which was kim chi ji gae) but a pasta e fagioli type flavor soup, but with no pasta. I had a late dinner and watched part of "Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock" - a while back we bought the first 6 Star Trek movies (based on the original series) in a boxed set, and when I get on a tear I watch all the movies in a series, so I'm sure by the end of the weekend I'll have finished the set!

Tomorrow morning yoga is at 8:45, which conflicts with spin and water aerobics, and the class after is "cardio sculpt" with the mistress of pain, so I don't think so! So not sure what I'm gonna do - I really want to go to yoga. I could use the elliptical or dreadmill (but I've done that 3 times this week), or maybe I could swim some laps. I haven't just swum laps in ages, and I find that very relaxing and it's a tough workout but not in a stressful way. So maybe I'll do that. ANyway, I'll let you know.

I hope you have an excellent weekend! It was 15 this morning, so I'm looking forward to the promised sunny, warmer weather. We'll be almost up to the normal temps for this time of year! At least for a couple of days. :-)

A couple of things:

I was down another pound this morning.

A schedule is coming together for exercise. Yoga was the first piece to fall into place, since classes are limited. So, Monday, Wednesday, and possibly Saturday are yoga days. Cardio came next, since it is based on my generally preferred classes. Tuesday, Thursday, and possibly Saturday are cardio days. I say possibly on Saturday since sometimes we are out of town or something and I can’t get to classes.

Weights were a little tougher for some reason. I find that odd since lifting has always been my favorite of the 3 activities. Monday and Wednesday will be lifting days as this fits well with my schedule – it won’t conflict with yoga and weights plus a hard cardio session is probably too much in the same day. The day for a third weight session is more challenging: Friday is my shopping day, so there isn’t much time or energy. Saturday is already pretty full. Sunday would work, but then I’m lifting 2 days in a row. I don’t view that as a disaster, but rest is good when possible. So I guess I’ll leave that day floating and see what happens. The nice thing is that there are enough classes at the Y and equipment both at work and at the Y, so that there is always room to adjust.

In thinking over the whole locker room challenge, I’ve realized that I enjoy the pool as well as the sauna and hot tub (especially this time of year!) enough that I will just muddle through the month of February using the other locker room.

Food today:
B: oatmeal
S: 2 clementines
L: vegetable soup
S: pb & prunes
D: leftovers

The boy is leaving for Florida this afternoon. I am jealous.

I hope you have a great day!

The greatest thing

Yesterday I asked my husband to drive me to the Y to work out. My goal was to do 60 minutes on the elliptical and burn 600 calories. (I know those things aren't super accurate, but they at least give me an idea of how much I've worked.)

Anyway, you know what the greatest thing about that workout was? The fact that I finished it. Because the truth is that despite a new cardio coach, I really didn't want to finish. But I listened to the message (he is very encouraging) and finished the workout. After that I cooled off with a tepid shower, then relaxed in the hot tub & sauna, then took an actual wash shower. I got home feeling exhausted but proud of my accomplishment.

Right now I'm at home. There's a lot of ice on the road so my plan is to work from home a little while then head into the office in a half hour or so. I did a kettlebell workout first thing this morning. I think we'll probably have yoga at work today and I'll stay & do a few weights & cardio afterward.

Mom is packing up & heading home this afternoon. It's been fun, but it will be nice to have a less full house again. The boy has no school again today. Luckily, when I planned our vacation up north I booked the hotels on the assumption that they would need all the days tagged on to the end of the year in the event of snow.

Hope you have a good day!