Day Ninety-Six
I didn't do so well today, and now I am up in the middle of the night, feeling bad about it.
Here are the things that went badly:
1. I never made it to the gym, even though I very much wanted and intended to go.
2. I had three of the delicious rolls my daughter made to go with our lentil soup dinner. She doesn't particularly care for lentil soup, so she made my mother's recipe for rolls, to vastly improve the menu. (She later conceded that the lentil soup I had made, which was rich in vegetables, was perfectly tolerable.) I let myself have a second roll at dinner, which, I know, is questionable behavior. But then, to make things worse, I later let myself have even one more. If I'm honest, I could go and down even more now in the middle of the night, but I am not going to do that.
3. I guess there really isn't a number three. Maybe I'll be able to forgive myself for numbers one and two.
The day started very early, because we had to help our two Boy Scouts put up forty-eight flags in our neighborhood for the state holiday today. It seemed even earlier to me than it normally would, because I had stayed up past midnight making a poster of a pedigree chart featuring our nineteen pioneer ancestors. To celebrate Pioneer Day, I had deep-dive-researched, as best I could, each of these pioneers, and I had learned a fair amount of interesting new things about them, which I wanted to share with my children who would listen. I felt the pedigree chart would be essential to their understanding of these ancestors' stories, as it would give some framework as to who they were. I mean, nineteen people who lived a long time ago is a lot to keep track of, and, to make matters worse, four of them are Elizabeths and four of them are Johns, so any help in keeping them straight would be good. I was not wrong. We did the pedigree chart game first, and it greatly helped them throughout the other four games I had prepared.
So, I normally go to bed in the early evening so that I can get enough sleep before spending an hour or more at the gym, and we had to start the flag service project at six-thirty, so there was really no way to fit a gym visit in before that.
Then, it took us two-and-a-half hours to do all the flags, which was longer than I had expected. We got back barely in time to watch the parade. I didn't even have time to shower before the parade.
Oh, yes, there is a number three, and it is not that I partook of any of the four types of cookies I had bought my kids. It's that, with all the eating of cookies and leftover potato salad going on around me, I let myself decide that its being a holiday could excuse me from the morning fasting, and I ended up eating about three hours before I normally should have, so my "fasting" ended up being only about thirteen hours instead of sixteen.
Which should not be a huge biggie, but it doesn't bode well for the rapidly-approaching end of the hundred days, at which time I wanted--still want--amazing results. I guess I am most anxious about that.
I am afraid that, when I stop being as severe on myself as I have been these past three months, I will rapidly lose what small gains I have made. (Or, is it that I will rapidly gain what I lost?) I really do not want that to happen. So, I have to do better than I did today. I need to not give myself permission to bend my rules by much, and not three rules in one day, I think.
As the parade ended, we did the other pioneer games, and my three at-home kids did all participate, and I think it was interesting to them, and that some of the stories will stick in their minds to some extent. The poster I had stayed up making was truly essential to their understanding the various stories, and so I have to be okay with that investment of time, even though it robbed me of other ways I could have spent my time. We did a matching game, where we matched the pioneers to their ages at the time of their journeys. We did a who-did-they-travel-with game. We did a when did they arrive, and with what company, game. And we did a guessing game of different circumstances and stories.
I still really wanted to get to the gym, and I still had daylight ahead of me, but, by the time the games ended, I was really quite tired, and I chose to take a nap before going to the gym. But, before I could take a nap, I needed to get supper chopped and measured into the crock pot. My daughter continued to hang out with me to make the rolls, and she did an excellent job. It was very nice to spend that time with her and continue our conversation.
She got me up when she needed some guidance in finishing the rolls an hour or two later, and then we met as a family again to read some more from Hamlet. Later in the summer, we will be attending some Shakespeare plays, and we have been reading them as a family so that the younger kids will understand what they are witnessing when the time comes. We read Twelfth Night weeks ago, but, with the hectic and varied schedules of the older kids and then their being gone for a couple of weeks, we had not started Hamlet until last night.
We ate dinner, then had to take the boys to pick up the flags. Fortunately, this only took a little more than an hour, but it was my usual bedtime by then, and I talked to my husband about maybe going to the pool with me, which he said he was willing to do, but he had some yard work and housework projects that he wanted to do, so he really wasn't available until it was too late for me. Yes, I could have gone without him. But I really did not want to run into holiday traffic and crowds near my gym, which I thought likely, so i just gave up on the whole thing. I also had to play a short computer game with one son, which I had promised him to get him through yet one more long scene of Hamlet.
I thought it would be great to get some early sleep and hit the gym real well in the morning. Since I'm awake instead, I should go now, but the true crime episode I listened to at naptime and bedtime have made me too paranoid to go out in the night.
What might be bothering me more than anything is that I never did shower today, and that right there is completely unlike me. I always shower, even on Christmas Day, when all we do is sit around in our pajamas watching our new movies. Seriously, people, the feeling of not being perfectly clean is keeping me awake. How uptight is that? I am off my game, that's the trouble.
I know hoping for any positive feedback is too much to hope for, as I squelched it completely in the beginning. I suppose I will get through the next four days as best I can, deal with the end results, and keep on living my life, hoping and striving for continual, though slow, improvement as I go along, just as I always have.
Here are the things that went badly:
1. I never made it to the gym, even though I very much wanted and intended to go.
2. I had three of the delicious rolls my daughter made to go with our lentil soup dinner. She doesn't particularly care for lentil soup, so she made my mother's recipe for rolls, to vastly improve the menu. (She later conceded that the lentil soup I had made, which was rich in vegetables, was perfectly tolerable.) I let myself have a second roll at dinner, which, I know, is questionable behavior. But then, to make things worse, I later let myself have even one more. If I'm honest, I could go and down even more now in the middle of the night, but I am not going to do that.
3. I guess there really isn't a number three. Maybe I'll be able to forgive myself for numbers one and two.
The day started very early, because we had to help our two Boy Scouts put up forty-eight flags in our neighborhood for the state holiday today. It seemed even earlier to me than it normally would, because I had stayed up past midnight making a poster of a pedigree chart featuring our nineteen pioneer ancestors. To celebrate Pioneer Day, I had deep-dive-researched, as best I could, each of these pioneers, and I had learned a fair amount of interesting new things about them, which I wanted to share with my children who would listen. I felt the pedigree chart would be essential to their understanding of these ancestors' stories, as it would give some framework as to who they were. I mean, nineteen people who lived a long time ago is a lot to keep track of, and, to make matters worse, four of them are Elizabeths and four of them are Johns, so any help in keeping them straight would be good. I was not wrong. We did the pedigree chart game first, and it greatly helped them throughout the other four games I had prepared.
So, I normally go to bed in the early evening so that I can get enough sleep before spending an hour or more at the gym, and we had to start the flag service project at six-thirty, so there was really no way to fit a gym visit in before that.
Then, it took us two-and-a-half hours to do all the flags, which was longer than I had expected. We got back barely in time to watch the parade. I didn't even have time to shower before the parade.
Oh, yes, there is a number three, and it is not that I partook of any of the four types of cookies I had bought my kids. It's that, with all the eating of cookies and leftover potato salad going on around me, I let myself decide that its being a holiday could excuse me from the morning fasting, and I ended up eating about three hours before I normally should have, so my "fasting" ended up being only about thirteen hours instead of sixteen.
Which should not be a huge biggie, but it doesn't bode well for the rapidly-approaching end of the hundred days, at which time I wanted--still want--amazing results. I guess I am most anxious about that.
I am afraid that, when I stop being as severe on myself as I have been these past three months, I will rapidly lose what small gains I have made. (Or, is it that I will rapidly gain what I lost?) I really do not want that to happen. So, I have to do better than I did today. I need to not give myself permission to bend my rules by much, and not three rules in one day, I think.
As the parade ended, we did the other pioneer games, and my three at-home kids did all participate, and I think it was interesting to them, and that some of the stories will stick in their minds to some extent. The poster I had stayed up making was truly essential to their understanding the various stories, and so I have to be okay with that investment of time, even though it robbed me of other ways I could have spent my time. We did a matching game, where we matched the pioneers to their ages at the time of their journeys. We did a who-did-they-travel-with game. We did a when did they arrive, and with what company, game. And we did a guessing game of different circumstances and stories.
I still really wanted to get to the gym, and I still had daylight ahead of me, but, by the time the games ended, I was really quite tired, and I chose to take a nap before going to the gym. But, before I could take a nap, I needed to get supper chopped and measured into the crock pot. My daughter continued to hang out with me to make the rolls, and she did an excellent job. It was very nice to spend that time with her and continue our conversation.
She got me up when she needed some guidance in finishing the rolls an hour or two later, and then we met as a family again to read some more from Hamlet. Later in the summer, we will be attending some Shakespeare plays, and we have been reading them as a family so that the younger kids will understand what they are witnessing when the time comes. We read Twelfth Night weeks ago, but, with the hectic and varied schedules of the older kids and then their being gone for a couple of weeks, we had not started Hamlet until last night.
We ate dinner, then had to take the boys to pick up the flags. Fortunately, this only took a little more than an hour, but it was my usual bedtime by then, and I talked to my husband about maybe going to the pool with me, which he said he was willing to do, but he had some yard work and housework projects that he wanted to do, so he really wasn't available until it was too late for me. Yes, I could have gone without him. But I really did not want to run into holiday traffic and crowds near my gym, which I thought likely, so i just gave up on the whole thing. I also had to play a short computer game with one son, which I had promised him to get him through yet one more long scene of Hamlet.
I thought it would be great to get some early sleep and hit the gym real well in the morning. Since I'm awake instead, I should go now, but the true crime episode I listened to at naptime and bedtime have made me too paranoid to go out in the night.
What might be bothering me more than anything is that I never did shower today, and that right there is completely unlike me. I always shower, even on Christmas Day, when all we do is sit around in our pajamas watching our new movies. Seriously, people, the feeling of not being perfectly clean is keeping me awake. How uptight is that? I am off my game, that's the trouble.
I know hoping for any positive feedback is too much to hope for, as I squelched it completely in the beginning. I suppose I will get through the next four days as best I can, deal with the end results, and keep on living my life, hoping and striving for continual, though slow, improvement as I go along, just as I always have.
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