It was a long day.

Not in the sense that I hated it and just want to crawl in to bed, but rather that I have just been up a long time.

And I want to crawl in to bed.

I volunteered to take a 5:00-8:00am shift at my health club job on Tuesdays. For many others this probably sounds like torture, but I am an early riser so a 4:15am wake up call doesn’t really bother me. Plus, I can get SO much done in those three peaceful hours.

I’m tired, but I’m still up and it’s 6:56pm. Those of you that know me, that’s a major accomplishment for the 8th day in January.

Health + Wellness

208.6

I’m not going to lie, I was quite disappointed this morning with that number staring back at me.

My right brain was running in circles with her hair on fire asking, “WHY, WHY, WHY? Why have we not lost 20 lbs in 8 days? WHY? That’s it, we should quit. What’s the point?”

While my left brain was leaning back in her chair, smoke hanging out of her mouth like, “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ sister, calm the fuck down. It’s been only eight days.”

Welcome to my crazy. Jump in, the water’s warm.

I’m happy to report I (mostly) listened to my left brain today. I’m just going to keep pluggin’ along. It also helps that I have a pretty sweet app that tracks my weight “trend” rather than just straight numbers. I love that I trust an app on my phone more than hard science. When I say it out loud I sound like an idiot.

House + Home

My cleaning ladies came today. HALLELUJAH.

I know there are some of you out there that think having a cleaning lady is ridiculous, especially my mother.

But, sorry, I am not sorry.

I have many justifications for this but these are my main ones.

• I work hard. I want to spend my money on someone else to make my home a place me and my family want to be together. I have many hats and juggle many balls in the air most days and cleaning and tidying up is not one of them.

• I am providing a job for someone. This is important to me, not only because I love a clean house, but because I know where my money is going. I am more than happy to give up a few material things per month in order to pay someone I know personally.

• I suck at it. Isn’t one of the first rules of good business practice is to hire out the things you suck at so you can concentrate on the things you are good at? Why should my family be run any differently than a good business? In any case, these gals rock. They are local, professional and put up with the mess of me and my animals.

If you want a cleaning lady and think you can’t afford it, take a good look at the things you are affording. I had to cut some things out too. And, now that I’m not spending a bunch of money on wine, I can have them come twice a month.

If your reasonings are because your mother would roll her eyes, well, I deal with that too, but I can’t help you there. You’ll just have to figure out a way to not care.

Debt + Finances

I honestly didn’t have time to do my budget today. That’s not an excuse, I really didn’t have time. I will have time tomorrow, promise.

Parenthood + Relationships

Someone please help me. Fortnight. I just had a ten-minute, very emotional conversation with my nine-year-old son about this game. It started out as a very innocent suggestion (from him) that if he isn’t crabby in the morning for 30 days then we will let him play Fortnight. It then escalated in to a level five meltdown revealing the real reason: he’s feeling left out because all of his buddies are playing together and talking about it and he’s not.

Um, twist the knife in to my bleeding heart.

On one hand, I could totally give in, and I probably will because I don’t have the willpower to keep up with him; he’s relentless when he wants something (<chip off the old block). On the other, I hate to give in to the pressure of greener grass.

It’s a pickle. Check back with me on day 38.

Travel + Staycations

Part of my intention behind volunteering for the 5:00am shift is that I can go right to yoga after. It’s been too long since I have attended my favorite instructor’s class and today it felt like coming home.

As I lay there on my mat before class began, I thought about how the next 60 minutes were going to be all mine. My intention for the class (besides not looking at the clock) was to be grateful for every pose even if I didn’t look like how my warped mind thought it should.

I just wanted to enjoy the heat, my mat and my breath. A little hokey, I know but when it’s January and blowing 50 mph, you need to fake a vacation somehow.

Today’s epiphany is actually something I read out of her book, You’re a Bad Ass by Jen Sincero. How to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life.

I have actually listened to this book about 10 times (which is a total of 90+ hours) since July. It’s great, you should read it.

In one of the chapters she talks about how giving something up is actually easier than doing it. She uses smoking as an example, but I’ll use wine as mine.

So, when I give up drinking for 90 days, I actually don’t have to DO anything. I don’t have to go to the store, find the money to pay for it, get out a glass, pour it, drink it, then wash the glass and put it away.

I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night and fight getting back to sleep. I don’t have pop ibuprofen like candy. I don’t have to sweat like a hog through my pajamas. And, that’s just the physical part.

My mind always went bonkers the day after an indulgent evening.

I felt guilty and ashamed that I couldn’t say no even though it went against all of the goals I was trying to reach. I felt like a failure and worried that I might have said or done something I shouldn’t have.

This would go on for a couple of days (or more recently, just a mere 6-7 hours) until I would just numb it out all over again. That’s another whole story for another day.

The thing I know for sure is that I haven’t had any of these feelings for a week. The work I am putting in now is next to nothing compared to the energy I was spending on navigating the muddy waters of my mind surrounding this topic.

How’s that for a dose of reality?