It’s a pretty wide rotation, currently.  Every two weeks, one or the other of us goes in.  Last week was my week on the rotation.  She did it two weeks before that and she’ll do it again the Friday after next.  I’m waiting to hear back whether we should clean more frequently than that, but so far, it seems to be working.

The head pastor is really excited that we’re doing it.  He came in on my first Friday (Friday and Saturday counts as the weekend for the church staff, since they work on Sunday) and told me that he was so thankful for the work.  And he said so again that Sunday when I ran into him after church.

I’m glad that he’s happy about it.  But his appreciation isn’t why I’m doing it.

The reason I’m doing it is because it needed to be done.  There was a need and no one was filling it, so the two of us stepped up and we’re taking care of that need.

But also because it should keep me humble.  I’m starting to get recognized at church because I sing with the band sometimes.  Even when I’m not singing that week, people still come up to me and mention it and tell me that I sound good.  It’s easy for that to go to my head.  But it’s a gift that I’ve been given (cultivated by my mom (thank you, Mom!)) – my ability to sing and harmonize with a group and feel comfortable enough to stand on stage and share it with other people.

But I’ve also been given a talent for cleaning and organizing.  And if getting on my knees to clean the toilets at the church office doesn’t remind me of how important it is to do the behind-the-scenes dirty jobs that no one wants to do, then I don’t know what will.  If I can get the same sense of service while I’m singing as I can while I’m cleaning, then I’ll know that I’m not doing it to get the praise of people watching.

I cleaned the offices on Friday for four and a half hours.  It was hard, dirty work, but that place sparkled when I left and it felt wonderful.  I was tired and sweaty and I smelled like dumpster, but I left a bouquet of flowers in the conference room and a clean coffeepot in the kitchen.  And how can I not feel happy about that?

So, in my last post, I mentioned my doctor appointment and that I’ve got a follow-up in six months to check on my weight-loss progress.  I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about how I’m going to approach this problem.

Here’s what I’ve got so far.  I have an account at MyFoodDiary.com and I know that if I actually go on there and track what I’m doing, I will lose weight.  I lost weight this way before—exercising and tracking my calories through this program.  So I’m doing that again.  Now, it only works if I actually go on there and enter in what I’m doing and I really don’t like doing that.  It’s a pain in the butt.  So my incentive to do this is that if I can log my food for 30 days in a row, I’m going to get a massage.  I love massages, but it’s been over a year since I last got one.  So!  Goal = 30 days straight of logging my food = Reward = MASSAGE.

I have a set of cards on the wall of my desk at work under my clock that count up to 30 (0-3 on one set and 0-9 on the other) and I have a tick mark on my mirror at home and I’m going to keep track.  I’ll also keep track through MFD, but I’m learning about visual management at work and the affectivity of it.

On my mirror, I’ve also written “Log your food!  Be nice to Justin – you asked for his help.”  Because he’s wonderful and gives me gentle prodding about logging and exercising and what I should and shouldn’t eat, and I get cranky at him.  So I’m going to try very hard to not do that anymore.  I appreciate his help. And I did ask him to help me.  So it’s not at all fair for me to get grumpy at him.

And that goes for the rest of you, too.  If you want to prod me about how things are going, I’m going to try very hard not to get grumpy about it.  So, please!  Go ahead and prod.  Send me emails and call and ask how I’m doing and if I’ve logged my food and if I’ve exercised today and if I’ve had enough water to drink and give me recommendations on different things I should try.  Because I have a wonderful bunch of family and friends and if I can’t accept help from all of you, then I’m in trouble.

I’m also putting in a request to get a nurse to help me.  My employer is starting up a program to help us improve our health and one of the issues that they’ll help with is being overweight.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen with that, exactly, but at this point, I’m willing to take any help I can get.

Okay, so that covers my calorie counting and accepting help from everybody possible.

Currently, this is my exercise program:  Monday and Wednesday night, I go to Zumba class.  Saturday morning, I go to yoga class.  That leaves Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday on my own.  What I’ve been trying to do is to practice Zumba or yoga on my own or do an exercise video.  Now that the weather is going to get nicer, I’ll be adding more outdoor activities.  Got to catch the weather between when it’s too chilly for rollerblading and too hot!  It’s not a long window.  In the summer months, I’ll get back into swimming again. 

What I’m missing is weight training.  I think it’s something I’ll want to be doing, I’m just not sure exactly when.  Yoga has a lot of muscle work in it that works with body weight, but I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be hitting the weights at the gym, too.  I’m still trying to figure that one out.

My overall goal is to lose 50 pounds in the next six months.  It’s a strong goal and I know that.  I’m going to have to work very hard to try to make that goal.  But I think that setting a goal that’s fairly difficult but not completely unattainable is a good idea.  That’s a loss of 2 pounds a week, which is healthy for my current weight and it’s going to be healthy for a long while.  Once I get past this first 50, it’s going to slow down, but for this first half, it’s attainable.

I need to lose nearly 100 pounds.  I’m sitting at 232 pounds right now.  I want to get down to 140-ish.  By my doctor appointment in six months, I want to be at 180.

And that’s that!  More information than you probably wanted to hear about my weight-loss situation. 

I’m on day 2 of logging my food.  Only 28 more to go before I earn my massage!

At that time, my triglycerides were up and my cholesterol wasn’t where it should be and my blood sugar was higher than it should be and it just wasn’t good blood-work all the way around.  I had three months to do something about it.

At my appointment yesterday, my triglycerides were much lower than they had been (by about half), my cholesterol was much better, and my blood sugar was much better.  My weight is still bad.  And a few of those numbers could handle going a little further toward the “good” side of things.  But it’s doing better.  I’ve been taking fish oil pills with my multivitamin every day, and I think that’s had a lot to do with it, plus regular exercise.

So now I just have to work on logging my food better and actually work on getting my weight down.

One of the other things I talked with her about was my asthma.  Do you remember that terrible cold I got back before Christmas?  (I’ve been sleeping.)  It’s was a bad cold and it settled into my chest and did unpleasant things.  Since then, I’ve had to take an inhaler almost every time I exercise.  And sometimes just because it’s cold out and I’m feeling short of breath.  It hasn’t been fun and I don’t like this relapse of my asthma symptoms. 

My current doctor hasn’t actually had me as a patient with asthma symptoms – they recessed back around 2005-ish.  So at my appointment, she’s explaining to me the differences between emergency inhalers and maintenance inhalers and all these other things that I know SO WELL by now, let me tell you.  It was kind of funny.  Seriously, I’ve dealt with asthma for well over half of my lifetime.  I understand how it works.

Anyway, she gave me a prescription for Symbicort as a maintenance inhaler and a refill on the emergency inhaler and we’re going to try and see if the maintenance inhaler can fix whatever problem has been happening down in these lungs of mine and see if I can’t get the symptoms to go away again.  I think I damaged them a little bit with the cold and they haven’t been able to properly heal – if that’s even an idea that works medically.  I don’t know.  But I think that taking the meds for a little while will help heal my lungs enough that I can go back to being asymptomatic again, and non-medicated again, which would be lovely.

I have a return appointment in 6 months to check on my progress with getting my numbers even better – my cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, and, most significantly, my weight.  We’ll check on the status of my asthma, too.  But for the most part, I’m in better health than I was the last time I went in to see her and that makes me feel good.

Today, we’re following up with typical March weather – it’s dark and rainy.  It is, on the upside, the kind of rain that smells like it’s going to make the grass grow.  It’s a refreshing change from rain that smells like winter, gets into my shoes and makes me cold all day long.

We’ve had an interesting couple of days around here.  Friday, I was at work from 7:30 until 6:00.  On a day where I would normally work only 4 hours, a 10-hour day is absurd.  I was really irritated by the whole thing.  I mean, sure, overtime pay.  But my Friday!  I had plans for that afternoon!  All of which are now just sitting on my list of things to do and hoping that I have time to do them this coming Friday.  It isn’t looking good for that list.

For dinner on Saturday, Justin and I made “Jade and Ivory Pasta,” which is a recipe that came with my wok and we’ve made a couple of times before.  It’s fettuccini, broccoli, and chicken stir-fried in a sauce with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sherry (that we substituted with red wine vinegar), and a couple other things.  When we got to the end of the meal, Justin’s tongue went numb.  His throat swelled up a little and he felt about as miserable as a person with an allergic reaction could feel without needing to go to the emergency room.  And we sat there, waiting to see if we would have to go to the ER, because the last time this happened to him, he spent more than a week in the hospital.  He can’t take Benedryl because it reacts badly with his system, so all he could do was brush his teeth, rinse with Listerine, and wait.

We still have no idea what set him off, so I’m eating all the left-overs while he feels miserable.  His throat and tongue are still raw and sensitive, with the unfortunate side-effect of being completely unable to taste anything.  It makes me feel sorry for people who have ageusia and never taste anything, and their spouses, for whom it’s probably almost as frustrating.

But we’re very thankful that it wasn’t worse than it was.  Meals that don’t land one of us in the ER = success!

Anyway, that’s pretty much the excitement that’s been happening around here lately.  I’ll try to write about something more interesting soon-ish.

So, that said, here’s my list for this coming year:

30 things to do before I’m 31

Random
1. Get a dog
2. Steam clean the carpets
3. Organize my photos better
4. Make the back porch a nicer place to sit
5. Put together our wedding album
6. Read one book per month

Body
7. End the year weighing less than I did when I started it (I’m getting smarter!)
8. Learn how to braid my own hair
9. Don’t get pregnant

People
10. Talk/email Mom at least once a week, preferably more
11. Talk/email Dad at least once a month, preferably more
12. See family for Thanksgiving (maybe?)
13. See family for Christmas
14. Write letters to grandmas

Travel
15. Explore a brown sign, museum, park, or cemetary each month
16. Go to the Barnett family reunion
17. Go to Luke and Krista’s wedding
18. Go to the Biltmore in Asheville, NC
19. Go to the place with the turtles
20. Go to the Ren Faire
21. Go for a walk on the beach at sunrise

Money
22. Make significant progress on the car loan
23. Save up money for a new TV
24. Save up money for that chaise lounge
25. Save up money for a new camera
26. Save up money for the bedroom remodel (new mattress, armoire, matching bed-tables, new bedding, matching valences, blanket rack, trunk at the foot, new TV)

Work
27. Finish my estate book and example
28. Finish my hurricane evacuation plan
29. Stop having breakfast at work
30. Go to the department Christmas party

Someone finally came and towed away Justin’s old Infiniti, giving us $150 for it.  It would have been nice to get more money for it, but just having that parking space back is enough.

Beautifully sunny 50-something degree weather all weekend long with the windows open and fresh air blowing through the house.

Yoga class on Saturday morning.

Mail with boxes and cards and presents from my mom and brother.

Ordering my present and a few other fun things online and the excitement of anticipating all those wonderful boxes in the mail.

Going out to dinner for my birthday, even if it wasn’t exactly what Justin had planned, at a restaurant that I’ve wanted to explore for a long time, where we’re definitely going visit again.

Having such a great time singing at church that I almost sang my voice out and had to go home and sleep for an hour and a half to recover.

Watching a clever little squirrel perch on the top of the shepherd’s crook holding the bird feeder, climb halfway down, stretch across the space, push the top off the feeder, stick his whole upper body into the thing, and then go back up to the top to munch on what he had grabbed.

Watching that squirrel almost fall off his perch when a large bird shadow blocked out the sun, followed by a flailing leap into a nearby tree.

Justin fixing the laundry room light so we actually have full light in there for the first time in a year instead of this terrible flickering nonsense.

Watching a friend stand on the top of a ladder holding a broom with a dustpan duct-taped to the end trying to scrape sticky Halloween eyeball toys off their living room cathedral ceiling.

Chatting and laughing with my sister on the phone while her daughter hummed.

Curling up in bed and laughing with Justin until it hurt about funny things we saw on the internet.

And several other things, but I think I’ll leave it at that.

There's snow on my patio!

And there's snow on my yard!

And there's snow on my plants!

This just isn’t right!

It’s really funny, though.  People were closing down things earlier this afternoon, even though it was just raining and wasn’t even that chilly.  It’s *still* not that chilly – but apparently it’s chilly enough!  People were walking around outside when I went to take pictures.  (Sorry about the picture quality, by the way.  My camera is on its last legs and my phone doesn’t take great shots.)

Kids are clambering to get outside and run around.  Dogs are barking at this weird fluff falling from the sky.  Apparently the grocery stores were crazy earlier this afternoon.  I heard sirens going a little while ago.  Southerners just aren’t prepared for driving in this stuff!  And there’s a lot of it coming down!  Big, fluffy flakes that are sticky and clinging to everything.  And melting once they hit something that hasn’t chilled down much, like pavement, but still accumulating enough to make a difference.

I wonder how long it’s been since it snowed this far south!

They sat there for a while and then started shining lights at the houses – not just the flashing lights they had already going, but painfully bright spot lights that they pointed at the houses along the circle.  My only guess is that they were trying to find out where the emergency was supposed to be happening.  I could hear the chatter of walkie-talkies through my window, but not what they were saying.

And then they left.  I have no idea what the deal was or what they were expecting to find.  When I looked around briefly this morning, I couldn’t see anything out of place.  It was very odd.

My best guess is that the fire engine infantry is still waging their war against the bus brigadiers.  They thought there was a sighting and came with all their fire power to run the encroacher out.  They did a thorough search but didn’t find anything.  Little do they know!  The bus went across the street and hid in the ranks of school busses.

In other odd news, they’re predicting snow for this afternoon.  Snow!  Come on!

Winter Storm Warning (NOAA)

URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHARLESTON SC
317 AM EST FRI FEB 12 2010

…A SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM WILL IMPACT PARTS OF THE AREA THIS AFTERNOON INTO TONIGHT…

BEAUFORT-COASTAL COLLETON-CHARLESTON-COASTAL JASPER-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…BEAUFORT…HILTON HEAD…EDISTO BEACH…CHARLESTON…JASPER

317 AM EST FRI FEB 12 2010

…WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO 6 AM EST SATURDAY…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHARLESTON HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO 6 AM EST SATURDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

LOW PRESSURE WILL INTENSIFY OVER THE NORTHEAST GULF OF MEXICO THIS MORNING…THEN MOVE ACROSS THE FLORIDA PENINSULA THIS AFTERNOON TO A POSITION OFF THE CAROLINA COAST TONIGHT.

RAIN WILL DEVELOP ACROSS THE AREA TODAY…MAINLY AFTER NOON. AS COLDER AIR FROM THE NORTH OVERSPREADS THE REGION…THE RAIN WILL BEGIN TO MIX WITH AND EVENTUALLY CHANGE OVER TO ALL SNOW LATE THIS AFTERNOON OR EARLY THIS EVENING. SNOW…MODERATE TO HEAVY AT TIMES…WILL THEN PERSIST THROUGH MUCH OF FRIDAY NIGHT…TAPERING OFF PRIOR TO DAYBREAK SATURDAY. TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 2 TO 4 INCHES ARE EXPECTED. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS ARE POSSIBLE ALONG THE U.S. HIGHWAY 17 CORRIDOR NORTH OF BEAUFORT.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…

A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW… SLEET…OR ICE ARE EXPECTED OR ALREADY OCCURRING. THIS WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR EVEN IMPOSSIBLE.

I thought I’d drop in quickly and share a little bit of mine.

One of the places that I have the hardest time keeping organized is my desk.  I have a small little desk in my office that has three drawers on the left side and a pencil drawer across the lap of the person sitting there.  I have the hardest time keeping those drawers cleaned out.  What’s supposed to happen is that the bottom drawer has photography things – prints and frames and CDs and manuals.  The middle drawer holds office items like extra printer ink, note paper, clip-boards, etc.  The top drawer holds my address book and my Nintendo DS and my music box.  And the pencil drawer holds my pens, pencils, stapler, tape dispenser, etc.

It’s never as tidy as all that.  I’ve got papers in the top two drawers that I need to read and figure out what I’m doing to do with them, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet.  Justin’s transcripts from college are still sitting in my middle drawer from when I was trying to decrypt them back in November or so.  I don’t know why I’m holding on to the prints and whatever else is hiding in the bottom drawer.  I’ve got a whole box of photographs up in my closet, too, that I just need to send to a scanner and get put onto discs.  I’ve got more pens and pencils and scissors than I know what to do with.

What I really need to do is get rid of the desk entirely and work on a table that doesn’t have any drawers.  That way I can’t hide anything in there.

So, that’s my long-term tidiness issue.  My short-term problems are:

• The bathroom, where I tend to drop clothes or whatever else was in my hand when I went to change into exercise clothes or pajamas.  I have a hook on the wall and the back of the door and they tend to get covered in clothing before the end of the week . . . if they make it there from off the floor and the counter.
• The flat surfaces in my office, where bills, paperwork, and other things that should go in there somewhere just get thrown until I have time to go back and try to put them into the right places.  I have a desk, a table, a trunk, a filing cabinet, and a chair that are all good candidates for having things thrown on them.
• The front door, where I throw sweaters, jackets, purses, lunch bags, shopping bags, and shoes as I come in the door.  I really need a set of hooks there so I stop throwing them over the shoe rack and the hamper.  Shoes are my biggest culprit.  I keep some shoes downstairs and most of my dress shoes upstairs, but by the end of the week, almost all of my shoes are downstairs.

I usually find time once or twice a week to clean up these problems, especially on Friday afternoons when I get off work early.  But they build up again in a few days if I’m not really diligent about it.  The kitchen could maybe go on this list, if it’s been a busy week and I’ve not felt up to keeping it clean, but the kitchen is an area where I sincerely try to keep it as clean as I can.

Anyway!  Some of my struggles as an organizer.

I finally found it and it’s going to take me a few days to finish it, but I actually have until NEXT Friday to finish it!  It’s amazing!

That’s the kind of week I’ve been having.

The good news is that the presentation that I had to do this morning seemed to go over pretty well.  I was given the assignment to do this presentation last Wednesday with the mandate that it be “no longer than 30 minutes.”  THIRTY MINUTES?  Like, half an hour?  And you think I’ll talk longer than that?  Do you know me at all?

And I was supposed to find someone to help me present the topic, and even though I begged and pleaded and offered cookies and got permission to get people excused from other projects by the DIRECTOR, I still got zero support.  So I did it by myself.  I put together a PowerPoint presentation and got the document printed out that I was presenting (86 pages) and prepared to talk for 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left over for Q&A.

I spent Monday preparing the document in between running around like crazy doing my regular job (the document was already written and mostly put together, but it needed formatting and other changes).  I spent Tuesday working only on my regular job, trying to support the schedule and getting my actual job stuff done.  I spent all yesterday putting together the PowerPoint presentation and figuring out what I was going to say for 25 minutes, while also supporting the overall activity in my group and regular job.

The presentation was this morning.  There was an hour allotted to me and another presentation from my area.  The presentation before mine took 45 minutes.  I was quietly asked by one of the event coordinators if I could do mine in 15 minutes instead of 30. 

Sure!

And I did.  I watched the clock carefully and abbreviated the things I was going to say and talked more quickly than I should have and glossed over one topic altogether, but told them where they could read about it in the document I handed out to them.  And I ended at 13 minutes so I could have 2 minutes for Q&A.  And they were impressed with the amount of information I could give them in 15 minutes and they loved the document that they were able to take with them for reading later on.

All in all, I think it went over really well.  And my actual job project was submitted on time yesterday, supporting the schedule.  And the other project that I’ve been working on is right on schedule.  I’ve been running around like a crazy person, but I’m apparently making a good impression to people watching me.  It’s encouraging, but I’m ready to slow down a little bit.

Which is why I’m excited that this new project isn’t due until next Friday.  I can actually breathe!  And think!  And go home and not feel completely burned out.

Though, you should all be proud of me:  Monday and Wednesday, even though I’d had a long, exhausting day, I still went to Zumba.  I worked Zumba so hard yesterday that I was drenched in sweat and not thinking coherently by the end.  Tuesday, I admit, I sat in my chair and watched TV, after working an hour later at work than normal.  But I’m thinking about hitting the Yogalates class at the gym tonight and a girl is allowed a break now and then.

Anyway, that’s where I disappeared to the last several days.  I’ve been working really, really hard.

Oh!  And I sang at church again on Sunday and I had an echo part all by myself on one song and I was really nervous about it, but a lot of people told me that I looked really comfortable and that I sounded really good, and Justin said I didn’t look nearly as much like I was going to faint.  Yea!