My Rear End

Hallelujah! I woke up this morning feeling almost back to normal, but definitely over my stomach virus! I was really happy about that and totally ready to launch into full cleaning & productivity mode! In addition to the cleaning, there were a few projects that I needed to get ahead on for my list before I leave tomorrow for Florida. The only thing that will be left will be to brush the dogs every day for a week and I already passed that one off on my husband. He's excited to do a guest post! So, I'm feeling in pretty good shape for the month! Just need to make sure I bring everything with me on my trip that I will need to finish up for January and the start of February.

My energy level was still kind of low this morning, so the one thing I was dreading was setting up the recycling bins in the garage. The actual act of putting the bins in place... no sweat... moving all the JUNK that was in the way... a whole other story!

I lost 6 pounds in 24 hours when I was sick. I honestly didn't know I could lose THAT much water weight, but Lord knows there wasn't an ounce of fluid left in me, so I guess it was possible. This morning my husband remarked that my butt looked smaller, which is nice to hear of course, but all I could think was 'Wow! I was retaining 6 lbs of water in my rear end... like a camel with two humps!' Nice.

So, for whatever reason (the universe conspiring against me??) this afternoon I started feeling really itchy and realized I had broken out in a rash ALL over my body. My first thought was 'are you KIDDING me??!!!' Ugghhh... so, off I went to urgent care. If I wasn't planning on leaving tomorrow for Florida I would have just tried Benadryl first, as I was sure it was just from the virus, but I felt like if I wanted to retain any hope of leaving tomorrow, then I better go get it checked out. The doctor said that indeed it was most likely from the virus... and then I got a steroid injection... in my REAR END. I told the nurse there was plenty to pinch, and it really didn't hurt when she gave me the shot. She said "well, it's going to start to hurt in a minute." Fantastic! Especially since I now have 6 less pounds of fluid in my butt to absorb it!

Okay, so the point to all of this... the doctor told me the only side effect of the shot would be that I might feel like I have some "extra pep!" Whoo hoo! So, although my fluid-less rear end was now jacked up on steroids, I TOTALLY had the energy to tackle the recycle bins! (and all of my other projects) And, as I sit here typing this, I'm not at all itchy!

Maybe the universe is not conspiring against me after all... maybe it just wants me to start recycling again after my 6 month hiatus!

Drowning in Paperwork

I have hated being sick this week. Not that anyone ever likes being sick, but I have just been so frustrated this week because I haven't been able to get anything done. Normally I wouldn't care as much, but I was supposed to leave tomorrow to drive to Florida to visit family. I've pushed that back until Sunday, but I was already going to have to "get ahead" on my list for January in order to get everything done while being out of town. It has been hard for me to not get ANYTHING done for a week. My house is a complete wreck. I hope my energy levels are back to normal tomorrow so that I can just go into full on cleaning mode!

Last night I finally tackled sorting through and organizing all the paperwork in our house. It was something I could do while sitting on the floor and didn't require any energy. This is the first house we have ever lived in where the guest room doesn't have to double as an office. We have a separate office... which I will love... eventually. Right now, it's just being used for storage of random things. You know it's bad when your 3rd grade neighbor comes over and points out "My Dad uses that room for is office. I can tell that you just use it for storage." Yes, very true. Or when your 3 year old neighbor is over and asks you "but, why is it so messy?" Point taken. In my defense, we have no office furniture, and thus, no motivation to clean it out. It's going to be a little while before we can afford to get that room set up. In the mean time, I have NO filing method for all of the paperwork that comes through here. It stresses me out. The general pattern has been that it piles up on the counter, or table, and then we have company over and I move the pile someplace else to sort through later. That place has mostly been an empty dresser in our bedroom. Yes, this is embarassing, but I had 3 dresser drawers full of paperwork. Most of which was able to be thrown away last night. The rest I sorted into piles and will put it all in file folders tonight. When we get the office set up, I need to get a good file system going. I should probably get some file boxes for hanging folders before we can get the office set up and establish a good system now. I think my husband would agree that paperwork issue in our house is definitely a frustrating problem.

I dream of one day having a well organized home office and great system for taking care of household papers. I need to put some thought into what that system is going to be. It feels good to be making progress for sure, but sometimes it's frustrating to not be able to just get everything done NOW! I guess that's the point of this whole project though. Progress a little bit at a time is better than nothing at all, right?

Next In Line

As of yesterday, I TOTALLY thought I was not going to get the stomach virus my husband and son got. I should have known I was doomed last night when I made the comment to Matt that "I must have a superior immune system." Ha!

So, this is officially the first day of the month that I haven't crossed anything off my list. So, after 8 hours straight of actually getting sick, I'm finally at the point where I can sit up, sip some ginger ale (which I hate... probably because I only ever drank it warm with bubbles stirred out when I was sick growing up... so that is ALL I can associate it with) and reconnect with the world. I can't remember the last time I went all day without checking e-mail or facebook. I guess maybe the day I gave birth to Andy! I still feel pretty queasy but I'm just not tired enough to go to bed yet. I was in bed all day. Well, when I wasn't in the bathroom anyway.

Yesterday, I finally got my crochet bag organized. Once a week I get together with a group of girlfriends for "Stitch N' Bitch" or, SNB as we call it. I haven't actually crocheted anything in well over a year. One week while I was pregnant I forgot to bring my stitching to SNB and I honestly never brought it again. Back then I had everything in a plastic grocery bag... actually 3 separate plastic grocery bags. So, last night I brought all 3 bags and the crochet bag that my Grandmother made me to SNB. I sorted everything out. I felt pretty dumb that those grocery bags had Christmas cards in them that were handed out 2 years ago at SNB and a few other pieces of trash. Along with a project that I had started but didn't even recognize and couldn't remember who I had started making it for! In those moments I have to try really hard to concentrate on the fact that I'm making changes now and not on the fact that I've left things so disorganized for so long.

Well, Matt and Andy seemed a lot better the next day when they were sick, so I'm sure hoping that is the case for me tomorrow. I now have a huge backlog of items I need to get done that just haven't happened after taking care of Matt and Andy for the past 3 days. Hopefully I won't feel too weak when I wake up in the morning. I'm hugely appreciative of my husband leaving work at 9:30 this morning to come home and take care of me and of Andy. Hopefully I can get our house back in order... finally... tomorrow.

Disinfecting My House

Okay, so it has been a complete vomit fest here for the past two days!! I think we are now in the recovery phase... as long as I don't get it... fingers crossed! We thought my husband had some kind of food poisoning because he was up sick ALL night Saturday night and slept ALL day Sunday, but then woke up Monday morning perfectly fine. We realized it was some sort of stomach virus yesterday afternoon when Andy started throwing up... everywhere... in large volumes...in 20-30 minute increments. I felt SO bad for him. This is the first time he's really been sick like this and throwing up. He's 17 months old. It got to the point where it was almost comical, like when you are watching a cartoon character throw up and they just open their mouth and stuff spews out like a fountain for 20 straight seconds... ya... it was unfathomable the amount of liquid that his stomach can hold. He wanted to drink and I wanted him to stay hydrated, so we did go through 5 and a half things of Pedialite last night. We went through every single bath towel & blanket we owned and Matt and I changed clothes so many times, we were all out of pj pants, t-shirts and gym shorts by the end of the night. By 8:00 p.m. he was done, went to bed at 10:00 p.m. and slept until 8:00 a.m. this morning. Bless him. I thought we were going to be up ALL night.

My husband was probably happy to go back to work today after the long weekend so that he didn't have to deal with the after math. Our house seriously looks like a tornado came through here. I'm still trying to get all of the soaked clothes and towels washed. Good thing it's in the mid 60's today because I really needed to air the house out. I have all the windows open and it's great!

So, yesterday I was realizing that I would have to make some modifications to my list. When I made my list for January I didn't know I was going to be gone for 11 days at the end of the month. There is just no hope that the family room is going to get painted before Saturday and I can't hang the blinds until after I paint and although I tried to schedule play dates this month, all of the kids we know have been sick, so, that just isn't going to happen. Since I had already made my list for February, I just traded out with 3 things from February's list. Yesterday morning my neighbor asked what I did all morning and I said that I organized my food storage containers and re-arranged my kitchen cabinets. She responded with "I didn't see that on the list!" (thanks Leslie!) So, now I feel like I have to disclose that I made some trades!

I did get my storage containers organized yesterday, but I'm not sure that the cabinet won't just become another jumbled mess. Previously, they were on the lazy susan and that was NOT working. Plus, I had a bunch of random lids and containers that didn't match. So, I matched them all up and put the rest in the Goodwill pile (along with a smoothie maker and rice cooker we never use). I moved the containers and lids to the skinny cabinet next to the sink (now that my freezer bags, tinfoil and cling wrap are in the pantry) but I need some tips or ides from people on what works for them keeping all that organized. Any suggestions?

My plan for the lazy susan is to get a few cheap baskets to put all of Andy's cups and bowls in so that he can get them himself. We'll see how this works out. I also totally rearranged our upper cabinets too. I needed a place to put all of those farm dishes! After 3 tries, I was able to fit them ALL in one cabinet! I'm very proud of that! Bless my husband for not making a big deal out of how many there were, and why we need them, when he came home and saw them spread all over our dining room table. Although, I did see some cute dishes with blueberries on them in the LL Bean catalog that came the other day and when I showed them to him and said "Aren't these cute?" he replied with "Don't you think we have enough dishes?!!" Point taken. But I reserve the right to get those cute blueberry dishes if I ever have a farm house in Maine some day! (what??!!! a girl can dream!)

Motivation

Let me just say that there is no better motivation to lose weight than going to try on bridesmaid dresses with 4 people who are all smaller than a size 8 dress! I have not made "lose weight" a resolution because I am smart enough to know that that just does not work for me. I'm trying really hard to make several smaller resolutions and changes and stick to them that I think will result in weight loss, but after today, I feel like I really need to step it up. My brother is getting married to one of my very best friends in September and I am the matron of honor. There is NO WAY that I want to see myself at my current weight in their wedding pictures. That in and of itself is wonderful motivation.

I feel like I need to add a weight loss counter on the side of my blog or something. I don't want to post how much I weigh, but my goal is to lose 2 lbs a week until I reach the "normal" range for my BMI. For me, right now, that is 42 lbs away. For my health, I think that is a good first weight loss goal.

I've already stopped drinking soda and majorly cut back on eating out and started taking my metformin (which I step up to two 500 mg. pills/day starting tomorrow... yuck!) but I KNOW my body and I know how stubborn it is to lose weight. I know that what I really have to do is cut the simple carbs and the sweets. I really really like bread. I really really like brownies. This is a problem since I really really want to fit into a bridesmaid dress that is 4 sizes smaller than I tried on today!

I'm not looking forward to this. AT ALL. But, I'm really hoping that if I can power through the first few weeks and see results that it will motivate me to keep going. That's been the case with everything else so far, so here's to hoping that trend continues!

Today I had to pick something short and sweet on my list, so my husband and I sat down and worked out maintenance schedules for our two rental properties. Well, not so much maintenance schedules, but more of a list of 6-8 small projects that we would like to complete at each property over the course of this calendar year. They are definitely reasonable and I have no doubt we can accomplish them over the next 11 months. The reason I felt like I had to make this a resolution is because I felt like we were becoming a little complacent with our rentals. When we first moved to Charleston, we were still in the process of renovating the house in NC to get it ready to rent. So, we would drive 4 hours up and 4 hours back every weekend to work on it. Then, I got pregnant... and we still made that drive every weekend. Eventually, I stopped, but my husband went EVERY WEEKEND. We made our deadline (barely), got the house rented, and then 1 week before I was due, a pipe burst in the attic, totally flooding the whole right side of our house, upstairs and down. I seriously thought I was going to go into early labor when I got that phone call (no joke! My uterus was having the equivalent of a panic attack!) When I say it did a LOT of damage, I'm not exaggerating in the least! Thankfully our insurance company was awesome, but when it was all said and done, the damages were over thirty thousand dollars. Paying our deductible was worth every penny, but it was just so stressful. I actually gave my future sister-in-law a sheet of paper when we went into the hospital to deliver Andy with instructions on what to say or do if any of the contractors or tenants called WHILE I WAS GIVING BIRTH! So... needless to say... after that whole fiasco I was so over doing any projects at that house!

But... I'm better now! And starting to MAJORLY get the itch to keep going on our improvements. We have thought about selling that house in NC, but I guess we are still just too attached. We have great tenants that want to renew their lease in August, so we are going to stick with it. I feel better now that we have a list though. Now, we have something to work towards!

Major Accomplishment!

The item that I can now cross off my list as of yesterday is "Not eat out for a week." Honestly, I wasn't sure that I could do it, but you know what? It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought once I set it as a goal! It actually felt really good yesterday knowing that I had gone SEVEN days without a lunch out or a bagel from Panera or even ordering a pizza!

I can't say that all of the meals that I cooked were perfectly healthy, but at least they were home cooked meals. One step at a time here! I am surprised at how good I feel after not eating out. I would always feel guilty for eating out because it didn't feel like a treat. I always felt like it was out of convenience and then I would feel guilty for wasting the money when I could have probably made a few really good home cooked meals for the same price. (not to mention how embarrassed I started to feel that the workers at Panera know me by name!) I want to get to the point where going out to eat is something special that we do, not the norm. I'm not even sure how we fell into this habit of eating out so much. I think that a lot of it started when we were renovating the house in N.C. Our kitchen was only borderline usable so we definitely ate out ... a LOT. I think a big part of it was also to escape from the chaos of our house being a construction zone and not having any heat, etc.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it's probably always about it being an escape. Even now. I would go through the drive through at Chick-fil-A because if I went home and tried to figure out what was for lunch I would feel guilty for not planning meals or writing out a shopping list and it would just make me feel more like I was failing at being a good wife and mother. The ironic thing is, that getting take out for lunch didn't let me escape from what I was feeling for any longer than it would take me to eat. After that I would feel even worse because I would feel like I should be doing a better job meal planning AND I would feel guilty for spending the money and not eating very healthily.

It's funny how sometimes just writing something out makes you look at your behaviors in a different way.

Well, I know that I felt much better this past week than I have in a long time, so my goal is to keep this up! I want dining out to be a treat, not a guilt trip! Now... to figure out what I'm going to tackle today....

Money Management

Today I crossed something off my list that is the start of a much bigger resolution. Today I finished getting "My Portfolio" set up on my Bank of America online banking site. I've decided to give this a try since it's free, instead of purchasing Quicken (which was my original plan). If you are a Bank of America customer and you have online banking set up then you can take advantage of this money management tool. (http://www.bankofamerica.com/onlinebanking/index.cfm?template=my_portfolio)

Today I finished up entering in all of my account information for credit cards, mortgages, auto loans & student loans. My Portfolio will track all of our spending and categorize everything for any time period that I specify. It will also show when each loan payment is due and the minimum due as well as the loan balance. It automatically calculates net worth and tracks any increases or decreases. The only accounts it's not picking up for some reason right now are our 401k's. I might have to call customer service for help on that. Anyway, I loaded in my monthly budget and set up the categories of spending I want to track. It will show me pie charts and graphs of where our money is being spent each month.

Gaining better control over our financial situation is something that I have needed to do for a LONG time. My husband and I don't manage money poorly, but we aren't great either. I think the majority of the problem is that we have a lot of monthly obligations because we have 2 rental properties (that we manage ourselves) and it becomes a lot to keep up with. I have had a budget made up in an excel spreadsheet for a while, and although it looks good on paper, that's pretty much all it has been since I created it. It seemed good in theory, but we definitely weren't sticking to it. We have some debt that needs to be paid off and we are in desperate need of creating an emergency fund.

It's a very stressful feeling to feel like you don't have good control over where you money is being spent. Especially when you know that you could be being a LOT smarter with it! We just purchased a new home in June and moved in in July. It is a brand new home in the first phase of a new neighborhood. We took the approach of buying the largest house we could afford in the nicest neighborhood that we could afford so that we wouldn't out grow it and need to move in a few years. So far, it has been great, but I totally underestimated the cost involved in furnishing the extra space. Some days it's hard because I really want everything to be done RIGHT NOW and that just isn't financially possible. We are working on things one room at a time (sometimes one closet at a time!) and we are definitely making progress.

Sometimes I find it funny that it stresses me out that everything isn't done yet because this is surely the nicest place we have ever lived! We bought our first house only 2 months after we got married and I think that most of our friends and family thought we were CRAZY! In fact, I distinctly remember my father saying the words "you are crazy!"... several times... although I'm sure it was with concern that we were in over our heads with the work that needed to be done. The movie "The Money Pit" was mentioned quite frequently! Anyway, it was a two story, four square house built in 1920 and the inside was HIDEOUS! It also did not have central heating or air. We felt like we were getting a great deal and it was exactly what we were looking for. Suffice it to say we had a vision of what that house could be. We lived that whole first year with things barely unpacked, in a total construction zone working on projects ourselves as we had the money to do so. This was all also done without central heating. We used space heaters only and often times slept with hats on. (This is when having 3 dogs in the bed comes in handy! ha ha!) I remember one morning I got up and went downstairs and picked up a fast food soft drink cup that my husband had gotten the night before and it STILL had ice in it! Yes, our house was that cold. We really were crazy! But it wasn't that bad. We had fun working on the house and it definitely gave us a sense of pride and accomplishment. So I don't know why I complain sometimes about this house not being all the way furnished! We live in a super energy efficient house now... and more importantly... it has HEAT! Nothing to complain about here!

Long story short, we did get that house renovated eventually and it's currently one of our rental houses. Turns out it is better for us financially as a rental because it's 2 blocks from a major university. My husband and I have never really taken the conventional route to do anything in our lives. Most of our friends and family just accept now that we are the couple that makes crazy decisions, takes risks that they probably wouldn't and that they should never write our address anywhere in ink! That's what makes it all the more humorous to me that we now live in a brand new house in a cookie-cutter neighborhood. It just feels SO not us. But I guess priorities change when you start a family... and I wouldn't change that for anything in the world!