Jayniana Jones

Glad to see you're still going both on land and on sea. Good luck on the job search.

Update: This week plugged away. I've felt off all week. I think it's a result of exhaustion, running from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, and getting news that gets the caretaker in me worried more than I want to admit. My yoga streak is still going. Although this morning I woke up with the room spinning. I tried doing my yoga session hoping the spinning and light headed feeling would go away. The last time it happened the doctors gave me meds for vertigo. Based on my past experience I had planned on going to my chiropractor who managed to relieve the vertigo by working magic on my neck. After I made the appointment, I managed to move just right that something popped and the dizziness went away. Thank goodness. I finished my yoga session, by doing a meditation and some very gentle stretches. Today was supposed to be my second body weight workout, but because of the vertigo trouble I postponed it until tomorrow. I have been working on my art. I created some water droplets that look like they can be touched. It doesn't look like much as a composition, but it took quite a bit of time to do (about two hours). Going to bed this week was better except for Thursday. I have some activities that I don't get home until about 9:45. I went to bed "late" but only by about 30 minutes. This weekend I'm home alone. It feels a bit strange because that hasn't happened since my teens were toddlers. Tomorrow I'm going to try to do what I want and not do the things that I think I should do to get a jump start on my week.

I took a yoga class about 20 years ago. Yikes! That makes me feel old. The instructor specialized in Hatha yoga which focuses on the flow of all the yoga postures. It's the style that is used to build strength and often challenges me both mentally and physically. I'll send you a PM with some of the programs I use because I feel weird talking about yoga stuff that isn't related to the NerdFitness yoga (which is on my list to try).

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm on day 36 today (I think that's what I counted this morning). My daughter is familiar enough in yoga that this week we've bumped up our practice to an intermediate/advanced level of yoga. Some of our sessions have left me more stiff than when I've done the body weight stuff. I'm thinking I'm going to bump the body weight routine down to a minimum of one time a week with the attempt at two. It worked okay last month, but I got more ambitious and didn't think about the change in schedule. The grass is always greener on the other side, eh? My hubby and I have actually talked about selling everything, hitting the road, and not having a home. Our kids freaked at the idea. Timing isn't quite right and I think it would add more stress to an already stressful situation. My grandma lives next door (our house was a two for one deal) and there are some serious health issues going on with her and my mom so we're a bit tethered to the property for the moment. As a compromise, we're devising a trip that will be at least a month possibly two. Things will all sort themselves out. I just get extremely impatient.

I'm envious of your snow for cross-country skiing. Around here the snow has melted and froze enough that it's like skiing on ice with patches of grass sticking up. I've never skate skiied before, are the skis different than regular cross country ones?

That's sounds like a great reward. You'll have a big book collection on the Kindle in no time. Glad to see you've found lots of workarounds. The photo just about fit my imagination. I'll confess I'm glad I'm a land lubber. I love canoes and kayaks on big (or small) water close to shore or on rivers. Not a huge fan of big boats on rough waters.

That's a long trek. Glad you are back. I was worried you.

You are doing great! I'm impressed with your determination to keep your routine despite the rough waters. In my storyteller brain I have your abilities right up there with a superhero at the moment. Huge waves crash over the top of the boat yet the mighty dragon continues to lift his weights. The boat struggles to toss him off, but our determined dragon tightens his grip on the elliptical/stair machine and continues to fight. lol. BTW, Dave Ramsey's book is an all age book. Yes, it would have benefited my hubby and I if we had it when we were 20, but I think we wouldn't have been wise enough to know we needed it until we had our huge disaster to fix. Now we're debt free and have the ability to do things we only dreamed about before following Dave Ramsey's plan. He is a christian, but honestly his advice is completely secular. I hope the water settles down for you.

What a great dad you have! It looks delicious! I have a possible suggestion for water when you travel. When we're on the road, we frequently buy gallon jugs of water from a grocery store. It functions as a nice stretch break and gives a palatable option for beverages. It won't cure the trouble of the bathroom breaks, but does help at the scary hotels. We've stayed in a few where I didn't want to put my bare feet on the floor or use the shower but the price was right. I hope you had a good trip.

So the week started strong and then fell apart. The yoga streak is still going (as long as I do my yoga next). I'm on day 34 today. My body weight stuff didn't happen because of back pain and my schedule got jammed so tightly that I found myself having to choose between yoga or body weight. Yoga won. Probably for the better. I'm rethinking my goals for the month because on some days doing my body weight workout that often goes 45 minutes (includes warmup and cool down) and then doing a 30 minute yoga session plus walking my dog 3-5 miles per day gets to be alot when my schedule gets out of sorts. I usually work from home doing freelance work, but for the last few weeks I've agreed to work temporarily at the library two days a week help to keep the doors open. Friday was quiet enough I was tempted to do some squats and lunges because there was nothing else for me to do. At the moment, trying to juggle essentially three workouts into my day while homeschooling, working away from home, and driving everyone to their activities might be too much right now. I did manage to get me time in this week on Wednesday evening. I've started playing with some of my art supplies that sit behind me in my home office. It was nice to check out for a bit. Going to bed at 10 went really well until Thursday night. I went from work, to a meeting, and then had a heavy discussion with hubby which lasted long past 10. Wouldn't have been to big a deal except that Friday night I hung out with my hubby and kids until 11. As I tried to go to sleep I felt angry and disappointed that my life is pretty boring at the moment. It was the kind of mad where I kept posing questions about what I was going to do about it. This method would be fine during daylight hours, but not conducive to sleep. Saturday evening I tried to do the impossible and make paint dry faster in my bedroom so I could apply the last coat before bed. Luckily, I came to my senses and realized that the second coat of paint would have to wait. Clean up took me long past ten. The fresh paint smell was pretty strong and I was glad it wasn't as strong as it could've been had I gotten the second coat.

Just did my AMRAPs. I learned some new exercises. I've been thinking, the light side members should celebrate eating "light" foods like cream puffs with whipped cream.

Hey everyone, This is my first mini-challenge. I'm not totally sure what I'm getting myself into, but I figure it'll be fun. I'm sporadic on how much time I have to hang on the forums, but I'll try to keep up. Maybe that means you're just well-balanced.

Got it. I've fallen behind on my reading over the last few days and will have to catch up to see what's going on. The assassins are a lot busier than the druids. No offense to the druids. Just an observation.

Mid-week update: So far so good. Yoga streak is still going. Today was day 30. My daughter and I tweaked our original plan because I have some spinal pain that comes and goes. The pain feels like it would be relieved if someone could just rub the inside of my spine. However, no one wants to volunteer with the excuse that I'd be paralyzed. The pain may effect my intensity on the body weight workout tomorrow since I'm maxed on my dose of Aleve and have regular rotations of ice packs and heat. I'll have to see. Got in my first body weight routine in for the week. Two more to go. Going to bed at 10 is okay. I missed it by 15 minutes on Monday because I was busy and lost track of time. No time for myself logged yet, but I have this whole evening to do something. My hubby took the kids snowboarding and downhill skiing. I used to enjoy skiing but after having my ACL replaced it's an activity I don't feel is worth the risk of messing up my knee.

The fan is great. Very ingenious. Good idea doing the 10k as motivation to stay focused on your bigger goals.

Thanks for links to the kayak lessons, I'll have to check them out this spring. The class in Costa Rica is a women's retreat that includes whitewater kayaking and yoga daily for a week. The instructor is Anna Levesque, a former freestyle whitewater kayak competitor. Real whitewater kayaks are used. It's geared towards the beginner/intermediate. I figure kayaking over the summer will help condition my muscles. Alot of the exercises I do don't seem to workout the same muscles I use for paddling a canoe, so I figure it's the same with kayak paddle muscles.

Nice work! One of the tips I remember my chiropractor mentioning for running on the treadmill is that when you are finished running, take a few steps on the ground with your legs crossing in front of each other. So for example, your right leg will step across the front of your left leg. Then your left leg will step across in front of your right leg. It's supposed to help with body alignment issues particularly in the hips and low back. Must have been a running day yesterday. It was so nice out I took my dog for a mile run. He was happy to comply.

The Western side. I'm about 15 minutes southwest of Menomonie. The Red Cedar River is about 6 miles from my house. I noticed you're training for kayaking season. That is something I want to get into. My first time kayaking was in a touring kayak on Lake Superior. I loved it. Little ones and finances kept me from pursuing kayaking any further, however, my "little ones" are teens and are taller than me now so I'm kicking around the idea of getting something this spring. I've done whitewater canoeing while in high school and college, but never tried it with a kayak. I have an ambitious plan to take a guided whitewater kayaking trip to Costa Rica in January 2017. I figure I better get something to practice with this summer. Any recommendations? I tried a short kayak on the Red Cedar river (definitely not a whitewater river) and found the kayak hard to handle compared to the longer ones. Are there tricks to handling the whitewater kayaks on calmer waters?

Hang in there. I believe you are correct, you can do anything you set your mind to.

It looks like you're entering the next challenge with a well thought out plan. One thing you may want to experiment with is despite the unpredictable schedule is squeezing in all or part of a workout in before you start your shift. This could help your mindset to make smart choices (eating, stretching, etc) throughout the day. After 12 hours of working, I'm usually not all that excited to face a workout especially if stress is higher than usual. I'm assuming the same is the case for you. Were you in AK when the earthquakes hit last week? I know the Kenai peninsula felt it, but I was curious if you could feel it on the water (i.e. rougher water).

Saving this spot for the wrap up post.

In January, life flowed well and for some reason I wasn't under a ton of stress. I'm still trying to figure out if it was because I'm getting a routine down or if things really have calmed down. Either way, I'm glad for it because it helped me put my workouts first. This month I want to do the following: Continue to build flexibility My daughter and I have been doing yoga everyday. As of this posting, we are at 26 days in a row. Our first milestone is at day 50 when we go on a girls day out to get funky patterned yoga pants. If I counted my days correctly, we will reach that milestone on 2/23. If we miss one day we have to start all over. Because we have days where yoga is done immediately after a bodyweight workout, a yoga session must be a minimum of 15 minutes long. Build Strength My son loves the bodyweight workouts and requested that this month we increase them to 3 times a week. This feels like it'll be harder because our schedule has been pretty tight, but I figure why not? We've gotten two days a week down, three shouldn't be too hard... right? The weather got unexpectedly warm up here in Wisconsin, so I'm thinking my slackline may come out to see how much our bodyweight workouts have helped our core for balance. Go to Bed at the Same Time Everyday I've noticed that when I got to bed at the same time everyday for a week I actually feel tons better. Yet, when Friday comes I tend to stay up at least two hours later and get up at the same time that I do during the week. I feel crummy, get migraines, and usually have terrible focus. This time around lights out at 10. Me Time I bought a set of ink pencils for myself for Christmas. They have sat on my desk and haven't been used other than to make color swatches and a beginning sketch of a strawberry. I use the fact that I homeschool my kids, work part-time, drive the kids to their activities, and do most of the cooking as an excuse for not being able to do something I love. So this month, I'd like to get about 1 1/2 hours a week on a project for myself. At this point I don't care what the project is and I don't care whether the 1 1/2 hours are completed all at once or scattered around the week. As long as I make the time to play, I'll be happy and count it as mission accomplished. Good skill to everyone on this next round of challenges.

Just a wrap up. I couldn't post on the forum last week not sure if it was site problems or Internet problems. This challenge round went better than expected. I think it's because life was quieter than usual. The only one I didn't finish strong on what working on my novel 15 minutes a day. However, some days I did manage to work 2+ hours so I think next round I'll modify the goal a bit. I plan to switch back to the assassins for the next round.

Yeah, small victories! Something is better than nothing and brings on perseverance. Small victories when tallied up lead to big victories later. Keep it up! I hope this week goes much better than last week.

Nice sketches. Keep up the drawing. I've found the more I sketch I sometimes get surrounded with a peaceful feeling similar to a meditation.