MizMarvel

They are incredibly inspiring! They were so tired in that picture - that was day 3 of a 3 day dog show in which they showed and did two different kinds of obedience. All in separate rings. They were waiting around in their exercise pen for the dog on the left to finish showing for the day. I will never again sign up for that many things at once, that was way way too much running around from one place to another.

I wondered where you went! That’s a great epiphany. I love the idea of making strength training and fitness just part of every day life, not something we need to squeeze in or make time for. Fabulous. I might use that next challenge

Total brag post. Bigly. Scroll on if you don’t want to read me blather about how awesome I am today. Feeling much better today and making up for as much lost time as I can. One thing having a chronic illness is good for - it taught me to seize the shit out of good days and make the most of them. It’s 1:30 and so far today I have: - washed all the dirty dishes - scrubbed the sinks - scrubbed the tub - cleared and scrubbed the kitchen counters - swept, vacuumed, and mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors - made yogurt - made laundry soap - washed the dog bowls - emptied the fireplace - washed a couple loads of towels - started a batch of bone broth for the dogs - taken the garbage out - taken the recycling out - washed the compost bucket - done two giant yard scent searches with the dogs - prepped smoothies for most of the week I'm sitting down with a cup of tea and cuddling my dogs for a while, but I have a few more things I want to wrap up before relax time tonight. Remaining goals: - wash living room windows and French doors - clean toilets - clean bathroom sinks and mirrors - throw in a load or two of laundry for work (still have tomorrow off yet but I’d like to get most of it done today) - a couple indoor scent searches with the dogs - sweep, vacuum, and mop the dining room, living room, and hallway floors Then I plan to light a fire and enjoy my evening. Hope everyone else is having a great long weekend!

Well done! Hope you enjoy the HP books. I re-read them almost every year.

Winding down can be a challenge, especially for those of us who have overactive minds! There's new research coming out now that ritual is helpful for establishing mental health and self control, I've been fascinated reading it and have found that there are two times of day when having a really firm routine (ritual) is paramount to me getting anything at all done. In the morning when I'm getting ready for work. In the evening when I'm getting ready for bed. I like @Kharissandra's idea of reviewing the day but I prefer to have that done before I head for the bedroom so I don't have to deal with it at bedtime. What I do right at bedtime is take the dogs out, and then perform my ablutions in my ensuite and change into my jammies. Then I leave my phone and ipad in the ensuite and close the door. My phone is set on do not disturb overnight. I have this little lamp, one of those wax warmer things that were all the rage a few years ago. I don't have wax for it anymore but it gives the perfect amount of light for bedtime. Not enough to read by, but enough I can see easily. Then I sit on the floor or stretch out on the bed and cuddle and play with my dogs and do some deep breathing. I keep it very low key because it's bedtime, and then when we're ready I get my ipad out of the bathroom (phone stays in there), turn off the lights, and go to sleep. That's the type of bedtime ritual I'm into. I don't want to add to bedtime - I want it to be a time to just relax.

Thank you! It's been a tough week, I'll take my wins where I can find them.

Sounds like a win to me! Well done!

Further to redgrill18's thoughts - You might find you have greater success with your goal of not eating out by having more specific steps as to how you're going to pull that off. For example, taking an hour one day or another to chop up some veggies and pre-cook some meat to have easy meals in the fridge you can grab and warm up in a few minutes. It's a good goal, and I think you'll see a lot of success if you break it down a little further and being more specific with the process you'll use. Your other goals are very specific and behavior oriented where the one about eating out is a little more pie-in-the-sky, for lack of a better term.

I'm so far behind on reading I think I'm coming in first. I don't have time to read everything and reply on all the threads I want to reply on, so I'm just going to throw it out there on one post. You guys rock. All of you. This stuff is hard and you're all making a spectacular effort to make changes in your life that are going to pay off in spades in the long run. All of us funny faces around here think you're all amazing. Well done.

@Kharissandra What a fabulous comment! I'm going to take full advantage of those - breakfast is not my strongest meal. I like my breakfast sweet, which has made going paleo-ish a little challenging in the past.

A week since last update, wow! Well, it's been an... entertaining... week. I have been so sick. I didn't mention in earlier posts (because I don't like talking about it, really) that I have hypermobility spectrum disorder with all the brilliant, shiny things that come along with that and it has been kicking my ass for the last few weeks. This week has been especially bad, from a stomach/GI tract perspective. So that's been fun. Goals wise? Uh, let's see. Enrichment has been ongoing. Not at all because I feel like doing it, or because I have cared about my challenge much the last few days. Because I've been laying on the couch a lot watching movies and playing Dragon Age: Inquisition and the dogs need things to do or they will eat my feet. Training has been dumbed down and slowed down, but it continues. For the same reasons as above. I have not had any lattes. Win! My smoothies have all contained veg and I have had smoothies every day. They've been my go-to for fuel this week and they've been tasty. Win again! I have taken three easy walks of an hour-ish in my favourite nature preserve in the last six days. My dogs are really good for dragging me out of the house when I really don't want to go. My kitchen is not a complete disaster. It doesn't look as good as it did last week, but it sure looks a lot better than it did last time I was sick. Overall I'm counting this stupid week a win.

Thank you! I think they're pretty fabulous too. I'm actually surprised at how much cleaner my kitchen has been because of that quest. It's really surprising how much difference that five minutes a day makes. And I've gotten to the point now where I'm motivated because I like my clean kitchen.

What are we talking about? Where am I? Who are you people? Kidding! But it's been a few days... The weekend was fantastic! I kept my house clean, trained my dogs like it's my job, drank my smoothies, walked miles through fields to plant and retrieve birds, and even had a giant latte before training on Sunday. No regrets. Look at my happy girl! The week is going well so far as well. My smoothie had green stuff in this morning and was delicious, no latte today, I got out for a walk, dogs were trained at lunch, and the house is tidy.

Thursdays are always my hardest days of the week. Always. On top of that, this week has been the longest week I've survived in a very, very long time. I am so happy today is Friday. Bird dogs, friends, and cider this weekend and I need this. I seized my twenty seconds of courage and called and got some chukar to use. 5 weeks to test. The negative: No enrichment last night, no training yesterday, no smoothie at all this morning. The positive: No latte today, and my house is still super clean. I guess it's a win? Who knows. I have a weekend to look forward to, now.

Day three ended well! The dogs didn't get enrichment activities, per se, but I had dinner guests so there was a lot going on for them to get involved in. I went for a walk! It's super smoky here right now from forest fires in the mountains (looks like we live on Mars the last couple days, no joke), but I got a quick walk in before I went home from work. I had a latte yesterday afternoon and I'm not even sorry. It got to about 3:00 and I wanted one terribly, so I made one for myself. My dogs got trained. Rigel worked on stand exercises but we got snagged up because the hand sign I was using for 'stand' is almost identical to his 'come around' so I'll have to figure out another gesture to use. D'oh! Working on a focused hand stack with Blink, which is coming along nicely. Veggies in my smoothie again this morning. Turns out cherries are the secret. Yum. My house is so clean! So much easier to keep up with when I do a tiny bit every day.