delalana

Technology always works better when you complain at it. Air fryer has moved to “processed” and I have an anticipated delivery date

There’s some weather coming in Thursday, so my parents shifted their move up by a day and they’ll be here on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to it. We’re a week out from when I ordered the new air fryer and the order is still pending. This is the first time I’ve used my work’s awards system to order anything, so I don’t know if that’s unusual or not. It’s certainly a bit frustrating. With things feeling a bit calmer than they did a week or two ago, I think the next thing I’m going to focus on is adding another serving of veggies. Right now I mainly eat asparagus, bok choy, and zucchini, depending on what’s on sale. I could add red bell peppers and summer squash pretty easily, but feel like I want to end up with a bit more variety. I like spinach, although not in a giant blob, and carrots, although I’m very picky about them not being mushy. In general, I’m looking for things that require minimal chopping that I can just season and stick in the air fryer/oven.

I took an eight day break from getting takeout and, honestly, it’s probably been years since that last happened. The streak is broken at this point, but I’m ok with that. The point was more to break what felt like an all consuming, all controlling cycle of all the fast food all the time. I’ve been keeping up with swimming a couple of times a week. Covid restrictions are loosening up again this weekend, so we’ll see what that means as far as availability goes. I have figured out that weekend slots tend to open up late. By waiting to check until yesterday morning I was able to get a spot for yesterday afternoon. While I haven’t quite executed on it yet, if I do a bit of batch cooking today, that should give me enough food to get me through to when my parents get here on Thursday. Yesterday ended up being a bust on the energy for cooking front, but it’s feeling doable today. And watching TV wildlife with cats is fun.

The backup plan to the unfortunate news from last week went fine. So things aren’t as good as we’d been hoping for, but we’re more or less back where we were a few months ago. The quick version of context is I have a relative with health issues. The state is expanding their vaccine criteria tomorrow, so all of my Minnesota family (except me and the six year old) should be eligible. The press conference said some groups might still have to wait a while, but the people I’m more worried about are top priority and my boss - who’s eligible but lower priority at this point - already got his first shot today, so we’ll see. The round after this one will be pretty much everyone, but I’ll at least be in a higher priority group at that point due to my weight. The belly dancing classes I do are scheduled to come back in person in May and I’ve decided it’s something I want to do, whether I’m vaccinated yet or not. It’s a small group made up of people I know and trust and at least some of them will already be vaccinated by that point. So the risk level probably isn’t that different from the swimming I’ve been doing for months.

Thanks. Emotions have calmed down a bit since last week. And my coping mechanisms and support network both feel a lot stronger than they have in months and years past. I ordered an air fryer which should come sometime soon. I did already have one, but it was the absolute cheapest one I could find and only had one temperature setting (425F). The new one should let actually try out some air fryer recipes instead of just roasting vegetables and heating up frozen food.

I got some incredibly unfortunate news yesterday, so now I’m generally tired and stuck in a bit of an emotional trough. On a completely different topic, in two weeks my parents will be moving in with me for an indeterminate while. They’re moving from Michigan to Minnesota, so they’ll be living with me until they buy a house. Obviously, going from living on my own to living with two other people is going to change rather a lot. The end result of the above is that I’m a bit shook and now does not feel like a good time to try to make more life changes. I’m going to keep on level 4 for the next couple of weeks. Things are going to be day by day for a bit and I would really, really like it to get warm enough to visit (specific) people outside. I’ll be more ok in a couple of days. Getting more sleep and just plain time will help with that. It’s just going to be a rough journey to get there.

Cauliflower wings are a different busy altogether. They’re basically florets with some breading and a sauce. I don’t think the actual taste is much different, but I can’t stand the texture of the florets. So tots it is for me. I got to the pool earlier today, which was nice. It’s been a little hard to get decent time slots lately as the pool is the busiest I remember seeing it since covid happened. Hopefully now that the weather is getting nicer some of those people will end up going outside. Tomorrow’s supposed to be 20 degrees warmer than today and we’re set to hit 50s by the weekend. Food has been decentish. I’ve been hitting recommended amounts of protein and vegetable servings, but I still tend to eat out way more than I really want to, especially on the weekends. And after making it all the way through level 4 on the app today, I found out that after that is... nothing (coming soon)! So I’m trying to figure out what I want to do now. I’ll at least keep up with the protein and veggies for a couple of days while I figure that out. But, hey, I’ve still eaten more vegetables in the past week or so than I did in probably a good couple months of 2020 (take your pick of pretty much any two months). Having an air fryer (as low effort vegetable cooking as you can get) and cauliflower tots (a slightly healthier and much more satisfying substitute for where I was usually putting potato chips) have both been godsends in that regard.

Hi! Thanks for checking in. I meant to get on here more often, it just didn’t happen. Work has been fine that past couple weeks, at this point I’m actually impatiently waiting for people to get contracts signed so I can start working on one of my projects that’s been on hold. Emotionally, things have been a bit of a roller coaster, but that’s not altogether unexpected. Personal growth really sucks when you’re going through it sometimes. But things are starting to feel more settled and there is tremendous upside to getting where I’m going. Food has also been up and down, I’m large part in line with my emotional state. For the past few days, though things have been good. I’ve prolonged the journey towards eating more vegetables and at this point eating three vegetables a day is feeling relatively easy. Although I’ve discovered I’m not a fan of cauliflower wings. I haven’t really kept up with the dance videos. I did finally make it back to the pool yesterday for the first time since November. I’ve missed the water. My mental bandwidth is still feeling a bit low, so for the next couple of weeks my main focus is going to be on food. I am going to book a couple of pool times for next week and plan to have a longer dance session this Sunday. But if something needs to give it’ll be the exercise first. Unusually for me, food is feeling easier to manage than exercise right now.

I gave it another shot yesterday, cooking them a bit longer and they seemed to have more of a crispy outside and also a creamier inside. So I guess I was just undercooking them. Yesterday, I finished up work for one project and got another to the point where I don’t have anything else to do until the customer sends us paperwork. Now I’m on one - single - project. The stress cascading away from me in the past 24 hours or so has been wonderful. I will be almost certainly be getting off work on time today and have no plans afterwards to do Responsible Adult Things (TM). At this point I’d like to get in a longer workout tonight (because I’ve been enjoying it), but I won’t be mad if that turns into embracing my inner couch potato.

Thank you to my past self for picking up some frozen meatballs and chopping a giant thing of bok choy a few days ago so that all I had to do for dinner tonight was drop a few things on a sheet pan. All goals intact. That was in a air fryer/toaster oven as it happens... but maybe this is when I finally learn what you’re actually supposed to use the broiler function for?

Day one went well. Dentist appointment meant I finished up with work long before 7:30. A 3-4 minute workout was perfect for getting back from the dentist and grocery shopping a little after 8. Finally, I got two servings of veggies in, asparagus (decidedly healthy) and some cauliflower tots (decidedly unlikely to go bad in my fridge if I get busy and/or forget they exist). I’m still deciding how I feel about the tots. They didn’t have quite the crispy exterior I was looking for, but I could see them growing on me. Thanks! It feels like I’m finally hitting a balance between not doing anything and trying to do too much given where everything else in my life is at. Fingers crossed, it still looks like this week will be more reasonable. We’ll see how tomorrow goes...

To quickly recap where my life is right now, work is incredibly busy at the moment and I’ve been working long hours trying to keep multiple customers happy. As of today, that’s still the case but I’m starting to see a hazy sort of glow that just might be a light at the end of the tunnel. Towards the end of last challenge I figured out that updating goals more or less weekly was working well for me given how hectic things are, so I’ll be sticking with that strategy. At least until Tuesday - the day of many meetings - my goals are: 1. Get back on the nutrition train. Currently doing NF level 4. This was going pretty well last week, but slipped over the weekend. 2. Dance at least a little bit every day. I haven’t really danced much at all in almost a year. I’d not realized how much I missed it until I looked up dance workouts on a whim yesterday. 3. Finish working by 7:30. Just a little bit earlier than last week and hopefully doable.

Yesterday went pretty well. - The customer is happy with the solution to the tricky problem, so I can go focus on other projects for a couple of days. - The casserole got assembled and I cleaned the kitchen. - I found out The IT Crowd is on Netflix Today wasn’t half bad either: - Having a hard cutoff of 8pm really helped focus my last couple hours of work when I had to pick which bugs I wanted to focus on - The casserole is in the oven and more bok choy is cooking on the stove - I got in a short but totally counting it work when I got bored about halfway through the nearly two hours of all company meetings this morning

Another Tuesday down, another round of meetings to figure out which customer needs what when. Knock on every single piece of wood I can find, I think I’ve figured out the second to last tricky issue with one customer’s project so this week should (might) be a little less hectic. With everything going on with work right now, rolling goals seem like they make more sense than sticking with something for any length of time. So for this week: 1. Keep going with NF nutrition levels. Right now I’m on the eat one vegetable a day stage, which seems just about doable given that I chopped up some bok choy a few days ago and can now grab and go. I can’t promise I’ll hit recommended protein amounts. It still seems to be having a positive effect, though, as half of my pizza lunch is going back in the fridge because one piece of pizza and about a cup of bok choy is enough to make me decidedly not hungry. 2. Stop working by 8pm. Rest is a thing that my mental and physical health both need and it’s easy to forget that. 3. Cook. The soup I made yesterday did not turn out well, so I’m suddenly very low on food. I need to finish assembling a casserole that’s half prepped and do the planning I need to to hopefully be able to cook this weekend.

Yep, they don’t have a specific place picked out yet, but they’ll be living with me for a bit while they look for something in my general area.

As predicted, I did not get around to exercise yesterday, but did get in a workout this evening after work. Workout 2B is way harder than 2A and I’m feeling it. Everything is trembling at the moment. I got one project pretty well wrapped up today, but another isn’t in a great spot, and the third needs to come off the back burner for a bit. So this will end up being a long week again. On the happier side, my parents accepted an offer on their house! Just over seven weeks until they live not 11 hours away from me

Work did end up being reasonable last week, with a bit of overtime, but much more manageable. And being excused from a customer meeting this morning is a good sign for this week as well. Food and exercise continue to go well. Yesterday it sunk in that, given perpetual telehealth appointments on Mondays, switching my schedule from MWF to TThS is probably a good idea. Depending on how I’m feeling this evening, that change will happen this week or next. Thanks. it’s also a nice way to distract from all the things I “should” be doing. There’s not a ton of pattern to my recipes, although I do have a fair amount of Mexican and Asian, and Greek food is fairly hit or miss with me. I like spinach, but have to plan it carefully as the grocery store’s half pound bag usually costs almost as much as the 2.5 lb bag from Costco and I’m cooking for one.

All the customers were happy yesterday, so I get to have a normal work schedule this week. Got a fitness benchmark in today that went better than expected and nutrition has been going well.

Got two things cooked today, so I should be good on food for a while.

It’s been a good month or two since I posted here. Suffice it to say the holidays weren’t terribly less stressful than the rest of last year. But I’m here now and I’m going to try to be fairly consistent about that. So, goals: 1. Improve nutrition - I’m planning on using the nutrition levels in the nerd fitness app to guide what I’m eating, although I’ll really take anything that results in less takeout. 2. Exercise 3 times a week - I’m not sure what I’ll do specifically. We’re getting to the point (>2 weeks after new year’s) that I’m not completely uncomfortable going back to the pool. On the other hand, covid regulations currently restrict pool usage to three people an hour. I haven’t checked availability yet, but it was already decently low when there were five people an hour. I’ve got a few things I want to try to find online, as well, but to have something now I’ll start with body weight work and/or the yoga videos my gym posts every week. 3. Improve the fancy random number generator - This one’s mostly for fun. I got stressed a week or so ago having to pick out something to cook on top of all the work it would actually make it, so I wrote a short program that would pick a couple of recipes out of a list at random added a simple display with pictures and clickable links. I think the next thing I want to add to it is the ability to generate a shopping list and hopefully upload it to Google keep (I haven’t yet checked if that’s actually possible with keep). This upcoming week will likely be the most difficult. Work was in a very stressful spot last week and I pulled a lot of overtime. I’m fairly certain that this week will follow suit. I have tomorrow off, though, so hopefully I can take advantage of that to get a start on cooking and exercising.

My cousin want into the hospital this morning. I haven’t heard from her yet today, so I’m assuming she’s busy with checking in and trial sorts of things. That was, indeed, me. I was taking virtual classes with a lot of the same people I had been doing in person ones with, but stopped because I wasn’t getting any of the social components of the classes and I was getting bored with drills. The videos are a good idea that I hadn’t thought of. They might not be exactly what I’m used to, but I’m a lot more open to that when I’m not paying the same price as full in person classes. And knowing that people could see me on a screen was never my favorite part of the virtual classes anyways. I appreciate your and @Kestrel Grey‘s suggestions. Needless to say, it’s been a hard year. While I’ve been relatively ok for a little while now, that grasp on ok has felt pretty tentative and fragile. So having one of the main supports go away is scary. And the stress and lack of sleep of the past couple of weeks isn’t really helping. But I was always going to have to diversify at some point. Some day I could end up living somewhere where I don’t even have access to a pool or having some temporary or permanent medical issue that makes it so I can’t swim. I’ll get through it. And I think getting outside and getting back to dance will help. On a less depressing note, I had a rather interesting revelation last night. I was walking back from my cousin’s, wanting to eat my feelings in deep fried food, but also most of the way through the last day of the drink more water challenge from the NF app, where the goal was not to drink anything other than water, coffee, or tea for 24 hours. Turns out I find the thought of eating deep fried food with water instead of pop absolutely unappealing. That, combined with the motivation of already being most of the way to my liquids goal was enough to convince me to eat the healthy dinner I had at home with a side of some fancyish garlic cheese bread. I don’t know what I want to do with that, but it feels like there should be something useful I can get out of it.

Unfortunately hospital policy is changing as of tomorrow to not allow any visitors. My cousin is having a hard time with the news that she won’t be able to see even her husband for a solid month. She’s sad, scared, and pissed off that people couldn’t even wear masks or cut down their socializing enough for us to be in even slightly less of a raging pandemic.

I needed this weekend. I got some much needed sleep and now have a much better idea of what day it is. Which happened just in time to order presents for the soon to be six year old’s birthday next weekend. Earlier today I finally got around to cooking the pasta dish that I made sauce for on Tuesday. All other cooking plans are getting pushed off indefinitely as I’m now far more aware of the fact that my parents are going to be getting here on Thursday. My cousin goes into the hospital on Tuesday (this got pushed back again for scheduling reasons, but is now officially a go). After talking things over with her doctors, she and her husband decided that they feel safe having him come and visit a few times while she’s in there. Her mother in law is coming to stay and watch her son for the entire time she’s in her hospital, so that her husband can both work and come visit her during the day. So, provided visitor policies don’t change due to covid, right now this is working out about the best it can. I’m realizing that I’m probably not going to get back into a pool for at least a couple of months at this point. Either I’m going to be quarantining to hopefully be able to see my family over Christmas or things will have gotten bad enough that I won’t be able to go see them, in which case I can’t imagine feeling safe at the pool either. And I am not going anywhere near the pool in at least the two weeks following new year’s. I’m sad and nervous about the impact that this is going to have on my mental health, but I don’t really see any other way around it. Maybe it’ll snow a bunch and I’ll be able to get out and snow shoe this winter.

Thanks. Family stuff is stable at this point and we were able to figure out the work issue this morning. So now I’m enjoying an evening of relaxing and looking forward to getting some good sleep this weekend.

I ended up babysitting until 6:30 today so cooking dinner didn’t happen, which I’m fine with. My eventual dinner choice wasn’t the healthiest, but it did come from my freezer instead of a restaurant, so I’ll take the win in that.