[Sylvaa] I'm Bringing Spreadsheets Back

[Sylvaa]

I need to stop taking so many steps in the course of my day. It's going to make it really hard to improve. 

 

Yesterday was a good day. Work went as expected, I did a FIIT class (which again included stairs - yesterday the total was 26 flights), then ended up biking 7 miles because that was the ride of the week (goal was 6, so it's not like I went all crazy). I had some amazing food truck tacos for lunch, and a fish fry for dinner - however I ended up not eating a ridiculous amount for dinner. The fish was cat fish, but it was really heavily breaded, so it was okay. 

 

Dealt with a little bit of drama in the house over the last few days because my step-son is sick and his mother does not know how to parent a sick kid (Take him to the doctor's right away! Don't make him eat or drink anything!). Luckily, he is back with us and not dying - which is how she tried to make it sound. It is so irritating because this woman likes to spend money on the kids to be the "fun parent", but then always expects us to foot the important bills (note: their divorce decree doesn't include things like medical bills, so we aren't obligated to.) Luckily we are almost done with this whole thing. She's been doing pretty well at not overreacting, so this is also a little concerning. She's diagnosed bi-polar and we kind of monitor these kinds of things. Not that we do much, because it's not our business, but if it becomes a trend, we end up with the kids more (to be fair, it only impacts my step-son anymore anyway).

[Sylvaa]

Good grief, just went down memory lane through Facebook. 2010 - 2012 were not good years for my fitness goals. 

[Sylvaa]

Yesterday was a good day. I got things crossed off for work and got to go to TWO classes (I added Body Pump to the day). It was worth it because I am sore, which is such a good thing. Granted, it's because I can still walk normally, which is a big positive after a workout. 

 

I did get cat-called walking back from the gym. Which is like seriously?! I'm sweaty, my hair is wet from swimming and is literally sticking out everywhere. And someone thought that was the point where I was attractive enough to cat-call? I don't get cat-called when I try! 

 

I ate loaded tots for lunch (tater tots, pulled pork, cheese, and bbq sauce), and that was my primary meal for the day. They were amazing though! I ran out after working out for some dinner, but wasn't really hungry. I had part of a pretzel and some sausage. I'm probably going to be more structured going forward on my limiting carbs goal though. It's not impacting my weight, but these aren't the greatest food choices. 

[Sylvaa]

Reason #1005 why Sylvaa needs to watch the carbs: my period sucks when I'm higher carb. Seriously, this isn't complicated. Get it together Sylvaa. I did not give myself full credit for carbs yesterday. I'm not sure whether or not feeling unwell was related to carbs, but the fact remains it wasn't a good stomach day and I can't rule out the carb thing. So it is what it is. Luckily, I'm home next week, so I should be able to really buckle down. Unluckily, this means that working out might be a bit more difficult, but I'll survive. It might be nice to take it a little easier than I have been while my body adjusts.

 

Definitely ready for the weekend though! 

[Sylvaa]

Totally did the adult thing and ran away over the weekend. Spent most of it in my blanket fort and life is wonderful. 

 

I'm working from home this week to deal with kid appointments. Which isn't too bad, but makes for different struggles than I'm used to. I've not yet figured out my workouts for the week, but I'll have that updated before the end of today.

 

Update on the sick step-son: he was not feeling 100%, but doing better before he went to his mom's house yesterday. Now he's back to being super sick, but she sent him to school anyway? We are pretty sure this is a petty thing to get us to take him to the doctors. Now, don't get me wrong, if he's still sick, we will be taking him to the doctor. But this was a, "since you won't take him, I'm going to force the school to send him home sick" move. Which is really stupid on her part, because the turn around from Sunday to Monday is kind of suspicious. Like what was he doing at your house that put him in this condition? She also decided to bad mouth us to my step-son because we wouldn't take him to the doctor. Please note: through this entire process, she never once offered to take him, only informed us that she felt he needed to go. Then painted us as the bad guys when we didn't. I just got an update that he's feeling better after crackers and ginger ale from the nurse. 

[Shello]

I'm glad step-son is feeling better.  Hopefully it stays that way.  And I'm pretty sure you won the weekend.  

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

4 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

Update on the sick step-son: he was not feeling 100%, but doing better before he went to his mom's house yesterday. Now he's back to being super sick, but she sent him to school anyway? We are pretty sure this is a petty thing to get us to take him to the doctors. Now, don't get me wrong, if he's still sick, we will be taking him to the doctor. But this was a, "since you won't take him, I'm going to force the school to send him home sick" move. Which is really stupid on her part, because the turn around from Sunday to Monday is kind of suspicious. Like what was he doing at your house that put him in this condition? She also decided to bad mouth us to my step-son because we wouldn't take him to the doctor. Please note: through this entire process, she never once offered to take him, only informed us that she felt he needed to go. Then painted us as the bad guys when we didn't. I just got an update that he's feeling better after crackers and ginger ale from the nurse. 

You can't see it, but I rolled my eyes and sighed on your behalf.

[Machete]

14 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

crackers and ginger ale

 

This is treatment? These are my favorite things.

 

I'm going to sick tomorrow.

[Sylvaa]

Ranger Week 2 mini

 

Week 2: As I hinted last week, this is a continuation of last week's quest. Some of you already have a head start on it. You're going to take the list from week 1 and expand it into two groups. Many things will likely be in both, and that's ok. For the first group we are dealing with reality. I want you to look at the week 1 list and look at things you actually spend time on. For the purposes of this exercise, lets look at a hypothetical "typical week." List the amount of time you spend on each activity in a week, rounded off to hours. You should have a total of 168 hours listed. If you find that your total number of hours doesn't equal 168, you either left some things out or are incorrect about how much time you spend on an activity.

The second group is not based in reality. Take a look at week 1's list and look at both what you actually do and what you want to do. Daydream about how much time each week (in hours) you want to spend on your activities. This does not have to add up to 168, in fact I'd be surprised if it did. The only caveat is you have to allow at least 6 hours for sleep (or attempts to sleep) each day. Hopefully you have more time for sleep. Other than that, have fun daydreaming.

 

I guess I already started this above...

 

On 10/22/2018 at 1:00 PM, Sylvaa said:

Current demands:

• Work 40 hours + I am on site M - 6.5 h, Tu - 10 h, W - 10 h, Th - 9 h, work from home F - 8 h = 43.5
• Travel 10 hours (ish) M - 6 h, Th - 7h = 13. This is probably 50/50 extra work and self-care. I read on the plane, but also work at the airport. 
• Fitness Activities (5 days / week) - on the road, I spend about 6 hours at the gym, plus another 2 at home = 8
• Sleep (average 7 hours per night) - 42 hours a week
• Grocery shop (weekend - ~3 hour process) - 3 hours
• Baking (for the family, Saturdays) - 3 hours; this includes not only a fun dessert, but weekend dinners and the like
• Family Time (assorted) -  really depends on the week. But recently, this has been about 10 hours a week
• Litterbox duties - 0.5 hours, probably less, but it rounds up the rest
• Laundry (wash, dry, fold) - I do other things while this is actually happening, but I'm going to say 2 hours for all the folding / etc...
• Dishes (at least once over the weekend) - this plus other cleaning takes up about 6 hours over the course of the weekend.
• Self-Care time (try for at least an hour a day - includes reading on the plane ~2 hours per week) - 5 hours, not including the plane
• I initially forgot to include eating, specifically dinner as this is something that can take a while on the road. - 10 hours per week.

 

Hmmm, this leaves me with about 20 hours of unaccounted time. Which doesn't really surprise me, because I'm great at wasting time.  

 

I'm really torn on the second piece. Because I don't WANT to plan all of my time. For me, knowing that I have hours to spend as I wish (and as such, can take a day for exploring, sitting around, or doing something random) is so much more my style than planning every hour of my day.

 

But what I've learned is that I do have more time than I thought, so I'm happy with the mini (thanks Tank!).

[Machete]

I use a tracking app called Life Cycle to narrow down my location and I can easily tell when I'm wasting time daily/weekly (e.g. spent too much time in the gym not working, got stuck in traffic, how long I was actually in Target, etc.). Apparently I'm not getting as much sleep as I think I am.

[Sylvaa]

2 minutes ago, Machete said:

I use a tracking all called Life Cycle to narrow down my location and I can easily tell when I'm wasting time daily/weekly (e.g. spent too much time in the gym not working, got stuck in traffic, how long I was actually in Target, etc.). Apparently I'm not getting as much sleep as I think I am.

 

Does anyone get the sleep they think they do? Appreciate the suggestion, but I am not all about that life. It was eye opening to see how much there is, although I think if I actually parsed out my time, it wouldn't be THAT much. What this showed me is that I might stress myself out more than I should about "no time", because obviously, I do have enough.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

I'm glad the mini is helping.

[Sylvaa]

I want to start this post off with a really important fact. My neighbors (across the street) are weird cat people. The lady has a covered - I can only call it a pram - that she takes her cats on walks in. Yesterday, we noticed they were erecting something that looked like a bird cage. Okay we thought, maybe they are getting chickens (because we are zones for chickens). Nope! It is an outside cage for their cats to chill in. I'm going to try to get a picture.

 

Halloween was good, although my step goal is failing miserably this week (too much work, not enough movement). My step-children were originally going to their mother's (H to watch movies with her bf and some friends, N to take his half-sister trick-or-treating). We talk to H Tuesday night and surprise! her half-sister apparently got sick and had a high fever and now they weren't going over there. So we offer our house for movie watching. Turns out, H's "friends" decided they didn't want to watch movies if there would be parents there (note: we didn't even hang out in the room), so her bf and another guy friend were the only two that showed up. This was cool with me because one of the girls that was supposed to be coming over, I don't like. Her bf and the guy are also friends with my son, so all the kids ended up watching movies together. We ordered pizza and my husband and I passed out candy. The step's mother ended up dropping off cookies she made for the kids and they were gross. So I finished Halloween with no extra sweets to tempt me!

 

I've also convinced my husband to start doing Foundations Light (the Darebee workouts) with me when I'm home. I am awful at actually doing physical stuff at home and us doing it together should help.

[Aquarii]

22 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

I've also convinced my husband to start doing Foundations Light (the Darebee workouts) with me when I'm home. I am awful at actually doing physical stuff at home and us doing it together should help.

 

I found that for me it REALLY helped to workout with my husband. We were doing really well with getting our workouts in until our schedules changed and we started working opposite schedules (which meant that we had to stop working out together). 

[Sylvaa]

24 minutes ago, Nova Aquarii said:

 

I found that for me it REALLY helped to workout with my husband. We were doing really well with getting our workouts in until our schedules changed and we started working opposite schedules (which meant that we had to stop working out together). 

 

Since I'm usually on the road, I generally have zero problems working out. It is SO MUCH easier when I really have no other evening responsibilities. When I'm home however, I do an awful job of doing anything. It's not like my husband has an issue with me going, I'm just not regimented here. I think it's because I don't really have a schedule at the house. If I'm home and get my husband to do it with me, it's a lot easier because then I don't feel awkward about working out in front of him. Foundations Light is really easy for me, but I do the highest level and at least it gets me up and doing something. This is also for my husband's benefit. He's really not in good shape and seems to be developing more aches and pains. 

 

Yesterday, I went gleaning! I got to volunteer with a local organization that picks farm seconds to hand out to lower income families. It is super cool. So I didn't know this until yesterday, but the county I live in is the #2 vegetable producer in the state and the next county over is the #4 fruit producer in the US, but I live in an area categorized as a food desert. A significant portion of my area is Low Income and more than 1 mile (urban) or 10 miles (rural) from a grocery store (note: I'm not really sure what we are considered the days). This is compounded by the fact that we have no public transportation and access to cars or drivers licenses is limited. The organization I volunteer with has 32 access points for people to get food, which is crazy, because it's not that big of an area! Yesterday, we picked apples. The apples are distributed through the local Boys and Girls Club, Go Girls Go, and the backpack program. 

[Shello]

3 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

So I didn't know this until yesterday, but the county I live in is the #2 vegetable producer in the state and the next county over is the #4 fruit producer in the US, but I live in an area categorized as a food desert. A significant portion of my area is Low Income and more than 1 mile (urban) or 10 miles (rural) from a grocery store (note: I'm not really sure what we are considered the days). This is compounded by the fact that we have no public transportation and access to cars or drivers licenses is limited.

it boggles the mind that there can be so much quality food nearby but still live in a food desert.   I didn't know gleaning was a thing.  

[Sylvaa]

4 minutes ago, Shello said:

it boggles the mind that there can be so much quality food nearby but still live in a food desert.   I didn't know gleaning was a thing.  

 

Right?! In my area, one of the biggest issues is related to the large Hispanic population and language barriers when trying to obtain a drivers license. Since we are a significant agricultural region, migrant workers have come to the area and do not leave. But most have limited English, and Spanish is not widely spoken outside the Hispanic community (for all the use of migrant workers, there is a huge racism problem here). And all but two of our grocery stores are located within 2 miles of each other, so unless one lives within a very small area, it is hard to even get to food. 

 

I didn't either until I started volunteering! It's really cool though. The farmers make their money through the first (or even second) picks done by hired workers - this is either sold as is or is sold to a processing plant. They then donate any leftovers to the gleaners. It is crazy the amount of "seconds" they get! Yesterday, we picked about 1,000 pounds of apples!

[Sylvaa]

Sylvaa signed up for the Kentucky half marathon tonight. Time to start running. 

 

 

[Sloth the Enduring]

It sounds like you have your training plan sorted out.




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[Tanktimus the Encourager]

17 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

Sylvaa signed up for the Kentucky half marathon tonight. Time to start running. 

 

 

@therealkat is your new best friend. She runs this every year as far as I know.

[Sylvaa]

6 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

@therealkat is your new best friend. She runs this every year as far as I know.

 

Yup! We've talked about this on her thread a few challenges ago! I'm super excited!

[thekatisalie]

On 11/3/2018 at 2:42 PM, Sylvaa said:

 

Yup! We've talked about this on her thread a few challenges ago! I'm super excited!

YOU'RE COMING TO RUN THE BLUE GRASS?!!!!

[Sylvaa]

8 hours ago, therealkat said:

YOU'RE COMING TO RUN THE BLUE GRASS?!!!!

 

I AM 100% SIGNED UP AS OF .... FRIDAY!

[Sylvaa]

For some reason, my NF e-mails keep going into my spam. So I'm not getting everyone's updates. 

 

I'm back on the road this week and am super tired today (maybe because I stayed up too late). Tonight I have to socialize with people. 

 

I also have to bike and run to stick with all of the crap I am trying to accomplish. I'll feel better when I'm done, but I wish that looking hot and sexy doesn't take so much effort. 

[NeverThatBored]

Apparently I haven't been following you?? I thought you just weren't posting! I'm following now.

 

(P.S. I think you still owe everyone that picture of the cat cage.)