Sovalis

Exactly. I love seeing that there are a few of us floating around while I am also floating around. Makes me feel like we are all in a coffee shop hanging out with headphones on just chilling together. ❤️

Thanks, Snarky! ❤️ Hooray indeed. Sending love back. ❤️ Thanks, Darling. It absolutely helps to have you all here for me. It made getting though the last challenge much better until things just got to be too much, which was no fault of any of yours. Love you too! ❤️ Very glad to have you, Sepherina! Nice to see you, athousandwords! I usually do reframe it as myself time and normally I enjoy it very, very much. We’ve been doing this for ~5 years and this is the first trip that went really sideways for me mental health wise. And I am not really sure what the issue was, certainly there was no real inciting incident, just a weird degradation of my mental health. So hoping it doesn’t happen again because it’s never happened before. *shrug* ❤️ Hi Friends! Yesterday was a nice day. I painted my second little Christmas tree in the morning. I really enjoyed playing with Saxon in the yard before work and eating the wonky marshmallow squares that Angela made/messed up. I also had a very delicious lollipop which honestly surprised me with how good it was. I slept in my own bed and slept until 6:20 at which point I got up which has made this morning feel much more leisurely than it otherwise might have. I sure love being able to fall asleep next to Dave with Sax at the foot of the bed. Such gratitude for these simple things. Dave got his taxes re-filed for the redress and we are getting a fairly significant chunk of money back. I am relieved/excited/grateful/wow-holy-cow. We are using most of it to pay off debt, then a bit to buy him his drum sander, some additional shelving for the basement, and then have a little bit for Christmas. I feel like I can breathe deeper knowing this should be here in a few weeks and that Christmas can be what I want it to be without having to go on the credit card. Whew. I go to register for November and December classes at the gym today. I am a little nervous about registering for two months at once because it seems like such a commitment, but I think it will be okay. I intend to do the thing, so I will just set myself up for that and then follow through. It’s simple, right? 😅 Need to remember to pack a protein bar for work today. I forgot mine yesterday and had a lot of sweets instead and that is not ideal. I really find that once I have something sweet at work I keep going back for more and that is not something I want to make a habit. Alright, going to go get ready for the gym. I hope that the wind doesn’t bite and your fingers stay comfortably warm all day. ❤️ Thanks for being here.

Hi Friend! Glad to see you! As a wise woman once said to me when I felt that I was repeating everything: we never loop back to exactly where we were. Life is a spiral: we might come around to similar places, but always from the vantage point of higher levels of experience. I believe you are on a new curve of your spiral and all of your habits and hopes will pay off for you as you continue to follow it around. Looking forward to cheering you on. ❤️

Good stuff. Here to cheer!

Here for this!! ❤️

Hi Friends! I don’t have time to reply to everyone, but thank you for joining me along this journey. I am delighted to have you all with me. ❤️ My time off with Dave was truly, astonishingly, amazingly peaceful and wonderful. I don’t think I have felt this connected and loved and relaxed for around a year. We painted a lot of minis, ate good food, watched a bunch of tv (new Legend of Vox Machina episodes were great!), and I was even able to start sleeping in our bed by the end of it. Dave came home with a cold and the congestion combined with his weird shifting sleep schedule made it hard for me to sleep with him so I was in the spare room. I think we are sorted out for that now though and I am glad for it. The small holiday has really thrown into even sharper relief that I was definitely not okay for the few weeks before he got home. I am starting to strategize better self care strategies for when he leave in January as that will be an almost 3 month tasking. I am starting to put food in the freezer a portion or two at a time so that I have fewer impediments to nutrition when he is gone. That seems like a reasonable first step. The second step is scaling back on peanut butter as I got out of hand with eating that recently. I had my InBody scan done on Monday for the start of the challenge and it was not great. I am up a half pound of muscle, which is nice! My inflammation is high still (makes total sense with all the wheat I am eating and the working out), and I have gained three pounds of fat mass in the last six weeks. This doesn’t surprise me, but it is disappointing. Still, all I can do is start making better choices and trying to build up the supports that will help me not repeat this in a few months. I am impressed that I am not lingering in my woe or beating myself up about it. Definitely a mindset win. Have to run to get ready for work, but I am glad the forums are back up and we can rock merrily along! I hope that the leaves are beautiful where you are! Thanks for being here! ❤️

I struggle with cold water to drink when it’s not warm out. So I deliberately leave my water to warm to room temperature or even warm it a bit (not hot like tea) in the kettle and go from there. Maybe that would help? Love your man-eating plants. ❤️ Here to cheer.

Here for this!! ❤️

I am sorry to hear about your niece, Ever. And the way you had to change your plans for your son’s party. I hope you can resist the junk food until the appointed time. ❤️

Congrats on getting through Wheel of Time! I am lost somewhere in book six or seven. We listen to them as audiobooks when we take road trips which is not an effective means of retaining information for me - trips are too spaced out for me to remember what was going on. 😅

Hi Sal! Here to cheer!

Here to cheer!

I understand the rage against thoughtlessness. I am sorry you had to deal with it, but I am glad they are at least getting along and that you got such a great walk in with your mom. Proud of you for putting things where you wanted them to be when you were reorganizing! I struggle with that, too.

Holding the line is a war of its own sometimes. Here to cheer!

I am so proud of you for going even in the shoes that might be less than ideal. Way to keep your momentum. ❤️ I wish you a balanced day and enough of everything you need.