GOAL 2: Money

I've got Dom Perignon tastes on a Bartles & James budget. 

The overindulgence that I spoke of yesterday extends beyond just food, it also applies to purchasing things. 
Everything from shoes to baking supplies to, unfortunately, houses. I have made a life of buying things which I can't afford and I've often blamed my low wages on my nonexistent bank account balance, but the truth is that my personal lack of control is more to blame than the fact that I'm underpaid (I will always maintain that I should be earning more, but hopefully resolution 3 will take care of that. And really, you are supposed to live within your means. It's dress for the job you want, not spend that way, Kelly). Terrance and I had a discussion the other day we're both tired of the way we live. We want to be more in control of things. I read a story years ago about a couple that went one year without buying anything they didn't need. They bought food only at the grocery store - no trips out to eat. They checked out books and movies from the library - no cable, no Barnes and Noble, no movies. No vacations, weekend trips, day trips or trips to the mall. They didn't spend anything they didn't need to. This sounds like a boring life, but they were also able to pay off a substantial amount of debt by the end of the year by only doing that. And, as an added bonus, they were happier because they learned to live on only what they needed and not what they wanted. They appreciated everything around them so much more. They tried new foods, they just cooked themselves.These are values I wish to install in Logan. It's important to me that he understand how important it is to be smart with your money. So starting in January, we are going to try to go 12 months.

Three hundred and sixty five days of conscious minimalism. It will be hard. I am frugal. I buy clearance shoes. I just buy a lot of them. I will make lists and set budgets and clip coupons. I will do this. I'm not willing to put my debt out there. Between the two mortgages, car payments, student debt, and Visa, it's a lot. I don't plan on being debt free by 2016. But I'd like my debt to shrink. 

(I'd like to at least be rid of Visa. That bitch is annoying.) 

GOAL 1: WEIGHT

My never ending struggle with my weight has intensified. We're basically at a DEFCON 1 in my own personal battle of the bulge. Clothed, I find myself to be pleasantly plump. I'm learning to dress my postpartum body. Draping seems key. And cardigans. And scarves. Empire wastes are an absolute no no. As are hip hugging jeans that tend to hit me right under my still present belly.  It's the times that I catch myself in the mirror unclothed that I have trouble. I stare, not unlike a tailgater passing the gnarled wreckage of a highway collision, at my midsection. The dimpled and indented graffitti of stretchmarks and extra fat marring the once smooth landscape of my abdomen. Women on the internet call them "tiger stripes" that I should wear like a badge of honor. I crave that self confidence, to look at them and see anything but my failure to prevent what I promised myself wouldn't happen. I study the lumps and bumps of my upper thighs and, perhaps the silver lining, I marvel at the size of my (now enormous) breasts, conscious that they are, at every moment, inflating with milk. The fat on my back - the adipose filled skin that rolls over itself under no pressure whatsoever- is my biggest nemesis. No amount of sucking in makes it go away. The thing is, I've been overweight before. I've blogged about my previous struggles. I've fought pesky pounds that won't go away. But this time it's harder, for many reasons.


I take responsibility for my part of this. I know that I have to shoulder the blame for my current inability to fit into a single pair of the pants that are currently gathering cobwebs in my closet.  I would be lying if I said I had no idea why I couldn't lose the weight. The truth is that when you don't exercise and you eat whatever you want, and what you want to eat is chocolate and pizza and other foods that you're not supposed to, it's tough to drop the pounds. But this struggle of mine has been different, this time.

First, there are a lot of post partum issues that I have had that I don't want to talk about on this blog, but it's taken me almost a year to be able to walk around the block without pain. It's frustrating, especially when everyone tells you you can start exercising at 6 weeks. I registered for a jogging stroller.  I had visions of Logan and I going on runs, enjoying the summer together. I had plans to sign us up for races. My truth is that at 6 weeks post partum, I could not roll out of bed without feeling like my pelvis was breaking in two. Trying to walk ended in tears. Stepping over the side of the tub to take a shower often made me double over in pain. I waited for it to get better. It didn't. Finally, at 12 weeks, I went to the doctor. She informed me that my pelvis was out of line and my bladder was falling. She sent me to a chiropractor, who assured me that it was bone and nerve related. He assigned me a 7 week long course of treatment at the end of which I  could walk from my desk to the bathroom without grimacing. I could not run. I could not even walk for exercise. I tried different videos to try and work different parts of my body to try and tone up. I was unsuccessful. I was also $500 poorer from copays and extra fees for service. I considered that to be a poor return on my investment. So I went to the physical therapist. She informed me that there was nothing wrong with my pelvis or my bones, but that it was all muscular. 4 and a half hours of pushing had damaged me. My pelvic floor muscles were weak. I needed physical therapy. I had more success with her. At the end of a month of treatment, I could walk ONE MILE without pain. If I kept up the exercises she gave me, I would be fine. So I left, armed with an exercise band and a sheet of exercises to do to strengthen my pelvic floor.  I'm bad at homework. I'm also alone with the baby a lot. Self care has fallen by the wayside as the need for sleep and nourishment take precedence over the need to exercise my pelvic floor. As I sit here typing this, I can actually feel my bladder. You are not supposed to be able to feel that. It's unsettling. But it's life. I haven't tried running yet. I can walk about 2 miles now without crying. That's progress. And the pain doesn't linger with me for days like it used to. Also progress.

I'm an emotional eater. I used to consider myself a stress eater, but then I realized that just about any emotion I have is an excuse for me to eat. I eat when I'm stressed about work, I eat when I'm sad about my job. I eat when I've had a good day at work. I eat because I'm stressed about Logan. I eat to reward myself if I've had a good day with Logan. I eat because I'm stressed out about Terrance being out of town and I eat because I'm so happy and relieved that he's come home. I eat because I'm frustrated that I can't do what I want. I eat because I can't run. I eat because I'm hungry, because I'm tired, because I'm sad, because I'm happy, and because I'm bored. I eat because I think something looks good and, damn it, I DESERVE it. My life is hard. Chocolate is good. I love chocolate. Not dark chocolate, not some BS Fiber One chocolate brownies; I enjoy creamy milk chocolate. Preferably by the pound. Occasionally mixed with nougat. Or nuts. Maybe hazelnuts? I do consider my life to be more colorful now that I have Nutella in it. I could write an even longer paragraph about my love of pizza, but in the interest of brevity, I will just assume that you get the point.

So what happens when you have no real metabolism to speak of, you can't exercise, and you eat whatever the hell you want? You end up sitting in front of a computer writing about how you're depressed because you're 50 pounds heavier than the day you conceived your child. My goal is to have 15 of it gone by Logan's birthday - March 3. And the rest gone by sometime after that. I'll reevaluate numbers and tonnage goals if I reach that. The point is I'm going to try. We started exercising at work. Little things, every day at 3. Hopefully, with that spark and a Costco size bottle of Advil to dull the pain, I'll be on my way. I'm also trying to cut it down to no more than 100 10 Hershey kisses a day. And eat more veggies. And drink more water.

Hopefully, small daily goals + big weight goal = Happy 2015.

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

New Year Goals

A coworker asked me if I had ever considered writing a blog, given my awesome sense of humor and what some have called "the voice of this generation". I sheepishly told  her how I like to be called the voice of this generation and that I already had a blog. This one. She enjoyed it and I have to admit it's always nice for people for people to tell you that you're good at something.

Her comment prompted me to browse through my posts in the last five years. It felt a little like when I check my Timehop every day. Timehop is an app for phones. You sync it with your social media accounts and it tells you what you've done on that day in the past. The thing is, it's fun to look back sometimes using Timehop and see how much things have changed - a facebook post about a hangover compared to the fact that you're up at 5 with a baby these days, an instagram of you when you had different hair, etc. When I looked through my past blog posts, there were a lot of commonalities. The running theme since at least 2011 has been me stressed or unhappy or both. And I'd like to change that. I've done some reading on the subject, and according to people who know more than me about changing your life situation, writing out your goals to organize them and keeping a journal of things can help. I'd like to do that.

The thing is, I've never been much of a journal keeper. My aunt and uncle got me a diary for my birthday in the sixth grade. It was fuschia and turquoise with a picture of a vintage convertible on the hard, shiny cover. I was way more excited about the lock and key that came with it than the actual act of journaling my life. My thoughts throughout my life have never lived all that long in my head. I give them almost immediately to the nearest person. This both gets me in trouble an amuses me. A lot. So my goal, as the new year approaches, is to organize my life in such a way that I don't spend hours trying to figure out how I got here, but instead I will try and figure out how to get where I want to go. This incessant drowning feeling is getting old. So thats where the blog comes in. I will list my goals for the year and hope to give a somewhat regular update on my progress. More for me, but out there for you to judge and ridicule. A commitment. I hope to achieve at least one of them. Or at least take some solace in the fact that I am actively trying to change my life for the better.

So the next few posts will have to do with my 3 big goals for a happier 2015: Get my weight under control, get my finances under control, and figure out what the hell I'm gonna do with the rest of my life.