Day of Rest Experiment

After June 2 - 3 weekend of back-to-back projects, June 9 - 10 traveling to Shreveport for my sister's version of Say Yes to the Dress, June 16 - 17 housecleaning marathon, I finally instituted a day of rest this past weekend. Two weeks after have the epiphany that I really need to take time off. So how did it go?

My ideal: wake up, finish the hunk of daily chores, and spend the rest of the day alternating between my three writing projects. Sitting down more would be insured by writing in longhand for one of the projects.

Reality: I lost the morning researching and writing my latest Hot Bod 2012 post. Then I realized I had to cook. Followed by alternating my daily writing and editing on the chores list with my earned fun writing. I never got a chance to work extra on Stellar or Forget. I didn't finish off all the daily chores before bedtime.

I don't feel frazzled or drained this morning, which is a success. I also realize I need to shed some to do items from Sunday if I want to continue attempting my ideal day of rest.

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The BookWorm

Hot Bod 2012 Post 5

Two weeks of exercising and eating mostly Primal (I think I overdid cheese and commercially fried chicken is not Primal, but I didn't order any Popeye's biscuits!) and if I had any progress it got lost with my period starting yesterday. :p TMI ALERT Feel free to skip On the upside, last month I was unnerved that I had an entire week of menses that did not want to flow out of my body. It was always dark brown and spotted the pads. I'm not exactly happy to report that this month that flow is back to its gushing bright red self because the cramps are killing me. I avoided taking anything for the pain yesterday because pain medication always affects the flow, but today I have a cramp and a headache. Fine, medication wins. END OF TMI Good news, I didn't notice any PMS mood swings or craved any chocolate, so something's working.

This past week I changed my vitamins. I had a few days during the first week where I couldn't eat enough. At least, I thought I had a reasonable meal felt full and had a rumbling tummy and hour later. First, I packed more snacks to the paying job. Then when I snacked at home, I started worrying that I was in a mindless eating rut. Second: added 1200mg of fish oil and 415mg of cod liver oil to the vitamins to balance out my Omega3s to Omega6s ratios. My hope is that they add to the fat = satiety. I also upped my potassium to 550mg after having leg cramps last week. It would probably be healthier to just eat bananas, but fresh fruit doesn't keep well in my kitchen.

Exercise: Habit is well on its way of being formed. The only day I came close to missing was this past Thursday when I woke up late thanks to interrupted sleep. Sore lower back is plaguing me too. I don't feel it sitting down, which worries me that my desk job and weight have knocked it off kilter. It's not a sharp while in use pain, more like a dull ache over the back of my hips that makes me what to pop joints.

Last week's goal was to fin a better spot for the wall squat and I did, but I don't feel like I'm progressing as I should. A feel strengthened when the scale nor the measurements didn't really move this week. (For my mental health, I'll post those results on a monthly basis so not to get discouraged.) I don't think it's my impatience showing, but I'm reviewing Primal Blueprint Fitness to double-check what I'm doing.

Problems: Not spending enough time exercising: *Snort* I should have realized it was going too easy. The three Move Slowly days, which I've been doing yoga on) need to equal 3 – 5 hours of low aerobic activity for the week. Yoga is not enough. But what to fill in the rest of the time with?

Walking is an approved exercise; I miss walking. My neighborhood is not set up for walking. More sidewalks were laid down around the park at work, but we're in the 90 degrees (F) is low temps for the day part of the year. Yes, I realize these sound like excuses.

What about more yoga? I have DVDs that I haven't used in years. Okay that's my new plan for Move Slowly Days: yoga routine in the morning fresh out of bed. Yogilates DVD when I get home before supper. I'll buy another yoga mat for the living room too.

Lifting Heavy Things: Oops, I'm supposed to do two sets of the exercises. I can progress to the next level when I meet the goal for the exercises during both sets.

Sprints I need to do longer and more off. Full out jump rope, rest, repeat until fifteen minutes are done.

Not doing the movement right: I reviewed Mark's video and discovered I was trying to keep my feet positioned for a regular squat and the stance should be wider for a wall squat. I'll fix that for next week.

I've got a lot to work on next week, but I can do it.

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The BookWorm

Nightmares of writers

Those who follow Discipline Under Fire already know I have finished Chapter Twenty-Three i.e the climax of Stellar Gift of Death and now am working on the wrapping-up loose threads final chapter. Those who didn't know now know too, and you need to know that along with the fact that I set up Chapter Twenty-Four by deleting Chapter Twenty-Three, tweaking the title, and saving as Chapter Twenty-Four back on Tuesday. It was an attempt to preserve formatting that didn't work. And I'm not going off on a tangent how much I don't like the formatting of Microsoft Word 2010 (what we have at the paying job) but haven't reached the point of figuring out how to make it the same as my Microsoft Word 2003 at home. It's not part of the story.

So Wednesday's writing time was spent all in Chapter Twenty-Four, and it was a great session. Moved onto other things throughout the day, went to bed, and dreamed I had deleted Chapter Twenty-Three, and saved it as Chapter Twenty-Three instead of Chapter Twenty-Four. I saw the proof on my home computer screen. I opened the file and nothing was there but the title Chapter Twenty-Four. "You have to rewrite the whole thing," an unseen voice told me. It wrenched me out of sleep, though at least not to the stereotypical cliche of sitting upright with heaving bosom. My eyes just opened and I realized I was in my bedroom and not my office and I felt a little panicky.

"Don't be silly. Chapter Twenty-Three was fine when you accidentally opened it yesterday before working on Chapter Twenty-Four." Panicky feeling subsided, and I rolled over to go back to sleep.

And just when I was at that dropping off point to deeper slumber, the voice came back. "Chapter Twenty-Three is gone, you have to rewrite the whole thing, and you have no notes for the 2000 words you added to it."

Wrenched awake again with a hearty "Goddammit!" Threw off the covers and marched to my alarm clock. Past midnight. Marched to the bathroom, and then the office, where I proceeded to open Chapters Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four off the flash drive and resave them to my home desktop without ever putting my glasses on. Back to bed and I finally slept so good I didn't wake up on time this morning.

Hardly the same nightmare fuel that gave me "the Bloody Hand," but I'm backing up to my GoogleDocs account today. Just in case my subconscious knows something I don't.

And now for my feelings on Word 2012 formatting: Hey Microsoft, stop dicking with the program to justify the price you put on it!

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The BookWorm

Stellar Gift of Death Word Count

Progress Bar from Writertopia

Hot Bod 2012 Post 4

WOOT! I'm so proud of myself. Seven days of exercise, so the whole roll out of bed and exercise was the step in the right direction. Now I didn't take measurements back on June 10th like I should have (driving home from Shreveport most of the day will wipe anyone out), but I dropped 2.5 pounds since I last measured on April 22nd. PROGRESS!

Today is tweaking paperwork so I don't have to spend time in the morning looking things up. The Lift Goals are now on my log sheet so I don't have to guess how close I am to the goal. Two days of lifting, four days of yoga, and one day of sprinting—which I used my new ropeless jump rope. That device is awesome; I didn't trip at all! What I don't like is the wall squat. I get stuck and can't slide. That's my goal for next week, to not get stuck.

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The BookWorm

Hot Bod 2012 Post 3

Break time is over; it's time to get in shape.  Between wedding dress appointments for my baby sister, she and our mother kept finding lovely sundresses for me in my current size. I loathe my current shape of all belly and it's all because I'm lazy to do what I know I have to do. Don't reward that, people! Time to move Hot Bod project to the front of the list.

So that was the first motivator to pick up my slack. The second was waking up this morning and realizing since moving the portabe AC unit into the bedroom and moving my bedroom furniture to make room I now have room for the yoga mat in the bedroom. I have tried using the living room as the exercise area and it's just too easy to ignore it in the morning since none of the rest of the morning routine uses the room. I can literally roll out of bed and exercise by moving the task to the bedroom.

Along with kicking my ass in gear with exercise, I'm restarting primal eating and avoiding sugar when I next buy food. Today is off to a decent start, I have avoided the vending machines so far.

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The BookWorm

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury died today.

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His bastard child* in mourning

*When I was an undergrad (probably around 1998-99), a gang of us drove down from Natchitoches to attend a lecture he gave at LSU. I forget the context--I think it was to do with writing--but after the enthusiastic response from the audience, he called us "the bastard children I never knew I had." I've claimed it with pride since he has been a writing father of mine for such a long time.

Front Porch Makeover

Front Porch Makeover, a set on Flickr.

First attempt at doing this, so I hope it works.

I'm Auditioning For Super-F******-Girl

Gustav blew through here the beginning of September 2008, I took a picture of the house and the debris filled yard, and there is no Incredible Hulk Shelving Unit at that point. So Mom must have closed the shop at some point in 2009. So it has waited for three years to get off my porch. Three years of the particleboard soaking up Louisiana humidity and rain, because my porch doesn't have walls, that is now over thanks to this weekend and me proving I'm a masochist yet again.

It was an ambitious makeover plan, especially since the only worker was me.

• Put everything that belongs to Mom in the parents' garage since Uncle Scott made room
• Throw away decrepit bench
• Nail up cable wire so it's not wrapped around my furniture
• Screw table legs to desk and make a real table out of it
• Price bistro chairs for new desk
• Sand rocking chairs and polyurethane for protection
• Turn cedar log into a side table for rocking chairs

I just set myself up with a Flickr account to better display pictures on my website, but I'm using it in the blogs too. Front Porch Makeover with all my commentary is already set up. You see a hint of what I took in this post, but I don't like how it goes off under the sidebar.

My father finally noticed what was going on when I was getting the base, the one on wheels into the garage. We still call it the garage, but my parents boxed it into a huge room a decade ago now and shrank the doors down to people-sized. I had the shelf on its side, the all-thread screws that I was calling rebar bent to get in the door, and I was pulling it in. Dad came out the front door and surprised me. "What are you doing?"

"I'm auditioning for Super Fucking Girl, what does it look like I'm doing! And I can bend rebar."

"That's not rebar."

"Shut up, I'm not burning this goddamned shelving unit because it belongs to Mom even though it's ruined." I don't know if it was my extra-growly voice that did it, but the base of the shelving unit finally went inside then, and I found my cheerfulness again.

Saturday's results:

• Put everything that belongs to Mom in the parents' garage since Uncle Scott made room
• Throw away decrepit bench
• Nail up cable wire so it's not wrapped around my furniture
• Screw table legs to desk and make a real table out of it
• Price bistro chairs for new desk
• Sand rocking chairs and polyurethane for protection
• Turn cedar log into a side table for rocking chairs
• Buy a bistro table and chairs set. Must have a top I can write on.

Sunday, I moved onto project number two and learned a valuable lesson. Lesson: schedule a damn day to rest over the weekend! Project number two was framing the hatch to the attic and cutting a door to properly fit the hatch. Sounds so simple, but it ate up so much of my time and energy that nothing else got done, including picking up my power tools from the back porch. If my circular saw has been stolen when I get home, I'll be pissed to say the least.

New attic door Flickr set. Please read the commentary, you don't get the full measure of how insane I got without it.

The good news is none of my power tools were stolen by the time I got home and I managed to do very little with cleaning up the tools. Today is my running around day. I have paperwork to take to my credit union, computer parts to drop off at the recyclers (which I tried to do yesterday and got lost), and table legs to return to Lowe's. Then back to organizing the back porch and the rest of my house work. I can't let it wait until the weekend because I'm scheduled to go to my baby sister's and help her with bride things. And that's a funny story for another post. Remember to put the massage mat that can go into a car on the seat by Friday.