A new title???

First, thank you all for your words of sympathy and encouragement in regards to my last post. They really do help. In fact, finally writing it out was quite cathartic. Note to self: do it more often.

So I promised I would write something more positive. I have been thinking a lot about what what to write about, especially humorous and lighthearted things. Well, I think I've found it. Zumba.

A friend gave me a month pass to a local gym. Since I've gained probably 15 pounds since moving here in October (curse you Rachael Ray!), I figured I really needed to do something about it. Especially since I cannot afford to buy a new wardrobe. Of course, if I were to lose a ton of weight, you know I'd find a way to get some new threads.

The appeal of this gym, and why it is worth paying money over free gym on post, is Pilates classes in addition to a full gym. I love getting back to doing mat classes and feeling less stiff. And there is a morning mat class 3 days a week. Perfect! I can do Pilates and then a little cardio and really feel like I've worked out. Maybe I'll move up to doing some weights to help. Now all that sounds real good.

My free month ended and I went and got all signed up. I get 4 free shakes and 4 free training sessions. All that AND Pilates? Awesome! Except now the Pilates instructor has gone on vacation until after July 4, which means I need to find a replacement activity. And many people have recommended Zumba. Think Salsa meets Aerobics. Fortunately I was able to hide in the back of the crowded class filled with skinny young things. While I mostly felt ridiculous, I kept laughing, and when I couldn't keep up the steps, I just kept swaying my hips, figuring that it was some movement and that must be good. I mean, it is a dance/workout class, and sweat means something. Bottom line: learning Zumba is ridiculous, almost as ridiculous as learning Pilates. Thus, it has presented a challenge. Challenge ON!!! I'm going to swish and sway and twist and girate into a smaller size!

Anyway, I'm thinking this blog may need to be retitled "Does this Army make my butt look big?" Because given the last 8 months, the answer is clearly and decidely YES! And not only do I look like a big butt complaining about everything, my butt has gotten bigger.

So here's to taking this butt back to a more normal size.

The muddy slide

It has been raining here for the last two days straight. And the temps have been in the mid-60s. All this gray weather reminds me of the Pacific Northwest I left nine years ago. I've even had to pull out my sweaters and set aside my bathing suit and sandals.

But yesterday I did not let the rain stop me from walking the doggies. On our way back, I foolishly walked straight up the steep path that just the day before had been dirt. Yeah, you can see where this is going. I got up close to the top and the doggies stopped to sniff something, so I stopped. And then the ground rebelled and my feet started to slide back down the hill. I tried to quicken my pace, seeing that Bear's paw were slipping too, but to no avail. And as if it were a slow-motion reel, I let out a yelp as I went down on all fours and continued to slide down the muddy red clay path. After a few feet, I came to a stop. Not hurt physically, all I could do was laugh. A few failed attempts to right myself mid-path, I then crawled off to the little bit of grassiness under a pine tree before I was able to stand up and assess the mud damage.

New white and red Adidas running shoes? Covered deep into the laces.

Black yoga pants? Covered from the knees down.

Dog leash? Completely covered, but at least I never let go of my precious babies.

Hands? Mud piled on so thick you'd think I was about to give myself a mud bath.

Military.com fleece cover-up that kept me warm during the walk? Untouched.

Getting in touch with nature? Priceless.

Maybe a case of general nothingness

After the excitement of deployment, homecoming, house-selling preparations, and moving 800 miles to a hotel room, well, life has kind of settled down. There really isn't the range of emotions or highs and lows that come with all the excitement. Life is steady for now.

But even better, there is lots of laughter. Jack and I have been enjoying our time together. Even if it is just being silly and talking about how cute our doggies are.

And there have been books. I finished Bright Lights, Big Ass (thank you AWTM) and I have moved on to the last Harry Potter book. Yeah, I know I made a big deal about getting it on the day it came out last year, but I never got around to really reading it. Until now. I like this having-time-to-read thing. Or I suppose it is making time. (For whatever reason, I just couldn't seem to do much "fun" reading while Jack was deployed. I haven't figured that one out yet.)

And there is time for working out. I went back to the BodyPump class yesterday. There were two instructors: one a dead ringer for Katherine Bell and the other looked much more like me. And I gotta tell you, it is inspiring to see someone who is not a size two, muscle-bound, thong-showing, George-Hamilton-tanned college girl not just doing the class, but teaching it. I think I will definitely have to go back.

And there is time for the doggies. We've been getting in lots of walks and naps. Some times it seems like my biggest concern is who has taken care of what business. Yesterday, Bear decided to take care of his business right on the sidewalk in front of the school. Nice. At least I care a special backpack just for picking up doggie messes.

I'll just leave you all with that crappy image. Have a great weekend. I think we're off to visit the home of another founding father.

Da gym

Shortly after arriving here in C-ville, I learned that those attending the course and their spouses get free FREE! access to the local Gold's Gym. Nice, very nice. I like the idea. But completely intimidated about actually going. I can't remember the last time I was in a gym with weights and cardio equipment and locker rooms and aerobicizing, muscle-bound, thong-showing, George Hamilton-tanned college girls.

Well, yesterday I went.

Some background on how I got there. The school has many courses going on at once (as I assume other schools do too). In attendance at one of the 2-week courses is a fellow soldier Jack Bauer met in Iraq, and who is still deployed. He was sent from Iraq to attend this course and is going back the day after it ends. That soldier's wife came to town for the week. A wise woman, she has been here before, knew to take advantage of the Gold's Gym. And she was kind enough to no-pressure me into checking it out with her. I took it as a sign that I really needed to get structured workouts again. (My yoga and pilates videos sit unopened here.)

So off to the gym I went to do BodyPump. Not that bad actually. All of the moves are based on free weightlifting, which I did as an undergrad for crew (yeah, I lifted in the same gym with the same weight coaches as PAC-10 football players), so the moves were all familiar to me. I kept the weights light so I could get familiar with the routine AND be able to walk today, which I can do.

Not bad at all. I think I might go back tomorrow for more torture.

And, yeah, that's not me in the picture. Not me even after 1,000 BodyPump classes.

This Army life is tough

Now we are on to Day 3 of school here in C-ville and Day 3 of my life as a full-time Army wife. Let's see what I did yesterday.

5:10 AM: Wake up and stumble into bathroom wondering why I am awake.

5:20 AM: Walk in the dark through jungle between Residence Inn and the campus with doggies and Jack Bauer. Still wondering why I am awake. Make way across paved plain to the Stairs of Cirith Ungol.

5:27 AM: Huffing and puffing and wondering why I got up for this. Say good-bye to Jack and the doggies and I wander off to explore.

6:40 AM: Get back to Residence Inn. Collapse into chair with cup of coffee. Lapse into coma waiting for Jack Bauer to return to room for breakfast.

7:05 AM: Raid hot breakfast bar. I must appear like a total pig, hot and sweaty, no make-up, hat-haired, piling food high on a single plate. Return to room and give most of the food to Jack, except the yummy cheese mini muffin. Yum!

7:45 AM: Say good-bye to Jack and crawl into bed, hot and sweaty, and lapse into another coma.

11:00 AM: Finally get out of bed, even hotter and sweatier, shower and make lunch for Jack Bauer. He even thinks the wraps are store purchased because they were wrapped so tight, but I had a lot of experience watching Josie, the wrap goddess at my last job, perfecting the tight wrap.

1:00 PM: Finalize grocery list and go shopping. Now the shopping center is literally across the street from the Residence Inn but I need too much to carry. So I drive. Spend the next 2.5 hours buying postcards for the niece and nephews, eye cream from Origins, an incredible butterfly box (see photo, much prettier in person), clothes hangers, a chest of drawers, a lime juicer (a don't-leave-home-without-it item). Oh yeah, and groceries.

4:30 PM: Traverse jungle, paved plain, and the stairs in the humid heat of the day to attend "ice breaker" at Jack's school. Spend next hour making small talk. Nearly collapse on my way back to Residence Inn from exhaustion.

6:30 PM: Make dinner in tiny kitchenette. Spend next 3 hours doing something, maybe cleaning tiny kitchenette, maybe watching super-cute doggies sleep, maybe watching Jack read, maybe read emails. No clue. Obviously I lapsed into another coma.

9:00 PM: Wiggle way into bed and fight for space with Jack Bauer and Moo.

9:30 PM: Win tug-of-war with sheets. Moo loses and heads to the couch to sulk. The much smaller Bear takes her place. Heh.

9:56 PM: Turn off Hannity (hot) & Colmes (not) and read funny book sent to me from AWTM last fall (yeah, I am finally reading that book. Love it! Definitely need it while getting house ready to sell.)

On today's agenda? My first "coffee." Time to really crack open my copy of Today's Military Wife, 5th Edition, so I can find out what a "coffee" is when it taking place at 7 PM.

Busy, Busy

Been a little busy around here the last few days. Here's the quick run down.

Friday: work from home in the morning; checked to make sure I became vested in my 401k (the 30-year difference is more like $174K); started date afternoon/night with lunch and a little Sex and the City movie (loved it! more on that later); dinner at Ruth's Chris (yum; good story there, too).

Saturday: landscaper arrived at 7 AM and the handy man arrived at 8 AM; yoga; work; nap; supervision of doggies while their backyard was transformed into someone else's backyard; grocery shopping; grilled chicken fajitas for dinner.

Sunday: errand running with Jack; work; thoroughly cleaned upstairs bathroom, got on my knees and scrubbed the floor and everything; called Dad to wish him Happy Father's Day; attempted to remove downstairs toilet seat but wound up breaking the plastic screw (oops!); grilled tri-tip for dinner.

Now that I have that all written down, it doesn't seem like much, but it was sure exhausting. It was very warm and humid all weekend. I don't like the humidity that comes with living in the Midwest in the summer. Can someone please take it away?

UPDATED: Back to WW

UPDATE 1225: Scroll to the bottom to see what happened. :D

End of week 2 of Weight Watchers Kick Start plan. And I am tired. I think I need to eat more. I did pretty good of sticking to near 20 points. I went to Pilates 3 times and I am off to yoga again this morning before weighing in.

Regardless of what the scale says today, I am going back to the regular Flex plan and eating my points. I've already started planning for the increase in food. I am thinking of whole-wheat mini pitas and red pepper hummus, increasing my tall latte to a grande, adding super yummy sesame sticks to my salads, and finishing the day off with a couple of kisses, uh, caramel kisses.

So come back in a few hours and I will let you know if the scale was good or evil.

UPDATE 1225: Weigh in? Lost 2.6 pounds. Total lost: 7 pounds. :D

UPDATED: Weighing in

UPDATE: Scroll to the bottom to see what happened. :D

So today marks one week since I returned to Weight Watchers. I was really really good all week. I tried the new Kick Start program, which is essentially 20 points a day. (My normal points value is much much higher than that.) That was actually not possible for me to do. I was between 21 and 23 points all week. And I worked out three times so when I factor in the exercise points, I did manage to have a net result of about 20 points a day.

Lots of planning of the meals. I've been eating salads for dinner. I really don't like cooking for one. I hit the salad bar a few times a week and package up individual salads so that it is all ready to go. I just add a few grape tomatoes, some crumbled blue cheese, a little kosher salt, a little fresh ground pepper, a nice olive oil, a splash or two of balsamic vinegar. Toss and shake and POOF, it's ready. Super easy. Also excellent with a sliced-up pear thrown in.

Lunches have been Kashi frozen meals. Healthy, wholesome, and easy, they are high in protein and fiber and tide me over nicely. A couple of clementines finishes it off nicely.

Breakfast consists of two nonfat Cascade Fresh yogurts--all natural, sweetened with fruit juice--and a banana.

Some deli turkey, carrots, and a Starbuck's skinny 3-pump caramel latte made for great snacks this week.

The result? Come back in a couple of hours and I will update this post on whether I was successful. I gotta go to yoga first.

UPDATE: Weigh in? Lost 4.4 pounds. :D

Uh, that's kinda tight

So I have been insanely busy for the last few months. Running here and there, working, working out (some), trying to keep my sanity, etc. Well, I let eating right slip. Mind you, I have sooo enjoyed eating, especially the Christmas cookies, but my pants tell another story. The pants are not happy. Not at all.

I came home to an empty refrigerator. And no coffee in the house. Oh the horror! So after I could no longer wait for a cup of joe, I slipped on some jeans that I had not worn in several weeks.

"Uh, did these just come out of the dryer?" They were a little snug going on. Hmmm.

Time to get back to watching what I eat in a manner other than noticing that it is going in. Get back to Weight Watchers. Get back to writing it all down.

And time to get back to moving more. I took the doggies for their first walk in months. (I know, I have been a bad puppy mommy too.) I also wrote down Pilates classes for evenings in my calendar for the entire month. Just getting back to the things I know that work for me.

So time to get off my butt and get going. Have a nice day.

Conquering the Yoga Studio

Some you all know that after a year-plus in Intro to Yoga, I finally moved up to Yoga I a few weeks ago. New poses abound. And last night there were three new poses for me, two of which my mind said, "you want me to do WHAT???"

I had a shoulder injury in college and have been walking around the last 15 years with my shoulders near my ears so the fact that I could do some of these things, or even willing to try, is amazing.

One pose is really a shoulder opening exercise using the wall ropes. You stand with you arms suspending all your weight leaning all the way forward with your feet at the wall. If the ropes are long enough, you might be looking directly at the floor from just a few inches away. Yes, it looks like your arms will be ripped out of their sockets. As if this was not enough, you are expected to move from prone to bent so that your head approaches your knees and your tushy is up in the air. Then prone, then bent in half. Back and forth. Needless to say, I was a tad hesitant -- OK, so a LOT more than a tad and I was vocal about it. But I did it. Arms are clearly still intact.

The other you-want-me-to-do-WHAT pose was a handstand. Now let me make this clear. I am a size 18. I am not a small woman. I do not look at all like that woman in the picture. I have ample junk in my trunk. So the notion of getting my behind airborne resting only on my hands is ... miraculous. Well, with a little assistance from my instructor I managed to do it for about 15 seconds.

The last new poses was back bend. Not particularly mentally challenging, but new nonetheless.

Now you will have to excuse me because the hour of downward dog we did before these other things seems to have strained my left wrist. And I kinda need it to type for work, well and type for pleasure, too. So I need to rest it now.

Update on the Fitness Front

I started a new yoga class on Monday. After 14 months of Intro to Yoga, I am now in Yoga I. I am amused by the slow pace of Iyengar yoga. The new class is much faster paced, which is good.

My chair Pilates class was canceled. I was the only person to enroll. But I have decided to do private lessons during that time for the remainder of what would have been that class. So last night I got my butt kicked. Well, actually it was more like my hamstrings and triceps, but you get the picture. And despite my saying during class, "Oh, I'm gonna feel THAT in the tomorrow," I can miraculously able to move without any problem today. Pretty cool, eh? :D

"You know what you are doing"

Finally, after 14 months of Introductory Yoga, I heard this compliment while doing a pose.

I took the yoga intensive and now starting Sept 10, I am moving up to Yoga I.

Gotta love the pace of Iyengar Yoga.

This week brought to you by ....

How I am typing, I haven't a clue, because I think my arms fell off after yesterday's yoga and Pilates classes. But I figured out what is going to get me through this week.

This week is brought to you in part by ...

I am pooped!

Yoga yesterday morning kicked my tushy! I'm surprised that I can move at all this morning. But gotta go back for more.

And I have chair Pilates this evening. I might not be able to get out of bed tomorrow morning! :O

Yo-ga, Yo-ga, Yo-ga!

This week is all about yoga. This morning I am starting a yoga intensive. It is every morning this week, 6:30-9:00 AM. I need to take this in order to move to the next level of yoga. I have been taking Intro yoga for a year. Hard to believe. But here I am and I am going to learn something new this week.

And in order to do this I am taking 1/2 days of vacation everyday. Actually, Friday I am taking off completely (we have half days on Friday during the summer) and getting a pedicure! =)

Remember to Smile

Here in the middle we had a lovely day yesterday. A nice respite from the summer heat. It was all of 84, low humidity, partial cloudy. A perfect day to walk the doggies.

Seriously lacking in excuses, I took the doggies out and was all caught up in my thoughts when I walked passed someone. I was jarred that I was violating my own park rule #6.

Now it had been at least a week since I took the doggies out for a walk, but my goodness, how easily I forgot to simply smile at the people walking by me. (It must have been that strange California air that caused some sort of reversion.)

But no problems. I gritted my teeth and forced a smile at every single person who walked by. And I didn't curse too loudly (I think I muttered "Criminey!") when a guy on a fast-moving bike zoomed by us on the right.

And by the end of the walk, I was much more relaxed and smiling was much easier. Fake it 'til you make it.

Back to the Routine

I finally took the doggies for a walk. The first in weeks. Poor poochies. But that also means that it had been several weeks since I had been for a walk. Not so good for me either. We kept it short, 25 minutes. And it was very nice. Lovely day here in the middle. Upper 80s and not too humid. Not a cloud in the sky.

Gotta run to Chair Pilates class!

Chair Pilates

I started a new Pilates equipment class this past week. It involves using the "chair". And for having a name that seems to imply resting or reclining, it kicked my butt, well, it kicked my arms mostly. A big challenge. And that's just what I need. In fact I was doing what this person in the picture was doing and I got up too high and the pedals pushed me up and almost over the chair. Luckily, I caught myself and landed on my knees. Anyway, I thought I would introduce you to this new thing I got going on.

Final Stretch

Plans are apparently underway for Jack Bauer to come home on time. So I guess I better get busy doing all those things that I wanted to do before he gets home. Somehow I'm not convinced that I will be able to lose 50 pounds, but it is just that kind of thinking that is holding me back, right?

I got back into my routine today. Walked Bear. Moo had to stay home because of a shoulder injury. Went to Pilates intermediate mat class and signed up for a new equipment class starting next Tuesday. So after a 50-minute walk and a 60-minute mat class, I guess I deserve to be tired.

Good night.

Another funk?

For the last couple of weeks, I just haven't felt like sharing much. Humphf! Here's a list of my current concerns/issues (OK, just some of my issues - I don't want to crash the blogosphere with the WHOLE list):

1. I'm getting anxious about JD Jack Bauer coming home in a few months when his post-deployment employment situation is not clear yet. He does have a fall-back plan so it really is just a matter of WHERE we will be. The plan is to have the house in decent enough condition to sell if necessary upon Jack Bauer's return.

2. Revelations about my parents from when they were just here. Go figure - my mother is not perfect! Lyn (therapist) is going to love this. I think this starts some of that basement cleaning I've mentioned before. Yikes!

3. Taking care of myself. I have not been walking the dogs. My excuse? Moo's hurt her shoulder. I have not been eating well. My excuse? Lazy? Stress? Anxiety? Some of each? I haven't been to a weight watchers meeting in weeks and I need to go to meetings. Just putting other things ahead of going, like watching the milblog conference. I have not been sleeping as good as usual and I usually sleep very well. Too much caffeine? Stress? Anxiety? Talking with Jack Bauer too late? Some of each? I need to renew my commitment to myself.

Hmmm. Well that's a quite a bit. No wonder I am feeling down.

Let's go to yoga! :)