Reflecting on Life Lessons and 21 Days Without Sugar!

You know, it's funny how a 20 minute meeting can result in hours and hours and hours of work being assigned to someone. I had that happen this week. Not that it's a bad thing. A good opportunity to get my feet wet with someone new but looking at it yesterday, I had the distinct impression that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Thankfully a good night's sleep and a fresh perspective this morning, it didn't look nearly as daunting. And it's going to make for a couple interesting weeks. Besides, I have Curves to work out my frustrations should things not go well with the plans! LOL.

I did discover something very cool online today. It's from a blog and it made me stop for a few minutes and really think about things for a few moments. It's called "30 Things to Stop Doing To Yourself" and on the blog Marc and Angel hack life. Every single one of the items is true and completely makes sense. If you like the post, please support their blog and sign up for their newsletter. I did!!

The first one is:

1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.  If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you.  You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot.  Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth.  And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.

OMG, I'm such a proponent of this one. And I think that I've learnt and lived this lesson. My only regret is that I didn't realize it sooner. Looking back on high school, I can think of several people that I would have just cut out and walked away from because they sucked the happiness out of me. Or just used me and never saw me for the awesome person I know that I am. Which leads me directly to points 5 and 6 in the blog:

5.Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you likeeveryone else.  Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you.  Don’t change so people will like you.  Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.

6. Stop trying to hold onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.

I think I have a pretty good sense of self now. I'm not a party girl. I'm not the type of person who goes out to bars or clubs every Friday and Saturday night. I don't go out drinking  and dancing with the girls. I'm lucky if my eyes are still open at 10pm on a Friday night. I'd rather curl up in my comfy close and read a book than get all dressed up and freeze my ass off waiting in line somewhere and then spend my night in a crowded room with a bunch of strangers. And I'm cool with that. There was a point in my life when I wished I was that girl. The bar star. But that's not who I am and I have no desire to be her either.

I don't like dwelling on the past. Been there, done that. I will occasionally recall something from my past in order to remind myself of the lesson I learnt from it, but that's all. Sadly, I've had a few people in my life who can't seem to get past the past. Which then goes back to point 1 and I don't associate with those people anymore.

I am somewhat guilty of # 15 and 16:

Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others are doing better than you.  Concentrate on beating your own records every day.  Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.
Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own.  Ask yourself this:  “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”

I'm 35, live in a small, kinda crappy apartment (because I can't afford anything nicer)  am still single and have 0 prospects on the horizon. Even if I had an interest in having kids, my chances of doing so would be pretty slim to none at this point. I often day dream about owning my own house with a nice backyard where I can have a lovely garden and a couple of dogs running around. And a husband who's arms I can curl up in on our porch swing and watch fire flies come out at night. Yes, I realize that I sound like I'm 80 but it's what I want. And I don't have it. But I know other people around my same age who do have it. I've learnt to change my thinking. I can't measure my life and successes against others. They're living a different life than I am. They're on a different path than I am. I know that I'll eventually get there, I just am taking a different route.
Same with people at work. I've seen people with less experience than myself getting better jobs. I've seen people who only worked in our office for a short period of time get promoted or find a better job faster than others who have been there longer. I can't begin to compare them all. Everyone is living a different life. I'm thankful for the things that I do have and will continue to strive for the important things that I want (happens to be point 30).

I will admit to being completely guilty of point 28 on the list too (you have to read the list to find out what it is) but I come by it naturally. It runs in the family and I'm fairly certain that I inherited it from my mother, who most likely got it from her mother :) And 29 is a work in progress for me as well. I've taken to doing a bit of positive affirmation after my workout at Curves. There's a stretching routine that you're supposed to follow after your working out to help your muscles. Part of it is done sitting on the floor. During those stretches, I like to close my eyes and think nothing but positive thoughts. I remind myself how strong I am. I remind myself of my goals. I think about why I'm there and what I want to accomplish and how much I love me and I just remind myself to take it one day at a time. Taking little steps towards all my goals are better than taking none at all.

Speaking of goals, I'm at day 21 without sugar :) Just 7 more days and it will have been a full month. I did nearly have a set back this morning when I opened the office fridge at morning break and found myself staring at two half eaten cakes. I grabbed my yogurt and ran before the devil could scramble up on my shoulder.

Good Night!

Sarah

My new Bonsai Tree

Mini Milestones

My day has been a day of some mini milestones which I didn't actually realize until late this afternoon.

For starters, today marks 2 weeks without sugar. I even survived the dessert section of an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet on the weekend. I broke down and bought some sugar free Jello Mousse cups to help with the chocolate cravings. Otherwise, fruit has been satisfying my sweet cravings and I'm feeling pretty darn good.
I'm finding it rather shocking just how much sugar is in things that you don't think have sugar in them or should have sugar in them. The one that surprised me the most are the frozen dinner and the supposed "Healthy" steamer style bowls. They have insane amounts of sugar in them. Talk about buyer be ware.

This evening also marked my 50th workout at Curves. Their computer system keeps track and lets me know how many workouts I've had when I sign in. I'll admit it. I'm a little proud of myself. I've actually kept with it for 5.5 months now. It's become routine for me and I actually enjoy it. Yes. I just said that I enjoy exercise. Some days it is hard to drag my ass there, like tonight. I was really tired after work. I've been tired all week. And it was really grey and blah out. Snow was in the forecast. And I'm reading a really good book right now (Omens by Kelly Armstrong) and all I could think about was going home, curling up and reading. But I didn't. I went to Curves. I was rewarded with my favourite coach being there (She normally works mornings except for Fridays) and I got in a good work out. Beat my target again for the 6th or 7th consecutive work out and it was my 50th workout. Something seems to have clicked. Now if my knee would just cooperate.....

Work is going well. It's been pretty steady so it's keeping me out of trouble. My co-workers are still providing me with a good deal of amusement. I swear, one day I'm going to write a book about my life in that office. I got a piece of good news last week too. I wrote a test on the 10th as part of a hiring process. I got the score back on the 12th and I did a pretty good job, scoring 42 out of 50. I'll take it, especially since I was still recovering from my cold and thanks to my inconsiderate neighbours, I only had 4 hours of sleep the night before the test. Oh yeah, and they tried to blow us up during the test too! (Blasting at the building site behind the test centre). Made for a very interesting day.

Tomorrow is the first day of spring. Not that you'd know it from looking out the window. We had snow today and there's snow in the forecast again tomorrow. The City of Ottawa set a new record on Monday. It was the coldest St. Patrick's Day in Ottawa's recorded history. Lucky us. Two years ago we had a heat wave and set a record of +25. It got so hot in our office that we got sent home. I'd much prefer that to this. I'm very excited at the prospect of having Spring here soon. It means longer days and more sunlight. It also means that I survived the dark, cold days of winter and I once again triumphed over my demons. I must say, this has been one of the best winter's I've had in a very long time. My seasonal depression really stayed in check and I've had  very few down days. There were a couple weeks between January and February that I found a little rough and had no energy but they were short lived and I bounced back quickly. I honestly think that Curves had a lot to do with the improvement in my mood. They say that exercise is good for more than your physical health. Who knew that they were right? LOL.

Steph and I checked out one of the positive signs of spring 2 weekend's ago: Blowing up the ice on the Rideau River. We got there too late to see the ice being blown up as they were further up the river, but we heard and felt some of the blasts and we did get to see the very beautiful and very frozen Rideau Falls. It was rather interesting to see. I got a lot of amusement out of watching the large ice chunks from up river going over the falls and creating quite the splash at the bottom. It was almost as amusing as watching Steph sniff bread in the grocery store but that's a story for another day. So is staying out to 2:30am, betting on electronic horses at the Casino in Quebec :) LOL.

I can hear my book calling me so I should sign off, go and curl up and read a little before bed. Or a lot.

Good Night!

Sarah

Very Frozen Rideau Falls - Steph took the photo when we stopped to check them out 2 weeks ago. So cold! But so beautiful!!

Back to Work and Day 2 & 3 Without Sugar

Despite still being sick, I made it back to work today. Even survived the day while remaining vertical, keeping my lungs in my chest and only mildly grossing out my nearest neighbours with my nose blowing. One of my managers referred to it as "trumpeting". Anyhow...

It was a long and busy day. Played catch up almost all day and not just my own work either. I'm half assed covering for a co-worker too. I managed to make it through the day without any cold meds either. Just lots of tea and water. And a mid-day nasal rinse.

Day 2 of the no sugar went well. Again, since I was home sick it was easier to avoid temptation. I did venture into Walmart in search of honey but managed to avoid all the bad stuff.

Today, I had a slight bit of sugar this evening. I had a quick swig of chocolate milk as I'd eaten something spicy and needed a quick milk blast to stop my tongue from burning. So all in all, not to bad at all. I did have a wicked craving for coffee yesterday and again this evening so I think I may need to track down a small box of Splenda tomorrow just so I can have coffee from time to time. While I'm quite happy to have honey in my tea, I can't say the same thing about coffee. Coffee and honey don't seem to go so well together. I don't want to go overboard on the sweeteners either so I need to limit my intake of them as well.

I can sleep in tomorrow so that should help knock this could out a little more. I need to take my night time medication and slather my chest with Vicks. I giggle and think of The Big Bang Theory every time I do it. The episode where Amy gets sick is priceless. I did like my mom's best friend's suggestion. She said to find a firefighter to do it. I'm down with that.

Good Night!

Sarah

Pretty much how I spent the last 2 days...

Day 1: Sugar = No. Sinus Cold = Yes.

So today is Ash Wednesday, for those who follow the Western Christian calendar. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Ash Wednesday is the kick off to Lent and it occurs 46 days before Easter. The story goes that Matthew, Mark, Luke and Jesus spent 40 days and 40 nights fasting in the desert while being tempted by Satan (I guess he had nothing better to do). The purpose of Lent has changed over the millennia and basically it boils down to giving up some sort of luxury or benefit in your life as a way of paying penitence for your sins. Now if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that we're missing 6 days in the math. The extra 6 days account for the Sundays between now and Easter and those are kind of like a day off. Fast for 6 days and feast on the 7th. Anyhow, back to my point. Since I am neither overly religious (much more spiritual really) nor do I believe that I commit many sins, I use Lent as a time of motivation. A period to make positive changes in my life and use it as a motivating factor. And with a little hope that God, the Goddess and the Universe all help me out a little and give me some extra strength and will power.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I'm giving up sugar for Lent. To clarify, I'm giving up any foods with "added" sugar in them, as well as high fructose corn syrup and other bad sugars. Anything that has naturally occurring sugars like fruit and milk are ok.

It just so happens that the World Health Organization published an announcement today asking people to consume no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar a day. They go on to say that no more than 10% of your daily calories should come from sugar but would prefer it if people could make that 5% instead.

Sugar is everywhere. It's in things that you'd never think of it being in. One tablespoon of ketchup has almost 1 full teaspoon of sugar in it. Even one serving of the Sour Cream and Onion Crispy Minis that I have has 1 gram of sugar in it. A lot of processed foods have sugar in them. A lot of "diet" or "low fat" foods have added sugar to help with the taste. It's very overwhelming when you stop to think about it.

I'm kicking the habit so I'm going to do what I can to avoid sugar for the next 40 days. I dawned on my today that my dad's 60th birthday falls during this 40 day period so that's going to be a tough one. But my aim isn't to be perfect, just much more aware.

Day 1 went well. Mostly due to the fact that I'm rather sick with a nasty sinus cold right now. I remember to buy sugar free cough/throat drops and I used honey in my tea this morning. Once I'm feeling better, I'm going to have to hit up the grocery store for a new cereal as my favourite one here has added sugar in it. I'm also trying to find some recipes online for no-sugar granola and breakfast bars. I'm sure I'll be a little more motivated when I'm finally feeling better.

My night time cold medication is kicking in so I'd better log off before I fall asleep at my computer and get snot/drool all over the keyboard (that's a pretty image eh?).

Good Night!

Sarah

Guess What? It's Still Cold.

It's been 3 weeks since I last blogged. It's still cold. There's still lots of snow on the ground. The forecast for the week shows more cold and more snow. And the first day of Spring is 18 days away. Someone needs to wake Mother Nature up and remind her of that fact. I'm so done with this weather. I think most people are. According to the weather experts, this is the coldest winter we've had in the last 20 years. I believe it. I'm hanging in there though.

From a mood/mental standpoint, this winter has been pretty good (knock on wood since it isn't over yet). Other than a  couple of days in December and a week in January, I've been doing pretty good. The demons haven't been bugging me. Maybe it's even too cold out for them! The only thing I've done differently this winter than last is Curves. It's become pretty much routine for me now. I haven't missed a session since mid January. I did miss one day in February but that's because they were closed so that wasn't my fault. I think the exercise really has helped. I've been pushing myself to get out more too, be a little more social. That's probably helped too. I'm starting to see the results from Curves. Just small ones. But they make me smile. In numbers, I've lost 6lbs and 10.75 inches. That means I'm trading fat for muscle. I think it's a pretty good swap.

Despite being up late last night, I woke up early-ish this morning and couldn't fall back to sleep. So I hauled my butt out of bed and got moving. I made it to the grocery store and home again by 10:20am. I then had breakfast, watched Police Academy and cleaned my kitchen. Like really cleaned it. I still have the stove/oven and my kitchen table to tackle but the sink and counters are looking pretty good. Took out a whole mess of recycling too. I can't believe how quickly it adds up! I did empty and toss out some expired stuff so that contributed to the recycling mess.

I've decided that I'm going to attempt something this week. It's going to be hard and I'm most likely going to be very cranky but it's worth it. Lent is coming up. And while I'm not Catholic and thus don't normally observes lent, over the last few years I have. For the last 3 years, I've given up chocolate for lent. I've managed to stick to it and then I go hog wild at on Easter. LOL. This year, I'm stepping up my game. I'm going to give up ALL sugar for lent. You see, sugar is my drug. Some people go nuts for chips, for me, it's sugar. Cakes, cookies, squares, chocolate bars, gummies....sugar. And I need to kick that habit. My mid-section needs me to kick that habit. So this should be an adventure. I'm not going to beat myself up if I'm not perfect and I'm sure God won't be disappointed in me either but I'm going to hold myself accountable and give this a real try. I've been told that it take 6 weeks to make or break a habit. Lord knows that my "doing dishes every night" habit attempt failed miserably but my making the bed every morning one worked. I bought a bunch of unsweetened apple sauce fruit snack cups to help with the sugar cravings. I just hope I can do this without killing anyone :)

Bed time has arrived so it's time to sign off. I really hate that the Oscars save all the big, fun awards until the end of the show. I guess no one would watch it to the end otherwise. Oh well.

Good Night!

Sarah

Cold Power Walking and a New Lunch Date

Well I certainly got my cardio in this morning. Thanks to the design of the downtown corridor, an accident in one key spot caused major backups for all the buses.

I was first aware of a problem when it took us 5 minutes to get up a hill. And then when we reached the stop at the top of the hill, we sat there for 5 minutes, without moving away from the stop. Thankfully, I'm a well prepared Canadian girl and was dressed for the weather. I had my boots, two pairs of pants, a sweater, a hoodie, scarf, mittens and my heavy wool coat on so I was good to brave the elements.

Me and about 6 other people hopped off the bus and started the trek into downtown. Looking down the street, there was a long line of pretty red and white buses and a heavy stream of people heading into the core on foot. While making the trek, I passed my boss' boss en route to the office. We said a hurried hi as we each scurried in a different direction across the street.

Despite the fact that it was -28 with the windchill when I left the house, I was quite toasty by the time I got to the office. There was a quick stop at Starbucks involved, where they gave me the wrong drink but it was still good so I was ok. I wasn't the only one who opted to take the two feet and a heartbeat approach to getting to work today. At least it was sunny.

I must say, I'm really looking forward to the new transit tunnel under downtown being built. I think it will really improve traffic in the core.

I had a fun lunch today. Due to scheduling conflicts and over crowding, I opted to have lunch with a couple of our students rather than my usual group. I know one of the girls pretty well as she's been with us for a few years now. They were quite fun to hang with. It was neat talking about school stuff again and I assisted in the one girl trying to plan a romantic weekend away. LOL. They were a nice break in the day. They gave me advice on boys too :)

Kind of like the conversation I had with our boss' assistant over the difference between the photocopier and the printer and the fact that you cannot send a print job to our photocopier. I'm sure it was a fun conversation for anyone who happened to over hear. Our office isn't equipped with over high tech machines. We're kind of an old school place.

All in all, it was a pretty decent day. I think it's time to go and feed my Merlin addiction.

Good Night!

Sarah

Ice Storm, Christmas, New Year's and Merlin.

So it would appear that I haven't written for a while. I haven't written for 2 months and 26 days in fact. I don't know I haven't written. Just didn't feel like it I guess. I formulated a couple blogs in my head but never had the energy or drive to get them out and onto the screen. I guess I needed a break.

I'll bring you up to speed.

I'm still employed. I'm still single. I'm still broke and I'm still going to Curves. So that would be great, not so good, really shitty and fantastic.

Christmas was lovely. Went home for a week and got to spend time with my family. Thankfully, none of us got sick this year which is good, because I still haven't fully forgiven Typhoid Stephen for giving me the stomach flu last Christmas. It's been over a year and I still can't bring myself to eat cranberries.

The day after my arrival at home, mother nature blessed us with an ice storm. Not quite on the same scale at the one that Ottawa received back in 1998, but it was pretty impressive none the less. We were very lucky and only lost power for a very short period of time. 2 minutes the first time and 10 minutes the 2nd time to be precise. The next door neighbour and the one across the street both lost power after a limb from our tree took down the line (that sound you heard was my mother correcting me and saying that it was the city's tree and not ours. Minor detail. It's on our lawn!). Anyhow, the line was live but it was blocking the road so the nice people at the Hydro company came and cut it, thus knocking out power to both houses.

I got to test out my new "winter tracks" when dad suggested that we go for a walk around the neighbourhood and check out the damage. The damn things worked and I stayed vertical while facing a great fear of mine. I'm terrified of ice. We walked in the middle of the road and everyone froze the second we heard a cracking tree branch as a lot of the tree limbs were still falling. But hey, you've got to do something a little stupid every now and then, right? Besides, it was my dad's idea!

Adding to the excitement of the day came in the early afternoon when a tree around the corner caught fire. Ironically, the house where it happened is owned by a Fire Fighter. The cool part was watching the wreath that was hanging on the tree light up and sizzle as the electrical current ran through the tree. It was like a giant, live science demo.

Christmas Eve took on a fun twist when one of my oldest and dearest friends tagged along with us for dinner in order to avoid having to visit her mother-in-law. However, she made the kids go and see her. I'm not sure if that's cruel or just plain old funny. I think I'm going to side with funny on that one. Kind of like our Christmas dinner. We were only expecting my grandfather to come for dinner. But when he arrived, I broke the bad news to my mom as I saw him helping my grandmother from the car (earlier she said that she was too sick to come). Dinner was interesting as, for the first time in my life, we had Ham for Christmas dinner and not turkey. A fact that my mother bitched about, non-stop, for almost a week straight. The kicker? She's the who bought the god damn ham! In the ham's defence, it was delicious and I loved it more than I like turkey so I wasn't upset about the swap at all. Anyhow, back to grandma. She spent most of dinner just pushing food around her plate and saying that she wasn't hungry. Things really got interesting when she asked for some extra strength Tylenol and then her and my grandpa got into a fight over whether or not she'd taken 2 aspirin before leaving the house. My father really didn't say much. Just kept looking at his plate a lot. And my mom drank more sherry with dinner than I've seen her drink in years. It all amused the hell out of me.

Now before you point out what a horrible daughter I am, rest assured that I'm fully aware that karma will be coming back to bite me in the ass over this. One day, hopefully in the really distant future, I'm going to be the one drinking the sherry and staring at my plate while my mom and dad bicker over drugs. Actually, it won't be sherry. It will be Bailey's.

This is a photo of my grandma from earlier in the day...she's hiding from my camera.

Moving on. I headed back to Ottawa just before New Year's Eve. Mostly because I was out of vacation days and had to go back to work. Also because a very good friend of mine was in town and I got invited to his parents' house for a NYE party. This also meant that I *finally* got to meet his awesome wife and see his wonderful little guy, who had the decency to sleep the entire time. I also got to try lobster for the first time and quite enjoyed it. Sadly the night flew by far too quickly but 2014 was ushered in with good cheer and some great people.

Not too much out of the ordinary has happened since then. I do have a bit of a "dating" conundrum going on at the moment but that can wait for another night as this blog is getting quite long. Seriously!? Why can't people just step up and say what they feel? If you're interested, just ask me out. It's not hard. Especially when I've told you that I want to get some face time with you. Clearly that means I'm interested, right?
Sorry, sorry. Just needed to vent a little.

Work is going well and so is Curves. I was there tonight. And now I'm very sore. Especially my back. Hello new muscle groups. Oh, and I've formed a slight addiction to the BBC tv show Merlin. I've been watching it on Netflix. No worries, I just have 1 last episode in season 4 and then all of season 5 to watch and I'm done.  Then I'll have to find a new series to get hooked on. I am behind on my Sherlock and Downton Abbey watching. It would appear that I'm on a British roll.

Anyhow, I have to go and finish doing up the dishes and then I'm going to relax and watch an episode of Merlin.

Hang in there. I might just very well be back.

Good Night!

Sarah

Happy New Year 2014!!!!