Brain Flopping

Oh Christmas Tree…

Just a short note to let you all know I am still around.  Apparently being overwhelmed with work and Christmas preparation and a class at church and working out and walking the dogs and and watching football and keeping up with social media (translation – sucked in by Pinterest) and my daily bible readings and sitting in front of my SAD light and doing push ups and keeping up with the house and playing the Simpsons Tapped Out (seriously addicted – thank you David Mauel) and did I mention work? is frying my brain and by 8 pm I have little to no creative juices left for writing.  Or at least, writing anything of significance, although that would imply “significant” writing earlier, which I am not sure I qualified for anyway.

Therefore, I have decided to treat the month of December as “Random Post Month”, where I will just post whatever is flopping around in my brain and not try so hard to be profound or give you anything useful.  This then, will be my first brain flopping post.  You will also notice pictures of the neighbors light displays scattered about.  This is the time of year the dogs and I traipse far and wide in search of glorious light displays, while Harry Belafonte and Josh Groban fight for the attention of my eardrums.

 

Before I start,  I have to confess.  My push ups have gone south for the winter.  Seriously, I don’t have time to do 150 push ups each morning and sit in front of my SAD light, plus get ready for work, etc.  And if I am completing 150 push ups in the first 15 minutes of the day, even if they aren’t consecutive, doesn’t that count as having achieved my goal?  I think the longest I have rested between sets has been 2 minutes or so.  I really think that should count, at least for now.  I do plan on picking it back up again in January.  Maybe.  Okay, yes, fine.  I will.  January is depressing anyway.  Might as well make it worse.

I may actually make cut-out cookies this year.  This is very thin ice for me, because I LOVE cut-outs – eating them mostly.  One year, I hid about a dozen of them from the rest of the family, because I wanted the last of them all to myself.  Well, it must have been one of those hormonal brain fog days, because I promptly forgot about them.  The next year, while digging out my cookie cutters, I discovered them hidden in the corner cupboard, behind the mixer.  Such a waste.  For the record, year old Christmas cut-outs taste like cardboard.

Mind you, I only like making the dough, rolling them out, baking them, and eating them.  I hate decorating them.  If it weren’t for the fact that they taste oh so much better with frosting, sprinkles, chocolate chips, red hots, and tiny silver candy balls that break your teeth when you bite them, I wouldn’t bother.  But they are so much better decorated and just biting into one brings me back to being a kid and sitting in front of our living room window, looking out at the snow and lights, or laying under our tree with my sister, looking at our reflections in the Christmas balls.

Well, that’s about all the brain flopping I can handle tonight.  I started a little too late and even though I have more stray thoughts, they will just have to wait for another post, or turn into a weird dream where I am running around looking for my locker that I can’t find, to get my books for a class that I can’t remember, to take a test I didn’t study for, the entire time knowing full well that I am the mother of adult children, making the scenario all the more ridiculous.  Or maybe it will be the one where I am late for work and forget to call in.  Or the one where I am trying to get the kids to school on time and fail miserably.  There.  Discuss amongst yourselves.  Let me know when you have a diagnosis.

Until next time!
Sue

I felt a little weird taking this picture because it was right up by the house and if they were home, it would have looked a little weird. I managed to take the picture though, and just got to the sidewalk when the neighbors came home.

 

 

Weekend Update

Welcome to “Weekend Update” – the portion of my blog where I fill you in on what’s been happening on life details that I may (or may not) have mentioned in past blogs.

100 Pushups – I start week 5 tomorrow.  To be honest, I’m not sure how well I will do.  Tomorrow’s sets are 36, 40, 30, 24, 40.  Seriously?  That’s 170 pushups.  One hundred seventy.  One.  Hundred. Seventy.  Pushups.  And I have not grown any fonder of them.

SAD Light – I ordered my SAD light (SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder – basically, you get depressed in the winter due to lack of light) and it came last Tuesday.  First of all, I have to say I paid a lot of money for something that looks and feels like it should cost ten bucks.  Then, not all of the lights worked – about 6 of them did not light.  Oh joy.  My skepticism and annoyance just multiplied by a billion.

Perhaps what I really need is actual sun on an actual beach for an undetermined length of time. Like 3 months.

However, because I did NOT want to package it back up, trudge to the post office, ship it back and then pray I got my money back, I decided to try it, regardless of the 6 dark LED’s.  I have used it for 30 minutes every morning since and the first three days (W-TH-F) I felt more awake and had continued energy at night after work.  However, I did not work out two of those three days because work was hair-curling crazy, so that may have influenced my evening energy.  On Saturday, I was talking about it with my sister, who said the energy increase was probably psychosomatic, something I kind of wondered about myself.  After which, I suddenly felt exhausted and promptly went home and took a nap.

So the jury is still out on the light.  I have read that it can take a few weeks to fully kick in, so I will keep using it.  I certainly don’t mind trying as it requires no real effort on my part, and I’m just drinking coffee and browsing the internet anyway in the morning.  Oh, and ironically, the 6 LED’s are now working.

Oh yes, I did just go there.

Y-M-C-A! – Sing it with me!  I joined on Thursday after work.  Haven’t gone yet and frankly I am a little stressed about trying to figure out when I will have time to go.  I am also stressed about putting on a bathing suit in front of strangers – something I don’t mind when I am at the beach because of all the weirdos at the beach anyway – I blend right in.  At the Y, I will be donning my suit with Michael Phelps Wanna-bes in goggles and speedos, pretending I know how to swim well enough to claim a lane in the cut throat world of 5am swimmers.

I am also going to try the spin classes.  A couple of the gals from the bike club also belong to the Y, so we are planning on meeting there to take them together.  And, heaven help me, I am probably going to start running on the indoor track.  Not that running in a circle and counting laps is what I want to do, but it’s slightly less boring than running on a treadmill.

Do not bathe us! We like smelling like corn chips!

A Clean Dog is Not a Happy Dog – However, a clean dog makes for a happy owner, especially when said dog sleeps right next to said owner’s face.  I noticed an increase in the corn chipiness of the air when one of them was next to me, and decided that November 19th, the day of their next grooming, was much to far away for my survival.  They now smell like soap and doggy perfume, which I am sure they hate with the heat of a 1000 burning suns, and that they are quietly plotting revenge.  The ‘revenge’ will likely show up in the hallway when I get up in the morning.  They are masters of the well placed doggie tootsie roll.  (This would be one of those “updates” that really have nothing to do with any past blog entries.  It’s pretty much just shameless yorkie poo promotion.  Or anti-promotion, as the case may be.)

And that, my friends, is that.  Time for bed and a new work week tomorrow. Hopefully, it will contain fewer moments of hair tearing than last week!

Sue

Battle Plans

You know, I was sitting here freezing, wondering if I should turn on the fire-place and lay on the couch or try to be productive. I choose productive, for the simple reason that I found my socks.

The Bees Knees in footwear

I have this favorite pair of alpaca wool socks, and they had been missing for at least a week. At first I thought they were in the wash, so dutifully wore my other socks until I got around to doing the laundry. Ten loads of laundry later, they were still missing. Then we had a spurt of warm, fall weather – well into the 70’s – so I didn’t notice too much that my feet were clothed in mere cotton.

But tonight, I walked the dogs in a chill 40 degrees with only a sweatshirt and came home cold, tired and footsore. I wanted my socks, dog gone it. I began to suspect a sock thief, but realized that the only other two occupants in the house are both males and unlikely to be sock stealers (unlike a certain daughter I know), so did the next logical thing. I looked under the bed. Viola! I pulled them on, and felt instantly better physically and emotionally. It got me to thinking too, about the up coming winter, and how I was going to battle the short, cold days of gloom and snow.

I’m going to need a battle plan. I can already feel myself being dragged into the comfort food vortex, where fuzzy blankets, mystery novels and video games conspire with the evil war lords from the Land of Carbohydrates, in a battle for my soul and my waistline. And to be honest, I am a willing victim.

Obviously, the socks are my first line of defense. They really do give me actual ‘warm fuzzies’. I love these socks, and I do not use the term loosely. You can get a pair for yourself here.

I didn’t have a SAD light picture, so had to settle for a Sue’s A Dork picture. Yes, those are glasses with windshield wipers.

My second line of defense is to buy a SAD light (SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder, not Sue’s A Dork…just sayin’). My trusted healthcare professional (interpret as you wish) has assured me it will be the best $60 I will have ever spent. I certainly hope he is right. Mine is coming on Tuesday (if the FedEx website is correct), so I will keep you posted. I’m supposed to use it every morning for 30 minutes, which won’t be a problem. I spend the first 30 minutes of every morning huddled around my coffee mug, staring into the glowing screens of one electronic device or another so what’s one more in the mix?

“Dog Breath set to ‘stun’, Mr. Scott”

My third line of defense will be to get outside, as often as possible, when it is light out and especially when the sun is shining. This is difficult during the work week, when I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark (hence the need for the light). But on weekends, I need to be diligent about finding time to be out, even when it’s so cold Lucky can’t make it to the corner with out pitifully holding out a frozen paw. (Lucky is one of our yorkie-poo’s. He acts tough, but is pretty much a wuss, although he does have breath that could kill a man. Right now he is sleeping under the bed. Weirdo.)

And my last line of defense will be to join the Y- for a couple of reasons. First, because the idea of having only the sweat box (our pet name for the gym at work) to go to for exercise all winter is enough to make me want to gnaw off a limb. The other reason is to get some swimming in after work. With the longer days, I am used to being active in the summer until at least 8 or 9 at night. In the dark of winter, I tend to completely shut off by 6:30. Maybe if I swim a few times a week after work, it will trick my brain into resetting its winter activity clock. Plus, it will give me an alternative on the weekends when the weather prohibits outside activities.

Oops – not THAT Frozen Tundra

I think it will help if we get some snow too. Last year we had very little, and I think that actually made winter seem longer. If I have to live in the Frozen Tundra, I want to have fun in it. Dave got me a pair of snowshoes last Christmas, which I was able to use only one time on a test run in the back yard. Of course, if it doesn’t snow, I can keep riding my bike…ah but we need the moisture more than I need to ride all winter. Plus Kay did invite me snowmobiling, and if I know Kay, it will definitely be a good time had by all. Maybe this winter won’t be so bad after all!

How do the shorter days affect you? Are you a winter hater or lover? What do you do to combat cabin fever?

Sue