Day One, or How Aio Attempted to Get Back in the Saddle

Today is a day for continued beginnings.

I’m wondering if I’m hitting a manic point right now — I’ve (re)started a few things that I had been doing earlier in my life in order to try to better myself — Not only have I started writing on 750words.com, which I realize only now is something that I’ve missed, but I decided to take the dive and restart Weight Watchers, at least for the promotional 6 months that I got for 60% off. I don’t know if I can afford 30.00 a month for WW, but I can afford 16 for right now. I want to feel accountable and the like, be held accountable to doing what I need to do. I also decided to restart with online journaling. I’m trying to decide if I want to go through here on Open Diary, like my first diaries were, or Prosebox. I kind of want to log back into Prosebox and figure out if anything’s changed with it. It’s been so long since I’ve written on anything like that. I was trying to decide if I want to pick up the old diaries and continue in them, or if I want to make a whole new one… (side note from Future Aio, I went with a new one) I think a new one. It’s cool to go through and read where I was 20 years ago when I had my original Open Diary but that’s definitely a different person. I’m older, (hopefully) wiser, and a little more in control of myself… or at least knowledable about myself. Still have problems spelling though, heh.

I’m going to try to hold myself accountable more. Before we went to pick up Rider, I started a system where I would be on a routine and do things at specific times. I did it for about two months and then Rider happened and yeaaaah, no routine since March. I was feeling really good doing it though, and I think I want to get back into that. Maybe if I start my “New Year Resolutions” a month early, I’ll be less inclined to drop them come February. I need some sort of routine, that’s the worst thing with being the “housewife” to the house — no accountability on my time and actions, besides the whole “feed the guins” thing.

Right now my routine is really sucky —

4:20 am – Wake up
4:30 am – Let the doggos out
4:40 am – Leave to pick up Mom and/or Rider from work
5:30 am – Return home
8:30 am – Make lunches for Ipo and/or Court
9:30 am – Feed Guins

Empty Space (usually spent on such frivolities as sleep and gaming and bugging Mom)

5:30 pm – Start dinner
7:30 pm – Take Mom and/or Rider to work
8:30 pm – Return Home
11:00 pm – Sleep

Only to start again the next day. I added a bit to it when I was doing the routine thing — added times to clean the kitchen and do chores. I figured 3 chores a day (including kitchen), each one taking up to an hour apiece. So I would have added in a block from 12pm to 2pm for chores, still giving me plenty of time before Ipo got home for naps and the like. I’m going to try that again. Part of what threw me off was the fact that I was getting frustrated being the only one doing anything around the house and the only one cooking and the like. We fixed the cooking problem — We have family meetings every week now, where we sit down and decide who is cooking what night. The rule is that everyone (but me) cooks 1 meal a week (ish, it ends up being around 2 meals every 3 weeks so far). They decide what they’re making, and they give me the shopping list for it so I make sure that the food’s in the house and on their night of the week, they cook and I don’t have to. If they don’t feel like cooking, they can either pay me to cook for them, or buy take-out / take us out to dinner. It’s working pretty well so far, even with Thanksgiving throwing it off a little bit. We even plan in leftover days.

Last night was Mom’s night and we had Stroganoff for dinner (Wooo, Hamburger Helper!).. there’s still enough that there’s plenty for lunch. I was thinking about getting a little, maybe I’ll see about getting a serving for lunch to go with a salad or something… I don’t want to try to kill my interest in weight watchers all at once. 🙂 Tonight is my night to cook and we decided on BLTs for dinner tonight. The local butcher shop has bacon on sale this week for about 30%, so we’re going to go pick up some. I’ll bake it and we’ll have sandwiches. I even bought myself some special bread for my diet. If you haven’t tried Dave’s Killer Bread, you really, really should. It’s really nummy. And good for you too — it has a bunch of protein and you can get full on a lot less than you would normally eat.

That’s where my biggest struggle is — portion control. Growing up with a Hawaiian dad, everything is supersized. You don’t have a ball of rice, you have a BOWL of rice. You don’t have a small cut of steak, you have half a cow, that sort of thing. So I’m trying to control that — I have a scale in my kitchen that I use for measuring out ingredients for baking, so it should work pretty well for getting the right amounts of food into my gullet. Speaking of which… I should eat.

Food Diary thus far:
Starbucks Trenta Shaken Black Tea, no sweetener
Kirkland Fruit, Nuts and Cheese pack