Tag Archives: house

So about that…

6 Mar

I’ve been struggling lately.

I didn’t get in the Word once while in Columbus (at a Christian conference no less!) I got in the Word Wednesday and today but out of sheer willpower. 

I encounter the cards with my memory verses on them every time I open my Bible. There they are, tucked neatly between the pages of Romans. I feel a twinge of guilt as I stuff them back between the pages at the end of my quiet time. I’m still writing verses on cards every Sunday. I’m just not memorizing them.  

Every time I go to the bathroom (excuse me if it’s TMI), I am reminded (and grossed out) about how dirty my bathroom floor is. Once I notice that, I start glancing around at the other surfaces and notice that indeed, they are all just filthy.

In this year’s election, I voted for Obama. But I am just now familiarizing myself with the changes he’s made and policies he’s created…oh and giant bags of money he’s handed out. And I majored in journalism. Yeah, I know, I would suck at being a journalist. Politics to me is like sports–I find it just interesting enough to care but not interesting enough to consistently pay attention.

[Side note: I am sooo glad that I am not the President right now–or really anyone that needs to make decisions about our nation’s future. When I read about the financial situation of the global economy, I want to crawl into bed and pretend that the problem will just disappear on its own. I bet you’re glad I’m not the President too.]

My vacation to Mexico is a week from this Sunday and I haven’t felt more bloated and flabby than I do right now in a long while. Eating chinese for dinner tonight didn’t help. I honestly tried Intuitive Eating from when I wrote my last post about this until yesterday…when I broke down and logged my calories on Livestrong. “Just until after Mexico…” I tell myself. Uh huh, right, just keep telling yourself that.

I volunteered to translate articles from English to Spanish with Gospel Translations and while I’ve had the article sitting in my inbox since February 16th, I just started working on it Wednesday night…And I only translated 3 paragraphs.

Well, this blog post wasn’t meant to turn into a Woe Is Me lament. I’m just being honest–this is where I am right now. I am a messy, ambitious but lazy, paradoxical, confusing sort of person.

Some people have willpower of steel. They have to force themselves to take it easy (and even then, they don’t really take it easy). 

Some people are always laidback and chillaxing. They have to force themselves to do at least one productive thing during the day so they can say it wasn’t a total waste.

I am a pendulum that swings back and forth between the two. Sometimes it takes me a month to swing from maniacal to couch potato. Sometimes it only takes a day. You could say I’m slightly bipolar. Or you could say that I’m just your average woman. Both would be accurate.

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Pathetic little cold.

22 Jan

I think I’m getting sick. On Tuesday night, I started to get a sore throat. Yesterday my nose started to stuff up just slightly. Today was pretty much par until tonight when I got a headache and feel exhausted. I’m thinking that maybe aerobics tomorrow morning is out of the question (Fridays are tough so I have to be on top of my game to survive!)

I told my women’s group tonight that I’ve been asking God to either make me better or make me sick enough that I can justify staying home from work. 🙂 Then I could watch House all day long.

Glorious.

But then I realize I would only enjoy it for about 2 hours before wishing I was just better already. I am too active a person to lay on the couch all day long. Even back in July when we were just moving into our house and I went to the ER from work because I was having trouble breathing and my chest had stabbing pains (turned out I suffer from acid reflux!), I still helped paint the walls and trim and move our stuff the next day (never mind the fact that I couldn’t sleep at night because it hurt to lay down and I couldn’t bend over because it caused stabbing pains.) I’m tough.

But when it comes to work, let’s just be honest. Everyone needs a good sick day now and again. I mean, no one wishes for any serious illness of course. But a wimpy, day-long cold every now and then? Bring it on.

Then there’s the kind of cold I have–enough to wear me out but not enough to knock me out. In short, just annoying. Boo.

Ok, well I’m going to go to bed now in case I do feel well enough to go to aerobics. And if I don’t, I really hope I don’t feel well enough to go to work either. 🙂 Hey, it’s Friday. Can’t I dream a little?

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An anomalous day

5 Oct

Today is strange. I don’t have anything that I have to do…and yet, I feel like I shouldn’t just spend my time lying on the couch watching TV. It’s a weird feeling really. This doesn’t usually happen to me… usually I have lots of stuff to do or I don’t want to do anything but lie on the couch and watch TV.

So far, since coming home from church, I have cleaned out the coffeemaker with vinegar (something that was LONG overdue!), watched our wedding video (for old time’s sake), painted the wooden box I’m going to hang in the bathroom when Trav gets home, and folded the laundry. I have a canvas that I want to paint our wedding vows on but I feel like I should have a stencil instead of just doing it free hand. I could work on my memoir but I just really don’t feel like it. I think I will read…and possibly take a nap 🙂

Meanwhile, here are the pictures of our wonderful new patio furniture–that we have yet to use since it’s cold here already! We also have an orange umbrella that goes with it but we haven’t taken that out of the box yet…

We chose the lowest maintenance furniture we could find.

We chose the lowest maintenance furniture we could find.

But the chairs are actually really comfy!

But the chairs are actually really comfy!

The chairs rock--literally

The chairs rock--literally

The lone tree in our backyard is finally turning yellow!

The lone tree in our backyard is finally turning yellow!

That’s it for now. I’m off to read The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever.

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Funk Free

3 Oct

The funk I was in a couple weeks ago is gone!!

I have been going to aerobics classes at our neighborhood Rec Center. The 2 classes that I’ve gone to so far have both been some version of step aerobics. The first one was 5:30-6:30 in the morning. It’s hard to get up for a class that early but I did–once. It was a good class–it was mostly 30 and 40-year-olds. I was by far the youngest one there. It was a little challenging (mostly to figure out what the instructor was doing!) and the ab workout was killer.

The other class I went to was from 5:30-6:25 PM and it was a younger crowd. There were probably 3-4 other women my age, others in their 30s and 40s, and 1-2 looked like they were even older than that. The instructor wasn’t a skinny minnie–she had a little extra weight on her. But man, did she have endurance. It was an entire hour of high-intensity aerobics. I kept up for the first 30 minutes but after that, I was seriously contemplating just getting up and leaving. But it was a good workout and I know that it will get easier the more I do it.

So I’m interested to see what the class is like tomorrow…hard or moderate? I’m sure it won’t be easy but I hope that I can at least keep up with these old folks! These aerobics classes are kind of like hiking–I think that I’m in pretty good shape until I go hiking or to one of these classes. Then I’m like “Man! I really need to work out more!”

On a completely different note, Travis and I went out to eat tonight and then to the Avs preseason game against the Chicago Blackhawks. I’m pretty sure the Avs lost (we left early). And now, I’m going to go watch Season 2 Disc 1 of House!!! We got through one whole season!! (But sad day, I missed the new House episode this past Tuesday. I’m hoping that NBC still posts past episodes on their website so that I can catch up before the next one).

Update 10.4.08: I went to the Cardio Kickbox class this morning and it was SO fun! It was challenging but I kept up with most of it (there was one point where I was so out of breath that I had to stop moving but other than that, I kept up). We got out the clappers and pounded them with jabs, hooks, uppercuts, and kicks. I had never done that before and it was really fun! I will definitely go back. 🙂

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I rule.

21 Sep

All of my recent posts have been self-loathing and bemoaning my laziness. But this one will champion my productivity and ambition! A good change of pace if you ask me…

What did I do today exactly? you may be asking. Well, let me tell you.

1. Read my Bible and Day 31 of The Purpose-Driven Life

2. Went to church

3. Went to Walmart and bought toiletries, a plant, a pot, and some soil

4. Went back to church for a children’s ministry meeting

5. Potted new plant and repotted old plant

6. Emailed 3 of my old friends to see what they’re up to

7. Went shopping for hiking pants and scored a $9 North Face t-shirt as well as awesome-fitting ski pants AND hiking pants (I have such a hard time finding pants that fit, that whenever I do find pants that fit, I pretty much buy them regardless of cost. The hiking pants are The North Face and were $50. The ski pants are Columbia and were $65 on sale. Was it my shopping day or what? See pics of my finds below).

8. Called 3 girls from care group to catch up

9. Made 3 cards–a baby shower one, a sympathy one, and a so-sad-you’re-leaving one

10. Went to Home Depot to buy Travis a part he needed for his DIY plumbing job (more about that below)

11. Did laundry

12. Cooked dinner and did the dishes

13. Researched identity theft and submitting a fraud report to the Social Security office (one John Glenn has his name under my SSN! He hasn’t yet spent the millions of dollars I don’t have but I don’t want some guy’s name under my SSN!!)

14. And now I’m blogging!!

It has been a very productive day, I must say. And I love this feeling!! I don’t think I’m quite out of my funk (especially the eating junk food and exercising part) but at least I wasn’t a bum today!

So here are the pics of my way-awesome purchases today:

My sweet-o snow pants and new t-shirt

My sweet-o snow pants and new t-shirt

My ski pants from the front

My ski pants from the front

Close-up of my $9 t-shirt score--LOVE IT!

Close-up of my $9 t-shirt score--LOVE IT!

My hiking pants from the front

My hiking pants from the front

From the back

From the back

My butt--to show how good they fit!

My butt--to show how good they fit!

They're amazing!!

They're amazing!!

Travis was very productive today too, except he has only been working on one stinkin’ project since we got home from that church meeting–installing a pressure-reducing valve on our main water line. The water pressure in our house is something like 130 psi–twice what it’s supposed to be!! So in consideration of our pipes and water fixtures, we’re putting a valve on the water line to reduce the pressure. He’s also putting a water shut-off valve in our coat closet so that we don’t have to go all the way into the crawl space to shut the water off in an emergency. Travis had some defeats at first with the soldering but he’s gotten a long way–as I type, the water is shut off so that he can connect the PRV with the main water line. My fingers are crossed for him!

Our coat closet currently

Our coat closet currently

Travis is down there!

Travis is down there in the crawl space!

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In a funk

16 Sep

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been in a funk. I just feel icky–not like I’m getting sick but I am just exhausted and lethargic a lot. When we first moved into our house, I feel like I didn’t take any rest–I was just go, go, go because there were so many things I wanted/had to do. But now, man, I get home, lie down on the couch, and I’m out.

Like Sunday, after church we helped some friends move some paving stones to their house. When we got home, I ate some cheesy bread and then proceeded to take a 2-hour nap. It was one of those naps when you wake up from time to time, half of your brain telling you to get off the couch and do something productive, while the other half of your brain is dead to the world. The feeling of your body being one with the couch, like you couldn’t even move off the couch if you wanted to. That’s how the nap felt. Then, when you do get up an absurd number of hours later, you feel groggy and lazy for the rest of the day.

Today, I left work a little early because I’ve been working some overtime out of necessity (things are C-R-A-Z-Y at work right now) and trying to make it up, since I don’t get paid for it (oh, the luxuries of working for a non-profit). I came home and read the new Newsweek for about half an hour, at which point I started to nod off. I had been planning on reading a little and then going on a run before Travis got home. But obviously, my love for naps defeated my current apathy of running. I slept for a good hour and a half. While I absolutely love the feeling of a nap, I hate the ensuing feeling of being a bum and having nothing productive to show for a good chunk of my day.

That is one of many reasons why I feel like I’ve been in a funk. I know that I’m not getting enough sleep at night. I should really be in bed by 8:30, falling asleep at 9:00, so that I can wake up at 5:30 with a good 8.5 hours of sleep (the amount I really need). But I find myself getting in bed around 10:00, 10:30. Way too late!

Another reason is that I’ve been watching House like it’s my job. It was the season premiere tonight. I thought it would be on at 6:00 here because it was 8/7c. But I guess not…because it came on at 7:00 here too. Travis made a good point about 7:00 being prime time. We also have Season 1 Disc 3 right now…only 13 more to go until we’re all caught up!

Yet another reason is that I haven’t wanted to run lately. It has felt like pulling teeth. I feel like I should still want to run, like not running would be wrong. But I don’t entertain the thought of running in the morning at all and I have a hard time motivating myself to run after work. I have found, though, that the prospect of going to the gym and doing the elliptical or aerobics classes is appealing. So I am going to join the Wheat Ridge Rec Center. It’s cheaper than the Y and a decent gym. The Y is nicer but it is $24 more a month. Bush League!

So needless to say, my exercise schedule hasn’t been followed to a tee. I have been doing Pilates/Yoga about 3 times a week so I’m not a complete bum, but the cardio has definitely been lacking. After such long, stressful days at work, I’d rather curl up with a bowl of ice cream and watch some TV, rather than go pound the pavement–which is, needless to say, what I have been doing.

Which leads to yet another reason why I’m in a funk–my eating habits since we’ve moved to our new house have been horrible. I was doing really well for a while but I tend to get pretty lax when I feel good–it’s counter-intuitive I know but somehow when I feel good because I’ve been exercising and eating right, I then feel like I can eat 4 slices of pizza and a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough and skip that day (or 3) of running and not gain weight–like I’m immune to the calories now or something. But the worst part about is that once I start eating poorly, it’s so hard to get back to eating right–so as you can guess, I haven’t. I haven’t gained much weight (maybe 1 or 2 pounds but I prefer to think that the scale is just wrong every morning for weeks in a row), which is a good thing. I just feel like a fat blob.

And the hardest part about it is that I know what makes me feel that way–eating ice cream everyday on top of little candy bars at work and light frapps from Starbucks. I have tried numerous times over the past several months to stop eating so many sweets. Most of the time, I don’t even make it a day before caving.

This is what I wrote about me and sweets a few months ago:

“There’s only so long that you can sit in front of chocolate, hearing it call your name and resist. Willpower has a time limit. I’m a ticking timebomb in front of sweets. As soon as the timer gets to zero (willpower), I explode and devour everything in sight.”

But tonight at the gym, I decided that I’m sick of feeling gross and flubbery. I am going to cut out sweets–except for Sundays. (I may be ambitious but I am still realistic!) No chocolate (ouch), no candy (oooo), no ice cream (uuuuhhhh). It’s gonna hurt but it will be worth it!!

So here’s to no sweets. I did it for Lent; I can do it again. And I am going to do this until at least Sept 30th–21 days from now because that is how long experts say it takes to form a habit. Hopefully I can kick my chocolate-tootsie roll-ice cream-gooey goodness addiction for at least that long. Wish me luck!

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I love House

11 Sep

No, I’m not trying to impersonate Steve Carrell in Anchorman–I’m talking about the show House. It is by far my favorite TV show of all time, hands down. I don’t know why I like it so much but I do. I just love it–the intrigue, the wit, the mystery, the bluntness.

And just my luck, I discovered the other day while updating our Netflix queue that we can get all 4 seasons of House on DVD. I am beyond excited. But only 4 episodes come on each disc so each season is 4 whole discs. We only get one DVD at a time and watch about one DVD per week on average–so that is 16 weeks of House. Travis thinks that I’m going to get sick of it, but we’re 2 DVDs in and I can’t wait to get the next.

Season 5 starts this coming Tuesday at 6 PM Mountain Time and I am SO there…because at our house, we finally get a few good channels with the bunny ears! Like FOX, abc, and NBC. Woohoo!! As much as I am anti-TV (I think that it makes you waste a lot of time), this is one show that I can justify watching. House, here I come. 

Tuesdays are my new favorite days. 🙂

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The grossest job ever

2 Sep

I just finished the grossest job ever–cleaning the windows in our new house. I really don’t think they have been cleaned since the house was built in 1974. The cobwebs, spiders, dirt, and grime are indescribable. Yesterday, I took all the screens off, scrubbed them, and then hosed down all the windows and squeegied them with Windex. I cleaned out the window frames on all the windows except 3, which I finished up tonight. It feels SO good to have that done (I noticed when we moved in that it was something that needed cleaning) and to not have to do again for a while.

I even went on a run tonight too. So now, I’m going to go lay in bed and read until I fall asleep. Nothing sounds better.

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Water, water everywhere!

1 Sep

This Labor Day weekend, Travis and I planned to go backpacking with Becky and Scott (Travis works with Becky). We went backpacking with them the other time we went too. We drove separately down to Pagosa Springs (because they have a huge golden retriever) and met down there around 6:30. Our whole drive there it looked like rain. At times it did rain and for a while, it even hailed. But when Travis and I got to Pagosa Springs, the rain had stopped.

We had planned on camping at the trailhead but found out there wasn’t any camping up there. And it just had to be the weekend of the Folk Festival in Pagosa Springs so there was not a one hotel room to be found. We did, however, find a campground right off the main road going through town. And when I say campground, I mean an area of undeveloped land that had a few fire pits and one portapotty.

After we met up with Becky and Scott, we went out to eat at a mexican restaurant and then set up camp. It didn’t rain before we went to bed so we got to have a campfire, which was nice. But we were all so full that none of us felt like s’mores. Travis and I were a little worried about our tent being able to keep water out if it rained–we only paid $25 for it on sale. So when it started raining about 4 in the morning, I was worried. But we stayed dry the whole night, which is good.

But it was SO LOUD at that campground. Big semi trucks came blazing through town at 3 AM; some drunk guys from the bars came back around 2:00, yelling and carrying on about God-knows-what; motorcycles came through around 6; traffic was constant. It was actually kind of nice when it rained because it drowned out the noise from the street.

I will say this though: I was actually warm that night. So warm, in fact, that I unzipped my sleeping bag the whole way and had half my body hanging out the whole night. It was glorious. (I am usually freezing all night when we go camping so this is a great change of pace!!)

Anyway, the next morning we got up and of course, everything was wet (except for us and our sleeping bags!!) and it looked like it was going to rain some more. We decided to pull the plug on our backpacking expedition and just hike the trail we had planned on. So that’s what we did. And it was a very pleasant–albeit wet and cold–hike. It was very foggy in the mountains and in the 50s, so it was a good change from our normal hikes (when it’s sunny and in the 80s or 90s).

Then, to top it all of, I got up last night at 3 AM to go to the bathroom only to find our bath mats soaking wet and the pipe to the toilet in our main bathroom spraying water everywhere. Fun! Travis was able to shut the water off just using the valve on the toilet (so he got out of having to go down in the crawl space). I put the mats in the wash and sopped up all the water. At least it was clean water and not sewage!!
Ah, the joys of home ownership begin.

Here are some pictures:

The fog over the trees

The fog over the trees

Another pic of the fog and trees

Another pic of the fog and trees

The culmination of our hike was at this waterfall:
The bottom of the waterfall

The bottom of the waterfall

The top of the waterfall

The top of the waterfall

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An eventful weekend

4 Aug

My weekend started earlier than I had planned it would. Around 9 AM on Friday, I started having chest pains, so much so that it became hard to breathe. Every time I inhaled, the pain worsen and it was impossible for me to take a deep breath. But I was in a meeting taking notes. At first, I thought it would pass. I had experienced a tight chest before but it went away after about 15 minutes. But this lasted–through our entire one hour meeting. By the time the meeting was over, I knew this was a special case and felt I needed some medical attention–not just because I thought it might be serious but because I wanted someone who could alleviate the pain I was in.

So I told my boss Carol Ann that I needed to go to the ER because I was having trouble breathing. She offered to take me and long story short, that’s what ended up happening. I called Travis on the way there and he said that he would leave work right away to come meet me (and he literally dropped everything on the spot–that sweetie). When we got to the ER (which seemed to take forever), Carol Ann told an EMT standing by that I was experiencing chest pain and having a hard time breathing so they made sure that my oxygen level was good (still 100%) and put me to the top of the list. About 5 minutes later, I was called back into triage.

I could bore you with the details but I won’t. Let’s just say they asked me a lot of questions, many of them 4-5 different times, gave me an IV, did an EKG, drew blood for lab tests, x-rayed my chest, gave me some nasty chalky stuff to numb my throat and stomach, the whole shebang. All of the tests (thank the Lord) came back negative. Turns out I’m actually pretty healthy. They even asked me if I was an athlete because my heart rate was so low (abnormally low–in the 40s–but then it stabilized around 64 or so).

But turns out that I have acid reflux. Some people get it because they’re overweight. Some people get it because. (I can’t help but wonder if all those nights of binge drinking in college has anything to do with this…that was before I was a Christian though! Don’t be getting the wrong idea about me!) Anyway, the doctor told me about the esophagus and the muscle between the ribcage and lungs can get inflamed by the acid. Then those muscles that normally help you breathe feel like sandpaper rubbing together. Beautiful picture huh?

Anyway, I got released with a prescription of Prilosec. I took a nap after getting home and then got up and painted our house (I’m a diehard, what can I say? Plus, 2 of our friends came over and helped us. I couldn’t just sit around!) But Friday night was miserable. I couldn’t lay down any which way without intense pain so I propped 2 pillows against the wall and tried to sleep sitting up. It didn’t work. About 2:30, I got up and went to Walgreen’s for some pain medicine (we didn’t have any at our house because we hadn’t moved all of our stuff down yet). That helped–so I got about 5 hours of sleep that night.

Saturday was Moving Day. We got up at 7 and went to Home Depot because we weren’t quite done with painting and needed to buy one more gallon for the living room. After finishing that, we drove up to Boulder and some of our other friends met us there to help us load the truck. About an hour and a half later, our lives were loaded into a 16-ft Budget truck. We drove down to Boulder and the unloading began. Another hour later and we were done (with that part)! We ate pizza at Beau Jo’s for lunch and then it was back to the grind.

Or not. I tried putting stuff away for maybe an hour or two but I was so in pain (this time it was my collarbone…?) that I eventually had to call it quits (against my stubborn nature). I took some Tylenol PM and watched TV (we finally get some stations!) waiting for it to kick in. I decided to sleep on the couch that night because I was scared of the bed (it was so mean to me the night before). Travis, again what a sweetie, slept on the futon so that he could be close to me. What an amazing man, huh? I actually slept really well on the couch–I could even lie down flat!

Sunday I felt good. I had a little pain in the morning but I took some more ibuprofen and I was good to go. Which was SUCH a blessing from the Lord because Sunday was Apartment Cleaning Day. It took Travis and me 4 1/2 hours to clean our tiny 700 sq ft apartment. But it is DARN clean, let me tell ya. Let’s just see what the landlords think tomorrow at our walk-through.

I even felt good enough last night to put stuff away in our apartment. I was a whirlwind–I unpacked all of our boxes and organized everything but our picture frames (I can never figure out where to put those!)

Anyway, this blog post is way too long now and you’re probably not even reading it anymore! (If you are, thank you for your dedication to my nothingness) 🙂

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