Kudos & Kvetching: What better combination is there?

Guess who just walked to the end of her street and back? Yeah! That badass in question would be ME, yours truly, moi!! I looked like hell, was breathing like a whale in heat and collapsed as soon as I got through my front door, but I made it :) Before you get tooooooo proud of me, “the end of my street and back” means “from my front door to the closest end of my street and back.” If I turn right at the end of my driveway, it is about .2 miles to the end of my street which means if we kinda sorta round up just to make me feel even MORE awesome…I walked almost a freaking HALF A MILE in about 7-10 minutes!!!! Remember when I couldn’t get to the end of my driveway and back? I was feeling super crappy prior to the walk (more on this later), but now I feel like SUPERWOMAN *big grin* Yeah, going to have to change the name of my blog any day now ;)

I was really surprised at how much more of a workout it was walking on the street vs. walking on the treadmill. I decided to go outside today for a few reasons; first of all, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and frustrated and felt like the fresh air and sunshine might perk me up. Second, I really want to work towards being able to take a decent walk with Tanner in the evenings. Third, my pre-surgery goal for walking is to be able to walk 10-15 minutes at a stretch. After my surgery, I know that walking is going to speed healing and improve my chances for getting back to a decent workout faster so I want to be able to manage a fair distance before the surgery. I’ve been walking on the treadmill off an on, but usually use the supports to help support my upper body. I won’t have those bars to help me out when I’m at the hospital. All the core work I’ve been doing in the pool and at home must really be helping because my back didn’t get tired until I was almost home and I didn’t feel that horrible PULLING feeling (of my stomach pulling on my upper torso area….almost made it difficult to breath decently when walking) I felt just a month ago when I walked. If I don’t reach my pre-surgery weight loss goal, I think I may at least meet my pre-surgery fitness goal.

As of this morning I’m at 429 btw, so nice to be back under 430 again. For those of you keeping track, I have to be at 416 by surgery time. Yeah…I’m sweating it too. 13 pounds I have left to lose in about as many days (today is officially 2 weeks to D-day). The good news is that I FINALLY made it through one full day on that sadistic pre-surgery diet after flubbing on it for a week or two. For the last few weeks, I’ve been managing to make it through the day (remember I’m allowed one 8 oz shake for breakfast and one for lunch NO other food or snacks in between), but come the evening when I’m supposed to have my meal of 3 oz of protein and a small serving of green/low carb vegetables I go INSANE. I mean really, by the time dinner comes, I am so hungry, I am literally nauseous and that little meal is just enough to send my existing hunger into overdrive. What I usually end up doing is overindulging (volume-wise) in healthy foods; maybe I have a lean cuisine and 2.5 servings of broccoli or wind up eating something carby in addition to too much of something else. I still end my day under 1500 calories, but part of why I have to do this diet is to shrink my stomach and if I’m overfilling it, I’m overfilling it no matter whether it is broccoli or enchiladas.

So, what I started doing yesterday in regards to the diet is I flipped it on its head. Instead of having my meal at the end of the day, I start off with the meal, but I wait to eat it until my lunch time. I know…it is never a good idea to skip breakfast, but I’m not really hungry until about 11am and my days are usually long since I work during the day and then 2-3 hours at night before bed as well. I have some coffee in the morning as I start my work day and then at lunch made some tuna with pickles and egg whites and then ate a tennis ball sized portion with a small side salad. I didn’t have time to grab a shake before going to work out, but I wasn’t ravenous (this was about 5pm) so I just grabbed one when I got home. I showered, spent a bit of time with Tanner and then worked two hours before going to bed around 11pm. I didn’t even get the second shake in :S I’m going to make a more concerted effort to get both in today. I’m thinking that I can possibly lose at least 13 lbs over the next two weeks on this kind of diet, especially if I continue the workouts; if for no other reason than it kind of automatically limits my salt intake so I should lose most of any water weight I’ve been hanging on to.

I mentioned earlier that I was in kind of a crabby mood and was going to fill you in, but here we are several hundred words later lol. In a nutshell, I accidentally (duh, who does it on purpose?) overdrew my bank account; partly due to error (we paid our security deposit in 3 installments and I thought they had all gone through….turns out the last $500 check hadn’t) and partly due to the fact that I can only make up SO MUCH slack financially in our budget. Erik’s second job isn’t working him at all over the summer and he isn’t exactly jumping through hoops trying to find something to make up the difference in the meantime. I’m keeping a running tab now of what I pay for that he should be paying for and he IS paying me back whenever he can, but if he doesn’t have the money, he doesn’t have it.

So, I wasn’t expecting to be out that $500 or the fees I was charged for payments that were authorized which means that coming up with my down payment for the surgery just got *that* much more complicated. As it stands, I’m concerned about whether it is even possible to get the money together at this point. I wanted to have a garage sale and erik is going through the garage as we speak trying to see what we want to sell, but I’m really not sure how much we can make on our random crap.

I also have a handful of jewelry scrap gold (broken chains, bracelets, charms I don’t wear anymore, Erik’s wedding bands) that I’m going to sale at a local place that buys gold. For family members that read my blog, I’m NOT selling anything that has any sentimental value to me and certainly nothing that ever belonged to my grandmother or mom. I just wish I could find MY wedding set. It wasn’t anything extravagant, but I wouldn’t mind getting rid of that for some cash. I lost it right around the time we split up ironically enough…oh well. If worse comes to absolute worst, I know of at least two people I could probably ask to help me get the money together, but I’d really rather not have to do that.

What irritates the crap out of me is that there are at least two people that owe me money (one owes me $500 and the other owes me $200), but one is a “friend” with a relapsed drug habit who happens to be in jail at the moment and the other is an individual who knows I need money right now and have for the last several years and chooses to spend it on everything BUT any debt she might owe me. So yeah, I’ve pretty much given up on ever seeing a penny of either amount. I try and remind myself that if I had to do it over again (loan the money), I probably would because there were higher purposes for each loan, but I suppose what upsets me more is that I know both parties have had the means to pay me back for several years running, just not the desire. That is what it is difficult to let go of. Anyway, moving on. Good grief, my “nutshell” explanation took four paragraphs…I’m hopeless.

Since I don’t want to end this post on a downer, did I mention I walked almost HALF A FREAKING MILE on my own today? Yay me!