Day 16: Finality

 

Day 16 of Nutrisystem 2.0 wasn't a day to brag about. For starters, I did not use the treadmill at all. I can excuse myself for lunchtime, because I used that time to unpack my Nutrisystem order and reorganize the freezer so that everything fit. It just barely fit, so I need to make sure I delay my next order. I have about 2 months worth of lunch, dinner and snacks. The only thing I would run short on is breakfast, but I can sub in the Jimmy Dean sandwiches or oatmeal. I also used a fair amount of time to cut up a salad. I say I can excuse myself for missing the treadmill at lunch because I didn't spend that hour sitting on my ass. After work, well - that's a different story. I got word that the sale of my mom's house is now final. My parent's moved in to that house when I was 4 months old and lived there until their deaths. So this was our family home, the only home we knew until we each went out on our own. I could easily have bought the house but it's a lot smaller than what I have and has no garage. Plus, I really like my house ! Once I get it sided it is going to look amazing .. so why move ?!?! The bottom line is I just wasn't feeling the treadmill today and that's ok. It's just been a sad few months and the sale of the house was the final step. I feel like a chapter in my life has closed and I'm not sure what happens next.

Breakfast was 150 calorie pancakes with sugar free syrup and an 80 calorie yogurt. I didn't have a morning snack. Lunch was a chef salad and 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt. Afternoon snack was 80 calorie cottage cheese and a handful of mini saltine crackers. I'm counting those as 80 calories. Dinner was 220 calorie chicken fettuccine alfredo over riced cauliflower. Evening snack was a 130 calorie vanilla ice cream sandwich. I have a lot of them so I'll be eating these most nights for a little bit. Total calories for the day are 960, which is a bit low. This happens when you have all the lower calorie items in the same day !

Since I had a new invoice from Nutrisystem I pulled the pile of them out of the box of papers I need to file. While I rummaged through the box I realized there is NOT that much in there to be filed. The job seems much less overwhelming now ! I've kept all of my Nutrisystem invoices so that I can see what I've spent over the years. I placed my first order on 12-29-18 and started the plan on 01-04-19, not knowing that 3 days later the bottom would fall out of my professional world. They announced our center would be closing in April ! I was devastated and had to give some serious thought to continuing to spend $300+ per month. In the end I decided I had to eat and I would keep going. In a stroke of good fortune, our Director advocated hard for our team and I still have my job today. Many of my colleagues lost their job that year and a few followed the work to Florida. It's ironic that I am still going strong while many people who looked down on me are now gone. I never tried to be the star and I never trampled other people to get myself ahead. I just worked hard every day and did whatever was asked of me, to the best of my ability. In the last year I have been rewarded several times and I've become the go-to that my boss can always count on. It wasn't intentional. Our team was given a challenge and after some early struggles I was getting it done and enjoying myself. A challenge is something I really needed, because I had become incredibly bored. 

Today was yet another gray rainy day. I was looking out the kitchen window thinking it looked like a fall day - not late January ! There is no snow on the ground on nothing major in the forecast for the next week. We still have plenty of winter left so we can get slammed with snow at any time, so I am very glad I work from home. Winter used to be so stressful for me because of the long commute. When Alex was alive I would sometimes get him to drive me to work, which was selfish because it put both of us at risk and he had to drive to Syracuse and back twice. Fortunately we never had an accident ! Once he was gone I had no choice and sometimes drove to work in sketchy conditions. I'd also use vacation days or call in sick to avoid the drive. I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore. My attendance record is much better and I don't have to waste a bunch of vacation days !

Over the past couple weeks I've been trying to get better at self care. Many days I'd skip taking a shower because it got to be too late in the evening or I didn't want to wash my hair. Now I'm trying to shower around 7 pm and that seems to work better. I put my hair up on days that I don't want to wash it. I'm not sure what happened to completely throw my routine off. Long before my mother's illness and death I got off track with my weight and everything else, so it hasn't nothing to do with that. I don't really know what happened, because I can't think of anything that "caused" it. Now I'm trying to get back to that routine and it's proving to be a struggle. I can't even say it's winter blues, because this happened all summer too ! I think to a degree the problem is the fact that since March of 2020 I don't go anywhere. Once I started working from home I only went out on the weekend, once the casinos reopened. Now that I don't go to the casino, I don't even bother to do my hair on the weekend or put on makeup, unless I'm meeting family for something. Once winter is over I'm going to find some things to do on the weekend. 

On that note, I'm going to go brush my teeth, put on some moisturizer and then head for bed. Tomorrow is Friday already !