Food, school, work, planning, holidays, and dread

What do all those things have in common?  They're all in my head right now.  Oh, and add pain, worry, concern, fear, and a strange sense of impending accomplishment which is new.  

Food is in my head because I cooked, shopped, and then cooked again today.  It's like the day was consumed with food!  Which, by the way, I'm trying to be mindful off considering I've gained back nearly everything I've lost in the past four years.  Oh, so depressing.  I never really made a plan for meals this week, I just bought random stuff and got cooking.  I had Rob prep meatloaf and then baked two of them.  One for dinner tonight, the other sliced and frozen for lunches or fin-fer dinners.  Then I made a small batch of chili for lunches, etc, and I've finally started potatoes so we can have a traditional meatloaf dinner tonight.  

So what I have to work with this week is...  (in my head there's a little drumroll going on.  I'm easily amused, get over it.)

• Macaroni and cheese (Kraft blue box)
• Meatloaf (leftovers from tonight and a whole one sliced and frozen)
• Chili (probably just for lunches, but in a pinch it's there for dinner)
• Pasta (spaghetti and sauce or ravioli and sauce - it'll be a mood thing)
• Fried shrimp/chicken and fries (Lindsay hates seafood of every kind - except clam chowder.  Go figure)
• Leftovers, fin-fer, breakfast...  whatever 

School starts - my last class (YEA) - in just over a week.  I'm NOT looking forward to it.  I'm so freaking over CCU, the cohort I've had to join, the assignments, the assumption that mental health issues cannot be solved without God, that the only way to live is to be Christian...  it's never ending.  This class is specific to combining religion and counseling, so there's that.  

Work is work.  I'm exhausted and it's just harder to give a rats ass when I feel overwhelmed and tired.  Also, I've been spoiled and rarely have I had to work more than part time.  I'm ready to have my Monday off again.  

I'm trying to plan the curriculum for a group, two groups actually, and while I'm a planner this is harder.  Enough said.

The holidays are coming, and we're in the middle of our family birthdays so I'm kind of anxious about money, get togethers, parties I'm willing to attend, parties that don't happen, gifts I have to buy, and everything that comes with that.  Matt isn't coming home for the holidays this year, so there is that.

I've had more pain lately.  Headaches, backaches, neckaches, jaw pain...  the list feels endless.  And then there are the worries...  the glands in my neck are swollen.  I don't know why but it worries me, and so do a couple of strange moles I have.  I'm hoping almost everything is stress related, but I really have to make a doctor's appointment for a physical - and nobody really wants to do that.

So stress.  Fucking stress.  

I would go on but now all I can think about is how stressed out I am and how I didn't get any laundry done today...  Dishes, laundry, packing up all the food I made, making my bed, cleaning up the messes I've made.

Exercise

To me, it's a four letter word.  I don't want to feel that way about it, I just do.  It appears that I will have to treat it the same way I treated quitting when I stopped smoking - unappealing yet necessary.

While I was waiting for Lindsay on Monday, I took a walk around a trail that I see from the gazebo I sit under to read.  The frustrating part was that the trail was shorter than I had anticipated, though it was about a mile long.  I had been trying to kill time and it only took me about 15 minutes.  For the next two weeks, Lindsay and I will have to wait an hour between her appointments around dinnertime so I mapped out a route that takes us past a Jimmy Johns and is two miles long.  If I'm right, this should take us a little more than half an hour with a stop to pick up a sandwich so we'll be back at the cute little gazebo with half an hour to eat our dinner before her second appointment.

While I was mapping and planning all this out in my head and on this really cool mapping site, I decided I needed an app to track my distance and time...  and maybe I needed to track it more often than once a week.  After all, don't they (whoever they are) tell you that you're supposed to exercise at least three times a week?  So I walked at lunch today and used the little app I downloaded from Google Play and I understand they make one for the iPhone too.  Now I know that I walk an average of three miles an hour and that my chosen route near work is almost exactly a mile long.  It will be easy to get out and walk...  until the weather changes.  Once there's snow on the ground, my work route is kaput because there are no sidewalks.  

Anywhooo....  the reason I started thinking about exercising, besides all the regular stuff (weight creeping up again, concern for my daughters health, generally healthier lifestyle, etc) is that Jake intends to get married in the mountains next summer, at the summit of a five mile hike.  Yeah.  The shape I'm in now, I'll never make it.  Rob says we'll just take our time and breaks as we need them, and drink enough water.  I think we should work on getting in shape.  I would rather not be done for before they even get married!  And I'd like to be able to make it down the trail in one piece.  And the reception...  I'd like to have fun there instead of napping.

So yeah.  I'm going to approach exercise - for now - the same way I did quitting smoking.  I'm not happy about it, and there are benefits that I will soon reap.  Hopefully one of the not smoking benefits will come in handy - my lung capacity is getting better and the shortness of breath is decreasing.  Thank heavens allergy season is waning.

More hurt feelings, and some feelings of failure too

Being treated poorly by your teen seems universal, but it can get old really quick.  I'm also curious, why do we accept poor treatment from them?  I really want to know.  Why do I allow her to call me names?  Why does she swear like a sailor even when I ask/tell/insist she not?  I've been permissive with her, that's for sure.  Maybe that's the answer.  

It's times like this that I want to just throw in the towel.  It doesn't take much to hurt my feelings anymore, to leave me feeling like a failure as a mother, wife, and employee.  My skin is quite thin these days, that's for sure.  I hate feeling like I am responsible for her success or failure, for her mood and our relationship.  

I would blame it on hormones (mine), but it's not that time of the month.  I could blame it on the back to school routine, or the fact that she just sprained her ankle pretty badly.  I could blame it on a lot of things, but the fact is that she treats me poorly sometimes.  I'm sure she says the same about me.  Maybe it's time for family counseling, though there isn't anything I want to do less, including being stung by bees, run over by a car, and allergy testing.  Seriously.