Operation "Arm Flaps"

My arms. They look like Mom's. This is unacceptable.

Full combat assault for the next 30 days - yes, we're taking on "Bingo Wings", folks. Gonna tone 'em up, and smack 'em down!

Sunday nights i will post my progress, via measurement and photo.

You want personal accountability? Post your fat on the interwebz...

i will be working a program based on "100 Push Up Challenge", augmented with other upper body work. This is a 3 day per week thing, so i'll be doing core/lower body work on alternate days.

i'll keep you posted on progress, but Sunday will be my day to do this...

Circumference of Arm Flaps: 14" / 36 cm

Success and Continuing

wow. what an adventure. i'd forgotten how wonderful it was to sit down and read a book. now, admittedly, i did have a few excellent suggestions on what books to read, so that made it worlds easier to accomplish the reading challenge.

even though there were a few days i didn't make my 30 minutes reading challenge, i still declare victory. three books, plus bits and pieces of three other books. and still a taste...a need...to continue reading. that is the essence of the challenge.

the sleep? not so well with that challenge, but glimmers of hope. will continue to pursue a full seven hours a night, plus try and do so with a reasonable (ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!) bedtime.

and, absolutely, i want to continue. i will continue to work at last month's challenges. but a new one is surely required.

next 30 day challenge? i will reconnect with 30 people who have been otherwise 'lost' in my life of late. people who are in my thoughts, but not recently in my e-mail, snail mail, voice mail. make the effort to let them know i care and hope they are doing well.



most of those will be family. after my divorce, i sort of withdrew from my family, spread across the country, in favor of my virtual local family comprised of good friends and colleagues. while my 'new' family is important to me, i still wish to reconnect to my true, blood family.

some will be friends. people i've crossed paths with in the past who have changed my perspective on life or otherwise been important to me. a man, for example, who was a work colleague and a friend...to include being best man...yet i've lost touch with him (or him, me...but that's not important) and want to at least reach out.

the notional challenge will be one person a day, but reality will be (due to upcoming vacation adventures), that i will likely double or treble up a few days.

accountability? indirect. i won't be posting on each person i reconnect with, but give an overall impression on how things are going.

and to those continuing with a new challenge, plus those new to this challenge? good luck and see you on the blog!

Challenge Accepted

I've been inexplicably tired lately. Run down. Worn out. Beat.

Now granted, I've got an always defiant 8-year-old son, who has a severely autistic twin sister. Did I mention the three-year-old too? So I guess it's not entirely inexplicable.

Still, these little soul extractors cherubs haven't just arrived -- they've been around a while. But my fatigue has been much more pronounced lately and I don't know why. It's been a little concerning.

So much so that I scheduled a doctor's appointment to see if there's a medical explanation. The night before my appointment, I slept 8 1/2 hours. And still felt the need to take a 15 minute nap later in the day. That'd be fine if I were 78 years old. I'm 40.

The good news was that I really liked my doctor. I had yet to visit my new primary care physician since moving to NC a year ago. The doctor spent more than five minutes with me, made eye contact, and listened, which is more than I've gotten from a doc in many a year. He didn't try to throw a prescription sample at me as a sort of trial-and-error school diagnosis. He didn't seem distracted or overworked. It was almost as if he actually cared about trying to help me. Crazy, I know.

At any rate, the gist of it was that I didn't have enough symptoms of any of the various possibilities to raise a red flag. They're doing some blood work to see if anything abnormal comes up. And in the meantime exercise and weight loss are the prescription. I've put on about ten pounds this year, which could be a factor in all of this.

One of the problems I've found with being tired a lot is that I can never get any reading done. If I sit down with a good book, no matter how interesting, after about ten minutes my eyelids start to feel heavy, my respiration slows, and suddenly it's 3am and I'm lying fully dressed in a puddle of drool on the couch, wondering where everybody went. For somebody who likes to read, it's a teensy bit frustrating.

So here's my 30 day plan: Ride the exercise bike for 20 minutes, and read a book while I do it. Flock of Birds, meet Stone. I can get 20 uninterrupted minutes of quiet, guilt free reading time. No kids allowed. No chance of the reading making me sleepy. And something to turn the workout from a boring 20 minute chore that must be endured and is easily procrastinated, into something I'll look forward to. And the exercise should, at least for some window of time afterwards, banish my lethargy.

Also, I've signed up for the Triangle 5k Run/Walk for Autism that happens on October 8th, so I really need to get my butt in gear. (Anybody want to sponsor me?)

My goal is to do this EVERY DAY. No alternating days or skipping weekends, or mixing up workouts. No free passes for headaches or tiredness or illness. No rationalizing. No excuses.

But then I'm really good at rationalizations and excuses. So that's where you come in. Doing this in a sort of public way will hopefully keep me honest and accountable.

Now to pick some reading material....

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My First 30 Day Challenge

How exciting! I've always wanted to do this as I was also intrigued with the concept after watching a few episodes of Morgan Spurlock's short lived series several years back. But I've always had a problem committing to anything!

I joined a gym and Weight Watchers 3 weeks ago - it was a spontaneous decision and I was "excited" about it, but secretly... I thought I would fail/quit and I was emotionally preparing myself to once again face the music. And then I'd have to give myself another pep talk just so I wouldn't feel bad about myself. But I took it one day at a time - the first 3 days were tough, but when I got to day 4 I started to really feel proud of myself. I was convinced I'd done this amazing thing - the gym!... 4 days...then 5 days... in a row! who does that? Oh, I know... Me!

Fast forward 3 weeks - I've been totally committed to changing the way I treat my body - I go to the gym 5 days a week, I stick to my food plan and I have already felt dramatic physical and emotional changes. Suddenly I feel that anything is possible and I want more! I'm ready for another challenge!

Daisyfae, my dearest and most supportive bloggy buddy, turned me on to this 30 day challenge and I'm so grateful!

I couldn't decide on the type of challenge - intellectual? creative? physical? spiritual?... I sat with it a couple of days, it was a tough call but since I'm finally learning new things about my body I'm going to expand on that discovery...

My plan is to learn how to Bellydance! It looks fun and sexy and really tones and strengthens the body.

I'm not a graceful girl so this could be laughable! On the other hand - I can only improve!

Thanks again for letting me play along!

Challenge II - Sleep

I really like daisyfae's idea of getting enough sleep for a while. I'll need to set my alarm to wake up at 6:00 to get the kids to school starting in about a week. It would be reasonable to be in bed by 10:30, right? And maybe asleep by 11:00? That's still only seven hours of sleep each night, but as a night owl, the idea of going to bed as early as 10:30 is a bit terrifying, so I'll take what I can get.

I can't imagine that this will be a very exciting activity to post about, but I think it will help me A LOT with my general happiness in life, so here I go!

Round 2 — What I'll (not) do

Well, my intention was "I'm going to do one new thing every day for the next 30 days."

Then I started thinking, while it might be an amazing task, I'm not sure how feasible it is, especially since I've already got a lot on my plate. So I'm going with Plan B (and I'll try to incorporate something new into my days, which will help out with said Plan B).

There's an exercise that I've done before from a book called Page by Page by Heather Sellers. In the book, she says if you do it ten days in a row, "your life will change." I've always* wanted to follow through with it. So here's what I'm gonna do for 30 days.

Page by Page, Exercise 13 (page 60)

• Number a page from 1-10
• Set a timer for 3 minutes
• Make a list of ten things you saw two days ago, starting from the morning and ending with the night. Keep your hand moving. If you get stuck, draw slow circles. You want to end up at exactly number ten at the end of three minutes. Don't write a novel at each item, just a few anchoring words to capture the image.
• Three minutes, one list.
• Look over your list. Let one item pick you, or if nothing leaps out, do number three. Number three is magic and it always works.
• Set the timer for ten minutes. 
• Write the item number and the words at the top of a fresh sheet.
• Some rules: You must keep your pencil moving. You must write slowly, all caps, skipping lines. Write in simple clear sentences. Don't try to be too fancy. Avoid adjectives and adverbs. Just write in nouns and verbs, very simply, very slowly. 
• For ten minutes. Write what you see. Write what you hear.

Apparently it's all about creating ritual. And forcing yourself to just write what you remember (and I reckon that after a few days I'll subconsciously be looking for new images/details to try to remember for two days later).   And, as busy as I know I'm going to be, if I can't find make 15 minutes a day to just sit down and do something for myself, then things be needing to change.

I'll type them up and share them, maybe not every day, but there will be thirty lists and thirty sets of observations.

What are you doing?

* Okay, you caught me. "Always" is a bit of an overstatement. I bought the book 4 or 5 years ago, and I've wanted to do it since then.

Wrap-up Round 1 a la Mitzi

The 30 Day Project came just at the right time. I was getting slovenly, and couldn't access the right inner zing to inspire me toward exercise. Un/fortunately, I am obliged to exercise for health reasons. The mental uplift is vital, and the maintenance of steady (decreased) weight is preventative of potential nastiness. Then a score of vanity reasons follow.

Getting out to the sea was an initial form of exercise, as I spent a good deal of brisk walking time exploring the local area. As I have only lived here eight odd months, the walks were exploratory and fun.

Despite the zensome joy of strolling by the sea and my initial stoicism, bad weather forced me indoors and back on the treadmill. The mental leap I made between about day 10 and now is exciting. It used to be gruelling to make it to 30 minutes. Now, it is distance rather than time thatI look forward to achieving. I also have proof that steady jogging of about 4 k's on a regular basis has shifted my shape around a bit. I became reacquainted with my waist which is once again the slightly narrower bit in the middle.

Now that the exercise hit from 30 Days round 1 has kickstarted my health and fitness needs, I may return to a mental challenge. One ten year goal I set earlier this year was to be able to do cryptic crosswords. The more I try, I find I've been able to make more sense of them. However, I don't want an unrealistic challenge. To complete an entire cryptic crossword is still impossible for me, but I can work out two or three clues. Therefore, one possibility for 30 Day Challenge Round 2 is to complete 3 cryptic crossword clues per day. As Monday 15th arrives slightly earlier for me than Northern Hemisphereans, I shall have to decide overnight!

My other desired challenges are: yogic stretching; a daily swim; contimued jogging; resume my learning of Gaelic; and a million other things.

Meanwhile, I will try to blog about a daily jog on my regular blog so that I maintain momentum. I also suggest that the highlight of my 30 Day Challenge round 1 was doing The Bay Run of 7 kilometres with relative ease. It showed how it only took about 15-20 ish days to resume a happy level of fitness and determination. Hooray for all of us, and Bob for getting the party started in cahoots with Daisyfae, and the rest of us tribal types. It's grand to form a fun yet frolicsome collective.