Hello! Sorry for the unintentional blogging hiatus. Life has felt a little bit all over the place, as it tends to.
Work:
Work continues to be chaotic and just generally somewhat stress inducing, with a lot of mental energy going to being the primary (and pretty much only) person onboarding our new employee. She’s able to work independently on many things now, but the frequent questions and check-ins and reviewing her work, etc. can feel tedious.
I’ve also been working on prepping for a presentation with leadership in hopes of resolving some ongoing concerns, and that is also sucking my mental energy. (One of those things where I’ve been tasked with trying to summarize and demonstrate a bunch of hard-to-explain issues in any easy-to-understand manner to people who probably will not really have any idea exactly what I’m talking about…. because they don’t directly do this work….yet they are the stakeholders/ decision makers…. It ends up making my brain hurt.)
Workouts/ Health
Still going to the gym! I’m about ready to wrap up Week 4 of my workouts (though week 4 has technically bled into Week 5 now… oh well.) I ended up totally missing any workouts Thursday-Saturday because my mom came to stay last week. This meant my “normal” schedules were all off, but that’s okay. It was worth it to spend time with my mom!
I did some thinking, though, and I think I could do a better job of picking TOP priorities for times like these when life gets turned upside down. Between my parents and Ivan’s family, we end up having houseguests fairly often. And I always feel like my “routines” totally fall apart, which I think is normal/ not necessarily a bad thing.
But I usually still have some available time- usually my early morning window. Instead of choosing to get up and either blog/ plan/ check email/ etc. (which is what I do most days), I could swap that time out and get over to the gym early, or even workout at home, if I know it will be hard or impossible to fit in later. Without realizing it, I ended up placing my blog/tea/email/morning quiet time routine as my TOP priority (the one thing I didn’t miss in my day), when maybe…. it should be a little further down the list. Anyway, just food for thought (for myself). ha.
Speaking of food- I feel like my eating habits need another reset. I feel like my natural weight set point has started to drift just ever so slightly north of where it always used to be. I’ve noticed this for a while now. Not sure I’m a fan of this. (Also feel like I’m sitting SO MUCH lately with work being really constant….). Also not sure that I want to have to constantly actively work to maintain a certain weight, because I’ve always been pretty lucky to just maintain quite naturally….. but also not sure I want to embrace the “slow weight gain slide” or whatever that’s called, where people slowly gain 1-2 lbs every couple years until they suddenly are like- “WHOA, what happened” one day.
Life Happenings
And, just a little recap of the last few days….
Let’s see…..
Lots of soccer. Ethan had an early game on Saturday that I took him to. It was a beautiful, crisp, October 1st day. Just the slightest hint of color where we were.
Asher had a soccer tournament, involving FOUR games between Saturday and Sunday- in a town almost 40 minutes away. ARGH. Ivan ended up taking one for the team and going to all of them. I made it to two. It was, frankly, an utter waste of time. His team was apparently in the wrong bracket or something, because they got creamed in every game. It was just not a fun experience all around. blah.
Besides that, the big event of the weekend is that we planted a new tree!! Yay! I’d been wanting to get one in the ground in this opening in our back yard, but we kept stalling. Finally I made the wheels turn and this happened (just in the nick of time, because winter will be coming soon….) My Dad came to pick up my mom and helped Ivan haul the tree and dig the hole, etc. I supervised. 😉
Somehow, we managed to dig in the ONE SPOT in our yard that contained some remnants of an old concrete block. My dad thinks there used to be a clothes line run out there or something, and someone had poured a concrete base.
We had an impromptu “hamster/ fish burial” as well. (Sorry if this is super gross, but…. over the past few years we have lost 1 beta fish (Rainbow), and a total of 3 dwarf hamsters (Speedy, Flint and Steel). They were all, um, resting peacefully in our basement freezer. Yeah. We kept meaning to bury them, but never really got around to it/ didn’t have a great place in the yard to just dig up a hole….
Well, now we had a hole! Ha. I actually love the idea of our beloved furry (and scaled) friends resting eternally beneath our new tree, helping to fertilize the soil and make it grow. The circle of life. 🙂
Other than that, the weekend involved…well, not much else, because 5 soccer games+ the tree took up a lot of it. But we watched a movie Saturday night and got Chinese food take out (YUM) which really hit the spot. Also, my house is fully decorated for Halloween now, including the inside AND the outside lights/decor are all up too.
Yesterday was Monday and I felt drastically “behind the 8 ball” starting the week, but, oh well. I seriously need to get some groceries and my calendar/ email situation is a bit dire.
I did manage to make a fan favorite 5 minute meal last night…. seriously, the kids LOVED this and it was so easy. Making a mental note to keep this in the rotation on rushed nights!!!
It includes:
- ground turkey, cooked with a packet of taco seasoning
- throw in some frozen peas and corn, let those cook/ heat up
- on the side, make some minute rice with a little chicken bouillon flavor added to spice it up
- serve in a bowl, sprinkle with shredded cheese
The end! Again, HUGE hit. hahaha! And seriously, soooo easy and quick. Actually not terrible nutritionally, either!
(After dinner, I cooked up the pork chops I had intended to make for dinner, but ran out of time, and Asher needed dinner ready stat before swim practice. So, I guess these will be dinner tonight instead!)
And that brings us up to today. On the docket: Get kids to bus. Gym (legs + abs). Shower. WORK. Meeting(s). Pick up A from XC at 5. Go to meeting at school at 7 pm about Ethan’s class trip to Washington DC! (coming up in just over 2 weeks!) Walk at some point??? Also, fit in some volunteer coordinator work- first home swim meet is this Saturday. Oh, shoot, and the groceries? hmm. Not looking likely. Maybe hand that off to Ivan while I go to the school meeting? I dunno. We’ll figure it out… lol.
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for my new tree!!
GRATEFUL KAE 
Wow! What a weekend. Your life is so much busier than mine. I just visited a friend for a couple of hours and put up Halloween decorations and called it a super productive weekend. It’s clear I would collapse if I had to keep up with you!
LikeLike
That work stress sounds…very draining. You have a lot on your plate and I can imagine very high standards of yourself. It’s frustrating to invest a lot into a project, too, where you know it won’t necessarily be received/understood as you would hope. Years ago I went above and beyond to prepare a big report on future-think for the department I head up at a university. There was all this “Rah, rah, rahing” and then NOTHING happened. And in that moment I officially checked out of trying to do anything big and grand in this job role. I could tell that nothing was going to change. I’ve kept doing a good job and working hard, but I had to realize the limitations of what I could expect while particular people were still at the helm and I have had to accept that the status quo is realistically where things are going to stay for the foreseeable future. Sigh.
The supper looks delish. Sometimes the fastest meals can be the tastiest and more satisfying.
I had to laugh about the burial; we buried the few pets I had a kid, too. My Dad even made a cross for my pet (wild) bunny. We buried a few goldfish…but the rest went down the toilet. Yikes…
LikeLike
Work has been insane for me, too. The financial markets have been so volatile and now that the quarter has ended, people are starting to get their statements and are freaking out, and my coworker that I split client calls with is traveling so I am doing a lot of them and it’s making me so so busy on top of other stuff. I’ve been waking during the night and thinking about work which is not good, and I have another work trip this week – to Chicago.
You have a lot of balls in the air right now! Prioritizing time with your mom makes sense as you don’t have her as a guest super duper often. I’ll miss my run on Saturday becuase my parents are in town and we are meeting for breakfast. I land after 10pm on Friday night from my Chicago biz trip so I know I won’t have the energy to get up extra early to run before – or most likely I won’t.
The burial of your pets by the tree is very sweet and does not gross me out. But not much grosses me out!!
LikeLike
i was about to email you to see if everything is okay because you haven’t posted for a while. I am glad all is well, just life business.
work-related stress could be over soon. Hang in there. but I can feel you about training new people. I’m getting to know my new team, and I will have to give feedback to them on things to improve, not an ideal way to start a relationship, maybe, but that would make my life easier in the long run. 🙂
about priorities, I think how you do things actually tells more about how you prioritize than the act of prioritizing if you know what I mean. if you skip gym to spend more time with your family, that tells what’s more important to you, which is perfectly fine. if you think you want to prioritize working out, I’m sure there are many ways to fit them in.
I clearly prioritized running over work during my training this time as I would take a day off when life got busy so I could still train. but obviously, that’s not sustainable in the long term, but short term is okay.
your throw together meal looks so yummy!
LikeLike
I love quick, easy meals that are also healthy(-ish). Good job!!
Re: food habits, I am like you, I have also been pretty lucky to just maintain my weight quite naturally … actively working to maintain a certain weight sounds terrible, but I also think that “recognizing” when the weight seems to shift is the easiest – and frankly right moment – to make little changes in order to NOT have to constantly work on maintaining your weight. 😉 If that makes sense..
LikeLike
Life happens – and yours has been busy busy busy lately! I don’t blame you for prioritizing quiet when you have had houseguests and nutty weekends and all sorts of craziness. You’ll get there! Also, the work stuff sounds uggghhh… Sorry. 😦
LikeLike