In a funk

I have been in a sort of funk the past couple weeks. I am in this mode where I am like obsessing over calories, money, and time.

So, my scale is not, in fact, unstuck. My weight is just going nutso. I think I have decided that I want to go to a doctor and see if there is anything wrong with me, why my weight is not going down despite all my hard work. So, the first thing they are probably going to do is send me to the nutritionist. So, I decided that instead of just writing down what I eat (I can tell you everything I have eaten since March if you want to know), I would do my best to estimate the calories. The dreaded "calorie counting". I wanted to do this so that if the doctors told me to eat less, I could and say "I have been eating 1700 calories a day for three months! What are you talking about???" I decided that a target of 1700 calories a day sounded good. Various websites said that I needed between 2200 and 2500 calories a day, so I subtracted 500 and came up with 1700. Every day (except Wednesday) I was under by at least 100 calories, and I didn't feel like I had changed anything about the way I was eating. On Monday, I came in at 1300 calories for the day, after dinner, and I looked at that and I thought that that really wasn't enough. So we got hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts. :-)

The trouble is that it is REALLY HARD to figure out how many calories are in the food you eat. Like, Friday night, we went to get sushi. And so, I lay in bed for like 45 minutes before we went, scheming about how I was going to use my calorie budget to maximize my enjoyment of the sushi. I decided I was going to charge 75 calories for the nigiri, and 50 for the maki. This sounded good at the time, but after I got home, I started thinking to myself that 75 calories for a little nigiri seemed really high. There is probably about two tablespoons of rice in those things (25 calories) and probably not even half an ounce of fish. Also, consider that at 75 calories, that implies that 4 nigiri is 300 calories. Well, you know what else is 300 calories? A whole (5.3 oz) chicken breast and 3/4 cup of cooked rice. There is NO WAY that 4 nigiri is the same amount of food as that, since the rice is the same, and the fish has a similar calorie density as chicken. Any way, you get the picture. I have been thinking this sort of nonsense ALL WEEK and I CAN'T get it OUT of my HEAD!

Another thing that I am stressing myself out over is money. Now, given that Mike and I are both software engineers and doing pretty well, if I do say so myself, this is RIDICULES! My first line of analysis was to try and figure out if we were going to be able to pay for the wedding with the money that we will make between now and then, or if and how much we would have to dip into savings. I was a little unhappy to find out that we would need to dip into our savings, given our current expenses and spending rate. This wouldn't be so bad, except that we would also like to buy a house, and I was hoping we could save some money for a down payment. The house idea has me pretty unhappy and stressed out. We would like it if we could live on Mike's salary (minus my car payment) and have my salary be gravy. This is because I don't know how I am going to react when we have kids. Right now, I am pretty ambitious and I am all about having my career blah blah blah, but I might change my mind. The places we can afford to buy houses on just Mike's salary are not the places I really want to live. :-( Especially not for the five - ten years we anticipate staying in a first house. And it is possible we might end up there forever, so I don't want to live in a slum!

I have also been reading this book, called "Wealth Building". This was fine, and had some good things to think about, until I got to the chapter about estate planning. Then, I flipped out. They had these three terrible stories about people whose estates got mangled by the probate process because they didn't set up their estate planning properly... It made me very upset and sent me into a frenzy of cleaning for a couple of hours. Then, I sat down and read the next chapter, which was about planning for end of life care, and I cleaned for a couple more hours.

On Monday, I realized I had made a big mistake with my FSA account. My medication is about $100 a month, and so I said I would put $1200 in the FSA. Unfortunately, they are taking that as $1200 for the year of 2006. So, $400 a month for October, November, December. Yike! Now, I can charge against in until March 15, 2007. But, by my estimate, that still leaves like $500 which I will lose thereafter. They have pretty strict rules about what you can charge to those accounts, which sucks. I am going to see if I can get a doctor to prescribe an "exercise program" that involves my personal training sessions at the gym. If anyone needs stuff from CVS, let me know!!

The last thing I have been stressing out about is time. Like I said, my weight is still stuck, and so I am saying to myself "Why the f*ck am I spending like an hour in the gym every day if nothing is happening??" I guess I just feel like it is really eating my time, and I am not getting what I want out of it. I also feel like I'm not doing a very good job of providing dinner -- at least half the time I make microwave things that have tons of sodium (but have well measured and controlled calories!). I really cook twice, maybe, possibly, could be three times a week. I just can't handle really cooking any more than that. And, the house gets to be a mess, because I feel like I don't have the energy to do anything about it. Except when I read scary chapters about estate planning, apparently. And the messy house stresses me out too.

I also haven't been playing my guitar hardly at all. I was having a conversation with myself last week about how I haven't played my guitar. I had this plan to save Christmas with my guitar. You see, every year up until last year there would be a sing-along and my mom would play piano. But, last year we went to Eloise's house in Chatham, NY, and there is no piano. So, I wanted to bring my guitar and a selection of Christmas songs that I could play and save Christmas. But how can I save Christmas if I don't practice??? I don't really have a good reason why I haven't been practicing. I just feel overwhelmed and vaguely unhappy.

I am in a funk. I hope it passes soon.

Long time, no see!

Welcome, Marie! (And congratulations Ben and Kerry Lee!)

I am still trying to figure out how to balance my work schedule with all of the other things I am trying to do. Like update my blog regularly. I may be trying to do too much, but all of the things I am trying to do are important to me, and I want to add one more on top! I am trying to go to work, go to the gym, play my guitar, not eat out ALL the time, and not live in a very messy house. I'd like to add spending some time drawing or painting regularly, but right now I have my hands full. Going to the gym like every day really chews up a lot of time.

I have got my wedding dress. For those who are curious, you can see it here: Michael, don't look!. Although, you can barely see it in that picture. It has massive beading on the bust and on the back. I took possesion of it on Friday, and brought it up to Maine for Anne's wedding, to show off. Christine and Barb and I found good jewelry to go with it at Marden's.

Last weekend, we went apple picking. We were trying to go on a field trip with my company, but we couldn't find anyone. So, we just picked our 20 pounds of apples in the pouring rain and went home. Then, when we got home, I made my first apple pie ever. I was anxious about the crust. Making yummy apple filling is a piece of cake (ha ha!). My mother always tried to make pie crust with whole wheat flour to make it more "nutritious" and I really hated it. (Sorry, mom.) But, my crust turned out great! And it got rave reviews from Mike, and our landlord's son who came down to eat pie and watch football.

The marketing ploy of fantasy football has TOTALLY worked on me. Not only have I been looking at that dumb website all the time, I have actually become INTERESTED in seeing certain games. I have also become much more sympathetic when Mike wants to watch football.

My last bit of news, I feel a bit sheepish about. I have gotten myself a personal trainer at the gym. Yes, I know. Her name is Katrina, and she is a perky blonde. We have found out that I can do a lot of things that many of her other clients can't. For example, I can do like 60 of those evil bicycle crunches.

I am just trying to get my scale un-stuck. My scale has been mostly stuck since the end of July. A few weeks ago, I took the drastic step of making rules against bread to try to get it unstuck, but it wasn't working! (For those of you who don't know, I already had rules about fried food and sweets.) So, this week, I put myself on this radical new diet : going to bed an hour earlier, taking a vitamin pill, making sure to get my liter of water, and ditching the diet soda (mostly). Preliminary results suggest that this might have done the trick.

The rationale for kicking the diet soda is interesting. I read on the internet that diet soda makes you hungry. It does this because when you have a sweet taste in your mouth, your body tries to get ready for the incoming sugar with extra insulin. But, with diet soda, the sugar never comes, and so the insulin response only serves to lower your blood sugar, making you hungry and tired. This pretty much described how I was feeling in the afternoon, so I decided to give it a try, and I have felt better.

Getting more sleep might be the most important part of the whole equation. Like I said, I am still having some trouble balancing all of the things I want to do. I figured out that I would rather get to work a little earlier, than leave a little later. So, I had been getting up around 7:30, and going to bed around midnight. Now, those of you with kids might scoff at me, but I have still been feeling tired and dragging in the morning. I got to thinking that maybe that tired, dragging feeling was the feeling of my metabolism in low gear. So, I have been going to bed earlier and feeling better, and maybe my scale is unstuck.

Last time I saw Katrina, on Thursday, we started by doing some boxing (sorta.) Now, coming from the do-jang, gym boxing is anything but. (And when I watch the "kick-boxing" classes, all I can think about is how people would sprain their toes and ankles if they actually made contact with anything, kicking like that.) Katrina was telling me to do straight punches across my body, going left and then right. And I was like "What scenario would cause you to ever do this??" I could see hook punches, but straight punches??!? But, that's not the point. And its not the point of my story. The point was that after I did all that hitting, my shoulder(s) felt fine. And, I did a couple lines of various kicks (crescent kicks in particular, which really make you stabilize on your post foot), and my knees were fine too. (As fine as they are liable to be.) If I could do a couple lines of roundhouse and side kicks, and have my knees be fine ... This has me thinking that maybe I could start going to Tae Kwon Do again. That would make me happy.