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.