Taking on too much...

I realized today, with the month nearly half over, that I really have put too much on myself at once, and I'm not happy with the way I've prioritized things. On the 29th I'm leaving to go to Maine for a 5-day intensive course on the Raw Food Lifestyle. There are things I need to do in preparation for this course so I've realized that I need to adjust some priorities in order to accomplish it. I want to get as much out of this course as I can, and take full advantage of it, but I can only do that if I put more of myself into it, and right away. I'm investing a lot of money into this course...but it's something that's very important to me, and it's not only going to teach me everything about being a raw foodist, but it also gives me a teacher's certification to teach others if I want to go on to any type of career in raw foods. I'm really excited about it. This means less writing, but I'm still going to keep a regular pace. I'm happy that NaNoWriMo has gotten me back into the habit of writing regularly and the words are flowing again, so I know I won't have any trouble sticking to it, I just don't think the 50,000 words will have time to surface in the next 2 weeks, which is okay with me. I will finish the book, it just won't be by November 30th. I can't believe I'm leaving in just over 2 weeks! :) I have a lot to do...

Marissa Turns Five Years Old

Okay, technically she turns five on Monday, but today was her big birthday bash. And BIG it was. Marissa has a lot of friends, we invited 18 kids (not sure how that happened, LOL) and all 18 came. That's 18 four and five-year-olds, all at Chuck E. Cheese. It was quite the sight. I was really glad we had the party in the morning, because we basically had the whole place to ourselves while her party was going on. It was exhausting keeping track of all those kids but it was fun. We had to be careful not to call it a "birthday party" or Marissa would get upset. Yes, there's a story there. ;) I think it was my fault. I told her one time a few weeks ago that she was growing up too fast or something like that and she took it to heart. She's decided she doesn't want to turn five, she wants to stay four because Mommy doesn't want her to get bigger. Sigh! I tried in the past week to change her mind before the party but she wouldn't have it. I tried telling her she couldn't get birthday presents unless it was her birthday and she responded with "they're party presents", LOL. She had an answer for everything. I told her I was okay with her turning five and that I wanted her to turn five, and that being five would be fun. I don't know, I guess I'll just wait it out until she decides it's okay to be five years old. And THEN silly me forgot to tell the staff at Chuck E. Cheese about her "birthday aversion", and Chuck E. came out and started dancing and singing "Happy Birthday" to Marissa and the tears started. I told them she wanted to sing "Happy Party", LOL... She quickly recovered before the song was over, thank goodness. I have to be careful what I say from now on, she's a sensitive girl... Like her Mom. ;)

After the exhausting party I still managed to go for a run tonight... It didn't go as great as I would have liked, but it was okay. I didn't have enough energy to do the whole session. I'm going to try increasing to four times a week. Some beginner training programs say you should run three times a week and some say four, so I think I'll try four and see if it makes any difference. I'm not improving as fast as I'd like.

The novel is slow-going, I have to admit. I think the story is progressing okay, but I'm not spending enough time on it if I want to finish the 50,000 words on time. In the past week, Marissa's birthday became a priority, and situations with friends, and other life commitments. I'm still determined to catch up though...

A sea of self-doubt

November so far:
1.16 km ran
5097 words written
raw food - (don't even ask, LOL)

Reading back my post from November 1st, I can scarcely remember what it felt like to have the month start off so well. On day one I had a good running session, and also wrote over 2,000 words of my novel, which is more than the daily quota to reach the month's goal of 50,000. I'm bummed to have to report that things went a little downhill from there. Thursday and Friday I wrote zero words. Yikes. I was having kind of an emotional time of it. The only way I can explain it was that I was wallowing in a sea of self-doubt, and I lost motivation because of it. I fell into a "my novel sucks...woe is me...there's no way I can do this" attitude. But luckily I seem to have snapped out of it...mostly. I've come to realize that obviously this is only the first draft of my novel and it's supposed to have issues, LOL. There are a lot of things I like about what I've written so far so I'm going to focus on that, and make notes of what I can do to improve things on the rewrites later. Which is really the whole point of NaNoWriMo anyway. Saturday night I went to a local coffee shop and wrote about another 1800 words. I was very focused and it felt really good to have the words pouring out again. Tonight I went to a write-in with other local NaNoWriMo enthusiasts that I'd met at the Kick-Off and wrote some more, then had a nice chat with one of the other writers afterwards. THEN came home and wrote more, for a total of about 1300 today. I'm happy to at least be back in the swing of things and the novel is moving along. I hope to write at least 3000 words tomorrow to do some catching up. I'm also really itching to go out for a run tomorrow as my running kind of took a backseat this weekend as I snapped myself out of my writing slump. ;)

November is here, yikes...

November so far:
1.16 km ran
2037 words written
0 days 100% raw (hmmm.. better luck tomorrow)

Well, the first day of November was busy, as expected. But it went pretty good. I wrote about 1000 words this morning, did some preparations for Marissa's 5th birthday party which is in 10 days (sniff! she's getting so big). Then of course there was work. Tonight I went for a run and it was great, I'm finally back to Week 3 of C25K after getting over that bad cold virus. The run was really hard, and I think I'm going to feel it tomorrow, but I felt really good having done it. Then I wrote about another 1000 words afterwards, all-in-all a productive day. I even managed to squeeze in one of my favourite shows, "Criminal Minds". Love that show.

Halloween '06

Okay, so not the best photo in the world, but here's my little Tinkerbelle. Now, she will tell you that the costume is not Tinkerbelle, but is "just a fairy". She's very adamant about this. I'm not sure what it is she has against Tinkerbelle, but I went with it anyway, LOL. ;)
Although now that I think about it she did have a good reason. This "Tinkerbelle" costume came with a wand, and Marissa pointed out to me that "Tinkerbelle doesn't have a wand, Mommy". Hmmmm... good point! Amazing how observant even a 4-year-old can be, isn't it? Andrew carved the pumpkins, pretty good, eh?

NaNoWriMo Kick-Off

Last night I went to a kick-off party here in town and met several other local men and women that are going to tackle NaNoWriMo this year. I really enjoyed it. It was great to touch base with some other people that are on the same page (pun intended) and are going through some of the same anxieties and challenges in tackling the same goal of writing a 50,000 page novel in 30 days. :)

I'm getting kind of nervous about November, which is like one day away! I'm actually going on a trip at the end of November and leaving on the 29th. That means to be safe I actually have to finish 50,000 words by November 28th. So instead of 1667 words per day for 30 days I have to write 1850 words per day for 28 days. Hmmm...

If that's not crazy enough, I'm thinking about also tackling a 30 day raw food challenge starting November 1st, in connection with my favourite raw food website, www.rawfoodtalk.com. In addition to never finishing any novels that I've begun to write, I've never completed a 30 day raw challenge either. I figure if I'm going to make November a productive month, I might as well go all the way! :) The last time I went raw I lasted about 12 days. That was in June of this year. It's the longest I've ever gone eating 100% raw foods. I had just started getting over the beginning of detox and feeling really great. So I'm not sure why when I'm starting to feel the wonderful effects of raw food is when I cave and give in to horrible cooked food cravings. It's like I'm afraid of success or something. If I decide to do the 30 day challenge I will start a series of blog entries to explain what the raw food lifestyle is, what I'm doing, and why... ;)

It's going to be very challenging (to say the least) to work towards these two major goals, NaNoWriMo and a 30 day raw food challenge, and also keep up running, this blog, and whole host of other life responsibilities that can't be totally ignored... I have one more day to get my life in order for all of this, and it's Halloween and I have a 4-year-old to dress up as Tinkerbell and take trick-or-treating. Or let the hubby do it and give out candy to probably over 100 local kids. Either way, it's going to be busy...

Itty-bitty pieces of chocolate

Anyone that knows me well knows that I'm a chocoholic. Or should know. Or does know NOW. ;) It can be a challenge to be a chocoholic when you're trying to lose weight, or trying to eat healthier, because conventional chocolate comes with a lot of other things like fat and sugar and other additives. I would really like to know who it is that invented these bags of what they're calling "fun-size" chocolate. I'm sure you know the ones I'm talking about. They're individually wrapped much-smaller versions of regular-sized chocolate bars and stuff. The concept is that if you buy smaller portions you're going to consume less...apparently. Who's hair-brained idea was this? What's "FUN" about an itty-bitty piece of chocolate?? Seriously. It's like taking a "Pot of Gold" chocolate out of the box, cutting it in half and then eating that, and being done with it. I don't know anybody who can just eat one, so really what is the point? Personally I think it was some demented fool who gets their kicks out of tormenting people. Knowing that any chocoholic could not be satisfied with just one of the itty-bitty "FUN-SIZED" pieces, and that they're really going to eat more than one, feel guilty about it afterwards, get depressed, and sink into a corner of empty itty-bitty individual wrappers and cry into the empty bag... Ummmmm... Okay, maybe I'm being a BIT overly dramatic... But only a little. ;) I really would like to find this demented person, who I have to assume is one of those thin people that can eat whatever they want and must have some sort of hollow leg or something, and give him a piece of my mind. Anyone willing to hold him down for me?

"DIET RAGE"

I’m on a lot of e-mailing lists. I get countless newsletters from who knows where. Most of them I don’t even read. Some of them I vaguely remember signing up for but don’t remember why, and most of the ones I get, I probably did sign up for once-upon-a-time. A lot of them are health-related. Some of them are webmaster-related. Some of them are spam. Once in a while I decide to unsubscribe from a few, but more just seem to creep up from the woodwork. Anyway, one of them actually managed to catch my eye yesterday. The subject of the email was “Do you suffer from diet rage?” I immediately answered “Yep!” in my head. A decade and a half of yo-yo dieting has created what I would call “diet rage”, and I’m beyond frustrated with it. I don’t know how many pounds I have lost and then regained in the past 15 or so years. A lot of that is because I’m an emotional eater and that problem never seems to get solved in any “diets”. I was slim before I got married. But losing a baby in 1989, 3 weeks before I got married is basically where the trouble started, and a cycle began of emotional eating and subsequently the trial and error of many, many different diets and weight loss methods. You name it and I have probably tried it at one time or another. But gradually over time, the older I got, and the more research I did on nutrition and health, the more healthy my attempts became, thankfully.

My cold that I’ve had for over a week now, and the congestion that won’t seem to go away is a stark reminder that I believe I could be healthier if I put my mind to it. I think I take pretty good care of myself, but I know in my heart of hearts that I’m not doing everything that I can. I know I’m not practicing everything that I know about health and nutrition, and what I believe is the best food to put into my body. So, the positive side of being sick is that it’s given me a bit of a kick-in-the-butt, and re-motivated me to be better to myself and believe that I’m worth it. Running has also helped me to feel better about myself, physically and mentally. I think I’m on my way but not where I want to be… YET. :)

Snow... and summer memories...

Thursday evening we had our first snowfall of the season. It wasn't a lot, but it took me by surprise when I went outside and saw snow mixed with rain coming down. My daughter was excited, and promptly went back inside to find mittens and everything. :) None of it stayed on the ground, but in the morning there was snow stuck to the top of the car. Many people are grumpy over the fact that winter is coming, but I actually like winter, and the snow that comes with it. It's pretty, it makes the trees look beautiful, and there's lots of fun things you can do in it, like snowball fights, tobboganing, making snowmen (or snowpeople, whatever, don't email me for politically incorrectness please, LOL), and down-hill skiing. Not to mention catching snowflakes on your tongue and snow angels!! Plus, when it snows, it's not as cold outside, because it has to be somewhere around zero (give or take a few degrees) to snow. Anyway, it was obviously a stark reminder that summer is a distant memory. Here's a photo of Marissa during one of our many picnics that we went on over the summer. She's chasing bubbles that were coming out of a bubble machine. I love this picture.

My cold is hanging on for dear life. I'm still congested and very exhausted. Along with that comes increasing frustration that I'm not feeling better yet. I did go for a run tonight, and though I couldn't do week 3 of C25K (couch to 5K) because I couldn't run the 3 minute segments, I did most of week 2, but I think I did 4 repetitions instead of 6. I'm okay with that, considering how I'm feeling. I'm glad to have done the majority of it. I think I'm going to go to the Running Room downtown on Wednesday night and join in on their free running club, and run with some other humans. ;) I think that might be fun.

"You're hurting my life!"

I think I'm getting addicted to the NaNoWriMo website. The forums are great. I learned a little tip to help me turn off my internal editor while I'm writing. One of the posts had a great suggestion to turn off your monitor while you're writing. If you can't see what you're typing, you can't backspace to change anything. You have to just keep moving forward. I'm definitely going to try this. I can't turn the monitor off with the laptop, but if I don't find a way to blank the screen, I will just make the text in Microsoft Word white, so I can't see it and change it back later. Another option would be to just cover the screen with something. Lots of writers have tried this method of turning off their monitors and swear by it. I'm glad to have found at least one solution that I think will really help.

Another great thing is that I have 7 buddies so far on the site. These are writing buddies that I'm going to be sharing encouragement and motivation with. That's 7 kicks-in-the-butt if my word count doesn't climb fast enough come November 1st. OUCH! If that's not motivation I don't know what is...

My 4-year-old daughter Marissa has a new phrase. When you tell her "No" for something, she says "You're hurting my life!!". She's so dramatic... LOL. I have no idea how she came up with it, but seriously, I had no idea that telling her she's played enough with her Nintendo DS for one day would scar her for life! Yikes... ;)

My cold has moved to my chest and now it's congested along with my head. I was coughing most of the night. I really need to get some sleep... zzzzzzzzz...

A Canadian Thanksgiving

Well, somehow managed to make it through Thanksgiving, cold virus and all. My 4-yr-old daughter decided that her dinner roll made a better plate than her plate itself, and put turkey, stuffing, veggies, everything in the roll and made one huge sandwich. Of course she realized after that she couldn't fit it into her mouth, LOL. I should have taken a pic. Hubby took care of the turkey dinner and I was thankful for that, since I was not feeling well at all. I had to laugh though, when dinner was over and he was getting ready to put the leftovers in the fridge, he takes a huge turkey breast, bones and all, finds the biggest tupperware he can find, and plops it in. Of course it still didn't fit. So I told him while trying not to laugh that he's gotta take the meat off the bones first, LOL. He will probably murder me for writing this, if he reads it. So if this is my last blog entry, I apologize to all the non-existant people I imagine are actually reading this. ;) Anyway, dinner turned out pretty good and I was impressed. I hope he realizes though that all the previous years he's pretended he doesn't know how to cook are out the window and now he's going to have to do it more often, haha.

I didn't go for a run last night, and I'm still feeling nasty today. I don't know if I'll make it out tonight either. So frustrating!!

I've been thinking about my ideas for the novel I'm going to write for NaNoWriMo. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about please see my previous blog entry from yesterday ;) ). My NaNo book has started to shape a little. I have some good ideas, but I have no idea how I'm going to flush them out. Hopefully it will work itself out when I start writing it. I was starting to get really anxious about not being able to find the time to write as much as I'm going to need to. But someone on the NaNoWriMo site pointed out that 50,000 words isn't that harrowing if you break it down. You have 30 days, so that's 1667 words a day. If you break that down into an hour, that's 27 words a minute for one hour. So if you can write 27 words in a minute while writing your story, you can meet the goal with just an hour a day. My problem, as well as many other writers, is that I think too much while I'm writing and edit as I go along. So it takes me a lot longer to write because I make changes while I'm writing. One of the goals with NaNoWriMo is that you're supposed to just write, no editing, no fixing spelling mistakes or typos as you go along, no changing your wording or dialogue, nothing. Just keep writing and let your creativity flow. Write without stopping, just create, and give yourself permission to make mistakes. And worry about editing after the month is over, or your book is finished. I hope that I can change my habits enough to be able to do this. It'll be hard to turn my internal editor off while I'm writing, but I'm going to try because I really think it will help me be a better writer.

I think I've finally lost it...

I came to the decision to start this blog because my life is getting so crazy I'm afraid that if I don't document it somewhere it will all end up a blur and there will be no way I'll remember any of it, LOL. I have a husband, a 4-year-old daughter who will be 5 soon (sniff! sniff!), a dog, a cat and 2 goldfish who have lived surprisingly long and I can't believe they're still alive. I have a part-time job, I run a website, I'm trying to write a novel, and I've taken up running. Those are just some of the major things, anyway. ;)

I took up running at the end of August. I'm working through a popular training program I found online that gradually works you up to running 5K without stopping. The program is called "Couch to 5K" and is found on coolrunning.com here: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml. I've been kind of slow with it but I'm gradually improving. I'm on week three right now, thinking about moving to week four. the runnin started out as a way to help me lose some weight, but it's become much more thn that. I really love it. I think I'm getting addicted to it. I just feel so great when I'm running, like nothing else in the world matters. It's great stress relief, it's something I do just for myself, it's ME time, and it feels awesome and very liberating. my first goal is to run a 5K. Then move up from that.

I've been battling a cold since Saturday. There have been 4 or 5 people sick at work, one after the other for the past couple of weeks, so I blame it on them that I woke up Saturday with a sore throat. ;) Of course, my turn comes on the long weekend (Thanksgiving here in Canada). I always get sick at the worst possible times. And always when I have a million things to do. Anyway, yesterday I felt a bit worse, and today I'm all stuffed up. We are still going to end up with turkey dinner on the table somehow today, but I haven't worked that out yet. I think I'll supervise my husband while he does it... Sounds like a plan to me... ;) If anyone has any ideas on how to kick this cold in the butt, please let me know. I have a million things I need to be doing and no energy to do them. I actually went running last night even though I'm not feeling well at all. It was going to be just a walk, since I actually should be resting. But ended up running a few segments. Stupid, eh?

Last night, while I was feeling crappy and vegetating while surfing the 'net, I signed up for NaNoWriMo, which stands for "National Novel Writing Month". It's a program where you write a novel from scratch in 30 days, during the month of November. You have to write 50,000 words to qualify as winning and succeeding in the challenge. I think this is the end for me, I think I've finally lost it. I have no idea how I'm going to accomplish this, but I've been working on writing different novels off and on for years now, and I really want to succeed at finishing a novel. I never finish anything I start. Gotta stop the cycle... I have a couple of weeks before it starts to get myself prepped for it. Hmmmmm...

Well, I think that's enough about me for the moment. If you read this far, thanks... ;) Please send me a message so I know I'm not typing all of this into some cyber black hole and someone is actually reading it. That would give me the motivation to continue typing this nonsense. Otherwise, it will be too easy to procrastinate, which I'm sure you know by now I'm extremely good at...

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Canadians... To all you Americans, Happy Columbus Day, if you celebrate it...