Full Week Back - What a LONG Week...

Wow!  The first full week back to the normal schedule and what a long, stressful week!

Initially, the week started off being the normal schedule - just a tad on the boring side as I really had nothing on my plate to do at work.  The upside to that is when I was working from home, rather than just sitting at the computer, I would get up and get some clutter or other house work done.  Downside, while I was at the office, I would lean towards doing some "boredom eating."  I need to be more conscious of when that happens.  

By Wednesday evening, I had planned on coming home to clear off clutter I had placed on the sofa.  Basically, throw out junk or move it elsewhere for a more time to go through what needs to be kept or thrown away.  I had run the dogs outside for their potty walk and after I got the groceries in the refrigerator, to my horror - the smoke alarms started going off.  

Again, the same smoke alarm, the one in the living room on the vaulted ceiling next to my bedroom needed the battery changed.  I know full well that the apartment complex does nto consider this an emergency and Rent-A-Man works from 7 AM to 7 PM.  I was stuck with two very upset dogs.  Solution - get a room at Aloft for the night, so that I could get some sleep.

Let me say, Aloft is a great pet-friendly hotel.  It is a bit more expensive than say Fairfield Inn and what have you, but I really enjoy staying there.  Just a darn shame I cannot enjoy it more for every time I have had to go there.  Basically, I am more hacked off about the fact that nothing gets done about the smoke alarms as it should.  Part of that is my fault for not pressuring the apartment complex management as I should.  The other part is that this has been going on for 4 or more years now.  It is ridiculous that I cannot get the battery changed out of these devices in a timely manner.  I have dogs that cannot handle the noise and after staying here for several hours the next day, it was driving me batty.

On Thursday, I boarded the dogs and called Rent-A=Man to come fix the battery issue.  Here I am trying to do a spending fast and I have these unexpected expenses.  It was a bit deflating, but I just went with it.  Not much I could do.

Friday morning, I got in to my car to go to work and the car would not start.  Ugh!  Another unexpected expense - new a battery from AAA.  Luckily, that was all the car needed was a new battery, so I am very thankful for that.  I paid for this expense out of my bank account, so I was fine with that.

At the end of the day on Friday, I was exhausted from all of the garbage that occurred.  In the end, I did thank God for my health and keeping me safe.  Others incur a lot worse in life, so I should be thankful that I got these challenges.

Job news - my boss officially announced my promotion to Design and Development Manager for the Wireline systems.  I am excited and yet, a little scared.  However, I am going to try my best to do a good job.  I forwarded the announcement to the boss I had before my last boss.  He was excited for me and said it was about time.  Oddly enough, the next day, I realized what a mountain of expectation I now had.

Health - at some point, I just quit getting on the scale.  I had to.  I was tired, frustrated, and the holidays did not make life easier.  Kevin Smith had it right - Holidays are hell for a fat man on a diet.  In this case, fat woman.  

I overate, but I think I did more on the savory side than on the sweet side.  Sure, I had my sweets.  I made a ring of coconut cake, but over half of that cake got thrown in the trash.  I make fudge, but gave away a good bit.  I wanted the sweet, but did not want to be overwhelmed with it.  The sad part is I do not want store bought goodies.  I want homemade - they taste better and are fresher.  For example, I make chocolate chip cookies with pecans.  I would rather have the ones I make than even the refrigerated version.  

I do want to experiment with my own cookies.  I had soup and salad from Paradise bakery one day and I got a chocolate chip and pecan cookie.  The cookie is placed in a separate brown paper bag.  By the time I got it home, the cookie bag had a huge oil stain.  Well, that is not good.  More or less - ICK!  I ended up not eating the cookie and throwing it in the trash.  I want to see if the cookies I bake do the same thing.

Back to health, I gained about 2 to 3 lbs, but I am not too unhappy with that.  At least, I am still under 300 lbs.  I know my endo is not going to be happy with me, but I am just going to have try harder to eat better and get more exercise into my daily routine.  I also need to drink more water.  I think that will make a huge difference.  I have been seriously lax about that aspect.

Sinking away from the FB "drama" - Well, I have gone from being on FB all of the time to looking at it maybe 3 to 4 times a day for about 5 minutes.  I just do not invest myself into it.  I think what also helps is that I am hung up on SimCity BuildIt game on my iPhone.  Something about building something, then rearranging it, trying to solve the problems that occur and raising money gets me drawn into the game.  It is somewhat like FarmVille and games like that, but I do not have to go asking for game requests.  I am good with that.  At least, I can get frustrated with trying to raise money and keeping my SIMS happy.  It is something I can control and the problems are fixable.  I cannot fix other people's issues.  I can only focus on what I can do.

Going to spend the rest of the day working on doing laundry and clearing clutter.  Even though I may need to move things into another room for another day, I am starting to feel a bit of accomplishment.  Again, with moving things into another room, that is for more analysis of papers that I need to keep or toss.  Sometime this month, I will go to a public shredder company and pay to shred a lot of this.  At that point, any further paper that comes into the apartment will be heavily examined - Is it a bill that can be delivered electronically/Get rid of magazine subscriptions or move them to electronic delivery on the Kindle/Toss ads and other garbage/Contact American Express to stop sending me credit card applications - I am so tired of those.