Times, they are a changing

1 week old with mom. Fin is in the lower right corner all by herself.

At 7 weeks.

At 8 weeks

At 14 weeks

At 17 weeks

I've fallen and I can't get up

So, back again to the same old story of goals and showing consistent progress toward meeting those goals. Or the lack thereof.

I am in my third week of JC. This week seems to be hard to stay focused. Excusses abide. Then there is the blatent lack of effort. It is hard not to be disappointed in myself and my lack of fortitute.

So I say. At this morment I need to focus and stay on course. Leave the guilt, leave the doubt, leave the unavoidable disappointment and get back on track.

More later.

Who's watching?

Why are personal goals so difficult to reach? Because no one is watching, that's why.


In school, we get grades - the teacher is watching
In the military, we get promotions - the officers are watching
In work, we get $$ - the bosses are watching
In agility, we get Q's - my peers are watching

I've learned to make commitments based on someone measuring my success to a goal. It is extremely competitive in a way and rewarding to do well because you get recognition.

Who recognizes whether I walked that day, or ate right, or didn't drink, or didn't procrastinate. Who cares whether I fed my kids healthy foods, made them do their homework, washed the dishes, or spent the day cleaning house. Where is my competition to make the accomplishments more fun? No wonder people would rather play a game with a finite result then wash the dishes.

I guess I have to learn something new at my tender age of 48. I have to learn to watch myself. It is frightening to imagine that I will be measuring my own success given my A personality and high expectations.

I guess I need to learn to manage myself, measure my success, and create a sense of competitiveness in order to get where I eventually want to be.

Lots of News

The wait is over for alot of things. Kel did get his phone call and he seems pleased with the result. He starts a new job on Monday September 24. It is all pretty exciting.
I'm still scratching away at my prison wall and no one has noticed yet. It was hard this week as I must have hit some pretty hard rock, but my little tool is holding up and each day I've walked the yard and dumped a few more crumbles on the ground.
This weekends agility was pretty cool too. Tazz actually won money! Kel and I are thinking of starting his own bank account. There is a game called steeplechase and you run around as quickly as you can and the winners get money based on the number of entries. There are two rounds, the first is a qualifier, the second is the money earner. Tazz has never made it past the qualifier before. Saturday he did!
So Sunday we ran in the money.
Some of these competitions are huge and the winner can take home large amounts. This weekends was small and the $$'s weren't big, but we didn't care. We just were very proud to be able to say we won!
Today is back to work and we have another big show this weekend. Can't wait!

7.2

Seven is a really cool number. There are seven days in a week, the seven year itch, the number of my next dog, seven wonders of the world, god rested on the seventh, seventh inning stretch, it is the 4th prime number (if that rocks your boat), and it is the number of pounds I lost this week on my weight loss journey.
Since I weighed in a day early, it really seems like alot, but I do have alot to loose. I must say even I was surprised. I thought it would be five (five is also a nice number), but no, it was seven.
So on to the next week. I did have a challenge in that last night we went out to eat at a friends. This is Kels friend and I felt uncomfortable taking my JC meal with me, so I just went with the flow. She served FIVE courses of food. She really put on a beautiful presentation and I couldn't hurt her feelings. I was stuffed after the appetizer! I kept giving Kel my food and he ate it all, he is such a trooper! I really appreciated how supportive he is.
This week I have a challenge of my first dog show on JC. I have only one meal that I will eat out. The rest will be planned and on JC. The weigh in on Monday should be interesting.
I am keeping the motto, "it is not what you do one meal, it is what you do over a seven day period!" So on to my next seven.

Waiting

to wait (third-person singular simple present waits, present participle waiting, simple past waited, past participle waited)
(transitive) to delay movement or action until the arrival or occurence of; to await
You'll just have to wait your turn.
(intransitive) To delay movement or action until some event or time; to remain neglected or in readiness
Wait here until your car arrives.

I really don't like to wait. I like procrastinating, but not waiting. I wait, then something happens and I wonder why I was so frustrated about waiting.

Right now, my husband is waiting for the phone to ring. He has waited for almost two weeks. He has received motivation to wait in the way of emails, "don't worry, we will call," or when he calls to check in, "don't worry, everyones at a conference, they'll call next week." Waiting is hell.

The phone rings, he prepares himself to answer, he answers, and it isn't the call he was waiting for. You know that call will come when we aren't here, so no one goes anywhere. Waiting.

This waiting stuff is for the birds. We are programed to wait since childhood. We go to amusement parks and wait in line, we make a phone call and wait on hold, we open a web browser and wait for our home page.

So can we stop the waiting? I don't think so. Can we stop the stress that waiting creates. Perhaps.

I'm going to go now as I'm waiting for a conference to start. Soon it will begin and the wait will be over.

Scrabble

Playing scrabble makes one think. There are lots of words that come up that have absolutely no relationship to each other. These words are on the same board and used to add up to points but in no way related. Someone wins and the rest are...well...they don't win. Everyone, however, has fun.
Ace, big, peony, water, cook, zipper, brand, error, flirt, fish, loud, pod, column, book, disturbed. These are just words, but in the game of scrabble, they are interpreted in terms of points. A 3 point word could become a 9 point word given a position on the board. A 10 point letter becomes 30 points if you are lucky enough to place it on the correct spot when spelling out your word.
Life can sorta be like scrabble. There is definitely skill associated with the game, but also a certain amount of luck. Strategy can be to hold onto a potential word to place it in a more strategic position, but without the luck of position, the decision to wait to play tiles can be a mistake.
I think there is a certain amount of skill that we get as we grow. We learn that patience is something to value. We learn that speaking just to be heard isn't always the best approach. We learn that age has some benefits. But there is a certain amount of luck in life that one needs to get the "big plays."
Today I'm pondering luck. I feel lucky although life hasn't always been fair. I feel lucky even though I find myself in a body I didn't really want nor deserve. I feel lucky even if things aren't always perfect.
Most of my life I have thought about what I wanted and worked to make it happen, but it was luck that brought the people in my life that have made such a difference for me.
My husband Kel has been a huge influence and I would never have met him had it not been for a smokey bar, dancing, and a boozing friend. I was in a good position to play tiles that day for sure. I'm pretty sure I played a Z on a triple square that day!
My income is due to luck in a way. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, I just knew what I didn't want to do. Then a person came into my life who gave me a key that I've held dear to my heart. The key was only a few words, but I was lucky that day to hear them, "Vici, 10 years from now you can be sitting at this desk, or you can be doing something else." On a scrabble board these words could add up to alot of points. In my life, these words gave me the big bonus that I was looking for.
My joy and my passion, my pups are somewhat of a lucky chance. Kel and I were looking for a pup and of all the breeds, we were lucky enough to get a sheltie. Little Sophie was a triple word play for sure. Then came Chester, Maddie, Rocky, Tazz, and now little Fin.
My scrabble board is getting full, I've been really lucky and with a little strategy I think I'm winning this game!

Commitment

Personal commitment, interaction dominated by obligations. These obligations may be mutual, or self-imposed, or explicitly stated, or may not. A personal commitment is a solemn pledge or promise to yourself for your personal growth for the purpose of acheiving a personal or spiritual goal.

The question is, what is my commitment to myself and my passions?

Today begins the third day of my prison jail break. My tool is a metal spoon that I stole from the lunch room. It barely scratches the surface, but scratches it does. I actually filled my pockets today for dumping during my walk. I'm hiding my progress from the guards with my large poster of a thin woman running a fast dog over an agility jump. They don't suspect a thing. My goal this week is to create a hole the size of a sack of flour. Let's see if it happens. The way things are going it is going to take a year for me to break out of prison....but break out I am committed to do.

Loss things found

There are many things that we loose. We loose pencils, money, time, keys, cell phones. We also loose family, friends, and pets. Many of these things we loose, we regret their loss. However, sometimes we loose something on purpose. And then, sometimes the things we lost on purpose come back.
That's what I'm going to write about today. Lost and found.
In my lifetime I have lost a LOT of weight. In my lifetime I have found alot of weight. Today, I'm holding on to alot of FOUND weight. I don't really want this weight, but somehow I hold on to it as if my life depended on it. I keep it around like all the boxes of stuff in my attic. I don't really want this stuff, it's just there and I don't know what to do with it.
The weight, however, I know what to do with. Loose it AGAIN! Hope that someone else that needs it finds it. Couldn't I just ship it overseas? I see alot of adds for skinny kids that want to weigh more, but I guess it doesn't work that way.
Tues Sept 4 I made a decision. It wasn't a happy decision, it was rather a reluctant decision. The decision is to do something about my weight. This isn't easy as it implies. I have a weight issue. I don't want to have a weight issue, I want to continue to eat what I want, when I want cause it makes me feel good. However, the long term effects of my behavior are not promising.
So Tues I walked into a "jenny craig" and signed up. I'm on my second day and am still feeling like woe is me, but I know that will change as soon as I start to see the results. I figure, one day at a time. One pound at a time.
I feel like a prisner that is slowly digging a tunnel. Each day I'll take a walk and sprinkle my weight around outside and no one will notice. Then one day, I'll be less than what I was and everyone will wonder where I went!
So today is another day in this journey. My tunnel is just a scratch on the surface but I see the vision of escape becomming clearer with each scratch I make.