Not that I have any fancy plans for the weekend so far. Tonight I have an extra bell choir rehearsal until 9 PM. Ordinarily I wouldn't mind, but I'm really in the mood to chill out a bit.
Then Forest and I are going out with Will to celebrate his new job with EDS. It's a pretty cool one, and I might even be able to "use" him professionally! (No, not like that, Shel.)
Saturday I'm doing laundry and cleaning my house, which has been pretty much trashed since we got back from Tennessee. We haven't had a chance to deal with all the stuff we unpacked from the van. Saturday night I don't get to go to Darcy's birthday party because I don't have a sitter. Forest and I are thinking we'll take Kirstin to see the Tigger Movie after he gets out of work, and then he'll go to the party, and I'll go home. Hopefully I'll have company. I'm thinking I might lamely see if Tiff and Shel want to have an old-fashioned sleepover at my house Saturday night. (If I can get ahold of Tiff, that is.)
Sunday I've got nothing planned except that I've been invited to a birthday party for a friend, which I really can't afford to go to, but might just attend anyway, what the hell. And then there are auditions for Outing Productions summer shows in the evening.
I guess I was wrong, it's a busy weekend after all.
Last night Forest and I went to see Romeo Must Die. It was a lot of fun to watch. The martial artists in it were great (Jet Li in particular), but we both wished they would have avoided the ninja-special-effects. Jet Li is awesome enough just with his own skills that you don't need to suspend him from wires and spin him around 4 times before a kick just for extra panache. He's a bad-ass already, he doesn't need that!
Foo-ey guys are awesome. It makes me want to take up another martial art.
Kirstin's spring break starts this weekend, and I wish I could take her on vacation somewhere. Basically, though, all I could afford would be camping, and there's rain (and maybe snow) in the forecast for most of the week. That pretty much means she has to stay at home. What a drag! I wish I were the kind of mom who could take her to Disneyland or something. She deserves a break.
Then again, she'll be with Bill and Kathy most of the week, and the kids in their neighborhood are Kirstin's friends. I'm sure they will find something fun to do. Kids are great escapists without leaving their own backyards.
I'm the one who needs the crutch of great distance to really relax. Or a couple of hours of Yoga.
I wish I knew what was keeping Forest up nights. It's really starting to worry me. I trust him that if it was something I had done or was doing that he'd tell me. His response, though, is that it's just the way it is. He just can't seem to get comfortable, and ends up getting up in the middle of the night. Then when he zonks in the car somewhere, I can't wake him up again. It sounds like a bizarre seratonin thing to me.
As for me, I've got no problems sleeping, except for the bizarre occasional dream. They don't disturb me, but they sure leave me a bit on the disoriented side in the morning. I've been dreaming a lot lately, and have no idea what's prompted this. Usually I only remember them every few nights, sometimes even more seldom. For the past couple of weeks, though, it's been every night, and even some naps. The dreams range from some really nice sex dreams (vivid) to one dream about shelling a walnut (vague) to another of random shapes and colors.
I'm pretty happy with how my semi-diet has been going. I've only eaten meat once in the past week, and that was a grilled chicken patty, with a tiny bit of mustard, tomato, and lettuce on a bun. Other than that I've stuck with three small meals per day. Breakfast has been a small bowl of oatmeal or shredded wheat with skim milk. Lunch has been various vegetable soups, and salads, with very tiny amounts of low-cal non-fat dressings. One night I skipped dinner so I could have a small piece of cake celebrating Kirstin's report card. Other than that, nothing. I've been in the ice cream store a bunch of times, at a conference full of free food, and even been to the movies, and resisted the popcorn. I haven't had anything to drink but water and a single Diet Caffeine Free Coke since we got back from Tennessee.
I'm glad that I haven't developed any sort of food fixations or addictions or anything like that. I don't feel deprived by turning down the regular munchies. Actually, it suprises me how much of that stuff I'd gotten used to. Before now, I rarely ordered popcorn and drinks at a movie, because I never had the money to do that. Now it's a sort of luxury, and I've taken to treating myself, just because I can. How silly.
I also have been at the Store often, sometimes daily, and have been in the habit of the occasional small sundae. Hot fudge is my favorite, and it's terrible for you. The ice cream isn't bad, but the toppings are horrendous.
Generally, I do okay with it. Last night I was starving at bedtime, but was too tired to care anyway, so it didn't matter. It made my shredded wheat taste better this morning. Likewise I was starving to the point of wooziness before lunch, because I didn't get to eat until 1 PM today... so I grabbed a quarter of a free bagel, and ate just a couple of bites to get by until mealtime, and tossed the rest. Tonight I will probably not have time to care much about dinner, either. I've got to have Kirstin to Jeff's a little after 6, and be at bell choir ready to rehearse by 6:30. I'll probably swing by the Store and pick up another grilled chicken patty sandwich. It's free food, and it's not bad for you, or very high in calories at all.
That's where I'm lucky, you see. I don't care what my food tastes like, it's fuel to me. I don't feel the need to put sugar on my breakfast cereal, and am perfectly content to eat my plain chicken on a plain bun with no sauces or whatever. I don't even care what my beverages taste like, honestly. I don't taste a real difference between diet and regular, caffeine and non... so it doesn't pain me to drink the 1 calorie version. I am just plain oblivious.
What I've just said is sacrilege in the midwest, I know.
I really ought to go online and find out how many calories I should eat in a healthy day. I've never counted them before, but I've also never had the option of a free lunch in an ice cream shop every day. To me, lunch is lunch, so I don't differentiate between the 200-calorie meal that fills my stomach and the 2000-calorie meal that does the same thing. In my past life there just weren't that many 2000-calorie ones I could afford often enough to be a problem. Nowadays, though, I need to make sure I'm not doing that very frequently. Guess I ought to go find out how often I can get away with it, huh?
I also need to find out how many calories are burned every time I spend 4 hours on Tae Kwon Do. Or an hour on Yoga. See, I don't want to starve myself, and I do have a rather high level of physical activity. Some days in particular, I know I'll be starving after practice. I want to find the healthy amount I should eat for the amount that I'm burning all the time.
Kirstin brought home a much-improved report card on Wednesday night. I've had a chance to look it over in detail, and am happy with the improvements. All the subjects she had C's and D's in before are now B's! That's a huge improvement. Only one grade went down, and that was math, from a B- to a C+. She's had a lot of trouble with those timed multiplication tests. We did, however, just have a breakthrough on that, and she's just figured out a method for finishing a timed test on time. Last week she got her first A+ ever on a math test, so I think she'll finish out okay.
So despite all the trouble she's had and how hard we've all had to work, she's doing well now, and steadily getting better. Happy thing.
