Day 144: The Reckoning Is Coming

 

I had so much hope for 2024, but I haven't accomplished anything. I failed miserably getting back on my diet and exercise program. I lost my job. I can't seem to keep my house neat, though I'm trying. Here is a link to my first post of 2024: New Year  I feel like I'm still in the same place. I started and stopped so many times and I have yet to "get it right". I am going to be starting 2025 with the same goals as 2024 .. and 2023 ... and probably 2022. I have to pull myself out of the hole I've dug and start this final section of life: retirement. I'm not going to fool myself into thinking I will magically find a job in the new year. In all honesty, I don't want a new job. This means I have ZERO excuses not to fully devote my life to losing the weight. I have nothing but time. I do not want to end 2025 in the same place. I want to be thinner and happier.

I wrote the paragraph above on 12-16-24. I'm going to repeat it in every blog through 12-31-24. More on that later.

I was awake at 5:30 this morning and ended up getting up shortly before 7. I fed Minnie but waited until almost 8 before feeding the strays. There were 6 of them waiting for me today ! Shortly before 10 I went out to collect the empty bowls and 2 were out there. One had eaten earlier but one had not, so I opened another can of food and fed them both. They always have dry food available but the canned food is a treat that all cats love. As long as I can afford it, I will continue to feed them.

I spent the morning watching YouTube and playing Cookie Jam. My plan was to be out of the house by noon to finish my shopping.

Now, to address the elephant in the room. Pun intended ! 2025 is 11-12 days away, depending on how you choose to count the days. I'm starting yet another blog for 2025. My 2024 blog was called "Fresh Start" and it was a miserable failure. I started and stopped so many times and once I thought I was on my way, the blood in my stool issue cropped up. That completely destroyed all the progress I had made both mentally and physically. I let it happen. I am to blame, so I have to own that. I'm in control of how I react to challenges and I let this latest one blow me right out of the water. Thankfully, it has cleared up and I feel better about the future. I feel ready to get going again but I'm giving myself until the new year simply because indulgence is a part of the holidays. Starting up again on January 1 will be easier because the next holiday meal won't come until Easter. Next week will bring indulgence on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The following week may bring indulgence on New Year's Eve, if Kim & Joe decide to host a gathering. After that I only have to worry about the weekly bingo outing. 

In order to be successful in 2025 I have to change my mindset. I need to establish and follow a sensible routine. I haven't been showering every day and that needs to stop. It's plain laziness. I used to shower every night before bed and I need to get back to that. Part of the problem is I wait until too late in the evening and I'm too "tired" to shower. As such, the plan will be to shower right after dinner and just brush my teeth at bedtime. The treadmill needs to come back into play as well. I will start with once a day and see how that goes. I also need to work salad or other veggies into my day. With all the food recalls, I'm hesitant to go back to salads. However, I have all kinds of salad dressing and other condiments I need to use up. I will give salads a try and see how it goes. It's a simple ask. Eat right, exercise and take care of yourself. I've created my new blog, so I'm ready to go on New Year's day. I will spend the next 11 days working on building my confidence and making better self care a part of my day. 

It's nearly 11 am and I'm on the fence about going shopping. It's below freezing (28 degrees) and it's snowing lightly, so I'm afraid the roads might be slippery. The forecast is saying 2 inches of snow will fall in the next 4 hours .. so I think I'm going to stay home. 

Continuing the self care narrative, yesterday I bought a couple of new eye shadows at Walmart. I've been wearing the same pink eye shadow for years and I read online that gold shades bring out blue eyes. I bought 2 shades and can't wait to try them ! They're powder and I'll be interested to see if I like that better than the creamy stuff I've been wearing.

Another area I need to focus on is keeping the house clean. I need to work at that every day by cleaning up after Minnie and me ! I've been doing that to some degree for the past couple of weeks, so I just need to continue that while expanding to things like cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming etc.

After having the above "discussion" with myself I decided to get off my a$$ and do something about the horrendous draft under the kitchen sink, which leads to frozen water lines at least once per winter. I got the roll of insulation out of the pantry, cut 2 strips and then tried to figure out how I was going to do this. I started off trying to do it without getting down on the floor, but I realized pretty quickly that wasn't going to work. I had to get down on the floor. I ended up kneeling on my yoga cushion with my right knee and then getting into a basic sitting position. I also got the step stool and a dining room chair to help me get up. I stuffed all the insulation I could into the gap and the draft immediately disappeared ! The draft has been a problem since 2018 so this is the 7th winter ! I will say that it was not easy to get back up. It took me a few minutes to figure out how I was going to do it and then move my fat body around. I used the dining room chair and the counter to hoist myself up. I've been back to the sink several times just to stand there and NOT feel a cold draft across my feet and legs ! It helped that I had cleaned out the cabinet a couple weeks ago, so there was nothing in there except the fire extinguisher, dish soap and the rinse agent for the dishwasher. There was also a package of rat poison which I had left open, but it appears nothing has chewed on it. I had taken everything out of the cabinet and cleaned it out because there were signs of mouse activity, but there's been nothing since. That was another huge accomplishment. I'm so glad to have all that clutter out of there and the stuff that was under there is now more accessible via a large tub in the pantry and the plastic drawers in the laundry room. Hopefully now the kitchen will be a bit warmer and maybe the heat won't have to work quite so hard. The main reason I did this was because they are predicting lows of 5-6 degrees for Saturday and Sunday night. That's close enough to zero to worry about pipes freezing. Fingers crossed that my efforts are a success !

I mentioned in yesterday's blog that I bought the stuff to make pizza and I had that for lunch today. My God .. it is so good ! I will miss it when January 1 rolls around. I bought 2 packages of crusts, so that is 6 pizza's. I may have sauce, pepperoni or cheese left over but I can use those items in moderation until they're gone.

Yesterday I finally added my bank account to my Venmo and today I requested transfer of the $470 balance to my checking account. There is so much fraud out there I didn't want to leave that money sitting there indefinitely.

I'm glad I opted not to go out and shop today, as we did get a couple inches of snow and roads may have been slippery. I thought about waiting until Monday to shop, since it's going to be warmer, but I may do it on Sunday. I'm not sure it's a good idea to wait until the last possible day to get everything done. Plus, I want to try making some Italian biscuit cookies, similar to the one Aunt Ann used to make. I don't have all the ingredients, so I need to go the store before I can make them. Alyssa makes them now but they don't share them outside their own family. I'm ok with that as I'm not really impressed with her baking skills. You have to be very precise with your ingredients when you bake and I'm not sure she is. Whatever ! I will make my own and if they're good I will bring a few on Christmas day for everyone to try. I need to get a solid list together of everything I need to do, such as where I need to go and what I need to get. If the snow sticks around we'll have a white Christmas, which is always nice, but I'm glad we're not facing any major storms !

I spent the afternoon scrolling my phone and watching YouTube. I had a meatloaf sandwich for dinner since I had pizza for lunch. I finished the jar of pickles that I've had for quite some time and also opened a bag of the seasoned pretzels I like. I haven't bought them in quite a while but I happened to see them at Walmart the other day. I bought 2 bags as a treat. I also had a 1911 hard cider. My hard cider is several years old so I'm working on drinking them. I also have a ton of wine I need to drink. I don't want to have alcohol every day and it's not something I feel like having every day. I'm not buying any alcohol until I've consumed everything I currently have.

It's not even 7:30 and I'm ready to go to bed ! I guess I am getting old. The most amazing thing is that I am sitting here with an outside temp of 24 degrees and a thermostat set at 68 and I am comfortable in my flannel nightgown with a blanket over my bare legs. Knock on wood, my heating system is doing an amazing job this season. It will have to work harder this weekend but I'm hoping plugging the source of cold air under the sink helps a bit ! It may struggle to keep the upstairs at 65 but I have space heaters available if needed. If I can get through the winter with no frozen pipes or heat outages, I will be incredibly happy and grateful. It is so amazing to stand at the kitchen sink and not feel that cold draft over my feet. It is so worth the time spent and the little bit of discomfort I felt. The discomfort illustrates another good reason to get this weight off. I can't be living on Tylenol every day to combat the hip & knee pain. I didn't need it last night so that was a good thing.

Temps are supposed to fall into the teens by 8 am tomorrow and then continue to fall until it hits the low of 5 tomorrow night. The high for Sunday is only 14 with a forecast low of 6 for Sunday night. By Monday we'll be back to low 30's during the day and low 20's during the night. I can manage the cold, it's the snow storms I don't like. Since Christmas and New Year's are on Wednesday this year there won't be any rock and roll bingo for the next 2 weeks. There will also be a pause in February/March when Kim & Joe go to Florida for several weeks.

I've given some thought to restarting Nutrisystem and my exercise program. I'm excited at the prospect of getting back to it ! I feel like I've been adrift for so long. I started regaining the weight long before mom passed away but I think to some degree I completely gave up once she was gone. I carry a lot of guilt about her passing but she chose to end her life. She was not able to eat because the stroke paralyzed her left side and made it difficult to swallow. She also wouldn't participate in physical therapy to try and regain her mobility. She really just gave up. I didn't visit her much as I was working and driving to the nursing home after 5 pm was out as their visiting hours ended at 7. That only left weekends. The last time I saw her I told her I loved her as I was leaving and her response was "no you don't". That just breaks my heart, but I know she was having a hard time accepting what had happened. Who wouldn't ? She went from planning a trip to the casino (the stroke happened on a Saturday) to being in the hospital and then dumped in a nursing home. Michelle was making arrangements to move her to her house when she passed. Since mom wouldn't eat she was basically starving to death. They did talk to her about a feeding tube and mom refused. We all agreed in the end that mom was not a strong person and she never had any fight in her. She wasn't going to fight to regain her mobility. I did love her but I should have spent more time with her on the weekends since everyone else was visiting her during the week. I was selfish and my avoidant personality sent me into flight mode. I didn't want to face what was happening any more than mom did. That Saturday she told me I didn't love her I left the nursing home and headed to the casino. Not exactly a proud moment. Mom had her stroke on July 9 and passed on August 8. We spent 4th of July at Rich & Barb's that year and who knew that would be out last gathering with mom. We had a great day, so that's an amazing memory. I have a couple photo's of mom from that day. She was fine, so that stroke came out of nowhere. I just hope she and dad are together and happy in Heaven. I know I'll see them again some day. Mom was 82 when she passed so I hope I have at least 20 more good years ! I won't if I don't get this weight off, so that's an added incentive to address this right now. I only went to the casino by myself a couple times before giving it up for good. It just wasn't the same and I was so lonely. I'm glad I gave it up, considering I lost my job in May. How much money would I have spent between August 2022 and May 2024 !

I didn't intend to rehash that story but some days I think about what might have been. I've always said things happen for a reason. Thanks to my mom's passing I was able to put siding on my house without going into debt and I have enough money in the bank to survive for well over a year after losing my job. Some of the money is from the settlement I got when I was hit by the car in 2017. Some is from my salary, bonus and tax refunds. I also got over $20k in severance payments. However, more than half is my inheritance from mom. I hope she knows how grateful I am. I do still wish she was here. She'd be 84 now and she'd be so excited by the expansions that are in progress at Turning Stone and Point Place. Who knows, maybe she sent me that windfall on Wednesday !

Life could be so much worse. I have much to be grateful for and sitting around all day feeling sorry for myself is stupid. Yeah, it's winter and it's a horrible time to try and find motivation but I have to do it. I have 11 more days to feel sorry for myself, eat what I want and plan for the start of yet another wellness journey. I feel like I'm kind of at a crossroads. If I can't do this, what is the point of continuing to spend $244 a month on Nutrisystem and $15 a month on iFit. I guess January 1 is going to be my "Come To Jesus" meeting with myself. 

As I mentioned earlier, this blog will come to an end on 12-31-24. I had some success with losing weight and starting to exercise, but I ultimately failed. I can't have another year of failure. I will not have another year of failure. I can and I will do this !

Enough snow fell today to cover the ground and a very fine light snow is falling now. It's 8:36 pm and I'm going to have my evening snack and then go to bed. I have been awake since 5:30, so that explains why I'm tired. Goal for tomorrow is a morning shower and clean sheets on the bed ! I may also do some laundry and wash the last couple of dishes that are sitting on the stove.