Way Back in August

In real life I’ve been back at work for a little over a week and it’s pretty taxing on me.  So I’m just gonna go back to August and document some fun things that I haven’t had a chance to blog about. 

First, a word from Noodle.  “I love to lay on paper.  It’s my favorite.  I do this every day while my catmom works out.”

I ate a lot of good food while on leave.  Some cooked at home.  Some dining out.  If I hadn’t been working out every day, I would have gained a lot of weight.

On Sunday 8/20 we went to Lolita’s Mexican for lunch.  If you don’t get there by noon you will have long lines to order and almost no seats.  That’s what happened to us.  But it was worth it!

On Saturday 8/26 we checked out Westroot Tavern for lunch.  It was a new-to-us place.  It was pretty good but expensive for what it was.  Fancy bar food!  We got the roasted Brussels sprouts with pork belly and it was really good but really oily.

I got ahi tuna salad and it was just meh.  Plus it was tiny.

Todd got fish & chips and it was ok.  He said it wasn’t salty enough.  So overall we won’t be back on a regular basis.

On Sunday 8/27 Todd went swimming in Del Mar with the SD Tri Club.  He got to wear his new wetsuit for the first time!  He had a wetsuit that he wore for years, but it finally broke down.

After that we went to lunch at Kappa Sushi, one of our favorite Japanese places around here.

We had an early dinner at Pho Hoang Express.  Then we went to Bernardo Winery for the Ira B Liss big band concert.  We do this every year and it’s always such fun!

After we got back home, it was time for the Game of Thrones season 7 finale!  I really enjoyed season 7.  Now we are watching season 6 again every Sunday night so we could go back and listen to the recap podcasts.  Long wait till season 8!

Todd took Monday 8/28 off so we went to lunch at Liberty Public Market.  We had sausage sandwiches from Mastiff.

After that we shared two small scoops of ice cream from Scoops by Moo Time.  One was Banana Nutella and the other Chocolate Pomegranate. 

And now, a word from Noodle.  “I loved to sleep in this cat bed by the window during my catmom’s leave from work.  I just wanted to be close to her, next to the recliner.”

Thursday 8/31 was the kickoff game for the Ohio State Buckeyes football season!  We invited our friends Anne & Gilbert over for dinner and the game.  Todd made homemade carne asada, which set off the smoke alarm when he was cooking it.  But man, was it good.  Anne & Gilbert brought jalapeno corn bread and it was divine.

Group selfie during the game!

Todd made carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for dessert.  So good!

The Buckeyes beat Indiana 49-21, pulling away in the second half.  It was a great way to kick off the college football season!  The first college football Saturday was 9/2, so of course Todd was prepared for it!

I haven’t been sleeping as well since going back to work.  I’ve been still working out every day though, so at least I’ve kept that going.  I’ll be back in a couple of days with more September recaps.  Talk to you soon!

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Before I Went Back To Work

(This post is postdated back to 9/24, the day before I went back to work.  Just so most posts are somewhat chronological on the blog.)

Ah, so much fun happened in September before I went back to work.  I guess I should say that we made the fun happen, knowing full well that my time of freedom was limited and the end of my leave was near.

On Saturday 9/2 we tried out the new Mendocino Farms in Del Mar for lunch.  We both got salads.  I got the chicken prosciutto salad.  It was huge and I had to take some home.

Todd got this other salad.  (I don’t remember the name, LOL.)

This place is know for their salads and sandwiches.  We saw some other people’s food and everything looked good and fresh.

On Sunday 9/3, after Todd went swimming in the ocean with the Tri Club, we went out to lunch at Curry & More.  Love this place!  I think we went there three times during my leave!

And now, an interlude from Noodle… I love sitting on my catdad when he’s using his laptop in his recliner.  Look at me, king of the house.

On Monday 9/4 (Labor Day) we went out to lunch at URBN Pizza.  It’s New Haven style pizza and we really like it.  We had gone there several times before, including for Todd’s birthday this past February.

We also had the roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon.  Yum!

Afterwards we went to Extraordinary Desserts and shared Todd’s favorite cake there, the Trouffe Framboise, and a latte.  This was sort of to celebrate that I finished my 6-week workout program without missing any workouts.  (Yea I know you’re not supposed to reward yourself with food.  I.DON’T.CARE.)

On Tuesday 9/5, I had lunch with my friend Lauren at BJ’s.  It was a lot of fun!  We chatted and caught up on life.

And now, a word from Noodle.  I found this red chair to sleep in, and it was so comfy!  Of course, everything in the house is MINE, so I don’t know why I haven’t slept here in so long.

Also, when catdad comes home from swimming in the ocean, and puts his towel on the ground, it’s for me to sleep on too.

On Thursday 9/7, I met my friend Anne for lunch at Tofu House. 

It was her first time there and she liked it!  We had a lot of fun chatting about our jobs, work life, etc. 

On Tuesday 9/12, I had lunch with a bunch of women friends from work.  We went to Pailin Thai.  It was so much fun hanging out with them.  We chatted about work and what’s going on with each of them.  I’m blessed to have friends from work.

On the same day, right after lunch, I got a text from my manager at work.  I had asked to extend my leave to mid-October.  At first he had said he was supportive.  But two people who were covering for me at work could no longer do it, and they were too overwhelmed.  He said, “If your goal was to make me appreciate you more, I think you have achieved that.”  He offered me a free (off the books) week off in mid-October, if I went back to work on 9/25 and worked the three weeks for quarter-end and the forecasting cycle.  I reluctantly agreed, but I was pretty bummed.

I wrote an Ode To My Shorts on Facebook on Monday 9/18: 

This is the last week of my leave from work. I have agreed to return to work next Monday. This was the first summer in 25 years that I was able to wear shorts all day every day. What a glorious summer it was! I bought a few pairs of shorts to go to Hawaii in April. Little did I know that they would be all I would wear all summer. I loved my Summer of Shorts! I'm sad to return to work next week, but grateful that I had the time of my life the last two months!

Thank you shorts, for the best summer of my life!

Todd made carrot cake to bring to his work book club, so I was the beneficiary of carrot cake for breakfast on 9/21.

 

Noodle has some words to say.  I loved the summer of having a SAHCM (Stay At Home Cat Mom).  It was so great.  I had company at home, and I loved getting snacks and treats during the day.  I also loved watching catmom workout every morning while playing in the papers behind her.

Also, the hoomans got a storage bench at the end of their bed.  They put a towel there and I knew it was a place for me to sleep right away.  That first night I spent the whole night sleeping there.  And then the entire morning the next day!  I only took a break to eat!

On Friday 9/22, I got a pink color refresh by Mel at Ahura Salon.  I wanted to have super-pink hair for returning to work!  (But I still refuse to cover my grown-out grays on top!)

On the same day, Todd’s new iphone 8 Plus came!  He used his iphone 6 for three years and it was starting to be unreliable (rebooting by itself, not charging correctly, etc.), so it was time.  I am still using my iphone 6 because it’s perfectly good, and I’m not paying for a new phone until it breaks!  Todd was really excited though.  And the two camera lenses with optical zoom and portrait mode is pretty spectacular.

On this same Friday Todd came home from work and told me the tremendous good news that he had a meeting with his manager at 3:30 that day and she told him he got his promotion!  It is something we’ve been waiting 10 months for!  I loved hearing this good news three days before I myself headed back to work. 

On Saturday 9/23 we went to Tofu House for dinner.  I just went with Anne, but I love it so we went again.

I finished reading the first Harry Potter book.  (I tried reading it 20 years ago in 1997 but it didn’t take.)  Then we rented the movie off Amazon and watched it on Sat 9/23. 

We spent my last day of freedom (Sunday 9/24) at the beach.  It was a great way to end my leave from work!  It was so clear and the sky was so blue.  Sunny and 75 degrees is my favorite. 

Afterwards we had lunch at Bongiornos. 

Then we had our Sunday night ritual of watching Game of Thrones.  We went back to re-watch Season 6.  Todd opened a bottle of his favorite Spanish wine Muga to celebrate his promotion, and we had some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

And then my 10 week leave of absence from work came to an end.

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Smile Because It Happened

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” – often attributed to Dr. Seuss

My 10 weeks of leave of absence from work is almost over.  On Monday I go back to work.  I wanted to extend it to mid-October, but they really wanted me back at work for quarter-end.  I feel so wistful today.  I can honest say that I’ve had the most amazing time the last 2.5 months.  The best time of my adult life.  I’m so grateful for the opportunity to take this leave from work.  I would highly recommend anyone to do it if they can.  It makes me look forward to the day that I can “retire” from work, hopefully in a few years!

I have a few more posts to document my life the last 2-3 weeks, but it may not happen until this weekend or next weekend.  However, I wanted to write a summary post of how I feel about my leave of absence from work, and also what I’ve learned during this time.

• Don’t put your life on hold because of work demands, stress, or pressure.  I was giving the best of myself during work time, and the rest of my life was getting the shaft.  I was exhausted when I got home, and vegged out the rest of the evening.  I felt like a big slug.  I was not socializing with friends as much, because it just felt like I didn’t have the energy.  With everything going on at work lately (layoffs, massive changes, etc), my work friends and I have come to the sad conclusion that the corporation/company that you work for doesn’t really care about you.  They can get rid of you in a hot second.  So to think that you would be rewarded for putting in a ton of extra effort and time is foolish.  This is a hard lesson for me, since I am Type A overachiever personality.  But it is something that I really had to learn for myself.  Working extra hard and putting the rest of my life on hold did not get me any rewards at work.  It will not happen again.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me!
• Exercising is a priority.  I exercised 6 days per week during my leave.  I will continue to do so after I go back to work.  I had forgotten how many benefits there are to exercising regularly.  I talked about why I was able to stick to regular exercising this time in this post.  My body felt so great when I moved it every day.  I really enjoyed the types of exercises I was doing.  My daily energy level improved so much.  And daily exercising improved my overall mood.  I’m so glad that I was able to totally reset my relationship with exercising, and was able to do it consistently almost every single day.  This was one of my intentions for my leave, and I did it.  I will continue to do it.
• Make time for friends and family.  Social support is everything.  Before my leave, I was not socializing with friends as much.  It just felt like it was a big effort, after I had already “shot my wad” during the week at work.  This was totally wrong.  During my leave I was able to schedule social time with a friend every week, if not twice a week.  I loved hanging out with them and chatting.  It really gave me a sense of social support, and that I matter and I am cared for.  I saw my dad and Shelly and hung out with them.  I made a trip to Dallas to see my sister and her family.  All this was precious to me.  I will continue to make time for friends and family. 
• Sleeping is a priority.  We often have the mentality that sleep is the time leftover after we do all our other things.  We are short-changing ourselves on something that’s vastly important for our health.  Staying up to watch TV, watch movies, read, surf the internet, etc is totally not worth it.  Sleep is when our bodies regenerate.  Lack of sleep is related to a host of health issues.  Instead of thinking of sleep as depriving ourselves of doing those other things we want to do, we should think of sleep as the ultimate “me time”.  During my leave I was able to reset my sleeping habits and got 7-9 hours of sleep regularly.  It really made a big difference in my overall well-being. 

I thought I was going to get more accomplished during my leave.  Things like house projects, purging, cleaning, organizing, etc.  But I hardly got those things done.  I’ve come to realize those are secondary to my primary intentions above.  I mean, I can hire people to do these secondary things, but only I myself can do the priority things above.  Those were absolutely up to me, and they were the most urgent things that I needed to change about myself.  So in that respect I feel very accomplished and awesome! 

I feel nothing but gratefulness that I was able to take 10 weeks off work.  Grateful to my manager for allowing it to happen, at great cost to him and my team.  Grateful to Todd for supporting me.  I  have never felt happier in my adult life.  I will do everything I can to carry this knowledge and these changes forward.  Onwards and upwards!

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Fitness Journey

Yesterday I finished my six week workout program Walk Strong 6 Week Total Transformation System without missing any workouts.  I worked out six days a week for six weeks!  I’m pretty excited to complete this program successfully, and I’ve already restarted the program today to do it for another six weeks. 

A little background on my fitness background and journey.  I started working out at the age of 27 (twenty years ago).  I was experiencing shoulder and back issues after working at my desk job for a few years.  I asked my father-in-law, who is a physician, about how I could combat those issues.  He told me that I need to strengthen my back and shoulders.  So I started going to my work gym to do weights, and gradually started walking and then running on the treadmill as well.  That has led to a lifetime of striving for fitness.  I have pretty much regularly worked out since then, with the exception of a few months here and there when I had fallen off the fitness wagon due to life circumstances.  I have run a marathon (26.2 miles), two half marathons (13.1 miles), and various other running races of shorter distances.  I have done workout programs such as Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, P90X, P90X3, T25, etc.  Over the last two years, I’ve also been avidly walking and trying to get my 10,000 steps in daily.  The months right before my leave of absence from work, I had fallen off the workout wagon and was not exercising regularly.  One of my main goals during my leave was to workout almost every day and to reset my fitness journey to take me to a good place.

I think my relationship with exercising is complicated.  I’m just now coming to a place of really understanding the purpose of exercising in my life.  For most of my life, I thought of exercising as a way to lose weight, or to maintain weight.  What I’ve found is that reason alone is not really enough to keep me exercising, because it sounded like a chore.  Plus, current research show that diet (what we eat and how much we eat) is MUCH more correlated with losing weight than exercise is.  I really had to dig deep and come up with “my reason why".  In the end, I had to reframe exercising as a priviledge, because I am worth it.  It cannot be something that I “have to” do.  It has to be something I “get to” do, and that I enjoy.  It has to be FUN.  And I like how good it feels to exercise my body.  How great I feel after I exercise.  And how motivated I am to keep going when the hill that was hard to walk up before now is a piece of cake.  I want to be a strong person as I get older, so that I can do all the functional things in life with ease.

I’ve been thinking about why I was able to complete the program successfully this time, and what I’ve learned from it.  I wanted to share with you, in case it resonates with any of you.  I’m really speaking from personal experience.  I understand that everyone is different, and there isn’t a perfect workout program for everyone. 

• My top priority in exercising is being consistent.  Being able to achieve results and changing my body is much more likely when I exercise on a consistent basis.  For me personally, this meant avoiding exercises that were too hard, too complicated, or too time-consuming.  This program told me what workout to do every day for six weeks.  It was only 30 minutes each day, which is not too time-consuming.  It was not too hard for me to do, yet challenging enough to feel like an accomplishment.  I have tried P90X before, but for me, it was too hard on my body, I couldn’t do the pushups and pullups, and it was too much time commitment.  All those things led me to fail before. 
• The amount of exercise time and level of exertion is important.  In the past, when I ran long distances for hours, or when I did workouts that were too hard, I felt depleted afterwards instead of energized.  I didn’t want to feel exhausted after exercising, so much so that I needed to take a nap.  I also didn’t want to exercise for too long and too hard, such that I end up eating everything in sight afterwards. 
• Exercising should make me feel happy, not frustrated or sad.  This program has a lot of fun elements to it, and I feel myself looking forward to certain days when I get to do my favorite workouts.  The key to consistency is finding something fun that I could enjoy and look forward to every day.  And I really feel that my daily mood has improved, as well as my sense of well-being.
• I need a workout program that worked my entire body, not just certain parts.  In the past when I concentrated too much on one type of workout, whether that was running or cardio or weights, I ended up being injured.  I really wanted to avoid overuse injuries this time, so that I could keep going every day and not be sidelined by injuring my body.  You can’t be consistent with exercising if you are injured or too sore.  The 10 workouts in this exercise program has cardio, strength, flexibility, high intensity interval training, and total body workouts.  These workouts make my entire body feel good and strong, and I haven’t been so sore that I can’t do the workouts every day.  The program has good variety and good rotation schedule so you’re never working the same body parts on back to back days.
• The program removed barriers to exercising for me.  In the past I wouldn’t exercise consistently, because it took too much time and motivation to plan out what exercises I should do each day and each week and each month.  I’m also not an expert on anatomy and exercise science, so any program I could come up with myself was probably not optimal anyways.  I like taking the guesswork out and having a program that tells me what to do each day.  It took away the mental stumbling block of “what workout should I do today”?

So what are my results and how do I feel about them?  What are my plans going forward? 

First off, I did not lose weight.  That is ok with me, since it was not my goal with this exercise program.  I did not change my diet during the first go at this 6 week program.  However, my body FEELS totally different.  My posture is way better.  I feel strong in my core, shoulders, back, and legs.  I have triceps now.  Walking up a hill is SO much easier.  My weight stayed the same, but I have lost a little bit of fat and my clothes fit better.  Overall, I just feel good in my body, which is a huge thing, when you think about it.  Often times as women, we have body image issues, or we emphasize LOOKING good.  But feeling good about your body and what it can do is MORE important and more awesome!  And probably longer lasting.

Going forward, I am starting the 6 week program over again.  But this time, I am going to try eating healthier and eating smaller portions to see if I can lose some more fat.  I don’t believe in cutting any foods out of my life.  Just eating sensibly and mindfully, and less sugar.  I’m excited to see where that takes me after this additional 6 weeks.  My biggest hurdle that I have to figure out is how to keep going with my exercising habits after I go back to work.  I can’t allow work to derail my success, so I need to figure out and remove barriers.  It was a lot easier to stick to a daily exercise program when I didn’t have to go to work! 

I hope that sharing my fitness journey and what I’ve learned is helpful to you.  I am constantly inspired by other people’s journeys, so I thought I should pay it forward and share mine, in case it is helpful to anyone else.  Just remember that everybody is different.  You have to find your own “why” and “how”. 

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