Posted on February 28, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Going MIA

I’m here, I’m here…and sitting in a mostly clean apartment! I’ve spent a good majority of this weekend working on cleaning and decluttering, and I’m happy to say that not only are my living room and dining room still clean, but now my kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom are as well. Whoo-hoo! Well worth staying mostly away from the Internet all week. Now to keep it up…constant cleaning takes up so much of my time that I’m curious about what I’ll have time for when I only have to clean for a few minute a day! I’ve already added some new blogs to my GoogleReader and picked out a couple of books to read…

Friday was only a partial day at work. I got there (not early like I’d planned, but on time!) and broke out my breakfast while reading e-mail. I mentioned earlier this week that since I started counting calories on workdays, I’ve been getting really, really hungry, but that I thought it was more related to how I was loading those calories, not to how many I was getting. So instead of eating a Liberte yogurt for breakfast and then having a snack later in the morning, I went ahead and had my yogurt along with a Pure cherry cashew bar.

And what do you know…it worked! I didn’t start getting hungry until around 11AM, when I was heading out to meet Jamie for a lunchtime walk.

My lunch was a giant salad topped with cheddar cheese and another piece of albacore topped with sour cream and seasoning. Oh, and cranberry-walnut-gorgonzola dressing.

I’m sure I must’ve grabbed something between lunch and taking Heath to the vet, or gotten something shortly thereafter, but I didn’t take a picture and I don’t have my food log with me (it’s such a long walk to the living room)…oh well.

Heath’s trip to the vet ended in him being muzzled while a tech held him down for his shots and so that the vet could look in his ear. I don’t know what’s with him, but the last couple of times  he’s gone to the vet he’s been very tense. I think he remembers the time I took him there to get his nails clipped, when he spazzed out big time. It’s so weird, because he’s so friendly to strangers normally. He wasn’t being aggressive, just cowardly.  The vet squatted down in the floor for five minutes and tried all manner of tricks to coax him over to her, and the most she could do was look in his eyes and pat his coat. And even that took some cajoling. He did lick her a couple of times, but she was trying to tell him that she was just going to look in his ears and it wasn’t going to hurt, and he was sitting sideways refusing to look at her, and I said, “Um, I think he doesn’t believe you.” And he didn’t.

Oh well. He’s on medicated eardrops twice a day for the next two weeks for his now-chronic ear-gunk situation. I had to buy more treats at the store to appease him…

Heath and I took a nap shortly after arriving home on Friday and didn’t get up ’til late…just in time to see Team USA win a medal in the short track relay. I reheated some of my soup from earlier this week, then watched My Sister’s Keeper, then went back to bed…

…then got back up, got on my exercise bike for 30 minutes, did some cleaning, wrote out a grocery list, ate more soup, and went to the store. Then I came back from the store and took Heath on a 30 minute jog, then rested for about 5 minutes after I got back and went immediately into the 30 Day Shred, since I hadn’t done it Friday night. Whew!

My reward for all this? Nachos…

MMMMMM.

Did some more cleaning afterward, and admired this week’s flowers–Asiatic lilies!

All the bouquets at Harris Teeter were $4 this week, so I decided to go for the lilies. Almost got the sunflowers, but there were only three  to a bunch and I figured hey, why not get the most bang for my buck…

I went to sleep early again, then woke up midmorning and tried to watch Twilight. Unfortunately, the DVD was so scratched that it wouldn’t play (something that rarely happens with my Netflix choices, but does happen on occasion), so I decided to check out what was available on Netflix’s instant services. And that’s how I wound up staying up until 5:30AM watching Supersize Me.

I went back to bed after that, slept in, then decided to make the tasty-sounding soup my mom linked me to yesterday. She was very clear that if I enjoyed this soup, I had to give her credit on the blog for pointing it out to me, so…here you go, mom.

Sorry for the poor picture–it doesn’t do the soup justice, but it’s hard to get a good picture when there’s steam rolling off your food. This is sausage, spinach, and lentil soup–crazy easy to make and crazy tasty, too. Just cook up a pound of Italian pork sausage, then add six cups of water, 16 oz of salsa, a whole chopped up onion, a bag of spinach, and a cup and a quarter of dried lentils, cook for about 30 minutes until the lentils are done, and you have awesome soup. So awesome that my first act upon finishing my bowl was to scoop some into a jar to take with me for lunch tomorrow.

After that, I set about cleaning some more. I remembered something I heard on Hoarders about there not being a point in keeping sentimental things if they’re buried where you can’t even find them, so I decided to stick every picture I found on the wall in my hallway. It needed some color, anyway.

Most of them are of dogs, mostly of Heath…I need to order some more prints off Snapfish so I have more recent photos!

I also found this picture of me at my highest weight from the summer of 2004. We went on a cruise and I was being menaced by a pirate at the dinner table!

I’m not sure how much I weighed in this picture, but it was around 170 or 175. Around this time I was wearing size 16 jeans and was determined not to go any higher than that…and I didn’t, but I didn’t go any lower for another year or two, either. Since I had an empty nail in the wall in my kitchen, I decided to hang this up there as a reminder of how far I’ve come!

This is me today, getting ready to take Heath for an afternoon walk.

151 lbs and trending downward…whoo-hoo!

Before we went for our walk, I decided to make some chocolate peanut butter cups! I made full-sized ones this time. They’re crazy simple to make…

…even simpler if you forget to put the brown sugar in like I did. Didn’t affect the taste much at all, though–I’ll probably leave it out in the future.

After we got back from our walk I had to taste test one.

I tried to spread out the chocolate on the tops before I put them in the fridge, but to no avail. I was worried they’d be too peanut buttery because it looked like there was very little chocolate…

…and then I discovered that the chocolate had just sunk down into the middle. Awesome.

A while later it was dinner time, so I served myself up a plate of various goodies on my nice clean bar!

Steamed salmon and asparagus, a plum, some co-jack cheese, and carrots and tomatoes with Greek yogurt dip.

Pretty and nommy. And I ate it on my nice clean dining room table, while the US/Canada hockey game played.

Now Heath and I are both winding down for the evening…

Unfortunately, my downstairs neighbor (who is hardly ever home when I’m home) has been here all day, and I won’t do my exercise DVD when I know that someone is in the apartment below me. So I’m skipping that for this evening and will try to fit it in tomorrow along with my run. For now, I’m going to go finish putting together my breakfast, lunch, and snacks for tomorrow, and then I think that I will do something relaxing, like read a book while enjoying the present cleanliness of my apartment…

Posted on February 25, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Stealth Snow

I let myself sleep in today. I stepped outside with Heath at about 7:45AM and there was SNOW. An inch or so of it, all over my steps and the grass! It was the big fluffy stuff that doesn’t stick to the roads, but it sure caused a lot of confusion among drivers by sticking to road signs. I kept getting stuck behind people who didn’t know where they were going because they couldn’t see how to get there.

Which just goes to show–I should’ve gotten up when my alarm went off the first time this morning…

Today was my weigh-in day for my fitness chore chart, and I’m happy to say that I’m down to 151.2 lbs! Last Thursday I was 153.8 lbs, and I feel that number was a little inflated due to my overindulgence during Mardi Gras (when people tend to dump unhealthy food in the office break area). However, this is the lowest number I’ve seen on the scale in a long time, which means I did indeed lose something. Go me!

This week, I’m keeping pretty much the same goals on my fitness chart as last week, with a couple of modifications. I bumped the number of days I’m going to try to ride my recumbent bike down to four, because I only did it three times last week when I was shooting for five days. I upped the number of days I’m going to try to get up the first time my alarm goes off to four days a week, and since I didn’t do that this morning I can’t miss a day now. I combined two of my nutrition goals–packing a healthy lunch for work the evening before and counting calories until 3PM–because on days that I work I don’t eat at home before dinnertime, so it’s much more efficient to just pack everything I’m going to eat before 3PM into my bag and count up the calories then instead of worrying about it as I go. To replace the missing goal, I made a goal to clean my apartment for 15 minutes every day. (Did some heavy duty work on the kitchen tonight–way over 15 minutes! No rolling cleaning minutes, though…).

I had an apple crumble Liberte yogurt this morning for breakfast–I think this might be my new favorite! This isn’t your typical yogurt–it doesn’t have artificial flavoring and HFCS and only kind of taste like the flavor it says it does. This stuff is all natural–it says it’s apple crumble, and it’s got apples and raisins and cinnamon in it to prove it!

Midmorning snack was a lemon Larabar. I had to eat this around 10AM even though I ate my breakfast at 9AM because I was ravenous–I don’t know why I’m suddenly so hungry all the time again now that I’m counting calories. I’m not going to try upping my calories yet, but I am going to experiment with shifting the balance so I’m eating more in the morning to fuel me throughout the day to see if that helps. That’s going to be hard–I hate eating in the mornings…

Went for a walk during lunch. Came back and immediately dug into my lunch, then realized I hadn’t taken a picture of it. It was the leftover half of last night’s chicken and mushrooms and rice.

Before Chinese class I snacked on this…

A sammich made of wheat-free (gluten-free, even) graham-style crackers and all natural chunky peanut butter. These crackers are good.

After Chinese class, I downed some carrots and roasted red pepper hummus.

And after work and some housecleaning, I ate dinner…

Two tomatoes, a broccoli crown sprinkled with garden salad seasoning, and a piece of tuna that I baked covered in a mixture of sour cream, dill, and Ozark seasoning. Super tastiness all around.

Well, I am tired and am going to try to get to work early tomorrow, because I’m leaving at 1PM–Heath has a vet appointment in the afternoon. Won’t that be fun…?

Posted on February 24, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Winter Just Wasn’t My Season…

No snow so far, but the beautiful, warm weekend is long gone–it’s been cold and drizzly out there all day. A climatologist says this is the sixth coldest winter on record in North Carolina and that the spring will be cooler and wetter than normal because of El Nino. Seems it hasn’t been this cold in NC since 1980. That was before my time…

Last night I found a use for one of the glass jars that always seem to find a way into my cabinet…

They make transporting soup to work easy!

I got up when my alarm went off at 5:30AM this morning. Then I reset it for 6:30AM and got back in bed. Then I got back out of bed because I couldn’t bring myself to go back to sleep when I was doing so well with getting up early.

Had a strawberry Liberte yogurt for breakfast, chased by a Pure brownie bar for a mid-morning snack.

I think I must have overestimated the calories in my soup…

I guessed it probably had around 300. I knew I was shooting a little high, but I ended up crazy hungry in the afternoon and broke into one of the Larabars I bought at the drug store during my lunch break.

Maybe I need to be eating more than 1600 calories if I’m going to exercise every day? I’ve been checking my GoWear Fit and even on Monday when I ran and took a walk during lunch I still hadn’t burned much over 2200 calories by 8PM, so you’d think I’d be okay at 1600. Hmm…

When I got home from work, I found a heavy box waiting for me in the mail room.

My spices arrived! I spent $60 on spices at Penzeys, plus shipping, but it’s worth it to get good spices from a friendly company.

Among the jars and bags in my box were a small jar of Galena Street Chicken & Rib Rub and a bag of Chip & Dip Seasoning. I broke into both for dinner.

I had strawberries and cream cheese dip (which had been hiding out in my lunch bag for a couple of days and needed to be eaten), carrots and dip made with the chip and dip seasoning and Greek yogurt, and a half of a chicken breast with the Galena Street seasoning and some mushrooms. A most delicious dinner.

Unfortunately, it took a really long time to cook. So long that I decided to start cleaning my living room, dining room, and hallway, which had grown progressively more and more cluttered since their last cleaning. At some point I realized that even though I was supposed to run tonight, it was better for me to skip it and keep cleaning. I rarely get into a zone where I can clean for hours at a time (which I did tonight, with dinner intermingled), it was cold and rainy outside, and frankly, I’m just tired. I have Thursday scheduled as my rest day, but maybe I should have made it Wednesday…in any case, this won’t mess up my fitness chore chart standings–the week ends tonight for me and I have 24 stickers, so after I pack my lunch bag for tomorrow I’ll have the 25 I needed to reach my goal for this week. I need to write down my goals for next week tonight and put them up on my door…

Speaking of the door: I was trying to get a picture of the huge, muddy, bright orange spot on my carpet that is right in front of the door, but it wouldn’t show up in the picture. Instead, I got a white-eyed Heath licking his nose. Great.

Here are some pictures of my shiny clean dining room and living room!

Tomorrow morning when my jeans are dry I’ll put the drying rack away, and I’ll also take out the recycling next to the door and the bag of trash hanging off of it.

My “inbox” is on the stool, and the pile on the right side of the table is things that need to go with me to work in the morning.

Note that my kitchen area is barely visible in this picture, because it is one hot mess.

It’ll be so nice to come home to a nice clean living room tomorrow night!