We'll Always Have the File Room

Ah Life, you crazy unpredictable bastard.
Just when I am posting about how my new schedule at work is going really well, the powers that be decide it's time to pull that carpet out from under me and Whoosh!, it's gone.
I went into work today feeling quite plucky, ready to get this ridiculous File Room project in order and to grab this new position by the horns and go all out like some sort of Organization Rock Star. Would I let the fact that a trained chimp could do this job bother me? No! Would the endless cardboard paper cuts and heavy lifting get me down? Absolutely not! Would I stand in the middle of the file room surrounded by boxes of crap and just stare at them, hoping to work a little Mary Poppins magic on them? Okay, yes, I did do that.
No sooner than I arrived, though, did my day start to go a bit tits up. Because the laser in our laser printer is broken, all print jobs had to be sent through the Print Shop in the basement. Upon taking a trip down there, I ran into the girl who covered for me while I was away for surgery over the summer. She totally surprised me by telling me how awful the girls I work with are and how they had "really nasty things" to say about me "every 2nd day". Was I shocked and appalled that the girls who I hear gossiping and bitching about people on a daily basis could say something about Perfect Me? No, but it still hurts to hear it from someone and confirm that you're not just paranoid - they really are talking about you. The silver lining was that while one my colleagues who shall remain nameless was making up totally lies about me, this woman who didn't know me from Adam thought it all sounded a bit suspect and when she did a little digging discovered that I wasn't in fact incompetent or lazy and that this aforementioned colleague is simply an immature high school bully who has spent a little too much time gossiping and not enough time being a grown up.
Cut to my first break of the day and my attempt at eating a healthy number of calories per day while sticking to a tight budget. I had a non fat yogurt, which was delicious but the Weight Watchers muffin I brought was a big Zero. I wouldn't recommend these store bought muffins at all - although they get high points in convenience, they are sickly sweet and have an artificial-y taste to them. Next time, I will bake my own.
I went back to work, imagining all the ways I could deal with my Gossip Girl colleague... my favourite of which was approaching her cubicle and asking in a very polite voice if she would be able to explain to me why she is such a heinous bitch. I, of course, went another direction and was simply very nice to her. I hope you really can kill a person with kindness because my confrontational skills are sorely lacking.
Lunch was leftover casserole that I brought from home and was pretty good and I drank my weight in water throughout the day, so good for me. *pat on the back*
The afternoon started with an email from my union rep, requesting my presence at a meeting with HR. Oh joy. So... insurance has come back, denied my claim for benefit (shocking, I know) and so I have until the end of the week to have my Dr appeal it (which he will) or I have to go immediately back to Full time, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Then I have to choose between my new job (See: Trained Chimp) or my old job (See: Working directly with Heinous Bitch). A real Sophie's choice, I know.
So I come home, thinking the day was stressful enough to warrant eating my weight in chocolate and ice cream... but I did not. I even had to stop at the store on the way home that was right next to a Starbucks and, though tempted to go in and get a big calorific frapp, I went home and ate an orange.
Some lovely girls came to my house to watch the season finale of "Super Fake Love Show" (Aka, The Bachelor) and we had sushi for dinner and a wee bit of wine. It was likely not the very BEST choice, but I know I could have done a lot worse.
Now said sushi and wine is churning around in my stomach and, despite the fact that it is nearly 4 AM, I am wide awake and dining on Ginger tea and some tums. Ah, the good life.

Still Alive, Still Overweight, Still a Procrastinator

Okay, here’s the deal: I’m not so good at following through. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a flake, I am generally on time and haven’t made a habit of breaking commitments with other people but when it comes to commitments to myself... Not so great. Not so good at all, actually.
I have my blogger page listed in my favourites and every time I see it, I feel a little pang of guilt because I know I should be updating here every day... or at least every week but I have been radio silent for quite some time. The other day, however, my facebook pal reminded me of my blog (thanks Emily!) and so here I am... with my tail between my legs.

All the excuses I have for not updating the blog, for not sticking to my diet plan, my exercise plan or... well, anything... are pretty standard. If you do any research on weight loss, you start to learn that there really are very few unique stories. Most people fall into the same traps, the same patterns and bad habits and I am just one of the many. That’s not supposed to be a grab for pity, it just makes it equally understandable and frustrating because it’s like, “I want to lose weight, but keep trying and failing” and the answer is: “Join the club”.

So here’s the good news: I haven’t gained back the weight I lost on the first week of the detox. I think I got a little too cocky with my first week’s success, though, because I kept thinking: “If I only have to lose a pound a week, I am ahead of the game and don’t have to worry about.” Stupid, stupid. Here’s the other good news: The weight I did lose was with very minimal exercise. To me, that means that if I can get my ass in gear for exercising I will be more successful.

Here’s the bad news: I hate exercising. I can’t even pretend that I like yoga and playing tennis and making an idiot out of myself at aerobics. It’s just not my bag. I think I can make myself do it... but let’s be clear: I will not be “super pumped”. I will schlep my extra 50+ pounds to the gym and work around my bouncy boobs and extra padding, but it will not feel good. Not for a while, anyway. Everything is just so much harder when you are carrying around an Olsen Twin on your back (and front).

The rest of my life has been a bit of a gong show lately. I have decided that I am living in one of two situations: 1) I have horrible luck and bad things happen to and around me on a pretty constant basis or 2) I have the coping skills of a teething 2 year old. I’ve decided not to speculate too much on which one of those is correct because that will just lead to long, self-deprecating mid-twenties crises and a giant Pity Party that won’t help anything.
Here’s a bit of a run down on what you’ve missed on “Stephanie TV” since I disappeared:
- My stomach started to get a lot more stable once the anti-biotics and everything were done, but has since taken to randomly flaring up every couple of days for reasons I can’t quite figure out.
- My job has finally agreed to let me go down to 3 days a week, but only temporarily and only by switching my actual position. Although I make the same hourly wage, I consider it a big “step down” in terms of job responsibilities. Considering I was bored to tears before, I am now driving myself insane. Fewer days at work means less stress for me but also less money for us, which is never a good thing.
- Adrian (who, by the way, has done incredibly well and lost about 15 lbs and has been exercising really regularly) is at a pretty major cross roads for his career and instead of being happy about the new options he is being given (including one with a significant pay raise and expense account), he is just getting super stressed. Super stressed hubby = Incredibly grumpy hubby = very stressful home life.
- Our home renovations for the flood we had in November have finally completed “Phase 1”, but it has been a huge pain in my ass for the last 6 weeks. It also means that now we have to cough up $1,000 to our insurance company to replace our floors for “Phase 2”. It also means we finally get our kitchen back, which has been unusable for a lot of the past couple of months. Yet another excuse I have been using for not sticking to my meal plans, etc.
- I switched my anxiety medication to one at a higher dose which seems to be helping a little, but it was a tough transition and made me feel really shite for a while. It’s better now, but does leave me with the worst taste in my mouth pretty much all the time. I am hoping that this new one doesn’t have any negative impact on my weight loss – I think it is pretty rare that it causes major issues but with my luck you never know!
- The other big possibility is that Adrian may join the RCMP and if he does, will be gone for 6 months and take a significant pay cut. Since we don’t know what’s happening, it is always playing on my mind. If we are BOTH making less money, it’s gonna be really hard to get the bills paid and our house assessment has really gone down this year.

So that’s the big stuff that’s been happening and to say I’ve been feeling a wee bit stressed would be a ridiculous understatement. Stress = Not good for weight loss. Well, Stress = Not good for anything - Especially when you have a pretty considerable anxiety disorder.
I feel like Adrian is at this really definite cross roads in terms of his career and it’s going to really affect what the next several years of our lives will look like. It will determine a lot of whether or not I can go back to school like I want to, when we can afford to buy a proper house, when we can try to start a family, what our income will look like for extra things like holidays to see his family, etc. It is a lot of “wait and see”ing at this point, which I have never been very good at.

The bottom line, though, is that I know it is easy to get caught up in all the drama that might be going on around you but that your health really does have to take priority. For me, this includes the other bombs my body tends to drop on me but I know that it also includes my weight. I know that if I DO want to start a family soon and do all these other things, I HAVE to get some weight off first. I just wish I knew how to focus in on that and make it happen.

Now that I am off Tuesdays and Thursdays, I am thinking it would be a good day to “schedule” in sessions at the gym. I am already paying the membership, I might as well go! It also gives me a day during the week to go out and get groceries without the long line-ups (well, at Costco anyway) and have more time to prepare/cook with an actual meal plan. That’s what I am hoping for, anyway. Tomorrow is the start of a new week, so I guess we’ll just see how it goes!

Workin' 9-5: What a way to earn a livin'

Tomorrow marks my return to work after being off for the better part of the last 2 weeks because of this infection I've had that's made me so sick.
I am always apprehensive about going back to work after having a period of time off due to illness, but I feel especially anxious about it this time because of the length of time I was away. I am also especially disappointed because, as I noted here on this blog, one of my goals for this New Year was to miss less work due to illness. The thing that poses me the biggest problem is the way it affects my relationships with the people I work with. Unfortunately, there are some bad apples in my fruit basket of colleagues and some rumours of whether or not I am a big ol' faker have been passed around. Knowing that this is the impression the people I spend more time with than my own family have of me is enough to make me never want to show up to work again because, as much as I tell myself that they can jump up their own asses, I can't help but care what other people think of me.
When you've had problems with your health the way I have you start to recognise that there are certain consequences that are going to come along with that. It definitely limits my life in far more ways than just work and I have lost friends and created strained relationships with people in my family because of it. My integrity, however, has never been called into question the way it has at my current position. It doesn't seem to matter how many times my various doctors can provide the information they ask for, they want more and more proof that I'm not staying home to watch day time TV or taking mini holidays. I wish I knew how to seperate myself from it but the truth is that it does hurt my feelings and make me feel a very definite way about some of the people I work with.
I have long suspected that I am not the type of person who is cut out to work Monday-Friday, 9-5 but that it what I have been doing for the last several years. I'd really love to be able to find a job where I could work fewer days and go to school so I could actually (finally!) finish my degree and move on to a career that I actually enjoy. I am always searching for work I can do for fewer days, do partly or entirely from home or have a more flexible schedule but there just isn't very much out there at the moment.
Until I find my dream job, though, I am back to the office. Cubicle, here I come!