Smoothie Day – Healing Journey Day 31

Journal:
I slept really good last night. However, morning still came too soon. I wasn’t really looking forward to today anyway because it meant I was flying back home in the evening. Oh well.

Because I had a blender in my hotel room, I was able to make datorade for breakfast (blended dates with water). Seriously, I love datorade but this was just not as good. I really think these deglet dates are not the sweet quality that I usually get in Canada. I’m looking forward to getting back to those dates.

Immediately after breakfast, we got ready and checked out of our hotel. We were on the hunt for a new winter jacket. However, most stores had hardly anything out as the weather was still t-shirt weather in Colorado, unlike the snow that had already fallen in Canada. So, I ended up jacket-less. However, my husband did buy me an electric orange juicer that I’m so excited about and some books Barnes & Noble. Educators get a discount and even though I’m a Canadian teacher, they still allowed me to sign up for their education program. So if you’re in education and you haven’t signed up for their education program, do it!

Now, lunch time came and I made the decision to eat one last time with my husband before I left. He even continuously offered to take me to the smoothie place, but I told him it will be awhile before I see him again, so I just wanted to sit down with him and eat one last time. So we went to the healthy, stir-fry place again: Genghis Grill.

You know, the difference of how I feel eating raw foods versus cooked foods is amazing. After eating the cooked foods, I felt like sleeping, with a heavy stomach again, and even a bit of that pre-headache feeling. It bizarres me. This is something I would expect from eating junk foods, but not cooked foods. My body is definitely ready to go back to all raw foods, particularly fruit for awhile.

For the last little bit of my time before my flight, my husband and I just sat and talked. I was flying from a smaller airport so it was easy to monitor the security lines and how long it would take.

Part of the reason I agreed to eat stir-fry was that I was only supposed to have 20 minutes between landing and flying again in Denver. It’s not a massive airport, but it is quite large and is often busy. So that meant that there would most likely not be any time at all to go to that smoothie place I had seen coming through last time. However, my flight arrived almost 20 minutes early and thankfully, that had given me enough time to go to the smoothie place.

The smoothie place was called Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli (I know… strange sounding place to find all-fruit smoothies). They had four smoothie options, but I chose the Summer Splash smoothie. In it, there was apple juice, strawberries, bananas and peaches. Oh my goodness. It was so good! I highly recommend it!

And that concluded my food for the day. I left a very hot, nice, t-shirt weather state and landed in a snow-covered, freezing province. By the time I landed, went through immigration and customs, retrieved my bag, waited for my ride and drove home, it was 11:00. I didn’t have my planning done for the next day (our flight had a tailwind again and we arrived 30 minutes early… not even long enough in the air to finish a movie! But, it was late and I needed sleep because as always, work comes early. So to bed I went, leaving tomorrow as an unpacking, cleaning, getting situated day.

Review of Symptoms:
-Tongue lightly coated.
-Digestion not as great (too much cooked food).
-Cooked food left me feeling heavy and tired with a touch of pre-headache.

Weight at the end of the day = 176.6 lbs (down 1.4 lbs from two days ago)

Total Calories = approx. 1784 (84% carbs, 8% fat, 8% protein… awesome macro ratio!)

Choosing Your Battles

Now, in many relationship advice books or forums, people will tell you to choose your battles. Of course, this comes in incredibly handy in relationships because, quite frankly, nobody is going to be the same as you. Especially when you live together, you are then trying to fit two lives into one and there will be many conflicting issues when two opinions are trying to melt into one.

However, my story doesn’t focus on a relationship per se. But it is about learning to deal with the small stuff, and only making a big deal over big things so that people have no way to argue back with you.

When my husband and I got our first apartment, it was in a “fixed” state. And what I mean by that is simply that the people before us were very rough on the place, having big parties and crazy enough to throw a couch off the deck into someone’s car below. Needless to say, they were kicked out, and all the stickers on the fan blades, the dirt and garbage throughout the place, and patch work here and there needed to be done. It wasn’t perfect when we got it, but it was our first place and that was all that mattered.

As time would go on, the lack of a screen door on our deck (the previous tenants had smashed that), had started wilting the corner of the door inwards. We mentioned it several times for almost a year, but it apparently wasn’t a big issue. We also had a screen missing in our bedroom window which was mentioned, but that never got fixed either. My husband wanted to stop paying our rent and be a little more forceful when it came to getting these simple repairs done, but I took the much gentler approach and said that we’ll just wait a little longer.

Now, as you can imagine, when those -40 winter days come, having an exposed corner of your door to the outside was a huge issue. When I could sit on my couch and see the snow outside on my deck through the one corner, that was an issue. Unfortunately nobody did anything about it. We kept being promised that something would happen, but it didn’t. And after a year and a half of being there, I decided that it was finally time to make a little noise. So I found the e-mail for the CEO of the rental company, thanked him for making cheaper places available and for having pet allowance (that a lot of places don’t), I simply explained to him our situation and reminded him how awful it was going to be on another -40 night. My door was fixed within 2 days. Now, I also had my fridge quit, and that was replaced right away. Had I complained and been more forceful about everything, I don’t think this would have been the case.

In my e-mail to the CEO, I also mentioned I was planning to move to another one of the company’s rental properties simply for being closer to work, and without asking, in apologizing for what we had been through, he waived our transition fee and got me an apartment rather quickly. I also had an ex-landlord of our current property (she was promoted higher in the company) call and offer any assistance in the transition I needed. Now think about that for a moment. I chose my battle. I didn’t battle every little thing. When you have lots of little incidences built up, people can see where you’re coming from over the bigger things and are usually more than willing to help you out.

Fast forward to our new place. In the year we’ve been here, we moved in with 2 broken sets of blinds (still never been replaced), a missing screen in our office window, the basement leaked every time it rained, our basement completely flooded twice, and just recently our tub quit draining. Now of course, my husband wants to take the same forceful approach because in reality, it is ridiculous. However, they did fairly quickly respond to the flooding, it took them about a year to fix the cracks in the basement, but they still did it, and it’s now taken them 5 days to fix our tub, plus I will have to call them back tomorrow because the piping from the tub is still dripping over our kitchen counter. But I haven’t made a big deal about any of it, and I choose not to because the more compliant you are over the small things, the more compliant they will usually be when it comes to something big.

So people, choose your battles. Don’t make a huge deal about everything or people will treat you as that “complainer”. But be patient with the small things, and you watch how much people will do what they can for you when it comes to a big thing.

Week 12 Day 3

I drove myself to work today. What a good feeling! I still got up at the regular time, but had so much more time to get things done and still get to work on time. I actually enjoy not feeling rushed in the morning!

The school day went well. I kept in all of my students during morning recess to write lines about how important it is to be quiet in class. I also had some boys scrub a few cupboard doors with toothbrushes (I have a cleaning stash under my sink) from throwing snow outside (an absolute no-no).

Now, the crazy part about this, is I was filling out a graduate survey for my university, and one of the questions it asked was: How would your students describe you? I’m the type of teacher that talks straight to my students. We work together and we figure things out together. Then, if necessary, I will step in to solve problems that they are not solving on their own. And because I’m very straight-up with them, I told them what I was doing and asked them to be completely honest about their answers. Keep in mind the trouble they were just in. They completely poured out these amazing descriptions, one being, “a good disciplinarian”. I wasn’t sure how to take that at first until they told me that my punishments were good and fair. Wow. I love my class!

After school, I had to leave right away because I was getting my next size of trays for Invisalign at the dentist. The roads were terribly icy, but I managed to make it there safely. I then proceeded to sit for an hour because of how behind they were. However, I couldn’t leave and come back the next day because my dentist only works on Tuesdays. So I waited, and then got my new bottom plate, as well as a maintenance top plate. It hasn’t started hurting yet, but I fear it’s coming.

I went home, got ready, and my husband and I went to the gym. I had a very good back and biceps workout. I was stronger, felt solid, and took a little more of a leisurely approach by slightly longer breaks since my workout was a little shorter today (7 exercises). I even was able to complete 25 minutes of steady state cardio on the stationary bike! It was just a good time at the gym.

I noticed something at the gym tonight though. Standing in front of the mirrors, I realized that my back shape is nice (from a side view). But it’s almost like my stomach is somehow getting flatter and yet sticking out more. I guess I can best describe it like a thick, smooth curve. I haven’t quite settled on how I feel about this. But I chose to leave it as a realization that I am stronger, I feel better, and regardless of the fat percentage, my muscles are showing more than they ever have before, and that’s a feat in itself. So I’m going to keep waiting and see how my body continues to take shape.

Week 12 Day 2

I started off the day in such a great way! I was motivated, working hard, accomplishing a ton of little things left and right. I felt amazing!

As usual, the kids got a little out of hand, but it was nothing too serious. I even took them outside for both recesses regardless of the fact that it was -20 C and -19 C respectively. It was nice and refreshing the first time, but by the second recess, I wish we had stayed inside.

At the end of school, we had an IT meeting which took awhile. I also learned I had to very quickly clean my room and basically throw my stuff into the hallway because they were using my room for another meeting I didn’t know about. With the results of being late and frazzled, I went out to my car to finally get it ready to come home. I let it warm up for quite awhile, and scraped and brushed it off so it didn’t quite look so much like an abandoned car in the arctic. Although my engine light is on, my car made it home and drove incredibly well. I love my car.

Tonight at the gym, I really wasn’t feeling my workout. I just wasn’t in the right mental state for a couple reasons, one being that I was home from work late again, and I also was still physically worn out from that crazy leg workout the day before. Not to mention tonight’s workout and every workout this week is now 4 sets instead of 3. My body just wasn’t feeling it today. But I did manage to finish the chest/triceps/abs workout including 12 minutes of HIIT afterwards.

I’m tired and worn out, but I’m about to go to sleep and hoping for the deepest sleep so my body can recover better for tomorrow’s back workout.

Week 9 Day 2

This morning was just not a good morning. I woke up unhappy, and just couldn’t seem to lift my own spirits today. My husband didn’t have to go to work until late, and so everything was rushed more than normal this morning. I missed being late by literally a hair, and I just felt such a mess this morning.

To continue matters, our worship today was filled with intense sadness. A brother to one of the teachers at a sister-school lost his wife due to some health complication that they weren’t able to save her from. To make matters more complicated, she was 6 months pregnant with their first child. They managed to save the child which of course is what his full attention is on as of now. He knows that his wife would have wanted him to do whatever necessary to keep their child alive, and so that is what he’s focussed so heavily on now. The baby is just over 2 lbs; very tiny and so very young. The problem is, he’s in the states, and as many of you know, this is not going to be an easy road financially with so many weeks to months of recovery for such a premature baby. I am going to ask that you please keep this man in your prayers. You may have no association to him, but these are people who thought little of themselves. In fact, they actually met while both volunteering for relief services after 9/11. The more I hear about this couple, the more unfair it seems. And the whole thing is that we will have no idea why God allows these things to happen to people that seem so good, the kind of people this world needs more of. But it is in my faith that God will wrap His arms around this man and his tiny son, and that He will help that son grow to a healthy state so that he can go home with his dad.

If you feel moved by this tragedy, I will leave the link to the donation site below. I’ve always been in Canada where we have not had to worry about such extreme health care costs. He needs your help. But most importantly, he needs your prayers.

Anyways, worship left me in a continued saddened state. The next stop was taking attendance and getting my students upstairs for our Remembrance Day ceremony. This assembly allowed me to take a breath, and to really contemplate things in my life, and realize again that I am so fortunate and blessed to have what I have. Even if my car needs work done, even if it’s extremely cold outside, even if my house is so trashed that I’d be embarrassed for anyone to see it, I still have things that other people do not. I need to be more grateful.

I’d love to say the rest of the day went much better, but no amount of reflection could have prepared me for the energy the kids brought today. They did so well containing it during the ceremony, but after finding out it was -25 Celsius outside, and so recess was inside, all of their energy was coming out in my room! Oh the madness! I was so glad when the day was done.

After school, I was not done work. In fact, I stayed at work until 8:00 p.m. I then came home, got ready, and went to the gym. I needed the gym tonight.

Tonight’s workout was supposed to be three circuits for back and biceps, but the gym was so packed! It ended up being supersets instead of full circuits just whenever I could find available machines or benches. I skipped cardio tonight because my mind was not in it. Instead, we came home and I continued to work on school related things until after 1:00 a.m. and even then, only went to bed because I knew I needed to. Definitely looking forward to an uplifted mood tomorrow!

If you’d like to donate to the tragedy described above, please click on the link below. I know he would very much appreciate any bit of help he can get to help his son fight for his life! Thank you in advance!

http://www.youcaring.com/memorial-fundraiser/ashley-picco-memorial-fund/260229