Thursday, January 08, 2009

A week late and $500 short

I never started out this year saying that I wanted to lose weight, quit smoking (I don't anyway), exercise more (I hate exercise), get more rest, travel, or change careers. And most of these things aren't going to happen but some are, not that I set them up as a goal or anything, they just happened into my life and I said yes to them.

I have the least amount of energy of anyone I know. I could not get out of bed in the morning if the house was on fire. They'd find my happily snoozing corpse between my feather bed mattress topper and my down comforter. Or maybe just my teeth, if the fire was really bad. Oh sure I set my alarm, go through the motions of hitting the snooze button, to drag myself up an hour later with a head feeling like it weighs a thousand pounds and legs that don't want to move. Usually I make some coffee and that helps a little.

Part of my commute involves uphill and stairs. The alternative is to stay on the bus, which is the better option when the weather sucks, like it does here most of the time. But if it's not drenching rain or icy, I'll walk up a pretty steep hill then tackle six full flights of stairs instead of taking the germ-ridden elevator or transit sneeze farm.

New Years Eve I was wandering around the square in downtown Santa Fe and I had a long chat with my good friend in Wyoming. She was going on about getting rid of all addictive substances in her life. The way she got off nicotine was to make a bet with a friend that if either of them lit up or chewed, the other one would be given $1000. So far I believe she's clean, but she hasn't heard from her friend.

So then she starts talking about getting off of sugar and coffee, and somehow or other I agreed to go in on a similar bet, for $500. It's great motivation. Tea is fine, and I'm guessing honey and pure maple syrup are okay; just none of that processed crap. I had my last drink around 9:30 pm on New Years Eve, a hot buttered rum. I came home a couple of days later with a stomach bug, so there really hasn't been any temptation except for the organic coffee lurking in my freezer. Along with one round wrapped chocolate candy that will have to wait. And I forewent (is that a word?) the cookies Delta offered in place of dinner for some peanuts. I got in so late after a zillion delays that I made the airline put me up in a hotel. The hotel had a breakfast bar with the usual crap cereal and bagels; luckily they had hard boiled eggs and oranges. Hard boiled eggs with microscopic pieces of shell that you didn't notice til you bit into them, and the orange was dry.

Tuesday night I had terrible munchies. I overcame them with a bowl of hot slow cooked oatmeal laced with honey. Yesterday I found myself starving at work, although I thought I'd brought myself plenty of food to eat. Today I brought extra crackers and that has helped keep me full. Two people brought in cookies, one brought home-made chocolate chip cookies (my favorite!), and I looked at them as foreign bodies or rocks. Not edible. No interest. Very very strange.

One of the nice things about being in New Mexico was coming back but being on mountain time. I awoke on Tuesday and was out of bed by 6:30 without an alarm. But Wednesday I still got up early but not without the alarm. Then I stayed up too late on the computer and today was one of those mornings where the fire department would have been picking pieces of my flesh out of the mattress. Perhaps my 2009 resolution should be to be in bed by 10 on weeknights. My energy is almost as bad as when I stayed home sick on Monday. Maybe I still have a bit of the virus that got my intestines. Getting more sleep would certainly help, anyway.