Will Run Amuck

"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one."~ Eleanor Roosevelt

My mom was recuperating from a virus this weekend, so I didn't see her at all. Instead, I spent the entire weekend doing house cleaning. I tried really hard to maintain my time discipline of 15 minutes of work, then five minutes of rest. I kept forgetting when the 15 minutes started, but when I remembered I sat down and rested. I worked until around 6:00, other than doing a couple of loads of laundry. I was very tired. The time discipline is supposed to address that problem. If I'm following the time schedule, I really shouldn't be tired when I'm finished. I'm guessing that I missed several of the 5 minute rest breaks. It's so hard for me to stick to that schedule. Even having missed a lot of the break times, it seemed to me that I should just keep going when 6:00 rolled around. It just didn't seem like I'd gotten as much accomplished as I wished. It was one of those weekends when I was having some problems with compulsiveness.

The other way my obsessive compulsive tendencies manifested was with the diet thing. I had decided that I would take the week off from working out because I've been feeling really tired. Just making that decision was difficult. I remembered that it hasn't been that long since I took time off because i was sick. That made me anxious. then I remembered the whole overtraining issue. The way you can tell if you're overtraining is that you feel tired all of the time and/or you have sore muscles all of the time. Finally, I was able to make the decision to take time off by ignoring my anxiety.

Then I checked in on "Dateline" and even started watching it. It was about people losing weight. Just what I needed. The more I watched, the more I was feeling the need to be on a diet and work out more. I actually recognized that I was getting into a compulsive state of mind again. That's a major victory, but then I turned the channel! Oh my god! How amazing!

I can't tell if I start feeling compulsive because of a change in brain chemicals or if it's something external that triggers it. I wonder if it would matter in terms of behavior. Who knows.

Hubby and I celebrated Valentine's day on Saturday. Much easier to celebrate over the weekend because I tend to be too tired during the week to celebrate anything. He actually brought flowers and candy this year. Of course, he started eating the candy immediately after he gave it to me. That's okay because I really really don't need to be eating chocolate. Too much fat, too many calories.

This morning was a nightmare. Ruski woke me up sometime in the middle of the night to go out. I was really out of it and turned the coffee pot on, but realized what i had done in time and rushed back into the kitchen to turn it off. I must have also turned the alarm clock off. I woke up later and looked at the clock, but without my glasses. I thought the time was 5:45. I turned over and went back to sleep. The next time I woke up, it was 7:00. Oh jesus. So I rushed around like crazy, but because I still had to deal with the Mighty Tusk, I still didn't get to work until 8:30. Not a great way to start my day. Of course my hubby and my mom would both point out how frequently others are late. Somehow that doesn't make me any less stressed.

When I went home for lunch, I was going to make some brown rice. I stuck the stupid thing in the microwave and set the timer for ten minutes. When the ten minutes were up, i took the bowl out of the microwave and the rice was still hard. I put it back in the microwave for five minutes. When I did that, I noticed that it was set to "defrost." Great. I gave it another ten minutes after I switched to full power. By that time, it was time to go back to work. I knew that Crazy Employee was planning to leave work at noon today, which meant that I was busy answering the phone all day today while The Information Superhighway did payroll. I really wanted to get back in time to rescue The Superhighway from having to do it.

All in all, it's just been a fabulous day. I'm still intermittently thinking about abandoning the idea of not working out this week. I just hate this part of myself.


america held hostage day 1860
bushism of the day:
"Then I went for a run with the other dog and just walked. And I started thinking about a lot of things. I was able to—I can't remember what it was. Oh, the inaugural speech, started thinking through that."
—Pre-inaugural interview with U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 22, 2001 issue