Back to work

It's been a while since I've posted, and I feel like a lot has happened since then. Last week was not a good week for me as far as work goes. I was completely unmotivated to actually work, and they are now allowing us to take time off without pay and request to end our shifts early. So, I took Saturday off (who wants to get up to talk about quitting smoking after a night enjoying fireworks and then driving home anyway?) and left early every day of the week that I did work except Monday. I forced myself to work a full day today, but it actually wasn't as hard as I was thinking it was going to be, thank goodness.

Yesterday Joe and I came home from church and started to prepare our dinner, but our oven died. Perhaps it's just a fuse that blew, but since we wanted to replace it anyway (it was definitely looking like it was on its last legs) and since we don't know much about fixing those things, we are going to have to scrape some money together to do that.

We also found out that Joe will now only get paid once a month. So we're really going to have to make sure we do a good job budgetting. It's weird to think that he's not going to see a cent from July until the end of the month. He's also not going to get paid for any overtime that he does from this point forward, which is a bummer. But I guess the good news there is since he's salaried now, he should see a paycheck that is the same from month to month. And the better news is that it'll be more money than he made before too.

We spent the 4th of July with his parents, watching movies, BBQing, and viewing slightly obstructed fireworks. We had a nice relaxing day and a (mostly) relaxing weekend.

Now we're preparing for the various events of this week and trying to get ourselves and our house ready for our housewarming party next weekend. We received a notice from the homeowners association telling us we have until Friday to take care of the weeds in our front yard and to remove the grass that is growing in the cracks of the sidewalk.

I had called the company that is mowing our lawn (temporarily, until we get a lawnmower) and asked if they could help out, since I was angrily greeted by a sea of spiders when trying to weed in our flowerbed (I have major arachniphobia and could've sworn spiders were crawling on me the rest of the day). Well, when the guy came last week to mow the lawn, I was running around taking care of some errands, preparing for a book club meeting that night and napping, so I didn't get a chance to make sure he did the work. And he didn't. I saw someone walking around in our back yard spraying the bazillion of weeds we have there, but when I was able to get to the front yard to check it out, the weeds were still there and he had left. So now we get to pay someone else to help with that.

Meanwhile, we went to Home Depot on Saturday and purchased some sort of magical weed puller that has helped with some of the weeds. Part of our problem with our flower bed (besides my arachniphobia) is that we're not entirely sure what is a weed and what is not. In fact, I'm pretty sure in my past attempts to spray weeds and pull weeds that I have killed a plant or two or dozen. Another problem is the ratio of weeds divided by the quantity of our motivation plus energy minus other errands and chores. We're hoping that it'll be easier to maintain a weed-free yard than it has been to get it to that point. But I guess we'll see.

In other news, I joined Curves last week. I really just wanted to see what was out there, and I was feeling pretty motivated. And when I learned more about the Curves program and the fact that the building is less than 2 miles from our house and would take less than 1 hour each day, I happily signed up. I joined last Monday and worked out Tuesday and Wednesday. Time got away from me on Thursday somehow, and before I knew it, it was too late to go because Curves was already closed. They were closed on Friday and only open for 4 hours on Saturday (during which time I was sleeping and otherwise NOT thinking about working out). So, I haven't been for a while, but I'm hoping to go 3-5 days a week and am getting ready to head over there after I finish this blog.

My weight-loss goal is to lose weight, feel healthy, have more energy, and feel more comfortable in my own skin. I have a pretty lofty long-term goal, but I'd like to break it down into more realistic and manageable goals to help me stay motivated and actually achieve them. I found it amusing that a lot of the questions they asked me the first day I went to check out the place were the same types of questions we ask people who want to quit smoking. Motivational Interviewing FTW (for the win, in case you don't know that abbreviation)! Anyway, I should get going before I lose my motivation today. :)