Week 4: less stress project meets hormones

This week, HORMONES were introduced to the LSP.

It wasn't even a fair fight.  Hormones clearly won.

I am grateful I survived this week without becoming a news headline.  I had fantasies of running away from home or dropping my children off on a street corner somewhere far, far away.  I also considered divorcing my husband several times.  No, I did not eat well, sleep well, exercise or accomplish any of my LSP objectives.  I was in survival mode, people!

It's truly amazing how a normally rational (??) human being can be completely blind sided by little molecules coursing through the blood stream.  The tiny fraction of my brain that survived the onslaught kept saying, "You have been taken over by aliens, hang tight and do NOT make any major life decisions for 5 days! You can do this!"  I clung to that voice and muscled through.  It seems my monthly craziness has just compounded with age, a smaller part of the rational surviving each time.  Is that true for anyone else?  Or am I totally losing my marbles?

Anyways.  This morning, I could tell the war was over.  I popped into my youngest daughter's room to wake her up this morning and saw this sight:

Little sleepy toes popping out from quilts made by mama.  I was awash with love, and all was right with the world again.

less stress project: exercise

I am one of those people who actually LIKES exercise.  I like the way the endorphins make me feel.  I like a challenge.  I like that exercise really is a simple work=results formula. If you stick with it, you improve.

So if it's so great, why do I bail on it so often??

Despite all these positive exercise benefits, I still have the tendency to hit snooze, relax or sew instead.  Because as much as I do LIKE exercise, I kinda HATE the first ten minutes.  You know? When it is cold outside in the winter and you just wanna crawl back in your warm bed.  When it is hot and muggy and mosquito-y, which I like even less than cold.  Those first ten minutes, before you find your groove, it is all huffing and puffing and creaky muscles.  BUT once you get past that....it's great.

Looking at all of my resolutions, I think this one is going the best.  I strived to exercise more, and I certainly have.  Have I skipped days when I could have made it happen? Of course.  But overall I have made it out 4-5 times per week, and just over a few weeks, have seen progress.

I am keeping it simple- just basic cardio stuff now: runs, power walks and today, I added in some cycling! My first run was pretty horrendous- slow as can be, with many walk breaks and the feeling like I was going to hurl.  But have stuck with it and am now running the same loop without stopping or needing to call 911.  Work=results! I am going to keep at this and then slowly add in some weight and so on.  I plan to build up a good base over the summer, and maybe add in a trainer or some kind of challenge in the fall....will see where that goes!  If you want to see my daily progress (and some really embarrassing, sweaty photos), you can pop over to visit me (kristieocd) on Instagram....I call myself #thesoggytomato and with one look, you will see why!

My toughest challenges still seem to be sleep (reading too many good books!), not snapping at my kids (little button-pushing buggers xoxo), and food.  But not giving up, and plan to really focus on eating this upcoming week.

How is YOUR less stress life going??

Week 3 of the less stress project: It's a metaphor.

This week was like any other, really- running from school to work to activities, fitting in the rest as well as possible.  Some things in my control, others not so much.

One big (and unfortunately continuous stress) in our lives is renovations.  We have had a bunch of work done on our home, unfortunately some of it hasn't turned out too well, so we are often chasing down contractors, waiting for trades, and bleeding out cash to fix things we have already paid to fix.  It can be really frustrating, and is one of those things that falls into the "out of our control" column, which further adds to that frustration.

This past week, we enjoyed a restful rainy day at our new cottage, only to discover a major roof leak from a deck to a sunroom below.  Now, if you have been around awhile you know that we have this ongoing issue with water- our original cottage was destroyed in a flood, our current home has ongoing roof leaking issues (even though we "fix" it every year!), our basement has flooded, and so on.  Perhaps the result of an Aquarius marrying a Pisces?  Regardless, a big PITA.  So we were NOT excited to find this new issue at our place of relaxation. We went about having a quote to fix it and were stunned by the $16.5K price tag.  Seriously?!?!  

So this brings me to the title of this post- it's a metaphor.  Have you read "The Fault in our Stars" by John Green?  The movie is actually coming out this week as well.  It is about a teenage girl,  Hazel, diagnosed with terminal cancer, who meets Augustus, an osteosarcoma survivor with an amputated leg, at a Teen Cancer Support Group.  On their first encounter, she is kind of enamoured with him- until he pops a cigarette in his mouth.  "Are you SERIOUS?!?" Hazel asks, and proceeds to tell him that he just ruined everything and how ridiculous it was for a cancer survivor to be a smoker.  Augustus explains that the cigarette is a metaphor- he puts the killing thing between his lips, but doesn't light it, thereby taking away its ability to do the killing.

This passage reminded me somewhat of my Less Stress Project.  Stress will always be around, like cancer, and ready to do its damage.  It is up to me to take away its power over me.

So the leaky roof is an annoyance,  for sure, but need not be a STRESS.  It's a first world problem- poor me and my drippy second home.  No one is dying or bleeding here.  We will deal with it.  We will get another quote.  It was probably doing this before we bought it and so it is not an emergency.  I will use my energy in a positive way to work towards a solution to this problem, rather than lamenting it.

Small battles won this week on the stress front.  

Now if I could only figure out how to stop my kids from pushing my buttons.....they drove me freaking mental this week : /

Week 1 of the less stress project: Everything is Awesome!

Happy Monday, everyone!

So, last Monday I rambled on a bit about some realizations I had made and some changes I wanted to introduce to help reduce the daily feeling of stress I had in my life.  Not Big Event Catastrophe Stress (which, fortunately, I do not have at the moment), but just the daily grind stuff that slowly eats at you and makes you miserable, even though on the whole, all the "big stuff" of life is safely in place. And thanks to all of you for your support about this!!  Your comments and encouragement were so great.

I took this endeavour pretty seriously this week, really tried to adhere to the spirit and main principles of the project.  And it paid off.  I feel great :)

The hardest- getting enough sleep.  Getting up early was not so bad, but I found it hard to GO to bed at a decent time, with things left "undone".  Or without time to unwind.   And though I didn't perfect this, I did feel the benefits of the extra sleep I did get.

Getting up early in the mornings had to be my biggest benefit.  Oh, to not feel rushed!!  I was pleasant!  I hardly yelled at all!  Things ran smoothly!  It was brilliant.

Being outside and exercising was also SO good for my psyche.  I didn't get to it as much as I had planned, but every bit it a bonus.  I took in fresh air, listened to birds sing, noticed the buds on the trees.  Medicine for the soul.

I also relieved some stress by ticking some annoying things off my to-do list. Put some things in order.  Cleaned house a bit.  And yes, even did the laundry to completion one day. Did a good grocery shop and used one of my afternoons off work to do the prep work for my work night dinners.  So nice to come home to meals that were quick to assemble!

Did LOTS of cuddling and focusing on my kids.  They made me laugh.  Best therapy.

Exercised Rule 10, where moderation was abandoned for a night of debauchery with friends involving too much food and drink and staying out too late.  It was spectacular :)

And all these things in the same 24 hour days I have always had!!

Imagine that!?!?

All in all, I feel like I am on my way to a better quality of life.  One step at a time!  

How did your week go?  I hope you all had a great one!  Enjoy a less-stress week ahead!