My sweet Veronica
As I was doing leg lifts yesterday, Veronica smacked my tush and told me my butt was looking cute. It's one thing when your husband tells you your butt is slammin', but when your personal trainer comments on it, well. that's special. And there I was, feeling all self-concious because the pants I usually wear to the gym - loose-fitting jersey-knit capri-length numbers - were in the wash so I had to wear my spandex jazz pants. I was a boot cut away from essentially wearing leggings, and my booty looked cute. That hasn't happened in a long time.
As Veronica put it yesterday, I've turned a corner in my weight loss journey. I had been frustrated because, although I'd been working out and eating more fruit and trying to eat less of all the other crap I stuff in my mouth, my weight hadn't really been going anywhere. I'd definitely been building muscle - Jason noticed I was more defined, even under all my flubber - but I'd only lost somewhere in the vicinity of a pound in well over a month. But when I weighed in on Monday, I was down three pounds. Three pounds! Woot! Suddenly, all the internal whining I'd been doing about getting up at 5:30 to trek in the cold to the rec center disappeared. I actually showed up early yesterday to get in some extra cardio. As Tara, my training buddy, said, I was "bustin' a nut."
Even though it's helping jam-pack my days since I see Veronica three times a week, I don't know how well I'd be coping with life if I weren't exercising. The holidays stress me out in a major way, and I've already had a couple little "I'm overwhelmed and I need some help!" breakdowns in the last week or so; Jason tries to avoid looking at me like I'm crazy as he strokes my hair and tells me he can do the dishes. Plus, Jason's had lung troubles this week, so I'm the only one in the house who is functioning on all cylinders (I tried to make the cats do laundry, but Meatwad just sat in front of their dish waiting to be fed, and Boo stuck her tail up in the air and walked off). My in-laws arrive next Wednesday, and I feel like my to-do list isn't getting any shorter. I'm absolutely certain that Jason's parents could care less about the guest bedroom - I could point them to a bed of nails and they'd still make me breakfast the next morning - but I want it to look fabulous so they don't think their son married a slob who can't keep house. And the rest of the house could use some work too - a top-to-bottom cleaning, finishing the outside Christmas lights that we started last week, organizing the garage and basement dumping grounds, taking nine months of recycling to the recycling center. plus Christmas shopping still to be done, and figuring out what to cook for two low-carb eaters when my diet has a food group called "mashed potatoes and gravy." And on top of that I've got some freelance work to finish, plus a big release of some software we're developing at work for which I overhauled the entire UI. Hooray for freelance work! But boo to having so much to do that it's giving me night sweats. At least this month it has paid off - I billed in freelance work the equivalent of a month of paychecks at my day job. And one week from today, I'm officially on vacation. Man, do I need it.