Well, oops.

I didn’t eat any vegetables today.

I could, theoretically, eat now just for the ticky mark. But a) I’m already full of chips and other snack foods that I shouldn’t have eaten, so eating vegetables will make me overfull and sick and b) the point is for the vegetables to use up some of the calories I would otherwise spend on ice cream, not to eat the ice cream (where ice cream here is metaphorical, as I haven’t had any today) and then shove the vegetables down my throat to make up for it.

So I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to take my non-ticky mark and live with it.

In my defense, however, I do want to note that I *bought* quite a few vegetables today. I just haven’t eaten any of them.

I am, however, going to get the rest of my reinstated ticky marks done before I go to bed. I’m adding both dishes cleared to kitchen and alarm turned on, since they’re kinda wussy ones.

Today’s new thing wasn’t…

…going to bed by midnight, as you can tell by the fact that it’s after midnight.

Instead, today’s new thing was eating vegetables. Which I did a lot of over the 3 weeks I was away, and my sister-in-law was cooking wonderful meals every day (unless my brother was cooking them), and then promptly stopped when I returned home to my foodless, cookless house.

I also drank water, did my dishes, brushed my teeth, and wrote a few hundred words on my romance novel.

Go me.

Back at it…

So, today’s things to do were to Write, Brush my Teeth twice, Drink Water, and Clean for 15 minutes.

I’ve written — well, typed what I had previously written on my romance-novel-in-progress, anyway, which was necessary to remind me what was happening, and which I’ve counted as writing in the past.

I’ve cleaned — though you can hardly tell.

I’ve brushed my teeth twice.

I do still need to down one more glass of water, but then, it’s off to bed.

Shouldn’t this shit be together by now?

So, I was getting my shit together pretty well. And then Christmas holidays came, and my shit got left behind in Toronto while I went to Vancouver and when I came back, it had all escaped again.

And now I’m doing an epically poor job of gathering it back up again.

Other than drinking 3 glasses of water a day, I’ve managed almost no ticky marks since I got back. My schedule is a mess in ways that really can’t be blamed on jet lag anymore, and I’m just not seeming to try to get stuff going again.

But I was at my writers’ group tonight, and I talked a bit about the 100 words, and one of them declared that he was going to hold me to that for the next meeting.

So I guess the shit must be got together.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to go from 1 ticky to 14 or whatever overnight. But I don’t want to go back to adding one thing a week, either. So, instead, I’m going to add one thing a day until I’m back up to my original list of things. Or, at least, my original list of things minus the stupid neck thing, which I have eliminated for being stupid, and moisturizing my feet twice a day, which I have eliminated for not doing a damned bit of good.

Water is the one thing I’ve been maintaining, so I’ll count it as already done. And writing got done yesterday and today, so I guess that’s retroactively day 2. I’ve already remembered to brush my teeth once today (and that, at least, never backslid so far that I went any days without brushing them at all), so if I can just do that again before bed, I’ll have a third thing added back for today.

The thing that probably needs the most attention is 15 minutes of cleaning, since my apartment is a profound disaster, so I’m going to target that for tomorrow.

I’m also targeting daily, if brief, updates here while I add this stuff back. I need to be holding myself accountable and not just letting it slide as something I’ll get to tomorrow.

Getting my shit together day 427

Okay, it hasn’t been quite 427 days, it just feels that way.

Last week’s efforts to get my shit together didn’t result in much shit being got together. It was a rough week for a couple of reasons, and a busy week, too, and between those two things, a lot of ticky marks went unclaimed.

This week, however, has been much, much better. I’ve been missing ‘going to bed at midnight’ but other than that, I’ve mostly been getting all the other ticky marks. It’s not a great trade, sleep for ticky marks, but I really, really needed to get back on track, so for a short time, I think it was worth it.

Also, this week, I figured out how I actually could monitor the timeliness of completing my tasks, so unlike the last time I promised it, that actually will be next week’s new thing.

Getting my shit together summary of day 1.

Well, progress was made. I managed to get most my ticky boxes yesterday.

I didn’t make it to bed by midnight, as I didn’t get home from bookclub followed by grocery shopping until close to 11, and then there just wasn’t enough time to do things and still make it to bed on time.

I didn’t do the neck thing, because to even get to bed at a reasonable hour required some level of give on what I had left to do at the end of the day, and I haven’t done the neck thing in quite a awhile, so I figured it was expendable.

I didn’t make it a day without Q-tipping my ears because part of my 15 minutes of cleaning was putting back all the stuff that came out of my bathroom and storage room for the renovations and I came across an old stash of Q-tips I didn’t know I had, and my sub-conscious overpowered my brain and stabbed one in my ears.

I’ve thrown the rest of them away, so hopefully that’ll be the last of that for awhile.

200 Good Days & 2 Bad Weeks

I’ve kind of let things go — even things I could have and should have kept up over the last couple of weeks. Partly because the not having a bathroom or lights situation was stressing me out, partly because I’m just lazy.

I noticed today, though, that my water streak is 200 days old. I’ve really had to press to hold that streak together in the last couple of weeks, but there it is. 200 days since I started this project, and I really do see some genuine improvements in my life. It’s been a bit of a slog, but I think it’s been worth it, and I’m recommitting to getting those streaks back in my new week. I’ve been slacking too much and letting too many ticky boxes go by the wayside — every streak needs to matter as much as the water streak.

I was a little worried that after quite a few days of not having weighed in (that was one of the ones I really couldn’t help, as my scale got packed way away to allow the contractors to work), I was going to step on the scale this morning and be back above 360, but it was still nicely settled at 355, so that was pleasing.

25K

On a happier note, I had a Harlequin Committee meeting today with my writer’s group, and I had set a goal of 25K words by this meeting, which I met with only a tiny bit of scrambling this morning to finish the last 250 or so words.

I believe I’m the furthest along in the process, though some of the other members who were well into writing the last time I was able to make a meeting were not there tonight, so I’m not sure.

A bad week…

This is going to be a bad week for ticky boxes. My house is in a state of total upheaval — I have neither a working washroom (or, really, any washroom at all) nor lights in my living room. Between the pounding in the other room, and the high contrast of my monitor in a dark room, I have a splitting headache. I’m planning on keeping up three glasses of water (though that’s painful without a working washroom unless I go upstairs), and a couple other things, but most of my chains are going kind of straight to hell, and no new things are coming on board.

Ugh.

I am not going to the gym today. I am not doing anything on time today.

If I’m really lucky, I might manage to make my book club tonight.

If I’m not really lucky, the feeling that I need to vomit will turn into actual vomiting.

Though, all things considered that might make the feeling go away, which would be an improvement.

Ah, the good ol’ days…

Remember deep in the near-forgotten mists of last week when I was stressing about whether it was okay to give myself a ticky mark for going to the gym a day late?

Those were the good ol’ days.

When we were young. When life was good. When going to the gym a day late seemed like a crisis that required deep thought. Unlike, say, the fact that I haven’t been to the gym since then.

This is why I need these damned checklists, because as soon as I get out of routine, it goes straight to hell.

If you happen to have my cell phone number and you happen to be up tomorrow at 8:30AM Eastern, give me a call. If you don’t hear bad music and ‘change stations now’ in the background, please yell at me for being the slacker that i am.

Snoozing and not snoozing

I’m finding my new routine of letting myself snooze twice and then forcing myself up to be working much better than other alternatives I’ve tried.

This morning I got up for a bit, but because I didn’t sleep well last night, ended up going back to bed for another hour after awhile, because I really felt I needed the extra sleep — but I didn’t have any problems getting out of bed in the first place, which has been the problem up to this point.

Just getting my feet on the floor is a victory.

Proactivity

I’ve been using the Proactiv for just over a week, and switched to the two times a day as recommended. I’m not adding a new thing for this week since I had to pick up the second instance of the Proactiv routine.

It does seem to be helping. My face isn’t perfect by a long shot, but it looks a little better. That could just be a cyclical thing, though, as my acne tends to be very hormonally driven.

18956

Plus, Serena and Lance are finally out of the damned hospital.

Now they’re having pizza at Mozza, and they seem like they’re kind of settled in there for awhile. Not quite sure how I’m going to make them leave there, either.

Grr.

I know I’m not ‘really dieting’ and that I spent Tuesday night at a giant festival of eating lots of things, but it still irks me to see my weigh in number go up!

…I would keep my word

Read my lips. No new things.

Seriously, I need to not add anything this week and concentrate on actually doing the things that are already on my list. There are too many gaps in too many chains.

In which only some things went to hell in a handbasket…

See that? I’m not saying it all went wrong. Mental progress!

So, last weekend I went out on a pub crawl with friends and didn’t crawl into bed until close to 4AM, then got up and went to this giant food event where I ate way too much in the stunning heat, and came home and napped for 2 hours (or, more specifically, napped for 1 hour twice) and this has completely fucked up my sleep schedule.

I’m finding it hard to get to bed and hard to get up in the morning and ARGH.

I have made it to the gym 2 days this week, but in the late afternoon, rather than the morning, like I should.

I’ve also not been doing my neck thing, as last week was that time of the month, and this week I just haven’t bothered. But I got grumped at by the chiropractor this morning, so I guess I should start that up again.

I missed a couple of days of writing, too, because Serena and Lance are trapped in a frigging hospital room and I can’t write them out of it no matter how hard I try because it’s not in the nature of Serena’s character to just leave her Little Sister alone in the hospital, no matter how hot the guy who wants to take her to dinner is. In fact, she’s probably less likely to do it for a hot guy, because that’ll just make her feel more guilty. Stupid characters and their stupid internal consistency issues.

I did do some work over the week on my good in concept less good in execution stories for my writer’s workshop that I didn’t end up going to anyway, because of extreme scheduling confusion and the need to go to the gym yesterday evening since I hadn’t gone yesterday morning. I might post those later.

And yesterday I forgot to eat a vegetable. I mean, there were some vegetables in some of the things I ate (tomatoes, mainly) but nothing your mom would look and call eating your veg. It was a find day nutritionally otherwise, just duh on the veggies.

Small Victories: Uninvited Guests

My landlady’s daughter came by today with a contractor to look at installing a wheelchair lift and fixing the shower in my bathroom. I ran into her as I was leaving to go to the gym and she asked if they could take a look at the shower.

I did not panic. I did not run downstairs and try to hide the fact that I haven’t done dishes in days. I did not say ‘no’.

I just thought about the fact that my apartment, while not spotless, is certainly clean enough for company, smiled and said, ‘Sure, I’m on my way to the gym, but I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

Small Victories: Pants

I put on a pair of my favorite pants today, and they fit noticeably looser than they did last time I wore them. Not quite as well as they did when I bought them in November, but still, that’s a few months worth of crappy living reversed!

Oops.

It’s 12:25 now and I’m not in bed.

I guess I can kiss that ticky mark good-bye.