Stress

So, you'll remember the post last month about being sad? Since then I've been to a therapist to talk my way through various Angela Agenda items and it's been a huge help. Two sessions ago, on my Birthday to be exact, she left me with a packet on stress and my objective before the next session was to read through it. Read through it I did and boy do we have one stressed lady on our hands. 

The first page in the packet was on Signs of Stress including bodily signs (tense muscles, headaches, frequent colds, breathing difficulties), feeling signs (uneasy, nervous, helpless, dissatisfied, frustrated, apathetic), behavioral signs (act irritable, negativistic; verbal mistakes, timid/withdrawn) and thinking signs (self doubt, racing thoughts, think you need help, difficulty concentrating). The second page is titled You and Stress and is a test of sorts to see just how stressed you are. There is a column on the left with various situations/life events and a numerical score attached to them. The exercise is to go through the column of life events/situations and see how many have happened/apply to you in the past year. Tally up the score and then see the chart below to determine how stressed you really are. Well, my score was 487. Apparently, any score over 300 states the following:

You now have a 9 in 10 chance of a serious health change in the next two years.

Hooray!!

I voiced my concern to my therapist about how that score was alarming/scary. As with most things, the first step is recognizing the stress. And the next is to recognize when stressful events are about to occur and planning/manage them accordingly. Example:

Pregnancy:
Recognize that it's going to be stressful
Realize that things that were previously able to be accomplished in a day may not be ever?
Cut yourself some slack and give yourself credit

Ha. Or don't have a baby less than a year after you get married. 

As for ways to effectively manage stress, the packet suggests healthy diet and exercise. Which seems to be the answer for pretty much anything these days. And another key factor that my therapist told me to do was to get some human interaction during the day. Of which currently I have little to none of. And to give myself a break. Those are things I can start doing NOW to solve the immediate need of A 31 year old should not have that much stress in her life and how can we reduce it.

Here's my immediate action plan:
while Lovie is at school go to the gym and take an exercise class (there is free babysitting for Baby Sister), look into working at Nordstrom a few evenings during the week and one weekend day or look into going back to work part time and start accomplishing some of my dreams.

One dream I've had for probably the past five to six years is to be a personal shopper. I've always loved shopping for others, shopping in general and love to run errands. Most hate errands and grocery shopping in particular, but it's something I've always enjoyed. Why not give it a go? What do I have to lose?

In the packet, and through talking to my therapist, it's mentioned often that once stress is recognized it can be used in a positive way. To solve a problem, to push us to do something that we may not have thought we could or to learn. While I'm stressed that I'm stressed, I'm also excited to put some of these tools to use and for what the future holds. Stay tuned!!

10K

No matter the distance, when your 60 year old Dad asks if you want to run a race with him you do it. No if's, and's or but's. My Dad is one of my greatest motivators - in life and in running. He knows at exactly the right moment to be encouraging, when to be empathetic and when to really push. We have the same pace and both love to book it when are we are about .2 to .4 miles away from the finish line. Something about seeing the finish, and picking off people as we approach that sends the adrenaline soaring. 

I don't know how many more of these opportunities I'll have so I want to jump on each one. Love you, Dad! Thanks for a great race!

At his surprise 60th Birthday Party 

One of my all time favorites and sums up perfectly how I feel about my Dad

Grey/Gray

While yes, this does describe my mood as of late; no, that's not what this post is about. It's about appropriate work out/running errands pants. Here's a little experiment to get my point across ...

1. Put on a pair of gray pants
2. Pee your pants
3. You're not going anywhere without changing your pants are you?

Case and point. So, if you want to wear your grey pants to run errands and it's not nine billiondy degrees read: no threat of swamp ass go ahead. But if you want to wear your gray pants to go work out or, better yet, work out and then run errands well, don't say I didn't warn you. 

Gray has a way of showing EVERYTHING. It's not as forgiving as black or white or dark green or navy ... which hide most everything. A very select, few, group of people can get away with "working out" in grey pants cause their definition of "working out" is just that ... exercise that deserves quotation marks around it. Cause it's more about reading US Weekly than it is about actually, working out. 

You want me to tell you when you have something in your teeth, right? Well. I'd certainly hope that if you looked like you peed your pants when you didn't you'd want me to tell you that too.

Lazy

Call it lazy, call it pregnancy, call it what you will, I like elevators. Typically, I do not care for elevators, except in buildings that have more than 4 floors. But with pregnancy hiking up steps is the last thing on my list of activities I want to participate in. I am hot and sweaty enough just thinking about walking from my car to the building, so I rely heavily on elevators ... to go up 4 floors mind you ... and seeing as how I'm 7 months preggers but look like I'm 9 I think my excuse is pretty solid.

What floors me are the people who have the rolling briefcases. What bothers me most about them is when they take the elevator up or down one floor because of said briefcase. Lame. Because there's nothing more aggravating in an elevator than having to stop on every floor. (I work on the 4th floor of a 4 story building ... there has been more than one occasion when we stop on every floor on the way up due to these jokers)

I'm sure these are the same people who park in handicap spots without a sticker because they don't want to walk and those who take a motorized cart around Sam's Club because they don't want to walk when they get inside either.

27 going on 88

I somehow twisted a few muscles in my lower back. And boy, am I in pain. I don't usually complain about much that hurts but this, this is miserable. Just leaning over to wash my hands hurts. I'm sure it has something to do with my nonexistent core muscles, also known as abs. Ugh. I have to get better about doing abs. But they are my absolute least favorite thing to do. I feel like after doing cardio for an hour that that should suffice. Perhaps it can also be attributed to the fact that I don't lift weights. My excuse there is that I lift Bean who is 26 lbs, a lot. That MUST be better than 3 sets of 12!?!?! So, sounds like I have my work cut out for me to prevent this from happening again: 1.) strengthen abs 2.) lift weights 3.) stretch more I'll check back in on this topic in a month and we'll see where I'm at!

I have a bone to pick...

With Ms. Jennifer Lopez. I was reading an article about her recently, and obviously, it was focusing on her just having given birth to twins. In said article, she mentions how to get back into shape she's training for a triathlon. Awesome. Go her. I can totally relate to that. I successfully trained, and am training for another, 1/2 marathon after having Bean. However, what I can't relate to is that she says this training for a tri is not cosmetic... Her reasoning for doing it is to, "make her babies proud of her." Herein lies the issue: OK. First of all, they are BABIES. Barely out of the womb. All they care about is where their next meal is coming from. Wanna make them proud? Feed them. Second of all, they are your children, they will always be proud of you unless your name is Britney Spears. Lastly, if you REALLY want to make your babies proud of you, JLo, then get rid of your nanny and 9 million personal assistants and raise your kids on your own like the rest of the world. OR, stop selling pictures of your beloved babies for millions of dollars to glossy magazines! Eh? How 'bout them apples. Oh, and by the way, JLo, your husband looks like a rat. Yea. That's right. I said it. A rat.