Successful September

I lost 8.4 pounds this month!! I have not lost that much in a month since my first month on SparkPeople. My total weight lost is now 43.8 pounds. Sometimes I still can't believe I've lost that much weight.

The funny thing is, I have NO idea what was different about this month. The only thing I can think of is the fact that I cut back my cardio from 6 days to 4 days so I could focus more on healthy eating. I was worried that cutting back to only 4 days would hurt me, but it looks like it's been very beneficial to me. I really have been paying more attention to the food choices I make, and when I do workout, I make each workout awesome. So I'm going to keep to my 4-day workout schedule while throwing in the occasional 5th day if I want to. I do miss working out every day, so if there are days when I want to workout but don't have it scheduled, I'll do it anyway.

I love having the freedom to experiment with my fitness plan, and I love how I am feeling about myself and my body. Now that I've lost almost 44 pounds (!), I truly believe I can make it to my goal. There is no turning back! I will not give up or give in! I just keep visualizing myself in the misses section of the clothing store, with my pick of clothes to wear. I cannot wait!

It's List Time!

1. Today I feel like a terrible teacher. I have a class that is a bit unruly, and it's been a challenge for me. I'm quite fond of having people like me, and so I feel very uncomfortable when I have to be stern in class because I worry about the students hating me. Stephen keeps reminding me that my job is to teach them, not be their friend, but it's really hard for me. Am I completely crazy?

2. I originally titled this "Fun with Bullets," but then realized I was numbering each item. Oops. I wonder how bullets got their name (I'm talking about the typographical symbol, not ammunition). Are the typed bullets called so because of their round shape? Because they're often used to make quick points, so it's like the speed of a bullet? (Yeah, probably not.)

3. iTunes 8 has a new feature called Genius, and it truly is genius. It works kind of like Pandora. You select a song in your library, click on the "Genius" icon, and then it searches your library for songs that complement the one you picked. I've tried it with a Fiona Apple song, a Jason Mraz song, a Bethany Dillon song, and a Natasha Bedingfield song, and I have LOVED each playlist iTunes generated! Definitely give it a try; I rediscovered a lot of songs this way.

4. I have received my first batch of papers. Guess what I'm doing this weekend?

5. There are four weeks until my birthday! In case you don't know, I LOVE celebrating my birthday. I love making a big deal out of it, and I always have. When I have kids, I am going to make a big deal out of their birthdays. Stephen couldn't care less about his birthday and doesn't like big deals made about him in general (I married such a humble guy), so I look forward to forcing my children to make big deals out of their days of birth.

6. Yesterday was National Punctuation Day. I feel that not realizing this is a personal failure on my part. To read one example of how one incorrectly used comma can cost millions of dollars, read this article.

7. My favorite punctuation is the semicolon; it's super.

8. Once again, alot is NOT a word! And your=possession (e.g., your coat), you're=you are (e.g., "you're silly). Why is that so hard for people to get??

9. Every time I see GG used to reference the CW show Gossip Girl, I want to hurl something at the computer. Everyone knows the original GG is Gilmore Girls, thank you very much! (And don't tell me the original GG is really Golden Girls. Let's be serious.)

10. I don't really have a tenth thing, but I can't end with an odd number, unless it's divisible by 5. Weird, huh?

The Incredible Shrinking Woman

Okay, so my "shrinking" isn't "incredible" just yet, but I'm getting there! Here is a group of three pictures of me, taken at different times during my weight loss: on March 30, July 23, and Sept. 21. As of yesterday, I have lost 40 pounds. As you can see, I still have a LONG way to go, but I really love seeing how far I've come. (And yes, I know these are not terribly flattering pictures, but if I just wore baggy clothes, I wouldn't be able to see the difference as clearly.)



This weekend I bought a new pair of pants in a size I haven't worn in about four years! It's still a plus size, but it's definitely toward the low end. If I am this excited right now, I can't imagine how excited I will feel when I can shop in the misses' section! I am pretty certain there will be tears, and you can bet I will document the whole experience for all two of my readers. :)

Cutting Back

School started last week, and that meant adjusting to a new schedule. I was very spoiled with all of the free time I had this summer to work out. I worked out around an hour each day, 6days a week, for the whole summer, and I loved it. (I still can't believe that I love exercise!). Now I don't have nearly as much free time, and I have a very odd schedule, with 3 hour breaks in the middle of the day on some days, and back-to-back classes on others. Last week I really struggled with working out 6 times because if I didn't do it in the morning (which on MWF wasn't happening with 8 am classes), then I was so tired in the afternoon that it was all I could do to get in 30-45 minutes of exercise.

I've decided to try something different this week: I'm cutting back on exercise. I have been exercising for 6 days a week since I began this whole journey on Jan. 21, and maybe it's past time for me to step it back a little bit. I don't want exercise to be my whole life or become an obsession, so right now the plan is to go to 4 days a week, with 45-60 minute workouts each time. I know that realistically speaking I won't be able to maintain a 6-day workout schedule forever, so I need to work on more manageable workouts and focus more on my calories. I've allowed myself to be pretty lax with my eating in some ways because I know the calories I burn through exercise help make up for what I eat, but if I want to truly be healthy, I have to get control of my eating habits. I still eat out of boredom, still eat more than I should at times, and still prefer cookies to vegetables. BUT I have these moments of weakness with much less frequency than before, and a lot of times I find that I just can't let myself eat something if I know I'll regret it later. That's HUGE for me. When I think about all of the junk I ate while in college and in grad school, I just cringe. I don't want to go back to that habitual gluttony! I can't tell you how much just logging everything I eat every day helps me; if you are struggling with eating, definitely try logging everything that goes into your mouth. It really becomes a sort of accountability system! And if you join SparkPeople, you can track the amount of calories each item has. (Have I mentioned how much I love SparkPeople? Because it's amazing!)

Thus concludes my weight loss ramblings. :) (Oh, except to mention that I'm .8 pounds away from losing 40 pounds!!)

More Adventures in Extended Session

Stephen and I got to spend another wonderful time in extended session today (read about our previous experience here), and we had eleven children all to ourselves. (Imagine our excitement as kids kept streaming in. It was truly wondrous.) Then we found out that there is really no lesson for that day, so we could just find a craft for them to do or let them play for the whole time. Awesome. Being the structured control freak that I am, I had a panic attack in my head as this was being told to me, but I just smiled and ran to get the one thing I knew we could excite them with: snacks! We got through that relatively easily, and then fortunately the children's minister saw how many kids we had and realized we needed something for them to do, so she brought us a video that tells a short Bible story. Half of them were more engrossed in each other than the video ("Hey, can I wear your necklace?" or "Why can he have his car with him but I can't?"), but at least they were all sitting in one place. After the video, we gave them activity sheets to color, but some kids preferred sticking the crayons in their ears and noses to actually coloring. (One kid seriously insisted that coloring made his arms hurt.) It's scary to think that other children will be using those crayons. I guess we should have thrown them away or something? After coloring time, we took them to the room next door, which had all kinds of toys for them to play with, and they entertained themselves very well. One girl delighted in running around with fake tubes of ketchup and mustard and squirting them at Stephen, all while giggling profusely.

We had a little bit of time left before the church service ended, so I got them together for a game of "Simon Says," which is the only children's game I could think of (how sad is that?). I was Simon at first, but then I let the kids take over. Some of them didn't quite "get" the concept, though, because a few of them would say something like, "Simon says, jump up and down!" and then when everyone did so, he'd say, "Nope, Simon didn't say!" And he'd literally said "Simon says" 2 seconds prior. It was quite hilarious.

There were some really sweet kids in there, and a couple of them provided us with laughable moments (we didn't laugh at the time, but you can bet we did later). One boy, who is a complete sweetheart, was showing Stephen the different colors that he liked, declaring them "so pretty." When Stephen handed him a red crayon and asked him if he liked red, the boy said, "Red is not one of the beautiful colors."

There was another boy, I shall dub him Bobblehead, who had a tendency to bob his head from side to side. At one point Stephen overheard one of the girls ask him why he did that, to which he replied, "So my head doesn't fall off." Where on earth did he get that idea??

All in all, another entertaining and enjoyable experience (aside from the quick view of a bottom that Stephen got when he saw that one of the boys was using the restroom but had neglected to shut the door). :)

Remember

Today I had my students write about what they remember about September 11, 2001. Then I discovered that most of them were in sixth grade at the time. I was a sophomore in college! I now feel very old.

Where were you when it happened? And does anyone else remember what they were wearing that day? I do, and I find that kind of strange.

First Days

Ever since I first entered kindergarten, I have adored the first day of school.  Other children, my brother included, screamed and cried and clung to their mom's skirts, despairing at thought of having to enter that classroom, but me?  I happily waved to mom and skipped jauntily into the classroom, eager to conquer the kindergarten arena.  I loved seeing all of the desks neatly arranged, the cubby holes ready and waiting to be filled, the decorations on the walls beckoning me closer, and of course, the Play-Doh.  I was hooked.  Each year, the night before the first day of school would come, and I would hardly be able to sleep for the excitement of wondering who would be in my class, where I would sit, what we would learn, what my teacher would be like, and I almost always woke up before I needed to, so anxious was I to start a new school year.  
New school years are new beginnings.  The grades from last year have been replaced with a clean slate (except within my mind, where I still can recall getting my first B in math, in fifth grade no less), the petty fights with friends have been healed by the summer months, and the promises of new experiences, new friends, and new knowledge shimmer in the morning sunlight. 

Now that I am on the other side of the desk, the excitement is still there, but it manifests itself differently.  I look forward to getting all of my office supplies in order: checking to see which pens still glide smoothly over the page and which just scratch and must be discarded; organizing my many sizes of Post-its; filing away last year's handouts; making out the week's to do list and writing in special events on my calendar, etc. etc.  I look forward to meeting a new group of freshmen, welcoming them into the world of college.  I look forward to exposing them to new ideas and new experiences, and I hope that in the midst of all the writing, they will have some fun, too.  I arrive at school early, to prepare myself and to pray for the students I will meet, and the excitement I feel is accompanied by another feeling:  fear.  My stomach does somersaults on that first day, as I think about all the things that could go wrong (me, the eternal pessimist): finding typos in my syllabus or going to the wrong classroom or completely butchering a student's name (I've checked my rosters, and there are some names I have no hope of pronouncing correctly).  What if I sound like a complete idiot?  What if they recognize me for the impostor I often feel that I am?  What if they're all smarter than I am?  What if I completely botch the whole semester and my students learn nothing?

But when I am tempted to just crumble onto my desk, consumed by these fears, I remember the phrase that has comforted me countless times before: worrying robs me of my joy and God of His glory.  If I focus on all of the these petty insecurities, that means I am not focusing on the One who looks at me and sees His daughter, the one He has fearfully and wonderfully made.  If I dwell on these fears, I give them power, and the only One who truly has power holds the world within His hands and will not let me go.  I am reminded of the words of David in Psalm 27:1:  "The Lord is my light and my salvation--whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid?"  Of whom (or what!), indeed? 

"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek:  that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and seek Him in His temple."  Psalm 27:4

Lame Excitement

I am easily excited.  I think this is an excellent quality, but sometimes I suppose my excitement over things like school supplies just comes across as weird.  This year at school I have my own office.  My very own office space!  And my door even has one of those dry-erase boards on it, so people can write notes on it!  (I'm sure my students will all be stopping by just to write "What's up?" on my door.)  I shared an office last year, and while my office mate was great, it was sometimes difficult sharing a computer and phone and office space, especially if we both had students in the office at the same time (as I often did because I'm so incredibly popular.  Ha.).  So I was really excited to see my name on the door, by itself!  (The fact that I have a nameplate was at one point a source of extreme excitement in and of itself.)  

The downside to all of this is the fact that my office is now in the engineering department.  (My old office now belongs to the new English department chair, as it was the only office available in the department.)  I have nothing against engineering, but I don't really know any of the people, and it will be weird to be completely detached from the rest of the English department.  I also have no phone or computer right now, but I'm told that will be remedied.  All in all, I think I will enjoy having my own office, and who knows? Maybe I'll pick up some engineering knowledge and change career paths.  I'm sure engineering is much more lucrative. 

Summer Is Vanishing

Next week, it's back to reality. With the exception of July (during which I taught a class), I've had a very stress-free, relaxing summer, and I'm sad it's over. However, I realize that if this were any other fall semester, it would already be over, but Union's fall semester starts later this year because of the new housing that had to be built after the tornado (14 new buildings in about 6 months! Amazing!). And of course, there's also the fact that most people who are beyond college age don't even have summers, so I should just count my blessings.

While I only managed to read one book on my original summer book list, I have read some books, mostly during July and August. Most of them, however, weren't exactly "literary" in the snobbiest sense of the word, but I think my brain just needed a break. In case you're curious, here's the list:

1. The Complete Fairy Tales by George MacDonald. The one book on my original list, and I liked it overall. I will admit that I skimmed some of the tales near the end, as I found them more dense and less entertaining than some of his earlier works. Still, I found his stories to be original and thought-provoking and would recommend them.
2. Dedication by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. I read this book based solely on my love of The Nanny Diaries, their first collaborative effort, but am going to give up on them after disliking this one and the one before it, Citizen Girl. I don't know quite how to explain my dislike, except that it seemed far too indulgent.
3. Summer by Karen Kingsbury. I love Karen Kingsbury's books, although they can seem in many ways to be too sugary and too easily resolved. Still, she does deal with some complicated issues, and she's an author I know I can rely on for enjoyable Christian fiction (a genre that I often hold at a lower standard than other types of literature, sadly enough).
4. Shopaholic and Baby by Sophie Kinsella. The Shopaholic books are my ultimate guilty pleasure, and this one did not disappoint. I love it when a book can cause me to both laugh hysterically and also become a bit teary-eyed.
5. The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella. This book isn't part of the Shopaholic series, and I don't think I liked it as much as I've enjoyed those, but it was still a fun read.
6. Savannah by the Sea by Denise Hildreth. Another Christian fiction/chic lit book, it was very enjoyable. I read the first book, Savannah from Savannah, a few years ago and found it to be charming, and this one was also.
7. Mercy by Jodi Picoult. It actually took me a few minutes to remember what this one is about. I've read almost all of Picoult's novels and enjoy them because of Picoult's handling of messy and fascinating subjects. This particular novel addressed the idea of mercy killing, with interesting results.
8. A Mile in My Flip-Flops by Melody Carlson. More Christian chic lit. I picked it up because the protagonist decides to flip a house, knowing nothing about it but what she's seen on HGTV. I had a love affair with HGTV myself (before we cancelled expanded cable, alas), so I was intrigued by the concept. It was pretty entertaining, but I didn't love the way the romance played out. There wasn't enough character development for it be believable.
9. Bookends by Liz Curtis Higgs. The title of this book is what got me, and while it was decent enough, overall I thought it was just okay. It had its charming bits, though, despite being terribly predictable.
10. House by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. Stephen has been on quite the Ted Dekker kick (he writes Christian thrillers that often have a strong supernatural element), and so I picked this up at the library because it sounded interesting. It was quite riveting; I read it all in one night, I think, and then I had trouble going to sleep because it freaked me out. My imagination is far too vivid.
11. Adam by Ted Dekker. I read this at Stephen's recommendation and found it to be gripping and well-written but also disturbing. It read kind of like a very long episode of Criminal Minds, in a way, which I like, but I guess I can stomach serial killers portrayed visually better than I can in print because it too left me unsettled, after which time I decided to leave the reading of Ted Dekker to my husband. :)
12. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Ah, Anne. What bettter way to rid my mind of disturbing serial killers than to read of dimpled elbows and kindred spirits and the Lake of Shining Waters? I adored these books when I was younger, and filling out the book survey inspired me to reread all of them. I found things about the books to be somewhat more annoying this time around (like having things told secondhand through Anne or someone else instead of actually writing out the events/dialogues themselves), but I still think they're completely charming and hope I have a daughter I can share them with.
13. Anne of Avonlea.
14. Anne of the Island.
15. Anne of Windy Poplars.
16. Hold Tight by Harlan Coben. I think I read this in between two of the Anne books, to take a break, and I really enjoyed it. Through a fictional story that has several different subplots, it asks the question, how much privacy is too much privacy between parents and their children? Is it ever okay to violate that privacy for the sake of protecting the child?
17. The Novelist by Angela Hunt. Another Christian fiction pick, but one that I thought used an interesting narrative device (a frame narrative, so to speak). I liked it.
18. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. The author of this book is coming to Jackson to speak this fall, so I thought I should read it, having heard it makes for good "brain candy." And it does. If you like Jane Austen's works, this book might be of interest to you. It's about a girl in the 21st century who wakes up one day to find herself in Jane Austen's time. It provides a less "rosy" view of the time period than many people think of, making mention of chamber pots and body odor and bad teeth, and while I didn't love the way it ended (it seemed a bit abrupt), I liked it overall.

So that's my list. Considering the fact that I read more than half of them in August alone, I think that's pretty good, but it could have been much better had my brain felt like reading earlier in the summer. I'm currently reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt, which I've been meaning to read for years and am now getting around to. It's too soon to pronounce a verdict on it just yet.