Step Away From the Cake

I'm studying to be a teacher, I may have mentioned that. I'm getting my Master's in Secondary Education from a local university. It's a great program and kind of the way I have to go. Since No Child Left Behind was enacted teachers now have to be 'highly qualified' in what they teach. Used to be you could get a bachelor's degree and go off and teach. Not any more. Here in Hawaii there are a lot of teachers who will be retiring because they don't meet that 'highly qualified' description. Many have been teaching for years and don't want to go back to school to continue to work. It's hard the way I'm doing it. But there is another way. You can get MS Instruction online. You can get your masters in Curriculum and Instruction completely online. St. Xavier's offers an online masters that focuses on theories of curriculum, learning, growth and development. I can tell you from experience, these are incredibly important aspect...

Okay, I'm going to tackle this just like I tackled my stress problem last weekend. A couple of things to note. I am sleeping too much. This happens whenever I stop working out I'm getting headaches. Another thing that happens when I stop working out I feel like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Ditto the above I have zero energy. Ditto the above. So enough of this. For the first few days, or even weeks, I will have to force myself to do something. So I'm starting today. Here is my list of activities for today: A morning walk (I need to start really slow) Work in the garden later (If it stops raining) Stretching/Yoga before I got to bed There, not too much, a nice easy start. I want to get back into the habit of stretching/yoga for about 1/2 hour before I go to bed. It really relaxes me and I'm unbelievably inflexible right now. I've also noticed when I do strength training regularly (which I will soon) I get very tight and the yoga helps keep me loose. I'm d...

So I've been thinking about my morning post all day. I just have to get moving. I don't have to do a kick ass hard workout, I just have to get moving. So that's what I'm doing tomorrow. I'm going to move. I may charge up the iPod and go for a walk. I may do the elliptical. I may go for a hike. I just have to move. I also need to track my food. That's all I'm going to do. Move and write down what I eat. I have my workload under control and now I need to get my fitness back in order. It's funny, I stepped on the scale this morning because I feel like the Goodyear blimp. It wasn't bad. In fact, it was down a pound. Hmmm....Clearly my eating is fine if I could just get the activity in there it would all be good. Okay, sorry but I love this :)

I have not gotten up to workout all this week, but I have been noting my routines. I have an amazingly hard time getting up at 4:30 but it's fairly easy to get up at 5. Hmmmm..... My main chore in the morning is feeding the birds, that alone takes almost 1/2 hour. Fixing the food takes about 15 minutes and then the actual feeding takes about 15 minutes. Hmmm..... I also have the habit of fixing my lunch and ironing my clothes (if needed) in the morning. That all takes about 20-30 minutes. Hmmmm..... If I get up at 5 there isn't really time to workout. So here's my idea. What if I got the bird's food ready the night before? There's 15 minutes. What if I also packed my lunch and ironed my clothes? There I have at least another 20 minutes. That gives me at least 1/2 hour in the morning with nothing to do. Hmmmm.....Oh yeah, I could use that time to work out!!! There is at least an hour every night that I sit around doing nothing but watching TV. While r...

Please note that is is not a paid post. I purchased these items and am so pleased with them overall that I had to write a post about them. These are Fit & Fresh food containers. They are specifically designed for different foods and/or meals and they have ice packs that fit right into the containers. They keep your food nice and cold for you. I have a few different ones and I absolutely love them. The salad one has a built in dressing holder/dispenser and a space for a knife and fork. I also got a bunch of 1 cup containers that have tiny ice packs that fit in the lid, very cool. I also got the drink shaker for my protein shakes in the morning. I got the breakfast one that's supposed to hold cereal in the bottom, an ice ring that the milk container sits in, and then an upper bowl for fruit or whatever. I love the thought of this one unfortunately I can't get it to work right. The container that holds the milk has to sit inside the ice ring and when I freeze the ice ...

It really is. So my little to-do list in my planner is probably the one single, greatest idea I've had in a while. On Tuesday the list had 13 items on it for 3 different areas. Tomorrow's list is 7 items. I've completed 6 things and they were the harder things. The 7 things I have left will be done by Sunday, probably sooner. Of course on Monday a whole new list starts for a whole new week, but that's okay, I've got a plan to handle :) I did not get up and workout this morning. It was freezing cold at 4:30 and I just could not drag myself out of bed. I didn't workout when I got home at 10:30 either because I was tired and decided I needed a nap more then a workout. That may not have been the best choice but it's mine. The way my schedule is; early some mornings, late some nights; I'm trying to figure out a workout schedule that won't kill me. I need to do something every day but it doesn't have to be killer every day. Ah, I don't ...

At least I think that's what happened at the beginning of this week. I was totally stressed out, things didn't look good, I didn't know what I was going to do and it all reached a boiling point on Monday. It actually started building on Sunday and peaked on Monday. But things are better now. One of the first things I did was make a detailed to do list so I had a handle on what the heck was going on. I found myself running in a number of different directions with grad school work (holy crap is there a lot of work in grad school), work, high school, worrying about the dogs, etc. I now have a detailed list in my planner that lays out all the things I need to do. I don't feel the need to do them all at once as I know I have a week to do them, but I also feel like I'm making good progress when I check off something no matter how small. So now that I have those things that I can control under control I'm feeling much better. When the stress started to build the...

I got my laptop about 5 months ago. I got it when I started school because with Sam, the bird, I can't always sit in here and use the desktop. Also, I discovered that having 2 computers is very helpful, especially for school. I can have info on the laptop and be working on the desktop, very, very handy. I purchased the laptop on sale for a good price and I'm overall very, very happy with it. However, there is one thing that drives me nuts. That little area at the bottom that is supposed to be the mouse. Ugh!! It's right in the middle and I keep tapping it with my wrists when I'm typing and it causes my cursor to jump all over the place. Or I'll be using it and hit the little scroll thing on the right when I don't mean to and the page will scroll. It can be very annoying. So I've decided I need one of these: I've been looking around and debating getting one, but I think it's becoming critical. I don't mind the keyboard on the laptop, i...

After my last post I headed off to school and really had a meltdown. I had to make a presentation to class of a chapter in our book. I had gotten my presentation together and it totally sucked. I really could not get my head around it and could not come up with anything creative at all. So it was this boring, dry, power point presentation. Blah!! But before class I was sitting in the room alone and thinking that I feel like an impostor in my own life. I was getting ready to make a presentation that I know sucked. Tomorrow night I have my adolescent psychology class. You can not imagine how I am struggling with that class. I am not into psychology at all. I don't understand it and I have trouble wrapping my head around it. So I was thinking about that class and how I'm pretty much faking it. Then I started thinking about my new job and how I don't know what I'm doing and feel like a big fake. So I really started feeling like a complete impostor. I got pretty...

I feel like I'm in a holding pattern and I don't like it. It was 8 months ago we decided to move to Colorado. We knew we wouldn't be able to move right away because of the dogs. They are just too old and sick to move, the move itself would probably kill them. Okay, we agreed to wait till they passed away. In the mean time I decided to go back to school to be a high school teacher. I was told that would take 12 months to certification and 18 months to a masters. Cool, I could do that. Now here we are 8 months later and I feel like we are no closer to moving then we were 8 months ago. Plus, on top of that, I feel horrible because we can't move till the dogs pass away so by being anxious to move I almost feel like I'm wishing them to die, and I'm not. But, oh, aaaarrrrggggg!!! Meanwhile 12 months to certification is really 16 months and 18 months to a masters is really closer to 24 months. I'm ticked but I'm into it already so what do I do??? Qu...

I really don't. I've decided to take a short hiatus from working out. I have such trouble getting up in the mornings and I'm trying to work out a better plan. I don't know what's going on I really don't but I've decided to step back and get some distance. This usually helps me figure out what's up and gives me a chance to catch my breath. I've been going, or should I say trying to keep things going, for a while now. It's time to catch my breath. I need to figure out exactly what I want to do and how to go about doing it. So that's it. For now I'm on a small hiatus. I'll still be blogging though, I always have stuff to blather about :)