Today is

I am not feeling well, and I'm at a point where it is not crucial if I take a day off, so I am home sick today. Being a teacher, it is difficult to take a day off. But there are times during the semester when it is easier than others, this is one of those times. Also, everyone around me is getting seriously ill with the flu. Since I'm not feeling well, and have no desire to catch the flu, I decided a sick day was the best course of action. I can rest and hopefully not catch what everyone has. Believe me, there are times when I have been deathly ill and still dragged myself into work because of what was going on. I'm hoping to avoid that this year. Anyway, I have things to do for school even though I'm not there. I started grading the AP tests last night, I guess I can finish them as I rest today. Oh joy.

So my phone died a week or so ago. If you had asked me before it died if I used my phone often, I would have told you no. That would have been a lie. I have found myself in so many positions in the last week where I needed my phone and couldn't use it. Ugh!!! I am getting a new one, but they are out of stock and so I wait. If I'm feeling better later, I may run it to the Sprint store and see if they can do anything. I also need to run my car over for a quick check, hopefully I can do that this afternoon.

Weight Watchers has been going pretty well. Not perfect, but good. I have started eating like a normal human - whatever the hell that means. But I have a decent breakfast, not heavy on protein or carbs or anything in particular. I have a decent lunch, again not heavy on any one thing, but a mixture of good healthy food. I eat dinner. No real snacking, except when I come home from school and I have got to break that. No after dinner snacking. What I've noticed this week is that I'm feeling good. Really. Really. Good. I'm tired at the end of the workday but not that bone weary exhaustion I get. I want to work out in the morning, I've been jumping on the treadmill religiously. And I've just been feeling awesome. I feel good. I like this feeling. I like feeling like a normal person and not some zombie by 4 p.m. in the afternoon. I did have a little candy binge yesterday. I think I had 4 tiny Butterfingers and 4 ting Twizzlers. Not great, but not as bad as it could be. I don't particularly feel like I'm losing weight, but I'm okay with that. I'm not making drastic changes, so I don't expect to see drastic results. I'm more than happy with just feeling much better.

Part of it has been the removal of stress. I do not bring work home, except for once in a while. 99% of the time, work gets done at work. I have removed the stress of walking the dogs during the week. That was a big stressor. I was so tired and having that hanging over my head just made it worse. Now that I've removed that, things are better. The first week at Phoenix was a huge stressor - that was last week. But I already feel a little better about this week. I probably graded the discussions wrong, but I do not even care. I have reached the point where I just want to get through this. Besides, I have realized that it seems mostly up to me so, whatever. I've also stopped stressing about my dissertation. I know what I want to do and it will get done. I don't work on it everyday, but I work on it more than I think I do. So removing stress has definitely opened things up for me. Once the stress is gone, things really start to flow. I have the energy and the desire to do things that stress prevented me from.

Okay, I've been walking on the treadmill the entire time I've been writing this. That has totaled to 31 minutes. Easy, peasy. Now time to go shower.