Sad I've Been Gone?

OK, I’m gonna lay it on the line here. I am a neglectful, absentee blogger. At least recently. Here it is, the middle of June and I haven’t written anything in four months. The gaps just seem to be getting bigger, don’t they? In my defense, I have a full time job, four children under the age of five, and I’m trying to lose weight. If that doesn’t qualify as ‘being busy’ then I don’t believe anything does.

Let me try and fill in this gap of time here. My last post was on Ella’s one week birthday. A few weeks after that I learned that the Board of Education, my employer, was implementing a Reduction In Force due to budget cuts. Some 120 people were going to be laid off. One Friday I got a call from work about my leave and health insurance. I was told that since I would not be receiving a check that month that I needed to come in and pay my insurance out of pocket. Ha! Yeah, right, like I have $450 just laying around unclaimed. So I told them to cancel it. I was then transferred to the administrator of my department. He informed me that as of the new school year, July 1, my position would no longer exist. Did…did I just get RIFed? You sure did! When I got back from maternity leave I would have about a month and a half of work and then that was it.

So this is what my life looked like three months ago. Three kids, new baby, soon to be unemployed, and essentially a single parent. Oh, yeah, I never mentioned that one. Dave moved out right before Christmas. The day of the Sandy Hook shooting in fact. Now I’ll always remember both of those events. 

He was there when I had Ella, though, but that’s a different story altogether. It’s a good one, too, that I will be telling. I think hers is my favorite of all my birth stories.

Sorry, tangent.

Anyway, that was what was going on. So I started trying to figure out what to do. I kinda saw this coming so it wasn’t a total shock. Here I was at a crossroads. What to do? Try to find a job that makes what I make now? Maybe go to school? I decided to draw unemployment and go back to school. The hard part there is go to school for what? I know what I want to do, and while there is a possibility to make very good money at it, it is by no means a guarantee. I need a guarantee.

I had planned to go to school for Public Relations and Journalism, maybe get paid for doing this very thing I’m doing right now. My mother has been suggesting the medical field to me once a week for I don’t know how long. It’s true, you can always find listings for RNs in the paper and online. Could I do that, though? Is that something I would be able to force myself to do?

Full disclosure: I love hospitals. I always have. I know it’s weird to some people, but that’s just me. Dave, for example, doesn’t ever want to go in hospitals and he even has to force himself to when I have a baby. He should not be a nurse. I like hospitals. Does that mean I would be a good candidate? It means that I wouldn’t dread going to work because of the atmosphere, but could I do the actual work?

I finally came to the conclusion that the amount of money I would make would be decent compensation for the things I might have to do. I like people and the helping of them. I have four kids so I’m pretty used to taking care of people. This way I could get paid for it. Is being a nurse my calling in life? No. However, I no longer have the luxury of doing the things that I want to do for myself. I have small children and I would like to be able to buy them shoes before their toes start coming through the ends of the ones they are wearing. Hell, I’d like to be able to buy them shoes AFTER their toes start coming through the ends of the ones they’re wearing. So far writing a blog hasn’t afforded me that, so as much as I like it, it’s just not paying the bills. Being a nurse would. I just can’t think of another occupation that I can achieve within three years of schooling that can pay me as much as an RN will.
Oops, another tangent.

…what was I even saying?

Oh! Anyway, so here I sit at what will be my desk for another two weeks. When I leave on June 28 I will be four days away from having worked here for six years, the longest I’ve ever worked anywhere. I don’t think anyone will notice I’m gone.

School has been out for three weeks and my parents have sacrificingly agreed to watch them all until I get the boot at the end of the month. I appreciate it so very much yet at the same time feel guilty that I have to even ask it. I realize now why parents are always so much more excited than their kids when school starts back. Connor is already asking to go back to school, though. I don’t think that’ll last too many more years. He will be in Kindergarten next year. It doesn’t seem like I should have a kid in Kindergarten. But my oldest nephew just turned fourteen and I kept him two weeks after he was born so that’s not right either.

However, last week I was mistaken for one of the teenagers taking driver’s ed at the Board this year. I think I’m ahead of the curve.

I will briefly touch on the fact that I am something of a single parent right now. There, I think that’ll do. It is what it is, and while it’s nice to have an extra pair of hands at times, the only way I am struggling is financially. Sometimes I hear “I don’t know how you do it!” Thanks and all, but…what are my options?

I am also waging my war on fat yet again. This is not baby weight. This is Easter candy weight. I sabotaged myself this time. True to form, two weeks after having Ella I weighed ten pounds less than I started. It was the consumption of Easter candy that caused this weight gain. I was actually told later that some people thought I looked sick. My body did what it always does and set up me up for a good looking summer but I went and made it go all funhouse mirror on me. I think this time was the hardest it’s ever been to start back dieting. I’ll save that for another post. I will entitle it ‘My Love/Hate Relationship with Cadbury.’

Hopefully, now that I will have ample time on my hands thanks to the Board of Education, I will be writing more. Tell your friends! And then they’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends… And so on...

When I Grow Up

Remember this?  When Do I Have To Grow Up By?  No?  Go back and read it then.

The main idea of the aforementioned post has not really changed in the two years since it was written.  The only thing that has changed is the number of job possibilities that have newly sprung into my head since that time.  Yes, there’s more now.  It doesn’t help me in the least.  In lots of situations limits provide us with freedom.  There are no limits here.  I wish there was somebody you could pay to pick two or three of the choices in your mind and just say “OK, these are your only choices.  Pick one and shut up.”

One of my newer job revelations is actually something I’ve been interested in for a very long time.  It just never occurred to me that it could be a career.  For years one of the things that has almost always been on my mind is physical appearance.  I do know how shallow that sounds, yes, but hear me out.  You’re lying if you say you’ve never been concerned with your own appearance.  Losing weight, diet, nutrition, cardio, weights, all that has always been a preoccupation of mine.

When I became a Zumba instructor I realized how much I enjoy helping people get into better shape.  A few months later I decided that I would buckle down and stop silently complaining to myself about the changes I wanted to make and do it.  That’s what Dave has always told me.  Any time I would say how I wanted to run a mile in ten minutes or how I wanted to lose thirty pounds, he would tell me to stop talking about it and just do it.  It seemed kind of mean at the time, but it was good advice.  Especially since I got to use it on him later on when he complained that his chest wasn’t big enough.

Not long into my Zumba classes I had a few people asking for help and advice on losing weight.  So I told them what I knew and had read and sent them on their way hoping to have helped.  However, as they thanked me and turned to leave I wondered if I should have added “but I’m not a professional!”  Why would I want to say that?  I don’t know, so that maybe if my instructions didn’t work they couldn’t quite blame me?  No, I knew that my advice was actually good and I don’t think a certified professional would have given much different gospel.  I just didn’t feel like I had earned the right to dispense it.

Around the same time as my classes started I decided to stop talking about it and do it.  My goal was to lose thirty pounds in six months, a goal I felt was reasonable.  Five pounds a month is a little more than a pound a week and that’s not considered unhealthy.  I had already prepared myself that it wasn’t going to be instantaneous.  Results were not going to be obvious but that they would come.  And they did.  I recorded my measurements each month or so and only weighed myself about as often.  Daily weight fluctuates with water and, for women, cycle and I don’t think it is mentally healthy to weigh yourself daily, nor is it safe for your scale after you fling it through the window and into the street.

I won’t get into the little details, but I used what I knew and somehow manifested some will power and I managed to lose twenty two pounds.  However, the inches lost far outweighed the weight loss.  I lost 38.5 inches total from my body.  That’s more than three feet of space.  To me that’s just astonishing.

I wanted to be able to help other people achieve that.  I looked into becoming a personal trainer and dietician.  There wasn’t really any official schooling involved.  All you really have to do is buy the books, study, and take the test through ACE or AFAA.  Yeah, it’s not cheap but it’s much more affordable than a four year degree.  So for a while that was what I wanted to do.  Then of course my mind changed because of what was going on.  I went back to writing and thought perhaps that was the path for me.  I really hate how indecisive I am.

When I got pregnant in June of this year my fitness and weight loss goals obviously had to be put on hiatus.  A lot of people might consider pregnancy and the state right after giving birth to be a huge setback in a journey of weight loss.  I am fortunate enough to see it much differently.  I see it as a fresh start, which is exactly what I needed.  Right before I got pregnant my attention and determination had waned considerably and I stopped doing what needed to be done.  I had a brief surge in my motivation and it is reflected in my June measurements as they were my smallest to date, but then I got pregnant.

If you’ve read my posts then you know when I get pregnant I start getting all kinds of ideas about doing things that I can’t while pregnant.  Running being the most prevalent.  This time around it has extended to burlesque dancing.  Definitely not something you want to see a pregnant chick doing.  I feel that this is kind of like that, but not really.  This is something that I’ve thought about before, the only different is that I want the formal education that goes with it.

Recently I read a pretty popular article on MSN and Huffington Post.  That article stated that by the year 2030 that 50% of Americans are projected to be obese.  That’s half, yo.  HALF.  That’s like one out of every married couple.  Does that scare anyone else?  That said to me that healthcare is going to be an even more stable field to work in firstly.  With the fat comes the disease; high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, joint problems, all manner of debilitating health issues. 

I know I won’t be part of that 50%.  That probably sounds arrogant, but here’s why I say that:  I won’t be part of the obese 50% of Americans because I won’t allow myself to be.  That’s why I am so confident in saying that.  Moreover, I won’t allow my kids to be in that number either.

That number petrified me when I read it and it inspired me to want to help beat that number back even more.  Half the population being fat is simply unacceptable.  I told Dave all this a few nights ago and he said something to me that pushed me more, though I don’t think he meant it to.  He said “I know what your thing is now.  Your goal.  You are waging a war on fat.”  I can’t help but think he said this to make it sound a little frivolous and stupid, but he was right.  There it was.  Never able to really put it in words (Shocking, I know) Dave was able to.  Sean, our roommate, made it even better when he said that it was a good war to fight.  It’s true.  Someone is going to have to battle this.  Really, it looks like half of the country is going to have to battle it, but someone has to guide the resistance.  Why not me?

I know how to lose weight.  I can tell you how, but I can’t make you do it.  That’s the hard part.  I’m going to be reading and researching and studying all this anyway, why not do it for a living?

As for writing, I can still do that.  See?  I just proved it.