Weekend Highs and Lows

I headed into this weekend, after Friday morning's crappy weigh-in, with one major goal in mind, and a secondary goal to follow.  The major goal was to make it better than last weekend.  Last weekend I overate all 3 days...Fri, Sat and Sun.  I set myself up for a bad week right out of the gate.  I also said I would be eating processed stuff/sodium-filled stuff out of the freezer in an effort to get it cleaned out, and I did that, too.  Then I had a really bad day on Wednesday, and went out to eat that night...yet more sodium.  And the scale responded accordingly.

The good news is that this weekend was better than last weekend, so the major goal was accomplished.  The not-so-good news is that my secondary goal was to make sure I did not exceed 1800 cals on any of those 3 days.  Oops.  Here's the breakdown:

Friday:  a really good workout at the gym and calories were 1800.  Yay me.
Saturday:  rest day from gym (every Sat is) and calories were too high to count (Mexican food & margaritas)
Sunday:  a really good workout at the gym and calories are 1650.  Woo hoo.

So I guess 2 for 3 this weekend is better than the 0 for 3 last weekend.  At least that's what I keep trying to tell myself.  Progress, not perfection, right?  Yeah, whatever.  It's more like, "When are you ever going to learn and actually practice consistency Tammy?" 

And don't get me wrong....I am totally proud of myself for sticking to my guns on Fri and Sun.  I'm not posting this to b*tch about it...I'm just re-capping the stats from the weekend.  And I'm sorry, but I'm never going to be one of those bloggers that reveals their screw ups and then laughs about it.  You will NEVER read a post where I say something like..***.I'm sitting here typing this post, feeling sorry for myself about how fat I am and can't seem to lose the weight, while I finish off this large supreme pizza and watch crumbs fall on my keyboard...LOL***  I don't laugh when I mess up.  I can't...I don't know how... and I don't understand people that do.  I'm not judging...I'm simply saying I don't understand. 

So there's one high and one low from the weekend.  Here's another.  While Dwayne and I were throwing back the calories at the restaurant Sat night, he hooked up his laptop at the table, and we surfed the web for oceanfront, pet-friendly condos in Destin and Panama City Beach, FL.  He seriously needs a vacation from work....and I need one from my life, lol.  We found some pretty decent prices after a couple of hours of searching, and the plan was for him to go into work on Monday and ask for 4 days of his vacation time to be taken somewhere around the 3rd or 4th week of April.  He wants to go from a Tuesday through a Saturday, traveling back home on Sunday, and have 5 days on the beach.  I can't think of anything more perfect, especially after this ridiculously long and unusually cold winter. 

He said he would come over this Tuesday and we would pick the top 3 condos we were interested in, decide which one we want, and book it online.  Yippie!!  Something to look forward to!!   I was happy, happy, happy!!  Then I woke up this morning and everything changed.  My roommate told me that some congressman or senator or somebody important is holding up extensions on unemployment checks.  I went online to certify this morning, like I have to do every Sunday morning, and there was an "Important Notice" for all of us poor souls that are reliant on the government for our paychecks.

You don't know how much I HATE relying on Big Brother.  I'm such a capitalist and such a lover of free enterprise and people that actually WANT to work and make as much money as their pockets can hold.  I've always been so thankful to live in a country where you were free to do just that.  It absolutely KILLS me that there are people out here like me who are ready, willing and able to work and yet the jobs have become so elusive in this poor, struggling economy.  I keep hearing on the news that it's getting better.  So I go online to the Georgia Dept. of Labor website to check the stats.  The national unemployment rate is STILL 10% and Georgia's is 10.3%....up from 10.2% a month ago.  Hmmmm....that's improvement?  Seems to me like it's still going in the wrong direction.

Ok, I'm off on a tangent...forgive me.  I've joked on here before that if I ever start a political blog I'm naming it The Rabid Republican.  :)  Back to the Important Notice.  Turns out what Shane said was correct.  Things ain't lookin' good.  It said if Congress doesn't pass the latest extension, then the Tier that you're being paid out of now will be the last one you get.  The extension that was previously available after my current Tier will be gone.  I've got to go into the Dept of Labor tomorrow morning and look someone in the eye and have them give me the details to my face.  I also need to know exactly how many weeks of pay I have left.  From my calculations, it should be 4 weeks.  But I need to go ask just to make sure.  But as of right now, I'm 4 weeks away from rock bottom.  Can we say "emotional upheaval"?  Feeling binge-y anyone??

I called Dwayne this morning and dropped the bomb on him.  I told him I didn't think it was a good idea to schedule a beach vacation when I might need help keeping the lights on.  He said he really needs the vacation, and we would probably still go, even if we shortened the amount of days we went.  But who knows...I could go in there tomorrow and find out I only have one week of pay left.  It's happened before.  Which would mean relying on Dwayne to help me financially, and when we went through this the last time, back in December, he came over and looked at my extremely lean budget, and said it'd be hard for him to keep up both of our bills for very long.

So here I am again....facing the same ol' sh*t....feeling helpless and hopeless despite all of my efforts to get an interview with someone.  I've tweaked my resume and cover letter over and over.  I've got a job link that encompasses many different job boards that emails me every single morning with updated listings...and as part of my morning ritual, I apply to everything new that I know I'm qualified for, and even the ones that I think I can "wing it" on.  I've been to job fairs.  I've had friends contact the HR companies at their jobs, trying to get my foot in the door, but nothing's been available.  I've stayed in contact with several girls I worked with at my last job from a year ago...keeping up the networking with them in case something breaks on their end.  Only one of them has found a new job....the other 4 (including my boss) are still unemployed just like me.  I've joined a networking site called LinkedIn, just in case that provides some help somewhere along the way.  I don't know how else to say, "I WANT TO GO BACK TO WORK!!!!"

So these are the highs and lows from the weekend.  After I hit the unemployment ofc tomorrow, I'll be going to the gym to work out some frustration and fear.  Then I'm headed up to Ellijay to babysit for my sister.  My calorie goals for tomorrow are 1800.  I haven't hit that a single time while I'm up there...but it doesn't mean I can't keep trying.  I hope everyone has had a super duper weekend....and a couple of people gave me some awards this weekend which I'll recognize in Tuesday night's post.  Thank you 266 & Kyle!  :)

Quote For the Day:

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."  -Dale Carnegie