Paying The Piper

I weighed in at 247.4 this morning for a gain of 7 lbs. Here's the pic to stay accountable to Kandice's Challenge:

For Chris' Challenge, I was supposed to start on Tuesday and screwed that up.  The rules are to exercise at least 1 hour/6 days/wk.  I did manage to do this Wed & Thur, but it wasn't a 4 mile walk at the park like I had hoped....it's been raining off and on here all week.  I ended up doing it in (2) 30 min. intervals here at home.  I did crunches (I'm unable to do a full sit-up yet), lower leg lifts, some arm work with my weights and some modified push-ups (girlie ones). 

A few people have emailed me this week to check on me and I appreciate it very much.  Leslie emailed last night and I'm going to copy and paste part of my reponse to her as to what's been going on with me so I don't have to re-type everything.  You all know already that the wknd was bad right through the holiday on Monday.  This email picks up with Tuesday morning.

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I've been doing Chris' challenge for the last 2 days, which is good, but the eating is still in the crapper. However, I'm feeling better. I've been stressed to the max ALL week, and it started on Tuesday morning. Shane (my roommate) told me that a guy from his church was looking for an admin asst for his company in Marietta. Gave me the # and I talked to the guy on the phone for a good 20 mins. He told me to email my resume and I did. That was Tuesday early afternoon. He didn't get back to me til Wed evening at 6pm...an email...so I was holding my breath the hole time. I didn't even leave the house...I couldn't. I was too stressed. The email said that he got my resume and to go ahead and call his contact girl at TRC Staffing (he had already explained on the phone that they do all their temp-to-perm hiring thru them)....and fill out the tax papers, etc. Now I'm starting to feel hopeful. I called TRC at 8am this morning...the girl I needed didn't get in til 9am...I was in the door at 10am filling out paperwork. Just about to leave, everything looking good, and he emails the TRC girl and asks her to test me on Word and Excel. Doh! I thought I was going to get out of the testing. The truth is, I've been unemployed for 1 yr and 3 mos. I knew I was going to flunk them because I'm out of practice....and I was friggin' nervous as I don't know what. The girl said she'd email them to me and I could do them at home. I called Dwayne as soon as I got in my car to head home and I was about in tears. He said just do my best and he was sure I'd at least pass them in the Intermediate range. Yeah right!

I got home, spent an hour dinking around in the 2 programs, trying to recall basic functions, and finally took the test. You had to score at least an 80 for it to be acceptable by TRC's standards. I'm not sure if that's good enough for the guy hiring or not. Well I got an 83 on the Word one and a 63 on the Excel. I called her and she said the Excel was going to hurt me....asked if I wanted to re-take it. It was 1:30p and she left the ofc at 5pm. I told her I'd study up a bit and re-take it.

I was texting, emailing and calling Dwayne on the phone and we were both frantic, googling Excel tutorials together....he actually left his desk and went in the conference room with his laptop for a solid 30-40 mins reading through tutorials with me while I worked through a spreadsheet I created on my computer. "We" studied for 2 solid hours and I re-took the test at 3:30p. I scored a 90 that time...got 27 out of 30 right. I called her at 4pm and told her, she was happy and said she'd email the test scores to the guy immediately. Well....I never heard back from him, and I know he works til 6pm, because he emailed me at like 5:57 the day before. So let's just say that I've been stressed to the max since Tuesday but especially since 10am this morning up until now....still stressed, and I'm going to stay this way I'm sure until I hear something back, good or bad. And I don't even want to think about how I'l react if it's bad news.
 
I got my last unemployment check today. I'm out of cash dude. So as of next week, Dwayne will be handing me ALL of my bill money and that just kills my soul. I can't tell you what it does to me. I know some girls are happy to have a guy pay their way but I'm just not like that....due to past experiences, it is of utmost priority to me to be able to pay my own way so I don't get stuck with no money, no job, no car, etc. (bad previous relationship)...and go spiraling into severe depression again. So I'm tied up in knots right now. Dwayne has been more than understanding, very supportive, covering me up in "I love you"'s...but even he isn't made of money, and very kindly told me that he'll only be able to carry my bills along with his for a month to a month and a half. He's trying to save to buy a house and anything he gives me comes out of his savings account.


So anyhoo....I was hoping the guy would call me this afternoon and ask me to do a face to face interview tomorrow...praying I could start on Monday. But that didn't happen. Now I'm not sure what's going on....and I know I'm only this frantic because I'm desperate. If it's meant to happen it will and it's not, it simply won't. It's just the up and down emotional rollercoaster that keeps me half effing crazy. I'd give anything for a normal, calm, relaxed year after the one I've just dealt with. It also hasn't escaped me that there are others that have it MUCH worse off... I know in the grand scheme of things my problems are menial and barely a blip on the screen....but they're MY problems, so they're very real to ME....you know what I'm saying?
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I have 2 goals for this week.  The first is to keep up with Chris' Challenge of 1 hr of exercise each day, and the other is to drop 7 lbs. this week. 

I've been consumed with this job prospect and haven't been cooking.  I'm quite certain the biggest part of this is sodium and here's why:

Tuesday - lunch out w/ mom and sister
                dinner out with Dwayne

Wednesday - lunch out by myself
                     dinner out with Shane

Thursday  - lunch out by myself
                  dinner out with Dwayne

So as you can see I've been overloading my system with sodium this week.  I feel pretty confident I'll see a big drop.  Here's my first attempt at getting back on track with the eating.....

This morning's breakfast was 4 egg whites scrambled with a pc. of 2% Amer. chz &  topped with 2 Tbsp of fresh salsa.

                                                                           Calories:  123

My next dilemna is with grocery shopping today.  I've got to go do that in a little bit and I am having a big problem with nothing I think about cooking sounding good, especially the veggies that I normally prepare ahead of time for the week.  Asparagus, broccoli, yellow squash, zucchini, cauliflower, etc.  All of it sounds hugely unappealing.  I'm considering buying all different kinds of veggies today than the ones I've been eating and see if that will spark some sense of creativitiy in my meal planning.  I'm also considering not concentrating on the veggies at all this week, and keeping my sole focus on simply staying under 1800 cals and getting my exercise in.  Maybe I should go with that....keeping it to the basics...one meal at a time. 

Ok.  Well.  That's it.  I'm off to start my day.  I've hesitated to mention this job prospect all week, in case it fell through like the fiasco at the last job that lasted 2 1/2 days.  That was embarassing and incredibly disappointing.  But I've thrown it out there now, so if you would, please pray for me.  Thanks friends.  :)