What a difference

So, last week was my first week FLYing. I can say it's made a HUGE difference already. In a matter of a week I got my house to the point where I am comfortable having people stop over at random. I can see my kitchen counters...ALL of them! My bathroom gets a light cleaning every night. And the biggest/best benefit of all is I did not spend all weekend doing laundry! I've been doing 1 load a night since Wed last week, so by time Saturday came I had just 1 load of whites to do and I got that cleaned and put away first thing! This cleared the way for me to get the kitchen in order and get out and have some fun!

On Saturday I went to 7 mile fair with Rick, his Mom, his Grandma, and his Mom's friend. While there I got wind of a bit of drama that may be surrounding our House Warming party this weekend. In a nutshell, both Rick's biological Grandparents will be there in the same house at the same time. There are really bad vibes between the two and they have not seen each other in years...(at least 23). I believe it should go fine, we're all adults, but I still have a bad feeling about it. We will see.

I'm getting excited for the next couple of weekends. This up coming weekend is our housewarming/Rick's b-day party. Then the following weekend is my 10 year (gasp) class reunion. I will be heading up to Hudson on Thursday and not coming back until Monday. I'm looking forward to getting away for a while! Rick and I discussed this weekend and decided it's more important to have some time apart than to go to this reunion together. I will be taking the dogs with me to give him a break from them as well. All in all it should be a good couple weekends coming up!

Changes

I've come to a point in my life where I feel helpless in personal situations that I can't really change at the moment. The inability to make the necessary changes has gotten me down in the past, but I've decided to take a new outlook on this and make some positive changes for the things I can control!

My first change was doing the 100 push-up challenge. I started week 4 and have noticed some improvement already. Not only with the number of push-ups I can do, but also with the way my arms look. To others my arms will still look huge. To me through all that nastyness I can see a bit of muscle definition. It's an improvement for me and I'm excited about it! Imagine what will happen when I move onto real (non-girly) push-ups!

My second change has to do with cleaning. I am horrible at getting motivated to clean. It's a love-hate relationship for me. I love the feeling once it's done and everything is clean and in its place. The hate part is actually doing the work! I feel overwhelmed a lot and sometimes don't even know where to start.

There is one part in my kitchen which particularly annoys the crap out of me. It's where magazines, papers, mail etc pile up. It looks messy and unattractive, but I can't figure out a good solid solution for it. So in my search for solution ideas on how to handle it I came across this site.

I thought I have nothing to lose so why not give it a shot. So I did not shine my kitchen sink yet. Mondays and Tuesdays are late days and I had no bleach at home. I got bleach on my lunch break yesterday dinner is simple tonight so I think I'll be able to do it tonight! I have my fingers crossed. I have done a couple of the other items, one was taking 2 min to clean a hot spot. Well, I was at work when I got the tweet about it so I decided to quick do my desk. Can I say it's amazing how much of a difference 2 min can make???

I'm still trying to find a way to conquer that pile in my kitchen, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.

One more thing about the site...the fly in FLYing is an acronym for Finally Loving Yourself. I love that concept and I'm excited to start this part of my life!

Cheers to positive changes!

Feelin' Old

It's been a rough 2 weeks for my body. 2 weekends ago I was putting on a pair of jeans and when I lifted up my leg to put them on I felt a sudden pain in my hip. It stayed there for a good week and finally started to subside by the next weekend. However, it remained stiff just to let me know it was angry. Even now, sleeping on my left side is almost impossible because my hip gets grumpy and feels I need to move in order to make it some-what happy.

Then this morning came. I got in a good 30 min on the elliptical, showered and dressed, dogs for a mini-walk around the block (cause it was raining, so I wanted to keep it short), garbage out and all of the sudden I turned to grab something off the counter and BAM! pain! in my upper back, right under the left shoulder blade. Almost like a knot but very painful. It lets me know it's unhappy every time I move it. I walk around like an old lady leaning forward with my shoulders, just to try to avoid making it mad. However, we're out of litter and I was doing a Target run, so of course I get some (the big 35 lb bucket of course!). Putting it in the cart required lifting over shoulder height. Upper back did not like that! Then I was thinking crap, I have to do this 2 more times once to get it on the counter and once more to get it in the car. Curse the cat litter! My back yelled at me but it's now in the car and Rick agreed to bring it in the house for me when he gets home.

Meanwhile, it's time to start popping some Ibuprofen like it was candy again. I'm too young to feel this damn old....isn't that a Garth Brooks song? That makes me feel even older!

On the plus side, it's one week until I get my new phone....Palm Treo Pro :D and I take a small step in the direction of Dog Assisted Therapy.

The WI Humane Society is offering a 1.5 hour class covering everything you need to know about this kind of thing. When we first got Bella I wanted to do therapy with her. But she gets scared easily, and doesn't take to new people all that well. I have a sliver of hope that the Canine Good Citizen class she starts next month will help her enough to be able to like seeing people, but I'm doubtful it will help that much. Tucker on the other hand will be awesome at it. As the neighbor girl says, he's that smiling dog. It really does look like he's smiling sometimes! He absolutely loves people and I'm sure he'll be great at it. I have to wait for him to turn 1 year old and pass the Canine Good Citizen test, then we can get involved. I'm psyched!

Fitness Blog

I've started a second blog that I will use to track my journey to becoming physically fit. You can check it out here.

My first challenge will be the One Hundred Push Up Challenge. Wish me luck!

I'm Free!!

Today was my meeting with my Attorney. Basically he said that this is what he was hoping I'd do but since he represented my ex and I he couldn't tell me to dismiss the case. He also said that my ex had called there and told him to dismiss the case. He was like what kind of idiot has someone else paying their bills and then actually requests for that to stop? Someone who is scared of another person coming after them for not making court ordered payments, that's who! Now, he will be held responsible for his back child support and other bills, not me!

In the long run it works much better for me. One MAJOR plus is that I fall just above what the average household of 1 makes. If you fall above this you do not have to send half of all income tax refunds received in to the trustee. I know, kinda messed up, since if you fall below you do have to send that money in. Go figure! The cons of the situation are that I have to extend this thing for 5 years (I was set to be out of the last one in Nov. 2010), and if anyone dies and leaves me money in those 5 years it goes into the bk. Other than that it was a good meeting.

Under the new laws you have to attend credit counseling. Basically it's a waste of time. But I did it and it's done and over and it wasn't too painful. At least it's something you could do online! So I'm well on my way for better days :) YAY!

The Negatives

During my marriage I did not control much of the financial aspect. It stressed me out to the max and my Husband just took it over. I learned this was not such a good thing. Not only did my credit get shot to hell, but it led to the filing of a chapter 7 bankruptcy and a chapter 13 bankruptcy. Yes, it really was that bad. Had I known what I know now things would be different. I'm a little more careful with my credit and it's on the rebound. Or I should say was on the rebound.

This year the ch 13 got to the point where I was now paying off the $5,000 in back child support belonging to my ex-husband. It all fell on me when we split. He was court ordered to pay $307 a month and has not made 1 payment. Muchless any part of the $1100 I thought he paid from income tax returns a few years ago. I got frustrated and gave up, decided screw him I will just let it go and refile. So I skipped a payment. Actually at the time I was thinking I'll just skip it to see if he'll make any of it. Turns out no he didn't and the day after I sent in the missed payment and the current payment the Trustee filed a motion to dismiss the case.

This is where a part of me I just don't like came out. When I don't want to deal with things I just shut down and won't talk to people, even if they are there to help. So I sent in the payments, the tax refund and went about my business. Then a few weeks ago I get a call from my lawyer's office. I of course ignore it. Then this week I open up the mailbox to a letter saying the case was dismissed and another one saying to call the law office. This time I realize that I messed up. I called and she informed me that the case was dismissed.

Doing some research I find it's not such a good thing this happened. Now I want to reinstate the case. I hear it's possible and I've contacted my attorney about it. I just hope it doesn't call for any action on my ex. That just wouldn't be good.

Also, my mother called. Get It Now called for me at her house (mind you I haven't lived there for 10 years now). She didnt' give them info, but it will be shortly before she's inundated with calls from these types of people I'm sure. So now I wait, and work on owning up to my mistakes. I think I've made enough for a lifetime and wonder how many more I can make before everything just falls apart.

I've also been in a funk about my weight. To the point where I'm so sick of seeing emails/ads about exercises to do and ways to cut the lbs. I have the desire to lose weight, there's just something there blocking me from doing it. I've been eating crappy and the only exercise I've been getting is my two 45 min. walks with the dogs per day which I don't know if those even count. Yes they're better than nothing, but they're not full out exercise. I've also been in a pretty bad funk over all my mood, my attitude, everything. I hope I can get out of it soon, because I'm seeing things I don't like.

And the score is....

Bella: 2 retractable leashes, 1 6' leash from the humane society, and 2 harnesses....Make that 3 harnesses, the morning after writing this blog Bella chewed through her expensive Easy Walk Harness....she never did like that thing.

Tucker: 1 6' leash form the humane society and 1 harness.

As you can tell my pups have a knack for destroying leashes and harnesses. Tucker chewed through his harness last week when I left it on him b/c I was going to be letting him out again once the contractors got to the house. Then last night while the said contractors were at the house I had the leash on him so I could stop him from getting in their way. They asked me to come downstairs to look at something and upon my return upstairs the handle of his leash was separate from the rest of it. I'm sick of spending money on this stuff!

As far as house training goes just when I think we're getting somewhere with Tucker he pees in the dining room as he's playing (by himself). I really wonder if he will ever get it. I just don't understand why it's so hard! GRRRRR!