June Recap!

And June is done! Can you believe it? Where the hell did it go?

Okay, let's begin...

Fitness/Weight! This continues to be my struggle zone but that's not really new. So when I last left you I was flat for the year on weight. I'm now down 1.8 for the year, lost 2 pounds last month. A big reason is I bought a Fitbit and I am very competitive. I originally bought the Fitbit to look at the sleep tracking. Then because I had it I started tracking steps. And because Brent has one when the app sends me my weekly update it shows Brent and I on a leaderboard for steps taken. And he was crushing me every week. Well...no, that's not okay. So I set a daily goal for the week. Three miles and 8000 steps Monday through Friday. It meant that on weightlifting days I need to get a walk in as well.

And then because it was a blank spot on the readout I decided to track calories. And this is where things get a little tricky. Anyone who has ever done Weight Watchers or any sort of tracking to lose program can tell you that just the act of writing down what you eat changes what you eat. If you have to write down that candy bar, you are less likely to eat it. You can't "forget" you had that bag of chips if you are writing everything down. And it really does work. Accountability for the win.

For normal people.

See, for me, tracking triggers that crazy spot in my brain that says, "I ate 1800 calories on Sunday, and 1500 on Monday. Can I eat 1000 today and be okay?" But the good news is that I know it triggers that crazy spot so I can watch out for it. So I tracked this month and I moved more. And I lost a little bit of weight. So we are back to the conundrum of if I am really tight with what I do, food, drink, and exercise then I can still lose weight. Not much. But some. And is that worth it to me? And I still don't have the answer. So we will see. Six more months in this year, working toward this goal to figure it out.

Reading! I'm still 4 books behind for the year. I'm sure I'll catch up. I'm not sure when, or how, but sometime soon. I read one Discworld book so I'm at the point now that if I double up one month and then one a month for the other 5 months I'll hit that goal. I've got the next two online at the library so I should be able to get those knocked out this month and be ontrack there. Maybe find a few short books to read to pad my numbers as well. Or that will just happen later. I'd really like to get ahead a bit because November/December is always a little tougher to get through things as there is always less free time around the holidays, but..I'll get it done I'm sure. I've been thinking about re-reading The Sandman series so that could always push me over the numbers.

Writing! Once this blog posts I'll have hit my "needed average" for the month so I'll still be four ahead for the year. Fiction I'm way ahead on. That Memory series that started as a lark post from a prompt Dana sent me has taken over. Thinking about it this morning and it could very well end up being 20 parts long. I REALLY want to finish it though because books aren't my thing. I keep having to go back and search for names and events to make sure I've got the right people in the right places. It's so much easier to write a short story and walk away. But it's been interesting. Even if it might not be completely coherent. Kind of like me.

MasterClass! I took Judy Bloom's this month. She was a huge influence when I was a youngster. Her books were so great. She's almost 80 and you wouldn't really think so at all. I think staying curious has kept her young. So that's a goal. I'm not sure that I picked up much as far as technique but I liked listening to her and how she does things. It takes her years to write a book normally. And the amount of writing and rewriting she does was really interesting. I think it should give a lot of us hope. The amount of time it takes her, and the number of times she writes it because as she says, "it wasn't good." If Judy Bloom thinks her stuff wasn't good the first time through that's something. I have no idea what I'm taking next month. Maybe Penn and Teller just because it should be interesting?

Monthly Museum/Attraction! Our local History museum has a Beatles exhibit running right now so we went to that. It was really well done. You tend to forget how short of a time they were together and how even shorter of a time they toured. They crammed a lot of influence into a few years. And a lot of merchandise. Some of it was really creepy. Like there was a line of dolls that looked like they had cross bred with Troll dolls...I just thought...imagine waking up to THAT staring at you...

Long Term! The deck is done!! It was one of those things that really worked out for the best. It was less than half the cost of the company we had originally scheduled to do the work. Sometimes it's good to find bad service.

So what's on tap for next month?

Long term: Curtains for the living room/dining room window. We've got vertical blinds on that back door that are just worn out. I'm going to switch them to curtains. I'm tired of hearing the blinds click clacking together in the breeze.  Also doing a clothing sort. I put on my calendar a few months ago that I needed to get rid of clothes that don't fit and to be ruthless about it. That is now two weeks away. I have little stashes of too small and too big clothes all over the house. It's time to be realistic about them and let them go.

Also going to try and catch up a little on reading. I have three books going right now, maybe I'll start doing that, seeing if reading a few at a time moves me along? Probably not, but for now I've got a nonfiction, a fiction, and the Mueller Report on tap. Yeah, it's 400 pages, you better believe I'm calling it a book!

And that's June. Enjoy your summer! Keep striving for what is important to you! Next recap will be on Birthday Month Eve! Woo!