W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

Such a hard year! But I made a point of being grateful for any successes or progress, part of what I'm promising to do more of in the new year. Like in 2009, I:

• Did yoga at least 4 times per month.
  
• Signed up for a gym, and went 4-10 times per month. Right through August, when I had the extended trip to Hawaii and came back tired and busy.
  
• Despite not slimming down from use of said gym, bummer, I did get healthier. The couple of times I went in December, after only doing yoga, my heart rate stayed strong and low.
  
• Wrote a whole chapter of my supernatural mystery novel, plus a reasonable (if overly general) synopsis. Did it to enter in the HWC.
  
• Made it to Hawaii for the HWC, despite vacation-time shortages and unexpected major household expenses. Normally, I'd freak out over $$$ and cancel things. Resisted that urge!
  
• Finished my first true comedy script and entered it in 5 screenplay contests. My first new script in 3 years!
  
• Reduced my soft drink and caffeine consumption from multiple drinks per day to 2 Dr Peppers and 3 mocha lattes a week.
  
• Drank a lot more water! (Because I didn't have the mugs of other stuff sitting on my desk at work).
  
• Bought (local whenever possible) veggies and fruit and ate at least 3 servings on most days.
  
• Paid off my car loan 2 years early (despite the trip and household expenses). That put me in the situation of having no debt no more, except for my mortgage.
  
• Increased the amount of money I send to my family in South Austin each month.
  
• Shopped thoroughly and found just the right new (leather!) sofa and loveseat, good quality at a good price. And by giving my old set to my brother, turns out I've helped mitigate his low-back problems from his old, spring-shot furniture.
  
• Made most of the monthly and biweekly meetings of my several writers group: SlugTribe, Austin Screenwriters Group, Austin Cats, Austin Writergrrls.
  
• Coordinated and project managed a very ambitious and successful weekend workshop with screenwriter guru Michael Hauge.
  
• Read and judged scripts for the Austin Film Festival. That's 70+ scripts + 30 "no" scripts. Even though crazy busy. A thing to be proud of, even if it didn't help to network me with the new contest coordinator Alex, who blackballed me from ever judging again. (Oh, and somehow only managed to pass on to semifinals a fraction of scripts by women writers. Really, he and his coterie sent a shamefully small % of female-authored screenplays to the Hollywood judges. But the Hollywood judges? They pretty much awarded 50:50 on the winners of the categories between guys & girls. heh)

( Why the last decade was so heinous... )

In some ways, being the home the family comes to for the gifts and the meal and snacks means you don't have to get up to travel on Christmas morning. But you still get up early to prepare the vegetables and roast beast and put them in the crock pot. (The crock pot I got last Christmas, btw.) And you spend a lot of time dusting and sweeping and mopping the day before so the place is (relatively) cat-hair free. And if you're like me, even though you can't eat things made with flour, you cook up some homemade goodies to have to snack on. Didn't make the homemade toffee I usually do, but did make a batch of Le Far Breton, the French custard card from my friend's family recipe that's full of egg and milky goodness with cinnamon on top! And banana nut bread and hot rolls. All this on Christmas Eve, plus then I went to a friend's annual party

But all went well, and the meal was deliciious and served right at 12:30 so that was successful! My gifts were successful too, which is the biggest deal of Christmas for me. Even though they were disappointing in their lack of bulk, so I didn't have the spread of stuff under the tree like in previous years. But my niece and nephew are in high school and all they want are pieces of paper (a year subscription to XBox Live and an Old Navy gift certificate). And my mom asked for a gift certificate for her favorite shop. My sister got a Dave & Busters gift certificate so she can take the 2 teenage kids out for food and arcade games. My brother, who doesn't ask for much and lives a very frugal life, had his ancient TV break on him a few weeks ago. So his holiday gift was my mom and me sharing the cost of a 42-inch flatscreen HDTV. I printed a picture of it and put it in an envelope under the tree to act as a symbol of the Christmas gift. Plus I got him 2 weird old horror DVDs. And got my mom a fancy old lady leisure outfit in black velvet with leopard trim as well as the gift certificate.

Me, got the new sonic toothbrush I asked Santa for, plus a gizmo that turns my car radio into a speaker for my cell phone and a gift certificate to Massage Envy. Earlier I'd gotten some cool books and games and scarves and candies from various friends... My Christmas gift to myself* was a mac PowerBook my friend Bryan got me at the price Apple dealers pay. It's the just-previous version, but that's okay because it's 5 lbs and wifi'd and cool! Still one big gift exchange with my pal Leslie too... I got her a nifty 7-inch TV. Curious to see how that goes over...

Then the days right after Christmas are my favorite time to freshen my winter wardrobe. Found a cool wooly sweater at 40% off and a gorgeous black-floral velvet skirt and red top I can wear with my knee-high boots that I gifted myself with last Christmas! And of course I find Christmas cards at discount now for Christmas 2010.

Would've called friends about seeing a movie today (UP IN THE AIR is my top pick) but the cedar fevers got me and I been sneezing and honking since yesterday evening. I won't disturb others in the theater when I have so many DVDs I bought and haven't watched yet. Such as.... the full season of FIREFLY! Only saw the initial episode and was "mehhh." But really liked the feature-length movie.

Oh, and I've started working on my PINKY BLACK novel again. W00t! Happy Seasons Greetings to all!

*I used to have a rule that it didn't count as a Christmas gift if it was also a tax write-off, but it was a hard year for the finances so the MacBook is it!

First, the bad news. I haven't been to the LifeTime Fitness gym since before my trip to Hawaii. So... late August.

I kept thinking I needed to go, but it was so cold and wet and dark. And I'm so freaking busy! But today, it was 68 degrees. Sunny! And I had the whole day. So I went to work out.

The good news: despite the almost 4 months of only yoga workouts, no aerobics, I had a really hard time getting my heart rate above 138! I pushed it and got to 140. So the heart health I built up before has stayed somewhat!

And I figure $75/mo x 3 months = $225 is enough to pay for the theory of fitness without acting on it.

When we get rain in Austin -- and we've been having drought conditions -- love what it does for my yard and plants. Hate what it does for the inside of my head and general health.

The mold blooms something terrible, and I get horrible sleep, pounding headaches, red eyes, sometimes tearing like I'm crying. Man. And I creep around. Barely get home from work, and I have to sleep for 2 hours! Which is bad anytime, but now it's critical I finish my CAN'T SAY NO script for the Austin Film Festival. Final deadline? Monday, June 8th!

So this morning I emailed in sick. My headache was so bad it had made me pukey. In fact, I didn't eat anything today until 6pm. And I amazingly crashed to catch up on sleep and was knocked out until 2pm today. I think it helped I turned on the ozone machine in my room, together with the HEPA filter, I was finally breathing some mold-free air.

Then from 6pm until now, I've been coordinating the Michael Hauge workshop and closing in on my final screenplay draft. Procrastination -- it's an addiction.

Monday as I left for work, I saw some dampness and water trails coming from the hot water heater closet in my garage. But my work days have gotten beyond crazy busy again and I never called a plumber. When I got home that night, OMG, water was everywhere soaking stuff in my garage!

Almost exactly 8 years ago (only 3 years into living in the Prairie Henhouse) I'd replaced that thing! But with the hard water in Austin and my lack of ability in draining my hot water heater annually (it's got no latches on the closet, no handles on the spigots, so some of that isn't my fault), 7-8 years is the life of a water heater here.

Yikes, the plumbers had to pull and replace the appliance, pull out the whole closet and rebuild it with new wood, bring the whole thing up to code (dramatic stories about how & where explosions occur) and $1400 later it's fixed. Plus I made them spray all the wood support that stayed and the cement with bleach to kill mold.

I'm really allergic to mold. And last night for the first time in a long time I didn't toss and turn with allergy headaches. I woke up headache free! Now I've got to wonder: was that mold creeping in from the garage? Sure hope this a turn for the better. How awesome to sleep well almost every night!

One of the good things about timing your commitment to better fitness & health with the New Year is that the gyms have special deals then. I signed up for Lifetime Fitness for a $140 processing fee and $75/month. The additional $400 joining fee was waived! I'm trying to fit going to the lovely and well-equipped gym into my already too-busy life. So far in the past three weeks I've been 7 times. Not the 3x/week I'd hoped for.

Yet, in that short time, I've already gotten enough cardio training that I can no longer get my heart rate up past 140 bpm unless I crank the machines up to the next level! I went in telling the guys there I didn't want them weighing me, measuring me, checking my blood pressure. My business! So the trainer told me a good basic program to start off was this:

15 iterations x 3 rounds on 2 different toning machines. LTF has their toning machines laid out in rows labeled "chest" and "abs" and "legs" and "arms," etc. I always choose abs + something else. Like the trainer told me, I cycle between the two machines until I get my 3 rounds on each.

Then: 45 min of aerobic exercise. It's totally boring to me to do all 45 min on one thing (that low threshhold for tedium is partly why my jogging habit went away years ago, where I used to run 15-20 miles per week). I always start with the treadmill for 20-25 minutes then go to something else. What's cool about the machines at LTF is all those aerobic machines have a heart monitor. That's how I know I could ramp up to about 150 bpm pretty quickly at the beginning. Now I can't walk fast enough to get there, so I'm going to have to start jogging (get ready, knees). I also can't cycle or nordic walk fast enough to get there, so I have to crank up the machines' resistance now.

But I am getting my 40-45 min of fat-burning heart rate. From my resting heart rate of 76-80 (pretty okay for a person who's only been doing yoga and walking), that means getting up to between 125-140 bpm. Easy enough, I'm discovering! It doesn't feel that hard now to be there and stay there.

'Course I have wobbly legs and creep around sore for 24 hours after. But MSM supplements help, and lots of water. And within 3-4 months, I should start seeing less recovery time needed and a lower resting heart rate. Seems like women who train heavily can get theirs to the 50-60 bpm range...

Oh, and I went to lunch with a group of friends after, and one person described my appearance as vibrant (!), another asked what I was doing to look so good, and someone else queried how could I look younger than I did last time she saw me. hehe