Bye-Bye January!

It is so crazy that tomorrow is February, where has the time gone?! I am proud to note that although I didn't blog everyday I did manage to write a blog for 23 out of 31 days, not bad for getting back into the swing of things. I have decided it will be fun to look back every month and see what I accomplished. So this month I love 6 pounds!! Yup, all of it was weight I gained over Christmas but this is progress none the less. I ran 45 miles (or will have after I go running tonight). It took me until August to run that far last year so this is big for me! I gathered a ton of addresses for the wedding, sent out Save-the-Date cards and helped John pick out tuxes for him and his groomsmen. So most of my big accomplishments revolve around the wedding, but it is what it is. I am looking forward to February, John's Birthday, more wedding nonsense and more running of course!

It Takes Time

I sometimes wonder why I think losing weight should be easy; like all the weight I want to lose should just come off in a few months. The inspiration picture I blogged about yesterday was taken almost 6 and 1/2 years ago, it took me that long to gain a lot of weight. So why should it take only a few months to lose that weight? If I was to lose even a half a pound a week it would take me more than 3 years to lose that weight. It is hard to lose weight and it took time to put it on so it should take time to come off. I just have to keep trying and working hard at it and not expecting things to happen so fast. That is harder than it looks but I am going to try.

Inspiration

First off I apologize for slacking the last few days. I have been enjoying a few days at home in Altamont, it is so nice to come out here and just relax sometimes. But something else happened as well!! I found the inspiration I need to lose weight. I was going through photos to find a few to put on a wedding video for John and I, when I stumbled across photos from my senior year in high school. I know I was much smaller then than I am now but I found one picture of me at state volleyball and I have to say damn, I looked good! I have never called myself skinny, but I would say I am skinny in this photo. So I am taking it home and I am going to hang it on my fridge so I can look at it everyday. It makes me excited to have something to work towards, not that I didn't before but I now I have something tangible to look at and remember that I was that size once so I can do it again!

Doctors are Ridiculous.

I could start and end this post simply by saying doctors are ridiculous, the things they charge for and get away with makes me so mad! Case in point. Well first of all there is a slight back story. My new insurance at the Daily Herald has a mail-order prescription service they make you use for all long term prescriptions so I signed up and ordered my birth control through the system. They ask for a doctors name and number so I put it on there, thinking in a few days I will get my medicine and it will all be dandy. Wrong. I get a phone call from my doctor, well my doctors nurse because doctors don't really do anything themselves, this morning telling me Dr. Cannon won't verify my prescription until I come in and get my blood pressure checked because apparently last time I went in it was high. So I am already annoyed that I have to go in to the doctors office to get my blood pressure checked, all because I can't fill my prescriptions at the pharmacy. So I go in they take my blood pressure it is fine. I wait 5 minutes the nurse comes in and tells me the doctor will sign the prescription order and I am good to go. I was in the office for a total of 15 minutes maybe even less and I didn't even see the doctor. As a side note I have never actually met Dr. Cannon and have been "seeing" her for four years now. I always see her nurse practitioner. But back to the story, I am there for less than 15 minutes and I get ready to leave and the nurse gives me a paper and sends me to the check out. The girl there asks me if I have a co-pay. "What? All I did was have my blood pressure checked, I am being charged for that?" The lady goes on to tell me that yup I am being charged for an office visit. WTF? Is all I have to say. How does it work that I can be charged for an office visit when I 1. didn't even see the doctor, 2. they didn't treat me for anything and 3. had something done that I could have had John do for me!! As another side note, I tried to take my own blood pressure before I went to the doctors but that was harder than it looks. So I am annoyed by the whole system!! If my insurance would just let me fill my prescriptions however I want I wouldn't have had to get the doctor to verify it, then I wouldn't have had to go get my blood pressure checked and I wouldn't be having to pay who knows how much for something so silly!!!

Only Child Syndrome

I think if John and I still have Willy when we decide to have children (and I hope we do!!) Willy is going to have a hard time adjusting to not being the only child. Yesterday we baby sat for a friend of ours and when I was holding the baby trying to get him to stop crying Willy was whining because he couldn't sit on my lap. Then when Jaden wasn't crying Willy would just look at him like "When is that thing leaving?"
Towards the end of the night Willy finally decided he was okay and came at sat by him, but as soon as he left Willy curled up on my lap. Then in the days I have been working at home he just sleeps right next to my leg all day and when I try to work out he licks my leg and tries to sit on my lap when I am stretching. The little guy is clearly a spoiled rotten only child and an attention hog, if you aren't petting him he acts like the whole world is going to end. Good thing he has a long time before he needs to worry about a baby coming to stay!

150 Days

In exactly 150 days I will be getting ready to walk down the aisle and get married. It is insane to me how fast the time has gone by! It seems like not long ago the day count was 350 days! We finally got our save-the-dates and sent them out to those coming from out of state, I guess there is no going back now (not that I want too, just saying). I wish I could say everything was ready for the wedding but there is still a lot to do! We have picked out our wedding bands and the groomsmen tuxes though, so we are getting closer. Although the days are flying by it also seems to be going really slow, I know that sounds dumb but it seems like New Years was forever ago but it has really only been 3 weeks. It seems strange that in 151 days I will no longer be Paige Fieldsted but Paige Hoffman. I should start practicing signing my new name, after all it took me 24 years to perfect my signature and now I have to start all over again!!

Working From Home

I have been working from home the past three day because there is a plumbing problem at work and since there are no working bathrooms in the building we get to work from home (and good thing to because my car is in the process of being repaired so I can drive it safely again). I can't decide how I feel about working from home. On one hand it is nice to be able to get up 15 minutes before I have to "be" at work and not have to get all dressed up. But at the same time it is good to get dressed, put on make-up and get out of the house everyday! I do love spending the day with Willy, he just lays by my leg all day long and I love not having to drive 45 minutes each way to get to work; so when I work 9 to 5 at 5 I am really done, I don't have to drive another hour home. Some of you, like John, might think that while I say I am "working" at home I am really just watching TV doing nothing. Not true! I haven't turned on the TV and have gotten just as much done in the past three days as I would have had I been at the office. In fact I probably do more work, because I feel like if I am at home I should be working, not surfing the internet like I sometimes do when I am actually at work. This working from home business could last almost 2 more weeks so I guess we shall how I feel about it then. But for now I am enjoying all the money I am saving on gas!

Life Isn't Fair

I am always trying to find ways to lose weight and eat healthier but I would say it has been about a year since I have really started paying attention to what I cook at home and making a conscious effort to make things healthier. In that time John has lost 2 pants sizes and probably 20 pounds; me I have lost 0 pant sizes and 5 pounds. I know life isn't fair, my mom has told me so since I was a small child but this seems really unjust to me. I try so hard to lose weight; I work out, I eat healthy most of the time and nothing. But John doesn't work out (granted he is a mechanic and pretty active all day) and eats a bag of popcorn every night (also an exaggeration but at least a couple times a week) and he loses tons of weight!! It makes me so so mad. It seems so backwards that guys, who typically could care less about how much they weigh, can lose five pounds without doing anything but it takes women, who DO care about their weight, 6 weeks of sweating on the treadmill and eating cardboard to lose five pounds. So maybe my new strategy should be to eat ice cream every night and I will lose weight too? No? Yeah I didn't really think that would work but wouldn't it be nice. I am happy for John, don't get me wrong, and he looks great I just wish my pant sizes would go down too.

Tires, Tires and More Tires

My car needs new tires... again. Normally this wouldn't seem like a big deal but let me explain. I have owned my car for about 4 1/2 years and in that time I have put no less than 20 tires on the stupid car. The problem seems to be with the rims because the idiot who owned the car before me decided to put after market rims on the thing and they have caused me nothing but problems. So I have found four new rims for only 20 bucks (which is good because the tires will not be cheap) and will be putting four new tires on in the next few days, which will bring the tire count to at least 24 (I may have missed a few single ones here and there). I think it is safe to say I have spent more on tires and tire maintenance than I probably paid for the car!! Hopefully this will solve the problem and will be worry free for the next 45,000 miles or so.

Never Never Land

Most days I really really enjoy being an adult. I can make my own decisions, come and go as I please and pretty much live my life how I want without anyone telling me what to do. But somedays I would give anything to go back to carefree days of childhood. It would be amazing for just one day (or maybe a week) have nothing to worry about except which flavor of KoolAid I want to drink and how many games of monopoly we can play in one day; when the biggest problems we encountered were being out of otter pops or getting spanked for talking when we were supposed to be sleeping. Those were the days!!
Now there is the stress of work and money and relationships and cars breaking down and hearts getting broken and people moving away and being responsible for everything! Sometimes being an adult just plain sucks.
It is funny because when you are little all you want to do is grow up so you can drive a car and date and live away from home, but when you get old all you want to do is go home and have your mom take care of you.
Unfortunately we cannot go back in time and relive the glory days so for now I will just have to use the memories as a brief escape when the stress of being an adult gets to be overwhelming.
As a side note I do have to say if I could go back and be a child again even just for a day I would learn how to do a cart wheel because I never learned and now I can't do one!

Now I remember

This winter has been pretty much un-winter like so far. There has been very little snow and it has been pretty mild as far as temperature goes, lower 40s in January is really warm for Utah in January! And I have actually been missing the snow. It makes winter so much prettier but this morning it snowed and I was reminded why I hate winter.
Winter and snow would be fine if all I had to do was sit in my apartment, drink hot chocolate, read books and watch it snow but unfortunately I have to drive 45 miles to work everyday. The roads were only bad half the way to work but still. I hate driving in the snow. I think it stems from me running off the road a few years back. No one was hurt and I just ran my car into a large pile of snow but it was still nerve racking. Now when I drive in the snow every little movement of my car freaks me out and I go slower than is probably necessary but as long as I get to my destination without running off the road the trip was a success. I still want it to snow but if it could only do it on the weekends or days I don't have to drive to Provo that would be great.

Way Too Full

For the first time in months I am uncomfortable full, to the point of almost wanting to throw up. I never understood why we do this to ourselves? I knew more than 2 hours ago if I kept eating I would get too full and feel sick, yet I continued to snack and eat. Why you may ask? The answer is simple, I love food. I love food. I love food so much that I will continue eating delicious things until I physically can not take another bite. And the thing that disgusts me most is I wasn't even eating good food! Yes queso and chips are tasty but definitely not worth this feeling. I think this may be a stepping stone in my journey to gain control over food and my eating habits. I think the next time I am too the point of fullness but want to continue eating I am going to ask myself "Is what you are about to put in your mouth worth the sick feeling you are going to have later?" I hope 99 percent of the time the answer will be no but I know I will still have moments of weakness. I just hope I can remember how gross my stomach feels right now and that will deter me even just a little bit.

Friday the 13th

I thought I would pay some homage to my birthday. Not that today is the day I was born but today is Friday the 13th and I happen to have been born of Friday the 13th. So while most people consider the day unlucky or scary, I think it is a pretty cool day. After all I came into the world on Friday the 13th so that in and of itself makes it a cool day ;)
I wish I had some really awesome stories about things that have happened to me on Friday the 13th to prove that it isn't a scary day but I really can't think of anything.
The best thing I have is one my 22nd birthday, which happened to fall on Friday the 13th, my fiance (then boyfriend) John took me flying in a tiny little plane. We flew over to my home town and I got to take pictures of my house from the air, which was pretty cool! And we didn't crash so that is lucky!
There are apparently 2 more Friday the 13ths this year but don't worry I won't write about that unless something really awesome happens one of those days.
So happy Friday the 13th to you all! May good things come your way.

Excuses, Excuses

I often think about what I am going to blog about and I originally thought this was going to be a poor pity me blog about how I suck at life blah, blah, blah. But instead I decided I needed to rethink why I would want to write a blog like that? I think a lot of people, myself included, put themselves down just so others can give them compliments and lift them up. If I tell my mom, John, my sisters or most of my friends that I suck most of them will come back with a compliment and list of reasons why I don't suck but I think what I really need is someone to say "You know what Paige? You and your excuses do suck." I originally started thinking about this blog while I was running today and not wanting to keep running and how fat I am blah, blah, blah. But really all I have are excuses. There are very few things that could physically keep me from being able to run 3 miles but there a million excuses. At the top of the list today it was too hot in the room, there were other people in the room watching me (even though that is not true), my knee hurt, my stomach hurt, it was late, I had just eaten, again blah, blah, blah. They are all just excuses to justify my bad behavior and I need to do get rid of them, move on with my life and reach my goals. We all have excuses.. What is yours?

Change of Plans

I have decided the plan I had to open a bakery/cafe is never going work and I will tell you why. Owning/running/cooking things for a bakery is going to require getting up very early every morning to bake fresh delicious treats for people to enjoy, because no one wants stale baked goods! Here is where the problem comes in.. I am not a morning person. I am the kind of person that will get up and then decide to go back to bed for 10 more minutes, when in reality that 10 minutes isn't going to do any good in terms of sleep. I just don't know if I could get up at say 5 a.m. every morning to bake things. I am still considering the options here because I do still want to open a bakery/cafe.
I suppose there are more important things to worry about like getting funding, having a business plan, finding the space, equipment, employees etc. and making sure I could actually make a profit before I ever need to worry about what time I will have to get up in the morning.

Let Down

I saw an amazing recipe on facebook, Nutella Ice Cream. Basically you blend 6 bananas and 1 cup of Nutella together and let it freeze and eat it like ice cream. I thought to myself "What a great alternative to ice cream!!" Wrong. I put in the calories of 6 bananas and 1 cup of nutella into myfitnesspal app and then divided it by 6 assuming you would get 6 decent sized servings from that many bananas. Turns out such a serving would have over 300 calories!! I might as well eat a bowl of ice cream. I was so disappointed because I was seriously considering stopping and getting nutella on my way home and making this delightful treat. Maybe I underestimated the number of servings this would make which would reduce the calories per serving but still not a light and delicious snack like I thought it would be. So so sad. I guess I will go back to chewing my mint chocolate chip ice cream flavored gum.

Wedding Fever

I think I have found my calling in life.. I should be a wedding planner. I am pretty sure every girl makes plans to start a wedding planning business with their closest friends at some point in their life.. I am no exception. Except I never knew how much fun planning a wedding really could be, except I think it would be much less stressful if I could plan someone else's wedding and use someone else's money. I have always heard people say planning for a wedding is fun but I always thought they were crazy, but really it turns out it is fun.
With the wedding a little more than 5 months away things are starting to come together. John and I picked out tuxes, well I approved them after him and his best man picked them out, Saturday. I have my address list more than 50 percent completed, I have designed return address labels and started working on mailing labels for the guests. I already have my wedding dress and am just waiting for my fitting appointment. There are still a lot of things to do but it is fun! As I have said before I like planning things, I like coordinating and I like being in charge, all things that get to happen while I am planning my wedding.
If I was a wedding planner though I could spend unlimited amounts of money (well not unlimited but still) and plan out all the little details! But alas I have chosen a different career path so for now I will just enjoy the wedding planning time while it is here!

Why?

I have hit the roadblock. The big brick wall that seems to pop up every time I set a goal or a training program and try to stick to it. I do really well for the first little while and then BAM!! No motivation, no will power, no real desire to do whatever it is I set out to do. This time it is running. I am as you know running the Wasatch Back in June. I have known this for a long time now and I have been doing a good job training since I would say Mid-August but now I have no desire to go running, to push myself, to get better. This same exact thing happened when I trained for the marathon, except I never really recovered and in turn finishing the marathon was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. Yes running partners, awesome music, a training deadline all help but what I really need to do is look inside myself and figure out why? Why am I running? Why do I want to do the Wasatch Back? Why don't I have the motivation to train? Why when I am already downstairs on the treadmill do I quit after 1.5 miles instead of pushing through and finishing my goal for that day? Why am I trying to get in shape in the first place? Is it because I want to look good in my wedding dress? Because well that is a temporary goal.. six months from now it won't matter anymore. Is it because I want to change my life and become healthier? If so, then why is it so damn hard? Maybe I always hit a roadblock whenever I try to do anything worth while because I am afraid to let myself succeed. It sounds crazy but hear me out. When I was in school I was expected to get A's because my parents knew I could. So maybe if I trained really well and rocked the next race or lost that weight that has been bothering me I will know I can and then it becomes an expectation. I wouldn't be able to use "I can't" as an excuse because well I can. I don't think this just applies to running but to everything maybe we sometimes hold ourselves back because we are scared that we can and that we will have actually make our dreams and goals a reality because we know we can do it. And that is scary!! Sometimes it is more comfortable to sit on the couch with a bowl of ice cream dreaming about all the things I want to do someday instead of actually going out and doing them, because yes there is a chance of failure and no one wants to fail. So if I never push myself really hard to run a faster mile or lose 20 pounds I didn't really fail because I tried and it just didn't work out. I would like to say I am going to get up tomorrow morning put on my workout clothes and go run 5 miles because I want that taste of success but the truth is I don't really know if I will. Before I can go any further with training and working out, I have to figure out why.

"Sleep" Study

I participated in a sleep study last night in the name of research for a story I am writing. I do not know why they call it a sleep study though because with all the stuff they hook to you I don't know how they expect anyone to get much sleep. I had no less than 20 little electrodes hooked to me.. most of them to my head. There were 2 at the base on my neck, 2 on my temples, 1 right in the middle of my forehead, 1 right on the top of my head, 2 on the sides on my head, 2 by my collarbones and 2 on each leg. Plus a snore mic on my neck (to record and measure your snoring), 2 belts around my chest and stomach, an oxygen sensor on my finger and some nasal cannula to measure airflow from my nose. It took more than half an hour to get everything all hooked up. So I had a mass of wires coming from off my body.. making me very aware every time I wanted to move and which made it hard to get in the most comfortable sleeping positions. The nasal cannula and the oxygen sensor were definitely the worst because after a while I couldn't really feel the electrodes. I was awoken once because one of the electrodes fell of in the night and the tech had to come and put it back on. I also woke up once because it was really hot in my room but before I could even ask for the air to be turned on or something like that the tech came in with a fan because she was watching me (so weird) and said I looked like it was really warm. And I had to call for her once because I needed to use the bathroom and had to be unhooked from the monitor. The other thing that was weird for me was I turned my cell phone off (mostly because I forgot my charger) so I had no idea what time of night it was and I am the type of person that always looks at my clock every time I wake up in the night so it was strange to not know how much longer I had to sleep. It was an interesting sensation to know that someone was watching me the entire time I was sleeping. It made me much more aware of how long it took me to fall asleep and every time I woke up because I felt like I was being bad because I wasn't sleeping, silly I know.
The good thing was the bed was a normal (rather comfortable) queen sized bed and I took my own pillows so I did get some sleep. My sleep tech said I slept enough for them to get some good information on me and they would have my results in a week or so. I am interested to see what the results say. I don't feel like I have a lot of sleeping problems but I am still intrigued. I do snore a tiny bit but not loudly and not all night which is positive but since John sleeps like a rock I don't think this will ever be a problem. It was interesting to learn about sleep studies and why they do them but I don't plan on doing one again in the near future (or ever if I can avoid it) because I much prefer my own bed and no wires.

Year of the Races

I have dubbed this year the "Year of the Races" because I have already committed to running 3 races this year. I haven't registered for all of them yet, I am just waiting for pay day, but I am excited! I am running a 10k in Ogden in February, a half marathon in Vernal in May and of course the Wasatch Back in June. So I don't think I will have any problem running more miles this year than last year! And it is great that they are all close together because it keeps me motivated to keep training, something that has been a problem for me in the past. I am thinking maybe this will be the year I take the plunge and run another marathon. I mean if I am already running all those other races why not?! A marathon in September or October would be perfect. I will have to see who else is on board because if there is one thing I have learned over the years it is I am not a solo racer! I lack the motivation to train by myself and definitely to compete by myself. Hopefully I can get my mom on board again and then we will have ran 4 amazing races in one year together and I think that would be just fantastic!!

Makeover

As I am sure you noticed my blog is getting a make-over. Since I created my blog almost 2 years ago a lot has changed in my life so why not the look of my blog? And I decided the old look was a little boring. I am not 100 percent sold on the current look, so don't be surprised if the style changes every day until I figure out the look that really fits me.
Since we are talking about makeovers I am working on making over a few aspects of my life. I am really trying to change my relationship with food. Up until this point in my life food and I have always had a love/hate relationship. I love love food but hate it when I overeat and feel like crap. I want to learn to enjoy all the foods I love (including desserts) without overdoing it. I want to be able to enjoy food without it controlling me or the things I do. I am also working on being more open minded and less critical. I am an opinionated person and usually once I form an opinion it is hard to influence me one way or the other but I want to try to be more open minded to trying new things, trying things I might not have liked in the past and having new fun experiences. Part of that is not being so critical of other people and their ideas.
So look forward to fun changes on my blog and in my life!

Unfair

Yup that is correct you get not one but TWO blogs from me today!! I just went running for the first time in 2 1/2 weeks and it sucked! It amazes me how it took me 3 months to build up to being able to run 4 miles without walking and in 2 weeks it all just goes away. I struggled running 3 miles today and I didn't even do it without walking. It is so unfair!! All that hard work should last a little big longer. Granted, had I not being eating every sweet delicious thing in sight that training might have stuck a little bit better but it still just seems so unfair that in 2 short weeks most of the build up I've done doesn't even matter anymore. I say most because I can still run at least 2 miles without walking but still I am so angry, mostly at myself. Definitely not going that long in between runs again.

"Yearly Adventures of P, 2011 Edition"

I wrote an article about New Year, New You for the paper last week. It was all about resolutions and how to make them stick. I have about 15 resolutions I would like to incorporate into my daily life but you can't get where you are going without knowing where you have been. The past is a big part of our lives and how we move forward so this post is dedicated to 2011 and all the things I accomplished, think of it as "Yearly Adventures of P, 2011 Edition."
One of the biggest things that happened to me in 2011 was, as you all know, I got engaged. While this isn't really an accomplishment on my part (all I had to do was say yes) it is still a HUGE thing! It is crazy to think 2011 was the last year I was just Paige Fieldsted, because come June 21 I will be Paige Hoffman. And 2011 was also the year John and I celebrated our 2 year dating anniversary, which I think is a big deal! We have figured out how to live with each others little annoyances and are making a relationship work, which is a big accomplishment.
Another huge change in my life is I finally got a job as a full-time reporter, where I get to write every single day. It is amazing and I feel like I am finally on the career path I want to be on!
I ran 145 miles!! For me this is a big deal. I have been an on again off again runner since my freshman year in college and while the first half of the year I didn't run nearly as much as I could have or should have it felt great to log that many miles. Just in case you were wondering that is enough miles to run from Salt Lake to Altamont plus 10 miles or from Salt Lake to Provo 3 times.
I made a lot of new friends! This may seem like a strange accomplishment but I sometimes have a hard time getting out of my comfort zone and bonding with new people but I can say in 2011 I made several new friends and few really great new friends!
While I am sure there are many more great and exciting things that happened in 2011 this is what I am most proud of. So here is to 2011 and all the great times and great things we all accomplished. Looking ahead to 2012 I want to run even more miles, continue my writing career (maybe I will finally finish my book), have a fabulous wedding, maybe buy a house and of course lose 15 pounds.
I am looking forward to the adventures of this next year and sharing them with you! Next year I want to look back and see 365 blogs!!