So life has been a bit chaotic over the past few weeks and is still going full throttle.  And I’m starting to feel like I’m losing control on a few things.  Work keeps going late; so then I’m rushing home; so I feel a few steps behind most days; and start taking short cuts for meals and other things (ie: Hey kids!  Let’s watch a movie! That way we can snuggle and I can fall asleep in front of Peter Pan instead of doing anything that would require effort). And I find my temper getting short, which is a pretty good measure of my trying to do too much in too little time (and then being SHOCKED when it doesn’t all seamlessly come together).

Really, when I get a rational “talking to” from my 3-year-old about how we aren’t suppose to yell because that makes other people feel bad (by other people, she mostly means her), I know it’s time to pull it together.

So in an effort to do just that I finally made it to the gym for the first time in two weeks on Saturday morning.

Pause for applause.

And even had the courage to step on the scale after my workout.

Pause for STANDING OVATION for my courage in the face of that instrument of female oppression.

And found out I’ve gained 5 pounds in the last month.

Not so cool.

I tried not to do that whole self-loathing thing.

But that was it.

That was my checkpoint.

When life gets chaotic, there’s usually something like that that makes me stop and go: “Whoa, need to take a step back and get things together again.”

And then I start by trying to fix/coordinate EVERY. SINGLE. THING. IN. MY. LIFE. THAT’S. BEEN. LAGGING.

Sometimes that even works.

Last time, in January, it resulted in my losing 30 pounds.

Which was pretty cool.

But, usually it’s smaller scale.  If nothing else, my house is usually clean and my bills are in order when I come out the other side of one of these organizational/motivational binges.

So, with that introduction, in no particular order, here’s what I’ve accomplished since Saturday:

1. Made wine (which has been on the to do list for about 3 weeks and will take 4 weeks to be ready, so until then I’ll watch the alcohol as part of the weight watching).
2. Meal planned; then grocery shopped (part of the “get the eating back under control to stop the weight gain piece”).
3. Finally called tile store back to coordinate to get a credit for something we were overcharged for on the bathroom reno.  Remain unclear as to why I had to call as they had all my credit card info from when they charged me in the first place.  But done.
4. Friends’ party in the evening with kids and family.  Nice downtime.  Tried not to mindlessly eat (which has been creeping back in the past month due to stress).
5. Spent about 5 hours Sunday catching up on my Economics Distance Ed course (so now a little less panicked about my state of inaction on that front).  Tried to plan time in the week to FINALLY get through unit one.  We’ll see how that progresses.
6. Spent time figuring out what to register our three-year-old in this fall as registration for City programs opened on Monday.  Was bummed I could find no programs for my 3-year-old that ran at same time anywhere as Parent & Me programs for my one-year-old.  Suspect this is an organized EVIL PLOT by community centres to encourage parents with two young kids not to stray too far from 3-5 year old kids (who are in classes w/o mom or dad for the first time).  But still bummed.
7. Dinner with parents and family.  Paid father back for something I’d been forgetting about for a while.
8. Got up early this morning to do more work on Economics.  Meh.
9. Got home from work; played with kids; made vegetarian stew (with lots of good leftovers for work which I FULLY INTEND to bring for lunches so as to curb unnecessary lunch time spending).
10. Started decluttering some of the things in the house that have been driving me bonkers.  Will try to slowly work through these this week.
11. Once I put the girls to bed (hubs night out) tried to register my child for programs online for about 2 hours before finally getting in (server busy).  I wondered vaguely if this is the 30-something-mom equivalent to trying to get into a club.  ‘Cause that’s what it felt like.  Finally got her registered for fall swimming.  But just to make me do that all over again in a few days, for some random reason, dance registration doesn’t start until Wednesday.
12. While I was trying to do that, I emptied some of my personal email inbox; did some coordinating for volunteering; made some Twitter Lists; checked out some Pinterest school lunch idea boards; and tried to convince myself this was “mostly” productive rather than time suckage on the Internet.
13. I’ve also managed, since Friday night – to get three relatively early nights (tonight not so much) to catch up on much missed sleep.

So that’s where I’ve been, dear blog.  I think that covers life for the last few days.  I have a long running list in my head of other things I’d like to get done over the next week (too long to list, and so much more rewarding and encouraging to list out everything I’ve accomplished so far this week rather than everything I’ve still failed to do).

Not the most exciting post, I admit.  But that’s where I’m at today.  Hopefully I keep the momentum up for the rest of the week.  Then I plan to kick back and relax for a week of holidays.