Aug 21, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
Sorry I had to delete my last post.
We’re off to Richmond Virginia tomorrow for a long weekend. I’m excited and a bit nervous because I don’t like to fly very much. I hope we enjoy it and I’ll have lots to post about when I come back.
Speaking of posting, I’m going to be moving blogs. I’m getting spammed constantly here so it’s time to move out, plus I’ve found another site that has a nice layout and lots of the features I want and I won’t have to do as much maintenance on it. If you want to know the new address please drop a note here in my comments and include your email or website so I can send you the link to my new page. I don’t want to post it in a link here because I don’t want the spamming to move over to my new site! 
I probably won’t delete this journal until the end of the month when I plan to move permanently to the new site.
Doing okay on the exercise/dieting front. Mostly just listening to my body and trying to make small practical changes. No more binge eating!
Back on Wednesday, hopefully with interesting news.
Aug 6, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
I just exercised. Granted it was about 15 minutes and I had to use a (very) beginner level exercise video, but I did it all the way through. I was really glad when it ended but I must admit I feel better. My body feels awake and that’s pretty nice. I started out with the plan to do one of the exercise shows I’d taped from Fit TV but quickly realized I’m not in good enough shape to do any of those. So I popped in my old stand by, the 1 mile walk away the pounds video I bought about a decade ago. For someone as uncordinated as I am, the movements are perfect, not too complicated & pretty smooth. With most exercise shows I spend most of the time trying to figure out how to do the moves but with the walk away the pounds video I can just concentrate on exercising.
I have been so incredibly sedentary since the beginning of the year. To be completely honest I’ve been slowly going down hill with exercise since I got married almost 4 years ago. We live in a teeny tiny place and honestly I either sit on my bed to watch TV or sit in the chair at the computer. A little while back I wore my pedometer for the day and just did my usual routine and found out I only took 896 steps during the whole day. The average person takes between 3000-5000 steps a day, and should take 10000. It’s no wonder my body has fallen apart. I think I have the muscle tone of about a 65 year old, a very inactive 65 year old. Weekends I move around more. We do quite a bit of walking on weekends, usually at Disneyland or SeaWorld or just out running errands, but it always leaves me feeling exhausted. So I’m trying to change. I’m definitely at rock bottom physically and I have to build up from there. I’m hindered even more by having bad knees. I’m hopeful that by getting some weight off and strengthening the muscles around my knees it will keep me from having to have knee surgery, at least for the time being.
So today I made a start towards building the future I want. My first baby steps were triggered by watching a ‘reality’ show as embarrassing as that is to admit. I’m secretly addicted to the Tori (Spelling) & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood show. They are just so happy & in love (reminds me of me and my hubby) but they have something we don’t; a gorgeous laughing happy baby boy and every time I watch the show my biological clock starts gonging at me. After all, I’m nearly 36 years old. If I’m going to have babies I need to start soon. My husband and I really want to start a family in the future, but we can’t unless I get this weight off. I just couldn’t handle a pregnancy on top of weighing 200 lbs more than I should. My husband won’t risk my health or the health of a baby, and neither would I. So babies have been relegated to the future, IF I get down to a healthy weight. Basically it’s up to me when, or if, we are able to start a family but I haven’t done anything to improve the situation. Until today anyway.
Aug 5, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
I feel like I need to update here though I haven’t much to talk about really. At least nothing of interest to anyone . I’m strongly considering changing my webhosting to typepad, which will mean a new url address. It would be the third url I’ve had in a year, which makes me feel like a flighty, flaky blogger; but I just haven’t found the perfect situation yet. I haven’t found the right url name or the right server. I just don’t feel completely at home with my site. Currently I’m not with a blogging service, just a regular website host service and it’s a lot more work to maintain than I really want. I want a place I can quickly log into and update, with minimal fuss. Another huge drawback to this blog is that it gets spammed constantly. I spend 10 minutes deleting nasty spam advertisements from my blog each time I log in. I’ve heard that spamming is a bit less frequent with a site like typepad. If I do end up starting over somewhere I’ll keep everyone who reads here updated. And I promise that if I move again, this will be the LAST move for a long time (so it better be the right move!!). Does anyone out there use typepad? What are the pros and cons?
As far as self improvement goes, I’ve mainly been focusing on trying to eliminate all the negative self talk that runs through my head. I’m just trying to get my mind set right to begin the big overhaul. I know if I don’t have my head in the right place, if I’m not completely ready to commit 100% then I’ll just end up failing. I want this to be the FINAL time I have to deal with these issues, not yet another roller coaster ride of weight loss success then massive failure & regain of everything lost. I have to be deeply committed. Committing to myself is something I just don’t do but that’s something I need to talk about in another, longer post.
Anyway, that’s what’s up with me at the moment. I’m just trying to focus myself a bit, trying to overhaul my site, and generally living inside my head quite a lot at the moment.
Jul 28, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
I’ve mentioned here that I want my blog to be a sanctuary for me, a place I feel comfortable sharing my soul, but it’s hard sometimes to be open and honest about what weighs on my mind when I know other people read it and possibly judge me. I have HUGE issues surrounding fear of rejection so it’s hard sometimes for me to let others really get to know me, to let others in. But in the spirit of creating a place I can talk about anything and possibly work through things that bother me, I’m going to start sharing more of my inner thoughts. Journaling has always been really cathartic for me but by censoring what I write I haven’t allowed myself that catharsis. So, here goes some opening up.
Currently my thoughts are weighed down, pun intended, by my weight. I weigh about 200 pounds more than my ideal weight and I passionately hate being so fat. Frankly, it gets in the way of living my life the way that I want. I feel lousy. I look lousy. My self esteem is non existent. Generally I want to just curl up under the covers and hide. I realized that my weight has moved out of the realm of something I can just continue to whine about and into an area of serious concern when my husband made a random comment that maybe we should take a trip to Hawaii. My immediate reaction was terror. I’d have to cram myself into the airline seat! The seatbelt might not fit! Hawaii is a place I’d want to walk about taking tons of photos and I’d get hot, sweaty and out of breath! Not to mention the fact that one of the main attractions of Hawaii is the beaches and I certainly can’t wear a bathing suit. I passionately LOVE to travel and see new places, so for me not to immediately want to pounce on his random comment and jump at the chance to go to Hawaii is a really big wake up call that my weight(and life) have spun too far out of control. You’d have thought this would have come sooner, maybe after I’d gained the first 100 extra pounds, but honestly the weight didn’t truly hinder my life until recently. Sure, it bugged me and I’d half heartedly attempt to do something about it on occasion but I was still relatively okay and functioning. I always felt fairly healthy. I was able to be as active as I wanted. I have a happy marriage. No one has ever been rude or hateful to me about my weight. So I guess I was able to be in denial pretty easily. Apparently though I have suddenly hit the magical number on the scale that screams IT’S TIME TO DO SOMETHING! Starting a few months ago I’ve begun to find it increasingly hard to do physical activities. I’m self conscious to the point of wanting to hide away. I’m letting my weight stop me from doing things I want to do. I’m willing to admit to myself that I absolutely have to do something to start fixing the damage I’ve done to my body, and my life. Soon, no make that right now STARTING TODAY, I’ve got to make changes in my life and begin digging my way out from under this mound of fat I’ve hidden myself behind. I know that for me this isn’t a simple diet issue. I’ve got emotional baggage/issues I have to sort out too. The weight is simply a symptom, not the cause. I’ve done the dieting thing with success many times before, but always put the weight back on. This time has to be different. I have to find a way to eliminate or at least control the issues that have led to my weight battles: namely lack of self esteem and self worth. So, today I am declaring that things are going to change. I’m not sure yet exactly how. All I know is that I’ve opened my eyes. I’m not hiding anymore. I’m going to step forward and start a journey towards creating a new, improved, healthy ME. The me I’ve always wanted to be, and always hidden away. I’m going to start taking care of myself. I’m going to learn to love myself. And I’m going to record some of that process here.
So, how is that for opening up?
Jul 21, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
Go and see this movie!
My husband and I went to see this on Sunday and as I expected, I loved it. It’s a really sweet, silly, fun, light hearted movie with great mother/daughter and best friends themes as well as a nice little love story. Plus it’s a musical, it’s set in gorgeous Greece, and it has Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan in it (also the adorable Colin Firth!). To put the icing on the cake, the music is all ABBA songs. Obviously, you can’t go wrong with all of that :). I wish my mom & sister lived closer. I’d be dragging them both with me to see it again! It’s a particularly good mother daughter type movie, so if you get a chance go see it with your Mom or vice versa.
I’ve got a couple of big projects I’m working on at the moment. My husband wants me to scan and archive all of his old family photos borrowed from his parents so that we have copies in case we move away (which is something we’ve begun to think about, another topic for a future post!) and on top of that I have about a million photos I have to get uploaded onto my stock photo site here: http://pilgrimsoul.deviantart.com . I’ve been meaning to have a contest over there for digital artists who use my stock photos but I’ve just never gotten around to it. Finally I’m working on it, but it means getting a lot of photos uploaded before Aug. 1st which is when I’m starting the contest. I’m so not prepared! By the way, if you happen to be into digital art, photo manipulation or collage art then maybe you’d like to check out that link and use a few of my photos in your work. You will also be welcome to enter my contest as well when it starts in August, even if you aren’t a deviant art member. Okay, gotta get back to scanning photos! Take care everyone!
Jul 15, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
Jul 9, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
I often think of writing things here and then stop myself, wondering what people might think of me or how it will change their perception. Sometimes I worry about giving out too much information. My husband and his family are all quite private people and I wouldn’t want to upset anyone by sharing too much online. And I worry about opening myself up to others, showing the ‘real’ me, my true feelings & thoughts, and being rejected. Keeping a journal has always been a small form of therapy for me, a way for me to work out & overcome issues that are upsetting me but because this is online and accessible to the entire world I find myself holding back a little bit. I don’t want to upset anyone. I worry far too much about the approval of other people sometimes. I really want to be liked, to be accepted, doesn’t everyone? But when that need holds me back from allowing others to see the many sides of who I am and keeps me from truly enjoying & getting everything I can out of the journalling experience then I need to overcome my people pleasing tendencies.
My journal is dedicated to celebrating beauty, love, & self-improvement so I have tried to focus mainly on positivity but sometimes I need a place to whine, rant, complain, cry, or just share some of the less fun topics that are often swirling around in my brain yet I often censor myself, feeling that no one is going to want to read those thoughts. Constantly second guessing myself has turned my journal into just another chore for me and I hate that. I want it to be my sanctuary, a place I can share the sad, sublime, and silly thoughts that are inside of me.
Hopefully I will find my voice. Hopefully I’ll find the courage to open myself up and really create a true home for my spirit here. A place of beauty where I can write about ANYTHING. The few people who read here may see a change in the sorts of topics I post about and hopefully you’ll stick around to watch me find my way, but if not it’s been great meeting you. Life is a constant process of discovering yourself, and that’s what I plan to use this journal to do.
Emerson wrote something once that has always stuck with me. To paraphrase him: Speak what you feel today and tomorrow speak what you feel also, though it may contradict what you’ve said previously. To be great is to be misunderstood. Trust thyself. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. I think all of those thoughts came from his essay Self-Reliance. Have I mentioned before that I love the transcendentalist writers? See, the sharing of my inner soul has already begun!
Jul 7, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
We’re back from our epic trek across the southwest & great plains. We started our trip around noon on a Friday, heading south towards San Diego with the intention of taking the most southernly route to Texas, heading through such places as Tucson, Arizon; Las Cruces, New Mexico and Elpasso, Texas. The weather was a lovely (sarcasm) 122 degrees for the majority of our trip and for the most part there isn’t a great deal to see along this route, other than the mexican border. I did see my very first real sand dunes which was rather fun. I didn’t take a photo though because that would have involved rolling down the truck window which I wasn’t about to do in that heat. Neither my husband or I like the desert much I’m afraid. I know many people who find it incredibly beautiful and while I can see some beauty in the desert, mostly I see dry, dusty, aridity and a general lack of greenery. As a person who loves a good rainstorm and big beautiful trees, the desert just isn’t for me. Needless to say, we didn’t do a lot of stopping for snapshots. In fact we didn’t do much stopping at all. About half way through Arizona my husband decided that if we drove straight through we could make it to Texas around midmorning the next day and then run up to Missouri to see my parents & sister. Since I haven’t seen them since November, three plus years ago I was incredibly excited. So, my hero (aka my hubby) drove 30 straight hours across the desert, up through texas & oklahoma to meet my parents and my sister in Joplin, Missouri. I’m actually from a tiny town outside of St. Louis but my family drove down to Joplin and met us in order to save us a few hrs. drive. It was so wonderful to see my family again. Two weeks earlier I’d gotten to see my brother’s family & my sisters boys when they visited us in California. Now I got to see my parents & sister as well. The only person missing was my brother in law who had to work. We talked and talked, which is what my family does best. We also did a little exploring. Joplin Missouri is right on the edge of Kansas and Oklahoma and since my family hadn’t been in either of those states we decided to explore a tiny bit and visited a couple of little towns in Kansas and then went over to Miami, Oklahoma and attended a Pow Wow held by the Peoria Tribe. It was incredible. I’ve always wanted to see a Pow Wow in person and it lived up to my expectations. My family has a bit of native american ancestry, though we’re mainly scotch-irish, so it was exciting to come in contact with a bit of our (distant) heritage. We just had the day with my family and then had to rush back to Texas so that my husband could be at work the next day.
Our time in Texas was mainly spent with him at work and me hanging out in the hotel room. We did manage to see a tiny bit of the Dallas area and we made a brief excursion to see South Fork, the ranch setting for the 80’s TV show DALLAS. In person the house is not much bigger than the typical houses here in southern California and is much smaller than many of it’s neighbors, but it was still cool to see it. I grew up watching Dallas with my Grandma. Texas was okay (with the exception of their roads, which are incredibly bumpy and uneven, not to mention laid out badly).
What we really enjoyed was the drive home. We went back up through north Texas & Oklahoma, drove through Kansas and went through Colorado, utah and Nevada on the drive home. We both really loved Oklahoma and Kansas. I think the wide open spaces & tranquility appealed to my husband. To me it just felt like home because it looked quite similar to Missouri in many places. I adore corn fields and meadows dotted with little ponds, which Oklahoma & Kansas had in abundance. I swear if there were IT/analyst jobs available in those areas we probably would never have made it back to California. My husband would have just parked the truck right in the middle of a pasture somewhere and we’d have moved in :).
Finally we made it home and now here I am, happily reminiscing while I should be doing laundry. Guess I’d better get back to work!
Jun 19, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
Jun 17, 2008 by FlamingoGirl
My ‘little’ brother, his wife, and my three nephews on beach in Santa Monica.
I’ve returned! Actually I got home about a day and a half ago but I had a ton of stuff to catch up on. The visit with my family was absolutely wonderful. My three nephews have grown and changed so much in the last 3 years. It really made my husband and I realize that we HAVE to get back to visit my family more often. It’s so easy to put things off, say we’ll go next year for a visit and then not get around to it. We can’t keep doing that. My nephews will be all grown up before I realize it and I don’t want to miss out on it all.
I think my family enjoyed the visit. We went to Disneyland & Sea World. We did a boat excursion and saw dolphins and sea lions in the ocean. We visited the Crystal Cathedral and Santa Monica Pier. We even went to the Grand Canyon. I have to clean up my hard drive before I can download all the photos but you can expect to see some Thursday night or Friday morning.
Oh that reminds me! I’ll be leaving again on Friday. My husband is being sent to Texas (Dallas area) for work and I am tagging along. We’ll be there about a week. I should be able to access the internet occasionally. Hopefully I’ll manage to put up a post or two. I’m not doing so well at my challenge to post three times a week, but I wasn’t expecting to do any traveling! Sorry about that.
