That right there should have shown me that my schedule would be pretty much shot for the rest of the day.
See, I figured, "Hey, I'm awake early. I know that I'm going to be walking later, but I do want to get in some pilates or yoga, so I think I'll pop that DVD and get a workout done before I need to get the kids ready for school." Only I did something to my hip and back yesterday or last night. No idea what, because I felt fine when I went to bed. It was the middle of the night that I woke up with pain in my left hip and in my lower back. But, trying to be the optimist that I want to be, I thought that working out might help it - you know, get those muscles used to working out regularly, not give any slack. And that was great. Until I tried to lift my leg more than 4 inches off the floor. The pain came back. It wasn't the, "Hey, these muscles are a bit stiff" kind of pain. It was the "AAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGG!" kind of pain when you know that something just isn't right.
I didn't want to forgo my workout, but I figured it would be better for me to do that than possibly damage things further. I'd take ibuprofen during the day, lay on the heating pad before bed and hope that everything felt better tomorrow. And I started getting some work done on the computer. I started putting my Daily Planning Book together (swaps I'm in, daily schedule page, exercise goals I'm going for, cleaning schedule, blog writing schedule... anything I need to know on a daily basis) and that's when I found out I was out of black ink. Thankfully, red looks really good where the black was supposed to be. I even impressed myself by not allowing myself to get TOO sucked in to things online, so I still had time to get the boys' lunches made, get them dressed and get them out the door on time. Go me!
I also knew that I was going to have less time for my errands and the like than usual today. Teddy's eye appointment was at 1:45 and I wanted to get the kids from PDO before they napped, so I only had until around noon to get things done. First was a trip to Wal-Mart with my friend Becca, where I spent more than I'd expected to on things I needed. That wasted a good hour or so. Back home, I threw a load of laundry in the wash and sat down to start reading through my Feed Squares. And, of course, as I start reading through all the wonderful posts, I start seeing things that my readers might be interested in. So I started my links post from earlier today.
I only got through about 1/4 of my reading (and writing three things I wanted to point my readers toward) when I had to go pick up the kids. I knew we were going to be early, so I made sure we stopped by one of the local parks. Fannie Mae Dees Park is close to Vandy's campus, which is where Teddy's appointment was located. Teddy immediately made a couple of friends, and Pete immediately followed them around like a puppy. I'd meant to bring my camera to get some shots of the kids but of course, I managed to leave it home. Trying to get the kids to leave when we had to go for the appointment was it's usual begging of "Just a few more minutes? PLEASE?" and my insistence that we couldn't be late for the appointment. Peter tried to give me a heart attack when he tried to climb down a rock outcropping wall (I had visions of him falling down and cracking his head open on a rock.) So Hefty Mama that I am, I climbed up to stop him from climbing down and had him hold my hand as we walked down the (much safer) stairs.
Waiting at Teddy's Eye Doctor was as painless as usual. Being a Children's office, there are plenty of kids for the boys to pal around with. Today, however, almost all the kids were glued to The Incredibles playing on Disney. No problems here. I was watching it too. While I was working on some of my swaps.
We ended up being there a lot longer than we'd expected, and I ended up having a very sad Teddy at the end of the visit. He's having problems seeing again out of his left eye. His doctor thinks we took the patch off too soon, so we're going back to patching him. He's got to have his right eye patched all day for 4 weeks, then 1/2 a day for 4 weeks. We're going back in June and, depending on how that visit goes, he'll go down to a couple hours a day, but we're going to keep that up for a good long time. Teddy hates the patch. He cries whenever we need to put it on him. So my heart was breaking for my little boy. He thought he was done with it and now he's got to go back to the beginning.
I had the doctor write me a script for his glasses again - his script didn't change that much, but I want to get him new glasses since his brother has bent these all out of shape (we're on the 3rd set of frames already). Then I told the boys we could head to the store if they wanted. Teddy had said he wanted to buy a surprise for me, and since he was already disappointed, I figured I'd do a little cheering up for him. Plus, I had to buy eye patches again since we'd used them up the last time.
Even though Target was a bit frustrating, I found quite a few good deals and managed to come out with my boys somewhat happy. Each of the boys got a $1 pinwheel that we put in the front yard when we got home. Then I found a Phineas and Ferb DVD that we didn't own for $10. I found a really cool Pokemon mini-album for Teddy for $2, and a Ferb bobblehead for Rich. And, of course, I ended up with happy kids. It took me awhile to find the eye patches - they keep them behind the pharmacy counter there - but when I did, I told Teddy that I'd help spruce them up a bit. We're going to put stickers on them to make it a bit cooler.
I had a wonderful find when we got home and got the mail. Well, actually a couple wonderful things. One was a package from Amazon that we had purchased on Gold Box (VHS to DVD 5.0 Deluxe
). I'm hoping we'll have time to try it out next week. The other was a postcard from one of my swap partners. I love getting mail.The kids and I had our dinner, then went to play a couple of games together. Toy Story 3 Yahtzee and The Very Hungry Caterpillar Card Game. Both are games that even Pete can play. He needs a bit of help when it comes to choosing which dice to keep or which cards to put out, but he loves shaking the dice and being a part of things. And I love letting him.
Once we finished the games, the boys started watching Phineas and Ferb and I dove back into my blog reading and posting. I took a brief break at 8:30 to put them to bed and read them stories (and as a special treat, read to them on my bed instead of on their floor). Then I tucked them in, gave them kisses and came back downstairs to keep working.
One of the things that has surprised me most today has to do with my walking. I didn't work out because I wanted to not overdo it with my hip. And yet when I look at my pedometer tonight, it is registering 9146 steps. Most days, I make right around 5000. When I've been out walking at the park, I make between 6000 and 7500. Today, when I didn't go out to exercise, I hit my highest numbers ever since I started tracking. It doesn't make sense to me.
Of course, I'm also hitting other high numbers that I don't want to be - my weight. And I'm honestly not understanding it. I'm walking at least a mile a day. I'm trying to get in extra steps by parking further away and going up and down stairs more regularly. I've been trying to eat less, and what I do eat, I'm trying to make sure is healthier. I'm trying to drink more water. And instead of watching my numbers go down, I'm watching them go up. I'm heavier than I was when I started trying to lose weight back in September. I'm heavier than I was when I wasn't dieting and exercising. And I'm getting more than a bit discouraged. Not enough to pull me off of the wagon, but enough to wonder why in the hell I can't seem to lose this weight. If I didn't know better, I'd stop eating all together. But I know that starts a whole other set of problems. So all I can do is keep plugging away and PRAY that my weight goes down soon. Because, emotionally, watching it go up totally sucks.
And now, having finished my posting for today, I'm heading to bed for (hopefully) a good night's sleep. Tomorrow will be more blog posting (including introducing you to some more wonderful Swappers for a Blog Swap that I'm a part of), another trip to the park to walk with the boys (or so I hope) and enjoying having my husband home for the evening.
Sleep well, all my wonderful friends.
