Surprise!

Hallo all!!  I know, it's crazy to see an update, isn't it??  It's been almost 5 years since the last one!!

So I figured I'd do a quick update of my life for those of you who follow me on here.  I moved to Burlington just over two years ago, in 2017. I live with Gaby and Smush in a comfy little townhouse with a small backyard. I work in Oakville, at a pharmaceutical company that runs patient support programs.  I currently work for an awesome drug that helps people breathe better. 

I'm also volunteering with Girl Guides, as a Guider to my niece's Sparks unit.  That means that I get to spend every Tuesday evening, as well as some weekends, with 22 girls aged 5-6 that are ridiculously excited. Also, three other adults.  

I've also started to write again. It's been a while since I felt the need to be creative. I've also been playing with Illustrator, creating some prints that I have up on my Etsy store. My news site is no longer up, mainly because it took way too much time and still I wasn't able to get as many stories, or even many high quality stories, as I wanted to.  I'll have to think of something else I can blog about. Books? TV shows? I don't know.  If you have ideas, please feel free to let me know. I'm open to any suggestions!!

Also, I've discovered podcasts.  Since I'm not on a patient phone line and I have no patient contact, I get to have headphones in all day and podcasts became my new thing.  Let me tell you, Crime Junkie is definitely my favourite.  There's a few other good ones, but I'm still definitely addicted to True Crime.

What else??  Ooooh, I have a kitty!!  Her name is Peppermint, and I love her so, so, so much. She just wants to be loved an cuddled.  She seriously is the best cat.  She doesn't fight you, she doesn't scratch, she doesn't climb or destroy things....she really just wants to sit on your lap so you can pet her. I wasn't soo sure about her when I got her, but it was supposed to be a temporary relocation for her.  But now, there's no way in hell I'm letting her leave.  She's my baby and with me she'll stay.

Hmmm...family update. Let's see....we're good. Gaby's in McMaster, doing her second year. Smush is in grade one, in French Immersion, and seems to like it. Nelson is living in a condo with Nakisha and they've both got good jobs and a ridiculous puppy. Jose is living in Toronto, doing pretty good for himself. Kienan is in his third year at Guelph and in the army. Mom and Aidan just bought a boat (yay!!) and are still happy together. Overall, I think the family's doing pretty good.

Okay, so that's my update.  Maybe I'll try and get one here to update again.  I still have that list thing I was doing, the blogging challenge.  Maybe I'll finish it? Or maybe I'll talk to you guys again in a few years.  Who knows, right!!

Not Really An Update...

I know I haven't been on here in FOREVER, but I promise, I plan to be back with slightly more regular updates soon!!  I've started updating both Since You Asked and Girls Love Soccer Too, so you should def check those out for now!!

In the meantime, I thought I'd leave you with this picture that's been making the rounds on Facebook. Honestly, I love it.  I'm happy with the election results, and I'm happy with the cabinet.  I know, I know, we still have to see if they can actually do any good, but I'm not gonna lie, it looks promising!! Let's hope we didn't just give Justin Trudeau our trust and a huge show of faith just to get majorly screwed!!

Anyways, I'll be back with an actual update sometime in the next week.  Maybe this weekend??  We'll see.  I'll try, but I'm also gonna attempt to write two blog posts for each of the other sites as well as clean my room and do my laundry and maybe organize some shit....or I'll prolly just end up reading and doing nothing productive.  Either way, I'll try!!

Fitness update: Two weeks in!!

So it's been two weeks since I started working out, and I wanted to give you all a quick update. 

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been doing Insanity.  Unfortunately, I had to stop.  I got to day 9, but it was too much, and I am way too out of shape.  I was just hurting my back and my knee (which is new...and sucked) and it didn't feel like I was actually helping myself in the long run.

So I stopped, last Thursday being the last day.  I then gave myself a four-day weekend to recover and as of today am back on it.  I'm not doing Insanity this time, though, I'm doing Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred.  It's way less jumping, which is what I feel was hurting me the most. So I'll do this one for the recommended 90 days, and then we'll see what shape I'm in, and I'll either do another cycle or start Insanity.

Thankfully, 30-Day Shred is much easier for me to keep up with, although to be honest, I still feel like I'm gonna drop dead by the end.

I'm not gonna post pictures, 'cause I don't think enough's changed for that yet.  Maybe once I've lost a bit more and can actually see a difference.  Or maybe I can't see it since I see me every day??  Fine, I'll think about it at a month.  Anyways, I'll give you a rundown of the changes so far:
                             Weight: -5 lbs                                    Arms: -1 inch
                             Neck: -1 inch                                     Chest: -1 inch
                             Waist: -2.5 inches                              Hips: -2 inches
                             Thighs: -1 inch                                  Calves: -1 inch

Not a crazy amount of actual pounds lost, but enough lost in inches to make me happy.  Keep in mind, this was all in nine days, and I still ate badly (yes, I know I need to change that too).

I think in order to lose more pounds, I need to work much harder to change how I eat.  In the last two weeks I still had chicken fingers with fries and gravy (twice!!), Chinese food, McDonald's, and lots of cookies.  So all those need to go!!  Only home-cooked meals for the next two weeks!!  Actually, that's a lie, 'cause my bday dinner is during these two weeks, so for at least one day I'll be having margaritas and Mexican food.  But other than that, home-cooked meals, damn it!!

Or okay, fine, I'll concede that I'll prolly go out at some point, so if I go out I'll eat something healthy.  Maybe a salad, maybe a sandwich, maybe something like grilled chicken and veggies.  I must cut out the grease and fast food and junk!!

In the meantime, I'll leave you with Jillian Michael's 90-Day Shred, Level 1.  Feel free to join me in doing it!!  There's two more videos to this one, which I'm pretty sure you can find on YouTube.

I'll update you all again in two weeks to see how I've done with my new food challenge, and to see if there's been more awesome losses in pounds or inches.