Long car ride and crowded places!

I forgot to post this yesterday, so I am going to post it now.
Sunday night my son spent the night at my moms place and then after me and my dad picked him up Monday morning we decided to extend the drive by 100 miles and head to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
It was a long car ride, the drivers of Indianapolis are worse than the drivers of Cincinnati, and the museum was crowded as all get out.
While I had fun there, with what I actually got to see, my son really wasn't feeling it and my dad was in pain by the time we left.
I learned something about myself though.
None of these places I take my son ever really live up to my expectation for how I thought the trip was going to go, or how the place was going to be if it was a new place for us to visit.
As a child I loved going to museums, parks, and zoos. I loved it. I was always able to find something I had missed the time before or I knew exactly what I wanted to see and everything else was just a build up of awesome things until I got to what I really wanted to see.
With my son, not so much.
He knows what he wants to see and he doesn't want to look at ANYTHING except what he wants to see. So, if you are trying to look at something that he isn't interested in for longer than 5-10 seconds then he is going to let you know just how damn bored he is.
It is annoying as all hell.
But, I have learned to go with the flow and get him to chill out for a minute.
Let mommy see some of the things that she likes as we work our way to what it is he wants to see, since we will be there for a while, if it lives up to his expectations.
It works, for the most part.
What doesn't help is when the website, that you have you son look at before you head out there, makes it look like there is a lot of things he would be interested in, and then you get there and 90% of everything is geared for kids under the age of 8.
He did enjoy the aliens and androids exhibit, and I had a few nerd moments there myself.
But, what I learned for the entire thing is, even when it isn't going how you had planned it to go, still find ways to have fun. Enjoy the little things.
While your child may want NOTHING to do with the Terra Cotta Warriors or Dinosaurs just wait until you see the smile on their face when they get to try and work a robotic arm!

Well, maybe my family isn't that nuts after all!

Woke up still feeling like poo, a little worse than yesterday, but started feeling better quicker.
But, shit hit the fan around the building today. Worse than usual.
I slept in because I wasn't feeling good and within 10 minutes of waking up it sounded like WWIII in our upstairs neighbors apartment.
It settled down after about 15 minutes or so, but then picked back up again 3 hours later.
I had gone outside for some air and sun, that always seems to help me feel human when I don't feel good, but all I hear if my upstairs neighbor and across the hall neighbor going at it in the hallway.
So, I open the building door to yell "My kid is in the apartment, you need to stop!"
*info-- upstairs neighbor and across the hall neighbor are brother and sister. upstairs neighbor lives with dad. upstairs neighbor and dad were fighting, sister was protecting/defending dad. sister got upset, sisters boyfriend eventually stepped in and started yelling at brother.
By the time I get back in my apartment my son is in tears because he heard me yelling and didn't know what was going on.
After what we went through living with my aunt in Arizona my son does not handle yelling well at all.
This was pretty much the mood around the building for the next hour or two.
I really can't wait until we can move away from here.
The rest of the day, aside from a quick trip to the store, was me trying to get the living room and bedroom cleaned up and my son packed up so he can spend the night at my mom's tomorrow night.
Even though I am not feeling all that well I am going to help her with some Spring Cleaning before dropping my son off for the night.
I'm looking forward to waking up tomorrow morning and seeing how excited my son is when he sees what the Easter Bunny brought him!!
Everything he got was bought with my Beachbody paycheck!!
Today's "positive" is when everyone's family is acting psycho as shit I can look at mine and realize that, yeah, I have some people I never want to consider family ever again, but I know I can count on my family to be there when I really need them to be. My dad, brother, son, and mom are my foundation and helped mold me into who I am today.

I almost forgot.. WHOOPS!!

*this will be short and sweet tonight*
Today is the first day of Spring Break.
Normally a day that I would be dreading because my son drives me absolutely bonkers on his breaks from school, but today I woke up feeling kinda crappy.
You know, that kinda crappy where you don't feel sick, but you feel run down and just blech.
I was behind on meals, I didn't work out, what I did eat wasn't the best in choices, I really wanted Cheddar Fries... SO BAD, and I rarely moved from my computer chair or the recliner.
But, I did spend a little over an hour and a half playing Mario Kart with my son.
Something that doesn't happen all too often.
Usually because I get bored with it really quickly and my son gets really cocky when he starts winning and it's annoying as hell.
However, it was really fun today!
So, I considered today my "off" day from work and spent time playing with my son.
Hell, most of my SnapChat story today involves him! (mstiana84)
It worked out, not feeling all that well, because I got to spend the day with my lil man.
Half the time when I do have the time to spend it with him he is on his computer and ignoring me, or when I am super busy/distracted is when he wants to spend time with me.
I love my son and today, except for feeling poopy, was perfect.

Take your truancy and suck a big one!

This one is a hard one.
No damn clue how I am going to find the positive today..
I mean, I could stretch it, twist it, flip it, run it over with a car, and MAYBE figure out how to find the positive with what happened today. But, that is my challenge. I usually don't do challenges or dares, because I hate them and think they are asinine. However, knowing why Robb is making me do this is the only reason I agreed to it.
So, here we go.. My shitty horrible negative for the day...
Today was fine in the morning. I got my workout done, even though my shins hurt, and I got my Easter shopping for my son done, since I remembered 10 minutes before I bought anything that I still had to buy it all.
Then I came home and checked the mail.
And I saw a letter from the county with the word "delinquent" stamped on it.
At first I was about to ignore it, because I don't deal with the county when it comes to juvenile courts because my kids stuff is in a different county. I opened the envelope and at first I wasn't sure what the hell I was reading and then it hit me, hard, in the face, like a drunk bitch that thinks you are talking to her man.
I was reported for truancy and being summoned to court.
My child had apparently "missed" 26.5 days of school.
However, the way the school works with tardies is "every 3 tardies counts as 1 unexcused absence." So, with that logic, if he is late to school by 2 minutes, three times, he "misses an entire day of school" when in all actuality he only missed a total of 6 minutes between those three days.
They are claiming that my son has missed TWENTY AND A HALF days of school because he has been tardy.
26.5 days equals, roughly, 143.5 hours.
Only counting the mornings that he has been late he has missed 14.16 hours in roughly seven months of school +/- vacation times.
This is not counting the 3 days that he missed the entire day, but I didn't take him to the DR so there was no DR note. Those 3 day I have no problem with. He had no note to excuse him so yeah, sure.
This also does not count the 6 or 7 times that THE SCHOOL called me in the middle of the day telling me that my son needed to go home, but then still marked it as unexcused.
Um, no.
BYE, FELICIA!!
You told me to come get him.
You, THE SCHOOL, told me to get him!
What gets me... 25 of these "tardies" are 5 minutes or less... Seriously? Of those 3 of them make it to the 5 minute mark, the rest are 2 or 3 minutes.
So, now the fun part.
Turning this clusterfuck of a negative into a positive.
And, after talking to my dad about it I think I was able to......After a few hours of getting really pissed off every time I thought about it.....
I have been on the fence about homeschooling my son all school year. Not only that, we are planning on moving and I have been struggling with the idea of leaving this school district. I didn't want to because up until 5th grade the teachers were AMAZING with my son and helping him with his struggles.
This year, middle school, not so much.
I mean, he does still have teachers that work with him, but a lot of the time he gets the "figure it out yourself" attitude from them, whether they mean it like that or not.
That doesn't work well with my kid.
He shuts down and gives up.
Now, after this letter, and the school waiting until there is only NINE weeks left in the school year I have pretty much decided I want OUT of this district and will be doing more research into homeschooling.
So, in a way this helped me settle some internal struggles with what I want to do when it comes to the move and next school year.
I no longer want anything to do with this school district once this current school year is over.

It's only failure if I give up

I decided to write this one early (well, early compared to the first four I have written).

On Friday it felt like my shin splints were coming back while I was going one of the cardio workouts for my 22 Minute Hard Core workout out, which made me nervous since it hasn't been THAT long since I finally got rid of my shin splints from when I attempted jogging.

So, I took it easy with resistance on Sunday and Monday, I was ok with the cardio Tuesday, and I was ok with the resistance this morning. 

However, a few hours later I started noticing pain in my shins as I was doing my pacing on my crossing guard gig. 

Looks like it is time to fall back on my backup plan.

I mean, that is what a backup plan is for, right? Something to fall back on...

So, I am turning this negative (my possible shin splints) into a positive by doing a second round of 21 Day Fix, maybe a third, and then going back to try 22 Minute Hard Corps again after I drop a little more weight. 

It does NOT mean I failed because I have to go back to a less "intense" workout, it just means that I have to work around what my body can physically handle at this point.

It is only considered a failure if I stop working out and give up completely. 

I will keep up with my clean eating. 

I will go back to doubling up on 21DF workouts when I can.

I will try 22MHC in 3-6 weeks and then HOPEFULLY my shins are ready for the amount of jumping that is needed for Tony Horton's workouts!

I can still do the resistance workouts that don't require jumping, and the core workouts from 22MHC, just to add a little something extra to my workouts. That way I can still look at the eye candy that is Tony Horton.... very easy on the eyes when working out lol.
In the past month and a half, almost two months I have come so far from who I used to be.
I used to be the girl that would eat nothing unless it came from a can or a box, could be heated up in the microwave or quickly on the stove.
Snack cakes were my best friend.
And I got a milkshake every single time I stopped at the ice cream parlor to get my son his weekly ice cream after his karate class.
I never said no to junk food. Food was my best friend.
I also thought that if I went to kickboxing class 3x a week and counted my calories, even though it was all the wrong calories, that I was still going to lose weight. Yet, I never lost more than half a pound in two weeks, and I couldn't understand why I wasn't.
Then I found 21DF and started eating clean and working out 6 days a week. Yes, I have slipped and have had junk food. But, I lost 15 pounds and only gained back 3 or 4 pounds during my 3 day slip-up.
Suffice it to say.. if I have to use my backup plan for a while, then I will. I will use my backup plan until my body is ready for me to move to more intense workout programs.
Because I will NEVER go back to who I was before.
She was tired and unhappy.
I am happier and less tired.

So, this is me refusing to give up, and refusing to let my negative for the day hold me back. 

I am a visual person

Again, today was a day where not much happened.
I got my son to school, pretty much on time, and did my job.
Then I came home and did my work out. I was a little nervous about it this morning though, because on Friday I thought my shin splints were coming back and that is NOT something I want to have to go through again, but I did my Cardio 2 workout with no problem.
I even had a backup plan, just in case I started to feel the pain in my left shin that I felt on Friday. IF I felt the pain I would just wait on the current workout I am doing (22 Minute Hard Corps) and go back to doing 21 Day Fix for another round (or two) until I dropped a little more weight. Maybe I weight too much for the type of cardio I am doing with this one, who knows. But, today was fine. The backup plan is still there, just in case. I will know more Wednesday when I have to do cardio again, since tomorrow is resistance day!
Then I went to the store to get myself a birthday present for myself, Mocking Jay Pt2!!! I also decided to get some jelly bracelets to try something a challenger in my current 21DF challenge group does to keep track of their containers. The portion control container system is color coded... green for veggies, purple for fruits, red for protein, so on and so forth. I printed out sheets to tally off how much of each container I eat with each meal, since I only get so many of each for the day, but there is also an app that can be used. I don't feel like paying for the app.
So, I got jelly bracelets. Every time I look at my right wrist I will physically see what I have left for the day, even when I am out to eat with my dad and son. When I eat a specific type of food I take the corresponding bracelet off. Today was the first day of doing that and it seems to be working well so far.
I have a crap ton of extra bracelets now, since I had to buy 2 packs to get the right amount of the colors I needed, so I decided to use the extra blue ones for my water bottle. I mean, it makes sense, right?
Blue... water...
Each blue bracelet on my water bottle stands for 8 ounces of water. My water bottle holds 2 1/2 cups of water, so each time I finish off the bottler I take 2 bracelets off of it before I fill it back up. Then when all 10 bracelets are off of it I know that I drank around 120 ounces of water. It's not quite as much water as I am supposed to drink at my current weight, but it's enough that I feel like I am swimming by the end of the night.. As I type this at 9:25 p.m. I still have 3 bracelets on my water bottle.. I am not sure I am going to be able to get those three off by the time I go to bed lol. If I do I will be up in the middle of the night running to the bathroom!
I know, I am not posting about the challenge, but there really was nothing "negative" that happened today. Today was a pretty decent day.
I managed to stay in a good mood, and positive, most of the day!
I even tried to help a mom with her car, after my shift during pick up, when her horn decided to start honking out of nowhere! It was so weird... and VERY loud!
So, Robby.. your challenge is becoming challenging to write about and I am only on day four!! :)

Over sleeping, hotdogs, root beer, and karate....

I am only on day three of this challenge and I am quickly learning how little I actually do in my life.
Aside from taking my son to school, doing my crossing guard gig, and taking my son to his karate classes, I don't really do much.
I mean, I am a Beachbody coach, and I am trying to get that up and running, while working on myself, but I mean in regards to actually going out in the world... It doesn't happen...
This challenge I was given by my friend, not naming his name, Robert!, is going to be fun when I am at home for 90% of my day.

Anyways... this morning seemed like it was starting out like a typical day. My alarm clock was going off.. I was ignoring it.. As usual.
I couldn't figure out why my alarm clock was going off so early on a damn Sunday and it was annoying because I had to wake up enough to hit 'snooze' and then roll back over to go back to sleep.
At some point my son asked me if it was Monday and if he should be getting up and getting ready for school, to which I responded "No, it's only Sunday, go back to bed."
He didn't. He got up and got on his computer and started watching cartoons.
I stayed in bed, under my covers, where it was VERY comfortable and warm. And continued to hit 'snooze' on both my phone AND my actual alarm (which I never set on the weekends...........should have been clue number 1) until something told me to look at my fitness tracker on my wrist.
To what to my sleepy eyes should I read but the letters "M-O-N" right next to the number 21....
It was not Sunday at all, but it was Monday and my son was well being "just a few minutes" late for school.
I got he and I ready as quickly as I could, being still have in a dozed out stupor and I got him to school. My son informed me that the school secretary already doesn't like him because he is always running late, because we always over sleep, so I nicely said "Tell her to shove it" and told him I loved him and would see him when he got picked up after school.
I got my really quick grocery trip done to pick up my dad some more lunch meat, came home and did my workout.
Then after my son got picked up from school I did my crossing guard gig, and we went to opening day at our favorite place to eat in the spring and summer (since those are the only 2 seasons this place is open) and had the best root beer, hot dogs, and extra salty popcorn that could be had. The boy had karate a little later in the day, which went well, they are learning how to flip people in self defense right now, and then we came home.
I have to say... nothing really happened today that I consider a negative.
On a day where I get to over sleep and don't miss a seriously important meeting or phone call.... I consider that a win. If my son was late to school and missed music class big whoop. I'm not going to stress about that.
So, I am at a loss as to what happened today, that I considered negative, that I need to find the positive in.
Today was a good day. It was a really good day.
I mean, my son was whiny, but that is an almost every day thing. It comes with the territory with ADHD, ODD, and anxiety... I just deal with it and tell him to breath and speak without whining.
Maybe tomorrow I will have something that needed to be spun into a positive.. but, today way positive from the moment I finally realized it was actually Monday.

You're going the wrong way... Motards!!!

Today was not a very active day. I only left the house twice: once to go to the grocery store to get my son the slice of cheesecake I promised him last night and then to go to dinner when my dad got home from work.
Other than leaving the house I did my work out, played on the computer for a little bit, fell asleep in the recliner while attempting to watch TV, and then dealt with an extra whiny child.
At the store I was met with the annoying "lets drive the wrong way down the one way aisle" drivers, you know the ones that I am talking about. They don't care that the aisles are made to be driven down only one way, they want to go a certain way, so they are going to go that way, even if it is against the flow of traffic, and they are going to insist that you get out of their way so they can make it down to the opposite end and keep the pattern going until they find the parking spot they want, and then they will pull in at a weird and stupid angle, where they are barely in, but it's good enough for them.
If you can't tell, it annoys the ever loving piss out of me. Even walking into the store I looked at my son and said to myself "No way in hell am I even going to attempt to turn this shit into a positive!" to which my son replied "Yeah, it's got to be really hard for people like you. I mean, you really just really don't like most people. Where, people like me, can find the positive in most things, most of the time, you just hate everything." Sadly, my kid was spot on. I don't leave the house often because, as a whole, society pisses me off.
Then we get home and I notice that my son threw away 1/4 loaf of bread. When I ask him about it he tells me it was because the bread was dry, so I point out that it is because he doesn't close the bag the right way, then I show him how to close it so the bread doesn't dry out. Which instantly started him in on telling me that I am "making fun of him" and am "being really mean" which being accused of something I am not doing makes me want to do what I was not doing, simple because I was being accused of it.
If anything today showed me that I really need to work on my patience. While I know there are stupid drivers out there, there is also nothing I can do about them. The only thing I can do is focus on myself and what I am doing on the road. I can keep myself and whoever I have in my car safe while I follow the rules of the road (or the parking lot). When it comes to dealing with my son, when he thinks I am being mean, when I am not even raising my voice and only trying to show him how to do something differently I need to take a step back and breath before I continue, because it will eventually get to the point where I do become mean, only because I have become frustrated. I also need to learn to take a step back, breath, and reassess the situation.

It's my birthday and I want to party

So, today is my birthday. I am 32 years young. Nothing new with this birthday. I woke up, made breakfast, got my son squared away so he could ignore me as he got sucked into the little world he is creating on his computer, and I checked things on my phone and computer.
Except, this morning I had to reschedule my birthday party because my best friend's health isn't doing so well.
My party was to be held at her house, since she is a neat freak and her place is the cleanest one I could think of I immediately thought of her apartment when I thought of where I could hold my "adults only" birthday party.
The party had been up in the air though this past week because my best friend spent all of last weekend in the hospital deal with a pretty serious physical issue. As we hoped she would get better, she seemed to be getting worse. That being said I decided to post-pone my party and let my friend focus on her health instead of feeling bad thinking she upset me because of having to post-pone my party.
Normally, this is something I would have thought of as a negative. Another birthday party, or birthDAY that did not go as planned. This seems to be a running thing with me. Not one single birthday, that I can remember, has ever gone the way I planned it. However, I am now to find the positive in every thing that I think is a negative.
My positive (out of a negative) is that even though my birthday party got postponed I was able to go out to diner with my dad and my son for my birthday, which I would have missed had I gone to my "adults only" birthday party instead, and I was able to meet up with a friend that I had not seen in almost a year and have a drink or two with her while we caught up with each other for about two hours.
It is not often that I get "adult time" away from my son, because I don't have a babysitter and don't like asking my dad to watch my son very often, but it was nice, even if only for 2 hours and 15 minutes, to go to the pub and spend some time with a friend that I have known since middle school. This also took some stress and pressure off my best friend since she didn't have to worry about a group of people coming to her home for a few hours, while she felt like shit, and gave her more time to rest and take care of herself. I hope she starts to feel better soon as well!!

Challenge....... Accepted?

So my friend Robb noticed something on my facebook posts recently........and called me out for it. While they are positive posts, since I am working on losing weight and bettering myself, there is an underlying tone that he figured I was not aware of... So he called me out on it.Even though I am posting positive things I am also putting myself down at the same time.

Honestly, not something I realized I was doing, but it makes sense. I've been doing it my entire life. It was ingrained in my brain at a young age by certain family members and neighborhood kids that I was not a "worth while" person, so I tend to look at myself like I am a hot mess that constantly needs to change to be better, or accepted.

So, Robb has challenged me, starting tomorrow on my 32nd birthday, to spend my entire 32nd year of life finding the positive in EVERYTHING that I think is negative. If something happens that I think is negative, then I have to find the positive in it. If I hear something I think is negative, then I have to find a way to see a positive in it.You get the idea.

From March 19th, 2016 until March 19th, 2017 I have to find positives in EVERY SINGLE THING that I think is negative.

Because in Robb's words (but paraphrased because I don't remember everything because I don't always pay 100% attention, still love you though Robb) "You are not a mess that needs to change. You are already awesome, You are just trying to improve on yourself."

I told Robb I was reading personal development books, something I already knew I needed to do for myself, but also something I need to do as a Beachbody coach, but I also admitted I don't do the "homework" in the book, which of course he called me out on also, so I am adding that to this challenge. When I read my PD and come across the "homework" I will do it as soon as I get to it, and not when I finish the book like I originally planned. I will also go back to the book I already finished and do the "homework" in that one since I never did it.... :D

And because I know the few of you that actually read this will be as curious as Robb about whether or not I stick to it I am going to blog about it! At the end of the night I will write about my day and the "negative" that I turned into a positive.

Feel free to call me out if I miss a day as well, because I am positive that it will happen. I know myself very well.

*Ps.. getting called out on stuff like this is what happens when you have known someone for 25 years.......