Eating Lately: Since my clean eating challenge ended, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do going forward. I felt so good while on the strict diet that I knew I needed to try and sustain as many of those changes as possible, but the no-processed-foods-of-any-kind has probably been the hardest rule to strictly maintain. I also still have cravings constantly for sugar (so you’d think that that would be the hardest rule to keep), but my body completely freaked out on me the last two times I had sugar (after being on the diet), so maybe I won’t be having problems keeping that one, seeing as how I’ve been avoiding it as much as possible for the past few days.
Watching Lately: We haven’t gone to see a movie in awhile, and the only new thing I’ve watched in the past month was Joyful Noise, which we found in a $5 bin somewhere. I am, however, excited that the next season of ANTM airs on Monday. There are only about 3 television shows I follow and embarrassingly, that’s one of them.
Doing Lately: I’ve been trying to take advantage of these last few days of summer while I still can, but it hasn’t amounted to too much. We had a fun family reunion last weekend and we’ve had friends over a few times for games, but we have yet to go on our monthly adventure for August. (Although now that I think about it, we DID try stand-up paddleboarding for the first time on Monday, which was AWESOME.) And just in case anyone was wondering, I’ve gone into my classroom exactly one time since school let out on May 30th. When I went in (on Tuesday of this week, as a matter of fact), I was delighted to find out that my room had apparently gotten re-carpeted, but then I noticed that my computer was missing, my cable connecting me to the district server had issues (as well as the outlet it was supposed to plug into), and that I have to have my printer re-installed yet again. There are few things I dislike more than getting my classroom ready for the new year—there always seems to be something that’s gone missing or that’s somehow gotten broken, and I am NOT one to go for cutesy decor on the walls. Anyone want to go in and get the room ready for me?
Growing Lately: Although our garden has overall gotten off to a slower start than it did last year (a fact we attribute to the fact that we only water twice a week now instead of every day), we have been enjoying a lot of fresh produce lately: green beans galore, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, strawberries, basil, parsley, and I used our very first onion from the garden just yesterday. Things that are close: our corn and possibly some of our watermelons/cantaloupe. It’s a great time to be a gardener!
Freaking Out About Lately: Grad school applications! Matt and I are neck-deep in applying to PT school for the second year, and because we’d gone through the whole process last year (and I knew that the system saved a lot of your information), I was mistakenly under the impression that the whole thing would be easy-breezy-summer-squeezy and that we’d be finished in under two hours and drinking celebratory glasses of sparkling cider in no time. Ha! Apparently, ALL the stuff that took the longest last year to do (the verification of his volunteer hours, the letters of recommendation, etc.) do NOT, in fact, carry over, so we now have to do all of those sections all over again. Plus, I thought that we were already way ahead of the curve because the application process just opened up last month, so I thought we were totally on top of the game this year. Turns out that one of the schools we have the best shot at has a deadline TOMORROW. Applying for grad school is the perfect blend of panic-inducing chaos for me because it combines all sorts of things that cause me intense anxiety—a lot of technical details that involve many phone calls and emails, fast-approaching deadlines that seem to come out of nowhere, a lack of control over what will happen, and the biggest factor of all–the fact that I can’t do much of anything about it since the application process is for my husband and not me, so there’s only so much of the burden I can take over. One day when he’s a licensed physical therapist, I’m sure we’ll be able to laugh about this, but now I just feel like throwing up whenever I think about it.
Running Lately: Even though I’m keeping up my thrice-weekly running regimen, I’ll admit that a lot of the passion has gone out of it for me lately. Maybe it’s because I’m not training for any race right now, or maybe it’s because I’ve always hated running in the heat, but I’m hoping that running will regain some of its joy when fall hits (partly because of the cooler weather, partly because I’ll have teaching stress that needs to be exercised off).
And, to end this post, a picture of one of our gorgeous melons, which just looks so delicious and crisp I just want to cry because it means that summer is coming to a close.
Unlike the rest of the blogging world, I myself am NOT ready for fall to begin.
As always, thanks for reading along! And if you could all send positive thoughts about grad school applications our way, that sure would be appreciated!
