Tomorrow is the First Day of The Rest of Your Life

Well I guess that should be my life but really it's another day with another chance to make it a little bit better than the last one.  First let me say HAPPY NEW YEAR Y'ALL.  I am a Texan (i.e. I was born there and I didn't just live there--Texans understand that distinction lol) so I have to say y'all every now and then to retain my position.  As everyone else around the world does on December 31st, I started thinking about what I learned over the last year and what I could hope for in the next year.  This has been an interesting year.  After leaving the only real grown up job I'd ever had in July, I realized just how unhappy I'd been in it recently.  I loved my clients but hated the people I was working for and the system they were constructing was just gonna make me more miserable.  Turns out they are crapping on the staff even more than they had been so I got out at a good point.  I have a new job which I found relatively quickly and while it feels like I've been lied to about just about EVERYTHING concerning it, it made sure I wasn't unemployed, gave me insurance again and allowed me to do my side gig.  The side gig has help offset bills and random expenditures but so has saving like the dickens.  I have a new campus interview coming up soon which may lead to relocation back to the family I like and the state I tolerate which would be good and bad.  I love my brother and his family but I kinda like a lot of things about my life here.  If I could take a few of those things with me it would be ideal but hey such is life it's always changing.

For those of you that have been around for a while then you know this blog is about my hair care journey.  My hair from July of last year to now is completely different and not just because I'm letting it go grey.  My hair dresser says the black dye isn't as hard on hair so I may think about spiffying it up but I'm not sold on that.  My hair had gotten pretty thin and was really damaged and had hit what I thought was it's terminal length cause that's the point it always broke off at.  The first few months didn't net major growth but my hair got full and thick again which was great because it meant I was doing things well and the length has slowly but surely come so that now I can say my hair is on my shoulders.  If I can get the one spot in the center to grow out like the hair around it then all will be good.  And I need to develop tolerance for new hair styles and possibly developing the two day wash and style process if I am going to keep avoiding heat like the plague.  I haven't used my sit under dryer in so long it's dusty seriously and when my blow dryer died I just opted not to replace it.  I only use my flat irons in an emergency.  But this whole hair care thing gave me new insights into how much I ultimately valued me too.

I had avoided taking better care of me because I was tired, lazy, didn't feel I deserved it, whatever the case may be I was crapping out on the self love stuff.  Since leaving the job and even taking slightly better care of myself I have fallen in love with parts of my life all over.  I'm listening to to new music, enjoying new shows, reading books from the library and best of all cooking.  I've baked and made more home made ice cream in the last six months than I have in the last three years seriously.  Even when the experiments didn't work it was fun for me.  And clearly I have been missing fun.  I've slowly but surely worked on part of a project that I need to get back to work on.  But that rocked when I did it.  I'm doing all those happy homemaker things that I envisioned myself doing as a child save you know the husband, 2.5 kids and four bedroom house.  But I had been ignoring that part of my life because I didn't have the husband or kids.  Correction I had a husband but he wasn't my husband and while his kids were great I never got to see them because his ex didn't want me in their lives.  I won't spend too much time on that because even thinking about it makes me take a deep sigh but I was waiting on him to take care of things so that we could be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious wonder coupled up and the problem is/was there was always going to be something else and after four and a half years I felt defeated.  I'm not sure if we were good for each other even though were good to each other.  I miss him and the cute kids but I also knew/know that if I want the husband, 2.5 kids and four bedroom house before I die waiting on someone else to figure their part out isn't in the cards.

So I'm single again, in pursuit of a new job, watching my hair grow out of my head and be all healthy and beautiful and it's time for phase two or three or twelve whatever it is.  My weight has been pretty stable but too freaking high for at least the last five years.  I'm sure stress and underlying dissatisfaction with parts of my life added to the weight not coming off in any meaningful way or my ability to stick to any kind of workout routine.  I wear oversized clothes so I don't look five months pregnant constantly.  Well that and I'm always very conscious of my boobs which have been in the way since 5th grade and have only gotten bigger since then.  My FIRST bra was a 32/34B or so.  I was all out of the cute training bras and into the you got boobs bras.  The last time I allowed myself to partake of the Cacique bra sale at LB I bought a 42DDD.  Yes three Ds which is actually much different than an E as E is still thankfully too big.  Because I knew that reboot started in January which is now less than 48 hours away I allowed myself to eat as much of anything as I wanted before the 1st.  That stops tomorrow and it's back to watching portion sizes and eating sensibly and drinking as much water as I can without making my bladder bitch slap me all day long.  I drink a fair amount now it just tends to be after work instead of throughout the day.

So to keep myself honest I'm going to post my starting weight and add a tab to the Random Goodness box that tracks any weight loss, gain, whatever.  I hope that it's usually loss but we'll see.  Weigh ins, other than today, will probably be on Friday or Saturday--maybe wash day since I'll be in a routine anyway.  I'm also going to share a photo with you of the round wonder that is me and try to do an update photo monthly or at least every other month.  Monthly I may depress myself ha.  And my hope is at the end of the year there is enough tone and loss that the the pinup photos make me happy to shell out lots of money to look purty.

Hmm what else is there to tell you about right now. Ahh no idea why you need to know this but I'm in a sharing mood lol.  So remember all the cute pajamas Victoria's Secret used to carry?  They were cotton and very comfortable.  At the time I got myself two or three pajama shirts and two sets that had tank tops and pants.  I haven't worn either in a while because I tend to just pass out in whatever is comfy and near me.  And I hadn't worn the tanks cause I was doing some serious hate on my arms and again the aforementioned boobs that fit great in the tanks when I was still a C cup but now look like whatcha doing with all that up there gal.  I guess because of the weather it finally dawned on me sleeping in lightweight pants would help me not freeze so out came the VS pants again.  But it's cold so it's not tank weather.  Ahhh light bulb moment.  The cute tops that stop at my used to be ample now too damn big butt work great with the pants--I mean they are the same material after all.  So I've created two new pj sets for myself after not wearing either part for a LONG time.  I'm such a dork I know.

It was raining here today so my cute hair was tucked under a hat whenever I went out in the elements and the curls fell a bit but I promised myself I'd take photos so here ya go.  And there's a picture of me at my current weight of 243.8 pounds--my scale is fancy and does points of pounds.  Glad it doesn't round up though and it's too high to round down to just a flat 243.  That means I've gained five pounds in the last four or five months.  Not major just not helpful.  So the goal for a year from today is to be at 203.8 pounds or less.  I don't want to set it so high that I get disappointed that I can't hit my goal and 40 seems reasonable.  If it's surpassed EVEN better.  And I'll be grabbing my jar soon to put next to the bed and be prepared to fill with all the goodness for the next year.  Woo this was a long post wasn't it?  Now it's time for gingerbread martinis after I eat a little bit so there's more than chicken bites and a Cinnabon on my stomach.  And if you made it all the way down here let me just say again, happy new year to you and yours and hope it's blessed beyond measure.