The long and winding road to fitness, day 52

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My first day of vacation was pleasant.  I had to run across town to go pick up my contacts and decided to head into Target while I was in the neighborhood.  I picked up a few things that were on sale, then came back home.  I didn’t do a lot at home today.  I figured I’d give myself one day of doing whatever, then tackle some chores tomorrow.  I don’t really like doing house work, but I sure do like having a clean house.  Since I can’t afford a maid and the little house cleaning fairies have left town, I guess I’ll just have to do my own cleaning.  It’ll be worth it once I’m finished.  Don’t you find that you are able to relax more when your house is clean and organized?

I did do two cardio workouts today…walked for 35 minutes this morning and danced for 20 minutes this afternoon.  I did a little core work…only four different exercises today…I kind of forgot about it while I was watching Days of Our Lives (what?  has Maggie died?  say it ain’t so), so hurried and did a little just a few minutes ago.  Tomorrow is supposed to be much cooler so I’m thinking I’ll go out for a nice long walk complete with pictures…you can never have too many pictures, although I do need to organize mine somehow…what do you all do with your digital photos to organize them so you don’t have to search for that one particular picture? I’m at a loss on this one.

I baked a homemade pizza today…lots of mushrooms, onion and turkey bacon…I know I just posted a blog about bacon not that long ago and how I’m not a huge fan of it…but I had to use this up because it was getting close to the use by date…guess I could have stuck it in the freezer so that I could find it next year…anyhow, the pizza was decent…not my best by any stretch of the imagination, but still pretty good. 

I also made up a batch of frozen banana pops…yum…I don’t know how I ever lived without these things…I can do without ice cream if I have these available.  I had some of the chocolate/peanut butter mixture left over and didn’t want to throw it out…what to do? what to do?  Oh wait, I have dried cherries in the pantry…no, no, took those to work…what do I have?  Hmm…dried apples?  No…dried pineapple…I don’t think so…dried plums (or prunes before the marketing whiz kids decided to come up with something more appealing to the masses)?  Hmm…how would that taste?  Tried it…not bad…the prunes are small ones so I ended up with about a dozen of them…Figure that could be a good candy substitute when I get a craving.  What do you think?

I’ve got to do something with zucchini tomorrow…I’ve got several I need to pick and, who knows, by tomorrow morning they may be the size of a baseball bat…so, do I make zucchini lasagna?  I already have enough pizza to last me for the next three days, so don’t really need another Italian style entree…zucchini bread or muffins?  That’s definitely an option…if I make muffins, I can put most of them in the freezer and take them to work for a snack when I go back next week.  Maybe grill some zucchini and other veggies?  I’d have to run to the grocery store tomorrow to buy more mushrooms since I used all of them on today’s pizza.  I could always shred the zucchini and put it in the freezer…decisions, decisions…what would you do?

So, all in all, a good first day of vacation…what did you do today?

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Have I ever really loved myself?

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Isn’t that a sad question?  Sad for anyone to wonder that about themselves.  What brought that to mind was my daily writing on 750words.com, saying that I want to treat myself like I deserve to be treated.  Then it hit me, maybe that’s always what  I’d been doing…treating myself like I thought I deserved to be treated.  That not doing good things for myself, eating trash, isolating myself from friends and family, not being nice to myself…that this was how I thought I deserved to be treated.  What a kick in the teeth to finally understand that I’d been treating myself  like dirt because that was all I thought I deserved.  Would I ever think that was how anyone else deserved to be treated?  Absolutely not.  So why would I think that was how I deserved to be treated?  Because what?  I’m different from everyone else, that no one else deserves to be disrespected, but I do?  But that’s exactly how I was treating myself, I was being disrespectful to myself.

Why?  Oh gee, I suppose most kids get wrapped up in how their parents love them…or how they don’t love them.  Yes, my mother absolutely loved me, of that I have no doubts.  And I’m thankful that I had her in my life.  My father, on the other hand, who knows?  I suppose he may have loved me in his way, but that way wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t what I needed.  It was not the unconditional love I craved.  It was full of doubt, insecurity, and abandonment.  One of his first comments, after not talking to me for nearly 20 years, was, “Are you still fat?” Seriously?  What kind of father says that to his daughter?  I guess the answer to that would be, the kind of father I got stuck with. 

Have you ever noticed that girls seem to base so much of their self-worth on how their fathers treat them?  That doesn’t speak well for our future when you stop to think about how many fathers are absent in the lives of their kids these days.  I’ve never had good self-esteem.  Now, as an adult, trying to figure things out, trying to make things better, I realize a lot of that has to do with the fact that I felt unlovable simply because I truly believed my father didn’t love me enough to be a part of my life.  Intellectually, I understand that it had everything to do with him and his demons and nothing at all to do with me, but how in the world do you take that understanding and transform it into changed beliefs and behavior?  Simply having the insight into the whys of your behavior isn’t enough to change that behavior…where do I go from here?

Right now, today, I don’t have the answers to that question.  All I know is that I want to reach a place in my life where I can answer the question,
“Have I ever really loved myself?” with a resounding “YES!!”

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