Operation: Cutie Pie Has Begun

It's no big secret (or maybe it is, but it's not a secret from me due to the fact that it's pretty hard for me to keep secrets for myself) that I struggle with confidence issues.

I fluctuate wildly day to day moment to moment between thinking I am the cutest cutie face ever to not even wanting to acknowledge or deal with my face that's always breaking out and splotchy, with my lifeless hair, with my belly fat and love handles, with my clothes that just never. fit. right.

Can you tell where I am on the confidence scale currently?

But, listen. I'm not a total headcase. I know that I have all the elements of a beautiful lady. I just need to learn and be willing to invest time into making my look come together so that I can feel sure that I'm looking my best. Because those days when I'm wearing ill-fitting clothes and I've thrown my hair up in a messy bun and my makeup consists of chapstick, I just don't feel good.

Some people do and that's awesome. Yay, you guys! I fully support that. For me personally, though, I need to put some effort into myself to feel outstanding.

Which is where Operation: Cutie Pie comes into play.

I took the day off work yesterday. I didn't request it off with the intention of O:CP in mind, but when I started visualizing my day off, I decided that I did want to start the journey into feeling better about the way I present myself to the world. It's crossed my mind a lot recently that it would be fun to start playing around with different hairstyles and makeup, since I pretty much do the same thing every day right now and with the help of Pinterest and tutorials from thebeautydepartment.com, there aren't any excuses. I could very seriously try a different hairstyle and makeup style every day for the next year and not repeat. Which is totally cray and I have no intention of doing, but I could if I wanted to. So, maybe two days a week, I'll play around with it.

Since I had nowhere to go yesterday, except Sprouts, I went with a sixties updo and what started out as a cateye, but turned into SmokeyTown, USA instead.

I posted the result of my playtime to Instagram yesterday.(Can't figure out how to get Instagram pics in a post! Help?)

Annnnnnyhow. To the point. My main source of upset is clothes that don't look good and/or that I don't feel good in.

My brilliant idea? Fix my wardrobe up!

1. Pull all my clothes out of their various hiding places.
2. Remove any clothes that no longer fit or I no longer wear.
3. Remove any tops that don't match at least two bottoms.

That's just the beginning, of course, but I feel like I'm on track to getting the clothes situation under control.

Here's part one of the clothing portion of O:CP.

That's everything.

These are the clothes that don't get to stick around, plus a sudoku book for kicks. The top picture is the before and the bottom picture is everything packaged up for the nearest thrift store or church rummage sale.

Some examples of what is being sent away. The world's shortest skirt that I wore to Eric's 80s birthday party, but never will again because my butt hangs out and that's inappropriate. Ex-boyfriend penguin boxers. The nightgown I bought in high school to wear once I got pregnant. (Hi, Roxy!) A prairie skirt?

Activity specific clothes, which are my workout and camping clothes. These are the clothes I should not be seen in unless I am doing physical activity or I am out in the woods. The workout clothes go into what is still referred to as my "gym bag", although I haven't had a gym membership in over a year. I'm not sure where to store the camping clothes. Suggestions?

Clothes for altering, hemming, otherwise fixing.

Organization is exhausting. Roxy will tell you all about it, if you have the time.

There ya go. That was my day off. I also made shutterbean's Curried Chicken with Coconut Rice and even after reading her fair warning, I have stained my cuticles with curry and they, no matter how much I wash my hands, smell of onion and curry. Yums.

Curry cuticles. One more step toward confidence. It's the hot new thing.

Elfin Forest

My manfriend and I, on a recommendation from a coworker, hiked Elfin Forest in Escondido yesterday. I think we agree that it's now our favorite hike in San Diego County. There are so many different paths to take that it could be different every time you go. It's challenging, but not so difficult as to be discouraging. There are plenty of shaded areas mixed in with the sunshine-y bits. There are also some pretty incredible views along the way.

Dylan checks out the land we've conquered at the beginning of the hike. I dig his conquering pose.

I'm sort of adorable. This is my pre-red-face-sweaty-body look.

Overlooking Lake Hodges.

We ended up hiking nearly 5.5 miles in a little over 2 hours.

We kicked up a lot of dust. As evidenced here:

I can't wait to get back and try another path.

Bonus pic from Friday night! We did a quick sunset hike up Cowles Mountain and used the new hats that Mama Barr gave us to help us along the way.

That's me at the peak. Always a lovely view of San Diego up top.

While I couldn't force myself to the gym three times this week as planned, two hikes in two days alleviates the guilt.

Happy Sunday all!

New Years Goals (NOT RESOLUTIONS!)

Not. Resolutions. I don't make them because I don't keep them.

I thought to myself toward the end of December that it would be nice to have monthly goals. I'd like to better myself. Always want to be improving and growing. Wouldn't it be nice to make new mind, body, and spirit goals each month? Of course it would!

January came with the following goals:

Mind: Complete 4 crosswords per week

Body: Complete my gym strength training workout 3 times per week.

Spirit: Learn to keep a plant alive.

Full disclosure: None of these goals is going very well.

Let me tell you something. New York Times crosswords are hard, friend. It's like they're written in some alien language. I should have, as mom suggested, started with the People Magazine crosswords. Those I can handle. You may show me a picture of Bradley Cooper for 1-across & I can fill in his name. I'm talented like that. But " 29-down: They're fed at the side of the road"? Um...pardon? Tigers? Astronauts? Weeds? Your mom? Couldn't that be anything that fits in the boxes? Anything?

I'll keep trying to complete them and perhaps they'll become easier with practice, but this week, I'm just frustrated.

My body goal has not even been attempted. I know what I need to do at the gym & had been doing it until this month. I also know what I can do at home on the days I don't go to the gym. But, this week, my fitness attempts have consisted of a few sets of triceps extensions, a few sets of one-arm dumbbell rows (heavier that I've ever attempted before, btw!), and a walk to the post office. Sad.

The worst part about it is not that I've missed my goal, but that I love working out & feel great afterward, but have been unable to push myself to do it. When I get home, I just need to put my gym clothes on and, if I still can't manage to exercise after that, then fine. I can lie in bed watching Morning Glory and No Strings Attached. I think changing clothes will push me enough, though.Update to follow.

Technically, my last goal is going very well since I haven't killed any plants this week. I'm not sure a plant could die that quickly. Mama Barr graciously gave me an herb garden for Christmas and the idea of having fresh herbs at home thrills me. I think I either water too much or don't water enough. I don't know how one figures out what the correct amount of water for each plant might be. Trial & error has not served me well in life as far as not killing plants is concerned. This goal is important to me, though. I'd like to think that I'll be able to have a functioning garden someday. I hear keeping plants alive is an integral part of a functioning garden.

It appears this has become a "how I failed at the New Year" post.

I've done one thing I'm proud of. Let's talk about that! I bought a journal from amazon.com in which you write one line about each day for the next 5 years. I've written down the highlight of my day every day for five whole days. I know. I'm sort of an inspiration. I know it'll be great to look back on this in 2017 and see what made me happy through the years.

I hope everyone's first week of the new year has been lovely and successful and that the following 51 weeks are as well!

Food as Fuel: Day 1

I had another one of my brilliant ideas last week. Some people say I get on these kicks & then give up on them after three days &, of course, those people are right. Something must be done, though. I haven't been very routine about meals and the past few weeks have been an excruciating cycle of skip breakfast, eat a huge, greasy lunch, feel sick, and eat a pretty healthy dinner. (Points for the semi-healthy dinner, right?)

So, the idea. Well, boredom at work births most of these plans and this time was no different. I spent a good amount of time creating a table in Word to plan out a general daily meal plan, which resulted in the following guidelines:

Morning pick-me-up

Smoothie (spinach, almond milk, frozen blueberries, flax meal, chia seeds)

Breakfast

Oatmeal with dried apricots & peanut butter

or

Egg sandwich on an everything bagel thin

Lunch

Salad with tons of veggies and a protein (I'm working with garbanzo beans and roasted chicken this week)

Afternoon snack

baby carrots with Laughing Cow light swiss
crackers

Dinner

whatever that may be

The idea is to eat every few hours so I don't get too hungry or cranky, both of which usually lead to questionable food decisions.

I'm also hoping that this plan will give me the energy to, you know, actually move around. Maybe squeeze some physical activity in?

For now, I have no idea how many trillions of calories or grams of fat I'll be consuming in these meals nor do I can. This is more a test to determine how I feel when eating regular, smallish meals.

I'm moving my thinking from food as obligation and into food as fuel.

I must not let lingering resentment towards events of the past affect my attitude in the present.

Pavlov

I successfully conditioned myself with a rubber band last week.

Let me tell you, snapping your wrist is an effective way to break a bad habit. For as long as I can remember, I've been a jaw clencher. It's mostly a stress-induced issue. If that weren't bad enough, in recent years, I've developed a jaw-cracking tic. It's bad. It sounds gross, it's painful, and I'm sure it's all levels of bad for me to be doing. Enter the rubber band. Every time I cracked my jaw, I got an immediate wrist snap. The first day, the multitude of welts were so deeply red, they almost looked like cuts. The second day, I had some visible lines, but nothing that would cause anyone to direct me to a suicide counselor. By day three, the habit was kicked.

I'm now going to use this particular brand of torture to beat a bad trait out of me, which may be slightly more difficult than making a bad habit disappear.

I am a bitch. Them's just the facts. Most folks who incur my wrath deserve it. They bring it on themselves and have to deal with the consequences of, well, me being in a bad mood.

There's one exception.

The people I work with get all bitch all the time. And that's not fair. At the risk of sounding like an ingrate, I despise my job. I'm not sure that's accurate...I despise my day at work. I enjoy all aspects of my actual work, but when you throw in the babysitting, editing, and interrupting that I deal with on a half-hourly basis, frustration starts setting in. Frustration leads to anger and anger leads to hopelessness. That's when the bad starts, really. Not when I'm mad, but when I've given up. The Land of No Hope is where I live. The Land of No Hope is where I become Mean Dawn.

Mean For No Reason Dawn.

"Is this paper for us?"

"Uh, yeah! That's why I put it there!"

The people I work with are, on the whole, not very good at their jobs, due to lack of caring, ignorance, or laziness. But that shouldn't mean they have to pay for it by dealing with me. When they do their jobs poorly, and I'm left correcting their mistakes, they're not sending a message to me. This is not an I hate you, Dawn thing. Yet when I talk to people the way I tend to, I'm personally attacking. I'm mad and I think someone should pay.

I need to quit it. No one should have to deal with my attitude. Which brings us back to the rubber band.

Let's see how conditioning goes when we're trying not to break a habit, but to break an split-second response to years of irritation.

Wish me luck.