You know what’s incredibly adorable? A three-year-old helping out in the garden. I have the kind of plants around my house that require you to pull away the dead stuff each Spring, and the second I put my gardening gloves on the little missy demanded that she have a pair too. Fifteen minutes and one trip to Canadian Tire later and I had this helping me out with my landscaping:
That is how you make gardening fun right there. Best little cedar-chip spreader I ever met. Also, gardening…hard freakin’ work. Really brings home how terribly out of shape I am. And speaking of being out of shape…
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
I’m proud to say that I’ve managed to keep on track since my post last week. I am now in the middle of week 2 of my exercise plan, which involves three days a week of the Zombies! Run! app, three days a week of a strength-training program, and one rest/stretch day. For myself, the trick to exercise has always been keeping my brain amused. I used to read magazines while walking on the treadmill. That worked once, but at the moment I’m at a point where just walking isn’t going to do me any good. That’s why the Zombies! Run! app is great, because it’s like living a little story while learning how to run. I’m doing the 5k training version of the app, and it starts out really slow, which is good for me because I’m so out of shape that 20 seconds of running has me panting like a heat-stressed dog.
For the strength-training I’ve been following the program in a book I’ve had for a while called Buff Brides. My husband laughed at me when he saw me looking at it and pointed out that I haven’t been a bride for a while. I punched him and told him that I was pretty sure my body didn’t care whether it was going to be ultimately wearing a wedding dress or not. I chose that program because I did it before (guess when?) and it’s strenuous enough for me to get something out of it while being low-key enough for me to not want to throw up while doing it (an important factor for me). Mind you strength training is incredibly boring to me, which is why I’ve been watching TV shows while doing it. Win-win.
Anyway, long story short, I’ve been getting all my exercise in this week. The eating aspect of trying to lose weight and get healthier is a little bit more difficult and I can’t honestly say that I’m doing well there. Baby steps, right? Right.
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.
I’m seriously considering removing this from the list simply because it’s hard to write about every week. 😛
Everything is pretty much the same as it has been during previous weeks. The big thing that I did this week was to participate in Jay Dee’s What Will You Write? challenge…which I won. ^_^ It was fun, and I’m expecting it to get big as time goes on, so I’ll keep participating.
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
I can’t really report anything this week because there was no physical accomplishments. In my defense, it’s been a really busy week. That said, I’ve got it mentally worked out how I’m going to proceed with the next few chapters (which will have some minor revisions), so I’m all prepared. The next two days are going to be a bit of a write-off because I’ve got company coming today and a 3-hour drive on my hands tomorrow, but I am confident that this weekend I will get a chance to sit down and really get some work done.
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
It was a good week. Even though a few of the things that I wrote are things that I don’t think are ever going to be published in any manner, I did wind up with a total of 9172 words this week, which is nothing to sneeze at. I’ve been trying to get as much out as I can before I return to work because I don’t know what my output is going to be like once that happens. I’m also trying to schedule lots of blog posts in advance, which really helps with the word count. But, that said, I’m starting to run out of ideas, so if anyone wants to make any suggestions I’d be happy to hear them. lol
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