Freewrite Fifteen

Here I go! I have not had a Freewrite for many, many days. I have been fairly full in my days, but today is a day for personal enrichment! 

I have no spiritual direction appointments. I was possibly going to have one with someone passing through, but it turned out that we had Valentina and Pieter here the whole time, and I thought it was going to be raining so we would have been inside with vacuum cleaners going. As it was, I had a very nice visit with them as they cleaned, and I had a pick me up as she commented on how well I have done at keeping my weight down! That was timely as I had gotten on the scale, and I have still kept my 10% weight off (from the gain during my Tibial Plateau Fracture), but it was at the very edge of that 10%, and I like to be about 5 pounds below that. So it was good to have the encouragement to KEEP IT OFF! 

With that said, I want to give a shout out to the new Weight Watchers. I had never officially done it before. I had gotten a book many years ago, and it was sort of a hassle. Now they have a great app, and you don't have to keep track of every single thing because there is a wide variety of Zero-point foods, and it psychologically does something to you to go for those foods instead of the really high point foods like ice cream and chocolate! I love how easy it is, and I love all the incentives and now they even have exercise videos built into the app! I think I will stick with them for another six months for maintenance. I think their maintenance is pretty cool because, at first, I thought, why didn't they give me more points to play with now that I have reached my goal? It seems like they didn't give me more points until a few weeks after my goal was reached (maybe four, but I am not sure). So maybe they want you to ease into it by giving you more points to play with as you prove you are keeping it off? I will have to read more deeply into all of this. 

I also made a good decision because I had switched from the blue plan to the green plan, and I just was not losing on the green plan. So I went back to the blue. It is fewer points, but they make lean protein options as Zero point foods. Anywho, it has been good. 

OH also, my back has not had tight problems (a precursor to there being a shift in my SI joint). The only thing I have been doing differently for the last 35 days is SQUATS. I do 50 squats a day in the morning, and I hear all these creaks. I think it "uncorks" me for the day. I am not sure. I told Dr. Myers that I want to break my record of 43 days. Actually, my real record was when I was teaching six Pilates classes a week (as opposed to only four). I think I went five months without seeing him then. 

Speaking of Pilates, I am going to make 20 hours of video content for the Faculty Staff Fitness because my boss did not submit the paperwork that said I have furloughed this term. I am looking forward to it, and it will be nice to have the video content for my Body and Soul Companion site. So it will be a win-win. I could not start doing it immediately because I had a melanoma biopsy on my bottom, and I had to wait to do Pilates until I got the stitches out after two weeks. I could not do the three rolling exercises with the stitches in. By the way, the biopsy came back benign.  I am happy about that.

I will start recording videos either today or tomorrow, and I have until December 31st to finish them.

Next week, I am doing a five day Advent Retreat. It is an "at-home" one, and they were not at all clear on their website about how we should go about doing this. So, I had four spiritual direction appointments, and when I called about something else, the lady was taken aback that I would have appointments. So, I called the director to find out if this was the case. I have no problem moving them, I was just seeking more information, and the director was so cold and "pithy." It left a negative impression in my mind of this group that I do not know much about. I have taken risks by joining groups "cold turkey" this quarantine season, and it has turned out great (thinking of the lovely people at Mercy Center, Burlingame, Albany CP group), but it made me wonder if I should do this retreat at all! I am still praying about this because I just did not get a good impression from either of the two ladies I talked to on the phone. I didn't understand why there was such coldness. So, still praying about it. If I do not do it, I will just have an Advent Retreat on my own since I moved all the appointments (except the one with the team I joined and have been waiting for for years - I cannot miss that one - no way). So we will see. 

I am going to IMAGINE today at noon. Then Teala is coming to visit. So it is a great enrichment Wednesday!