Three Months

It’s crazy how fast time has been going by – my last post here was in December 2016?! Perhaps that means my day-to-day was too busy to take time out of my day to write. I’m not one to write in the evenings – that’s “zone out and relax” time for me. 😀

What’s different now? Well, this week is my first week of a three month sabbatical from work! Automattic, the company I work for, has the option to take a three month sabbatical after you’ve been at the company for five years. Since my five year anniversary was at the end of February, I decided to wait until the weather was nicer so I’ll be out May through July.

The most common question I get when people find out about my sabbatical is “any big trips planned?”

I know a lot of my colleagues took some amazing, multi-week trips while on their sabbaticals, but that wasn’t something I wanted to do with my time. Additionally, with Pixel being 18 years old now, it’s more difficult for us to both be away from home for any length of time. Between her twice-daily thyroid medicine and the fact that she gets crazy stressed out when we’re gone for more than a day or two, we’re not going to put her through that just for a trip.

Seriously, how can you not give her everything in the world to make her happy? 😍

But what I really wanted to do is work on projects around the house – stuff that I don’t want to spend nights and weekends doing.

The last time I took any substantial time off do to home improvement projects was back in 2012 when I took three weeks off when we first moved into that particular house to unpack and paint 70% of the rooms in the house. Satisfying stuff.

So what’s on deck for my next three months? A rough list:

  • Major tree and shrub removal
  • Replacing the last two sets of windows on the house
  • Constructing a garden shed
  • Painting: kitchen, master bedroom, Tim’s studio, guest bedroom, and possibly my office
  • Having my mom stay with me for a week
  • Landscaping
  • Electrical work: fixing some issues with switches, installing new lights, new outlets, etc.
  • Designing Tim’s studio space
  • Dialing in my nutrition/exercise plan
  • A few day/overnight trips?

All in all, not a bad list.

Monday we had the tree and shrub removal done. We had a giant cedar tree in the front of the house along with a big spruce on the side of the garage that were long overdue for removal. We also had a birch in the front yard that was encroaching on the roof of our house that they trimmed back. But the biggest project for them was our silver maple in the back yard. They took down two huge branches (one was a foot in diameter) and trimmed back anything that was overhanging the roof. It was wild watching them at work – they use a series of ropes and wear climbing harnesses to scale up in the tree with their saws and chainsaws to take stuff down. Very glad I paid someone else to do it.

After seeing the amazing results (I really should have taken before and after shots) we bought an electric chainsaw (the Ryobi 40v one) mainly to cut up the big branches I had them leave behind for firewood – they had a wood chipper and took care of the smaller stuff. We also have been obliterating the smaller overgrown and half-dead cedar and rhododendron shrubs I hated from around the house. Looks SO much better now. 😀

The shed was on low my list, but after finding a killer deal for one at Costco, that plan got advanced a bit and I’ll probably get that done this month.

My mom coming to visit for a week is because my sister needs a break. Since my dad died almost two years ago, my sister and her husband have been living with my mom out at the family farm. My sister is the one that would have eventually gotten the farmhouse anyway, so being there now gives my mom a bit of security too. But with anything, one needs a break so I’m happy to do that for her. Plus it’ll be fun to have Mom around when I don’t have to work. 🙂

The whole nutrition/exercise thing is more of a “build a habit” goal. I already exercise regularly by going to CrossFit and using the rower we bought around Christmas, but I need to get my cooking game back on point. I love cooking, I just need to get my meal planning back on track. I’m going to meal plan and make sure I have all the stuff I need on hand to make dinner without it being a big production, otherwise I’ll just say “fuck it” and order takeout or pizza. Since I’ll have all the time in the world and can grocery shop and prep ingredients, I can get into that routine then once I go back to work in August, it’ll be muscle memory at that point.

Hopefully.

All in all, I’m going to enjoy the house we work so hard for and enjoy the time off to rest and recharge.

Also, expect me to write more than once every 18 months. 😀

Six Weeks

I realized today that it’s been six weeks (and one day) since my surgery! Back on my last post, which was one week (and one day) post surgery, I was feeling so frustrated in not being able to do much of anything. Now, I’m getting around much better!

In fact, I had my six-week checkup yesterday and my doctor said I’m healing up nicely and that I’m able to resume normal activity again. YESSSSSS!

I know, right?
I know, right?

I’m not immediately going back to CrossFit; I’m going to wait until after the first of the year before I start up that again. My doctor said that it would take probably six months before I’m 100% back to normal again. The idea of doing a burpee makes me cringe. I can’t even sleep on my stomach yet!

Instead, I’m going to start a couch to 5k training plan to get my endurance and strength back which will hopefully put me in a better spot for when I go back go CrossFit. But, I’ll still have to go slow because if I overdo things now, my incision lets me know. Jerk.

That's pretty much how I feel if I overdo it.
That’s pretty much how I feel if I overdo it.

Today is also Thanksgiving Day here in the US. My family is having their big dinner (at my house!) on Saturday, so we drove down to my brother’s house and had dinner with my Mom and one of my sisters instead. The rest of my siblings were at their in-laws, per tradition. That’s primarily why my family never celebrates the holiday on the holiday: the in-laws are insistent it be the day of, and my parents never gave a shit – they just wanted all of us to be together.

This year I’m thankful for family and that I got my own health problem taken care of so now I can focus on getting back in shape. This year taught me a valuable lesson about not taking things for granted and to live more in the moment, not wasting so much time and energy on things that you can’t control. It’s why I got this tattoo earlier this year:

Just a reminder to always breathe. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Madness

Before I even put my turkey in the oven, I went to “celebrate” with my CrossFit family.

Madness, I know. But, I used to do “Turkey Trot 5ks” every Thanksgiving, so why not keep up the fitness tradition?

The hubby begrudgingly went with me and here’s what we did:

Thanksgiving WOD

After running a bunch, doing a buttload of squats and ring rows, and pulling 135 deadlifts, I earned that damn bird today.

Here’s everyone after the “massacre”…

We look insane. Truly.
We look insane. Truly.

Now, there’s less than 30 minutes until all the results of my hours of cooking come to fruition. Dat turkey and stuffing, tho.

Happy Thanksgiving!