A Productive Monday evening

It's quite rare when even after going back to work on Monday that I feel like hitting the gym and then coming directly home and starting laundry. But that's what I did. And I also cooked a nice healthy meal, steamed spinach and two turkey burger patties, no buns, and cooked on my George Foreman grill, so the fat is wicked away. And for my evening snack I had strawberries and cottage cheese. I'm slowly trying to integrate cottage cheese into my diet. I don't really like it, but I find I can tolerate it with fresh fruit because it cuts the sour/salty-ness of the cottage cheese. I do not know how some people eat it plain. Just gross.

After laundry I sat and started reading the first few chapters of "The Help" novel. Quite by coincidence, I got to work today and my co-worker Nichole actually had brought the book in for someone else, but that person got another copy from somewhere so she lent me the book. That now makes three books I am reading. I still have yet to finish the Artist's Way follow up, I am almost done Mini Shopaholic and now I've started The Help. But I must say, I am glad to be reading again. I haven't read this much in years. It's good.

This whole process, this undertaking, this "challenge" (which the further along in time I get the less it feels like a challenge and the more it feels like life-changing decision) has been one of the best, most important things I have ever done for myself. The longer I go, the stronger I feel. And not physically, though I know that is definitely happening because I can see my body starting to pick up from the revised workouts, but more mentally stronger. My brain is coming back. I feel more like myself than I remember feeling. It's like the me of high school only smarter and older and wiser. And more muscled. I like to think that maybe, just maybe, the me of now is someone the me of high school just may have wanted to emulate. I don't like to coulda/woulda/shoulda but if there had been a way to convey to myself what it would have taken for me to get ahead in life and make something of myself sooner rather than later, I would have loved to have had that conveyed.

But the important thing is that it's not too late. I still plenty of life ahead of me (Lord willing) and I don't intend to waste any more of it.

The air is absolutely heavenly wafting in the windows. Perfect sleeping weather. The summer is definitely starting to come to a close. Besides the temperatures (and I'm fully hoping for a heat snap again - one last time before jacket weather starts in a few weeks) I noticed it getting dark around 8pm tonight. That's probably the saddest part of it all. I do enjoy those evenings when it's light out until 9...