Something for me

I had the best time this evening and I can't wait to share it with you, my dear readers...  I had a dear friend and her husband offer to take me out to dinner to celebrate both my birthday last week as well as me paying off the last of my divorce debt.  They let me pick the restaurant (they had suggested two places because they wanted me to have a memorable/special experience) and they made reservations for us to sit by the window so we could see the ocean.  We started out with drinks (we WERE celebrating after all) and I ordered one called the Creamsicle and that's exactly what it tasted like!  They brought us a plate of complementary calamari (which I couldn't eat due to food allergies but she said it tasted delicious) while we perused the menus.  Because it was a seafood restaurant there was quite a bit on the menu that I had to cross off my list automatically but the item that caught my attention right away was the gnocchi.  I took the advice of the waitress and had did half and half on the sauce -- half marinara and half Gorgonzola cream sauce.  I know that I consumed too many calories (and I had some sort of pineapple deliciousness for dessert) but I honestly didn't care.  I had a great time with them and there was great conversation so I was okay with the calorie consumption.  It was fun to do something for me.

Yesterday I started to do something that I never thought I was going to do -- I started to do yoga.  I did the full (major) workout yesterday and then could barely move to get out of bed this morning so I thought it would be good to do the yoga stretch workout at least so I could function.  I've been doing a different workout routine but found that I had been building solid muscle rather than lean muscles.  I did a belly dance workshop when I was home this summer where we did a yoga warm up and cool down and I remember the muscle groups that were sore so figured it might be a place to start.  So I bought a yoga DVD and a yoga mat and have decided to give it a try.  We'll see if I can keep it up or not and if I get the result that I'm hoping for...

Other than the yoga, I did something else yesterday that I'm pretty proud of myself for.  I decided to go to a store to look at some clothes and didn't have anything in particular in mind that I was looking for.  I ended up finding a jacket that I really liked but when I tried it on, the size I thought I needed pinched at the arms and didn't fully zip over my chest.  There are many times that if I have to go up a size, I don't buy the item of clothing because I focus on that size number.  Yesterday, I liked the jacket, I liked how it looked, I liked how it made me feel so I bought the jacket and didn't mind the size.  I'm hoping to remember that the next time I go clothes shopping.

Today, other than my morning yoga stretch and then having too many calories for dinner, I had a pretty productive day!  After my yoga stretch, I did about a 30 minute ab workout (ouch) and then got busy.  I took the trash out, did a sink full of dishes, did some laundry, put a bunch of clothes away and then I took a cat nap on the couch.  While I was putting clothes away, I was multitasking by talking to my parents on the phone at the same time.  =)  I feel pretty accomplished after all of that.  Tomorrow I get to have the day off of work so I'm hoping to take some "me" time after what I got done today.

Over the last several weeks, I have been working so many hours that I haven't had the opportunity for too much "me" time.  This is something that I know I need to make more of a priority.  I know that I've said that before but I'm going to work on it again.  I'm not sure yet exactly how I'm going to do that or what that's going to look like but it's something I'm going to give some thought to.

On that note, my dear readers, I'm going to bring this to a close.  I hope you all have a fabulous week and that you can do at least one thing for YOU this week.  I look forward to see what I'm going to do for myself...