Merry Christmas and a job offer

Merry Christmas!

The older my kids get the more I lose the holiday magic. Maybe one day it will come visit me again. 

 The good news is this is the first year I wasn't doing the "just one more thing" dance that I am guilty of. As in I need to buy one more thing to make everything perfect. 

I actually spent the first few days of my break documenting all of our debt. I bought a worksheet for $5.60 on Etsy that I had seen elsewhere for $27. The exact same worksheet from the same author. I plugged everything in as it does a debt snowball or avalanche. I was happy with it until I realized that I didn't have any freedom to tweak my numbers how I wanted. For instance, I could add an extra payment but it HAD to go on the lowest balance card. What if I wanted to add it to the highest one? I ended up finding a Youtube video that walked me through setting up my own Debt Snowball worksheet.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiZ0t2eUqoo  Here is the link in case you would like to check it out. It uses Excel and I was able to follow it as he goes over it step by step and shows you on screen as well.  I like this one better because I have more freedom.

One thing that I realized I did "hand in hand" when I was successful losing weight was debt reduction. It is so much easier to reduce your food spending/intake when you know what is going on money wise to the penny in my humble opinion. It is easier to be stricter on both when you stop hiding your head in the sand. I have been eating decently the past week at least till Christmas Eve. And to be honest I didn't go crazy on either Eve or Day. I ate what I wanted but I didn't overeat. I decided to weigh in today and I am actually down .4 from last Sunday!  I may keep this weight for the week or use Sunday's number if it is lower. Hah! Yes, I will "cheat" in that aspect if it makes my brain feel better. I have just been calorie counting with about 90% accuracy. I am not stressing myself out because if I do I will fizzle out quickly. 

I may be on break for these 15 days but that means I lose an entire two weeks plus two days of income since I am hourly. I am scrambling as I do every Dec/Jan to circle the wagons and make sure everything is paid. August and Jan are always our tightest months due to the lack of paychecks for me. We also lost a week of my pay in November due to Thanksgiving break. 

Of course, every end of year/ new year I start keeping track of things and thinking that *this* will be the year I get my stuff together.  Never happens but I am still going to keep trying! I remember being in a dark place last break and realizing that I just didn't care about anything. I don't even think I did my yearly "this is my new idea I am going to succeed with" last year. Ok I just looked at last year's Dec. post and I see I did tell you all how I was feeling. Goodbye 2024   

I do have some great news to share. My degree finally conferred and I received this. 

Technically I already sent my transcripts but the college dropped the ball. I had them marked "hold for degree" and they sent them on Thursday Dec 18 but they were UNDATED.  The college closed for the break starting that same day so there is nothing I can do until Jan 2nd. Someone downtown was able to speak to a contact at the college though that is supposed to be following up for me as well on Jan 2nd. 

The principal forwarded me the official recommendation of hire email and the one above. It had gone to my personal email so I had not seen it yet. I may have squealed out loud and the kids asked me what was going on and I told them I had gotten a positive email about something. We were in a middle "study" period so no one was testing at the time. 

It's been 17 days

 And I still am a hot mess. Still in the 250's  -253 this morning to be exact. Have I really done anything to counteract this?  Nope. I have drunk more water in these 17 days then I have in a long time but it doesn't help unless you change other things too. I did make more of an effort on Friday but then by the afternoon the desk candy came out to play. 

I spent Friday night and Saturday reading. I did pop a turkey in the oven on Saturday afternoon though that turned out perfect! It was a 22 lb one so I have a lot of meat leftover which is what I wanted. Not totally sure what to do with all the dark meat though as that is not favored in our house. I do intend to make a turkey stock with the bones and I should probably start that now so it has all day to simmer. I did spend the morning giving the kitchen some love. There are still knives and utensils in the sink but everything else is washed. I actually woke up and popped out of bed to go do so. I intended on making breakfast afterwards but who wants to clean the kitchen again. I brewed some Nespresso and threw in a protein shake for now. It will get something in my belly. 

I suspect I have ADHD but don't know how to get diagnosed. I feel like if I go to my DR and say I believe I have this- please give me drugs that they are going to call me a pill seeker. HA!

Last night I got the bright idea to search dieting for ADHD on Tiktok. I found a few people suggesting a way to meal plan and I realized I kind of have been doing this for a hot minute. They recommended having easy meals, medium meals, and hard meals. Meaning how much effort you need to put in to cook them. I actually do this and lately I have been doing allll the easy meals. My cheap rice cooker crapped out a few months ago and I got a nicer one that steams. Love just throwing cooked meat (raw for scallops) in with rice and seasoning and letting that bad boy cook. I have done scallops, cooked ground beef, smoked sausage. Kind of like a set it and forget it. I do actually have an Instapot but that takes forever to come up to temp and then I feel like everything is overcooked when it comes to rice. 

I also read that high protein and low carb is recommended for people with ADHD as you are always looking for that dopamine hit. I even saw one that explained exercise routines pretty well too. That if you do the same thing over and over it will lose its appeal and you need to change it up to keep that dopamine flowing. I KNOW I do better on high protein, low carb just from past experience. 

I have nothing new to report. I have some dress pants coming in the mail today that I hope fit. My mentor teacher is very old school and had a chat with me on Thursday saying that I need to dress professional not in t-shirts everyday. I typically would wear joggers and a school t-shirt for school. She brought up the official dress code and said not to look at what other people wear (Umm including my husband  o.O) that I need to follow it for myself. That no one has said anything but that now that I am closer to being hired (meaning degree awarded) they will be doing more observations and that will be something they note. I was a little annoyed at first but I know she is old school and has my best interest at heart. 

Ok bone boiling is started and food is in my belly. Real food- I just ate 3 scrambled eggs with cheese in a carb smart tortilla. I even TRACKED it. How long will that last? No idea.  Maybe one day with me. I had gotten a new scale with black Friday deals so I broke that out to track. Now I know how many grams those little butter packs that I have are. The kind that Panera have with the little white cup and peel off foil lid- They are 6 grams completely full- which is 43 calories. I tried to weigh the pack empty and it didn't trigger the scale so I just counted the 6 grams. I did the reverse weigh on the cheese and just put as much as I wanted. It wasn't even a full serving so that was nice to know I didn't overdo it. 

One more week of school then about three weeks off! Two days of normal schedule for review then 3 days of testing two block periods a day with crap periods in the middle. I am so over pretending to be a teacher and I really need this break. It isn't fun anymore and the kids are taking over.  I need the break to reset and come back as a hard ass. Phones are creeping out more and I just don't have the energy to fight the battle with Christmas break so close.