August Goals

Today wasn't quite as busy as yesterday because I didn't have much that could be done with my bedroom. Brian (my older brother) is busy working on his own project--building a shed--so he can't help me until he's done with that. He gave me explicit instructions not to get overzealous and start tearing stuff apart.

You have no idea how hard that is for me. Especially as someone with bipolar disorder who is going through a hypomanic phase!

This morning, I cried for a little bit. It's kind of sad lying on my mattress which is on the subfloor of my bedroom, which has a huge hole in the wall and floor just waiting for critters to come in and give me rabies while I'm sleeping. (I blocked it off as best as I could for the cats, but if something wanted to get in here, it's definitely possible.

Anyway, with tomorrow being a new month (and the last full month of summer) I thought I'd list a few goals to work on. Not a "challenge", necessarily, but something to keep my focused during a time where it's very hard to focus (hypomania).

So, here goes:

1) This is no surprise, but I NEED to drink more water. I'm tired of waking up with a mouth so dry I can barely talk. Several years ago, I would drink a whole liter of water before I even got out of bed. I kept it on my bedside table and gulped it down. Then I'd drink three more liters throughout the day. And I always felt great! So I'm going to aim to do that again--starting with drinking a liter as soon as I wake up.

2) Start running again. This is getting really ridiculous--I haven't been running in months! The break only started because of my knee injury, but that hasn't been giving me any problems anymore. In fact, since becoming vegan, my body actually feels pretty damn good.

3) Spend more time outside. Every year, I tell myself that I'm going to take full advantage of summer by sitting outside on the deck. Jerry and I used to do that all the time. We'd each have a glass of wine or a beer in the evenings and enjoy the warm weather. Even though I don't drink anymore, I can still have my Heineken 0.0 or just some tea or something. The whole point is to spend time outside.

4) Work on keeping up the landscaping. We haven't planted anything yet and we aren't going to until next year (I want to keep the whole bed of mulch weed-free and prepped for planting). Every time I walk by, if I see a weed starting to grow, I pull it out. I'm starting to see more and more of them, so I want to make it a point at least every few days to pull out all the weeds I can see.

5) I'm just going to end with this one because this goal going to take up 99% of my time--finish this mess of my bedroom! I have to tear everything out of the master bathroom--including cutting up the shower to get it out (it's one piece and too big to remove)--and remove the flooring. Once everything is removed, I have to cut out the water damaged pieces of subfloor and replace it. Once all that is done, I have to level the floors with a liquid leveler. Then put plywood on top of that. Then install the luxury vinyl planking.

That's just the beginning! That's just getting it back to "livable". Other than all of that, we have to install a new shower (this time in the opposite corner). I'll have to install all new drywall (kill me now--I hate drywalling!!), sand the heck out of it, then prime and paint. I haven't decided on a color scheme, but since we have to remodel all this stuff, we might as well change things up a little. So that part will be fun!

Anyway, nothing super new for August goals, but hopefully writing them down will actually help me do them. Other than fixing the bedroom, I really want to focus on getting back to running. I think I'm going to go back to the good old 3-3-3 plan (run three miles, three days a week, for three months)--without focusing on anything other than those three numbers. No worry of pace, heart rate, etc. I'll probably do a lot of the runs on the treadmill, and that's fine with me. It's been in the 90s here lately and that is just too hot to run outside (for me anyway)!

Well, Jerry just got back with Joey after Joey's very long vacation. So I'm going to go spend some time with them :)