Hello my CT friends! I have missed you all so much. Though I’ve been lurking occasionally, I haven’t had the time or energy to do much posting over the past four or five months. Beware – a lengthy explanation of my absence and a whine/rant/primal scream about the current state of my healthy lifestyle follows.

You see, when I left my job last fall, my worst fears were realized: Everyone assumed I was suddenly available for all kinds of volunteer work, and I foolishly accepted the requests. The biggest and most time consuming has been fundraising for the PTA. It is fun and extremely gratifying. I’m truly amazed and touched at how generous people have been even in these difficult economic times. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a lot of frustrating, stressful, hard work!

In the past two months, I’ve run two auctions – one online and one at a live event yesterday. So my first step was to solicit donations from vendors; that is, I went begging. I had a wonderful and energetic committee helping me, but that kind of activity isn’t even in the same zip code as my comfort zone. I couldn't help taking it personally when I got turned down. Keeping everything organized and on schedule required every ounce of project management skill I acquired during my long career. A lot of late nights, a lot of missteps, and a lot of stress eating later, it’s almost over. There’s a classroom at school full of sold auction items waiting to be picked up and a few unsold ones awaiting their fate. If my estimates are reasonably accurate, we should be pretty close to our fundraising goal, which means the PTA has enough money to continue offering music, PE, art and other programs the state no longer funds. In any case, it will all be over by the end of this week. Until next year. But let’s not go there now.

For the most part, DH and DS were very patient and understanding through this ordeal. Unfortunately, DH was dealing with a lot of business stress at the same time I was going nuts with all this fundraising activity. That meant he was unavailable to help provide some of the critical support I needed, like getting DS to or from his activities. We struggled a great deal with balancing our marriage, our parenting, and our other responsibilities, but I think we’re getting the hang of it.

Did I mention that DS’s birthday fell the week before the live auction? That DH went to a weekend-long bachelor party in the middle of May? That the Little League administration changed the playoff schedule so that the first game fell on the day of the live auction? That the school carnival includes a cake decorating contest? Did I tell you about the hassle of refinancing our mortgage? Or about suddenly needing to take down a tree in the backyard?

I include all that information to help explain why my summer shorts and lightweight pants now create a mushroom cloud of flesh around the waistband. Stress eating was off the charts and workouts have been a low priority. I did manage to exercise fairly regularly, but time was precious and I was more likely to do 20 or 30 minutes instead of an hour. It is almost scary how quickly I lapsed back into a Diet Coke habit, rationalizing that it was better than eating something sweet when I had a craving. But it didn’t help me keep my weight down. I guess it could have been a lot worse – I’m up about five or six pounds – but I know how hard they’re going to be to lose. Perhaps it’s a sign from God that tomorrow is Monday, June 1, truly a remarkable opportunity for the original Miss Start-Over-Monday to get back on board for the summer. I read Brie’s post about summer planning, and in between work on auction pick up worksheets and calls to high bidders, I’m making my get-healthy-again plans today.

Thanks for listening. I’m back now and I promise to return the favor!

PS – Remember how Obama promised his daughters a puppy when the campaign was over? So does DS. Life is always interesting.

Hi! I was just thinking about you!

Welcome back!

Welcome back Susan. Sounds REALLY stressful. I hope you and DS have a much more relaxing summer and I bet you can get things back on track and those few pounds will be gone soon. Good job helping out the school!

Peg

Glad you are back. 5-6 pounds is an amount you can tackle in the next month or so--- it's not like being 20 or 30 pounds behind the eight ball. Hang in!

Welcome back Susan! So glad to see you posting again!

So good to see you back, Susan, and sorry to hear that it has been a stress-filled time for you. I hope that now that the bulk of your volunteer activities are done for the time being, you'll be able to get some relaxation and "me" time in.