The week before, my gynecologist ordered cholesterol and other similar blood tests for me as I’d never had them done before, and while everything else was within normal ranges, my triglycerides were slightly elevated at 185.   All I’d had to drink that morning – because I did not know I was going to even have a blood test done and so I did not do any fasting – was about 3-4 oz of Diet Dr. Pepper.  Normally I also have coffee, along with some type of cereal and 2% milk, but that is usually once I’m en route to work for my 45-60 minute commute (I take the cereal dry in a baggie, stuff like cheerios so is easy to eat in the car), so those I had not eaten yet.  She did not order a retest so I have no idea if that slight elevation was “normal” for me after a fast, or if it was due to the diet soda.  Either way, I read up on things afterward and decided that day that I was going to stop drinking diet sodas or anything sweetened with those artificial sweeteners – after I finished my last crystal light, and last soda that I already had open and was drinking, of course.

This is not to say I am giving up caffeine, also, oh no. I still have a morning coffee, and instead of soda now I am drinking iced tea, using Truvia as the sweetener.  But, I have not had one drop of soda since last Thursday, nor any crystal light.  Instead, I’ve been trying VitaminWater by Glaceau (both the “zero” and the regular stuff, the “zero” is supposed to have the same stuff that is in Truvia), and sometimes, Gatorade.  I’m not reverting to regular sodas because they contain high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which I’m also trying to cut out of our diets.  That is turning out to be much more difficult than avoiding splenda or aspartame.  They sneak that stuff into pre-packaged frozen foods that are supposed to be “diet” foods, did you know that?  For shame.  I’d much rather see straight sugar, or cane sugar in foods, than HFCS.  At least with the former types of sweeteners, it takes longer for the body to break them down than HFCS (or so I’ve read).

The hardest part so far is trying to explain to my four year old that we’re not buying such-and-such cereal anymore because it’s “bad” for us (she prefers Lucky Charms and it’s various brand equivalents).  She seems to like an alternate cereal I bought for her (an organic brand) that has a minimal amount of ingredients in it, but not enough to forget about those marshmallow cereals. Not yet, anyway, but I’ll keep trying.  I’m just glad that her preschool sticks to the relatively low-sugar stuff for breakfast like cheerios and chex and the like.  Then again, they probably don’t want a bunch of toddlers hopped up on sugar for the morning, either. LOL

So that’s our goals so far – cutting out HCFS as much as we can, and, at least for me, dropping diet sodas and crystal light. For hubby that last part is probably going to be a bit more challenging, I think.

I will be glad when this is over, I’ve had ideas brewing in my head for things to work on, and I signed up for a membership at beadsandbeading.com so that I can learn a few techniques with polymer clay that I don’t know how to do yet, and I’d really like to get started on some of that!  But this project has left me little time in the evenings after work to do much of anything but get dinner, relax a little while eating, then get my daughter ready for and into bed, and then start working on some tasks for the project at work, and finally go to bed myself.

The exception was yesterday, since I had completed some extra tasks on Friday (2/3rd of my set number for Saturday), I decided to leave the last 1/3rd for Sunday and take Saturday for myself.  Well, it was also because my daughter was invited to a birthday party across town, and I knew when I got back from that, since she would be staying overnight at her grandmother’s house, that I sure wasn’t going to want to do any work-work… So I went out to dinner with my husband and we hung out for the evening.  I couldn’t muster the motivation to start any jewelry or polymer clay work that evening, knowing I wouldn’t be able to pick it up again who knows when.  So when my husband started playing a first-person shooter video game (I can’t handle watching those, they make me nauseous), I went back to my office/craft room and started reading some of the older posts at Beadsandbeading.com, and noting which back issues I may want to order at some point.  And I also did a blog post here for a Crazy Train rider.

So anyway, if we keep up this speed on how we’re getting through our task list, I am hoping that maybe by this weekend, or early next week, we won’t have to worry about doing any extra work from home and can actually get our own lives back to do with as we choose.  That will be nice indeed.

I dusted my PC monitor, my iMac and my desk (the dust bunnies tried to run, but I caught them in my hand vacuum). I still need to work on moving other stuff around, though, to get it to where I can utilize my side desk for working on my clay or jewelry.  I’m going to try my best to keep the space on my desk in front of my PC monitor (it sits on a raised part of the desk), clear so if I get a bug to work on some jewelry while my side desk is cluttered with clay and tools, I can do that.  Plus, that is also where I put my docking station for my work laptop, so with that in mind that will help (I hope!) me to keep that space clear of clutter.

One thing I have discovered with this move of my iMac, however, is now that the keyboard is up on the desk (instead of on the keyboard tray), I’m probably going to need a wrist rest for my palms.  I never did figure out how to keep my hands elevated for long periods of time while I type, so I usually end up typing with my palms touching the desk and, in time that just starts to hurt.  Or I could just learn how to type with my hands elevated instead of being lazy and letting them always rest on the desk! That would be the cheap and quick way to solve that situation I suppose.

Anyway, as I sit and write this, I am periodically looking around my workspace and wondering where to start next with this reorganization.  I’m to the point where stuff is kind of here and there and everywhere and not in it’s permanent home, but I don’t quite know where to start to continue to get things completely in order.  I hate that.

However it seems I need to do something soon, all this chaos in my room is leading to my cats becoming overly curious and poking their noses where they need not be.  I fear one of them may cause an avalanche of precariously stacked boxes if they get too inquisitive and actually try to start climbing things.

Since I have no desire to do any of that extra work the day job is once again forcing upon us, this evening, I think once I’m done here with this post I’ll turn my chair around and take stock of the mess that is left and just start getting it done.  My aim is to have it done by this weekend.

In all I had almost 50 orders to take care of, the ones that took the longest spanned yesterday and today and there were less than ten of those, but due to the nature of them, it just takes longer to do them than the others I had. No, I did not spend ALL day yesterday and today working on them, I’d take breaks now and then to hang out with my husband and daughter, and eat and such.   That is probably why it took longer over the span of the weekend than it would have if I’d sat and worked straight through it, but I was trying to have some semblance of a weekend intermingled with the forceful work I had to do before Monday.

But now I’m done, as of about 15 minutes ago, and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted. I really hope our boss doesn’t put us into that sort of situation again, it royally sucks being salaried and working with no extra compensation. Oh, I guess they’re going to buy us lunch or something. Whoop-dee-do. That’s just SO worth the loss of about three evenings and what probably equates to one full weekend day.  Pfeh.

Now, I’m going to try to work up the motivation to pick up where I left off with my office re-organization. Becaues, you know, I’d really, really like to get back to working with my clay and making stuff so I can finally make use of my Artfire studio!!