What can I say...it's been waaaaay too long since I have added anything to this blog. I have no excuses...only a bit of background information. Since 2005, my life has been a train wreck, a dumpster fire, and a goat rodeo all rolled into one. It started with an almost life-ending automobile accident and proceeded through my husband's cancer diagnosis and eventual death at 56 yrs. old, my son-in-law's unexpected death at 31 yrs. old, my cousin/sister's death at 56 yrs. old, my mother's death and two aunts deaths in the same year (Mother was 102 and the aunts were each 100), and my retirement...all during a 5 year span! To say the least, I had to do a lot of adjusting, coping, grieving, reinventing, suffering...well, just insert your own emotion here. I think I have been through just about all of them. I have tried to keep myself busy over the past 15 years in an attempt to adjust to everything that had changed in my life. Fast forward to the last 9 months. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting quarantine threw me into an isolation that I did not handle well. I had no place to hide, nothing to take my mind off my life, and too much time to think and be alone. So, being the headstrong...well, downright stubborn...person that I am, I finally got tired of my pity party and made up my mind to do something about it. I started a diet and was determined to lose the weight that had piled on during those 15 years. Luckily, my daughter was doing the same thing so we partnered for support. It has gone very well since August, 2020. I have lost 20 pounds and am roughly halfway to my goal. HOORAY!!
With all of that time on my hands, I began to get very serious about my genealogy. I have always been interested in family and grew up with a very strong oral tradition of stories from my relatives. History and a good mystery really interest me, so genealogy was a natural. Fortunately, my public library has Ancestry online, so I began to fill in some gaps. I have a strong Scottish/Irish heritage and expanded my research several centuries back. At the same time, I began reading and watching the "Outlander" series. I watched first and then began to devour the books. I was propelled by several similarities between my own family heritage and Jamie Fraser's. Let's face it, who wouldn't want to be related to that fabulous Scot! Having read all 8 of the published books (and waiting not too patiently for the 9th book) and watched the TV series at least twice, I decided to take my research to the next level. I have booked a trip to Scotland for me and my daughter. We will spend 9 days in Scotland in June, traveling through Edinburgh, Pitlochry, Inverness and the Isle of Skye. We will be visiting many of the areas from the Outlander books and I am totally pumped!
Never settling for so-so, I decided that as part of my plan to lose weight and get in shape, I would find a fitness plan to push me. I'm not one for the gym...the hours are never quite suited to my schedule and it's just not my thing. I was looking online for something when these 2 Scottish fitness experts popped up on my Facebook page one day. I guess the algorithm kicked in to my searches for travel in Scotland and my Outlander fetish. These guys are great. They are called the Kilted Coaches and they do all of their workouts wearing kilts! I don't know about you, but I love a man in a kilt...think Sean Connery! Anyway, they have an online fitness program, complete with exercises, food, and support. So I signed up! Yesterday was my first day and I began to think that I had made a mistake. My 70 year-old body had written a check that it couldn't cash! The exercises were a bit intense to say the least. Combined with the fact that I have had several injuries (broken collar bone, broken ankle and broken elbow which still has pins and plates) and I haven't exercised in years, I realized that I would have to start slower. So this morning, I got on my stationery bike and peddled for 30 minutes. I doubled my heart rate and stayed in the fat burning zone for 28 of the 30 minutes. I hope my legs will get me to the shower!
Another thing that I realized through all of this was that over the last 15 years I had been in limbo. My life before all of these events had been fairly well ordered. I had work, church, wife/mother/daughter duties and those kept my life running along by a schedule. All of a sudden, my husband was gone, my children were married and off on their own, my mother was gone and my working life changed dramatically. I was just floating along like a boat without a rudder. I had no exact time schedule and no one depending on me. Bottom line...I got lazy. The Kilted Coaches talked about setting goals in their introductory session. So my goal is two-fold...lose weight/get in shape and get back to a routine schedule. No more eating supper at 9:00, no more staying up until 2:00am, no more laying in bed until I won't tell you what time! Nope! I have scheduled a bedtime (11:00-11:30pm), I plan to wake up every morning no later than 7:00am, exercise for 30 minutes, journal for a few minutes, shower and get ready to conquer the world...or at least the patrons at the public library! We'll see how it goes. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted. An just for accountability, here's my goal...
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