Frost on the ground

Woke up this morning to frost on the ground. Winter is coming. So is my internship. Yes, yes. Today is the day. I am ready. It's time to move on to the next phase of my life.

I woke up in plenty of time to do a yoga video or run a few miles on the treadmill but decided that I'd rather drink coffee and bum around in my pajamas. There will be plenty of time for that typical working woman kind of morning. A whole year at least. Today I'll take a moon day.

My weight was not too heavy this morning, which is a nice start and I think I will interpret as a good sign of things to come. Sadly, it always makes me happier to weigh lighter, even as the weight I accept as okay (like this morning) is higher than what I would have been happier with 1-2 years ago. Diet, laziness or age? Probably all of the above.

What are my goals for internship? I suppose my main goal is to finish in time to graduate. Second internship-related goal I have would be learning lots and lots, including hopefully Motivational Interviewing and having a chance to implement some of my yoga therapy ideas with this non-eating disordered population.

Another goal--equally important to me-- is to get back towards the kind of physical shape I would like to be in. Part of the reason I let my fitness slip recently has been the mental effort I was putting into completing my dissertation. Now I want to get into a rhythm with work and get serious again about my working out. I'm not sure what that is going to look like right now but I think it can happen. It was not the time that the dissertation took, but rather that I only had energy in my brain for one main goal. Doing a good job at internship is not so big that it will crowd out anything else. The biggest challenge will be balancing all I want to do: run, lift weights and yoga, basically, as well as balance the fact that I'm not going to look like I did when I was training for a bodybuilding/figure competition. We'll see how it works out.

I also need time to do lots and lots (and lots) of homework with my younger daughter whom, I was informed at her parent-teacher conference yesterday, is being put on an ILP, or individualized literacy program. We have George W. Bush and his no child left behind program to thank for this. The literacy teacher informed me that 10 years ago my girl would have "fallen through the cracks" but that thanks to W. she can get the help she needs. And together we can do 40 minutes of homework a day, not counting what she gets from her regular 2nd grade class-- which, fortunately, takes about 10 minutes. When I mentioned to the literacy teacher how long the homework took, kind of questioning whether a 7 year old really needed that much work, she suggested I begin timing it and reward her for bringing it down to 39 minutes.

Sigh. Maybe with my whopping $12,000 internship salary I can pay the babysitter, a cleaning lady, my school tuition AND a tutor.

Enough complaining. Time to get psyched. Maybe I'll run around the house throwing air punches, Rocky-style.