ILS is Live

We're up and running. 90% of my day or more was answering questions and trying to make everyone feel comfortable with the change-up.

New computer systems are exciting, awesome, and extraordinarily exhausting.

I could sleep for a week.

Have totally fallen off the exercise wagon...plan to make up for it and start from scratch this weekend.

Ouch Ouch Ouch (aka Jog and Blog)

So. Much. Pain. But it's manageable in small doses.

As per my previous blogs, I've been trying to exercise but keep whining that I have no time. I found this on MSN that was labelled under the slightly misleading pre-heading of "get fit in 10 minutes." Yeah, but it's 10 minutes in bursts throughout the day. Not, as I was pathetically hoping, just one 10 minute session in the morning. Still, it seemed like something that I could handle. I mean, I could, theoretically, do 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at lunch, 10 minutes before supper, and 10 minutes in the evening. It's at least do-able. Plus, it's only 20 10-minute bursts per week, so really, that's less than three times a day. I was psyched. I have time for this!

Then, I tried it.

Holy crap - I am so out of shape.

I chose the "tone your body" routine and it hurts.

I managed the toning walk - I've done two so far. The stairs are evil and I am somewhat sweaty when I finish, but the sweatiness is encouraging because it means I am getting a workout.

The squats and lunges - I've done this routine once so far. Holy pain!!! I had no oxygen and my legs began to shake. After only 10 minutes. Pirate Boy suggested I lay down. I felt much, much better after water and some slow walking.

Next, I tried the belly-toning exercises. After baby, I can't even do them. Okay, I can do some of them, but the sit ups are not working. I'm going to try hooking my legs under the couch next time because I literally can't do this. It makes me sad because I could do it pre-baby. Bleah.

I am going to try and stick with it, though, because 10 minutes a day is really something that I should be able to tackle.

Updates on whether I give up and eat a billion chips will follow.

Fight or Flight?

I have been stressed beyond capacity for the last two months. Putting a new computer system in a library is not easy. I'm not really complaining in that regard - there are other people working on this changeover that have way more stress than I do. Nevertheless, it's added a lot of hassle to my life. It is one of the single most stressful things that a library can go through. Awesome. My job has basically involved training and ensuring that all my staff members are prepared for the change. Thankfully, I have a pretty cool staff and no one has suggested all out rebellion. In addition to the computer stuff, I've had a few other things going on at work. The day-to-day grind like preparing for payroll and board meetings. Also, as a public librarian in Alberta, the monumental task of preparing a couple of grant applications, one of them extremely intensive that requires surveying our library population for two weeks. Bleah. Oh, and in the last couple weeks of February, I was also asked to teach a course on a certain topic. And they wanted the proposal in two days. No pressure.

Of course, having all of this stuff to do at work does not let me off the hook at home. Collapsing when I walk in the door is not really an option. I have two kids to take care of, a household to keep in semi-working order (dishes, laundry, garbage, and Pirate Boy's homework/school requests are must-do's), and our taxes to prepare. Also, Ninjababy has been pretty sick. She is, we're fairly sure at this point, lactose intolerant. As soon as we cut milk out of her diet (which was not fun, but not as bad as I'd feared), she got better. Apparently, I was also sick for all of January, so when I took Ninjababy to the doctor, he also made me go on antibiotics.

It's been fairly insane and I have really not been posting until now. The interesting part of this was my reaction to the stress. Mentally, I run away from it all. It's something I've really always done.

The last two months, I have spent my very little free time:

• Thinking wistfully about vacations. Planning trips that I can't take. Missing London terribly. I even signed up for a conference session on library exchange programs.
  
• Looking at house plans. Our house is too small for all of our things and it has made keeping the house organized that much more difficult. My kingdom for a playroom where I can shove all the kids' stuff and not look at it anymore.
  
• Considering cutting all my hair off. I seem to think that if I look different, I might be different, and maybe the new, different me could handle all of this better.
  
• Buying lottery tickets, figuring if I win then I can literally just walk away from the stress.
  

I've not actually run away, but I am definitely a "flight" person mentally. Thankfully, the worst of it is over.

I'm curious, does anyone else react to stress this way? What do you guys do?