Happy Administrative Assistant's Day

As a church secretary, there are days when I love my job, and days when it makes me want to scream. What better day than "Administrative Assistant's Day" (formerly known as Secretary's Day) to publish a few helpful hints on how to make your life a little bit easier for your church secretary.

1. Give me time to worship on Sundays - so please don't show up at my office door just before the service, expecting me to make a pile of copies for you. Allow me to have some quiet time before the service to quiet myself and get ready for the service.

2. If you have an announcement or item to add to the church calendar, please write it down for me. If you just mention it in passing, I'm likely to forget it or mix up the details by the time I get to my desk. You may say, "Oh, it's just one date...", but I may have three other people stop me with similar requests before I get to my office.

3. Don't grill me for confidential information.

4. Don't use me as a go-between if you feel wronged by somebody. The Biblical thing for you to do is to go to the person who has offended you, and work it out with them (Matthew 18).

5. Read your bulletin. I should have made this point #1. One of the most frustrating things about being a church secretary is the number of times this conversation happens:
"I didn't know there was a church dinner today. How come you don't let us know about things like this?"
"It was in the bulletin for three weeks, announced from the pulpit, and in the announcement slides."
"Oh, I never read the bulletin or watch the slides, and I usually come in too late for announcements."

Yes, I've had that conversation more than once... probably once a month. It makes me want to tear my hair out! 

6. Be gracious in pointing out errors. I try to proofread the bulletin, prayer lists and newsletters that go out, but sometimes errors slip through. Chances are if the prayer sheet on Wednesday night has five typos in it, it has been a crazy, busy night in the office, and a nasty comment about the mistakes might be the last straw that drives me to tears.

7. Let me know if your contact information changes. When I do bulk mailings, if a person's address has changed, there's a charge for forwarding it and notifying me of the change. If you move and let me know ASAP, I can update my lists and avoid any charges. 

8. If you borrow stuff, please put it back from you got it from when you're done. That way, I don't spend half an hour trying to find my stapler! 

9. Be willing to serve! One of my least-favorite parts of the job is when I have to get volunteers for ministries. As of today, we've been asking for help in Junior Church for over a month, and still have a month open. The nursery is always looking for more help. We're about the run the bulletin insert for VBS helpers for the third time, because we barely got any responses the first two times. I hate groveling... and nagging... but it takes a lot of help to keep a big church with lots of ministries going. 

10. Try to keep after-hour calls to my house to a minimum. I understand if there's an emergency and you want to get the prayer chains going immediately, but I have people calling me for addresses for members who moved away years ago, or to ask if they're signed up for something. I don't bring that information home with me. Please call during office hours, or leave a message on my voicemail and I'll get back to it as soon as I get in for work. 

11. Pray for me. The job can be stressful at times, trying to keep hundreds of people informed and happy. 

Time for a final push

I had a "aha" moment on Friday. My husband and I were staying at a hotel with our 13-year-old daughter, who was competing in a talent competition on Saturday morning. My puppeteer/pianist/singer is NOT a morning person, so we drove about 2 hours downstate and stayed overnight so she wouldn't have to get up at 5:30 am to leave on Saturday morning.

While we were at the hotel, I took advantage of the hotel's pool and workout room to do 2/3 of a sprint triathlon. I stepped off the length of the pool and calculated that it would take 75 laps to go 600 yards. That took me about 35 minutes. Then I figured I'd do 20 miles on the exercise bike, but the bike shorted out when I tried turning on the fan, so I ended up on the treadmill for a 5K. The trouble is, there was a full-wall mirror in front of the treadmill, so for one hour, I was treated to the view of my legs in shorts. I didn't like what I saw. How come chubby legs are so adorable on babies, and not so adorable on grown-ups?

 <--- Cute!

Not cute! -->  

In a little over 4 weeks, I will be on a Hawaiian Cruise to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. I don't think I will be 100% comfortable wearing shorts in public and showing those chubby knees. 

As of yesterday, I had 30 days to go, so I issued myself a challenge: to get out for a jog or walk every day for 30 days, and to stick to healthy eating for 30 days. I plan to jog 5 or 6 days per week, and walk the other days. So far, so good... I've been jogging to the corner and back (.8 mile - but I jog the entire distance). Yesterday I was 11 seconds above my best time. This morning, I beat my best time by 5 seconds. Once I get a little more comfortable with the .8 jog, I will add a little more and then a little more (adding the subdivision across from our house will get it up to 1.1 miles, then to the other corner and back will be 1.6 miles). 

I am upset with myself that I didn't stick to my diet and exercise program more diligently, but I'm not giving up. Little by little, bit by bit, I'll get there! 

Back to Basics

It's been a while since I blogged. You know that old saying, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"? Well, I sort of fell off the diet and exercise wagon, and didn't have much to say of a positive nature, so I was silent.

I got busy and let exercise slide. I got careless and started letting junk slip back into my meals. I avoided the scale a bit too much. On April 1st, I got up and hopped on the scale... and found that I was up ten pounds from my lowest. Not good. Not good at all. Seven weeks away from a dream trip to Hawaii and I was no closer to my goal weight than I was in January.

I decided to recommit for the month of April. I made up a challenge chart so I could check off when I got in my workouts, drank my water, and stuck to clean eating. In honor of April Fool's Day, I called it the "Stop Fooling Yourself" challenge and used a picture of Mr. T to decorate the page.

My first weigh-in, after just three days of working out and eating according to the LiveFit Revolution Phase One eating plan, showed that I was six pounds lighter. Of course, my April 1st weigh-in had been after quite a "bad food day". I was probably retaining a lot of water from the pretzels I ate. 

A week into my new resolutions, I'm feeling a lot more energetic and much better overall. I'll admit, I'm also feeling a bit sore. Yesterday's kettlebell workout used some muscles I haven't used for a while. It's a good sore, though. It shows that I'm making progress.  I'm hoping that by the end of the month, I will be seeing a brand new "lowest weight in more than twenty years" number on the scale. 

The moral of my story? When I saw that discouraging number on the scale on April 1st, I could have given in to the old way of thinking:  "You're never going to get to your goal. You're always going to be heavy. Just give up and eat whatever you want." I didn't give up. I got back on track. You don't need to be perfect to lose weight. You just need to be committed.

On The Road Again… Sort of

We had some warm weather this week that melted the snow and made me eager to get out running again. I’m afraid to run on our country roads when there are snowbanks on either side of the road. If a driver doesn’t pull over to give me some room, there’s nowhere to go. After two days of springlike temperatures, I was hoping that I could get out on Saturday morning. A Facebook friend challenged me to join her “Weekend Warrior” challenge: doing a 5K and holding plank position as long as possible.

Alas, winter came back for the weekend. Saturday morning was cold and blustery, with a frigid wind chill and whiteouts from blowing snow. I didn’t want to give up, though. I’ve been making too many excuses about exercise lately. I finished up some errands (filling the car up with gas, going to the bank and the post office, and getting some deals at CVS… $60 worth of stuff for $20, and $8 in coupons off on my next visit!), then it was off to the church gym for laps. 51 laps is a 5K, so I put on my MP3 player and started running. My previous best time for 51 laps was 48 minutes, so I was hoping to beat that. I was encouraged to see that my time after one mile was 13:09. I don’t think I’ve ever had a mile under 14 minutes before!

I kept hitting the button on my MP3 player to skip past slow songs. I wanted peppy stuff to keep me moving. I was starting to drag a bit at lap 34, but “Running Just to Catch Myself” by Mark Schultz. I love that song. It’s my theme song. That perked up my running speed, so when the song finished, I hit the back button and listened to it again. Good old Mark kept me company for about 12 laps. 12 speedy laps.

I was very pleased with my time: 43:10. I was afraid that I would have digressed with my times, since I haven’t run in several weeks. Before you know it, I’ll be registering times in the 30s!

I got home and made a yummy dinner of chicken fajitas and homemade tortillas. Tasty, healthy, and gluten-free (I’m tweaking a single-serve gluten-free tortilla recipe – Ron and Bethany had regular flour tortillas, although I tossed in some flaxseeds to make them healthier).

                                            The Plank Competition

Once our lunches had a chance to settle, Bethany and I had a plank competition. I’ll admit, Bethany won by a long shot! I only held the plank position for 20 seconds… she held on for a minute.

It felt good to get in such a vigorous workout. It’s a challenge to make time for an hour at the gym with my current schedule, but I’m going to work on doing it more often.

Motivation... in many forms

I've been thinking about motivation a lot this week. One specific event that got me thinking was a crazy-busy day. I worked later than I had planned, rushed home and got dinner together, and rushed back out the door for Open House at my daughter's school. The Open House was over at 8:15, but we had to stay a little later to pick up a bag of clothes from the secretary. Her mother had cleaned out some too-small clothing and thought I might be able to use it. My daughter and I did some shopping, since we didn't have any milk in the house for breakfast the next morning.

By the time we got home, it was 9:30. I was eager to go through the bag of clothes and see what new items I had to add to my wardrobe. The trouble was, I am in the middle of a freelance proofreading assignment for a crossword puzzle magazine, and I needed to do two pages' worth of puzzles to stay on track to be finished by my deadline.

I worked up a plan. I figured out approximately how many answers I needed to come up with for the puzzle assignment, and guessed at how many pieces of clothing were in the bag. I told myself that for every 4 answers I got, I would check out one piece of clothing. That actually worked out quite well. The "study breaks" kept me motivated and provided a nice break. I had fun going through the bag of clothes and found quite a few things that looked like they would fit and be a nice addition to my wardrobe.

I thought about how the plan I worked out, of small goals (4 answers) and immediate rewards (a piece of clothing from the bag) kept me on track and moving forward. I think I need to break my remaining weight loss down into small chunks and come up with some fun and happy rewards to celebrate reaching those goals.

I've been working on more ways to keep myself on track this week. Early in the week, I was having bedtime prayer time with my youngest daughter Bethany (12 years old). I said something about the fact that I still wanted to get in some exercise, but I just didn't feel like I had the energy or the motivation. She said, "You need to do it. You don't want to let Laura down!" I couldn't figure out who she was talking about! She smiled and said, "Laura's Lean Beef! People will be reading your blog and you want to tell them you got in a good workout!" Boy, that kid knows how to motivate! Half an hour later, I was fnished with an intense kettlebell workout, and feeling a great sense of accomplishment!

My helper, motivator & encourager: Bethany

Bethany also came up with a nice way of keeping my goals in front of me on a regular basis. She was cleaning out her closet and gave me a cute little bracelet that says Aloha and has some Hawaiian flowers on it.

15 weeks from now, my husband and I will be celebrating our 25th anniversary with a Hawaiian cruise. 15 weeks sounds like a long time away, but I'm sure it's going to fly by (sort of like 25 years have flown by)! I've been wearing the bracelet for a couple of days now, and I admit, it has helped me to say no to some temptations. One day this week, a work crew brought in a dozen doughnuts and left them on the table outside my office. One of them took great pleasure in munching on a doughnut outside my door, saying, "Ooooh, this is sooooo good! Don't you want one?" I almost caved in, but decided to stay strong... I'm not ready to go out in public in a bathing suit just yet!

One last way I've been pumping up my motivation this week was to pull my "goal dress" out of the back of the closet.

I found this dress about 15 years ago at a thrift shop. I've never fit into it. In fact, it still has the price tag on it (it was $8.99, cut down to $4.98). It has a satin underdress with spaghetti straps and a lace overlay. I would love to be able to wear this dress for out 25th anniversary this year. I'm getting closer... at first, I could barely get the sleeves past my elbow, and now they almost fit.
This week has been a good one for getting back on track. It's time for the scale to start moving in the right direction again!

Little By Little...

The children's choir I co-direction is working on a song called "Little by Little". I like the words, because they fit not only for the kids, but for me as I'm making my way through my weight loss journey:
"Little by little, I'm changing, I'm growing.
Little by little, I hope that it's showing.
I'm not who I was, I'm not who I'll be.
I'm somewhere in the middle.
But God is working on me, little by little."

Toward the end of the song, there's a line that says, "Every little step I take, gets me a little bit nearer. I can't wait till the brand new me shows up in the mirror!"

I realized just how true that is. Little steps, little choices, will either take me a step closer to my weight loss goals, or a step further away.

• getting in 15 minutes of exercise when I don't feel like it will get me one step closer…
• resisting the urge to give in to a "snack attack" gets me one step closer…
• sticking to healthy eating gets me one step closer…
• all those little steps will add up

I've been doing better this week, eating healthier, getting in more exercise, and doing very well on crossing things off my to-do list. Yes, the Christmas present that took up residence in the back seat of my car has finally been mailed. The doctor's visit I've been putting off for months is scheduled. Taxes and FAFSA are done.

Struggling

It’s been a bad week for me as far as my diet and exercise plans were concerned. Last week, I made big plans to recommit to a detox eating plan, and get back to more intense workouts.  The only exercise I got in this week as an hour of cross-country skiing on Sunday. I started well with my detox diet, but slid into old eating habits by Tuesday, and stayed in that slide until Thursday.

I can see a bunch of factors that contributed to my train wreck of a week.

·        I didn’t make up an index card of weekly goals to help me stay on track. You know that saying, “If you shoot for nothing, you’re probably going to hit it”? That seemed to be my motto for the week.

·        I got into an “all or nothing” mentality about exercise – if I couldn’t fit in an hour, I didn’t do anything.

·        It was a busy week, and I let myself get overwhelmed with a growing list of things to get done. I’m ashamed to say that there is a package in the back seat of my car that needs to be mailed… and it’s Christmas presents. Just finding time to get to the grocery store has been a challenge lately.

·        I told myself I’d take a few days off and start fresh on Monday

Well, waiting until Monday isn’t always a good idea, so I got myself back on track on Friday. On Saturday, I sat down with a pad of paper and started making a list of stuff I needed to get done. I got it on the computer and organized it by day and priority. I printed off my list and I’m working towards crossing off every one of the 30 tasks. I plan on updating the list daily and carrying it with me, so I can make good use of little bits of time here and there.

I also re-evaluated my idea of a good workout. My schedule has changed, and I need to hurry out of the house each weekday morning to pick up my mother and get her ready to go to Adult Day Care. I don’t have time for a long workout in the mornings, and by evening, I just don’t have the energy to put in an hour. I think I need to focus on getting in a few “cardio bursts” each day – jogging a mile around the gym, or an intense 15-minute kettlebell workout. 15 minutes of swings with a heavy kettlebell sure burns a lot more calories than sitting in my recliner, watching TV!

I have a major goal on the horizon. I’m only 12 pounds away from my wedding-day weight. I would love to be back at that weight for my husband’s birthday on March 28^th. That would be an awesome birthday present for him. It’s going to take focus and hard work to get it done, but it’s a goal that’s within my reach.