Holidays, Wanderlust, and Sadie

Here we are, in the full swing of Holiday prep .... well, ok, maybe not all of you.  But anyone who's worked retail knows that there's a lot of prep that goes into making a successful sale during the Brown Thursday / Black Friday events!   Truckload after truckload of product rolls into the store and it all needs to be sorted, priced and prepped to be ready to pull to the floor in time for the sale.  There's a lot of planning and execution going on - at the same time, trying to run a busy business with the day to day stuff as well.   Which in most cases means OverTime!  I rarely complain about any overtime that comes my way -- although I've been known to turn it down if they ask me to do something that I'm not thrilled with doing (culling produce comes to mind!)

But what also happens during this time of year is stress levels begin to climb.  And we all feel it.  I usually can get through the day without feeling the effects -- until I climb into a warm car and let my body relax a bit.  That's when I know that I've been holding in the stress all day.  By the time I get home, I feel worn to a frazzle.  It's about all I can do to toss a meal together and eat in front of the TV with my feet up.  This is the time of year when I think about a good friend who used to eat soup straight from the can with a plastic spoon.  (You know who you are!!)   Definitely no clean up!  And it's ready when you're ready.  I can totally see the benefit of that!  Since we've been in the warm temps up until today, it was easy to suffice with tossing some ham or turkey on a whole wheat roll and call that a meal.

Sadie doesn't let me drudge around too much, however.  She's constantly nagging me from the time I get home until sunset -- that's when we take our evening walk.  I've been forcing her to go just a little bit further than we've been doing because we both need it.  And it helps our sleep patterns as well.

Last weekend, I got an idea in my head and so Brian and I hopped in the car - with Sadie - and drove to Calif to see my mom.  I was there in October, but Brian hasn't seen her in quite a while.  Last time he was "home" was for Dad's funeral, so he was feeling the need to go.  With him along, there's no one to watch Sadie, so we opted to drive.  A missed exit on the freeway and we ended up 30 minutes out of our way -- but that's ok, I love to drive.  We got to see places we hadn't seen before.  And it created ----- no, it sort of jump started my wanderlust again.  I miss doing little road trips and checking out new places!

This weekend will be the only weekend in a long while that I'll have two days off together, what with the holidays and all, so I am hoping to make the best of it.  I'm going to clean/organize things so that there's very little for me to do after work, other than eat, and walk.  It's my goal for the next 6 weeks to reach a new level in steps counted on my Fitbit - 80k each week is the goal.  So far this week I'm at 77,372.   I can do those 3K steps in my sleep!  (Well, sort of. haha)