Where's Miranda?

Greetings everyone!

I am sorry that I have been MIA for the last few days. Have you missed me? I have missed you. But I have just been very busy lately as you all know, working my butt off, having picked up a zillion extra shifts just in case I needed the $$$ had I been laid off. As we know, I did not get laid off, and am pretty confident I won't be either, so after next weekend, I am back to a regular work routine.

I've been struggling still with high stress levels, still, even since taking last Wednesday to myself, and not having been getting up early to go to the gym.

I felt that I needed to continue to rest, and part of my resting was taking a short hiatus from blogging. That however is not to say that I haven't been photo journalling my days, with the exception of Sunday.

So rather than play a ginormous game of catch up, I am only going to report on Saturday. The other days I didn't do much that worrents chatting about. Food was boring and I didn't do anything exciting. But Saturday I did.

I had a long Saturday ahead of me. I was up at 7:30, was going to be spending a few hours outside and then working until 11pm. So I started the day off with something simple yet filling.
Scrambled egg whites with 1whole egg and 1 cup of chopped broccoli.

Then it was in the car off to pick up MB.

Hi MB!

We were then off to a park 15 minutes away from her house in Scarborough to . . . . . PLANT TREES!

Let me tell you I was very excited for this day to come. It had been planned for a good month or more, and I was so so excited. I think I was even more excited because I wasn't planting trees at home in Bowmanville (smaller town - where when reading Friday's paper Sunday morning, I found out I could have done in town), but rather in the city of Toronto, where you don't often think of green spaces. There were several locations all around the city, even the Mayor participated, just not at our location.

This is where we were planting up along and over the hill.

A couple of shovels on hand for us to use.

Some mulch, which later while getting our pedicures, we noticed both MB and I had these red rashy marks on our knees probably from the mulch. This pile of mulch was gonzo by the end of the 2 hours of planting.

Getting our lesson in all the steps needed to plant our trees.

MB with her first tree laying down the mulch.
Ta-Da 1 of 10 down for MB! Beautiful picture!

My turn with the first of my 10 trees.

So cute.

Showing my tree some love so it grows big and strong.

MB and I planted 3 trees super fast and then we looked around and the next thing we knew, we were surrounded by other volunteer tree planters.

To our left, boy scouts.

To our left lots and lots more people all the way down the park side.

Checkout the friend one of my trees made as soon as it was planted.

MB and I headed down where we thought we could have more space and more trees to plant, down the side of the big hill. Have you ever tried to plant a tree on the down slope of a hill with lots of strangers around you doing the same. It's hard!

We went back over to the original area we were in, as it had emptied out, and there was still lots of trees to be planted.

Oh! You know why the trees were still there and no one around? Because it wasn't all properly tilled before hand.

We had to get down on our hands and knees to dig around the big a$s rocks and BRICKS. Yes bricks, like house bricks.

Sadly the rocks and bricks slowed us down which is why we only planted 10 each instead of more. But 10 is better than none right!?

After the trees were all planted MB and I went off to Kelsey's for some lunch.

I ordered a club salad minus the bacon and sub the ranch dressing for a balsamic.

Some bruschetta tomatoes, feta and yes guacamole! Great salad.

After to kill time, as I had to work in Scarborough at 3, we went to get ourselves cleaned up with mani/pedi's. No pictures as I forgot. I was just so relaxed laying back being pampered and chatting.

3pm off to work.

I had packed my dinner as I am trying to drop the stress lbs I've gained. But it was also homemade pizza night at the group home. So I grabbed a half a slice to add to my salmon salad.

For my evening snack I sliced up and ate 1 gala apple and 1 plum.

Tasty snack while watching the Breakup and I Love You Man at the group home.

Come 11pm I was out the door and zooming home. I was so tired, I could have fallen asleep at 9:30/10pm if I wasn't working.

How was your weekend? Did you do anything really fun?

Emotional weekend.

Well this was a rough weekend for me. Sadly it started off stressful Friday.

Number 1. I had no groceries and no idea what to make with the mishmash of slim pickin's that was at my house.

Well I didn't end up packing a lunch, rather went downstairs to Pizza Pizza and got this. I am terrible for multi-tasking at work while eating too. So I ended up eating a cold nasty slice of pizza. 20 Minutes later I felt like a$$ and wished I hadn't eaten the pizza chips and pop. Next time I think about eating from Pizza Pizza I will think twice and not do it. This however is not to say I am completely swearing off pizza (see below).

For my snack, I have these fig crackers. not too shabby.

So I talked about being stressed but never addressed why. Well Friday I got a total of 3 phone calls from my perm. part time job. See Monday they are announcing 1.1million dollars in layoffs. Those layoffs are coming in the form of staff cuts.

So Friday,

Call #1. There is a meeting at the office first thing Monday morning at 8:30am. Everyone should be there.

Call #2. No meeting, misunderstanding, but be at the office as HR and the ED are making calls to notify people if they are being laid off. So come in sit around with a bunch of coworkers who are all equally as anxious as you and just sit and wait.

Call #3. No meeting, and if you aren't scheduled to work you don't have to come in, HR will get a hold of you between 8:30-9:15am. So be by your home phone.

Yeah not a fun Friday.

Saturday was even worse. Why? Because I had to go into said work where I may be getting laid off from and work 6 hours. The worst part, is though I tried to avoid getting involved in chatter about the pending lay offs, I couldn't find a nook or cranny were there wasn't a coworker, who wanted to talk about lay offs and stress.

Sadly this not only exhausted me emotionally, but it made me nauseous, and upset my stomach I was so stressed out.

I did try and start the day off strong by making healthy choices. Eggs are always a good strong breakfast!

3 egg whites

1 whole egg

1/2 Kumato tomato

2 tbsp chunky salsa

30g mozzerella

I was expecting a lot of meetings to mediate at work, however sadly, there were so many visits cancelled all for various reasons. So not only myself by my coworkers were all pretty much not busy, and all sitting around all day.For snack Still hadn't gotten out to get groceries. So I went to Quiznos for lunch instead of subway or a pita. Mainly because Quiznos has guacamole on their veggie sub where as the other two places do not have guac.Going home from work, I was a zombie. I for the first of two times Saturday night became one with the couch and TV.

Come 7pm, Kevin was getting hungry and said to me "so where are we going for dinner?" You have to understand, Kevin likes us to keep our money, not give it to others. So the fact that hes suggested that we go out for dinner and it wasn't my idea, wowzers, he knew how stressed I was.

We went to Boston Pizza. With my anxiety I didn't think that trying the new Mexican place was a good idea.

At BP, we ordered Cactus Cut Fries for an app. I love the heat in the dipping sauce. I think Kevin loves them a little too much!Here you can see my drink before, *ahem* I forgot to take a picture before it was gone. And as you can see I love me some Long Island Ice Tea. Those babies are sooooo good!

I couldn't figure out what I wanted. I did know however I didn't want a pasta. So instead of having a lot of carbs, I ordered, a lot of carbs. LOL The bruschetta pizza really was so much better than Friday's pizza. And it really helped sooth my wreaked emotional state.

After dinner we headed home. There the couch, the TV and I all became one again. We put in the movie Sherlock Homes with Robert Downey Jr. Not a bad movie.

Sunday, well for the whole weekend, Kevin's parents were at their house in town (they are moving from Barrie Ontario to Bowmanville Ontario). Sadly they have had possession of their house in town since Feb 10th. Their house in Barrie though they get a lot of showings, hasn't had a single offer yet. :-s

So, we hadn't seen Kevin's parents in a few weeks, so we were invited over for brunch. Because they live so close to us, Kevin suggested instead of walking over that we ride our bikes. I was game. Look how funky cool I am with my one pant leg rolled up. Haven't had any luck finding myself a chain guard yet. Everywhere I go, people just keep telling me "oh I guess you'll just have to wear shorts and get grease all over your leg" and laugh. The first couple of times I laughed too, but now I am just frustrated and want to find a chain guard.

Kevin's dad went out and BBQ'ed the Turkey Bacon. Kevin's mom checking brunch. It's a work in progress (someone else's recipe she works off of).French toast, baked with apple pie filling in the middle. Sadly this batch the bottom piece of bread was all mushy, the top was great though. And peamale style turkey bacon.We also had tea cups filled with strawberries and pineapple. I had about 3 of these cups of fruit.After brunch was over it was back to the house so that I could make my dinner and snacks to take with me to my other part time job (group home for co-ed teens).

While working in the kitchen I had a handful of clodhoppers. I love that eating healthy is really turning my nose up and away from old unhealthy favourites. I also had 3 dates.I wasn't feeling as stressed Sunday as I had been Friday and Saturday. Such a nice relief. Don't get me wrong I was still stressed and worried, just not to the severity of the previous days.

At work I mixed some granola, chia seeds, dried blueberries to some yogurt.The house was so quiet for my shift. There was myself, the full time staff Paul (yeah), and one female resident. She asked if we could eat outside on the back porch since it was nice out. I was game, especially seeing as we were BBQing the chicken out there anyways.My left over quinoa stir fry with Paul's BBQed Honey Garlic Chicken. I only had 1/3 of the chicken, but took the rest home. I also packed a salad with strawberries, almonds, quinoa and avocado. You never know who is going to be doing the cookie or what will be cooked at a group home so I always pack my food. Better safe than sorry. And hey if you get pleasantly surprised with Sunday nights chicken, all the better.Some grapes to finish the night off right. Home by 11:45, and vegged on the couch watching PVRed Modern Family and Cougar Town.

Update you soon on the layoff situation.