giving up the snooze

The grad school started a "spring into wellness" program that began the week after spring break.  For the remainder of this semester, participants have a series of weekly challenges to complete.  There are prizes!  (because, really, who would participate if not for prizes?)

For instance, this week we are tracking our daily spending and watching for any bad habits or unnecessary expenses.  It's not much of a "challenge" for me since we got on the penny pinching bandwagon way back when I quit my job to be a stay-at-home-mom.

Last week was a water challenge.  We were tasked to drink half our weight (in pounds) in ounces of water each day.  So for someone who weighs 200 lbs, they were to drink 100 ounces each day.  There are online discussions to participate in each week, so last week's discussions mostly centered on big people having to carry around lots of water and easy ways to do that, along with an increase in trips to the bathroom.

Since this week isn't particularly challenging, I took on an additional goal.  See, for two days in a row, I was prompted, from unrelated sources, to stop using the snooze button.   I took these as messages from the universe to GET UP! when the alarm goes off.

I'll admit to having been a snooze-a-holic for the past several years.  Don't know when it began actually.  But yes, I'm one of those weirdos who would set the alarm for a good 30 to 45 minutes before I needed to get up, then spend that time repeatedly hitting snooze.  Magnum rode along.

This week, we decided, no more of that!  I learned that sleep quality  is actually quite crappy during those snooze button sessions.  We are way better off just setting the alarm for when we intend to get up, and then GET UP.

So we're doing it.  I feel SO much better!  Okay, it's only been two days, but...

In other progress news, the tidying continues.  I honestly thought I was already pretty tidy, clutterphobe that I am.  But I'm rising to a whole 'nother level.  Even Magnum has (surprisingly) gotten on the bandwagon.  Or  maybe he's just playing along because of that testimonial from one woman who chucked out her husband along with the other discards that were not sparking joy.

And speaking of tidying, the city seems to be on that bandwagon too.  Over a year ago, they took to cleaning up and renovating a section of the bike trail that I used regularly.  It was a big project as it included putting in a bicycle underpass and performing major clearing and erosion control on the adjacent creek bed.  It was scheduled to be finished at the end of last October, which meant that in no way would it be completed by the end of last October.

Since they closed it off, I've been taking a detour which hasn't been too bad, but caused me to encounter people hitting me up for marijuana as well as Bella's tire being screwed.

But whaddya know, Magnum and I went on a ride and discovered that they opened it last weekend!

Glory Hallelujah!

I don't have any "before" photos, but suffice to say that this is quite a makeover.  No wonder it took so long!  It's almost too devoid of flora, but I've seen landscapers out with a few plantings this week, so I doubt it will stay this barren for long.

Gosh, I'm gonna miss that guy bumming weed.