Category: stepson

Today is the Day

OK, he’s a recruit right now, but he will be a Marine soon!

Well, today is the day.  My husband left early this morning to meet my stepson at the processing station, a few hours drive from here, and say good-bye to him as he heads off to boot camp.  I am saving my vacation time from work for his graduation, but it was still hard not to go with my husband this morning.

Since I was up early anyway, I threw my bed-head into a ponytail and did some Leslie Sansone walking workouts, adding on 2 more miles to the work wellness challenge.  I am in 3rd place after our first week, but I am only 3 miles behind the person in 1st place.  I am going to do all I can to take over first place after this week!

Yesterday I spent some time looking up Marines boot camp graduation information, and my stellar idea about the white suit is just not going to fly.  Because of all the walking, and climbing bleachers, and being outside, the website I read recommended comfortable shoes and much more casual clothing.

I really want an outfit to focus on to keep my drive, kind of like the wedding dress for the wedding, something I want to fit into by a certain date so I don’t slack off.  So I shopped online for some more casual, but still pretty, tops to wear, and I saved them in a folder so I can get to them easily.

I also made myself a motivational poster yesterday.  It’s just quotes and images that I like, arranged somewhat creatively on a page, with the Marines logo dead center to remind me of my challenge.  I hung it on the wall in our workout room.  It will be right in my face when I want to slack off, or when a workout gets tough, and I want to quit, but how can I quit when I know my stepson is busting his butt even harder?

Fired Up!

I ended up skipping weigh-in on Saturday.  That is typically a huge mistake, and I end up with a huge gain at the next weigh-in, but I just need to make sure that doesn’t happen this time.  I decided to just enjoy the weekend with the kids, get a little sleep Saturday morning instead of getting up extra early for a workout and weigh-in, and start over today.

I also had something to celebrate with my husband and kids: on Friday, I had a meeting with my boss, and my promotion is now official.  We started talking about it months ago, but it wasn’t finalized until Friday.  I am now a director at work, and of course that comes with more responsibilities, so I am even busier than before but excited too.

We went to dinner to celebrate, and the girls helped me pick out some leopard print dressy shoes for my new job role.  (Because leopard print goes with everything!)

My new title was announced at a staff meeting this morning, and there was another important announcement: the wellness challenge we are doing (tracking workout miles) now has two prizes!  First prize gets 2 tickets to an amusement park, and second prize gets an extra vacation day.  I feel so fired up now!  I actually am not very interested in the tickets, but I would love the extra vacation day.  My co-workers better get to stepping, because I intend to start racking up serious miles this week.

I said good-bye to my future Marine, my older stepson, this weekend, since he ships out for boot camp tomorrow.  There was so much I wanted to say to him, but I didn’t know how to say it.  He hugged me really tight and said he is nervous but excited.  That is what I wanted to hear, that he is looking forward to this and not letting his self-centered, piece-of-crap womb-for-rent ruin this for him.

I told my husband last night about challenging myself to lose 30 pounds while our son is away at boot camp.  I told him I have a white suit I haven’t been able to wear for a very long time, but if I can ditch 30 pounds, I should be able to wear it to our son’s Marines graduation.

I feel more motivated today than I have in a long time.  I want to win a prize in our work challenge, and I want to kick 30 pounds (or more!) to the curb before my stepson sees me again.  Let’s get to work!

Worried

Yesterday I had a much-needed hair appointment.  I am a low-maintenance woman with high-maintenance highlights, so they tend to get several inches of roots before I force myself to make an appointment.  I keep saying this is the last time, that I will color it all back to one color so I can go back to coloring it myself, but I have to admit, I really like how it looks highlighted, especially right after I get my hair done.

My stylist told me I look great and asked if I have lost even more weight since she saw me last, in July.  I told her no, I have gained, and she said she couldn’t tell.  Yeah, right!  I wanted to tell her it’s okay, I will still give her a good tip, ha ha.

After writing about my older stepson yesterday, I got a text as I left the salon from my husband, telling me to meet him and my stepson at a restaurant near our house.  I hadn’t expected to see my stepson, so it was a nice surprise.

I think he might be getting a little nervous about leaving next week, and unfortunately, it sounds like Psycho and that mentally-challenged side of the family are feeding those doubts and insecurities.  They are harping on him about leaving, about being gone so long, acting like he’s doing something wrong or offensive to them.  His dad reminded him this should be exciting, a beginning, not an ending.  Good lord, what is wrong with those assholes?  Why make him feel guilty or scared instead of excited and proud and ready to start his own life?

I could tell he didn’t want to leave after dinner.  He wanted to stay overnight with us, but Psycho blew up his phone with god-knows-what texts, and his face fell, that defeated look I know so well, and he said he had to go.  He stood in the parking lot a long time, chatting, keeping the conversation going, like he didn’t want us to go…or, more likely, like he didn’t want to go, back to her, back to them.

I tend to focus on my weight loss efforts in this blog instead of the drama and crap we deal with from Psycho, but all I have thought about today is my stepson.  I am worried about him, about all four kids. I got a dark, nagging feeling last night that something was wrong.  You know when someone keeps talking to you, but they dart their eyes, seem agitated, can’t stick to a subject, and talk really fast, like they really want to say something else?

I thought of telling him about my challenge, but I decided to wait until he is finished with boot camp and sees the results for himself.  He has plenty enough on his mind right now, and it didn’t seem like the time or the place to gab about weight loss challenges!

My Marine Boot Camp Challenge

My older stepson, the oldest child, is leaving for Marines boot camp next week.  I first met the kids when he was about 7 years old, and I couldn’t sit down anywhere without him climbing into my lap or chatting my ear off. 

I watched that poor kid get chewed up, spit out, twisted, mangled, and manipulated by his biological mother, Psycho, until he had no idea anymore which end was up.  He was told to lie to us, lie to judges, lie for his mother, until he was so confused that he barely knew his own name.

I am glad he is finally getting away from her.  The distance will do him good, I believe.  But I feel sick to the stomach that he has as much admitted that he only enlisted to get away from her.  I hope this is a good move for him, no matter what pushed him to take that first step.

Yesterday I was driving home from work thinking about him, and how much he will change in 12 weeks, how different he will be when he comes home.  I remember one of my older brothers coming home from boot camp for the Army, and he walked up to us in the airport in his uniform, shorn head, much thinner, standing tall, commanding attention.  A man actually came up to us and wanted to carry my brother’s suitcase for him, but my father beat him to that honor. 

It occurred to me that I can make a lot of positive changes in those 12 weeks, too.  Why not come out after 12 weeks as an improved me, too? 

So, the “My Marine Boot Camp Challenge” was born!  I called it My Marine not to refer to my challenge, but to my Marine: my stepson, who to me will always be a talkative, sensitive 7-year-old curled up in my lap, no matter that he is over 6 feet tall now and heading off to become a Marine. 

My objective: during the 12 weeks that my stepson is away at boot camp, I will work hard too.  I don’t even pretend that what I will do will be anywhere near as challenging or difficult as what he will be doing, but when I want to slack off and be lazy, I want to force myself to think of him and what he is pushing himself through to achieve his goal.  Why can’t I push myself too? 

He should be home from boot camp around January 2, 2018.  I weigh in on Saturdays, so my final weigh-in for the challenge will be January 6, 2018.  My goal is to lose 30 pounds during this “boot camp”.  I know that sounds like a lot, but I anticipate losing more than 2 pounds per week to start out, especially when I bump up my workouts next week (I wanted to focus on consistency this week, then step it up next week).

I don’t want to wait until next week to start, or I will likely lose my drive.  So I am starting right now.  Consider me enlisted!

I’m excited to feel connected to my stepson in some way while he is gone, even if he isn’t even aware of it.  I dedicate every workout, every drop of sweat, every huff and puff, to my stepson, and I hope I can make him even a tiny fraction as proud of me as I already am of him.

Mini-Goal, DVD, and Facebook

I was looking forward to weigh-in Saturday morning, because I thought for sure, the week I ran half-marathon distance, I must have torched some serious pounds!  I stepped onto the scale, eager to see the number.

169.0

On one hand, that was awesome.  My mini-goal was hitting the 160’s, and I did it!  I lost 2 pounds since last week.  I should have been excited, right?

But I wasn’t.  Two pounds?  After running over 13 miles?  I felt cheated and disappointed.  I’m not sure exactly what I expected, just more than that.

Two pounds is still two pounds in the right direction and two pounds closer to my goal.  My reward for reaching the 160’s is this workout DVD:

I love Cathe Friedrich, and this weight-training DVD got really good reviews.  Her DVD’s tend to cost a bit more (this one was over $20), but I have found they are well worth it.  I will review it after I receive it and try it out.
This past weekend, my stepkids were home with us.  My 13-year-old stepson told me he saw my post on Facebook about running over 13 miles, and he congratulated me and said, “I liked it on Facebook because you said you had been trying to reach that distance for a long time.”  I loved that he was proud of me.  It meant so much to me.
But…I had checked that post to see who had liked it, and his name wasn’t on that list.  I checked again, thinking I had just missed it, but nope, it wasn’t there.  Well, he certainly didn’t lie about liking it, and he had obviously seen it because he knew I had mentioned it being a goal of mine for a long time.  There is only one possible explanation: after he liked it, his biological mother, Psycho, logged in as him and un-liked it.
I just shook my head.  Yes, that is definitely something she would do, as sad and pathetic as it is.  My stepson liking something I wrote about my fitness achievements would have sent her into a jealous spiral of rage.  Well, let her be jealous.  That’s her prerogative.  My stepson knows what I achieved, and he is proud of me, and she can’t change that!
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