I will apparently join almost anything

My husband has a job that periodically requires travel.   That usually works out to a couple nights a month.  In October, he started a new (and temporary!) assignment that has him traveling extensively for 4 months.  I wanted to gag when he told me. Then I moved on to putting it out of my mind because thinking about it was like filling the sky with giant looming black clouds.  Putting it out of mind is a fairy effective strategy right up until your husband is rolling his suitcase out to the car.  Then you're back to the gagging.

The downsides to his recent travel are obvious.  They include needy children, needy dogs, a tired momma and lots of dishes in the sink at all times.  I admire people that can't go to sleep at night until they do the dishes.  Way to be.  Please move into my house and never leave. 

The upsides to his travel are less obvious.  Despite that, I try hard to find them knowing that 4 months is way too long to spend feeling bitter and angry about a situation beyond my control.

My new favorite upside is finding new things to goof off doing when I should be closing my eyes and going to sleep. Some nights it involves reality television.  Lately it's involved downloading random apps and joining fitness and weight loss challenges.

For apps, I currently have one for situps, push ups, squats, arms and a random strength/yoga thing. I try to do them every couple days.  Sometimes I'm good at remembering to do them.  Sometimes I'm not.  I've had an annoying calf muscle issue since my Thanksgiving boot camping so my world squat domination plans are on hold until that gets better.  So naturally, I decided to fill the void with planks after seeing the Merry Planksmas challenge on FatChick2FitChick.  I can't plank to save my life so I figure I can only get better.  I started yesterday by holding an elbow plank for 37.6 seconds. Go, me.  My next step is to figure out how to get my offspring to photograph this madness for entertainment purposes.   It'd be great if they could do that without filling my phone with 437 photos of the ceiling fan, the television and their sister's ear.  But we'll see.
 
I  also decided to sign up for a Dietbet for December started by Courtney from Journey of a Dreamer.  You pay $20 and then compete to lose 4% of your starting body weight.  Everyone that loses 4% then gets to share the pot at the end (as opposed to just giving all the money to the person that lost the highest percentage). I'd gladly pay $20 to help me stay on track with my health kick and I'm hoping my competitive side kicks in and doesn't want to lose.  Although 4% is pretty steep in a month that will include Christmas and several birthday cakes in my house.  But it'll be a good challenge for me and my goal is mostly to win back my $20.

Especially since I'm wrapping up a holiday challenge by Fitness Unscripted.  I'm on a team of five competing through next week to lose the highest percentage.  The girls on my team are all really nice and supportive and it's been fun getting to know them and encourage each other.  We're not winning but I have found it a good guilt inducing motivator just knowing that other people need me to stay on track. 

I've also been unofficially attempting to Pile on the Miles.  I didn't actually set a goal number of miles for myself or even officially sign up.  But I've been keeping track of all my walking and running on MapMyRun to see how many miles I can cram into one month.  At the risk of being the highly annoying overachiever, I'm wrapping up November with 130 miles (mostly walking!).  I know.  That's insane.  I need some new hobbies.  

And speaking of my new best friend, MapMyRun, even it has noticed I'm in the joining mood and sent me an email last night to join a Stay Fit Holiday challenge to log workouts for 20 days in December.  If you successfully do it, they enter you in drawings for an Amazon gift card.  If I can log 130 miles in one month, me thinks I can successfully get in 20 workouts.  Joined!

About the only thing I haven't joined yet is a Secret Santa swap or food related blogger swap.  But believe you me I was tempted.  For example, last night while avoiding my pillow, I almost joined the Secret Santa swap on Skinny and Delicious.  I'm a girl who enjoys random packages and holiday themed crap.  But then I remembered that my husband is still MIA, my to do list is already forever long already and I haven't even Christmas shopped for anyone in my family.  So I hit the power button on my computer and watched Real Housewives instead.