Good morning afternoon

So I woke up today at 3:40 pm. It was already pretty much dark outside.  I live in Alaska so it gets dark early here.  The lights were all off except the Christmas tree with just white lights and lots of sparkly clear ornaments in the shape of snowflakes and ice cycles.  I just turned on some soft music and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Happy 2015.  I'm determined to have a better year than last year.

My main goal this year is to lose weight and get healthier.  I need to work on muscle strength.

I know that everyone pretty much has that same goal but for me it is different. I have been gaining weight because of the chronic pain and not being able to do a lot of things that I used to.  When I exercise I get flares of pain and then later or the next day it is even worse because I get a fibromyalgia flare up.  I try very hard to limit myself so I don't cause a flare up but it is hard to know when is too much.  People like to tell me "no pain no gain" and I just want to sock them in the head because they have no idea what they are talking about.  Pain from muscle soreness is way way different than this.

Anyway, I got some resistance bands and I'm going to use those to help build up some muscle.  I am very weak so I easily pull muscles I didn't even know I had.  The worst is when I pull a muscle in my ribs or I get muscle spasms all over the place.  I am going to start very very small and just work my way up from there.

My secondary goal is to work on my house and organize and purge a lot of junk.  I already started some in December.  I had all these different tubs of Christmas ornaments in different color schemes. I donated all the red and gold ornaments except my old fashioned style ones.  My favorite color scheme is blue and silver/white.  I can't really do much with the tree anymore and my boys are too old now and just don't want to.  It just doesn't feel right to make them decorate the Christmas tree. It kind of kills the spirit.  So really, what is the point in going through all the work in they don't care.  I realized it is just for me now.  I like having a Christmas tree.  So I am slowly working my way through the decorations I have and donating a ton of it.

I've decided to do this yearly challenge again from a website called Home Storage Solutions 101. I've done it before but not entirely.  I just skipped around and did a few things.  A lot of the time I just can't do anything because of my health so I can only do what I can.  They do have a monthly calendar with missions and things so this year I plan on putting it on the frig so the rest of the family can help too.  Last time I was just doing a screen print and making the current month my desktop image.  I hate printing everything and having to deal with all the papers and where to keep them.  This year I'll welcome the help and I'm sure my husband will be all for it.  They even have a new facebook group for this years challenge.

So there ya go.  I am just like everyone else who most likely has the same two goals.  These are not resolutions though.  I will not feel like a failure if I don't lose 20 lbs or finish the organizational challenge.  I'll feel good just knowing I tried and did the best I could.