Category Archives: goals

Oh hi hi hi

I swear to Jeebus I'm smiling.

So yeah, I don’t do transitions too well. I spent the last several months:

» Being super excited about moving to our new town! Winston-Salem, N.C., is home!!
» Looking for jobs and not getting at ALL excited at the idea of sitting behind a computer.
» Running running running! Up big hills, around beautiful neighborhoods!
» Getting bummed out at not finding work. What’s a girl gotta do?
» Letting my being bummed out bum me out. No more exercise.
» Getting work! At Starbucks. Interesting.
» Getting more work! At an amazing bakery in town (Camino), selling baked goods and learning how to make really good espresso drinks.
» Working two jobs and getting tired. And bummed about being tired. And eating because I’m tired. And still not exercising.
» Ooh! Just one job now! The bakery is such a good place to spend time, behind the counter or as a customer. I love going into work.
» Oh what? I kind of gained even more weight. And also am so-very(-too-too)-slowly getting back into good eating habits and an exercise routine. You know what that makes me? Bummed. Just a little.

So I asked my best friend (hiya, Mela!) what the heck to do, and she talked about how writing her blog and connecting with folks in her area has helped her find her center. You know what? She’s smart.

Time to get back into a routine. Time to get back to writing about it. Because I liked that part. I liked all of you and I liked having a way to stay focused on the things I decided were important to me.

Things I decided were important to me

1. Being fit. Is it being 30 years old? I’m not sure how else to explain that — even with an extra 20 pounds on my frame — I’ve been looking at myself during my weightlifting classes at the gym thinking “damn girl, you’ve got a fine ass,” and “look at those thighs! Tremendous!” So yeah, I’d like to fit back into my jeans, but more and more it’s clear that my underlying motivation for eating right and exercising has to be my overall fitness, not how much I weigh or what size those jeans are. So how to mark my progress? How about a 10K? By this time next week, my goal is to have signed up for an autumn 10K in town.

2. Whole food life. It’s not so much I’ve fallen off this wagon. But last we met, there was still so much I was interested in learning and exploring. I want to take up that adventuresomeness again — new grains, new fruits and vegetables, canning! Goal: To try one new something every week and report on it. It’s also time to learn how to make jams and pickles and put ‘em by. Goals for that to come …

3. Making a happy home. Our house is beautiful, but I struggle to implement the tiny home projects that keep floating through my daydreams. There are walls to be painted, closets to be organized, a bathroom that could use little touch-ups. Goal: By this time next week, unveil a tiny, tiny home project I can plan and implement by the end of April.

3. A handmade wardrobe. I have everything to learn and everything to make. What I might need is a little focus, and my new job at Camino might have offered it: I’d love to wear smock aprons for work — something cute with cap sleeves that I can get get dirty. So a goal! Within two weeks I want to have found a pattern and made my first smock apron. Do you think I could single-handedly bring the smock back into fashion?

Hey …

… This was nice. Let’s do it again. Oh, and Dawgface says hello.

Remember me? I'm here, too!

Day 77 of 101: Back into a healthy rhythm

Let’s be serious.

I spent the past two weeks doing a great deal of planning and packing before our move to North Carolina, but not a lot of time focusing on healthy habits. I indulged in foods that kept my brain turning — but they were foods my body didn’t really need.

Now that my husband and dog and I are settled into our temporary home in Greensboro, I can bring back a semblance of healthfulness.

Gym time, please!

I’ll miss my little old gym friends from Roanoke. On the days I did training runs, there was this one elderly man who always chatted with me. He told me he’d miss me when I let him know we were moving!

But new town, new gym. While I’m in Greensboro I have a temporary membership to a place just a couple of miles from my parents’ home. Luckily it hosts early-morning group exercise — I’ll be able to do my weight-lifting, yoga/pilates, and cycle classes.

It’s gonna feel so good to get back to my early-bird workouts.

Food food food

The only healthy pattern I’ve observed in my food life is one built around routine. Same breakfast; same lunch; similar small dinner from night to night.

It means egg-and-toast breakfasts. Hummus and veggies for lunch. Granola-and-fruit snack. Afternoon hot drink!

I’ve already made a big ol’ batch of granola. Hummus is on today’s to-do list. And as long as I’m the Durango home, I will never be short on eggs.

Plan for this week

How about a little rough sketch of my week ahead?

TODAY
My workout: Yoga/pilates (I’m SO looking forward to a good stretch!)
Yum yum: Hummus!

WEDNESDAY
My workout: More stretching (it does a body good, right? Also, my left hip has been giving me problems and I’m hoping a good couple of stretch days will work it out).
Yum yum: Hmmm, how about a bacon and vegetable quiche? I think that sounds good.

THURSDAY
My workout: Cycle class (eep!)
Yum yum: Good ol’ rice and beans (using up some canned black beans we lugged from Roanoke).

FRIDAY
My workout: Weight-training class
Yum yum: I want corn bread! And red meat with vegetables.

SATURDAY
My workout: Rest
Yum yum: No plan

SUNDAY
My workout: Afternoon yoga
Yum yum: No plan

Hey … wish me luck? I have a feeling a good start for this first week of our new adventure will carry through the next many, many weeks of our big change.

Day 40 of 101: Meeting little goals

A few weeks ago I was looking to bring more focus to my week, so I set some little goals for myself. I gave myself three weeks to finish them, and now my three weeks are up!

I think I did pretty well. Sometimes goal-setting gets overwhelming. “Will I really be able to finish all my projects? There’s so much to do!” I think I found the secret: modest, modest goals.

Sew another tote bag

Le bag.

Done! And I wrote about it, mostly about how I wish I’d made it a little different, to have that new-project thrill. C’est la vie and all that fine stuff.

Sew myself an outfit

This is me loving the dress I made.

I’m gonna call my “15-minute” dress an outfit. I still need to wear it out-and-about!

16 of the 50 recipes

See this dog? Her snout was inches away from my beer bread while I was taking photos. So I turned the camera on her and what does she do? “No, no. Not me. I wasn’t trying to eat your bread.”

I’ve made the recipes! I’ll be posting about them this week. In the meantime, don’t that beer bread look good? You should make some.

Develop a cycling snack for Patrick

What you see is honey, dates, oats, flax, almonds, cinnamon, chia seeds, and that's it!

I’m so, so close. I’ve got the flavors down, but I need to work on the consistency (it’s a bit too sticky to be convenient as on-the-go food). Still, I’m happy with the recipe as is for myself, so I’ll be posting it soonish!

New goals

This worked so well for me that I’d like to proclaim some new modest goals for the next three weeks:

» One sewing project each week. I already know I want to make a padded laptop cozy to match my new tote bag. And I want to challenge myself to following an actual pattern for a blouse or skirt. Finally, how about I make some formal napkins? When my friend Melizza started getting serious about sewing, she made a collection of great napkins (she sent me the blue ones!). I want to borrow from her ideas; maybe some of her good sewing juju will rub off.

» Another dozen recipes! This fifty recipe challenge is introducing me to so many good foods and new ways of putting them together. In fact, I think I’ll have to renew it once it’s done.

» 10-minute mile in the outdoors! This feels like the most ambitious goal — Patrick and I went on my first street run this morning and I could feel how much I slowed down on those hill climbs (it didn’t feel like I gained too much on the downhills, either). I’d like to run a solid 10-minute pace for the 5K we’ll do Thanksgiving morning.

» Design design design. When I started my 101 Days Project I definitely thought I’d be doing little design projects for fun. I haven’t done a single one! So, over the next three weeks I’d like to: design my own version of a few of those inspirational quote posters popping up all over the place; design holiday cards because … why not?; and design a logo for a personal project muh husbandman’s working on.

Hmm, these are feeling decidedly less modest. Let’s see how I do. (Pretty good, I bet.)

It really is. It isn’t, but it is.

I just had one of those moments: I was filling up my water bottle, stooping a little to reach the spout and feeling really, really good. “My abs! They’re doing their job!”

And my next thought was: Huh, and if I want to keep feeling this good, all I have to do is keep making the right decisions. Simple.

Not really, of course. Three weeks ago, the right decisions felt like monumental tasks. I had to work hard to get to this place, where they feel like an effortless Turn Right instead of Turn Left.

But I’m at this place right now, and I’m totally going to celebrate it, and celebrate myself for having done the work to get here.

Tomorrow, I’m waking up to get to my 5:45 spin class, and I’m truly looking forward to it.

No joke.

Why I’m laying off the scale

I believe in keeping track of weight over time.

It’s a good canary in the coal mine. I even remember the moment about three years ago when I saw the scale had nudged up by 7 lbs. My thought at the time? “Huh. Oh well.” If I’d used the information as a little wakeup call, I probably wouldn’t have gone on to gain an additional 17 lbs.

The practice of weighing (in my life) also correlates well with good health habits. If I’m weighing myself, I’m paying attention. When I pay attention, I put an emphasis on good foods (and sometimes exercise, though that’s a whole other challenge for me).

So why am I stepping away from the scale for now?

Weight-loss efforts before have been focused on just that: losing weight. When I lost more than 40 lbs. many years ago, it was in large part due to reducing my food intake (and doing occasional exercise).

And it’s what I needed at the time. I’d spent my entire life overweight, long enough to assume it was “just how I’m meant to be.” Losing weight shook me out of that notion.

Now, though, losing that weight I gained back has become a secondary goal: my primary goal is to become fit. I mean. FIT.

And I’ve been doing pretty well. It’s been easier than I expected to eliminate the extraneous cheese and sweets from my day (and I often replace them with fruit bowls or extra veggies in my meals). I’m even excited about pushing my body physically. I have little goals and for the most part I’m reaching them.

Except that when I step on the scale, it’s stuck (and sometimes sneaks up a pound or two). Whenever I see those numbers, I get discouraged.

What I don’t need right now is to be doing all this good work and then get discouraged because of the ten seconds I spend on a scale.

The plan: stay off the scale until September. Keep up my good habits (and challenge myself to ramp them up).

What I hope will happen

I want to rewire my brain to find rewards in good-food days; in my accomplishments on the bike and in my spin and H.E.A.T. classes; and in how those things change the way my body feels.

If I can start reacting more significantly to those cues, then a little time on the scale shouldn’t mean anything more than what it is: a reflection of how my body is reacting to all these good things I’m doing for it.

the week ahead

OK, let’s keep this simple!

Things I wanna get done this week:

» go to the gym every morning. It’s a big goal, but there’s also no reason I can’t do it. In fact, it’d probably do me good to have a super stable sleep/wake schedule. And who says I have to kill it every morning on the machines? The goal is just to get to the gym and do something.

» cut my hair! I had this idea recently that I could save a lot of money and learn a new skill by being my own stylist. It’s kinda bold. It’s kinda scary. But why the heck not?

Hey … and that’s it!

I’m definitely in Slowly Get Back on the Horse mode, so this seems like plenty.

the week in review & its lesson

The past week was … pretty good. I didn’t reach any of my goals from last week (I didn’t hit the gym at least four times, only two; I didn’t wear my heart rate monitor once, because I still haven’t found it; the closest I came to waking up at 5 a.m. — regardless of my intention to go the gym — was the morning I got out of bed at 5:55. “Yay! Still the 5 o’clock hour!”).

The thing that makes this all kinda OK is that the weekend was great. Seriously.

Patrick and I, as I mentioned earlier, rode our bikes up a mountain and made our first trip to a Star City Brewers Guild meeting. We met a ton of great people who brew beer. Additionally? The food spread included a lot of healthy options (I ate fresh greens, hummus, tabouli, flat bread and some spinach dip). And, AND … how many different versions of homemade lifestyle did I hear about? Among them: compost worms in someone’s house, homemade kimchi, other folks’ versions of beer breads, home-cured ham, homegrown mushrooms, hop gardens. This group meets once a month and I expect I’ll learn something new about beer and about scratchmade living at every meeting.

So that was how amazing Saturday was.

Sunday was pretty great, too: a hike halfway along Tinker Ridge; homemaking an Italian loaf, granola bars*, granola cereal; and a delicious dinner of that fresh bread, toasted and accompanied by sliced pear, tomato, roquefort, fresh mozzarella and honey.

Are you f*cking kidding me? The weekend could not have gotten much better. And it’s one I want to replicate again and again. I want a bike ride every weekend, a hike, homemaking, and good tasty nutritious eating.

Is this some version of spring fever?

this is the tasty italian, made by patrick. i’m so glad we finally started making all the bread we eat … so simple and yet such a feeling of accomplishment. below? the bread mid-mix, and a little saazie-face to get you all “awwww”-y. (this is what we see anytime we’re in the kitchen: her trying to be as close to us as possible without getting in the way. ok, sometimes getting in the way.)

In any case, as good as the weekend was, I still want to take some notes from my less-than-stellar week …

the lessons

1. I need to seriously cut the sugar out. And I need to give credit to my fruit & oat bowls for satisfying my sweet tooth.

I was pretty go-go-go all week … until Friday.

I’ve tried to bring a certain tradition into the workplace (which I borrowed from Patrick’s old job in Knoxville): #coffeefriday; celebrate payday with coffee and breakfast! It’s brilliant and important and something to look forward to every two weeks.

In past weeks I’ve brought in homemade scones and biscotti, a co-worker brought donuts another week, and yet another everyone contributed to oatmeal breakfast (bringing spices, oats, fruit, coconut, etc.)

This week? I brought in some delectable treats from Bread Craft, a sweet little shop serving up European-style goods. I highly recommend it, and I will eat there on into the future (their salads are tasty, their sandwiches hearty, their cheese is housemade!).

But between my coffee Friday morning and my ginger scone from Bread Craft, I turned crabby instantly. And then I ate another pastry in the afternoon (danish).

I knew what was happening, but I was not able/willing to fight it. I knew that sugar is no good for me first thing in the morning (or in that quantity, or unaccompanied by protein and fiber). But I picked up the scone and ate it. I knew that the reason I wanted the second pastry was because I’d eaten the first. But I ate the second pastry.

I’m going to challenge myself this week: I’m going to limit my cane-sugar intake to the little amount that’s included in my newly homemade granola-bar-squares (one ounce of granola square has about 0.1 ounce of sugar) and bittersweet chocolate. Otherwise, I’m going to look to fruit to satisfy my sweet tooth, or to forgo a sweet when I would otherwise indulge the craving.

What I hope to see is a week of me feeling full of energy and ready to take on all the challenges that await me.

here’s a nonsugar dessert I enjoyed earlier in the week: chopped pear, plain old-fashioned oats, malted barley, semisweet chocolate & honey. it was delicious and it’s the kind of thing i plan to reach for whenever i think “sweet!”

2. I absolutely must have all my morning stuffs prepped if I want to get my ass successfully and energetically to the gym. I lost my keys last week. Also, I have no idea where my heart rate monitor is. Some mornings my lunch wasn’t ready and when as I was going to bed all I could think about was how rushed I was going to feel trying to fit in a trip to the gym, getting ready for work, eating breakfast and making my lunch. I’m pretty sure that anxiety kept me in bed some mornings.

So I want to remove all simple obstacles. I aim to have: my gym clothes folded and ready for me, my keys stored alongside them, my iPod full and charged, my lunch made.

I’ll limit my goals to these two, but I think of them as very small, integral cogs in a very big machine. I hope to be running more smoothly one week from today.

* The recipe for granola bars (shown above cut into about 2-point portions) is from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I recommend just about anything that this behemoth food brand creates (Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, the America’s Test Kitchen PBS show, cooksillustrated.com). Their business model is built around being only mildly open source, so to speak. I’ll respect that and post a recipe for the granola bars only after I’ve tweaked it enough to feel like I can call it my own.

the week in review & the one ahead

First, look at this, will you? My husband made this for me for our early Valentine’s Day dinner.

5 oz. pan-fried steak topped with 1/4 oz. roquefort butter, 3 oz. homemade whole-grain bread, braised endives with bacon & cream.

Plus (PLUS!): 6 oz. sweet mashed potatoes that needed just a few more minutes to cook, and a slice of cheesecake drizzled with homemade malt syrup and garnished with pear slices.

42 points. But I had them to spend and I was happy to do it.

the things i did
It was a good week. Patrick and I shared a Saturday and Sunday cooking delicious food, riding bikes and being generally productive. We made bread using the spent grain from his beer-making! We ate lots of fruits & veggies (and have already stocked back up on mangoes, pears, apples, avocado …). We shared happy-hour beers at one of our new favorite spots, Lucky.

I’d set small goals for myself last weekend, when I was celebrating the end of my return the gym. They went something like:

» go to the gym at least four times in the week head. And I did! Now, I’m committed to being easy on myself this go-round, but I have to give credit where it’s due: when I headed to the Y this afternoon, I think I was at least 50% motivated by making sure I could say “I reached my goal!”

» do at least 45 minutes on the elliptical each gym visit / wear my heart rate monitor. Ehh. Neither. I mean, today I absolutely rocked 45 minutes *hard* on the elliptical. But other mornings I phoned it in. And I forgot my heart rate monintor every single time. C’est la vie! Next week …

speaking of next week: goals!
» four gym visits! I could push it to five trips, but four still feels like an accomplishment. And I’ll set my sights (again) on doing at least 45 minutes of cardio each visit.

» wake up at 5 a.m., regardless if I go to the gym. I was finishing at the Y one morning when I looked at the clock and realized that if I’d not decided to exercise that morning, I’d still be in bed, not even awake yet. And *then* I thought how much of my day I was giving up to sleep (when I stay in bed on my non-gym mornings, I’m almost always getting “extra” sleep … somewhere beyond the seven-or-so hours that I need to feel fully rested). And then I thought of all the things I feel like I don’t have time for. And *then* I put those two thoughts together and realized I could try to wake up at 5 every morning and get productive one way or another. So there we go. Goal! 5 a.m. wake-up call.

» a week of food photos. One thing I want to improve about this blog is more (and relevant) photos. I can do only so much justice to my adventures through words. Images are priceless, and I want to get in the habit of making’ em.

goal: enjoy food, bite by bite

I have this really irritating habit of thinking about the next meal *while* I’m eating my current one. Or thinking of dessert as I’m eating dinner. Lunch as I’m snacking on my fruit.

Basically, I almost never ever hardly ever actually enjoy the bite I’m taking *in that* moment. … And yet, wasn’t I eagerly anticipating that very bite sometime earlier in the day?

Consequently? I think that whatever part of my appetite is mental is not getting fed. (And whether or not it’s OK for appetite to be mental? … I don’t know; that’s a whole other discussion. I do know, though, that one of the reasons Weight Watchers works so well for me is that it imposes some natural order to my eating, rather than me relying solely on my constant mental desire for food).

So. Famished mental appetite. Self-perpetuating void.

one bite at a time
Isn’t this the root of most life lessons? Enjoy the moment *in* the moment. No looking back, don’t get caught up in the future. The reward is the journey, not the destination, etc., etc., etc.

It’s hard to believe that I actually have to work at enjoying my food, considering how much brainspace it occupies. Maybe the daydream of food sets an unreasonable expectation for the experience of it? …

mission! Enjoy my breakfast, full stop. Enjoy my bus ride. Enjoy my coffee. Enjoy work. Enjoy lunch. Enjoy work. Enjoy my bus ride. Enjoy dinner. Enjoy repose. Enjoy reading. Enjoy sleep. Enjoy the morning routine. Enjoy breakfast & repeat.

an idea of a schedule.

So here I am striving for increased productivity, making more healthful choices, getting my arse to the gym. And I’m *also* feeling like I don’t have the time to commit myself to those lofty goals (they’ve felt lofty, anyhow).

My bus commute is, no joke, 3 hours every day. By which I mean that from the time I leave my home to the time my butt is in my seat at work, an hour-and-a-half has passed. And then that hour-and-a-half passes again when I head home. Three hours! To be honest, I don’t mind the time. If I worked next door to my apartment, I don’t suspect that I’d be compelled to make better use of those three hours than I do now. With this commute, I rack up about 2 miles of walking, and almost two hours of reading on the bus. Reading! I’ve started reading again. On my phone. For free (yay Google eBookstore!).

So that’s pretty awesome. But put a three hour commute together with a mentally challenging job, and I have been writing off my free time as me time.

And while I *do* feel repose is healthy and necessary, I’m not sure I need quite so much of it. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if I adjust my schedule ever so slightly to include, say, exercise, the extra energy would get me doing more with those quiet moments.

So here I am wondering how the heck I’m going to fit more into my day, when someone suggests I simply sit down, write out my schedule and make it happen. They even throw out Google Calendar, which they may or may not have known is secret code for “Lindsay is about to make a date with her lover … her lover named Google.”

So here, quite simply rendered, is a sketch of my day, via Google:

It’s bare, but I did that on purpose. See, I’ve finally come to know this thing about myself: The more I get wrapped up in the minutiae of a plan, the less likely I am to follow through. I don’t know if it’s that I expend all my energy on working out details (for something that would mostly likely be best served with a little trial and error), or if it’s that I build up this huge idea that then looms over me like a guilt-cloud ready to burst. Whatever the reason, I need to change my approach.

So here is this simple calendar. The briefest outline.

Not to say I haven’t thought how it might play out in fine detail. And not to say I’m not willing to share a theory, or a dream. …

5am-7am: ymca (go!go!go!)
This’ll have me probably waking up around 4:30. Jeezus. Maybe I’ll make it 5:30 at the gym, so I can wake up at 5. But you know what? I worked in a bakery. I can do this.

Whichever way it lands, 5 or 5:30, the point is that I want to get my workout early in the day. It’s always suited me. If I plan it for the evening, I’ll invariably come up with a reason that I can skip it in favor of a walk (which I end up skipping in favor of television).

I want to start out with the basics at the gym: 30-45 minutes doing cardio, 30 minutes on weights, 20 minutes to shower, etc.

7am-8:30am: roanoke/christiansburg (write, notes & lists!)
I’ve been using both of my commutes to read and generally zone out. While I’m really grateful to be a reader again, in reviewing my day’s schedule I realized that my morning commute would be a great time to start working my brain on ideas for my blog (which I want to write more and more), the day’s tasks, the week’s adventures, the year’s big plans. I can go into the office energized by my own steam and hopefully find myself even more focused and ready for the day.

8:30am-6pm: work!
I love my job. It keeps my brain busy. It provides opportunities for me to challenge myself regularly. While I’d love to break this big block of amorphous time into pre- and post-lunch shifts, or to schedule some time to, say, write a blog entry, I know I can’t predict my schedule from one day to the next.

Better to acknowledge the truth of it (a truth I like … I work in news, and sometimes the most exciting thing to hear is “we’re gonna have a late-breaking story you have to get in tomorrow’s paper!”).

What I’ll aim to do is keep watch over my workload every day and tuck in personal productivity where it fits.

6pm-7pm: christiansburg/roanoke (read, relax)
I’ve never doubted the importance of solitude. I’ve always been comfortable spending time by myself, and in fact I think there’s something in it that feeds my very soul. Where other people may find themselves nourished by the company of others, I find myself nourished by reflection.

I’ve been reading on these bus rides, like I said, and I completely lose track of time. It’s one of the few times in the day that I step away from a clock. And without effort! It’s something to be grateful for.

7pm-9:30pm (or 10): unassigned
Why unassigned? Because this is when I come home, am greeted by a happy, snarly-faced doggy and a husband who’s likely just finished cooking dinner.

What I *will* aim for during this time every day is to stay away from the television as much as possible, to connect with my husband, and to keep feeding my brain and energy with healthful thoughts.

tasks: cook (healthful) dinner; learn something new!; prepare tomorrow’s lunch; write blog entry
These things might fit in during the evening, or possibly sometime during my workday. They’re things I know I want to get done but that need to be approached with some flexibility. (I think?)

* Cook (healthful) dinner. Why am I doing this if I mentioned earlier that my husband cooks dinner? I realized that the dinners he cooks, while delicious, often are too rich for me. At least for now, while the good-habits part of my brain is still warming back up. Once I get in full swing, I’ll probably be more mentally prepared to account for his dishes, and to portion them appropriately.

* Learn something new! I want to keep challenging myself to learn more about healthful eating, baking with whole grains, how to maximize my morning oatmeal, what exercises are best to get me flexible, strong, lean. … Obviously there’s a lot I want to know, and I think committing to at least *seeking* one new piece of information every day is a great start to building my personal encyclopedia.

* Prepare tomorrow’s lunch. Because I’m more likely to take a good lunch to work if I don’t have to fiddle with it early in the morning. Duh.

*Write blog entry. I’m so glad to be back to this blog. If any of you has kept up with my blogs since I started writing them a long long time ago, you know I have these mood swings. Write write write!! And then nothing for months. Write! Nothing. Write write! Noooooothing. I want to use this platform to record my own thoughts on healthfulness while I’m still trying to hard to attain it. I also want to reach out to other people who might have some smart ideas about how I can continue on this very long path. So it’s pretty well settled that I must commit to writing it.

Phew. That was a novel. All to come up with a little thing like a schedule …