waiting for the siren's call

May for me will be about returning order to chaos, and about being still. Today was a good preview: a quiet day at home, with my only excursion being a yoga class. My plan:

1. Tomorrow I'm starting the 2012 Whole Living Action Plan, which is a 21 (or 28) day cleanse/detox program. I'm not eliminating caffeine, but I will be limiting myself to one cup of coffee per day. And I'm not committing to totally eliminating alcohol, but I won't be drinking at home, and I'll be sticking to vodka/soda when I go out. At least then I can pretend to be hydrating? I'm planning on blogging about it here, so my apologies if you're not interested.

2. Take advantage of a month or so off from race training to establish fitness routines that involve: yoga with my friend Annette, riding my bike to work at least once/week (8-10 miles each way), and running. I'm also working my way through 200 situps and 100 pushups. I started the former a week or two ago, though I think my initial form wasn't actually 'good', thus sticking me in the program at week 4 instead of week 1. That's fine - I'll just start over with better form after I finish a first round. I had been working through the latter with friends, then took some time off during the moving chaos, then did the pretest again and came up with fewer pushups than in my initial pretest two months ago. Very discouraging. Oh well - I'll carry on. I also signed up for Health Month because I need another place to track stuff. Come keep me accountable!

3. Establish household maintenance routines using this Apartment Therapy plan that breaks cleaning down into manageable time boxes: 20 minutes per day, every day. I don't know that a bathroom used by one person really needs to be cleaned every four days, but I'll try it! I also ordered a vacuum today because hello, carpets and cat. I've lived here almost a month. It's time to get shit in order, and get used to maintaining my house like an adult, not like the slob I was in my rented room in A2.

4. Make a plan to wipe out my credit card debt in the next year. Between travel, moving, medical bills, and needing to buy stuff for the new apartment, I've racked up around $6,000 in credit card debt. I can take care of that in the next year, but I need to commit to it, and I need to stop buying stuff that I want but don't really need right now. Like a TV that is less than 10 years old and more than 13" across. Or a new iPod, since mine died and I can't load podcasts onto the Shuffle that Shane handed down. Or a Boxee. Or a coffee table. Or more new dresses and shoes and other clothes since I'm sick of all of mine.

Really, all of this is about getting my life in order after six plus months of chaos. It feels important. It is important.