This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Slim-Fast. All opinions are 100% mine.

I hate dieting. And it’s not that I don’t have the will power or the drive to be successful! I just lack the time and ability to stick with something. While I am not down to my target weight, I have definitely dropped around 30 unwanted pounds and feel so much better for it. But I am always looking for alternatives; I need something easier that I can stick with on my long days at work.

The Slim-Fast 3-2-1 Plan is something of a curiosity for me. It’s all about the packaged deals in regards to meal plans without being things I need to worry about heating up, storing in the fridge (not forgetting in the fridge), etc.

3 snacks (such as Slim-Fast 100-calorie snack bars, veggies, fruits, or nuts.)

2 Slim-Fast shakes or meal bars

1 balanced meal in the 500-calorie count range

Products are available in the pharmacy section of grocery and retail stores nationwide, including Wal-Mart, Target, and even online at Amazon.com! Talk about making it easy to obtain.

Slim-Fast shakes are great for hunger control, providing up to four hours of it and it offers 10 grams of protein, 5 grams of fiber, and 24 essential vitamins/minerals. I think I’m going to have to try out both of the chocolate shake flavors: Creamy Milk Chocolate and Rich Chocolate Royale. Yum!

At the very least, it’s worth a shot. It can’t really get much easier than throwing the shakes and snacks into my bag the night before work or even keeping a stockpile in my desk drawer at work. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have found my Thing. Just maybe this is the boost I need to get me to my target weight loss goal and by this time next year? I’ll be wowing everyone at the holiday gatherings.

I just have like zero energy. I wound up in the dentist chair on Tuesday for a two and a half hour session where they did a root canal and removed the remains of my broken tooth. The antibiotics they gave me wind up making me feel a little icky and then I started getting really severe heartburn. Apparently that is normal? Thanks for the warning, pharmacist. On top of that, they gave me vicodin for the pain. I would say that I’ve never slept better but Charlie has been even more obnoxious lately and is keeping me awake. I have stitches in my mouth. Ugh.

*curls back up in bed*

But yes, this and more would be why I failed so hardcore at the 30-day posting thing. And NaNoWriMo. Whatevs.

Stay Classy, Internets.
♡ Kristen

This past week, I got hit hard with a migraine that kind of spelled out my whole week in regards to how much of a disaster it was going to be. Now, I am no stranger to headaches and migraines are simply ‘worse than a headache’ for me. Headaches I can tolerate. Migraines knock me on my ass. I had woken up on Monday morning around 3am and could feel the migraine coming on. My first line of defense is to curl up under a blanket (darkness and warmth FTW) and try to sleep it off. Considering it was 3am, I was able to fall back asleep fairly easily. When my alarm went off at 6am, the barest amount of light was peeking in through a crack in my curtains from where Charlie was peering out the window.

Nothing impossible to deal with. I got up, winced as I flicked on the bathroom light for my shower. The curtain tends to hide the light a bit so it wasn’t quite as painful and I knew I could just get through it. Wrapped a towel around me when I was done and headed back to the bedroom. I turned on the light in my bedroom and just… dropped to a crouched position. My head felt like it had exploded, my eyes burned, my stomach churned, and I wanted to die. Needless to say, I wound up calling out from work and spent the next four or five hours under my comforter trying to sleep off the worst of the migraine. At least the light sensitivity went away.

The weekend came and I felt the tension coming back, signaling a similar migraine was on its way. I tried to do all I could to roll my shoulders, to dig into various points, to do anything to relieve the building tension. At work last night, the headache started up again and by the time I got home I was exhausted and ached all over. I don’t exactly have the funds right now to be spoiling myself and a massage is definitely not in the normal budget but I called Massage Envy and scheduled an appointment. To keep the cost down, I am going to wind up signing up for their monthly membership and maybe by doing so and going every month I can get back to keeping these nasty little things at bay. It’s only 11am and my massage is at 2pm (with Michael) – I am definitely looking forward to getting someone to just dig into my shoulders and neck to release the nasty amount of tension there. It’s a simple, but somewhat expensive fix. Yet it will be totally worth it if I can keep the migraines from returning.

And a side note, Happy Anniversary Simple Dude! I am a proud Simpleton. Yes, yes. There is a contest running right now but I really do enjoy reading his entries. His brand of humor is awesome and there are random posts that catch me off guard and make me smile. I can’t say that about many bloggers. Hell, I know I am not one because I don’t exactly write for an audience but for the therapy. Keep it up, SD. Here’s to another year.

Stay Classy, Internets.
♡ Kristen

P.S. having issues with that first word appearing in the wrong place. I give up. *kicks it*

Yesterday, I decided to pamper myself a little bit. I went and got my hair trimmed. My hair, overall, is kind of a mess. The thinning out that was done almost a year ago is now growing back in and it’s just… well it was a bad idea. But I don’t regret it because at the time, I was fully ready to just shave my head.

Again.

Anyway, from there I went to a random nail salon and got a pedicure. My toes are purple! FINE. My toe nails are purple. But I like saying that my toes are purple. Then things got awkward. I don’t know if the woman doing my feet realized what she was doing or what was going through her head. Maybe she watches too much porn. But suddenly she went from massaging my leg to massing my foot to rubbing my foot to… well she looked like she was trying to give me a handjob. On my foot. In my head, I was like “…” and then suddenly she looks up at me with the weirdest expression like she was trying to be sultry and licked her upper lip and proceeded to ask if it felt good.

UHM.

AWKWARD.

Seriously?

So back to my happy place I go: I HAZ PURPLE TOES.

Stay Classy, Internets.
♡ Kristen

What a week. Robby wound up in the hospital. As there wasn’t much I could do except shuttle Angel to and from the hospital and eventually pick up Robby when he was discharged, I felt rather lost. It didn’t help that I was still recovering from the previous week’s panic attack. I couldn’t quite get a hold on my empathy and couldn’t quite keep Angel’s residual and current emotions at bay. I wound up getting very poor and broken sleep all week.

This sort of culminated into my being utterly and completely exhausted each day. I wound up taking a nap today after work and I failed at even that; I tossed and turned the whole time but was so completely exhausted that my body was pained and getting up was not exactly an option.

I had a job interview on Friday which went awesomely. I should be hearing back from them this coming week. Hopefully by Friday. But when I say that it went so well, I mean that it wasn’t even an interview. It was more like a great conversation between the hiring managers and myself. They were making me laugh, I was making them laugh… the whole thing just seemed to be like it was a place and position that I could absolutely see myself in. Here’s hoping!

Stay Classy, Internets.
♡ Kristen

Monday saw me really cracking down on the newest adventure: Weight Watchers. I had started it on Sunday but it was more of an official start for me on Monday because I knew that I was going to do it and it wasn’t just looking at the website to familiarize myself with it. Sure, I had started late in the day on Sunday but I had been able to plug in what I’d had to eat and drink; I was still under my daily goal with my points. Sweet!

Tuesday and Wednesday were fairly uneventful, just more of the same stuff as usual. Thursday I finished up working on the new layout for my blog with the finishing touches being added on Friday and Saturday, thanks to Angel tweaking a particular element that I hadn’t gotten to yet. It should make things easier for later template updates.

I wound up going to bed early last night because I had suddenly found myself sitting in front of my computer and falling asleep while sitting up. I read more of PS I Love You while arguing with Charlie over whether or not he could sleep over the book while I was trying to read it. Apparently he was telling me that it was time to go to sleep. I tossed the book aside and snuggled Charlie until he decided he’d had enough and retreated to his shelf in the bookcase. That particular shelf was kept empty for him because he had claimed it. I tell Charlie to ‘go to bed’ and that’s where he goes. It’s adorable.

I woke up initially at 5am and realized that I was awake but so not ready to get up. I finally got out of bed around 5:30am, used the potty, went downstairs, and got myself a glass of milk while Trouble went out to do his business and get some water. He went back in his kennel and I went back to bed when we were both done. By the time my alarm clock went off, I didn’t want to get out of bed. Alas, I had to work so I dragged my ass out and did my Sunday shift. It was a slow day and really boring.

One thing that I managed to do every day was to take at least a 10-minute walk. Some days were 20 minutes, one was almost 60, but I got in at least 10 minutes each day. Walking isn’t much but I am a bit leery about just how much my knee can take. So I am taking it easy and just moving; I can work my way up to more ‘strenuous’ activities later. The important thing is that I am making it a routine and I am doing it daily.

A week after starting Weight Watchers, I have lost 7 pounds. I do not anticipate this rate to be any kind of normal but it is an excellent start and it gives me hope. I feel positive. I feel empowered.

Stay Classy, Internets.
♡ Kristen

I officially feel like white trash. I broke my tooth back in 2009 and couldn’t get the funds together or the nerves to get the root canal and crown. Well a couple days ago, it broke the rest of the way. As in… in half. There was the back. And there was the front.

Today the front part fell out. It is the side that people see. It is the side that everyone looks at in those rare moments where I flash my not-so-pearly-whites! Now there is a hole. Only, it’s not a hole where the tooth is just gone. No. Instead, there is the back-half of the tooth still planted firmly in place, taunting everyone to take a look at the redneck redhead.

So. I has a sad. Because I feel very self-conscious and self-pitying right now.

Writing is very therapeutic for me. It is something tangible, something that I can do with my hands. For some reason, working with my hands in some way has always been something that I’ve enjoyed because it was a stress reliever. But writing with a pen or pencil on paper has always been a different type of therapy. Since my creative muse has been a little ditsy lately, writing for myself has been a little out of the question. I cannot seem to focus on my writing. I tend to move to penpal letters in this case but my hands are so unused to holding a writing implement for that long so my hands begin to cramp. I used to be able to write for hours at a time. Do you see what computers have done to us? Anyway, in regards to penpals, I still haven’t quite found someone that I’ve really connected with. So it is frustrating to feel like I have to write to someone I have zero interest in keeping contact with. What is the point then? There isn’t. So I just stop writing to them.

I am thinking of taking up crochet or knitting. It is something fairly easy, once the basics are learned, and it is definitely something that I can do with my hands. I talked to my friend the other night about where she learned and if she had any suggestions for me. She was able to tell me what basic supplies I should arm myself with as well as how she was self-taught. Since I love to learn by doing, this method is often the most fun for me. By trial and error, I often learn the mechanics more quickly than if someone just shows me and talks me through it. Learn by doing, that’s my motto! Besides, it always feels so much more rewarding.

I wound up sleeping for about four hours tonight (last night?) for a nap because I just didn’t feel right physically. I was nauseated, run down, and had a migraine threatening to show up and wreak havoc. So, sure, I avoided the migraine and my body enjoyed the sleep, but damn if I didn’t just completely eff my self in my ability to sleep through the night. Sigh. Awesome.

Meanwhile, Veracity has opened up its TCG. Feel free to come on over and check things out. Kristen sent you

I didn’t go to bed until around 5:30 in the morning. I just wasn’t tired and couldn’t have even gone to sleep if I’d tried. So what was the point in stressing myself out by laying in bed and staring at the ceiling? So I worked on the project I mentioned previously. Nothing much, just a few things here and there.

I finally fell asleep around 6:30 or so and woke up three hours later with the full knowledge that I wasn’t going to sleep any longer than that. So I got up.

I’m running off of three hours of sleep and it would be really nice to know why my body has suddenly decided to pull this crap. I don’t get it.

My wrist is killing me. My shoulder has been hurting all day, to the point where the pain is so severe that it is shooting down my arm and effecting my wrist and hand. It’s just one of those knots that is apparently in the perfect spot to cause me the most amount of pain possible.

I had all these intentions of being productive at the computer for a new project I’m working on with the girls (Angel, Jenn, and Mika) but the pain was so severe that it hurt just to sit at the computer. So I watched some random television with Robby. Something from Shark Week and then something about huge cargo ships that I believe was from the modern marvels series. I don’t even know. To be honest, I don’t remember much of the evening.

Mika arrives in a few days! It will be Halloween this weekened. And then November pops in to say HI! Man. Time is flying!