I am ridiculous. I got up early this morning and made a big old chart with some tables at the bottom so that I may gleefully track my fitness progress on my road to the dress fitting. I’m a little less than four weeks away, so I need to be super vigilant about eating clean (isn’t that the new buzzword kids are using these days?) and getting in some super tough workouts every day of the week. Except for one day, during which I let myself recover from the pounding.

I would also like to work in some kind of planned “cheat meal” per week, but maybe that will be just whenever we go out. Since we’re old now. And we never go out. Which is actually kind of fine with me, because we bought the world’s supply of meat on our last grocery shopping trip, so we’ve been cooking fairly often.

Anyway. So the charts. The whole thing-uh-muh-bobber fits on one piece of paper. The big graph is color-coded in pink and green – pink for weight, and green for bodyfat. Right now, they are both moving in the right direction (downwards) so I’m a bit giddy about that. Although my butt hurts. On account of the soreness. From working my glutes silly. Just silly, I tell ya.

And then I have three tables below the graph so that I can chart my measurements (arms, chest, waist, hips, blah blah blah) every week.

Steve is so supremely disturbed by this behavior. He told me I have OCD in two areas. One being this whole charting business. I can’t argue there. The other is with the working out, and spending time thinking about what I’m going to do in my workout, and then working out, and then thinking about the workout afterwards.

Last night, as I was going to sleep, all I could think about is work. It’s my life right now, since the channel is launching on June 4th and so there’s much to be done. I was done thinking about work though, as I was drifting off to sleep, and so I strove to find something else to think about.

I won’t lie. Fond memories of my work out helped me fall asleep.

But soon. Soon I will be able to do pull-ups. And then I’ll feel badass.

And then the channel will launch. And hopefully pull-ups won’t be the greatest thing to happen to me.

First off, I would just like to say that I can’t believe it’s only freaking Tuesday. For the love - can this week go any slower.

However, after yesterday’s weird exhaustion, I’m feeling way, way better today. I got up at 6:30 and headed to the gym where I ran for 10 minutes, did some weights and then ran for another 10. I finally feel totally on track for getting my bodyfat percentage back down around 22%. (I’m currently at about 28%.) The question is, how fast can I do it?

I feel like I have a ton of energy today, which I have needed every last bit of to get through the number of hurdles chucked in front of me today.

Tonight I think I’ll put on the sneaks and go for a walk before dinner so I can unwind and relax a bit. I need to learn a little stress management, because my days are so entirely crammed that I’m not going to be long for this world if I don’t figure out how to chill out on cue. (And I mean a way that doesn't involve guzzling booze.) Tips and ideas are welcome.

My stress dreams are becoming much more vivid again. Last night, I dreamt that arsonists were torching all the Toy R’ Us stores in Manhattan, one by one. Except that Toys R’ Us was a restaurant chain and there was one in each neighborhood. And location-wise, we were guessing that we were actually inside the next target, so we had to scramble to get out before it went down in flames.

Yeah. That doesn’t make any sense to me either. I went to bed at 8 p.m. last night and slept until 7:30 this morning (so much for my morning workout) and even though I got almost 12 hours of sleep, I still feel so incredibly and indescribably exhausted today. But I will try to describe it anyway. I feel drugged and sorted of floaty and like my hands aren’t connected to my brain. And I have a sore throat and a runny nose. So I think what this means is that I’m sick.

My guess is that I had best do the work that absolutely HAS to get done today, and then I need to get my butt back home to beat from the bug.

The wedding dress. It has arrived. And now. Now I must have a fitting. Of the dress. On June 11th.

What does this mean? This means that I can no longer procrastinate on the tightening & toning.

The last time I put the dress on (well, the floor model anyway) I wasn’t all that happy with my arms and back. They were kind of smoothed out and rounded. I want to see muscles. I want to be a ripped, hot, fit and toned bride. Not a mushy or squashy bride.

So now the heat is on, and I need to get down to business in terms of watching what I put in my mouth and working out with dedication.

I’ve got a month to renovate the old bod. Wish me luck.

PS: The brain is back. My stress dream last night involved my sitting next to Sarah Jessica Parker at a crowded party in which the only toilet was in the middle of the room, which happened to be about a foot from where we were sitting. It was, in a word, horrifying. 

Normally I have a wild imagination and I tend to be very creative – always coming up with new ideas. This part of me is taking a nap right now while the nitty-gritties of work have taken over my life …moved in temporarily like a hard-on-his-luck relative who promises to only stay a week while he gets back on his feet, but a month later his smelly feet are still on your coffee table, and now you’re out of beer.

We were in a brainstorming meeting yesterday for a full hour, and my tinkering noggin came up with exactly zero ideas in a room full of 20 people, each with their own flashes of brilliance. And on a conference call, my boss apologized for speaking for me, but I only felt grateful that she had, as I’m not sure it occurred to me to speak.

Even my stress dreams have become boring. Where there used to be fanciful nightmares more terrifying than reality, I’m now saddled with a dull vision of a grey user interface, all buttons and frames and squares like a 1950’s version of Tetris floating behind my eyelids at night while I dream about an invisible data factory, pumping out information into the ether.

I can see the clouds breaking up in the distance. I have a great team behind me that’s rarin’ to go. Iterative releases are working their magic. Life will become mine again soon, and my brain will be freed up once more so I can see the bigger picture (or at least the medium-sized picture). Hopefully, very soon, my mind will come back down to earth.

Come back, brain, come back!