Crafting Goddess sets a new goal

You know things are getting crafty when the glue gun and pipe cleaners come out.  And yes, that happened today.  I have been spending the past 3 days completely reorganizing and rearranging my classroom, and I have also now deemed myself "Crafting Goddess."  One day spent on Pinterest a week ago, and now I just can't stop myself.  I'd show you pictures of all my classroom functional crafts, but I want to wait until the whole room is put together (probably late next week), and then I'll pretend to be a teaching blogger for a day and give you a tour of my "First Grade Garden."  So cheesy and amazing at the same time.

While I've been crafting away, I've had lots of time to do some thinking about the upcoming school year.  As with any new beginning, I've set a few goals in my head about how I want this year to go.  Some of these are teaching-oriented, so I won't bore you with them here.  Also, as soon as my first graders walk in the door on September 5th, I know that I'm going to get caught up in the nitty-gritty day-to-day routines, assessments, etc. of the classroom and forget about most of them.  I'm especially afraid my sudden burst of craftiness is going to slide away due to lack of time and energy.  But I'll worry about that later.

Right now I'm going to publicly declare a new goal I've set for myself and therefore make it impossible for me to forget about it or fail (right?).  So here it is:

BIG GOAL FOR THE 2012-2013 SCHOOL YEAR:  Become a morning person!!

I'm not a morning person.  I hate waking up to an alarm, because I hate waking up at any time besides when I actually want to wake up.  I know, I know.  I can hear all your brains thinking "just wait until you get married," or "just wait until you have kids."  And I know that I've totally lucked out by owning a dog that loves sleeping in as much as I do.

Can you see the time on the clock?  7:30.  I've
been up, face washed, teeth brushed, dressed,
etc.  But she has no intention of moving until
she hears the clink of her leash.

But right now, I'm single, I have no human children, and on non work days I can wake up whenever I want to.  Which is usually around 8 or 8:30 nowadays.  Up until a year or two ago, my preferred wake up time was between 10 and 12.  Now I'm a super mature 28 and a half year old.

And this is all well and good, but now that summer is ending, most days are not non work days.  I've been toying with the idea of moving some workouts to the morning, but have settled on the plan of trying to walk Lucy for at least 30 minutes in the morning instead.

There are several reasons why this will be extremely difficult for me (in addition to ones I've already covered):
1)  Because of my long commute, I already "wake up" between 5:30 and 5:45 on most days (don't worry, I'll explain why "wake up" is in quotes momentarily).
2)  Very soon, Seattle will hit the rainy months.  Outdoor activities, especially in sleepy morning hours, are no fun.
3)  We're encroaching on winter, which means dark mornings.
4)  Numbers 2 and 3 combined equal dark rainy mornings.  This deserves it's own spot on the list.
5)  I have a love/hate relationship with my snooze button.

Let's elaborate on the snooze button.  I love my snooze button.  I set my alarm 20-30 minutes earlier than I need to, just so I can snooze.  I feel like I'm tricking myself into thinking that I am getting extra sleep this way.  Every morning, I do fancy mathematical calculations in my half asleep brain to determine whether or not I can snooze just one more time.  Often these calculations are wrong, and I end up rushing through morning preparations to get out the door on time.

I also set my alarm clock 10 minutes ahead as another way to trick myself into getting out of bed earlier.  Again, this does not work.  I add this extra 10 minutes into my fancy mathematical calculations every morning, probably making them even more inaccurate.

All of this "tricking myself" is not paying off.  I've been doing the same thing for years, and it obviously doesn't work.  So instead of beating my head against the same wall over and over, I am going to make a choice to change things.

Yesterday, I officially decided to ban the snooze button.  I want to hear my alarm go off and get up.  Just like that.  No biggie.  I tried it this morning, and was semi-successful.  I was just about to get up to the first alarm when I remembered that the clock was set 10 minutes ahead, then I told myself that just one snooze was ok.  Seven minutes into the snooze, I theoretically slapped myself on the hand, got up, and immediately set my clock back to the real time.

Tomorrow will be another test.  Will the snooze button defeat me?  Because if it defeats me at this week's 7:00 wake up time, I know it will defeat me at the normal 5:30 wake up.  So the rest of the week is a test of strength between me and the snooze button.  I think this will be harder than running a marathon.  And I feel I have a right to say that, because I've run 3 of them.

I'm going to take my new school year goal in baby steps.  This is the "practice" week.  It's worked out well waking up a little earlier than I choose to, and I've taken Lucy for 30-45 minute walks before heading into work.  I've also given myself 2 hours before needing to leave.  I need to cut this down to an hour an a half unless I want to wake up at 5 AM.  And I don't.

And now I'm going to publish this for the incredibly small number of people who read my blog so that you can hold me accountable for magically become a morning person in the next year.  If I fail, you can all publicly chide me.

And because this is supposed to be a blog about running, here are my splits from today's speedy run with Erica through the streets of Ballard.

The last .28 mile is super slow because it is a HUGE hill.  And I ran lots
of hills for yesterday's run, so I did not push myself.  One day I will
magically love hills.  But that is not this year's goal.

I've been back to running my last few runs in the 9:00-9:30 zone, so it was nice to head out on the streets with Erica so she could push me to run a little faster, even if she didn't mean to :)

And speaking of running and other crazy things, a HUGE GOOD LUCK to Ironman friends MacKenzie and Kelly who are doing Ironman Canada and Jason and Joe who are doing Ironman Louisville on Sunday.  You are all amazing and will do an awesome job, and I know for sure because as I snoozed for 7 minutes this morning, I dreamed all about it.  

PARTICIPATION TIME!!  Do you have a new goal now that the summer is ending?  Tell me all about it!