Thank you to those who left comments on my last post "Donate to help people in Haiti". As promised I have added $5 for every one who told me that they had or were going to donate to relief efforts (so an extra $50!)

If you're like me, the disaster in Haiti has left you in tears and feeling helpless. And when I log on to facebook or twitter, and find myself going about regular every day life - I can't help but cringe a little that life simply "goes on" for the rest of us when there is such chaos, destruction and sadness for so many people.

It makes me take a look at some of the "unimportant" things in my life that my thoughts tend to revolve around so much... from this ten in ten project to get my butt into gear and get exercising again... to really wanting to move some furniture around and 're-decorate' without spending anything...

So last week I was feeling pathetic - rolling my eyes at my lazy attempts to meet my 2010 workout goals... And this week... this week I'm feeling GUILTY. Guilty because this is my big challenge. Because I have the luxury to whine about things like working out and trying to figure out who I am and what I want. Because I didn't even meet all my goals for this week.

My first goal was to get in four 20-30 minute workouts. The week started well and I did my first two no problem. Then I let everything else come first, then the girls and I came down with a stomach flu (it was brief and not too intense - but still all 3 of us were barfing - and no one got a good night's sleep that night!)... and before you know it, it was was Sunday morning and I was telling Brandon that if I was going to meet my goals I had to do 2 workouts (20 minutes each) and 2 yoga sessions (10 minutes each) later in the day. He suggested I try a 60-minute P90X "core synergistic" video - which includes a lot of yoga type moves in the warm up and cool down. So that's what I did. Just barely meeting my goal. Barely.

As for my goal to eat only one sweet a day. Oh my goodness. I thought it would be easy. I was so wrong. Brownies, cookies, cake, ice cream, apple crisp... I think I ate 5 molasses ginger snap cookies one day (and probably a brownie)! I polished off the chocolate and caramel ice cream another day... and I'm almost positive that the only day I limited my sweet intake to "1" was Monday. And I'm not even a sweets girl. I prefer salt. It's as if the idea of not having the sweets made me crave them so much more. This has got to be why diets don't work.

So... here we go again. I am determined to continue exercising so I'm keeping my first goal and will do at least 4 workouts over the next week. I'm also determined to start cutting back on my calorie intake (with plans to start weaning Meaghan soon, I just won't be able to eat to my hearts content anymore :-( Nursing her has been using up lots and lots of my calories!!) so I'm going to try a little harder this week to be disciplined and truly limit the sweets to 1 per day (2 if it's something really small!).

And... like many of you I'm sure - my thoughts and prayers will be with the people of Haiti as I go about my week. When I exercise or avoid my sweets I will remember to be thankful that these are the trivial challenges that I have in my life. I will remember to count my blessings.

A.