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Thursday, September 11, 2003
what a great day
I just had such a good day. It shows how petty I am, I suppose, that being able to wear clothes I hadn't been able to in the past can make me feel so happy. But there it is. Not only the "too small" jeans, either. After I got home from Bible study tonight I got out a denim dress from that same box -- a short dress with blue and white flowers embroidered on it -- feminine yet sturdy yet sexy. T had told me that he'd like it if I could wear it -- back when I couldn't even button it closed. It fit like a dream tonight. I was so pleased.
OK, I just had a call back to reality. I had to go make my washing machine behave. You know how some washers have a buzzer that goes off if the load is off-balance? This one doesn't need a buzzer, because when it is off-balance it makes as much noise as a mounted cavalry running through my linoleumed laundry room would. And of course since the laundry room is right next to both kids' rooms, and both kids are both asleep and afraid of loud noises that wake them in the night, I had to go make the darn thing shut up. T would sleep through just about anything and it even had him in there, blinking at me, asking me if I needed help. Hmm, maybe I should empty the garbage in the middle of the night, and make a lot of noise at it....
Anyway, back to my great day. Not only was there the weight loss thing, but school went really nicely, and for dinner, we had a picnic at the park in town for which I made deli sandwiches. And T and I had a big argument about something stupid last night, so we were still in the tender gentle happy make-up stage today.
The kids and I watched Return to Snowy River today, which also added to the overall mood of cheerfulness. Perhaps it is silly of me, but I really love a good pretty horse movie. Nice scenery and running horses just give me a happy little thrill. (I should start making a list of all the things I say that about!). Really. I love watching the Snowy River movies, and The Black Stallion (which is a really rare thing: a movie that is better than the book), and this version of Black Beauty that we bought from the bargain DVD bin at Wal-Mart. When I was little I was the same way (I'll have to find Phar Lap and National Velvet and see if they're as pretty as I remember them being). The dialogue can be hokey as anything, but if there's pretty scenery, nice music, and plenty of horsey eye candy, I can't help enjoying watching it. Hey, I never said I was a movie purist. Luckily I have a daughter as an excuse. :)
I'm starting to feel hungry so I'm going to get a good drink of water and go to bed before I start munching. (must forget about Cadbury bar in fridge. Must forget.)
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Wednesday, September 10, 2003
The Too Small Jeans
Remember how I kept telling myself I wasn't going to break out the Too Small For Me clothes for another 7 lb? Well, I lost my resolve. For lack of a better place to keep them, I had stored them in a box, which was sitting in the schoolroom near the pencil sharpener. I was just back there sharpening pencils (there should be a law against putting broken pencils in pen cups!), and saw the the top of a pair of jeans poking out. Lovely nice dark blue size 32 jeans, which my mom gave to me. They'd been given to her by a girl she works with, who'd, um, gotten too slender for them. They are very new, and more expensive than I'd ordinarily buy. When Mom first gave them to me a couple of months ago, I tried them on but couldn't even button them and I was really upset with myself about that. At any rate, as I mentioned, my resolve flew out the window and before I knew it I was pulling them on under my sundress. And buttoning them. And zipping them. WITHOUT ANY EFFORT. They fit! I look great! I keep going and looking in the mirror at myself. Not in a "damn I'm hot" way exactly, but just, "wow, I honestly was not sure I'd ever see myself look that way again." I also pulled on a ribbed knit tank top from the bag. The color (a kind of vivid rose pink) is really not me, but the style looks much better on me than it when I originally tried the shirt on.
OK, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Just had to share before I exploded. :) It is so nice to have my discipline paying off in a tangible way.
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Monday, September 08, 2003
Every homeschooling mom's dream day
We have just had a monumental day in school. I have to make record of the fact that my 7-year-old jiggly, wiggly, energetic little boy did all his work quickly and correctly, without one single moan, whine, or complaint. This is indeed a red-letter day.
C also did her preschool things nicely and well. But she is young enough to actually be excited about school every day (I remember the days when my son was like that!) so that is more common.
On other topics: I am tired of weighing myself. I want to just throw my scale through the window. It just says the SAME STUPID -15 WEIGHT every time I step on it. It must be the scale's fault, right? I keep swearing I will only weigh on Thursdays, which is the weigh-in day for one of my weight loss online support groups. But I go past the scale every time I use the bathroom and the lure is just too great (hmm! maybe I will have miraculously lost two pounds in the past hour!). But if I only weighed once a week and I saw no progress at all after a whole week, I would be at risk of totally derailing myself with discouragement. This way it's a daily challenge -- "I will whip that rebellious scale into submission and make it show me a lower weight tomorrow!" I have been so good and careful. It's not fair. T is also losing weight -- he has lost about the same percentage of his goal as I have, and he's already breaking out his next-size-down jeans. Which is appealing, but I can't help being a wee bit jealous of the obviousness of his success. What am I doing wrong?
Still and all, it's better to be staying at -15 than to be going back up -- so I will keep working at it, even if all I ever do is maintain the same loss. And sooner or later I will have to lose more -- I have confidence in my scientific methods. ;-)
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
just stuff
We had a potluck tonight with our Bible study group, and I was pretty good, but I'm so used to being strict with myself that I feel like I was really bad. I ate a small square of lasagna, two different kinds of green salad, and a few small slices of sourdough bread. I have not weighed myself today. That is supposed to be a feeling of freedom but it's really not; I feel panicked. What if I gained 5 pounds? What if I'm back at my starting weight?? aaaauugggh!!
I will not go weigh myself. I will not weigh myself. I will not weigh myself.
I got one thing on my list of goals for this week done yesterday: I went through the boxes of clothes I had lying around, which the kids had outgrown, and sorted them out and got some of them delivered to where they're going. I do still need to get ready for school next week though. That's tomorrow's job -- cleaning the room, getting it organized, and figuring out what our first week will be like. The next day is the day that our family looks forward to second only to Christmas: THE FAIR. How exciting. It is a lot like Christmas; you love it when you're a kid and then you love it even more as an adult watching your kids love it. And the next day is the destruction derby, which is not only fun, but it's also the end of destruction derby season which means I have my husband around on evenings and weekends again. ;-)
ah, my radio program is over, and I'm practically falling asleep sitting up. I'm going to bed... I will not weigh myself on the way by, I will not...
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Tuesday, August 26, 2003
death to all ants
Music: Loreena McKennitt, "The Highwayman" (amazing, wonderful song)
Mood: Virtuous Again
Another pat on my back for this evening: Not only did I spend two hours cutting out reflective sheeting into letters for T's derby car (major brownie points there), but I also cleaned the kitchen pretty thoroughly. OK, so this was partly to declare war on the ants who have finally found their way into our house. I don't know if it was the storm last night that decided it for them or what, but after a summer of being the envy of all who knew us, we ended a long ant-free streak today. Little beasts. They are cheerfully carting back mouthfuls (or whatever) of Terro to their nest, wherever it is. Terro is the best ant killer in the world.
This is day, what, ten? eleven? of being stuck at the same weight. I am combining advice from friends and I'm going to do two things differently: First, I am going to aim for 1400 calories per day instead of 1200, to help avoid putting my body into we're-starving-save-the-fat mode. I should still be able to lose at that calorie level, especially if I keep getting some good exercise. And also, I'm going to make sure that I don't eat too many carbs (note, I am not going to do low carbs really, just I *had* been having a lot of them), and that the ones I do eat are mostly from whole grains and things. We'll see if those two things, plus the resolution of the possible hormonal reason for the stalemate, don't help. (if they don't I will scream. Really loudly. And then I will go see a doctor.)
Meanwhile it is again getting late (shameful, absolutely shameful, how that keeps happening every day) and I got a notable lack of sleep last night. More tomorrow...
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Monday, August 25, 2003
what I'm reading, how my diet's going, stuff like that
Mood: Cheerful
Music: "The Kiss" from The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack
I took a good brisk walk this evening, 9/10ths of a mile each way, in just under 15 minutes going downhill and just over 15 minutes going uphill. And that is REALLY up hill, for a lot of it. I didn't do the whole almost-two-miles at once, though; I had a choir practice in between. I realized today just exactly how much exercise there is in doing stuff around the house. Cleaning my room this morning for example -- lots of bending and lifting, and I kind of exaggerated the motions, if you know what I mean, to get more exercise out of them (with caution so as not to hurt myself though). I'm sure it looked kind of silly but oh well, I was the only one looking ;). I am SO turning into my mother (and that is a good thing; I adore my mother) in so many subtle little ways. That is exactly the sort of thing she'd do if she thought of it.
All summer I've been on this committee trying to figure out how we're going to run and fund our community chorus in the future, since we were being dropped by the college which had supported us in the past. We had meetings, earnest discussions, lists of options and flow-chart like if/then scenarios worked out. Then the powers that be went to actually withdraw the class from the college to have it transferred somewhere else when we had finally, after all this, decided what to do, and the college decided not to drop us after all. Which simplifies things but sure as heck makes all those meetings look like wasted time. Oh well. :)
I am reading four or five books at once right now. I had resolved that this year I would do almost no re-reading, and I would read a bunch of new stuff. It lasted about seven months but now I'm buried in a bunch of comfort reads. To be fair, two of them are for online discussion groups, and one I'm in the process of reading to my dad. But I'm in the middle of Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, Silas Marner by George Eliot, Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati, and The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. I kind of wore myself out on new-to-me books after a flurry of reading a bunch of Maeve Binchy and Elizabeth Berg. I'm temporarily a bit burned out on them and there hasn't been another new-to-me author to kindle my interest yet. What I should do is go through the books I own but haven't read, one by one, and read them all. The problem is, some of them are torturous -- like Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, and War and Peace (or anything by Tolstoy for that matter), or anything by Henry James. I get a few pages in and can't stand it any longer, and put them aside to try again in a few years when I've grown a bit or when the kids aren't demanding so much attention. And I feel like a total loser for doing that, and then I go re-read an Austen or Jane Eyre to prove to myself that I'm not a Harlequin-consuming twit who can't handle real literature. sigh. (Besides, if I start perusing my bookshelf on a regular basis I get sidetracked by the discovery that I'm really in just the right mood to read that book for the five-thousandth time. So that's kind of a self-defeating idea)
I had a "first" today. I had to eat a bit of something to put me over my minimum calorie consumption. If that 1200 calories thing is untrue, someone tell me! Anyway, I totaled up my meals (had no snacks) and found that I was only at 1150 or so. So I had a root beer float with diet Barq's and sugar-free vanilla ice cream -- total 100 calories from the ice cream. Yummers. The thing was, I wasn't feeling hungry or munchy and would just as soon have gone without but I don't want to make weight loss difficult or unsafe by eating fewer than what my body supposedly needs in order to avoid burning muscle and making me all weak. Again, if that's some kind of dieter's myth, puh-LEEZE let me in on that...
oh goodness. I just looked at my computer clock and it is far, far later than I thought it would be. Off to bed!
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virtue is its own reward; still stuck; LT's faith
I feel all virtuous. I told the kids there would be no videos for them or computer for me until our rooms were clean. Well, theirs are cleaner than they were, and they are watching 101 Dalmatians as a reward for their lots of hard work. And my room is actually really CLEAN; I cleaned our closet, cleared off the dresser, organized my bookshelves, the whole shebang. And I am ashamed of how many dirty clothes were heaped around in there. I do have another couple projects I want to at least start today -- I want to sort my "thin clothes" by size and label the boxes, and I want to get the school room clean and organized and ready for school next week. Oh, three: I also want to go through the kids' outgrown clothes and get them delivered to the people or places where they will end up.
Yesterday I was sure I had gained 2 lbs. Today it is gone and I'm back at -12. I'm glad that the 2 lbs have mysteriously disappeared but I am tired of being stuck here. I really hope that this is related to hormones and that in a week the weight will start to fall off again. Otherwise I am going to have to start thinking about believing all those people who are evangelizing me about their low carb or no carb or food combination diets --seems like half the time you tell someone you're counting calories and getting more exercise, they can't just let that lie; they have to tell you about the way THEY're doing it and that just eating smaller amounts of healthier foods and getting more exercise is not good enough. I have been diplomatically (and truthfully) telling them that I've never really given this a good try before, and I'm going to make a GOOD solid effort to just use common sense and get myself moving, and see how that works, before I get onto a "program". I have three other people to cook for, and I also want to avoid getting into a diet that I'll have to change drastically when I get into "maintain" mode.
Just arranged with my mom to go for a walk with her and the kids during her lunch hour today. I hope it's not too hot out there. I can't go swimming tonight because I have a chorus practice, but I do think I'll walk briskly to and from practice, and I'll try swimming tomorrow.
We had one of those almost-creepy-but-good experiences last night. LT had not been feeling very well off and on all afternoon. Then, late at night when he and T were watching Star Wars: Episode II, LT got that feverish look (for him, this is half-closed eyes and slouching posture, like he's becoming a limp rag). I took his temperature and it was well over 101. We gave him Tylenol but an hour or so later it still wasn't working. We set up the air mattress in the front room; LT and I would sleep there so that he would have someone with him and not be tucked away far at the back of the house where his bedroom is. After we lay down, LT, T, and I prayed that if it was God's will, could he please take away the fever and tummy-ache. Poor boy had just been getting hotter and hotter and feeling worse and worse. Boom, sixty seconds later the fever was gone; he slept peacefully all night and the fever never came back. That does amazing things for a little boy's faith -- and for his mommy's and daddy's, too. It also raises questions -- why him, and why then, and why not other children and/or other times? Why not serious, scary, fatal illnesses? Obviously God has a plan in everything, no matter how hard it is for us to see....
C will be ecstatic; she's been begging for lunchtime to get here for the past half hour and finally it's time. So off I go. :)
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Thursday, August 21, 2003
Dinner out etc.
We went out to dinner tonight at my favorite local restaurant. I was relatively well-behaved but not totally uptight either. (in other words, I ate a couple of zucchini stick appetizers which I'm sure threw me WAY over my calorie quota for the meal all by themselves, I got a salad but not the additional soup I usually get, I gave my totally scrumptious roll (this place is famous for its rolls) to the kids, and I did what all the "weight loss tips" articles always suggest: I divided my dinner in half and brought half of it home for lunch tomorrow. So now I essentially get to have my favorite restaurant food two days in a row. :)
Poor LT. He and C had a late lunch; they ate around 2:30. He had two deep-fried burritos. Then he ate a snack consisting of probably six or eight quarter-round slices of watermelon about 4:00. Then we went to the restaurant at 6; right away he got a glass of rich chocolate milk with whipped cream on top, and he ate some of the zucchini appetizer and half my roll. Then his food came and he kind of dabbled with it, meanwhile drinking about a cup and a half of chocolate milk. Just as I was asking the waitress to package up my extra portion, he said his tummy hurt, asked me to pray for his tummy, then said, "Pray fast... I gotta...." We skipped praying and he ran into the men's room (thankfully we were right near it) with Daddy on his heels. Apparently everything from lunch onward made a reappearance, poor boy. There is something about my kids (and me) and chocolate milk. C has it BAD -- if she has chocolate milk or a chocolate shake or any sweet dairy drink (say from Starbucks) in the car, she WILL throw up. If she eats too much at a meal and then drinks chocolate milk, or vice versa, up it comes. Now me, I just get a bit of an upset tummy if I have too much; LT has thrown up once before (years ago, I think he was maybe 4) after eating a large meal and topping it off with chocolate milk. This was at Hometown Buffet, and he had fully overdone it on the all-you-can-eat macaroni and cheese. That time we were NOT next to the bathroom and we did NOT make it on time (we also did NOT go back to that particular location for a long time). For about a year he referred to HB not by its proper name but as "the restaurant where I frew up." Anyway. This was only the second time it caused any problem for him, but when I really thought about all he'd eaten in the space of about 4 hours (remember, the kid's only 7), I was not surprised. He was fine almost immediately, for which we are really glad. With C losing it yesterday morning, and then that tonight, I was beginning to think they had a virus or an intestinal infection or something.
I have learned today never to say that I've never gotten a copy of a rampant virus. My online friends are all abuzz about how many copies they were getting in ten minutes and I was rather smug. Well, my regular ISP has good virus protection, but I have an address for my sole web design client and at about five this evening the virus messages just started rolling in. I wasn't stupid enough to open any of them; I even turned off the preview pane just to be sure. But that address has probably received 20 or 30 copies of it in five hours. I am getting royally tired of it, to tell the truth.
Well, I am off to bed. T and the kids watched Star Wars Episode 1 this evening while I worked on my dad's birthday present (his birthday is today, the party is Saturday). I'm reading him a book on tape. Probably a flagrant copyright violation, but he likes to be read to and this way his darling daughter and delightful grandchildren are the voices he's hearing tell the story. :) (Well, grandCHILD; LT reads; C talks on the tapes but can't read yet). He gets a tape set for every birthday, Father's Day, and Christmas; so far I've done about six for him. Anyway. Thanks to reading for an hour and twenty minutes straight tonight, I have a nearly unquenchable thirst and my throat is scratchy. It's also surprisingly tiring doing all the voices. :) I have to be heading off early in the day tomorrow for the valley so I should get going before I fall asleep sitting up.
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Plateau broken!
I finally broke my plateau -- I am now -12 instead of -11! :) I am all encouraged. It is a pearly, cloudy day today -- although still quite warm and now also humid -- so it's not QUITE as miserable outside during the day as it has been all week. 100° in the baking sun is not comfortable at all. I think I'll take the kids for a walk today, and then go for one alone once T comes home. My neck is almost all the way better -- it feels fine in the afternoons and evenings, and during the night I sleep fine, but it's still a little stiff when I wake up. I'll try swimming again next week. Between now and then I'll try to fit in three or four of those long, fast, brisk walks.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2003
blah
Music: None, kids are watching a movie
Mood: A wee bit blah
I have been stuck at -11 pounds for four days now. This is frustrating. And by and large, I've been behaving so well! Maybe I'm bloating, or something.
My neck is still stiff and sore from last night's swimming incident. It hurts to turn my head (which makes driving fun) or to look up or down. In the night it was absolutely excruciating any time I moved so I did not sleep well. T was so kind to me this morning, bringing me aspirin and milk while I writhed in pain, trying not to move too much.
It didn't help that an old hotel about a mile from our house burned down last night. It's been abandoned for years. It was this old wooden building with a few cabins around it; it hadn't been anything but a target for vandals for quite some time. So in the middle of the night we were awakened three separate times by sirens roaring by, and then the smoke was so heavy that our eyes were burning -- or course, it being summer, any window that's not reachable from the ground is open at night. By the time I got up this morning the smoke was cleared away, except that along the floors in the house you can still smell it (which is kind of weird). So between the sirens, the smoke, my neck, and the fact that I was tired from swimming to begin with last night (I was literally almost falling asleep standing up while I helped T collimate his telescope), I got out of bed this morning feeling like I'd had negative hours of sleep. I am having fantasies about the kids going to sleep so that I can too. Not happening, however. sigh.
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