weight loss (or not) Archives | Page 3 of 3
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Monday, August 18, 2003
OUCH
Music: Rebecca St. James -- "Amazing Love"
Mood: Cautious. Very cautious.
Note: don't you hate it when you accidentally hit "alt" instead of "shift" when you're typing and some menu pops up and you've no idea what you've just done?
I just got back from swimming. I swam for 25 minutes, good aerobic heart rate and all. I also managed to nearly inhale half the pool. I am not a coordinated individual and this causes problems when I try to actually swim correctly. In my mom's words (and my mom is a REALLY tactful person, so you know if she says something harsh, it's really ten million times worse than that), I have always managed to look like I'm in the last seconds of drowning when I swim. I don't feel that way, but apparently I really look it. (I don't dance well either. Perhaps Mom would compare that to an epileptic seizure?) I did manage to learn how to swim with enough form to barely squeak by in the one or two brief swimming units we had in high school PE (no, our high school doesn't have a pool. ha! It doesn't even have a cafeteria! no, we rode school buses to the town pool for PE class). But then ten or eleven years went by before I set foot in a pool without a child. Anyone who has children knows that you can't actually swim while they're in the pool; you have to be constantly supervising. So I hadn't actually tried to swim in quite a while, and that brief spurt of knowing something about form had flown out the proverbial window. So I look moderately ridiculous when I swim (and that's even without the swimming cap), but it's good exercise and I like being in the water so I endure the knowledge that everyone goes home and laughs at me, and I just do it. Anyway. Tonight I was trying to make my body remember how to do the crawl stroke and I kept getting my timing off and inhaling while my face was in the water. Very poor idea. Also, I managed to really rip something in my shoulder -- which, while being a good excuse to stop before I drowned, is not very pleasant. I have a stabbing sort of pain from the top of the right side of my neck down to my upper arm. It even (horrors!) hurts to type. Notice how I am persevering; aren't I a very strong person? My massage therapist friend is always telling me whenever I ask (which is often) when to ice and when to use heat. And I know because of this that heat is NOT for injuries, but man, it seems like a heating pad on there would feel unbelievably good right now.
And now I am totally famished. The little demon on my shoulder is telling me to go ahead and eat something; I DID work out after all. Get thee behind me; I am not wasting this pain! We are almost out of diet Cokes. I suppose (sigh) I can drink water. ;-) I do need to make some iced tea; I have made almost none this summer, can you believe that? ("Perhaps," my logical self reminds me, "this has something to do with the 28 pounds of diet Coke cans your son recycled today?")
I have just looked at the fish tank and realized that I can barely see the gravel at the bottom through the leftover food. (that plecostamos is NOT earning his keep!). So I will be all virtuous and go take care of that now.
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miscellaneous ramblings
Music: Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast At Tiffany's" -- I had thought this was by Toad the Wet Sprocket! whoops! :)
Mood: Cheerful
We went to the valley and took LT's cans and bottles to the recycler today. He wound up with $54. This is spending money for the fair; he is going to buy two books of ride tickets and have the rest ($30) to spend on food or treats or save for Christmas shopping or who knows what. He gets all our bottles and cans in exchange for doing the work involved in smashing and sorting them; also, there are a few people who know he does this and save their recyclables for him also. About three times a year he turns them in and gets his loot. :)
Somehow we can never go to the city without taking longer than we think we will. Today we went to Smart and Final to look around (verdict: more expensive than Costco, but considering that we wouldn't use Costco enough to make up the cost of our membership, still a good deal). They have banana split boats, which I've been hunting for since January, when I wanted to have banana splits at our playoff game party (only in California... and maybe south Texas... ;-). Anyway, after Smart and Final, we went to Wal-Mart to get LT a pair of Wranglers, since not only were his only remaining pair getting too snug on him, but he also wore them while helping me paint his sister's dresser a couple of months ago. >:-[. I managed to pass the 14c crayons without adding to our collection, and I even resisted the lure of the 20c pencil/crayon boxes... which I had just bought at 67c apiece a few days ago. We went to the mall so I could get a swimming cap. I am so looking forward to going swimming this evening even though I will look like a total pinhead; hopefully I will NOT be the only person there this time. It will be nice to know that I'm not chlorinating my hair like I have been the last few times I've gone. I've got enough split ends without doing that. I need to get my ends trimmed but I hate to spend a ton of money and feel all dumpy going to a salon just to get that done. I think as a reward for myself once I've lost all the weight I want to lose, I will treat myself to a new outfit, some makeup, and a nice haircut. Maybe on the day I take C to the Nutcracker. I am thinking about getting my hair cut short, and donating the length of it (if it's in decent enough shape) to Locks of Love, once I'm thinner. I really do NOT look good with short hair and extra weight -- my face gets rounded and my head looks so small on top of my big body. I have broad shoulders to begin with and the extra weight just adds to the problem. But when my face is thinner, a short haircut really does suit it nicely, if I can find a person to do a good enough job on it.
Speaking of weight, I'm still down 11 pounds, and I've been a good girl today. AND I found myself having to hike up my shorts a lot today. Suffice it to say, that has never been a problem in the past. They aren't terribly loose as I sit here but when I stand up and practice good posture they droop a little.
OK, I just got a huge major craving for chocolate chip cookies. What am I supposed to DO about this kind of thing? I do not want to be one of those people who always goes around saying, "oh, no, that's too many calories," and yet, I also do not want to be one of those people who keep creeping on more and more weight until they have to be hauled out of their chairs by strong relatives anytime they've sat down. So far my plan is to reward myself once a week, if I've had a losing week, by allowing myself one small (200 calories or less) indulgence. But am I never to have a banana split or an Its-It bar again? (I suppose I could exchange an Its-It for dinner occasionally, but one banana split would fill my entire day's calorie ration and then some, most likely...). I do not want to condemn myself to a life of eating only boring food. But I really, really, REALLY want to be a size 10 or 12 (dare I even hope for an 8? nah) instead of a 14 or 16, too. I know that one treat a week won't necessarily keep that from happening, especially once I'm in "maintain" mode rather than losing mode. But right now I just feel like I have to keep an iron grip on my discipline or all this progress will just evaporate.
I keep meaning to post about this really cool site I found the other day: FindYourSpot.com. You answer a survey (I am a total sucker for surveys regardless of the content, and this one is really fun and funny) and then, based on your answers, they pull from their database of places the 25 cities/towns that would supposedly be the best fit for you. I got a lot of southern small towns (not a single response was for Kalifornia; I think that had to do with my answer on the "government: less is more?" question). Really, you should try it. Even if you're never going to move away from the place you live, it's still interesting. Realistically, we will probably never live in any of those places, unless we somehow became independently wealthy. It's one of the traps of having a great government job -- it makes it hard to settle for less. Not that T makes oodles of money, but he has job security, benefits, a good retirement program, a job that he likes, and an income that will support a family by itself if we live carefully -- this last in particular is increasingly rare in our daycare-and-public-school-based economy. It's too scary to contemplate moving to a place where he'd have to work in the private sector. ;-). Really, whatever God has in mind would be fantastic. Politically I'd love to live somewhere else. However, having lived in the same rural area since I was born, I am not eager to move away from it, especially since my kids' grandparents are here. Not just for the kids' sake either; I love my parents to pieces and wouldn't enjoy being in a position where I could only see them a few times a year.
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Sunday, August 17, 2003
Quiet...
I am one of those people who love rearranging furniture. Today I shifted our couch around perpendicular to where it used to be, and I'm trying to nag T into moving the piano to the place where the couch used to be, and putting the computer where the piano is, and the armchair where the computer desk is. So far he isn't caving. ;-).
Other than that today is pretty quiet, borderline boring. My parents took us to lunch (just at Burger King, and I was a good girl, had just a chicken whopper which is only 600 calories) -- with a 600 calorie dinner (which I've already had), that keeps me under 1500 for the day, and I still have hopes for a walk after T gets back from I'm-not-going-to-say-it,-i-will-have-one-diary-entry-without-mentioning-it with LT. C would rather watch (sigh) A Bug's Life than go for a walk with me, and that's OK because with her sweet short little legs, I can't get anywhere near "brisk" anyway, unless she's on my shoulders which can only last for so long before my neck protests too much. Today's weight is the same as yesterday's -- no big shock since I ate almost exactly the number of calories I would need to maintain my weight yesterday. :) Since lunch ended we've just been home -- did a lot of tidying in the living room, and the aforementioned rearranging, and not much else.
Locally, public school starts in a week. Then will begin the dozen-times-a-day question: "Why aren't you in school?" when LT is at the store or the post office or the park with me in the middle of the day. Sometimes I feel like making a placard for his chest saying, "I'm homeschooled, that's why not. It's also why I'm so well-mannered toward adults, even rude ones, and why my natural inquisitiveness hasn't been squelched by six hours a day of sitting unnaturally still listening to stuff I either already know or can't quite grasp." Most people around here, to be fair, think homeschooling is great, and we get far more positive reactions than negative ones. But it's kind of like being asked when you're due when you're pregnant -- you just get kind of tired of it.
There is a new bookstore going in in Smallish Shopping City. T and I have one of our silly bets about it -- if it is finished before October 15th, I win, and if it's after, he wins. I hate to break it to my darling life-mate but HE'S GONNA LOSE. We aren't sure what the stakes are yet -- usually it's something like getting to choose the next few movies for our biweekly date nights. The building is totally done, the glass is in the windows, the outside decorative brickwork is done, and they were laying the sidewalks when I drove by yesterday. I say it's a matter of a month or less before "my bookstore" (as the kids say) is ready for me to go in and spend a leisurely afternoon browsing. :)
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Thursday, August 14, 2003
first entry
All my life I've wanted to keep a diary. Usually it goes like this:
Day 1. Get new diary. Write 1000-2000 words about self, life, loves, desires, and that day.
Days 2-10. Write every day. By day 10, entry is very short indeed
Days 11-infinity. Leave gargantuan blanks. Then after several months, resolve to use diary more regularly. Write 500-word catchup entry. For the next few days, write every day. Repeat.
This has happened probably half a dozen times over the course of my life. When I was 8 (this was in 1983) my dad bought me one of those little diaries with a lock -- tiny pages, narrow lines, you know the type. It was orange. It had a line at the top of each page for the date, and, like check registers, it went _______, 19____. I asked my dad, "But what if I'm still using it in the year 2000?" He told me that if I hadn't filled it by the year 2000, I would not have written very much, would I have? Well, I kid you not, that diary is probably three-quarters blank. (the entries that ARE in it are really funny, though. Especially the attempt at the drawing of the polka-dotted pleated-skirted dress I got for Christmas that year -- done in marker.) I gave up on using it in probably 1988, when I got a bigger version, which also never got nearly full. In high school I went to plain spiral notebooks, then my first PC (just like Doogie Howser, ha ha)... tried again when I was first married. All in all it's a long sordid history of undisciplined abandonment of journals. Here's another try. :)
Rather than start with a recap of my life to date, à la my 10-year-old self, I'll just start with today and anyone bored enough to actually read this can catch on as I go.
I am trying to lose 40 pounds. 35 would be OK, 45 or 50 would be wonderful (but unlikely), so 40 it is. I am not (NOT) going to put my weight down here for all and sundry to see; suffice to say that after I have successfully lost 40 pounds I still will not be anything like Kate Moss, and I'm 5'8 1/2" tall. So far, I have, in two weeks of making an effort, lost 8 pounds, which is not bad. Of course, that's using as my starting weight what it said on one of those 25c scales in Albertson's (except subtracting 4 lb from that since it was in the middle of the afternoon and I was -- being of course in a major chain grocery store and not in the privacy of my own bathroom with the door shut -- dressed), since I did not own a scale until a week ago. I have been actually (bo-ring) counting calories. Sheesh, that sounds like it's 1974 and I'm trying to fit back into the pantsuits I wore on my honeymoon (Now, to fit into the Worthington wardrobe we charged on our honeymoon, THAT would be nice), but so be it, I have been. I've been keeping myself to 1200-1500 calories per day, and making an effort to move my sizeable self around more each day. Tonight I went and swam laps at the town pool. This means I paid a dollar to swim back and forth, alone, under the scrutiny of a college-aged Twiggy-esque (but nice nonetheless) lifeguard who has probably never eaten two donuts in one day and who probably went home and laughed at the dinner table about the way I swim. Last week there were other people there, this week it was just me. I lasted only 20 minutes this time -- last week I made it 35 minutes before I got too self-conscious. She says it's busier on Mondays.
I have spent a lot of time today looking at real estate. Not here -- it is too depressing to look at real estate here. We will be moving out of this house (where we've lived since we got married) in the spring, buying our first house, and it is just TOO depressing to see how prices have gone up in the last 5 years. So I will worry about that when the time comes to actually do something about it. Today I tortured myself looking at real estate in other places. There's a job T qualifies for, which he'd enjoy as well (it's in the Drug Enforcement Agency and that is right up his alley), in Laredo, Texas. So I looked at houses there. Four bedrooms, two baths, and an inground pool with a diving board for $100K. O-K. (that house would be $325K here, I know this because it seems comparable to the one across the street from us which is listed for exactly that amount). My aunt used to live in Muleshoe, Texas, which is a dinky little town about 45 minutes from the New Mexico border in the northern part of the state. Out of curiosity, I looked at listings there (there are all of 2!). 4 br 1 bath, EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. I mean, there has GOT to be something wrong with that house, right? I am tempted to call the realtor and say, "look, I'm never realistically going to buy this, so you can tell me to save my sanity, this place is about to fall down, right? or something?" Nowata, OK, the town where my dad was born -- nice place on 5 acres, $140K (which, by the way, is what places used to sell for around here, until recently). Or a little cheap 4 br place in town, which looks uncannily like his grandmother's house, for 40K. Oh well. I'm resigned to buying bare land and putting a run-of-the-mill-but-nice new house on it, and paying $1200 a month for that privilege for the next 30 years. sigh.
Tonight or tomorrow I will fiddle with this and make it look nice, give it my own look. For now it's time to pick up T and the little ones where they've been working on a destruction derby car this evening. Well, T has been working on the car while the kids have been playing in the dirt. I might as well just plan on turning the hose on them when we get home. Small price to pay for two hours alone at the computer and a trip to the pool... such as it was. More tomorrow! :)
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