The Library

Daughter was sick all last week. I have it now in a milder version, but I am trying to ignore it as much as I can. It is mostly a cough and upper respiratory ick and I tire easy. I am taking extra vitamin C and lots of liquid. It is such a beautiful weekend I did not want to miss out on the weather. I did my favorite Saturday morning ritual of a bike ride and coffee shop yesterday. I took it easy on the bike ride. This morning I stayed in prepping veggies for the week but may do a nice dog walk on the river front if I feel up to it. The fresh air should do me good.

We cleaned house yesterday downstairs and that makes my room mess even more unbearable. I am not up to that task yet so I have set up shop in the library. I love this room. It is bright all day with natural light. It is full of books and inspiration. It is just big enough for a small couch and a chair. I watched a movie in here on my laptop last night and also lounged around reading from some of the many books. I have a lot of great books. I added a couple that I found to my coffee table books. I don't buy books too much anymore but we used to go to the bookstore often when daughter was younger. We'd relax and read for hours and then each pick a book to bring home.

I had lost five pounds as of the middle of last week, staying faithfully on a program of healthy eating but when I got sick I started eating weird stuff. Three pounds were back this morning but I am not worried. I am stabilizing today and that fluctuation will go back down. I wish I had not deviated but I am not going to beat myself up and get all sad over it. I am moving on. I stocked up with the veggies and lean protein and I am prepared. One thing that helps me is to clean, cut, chop, peel, etc. all the fresh veggies on the weekend after I purchase them. If I don't then during the week I am far less likely to use them because the task of preparation is too daunting. So I have them all at my fingertips now.

I feel very optimistic and good about my body. Being in the library reminds me of how far I have come. Many of the books purchased in the self help department were to address issues that I have faced and healed, including the food issues. It makes me happy to see all the many different books I drew inspiration from. Different programs of eating all meshed together to make up my choices that eventually melted away fifty pounds or more of fat. I will never really know how high my highest weight was because I stopped weighing in the worst of times. But it does not matter to me anymore. What matters is now. I am at a very good place in my life right now. The pesky pounds that I work with now are manageable and no longer overpowering like in the old days.

Anyway, I am getting a bit tired so it is time for rest.

Today I am extremely thankful for my home and especially my little library.

Proclamation Extension

The candy is gone now (hooray!) and I ate none of it. I have extended the Proclamation to any sweets for now. The sweetest thing I have eaten are my frozen blueberries and the fresh crispy apples. Today I am grateful for New Job. I am grateful for Ezekiel sprouted wheat bread which I finally decided to try. The price put me off before, but when I shopped for office food I decided it would be handy because it comes frozen. So far a loaf has lasted from last week into this week. It satisfies without making me crave more. It is amazing actually. I am grateful for Our Lady of Weight Loss. I have been reading from her two books each night at bedtime. Also I have Wisdom Cards published by Hay House (Louise Hay) that I flip through before sleep. They are positive statements with drawings and bright colors. I love them.

It has been a week now since I started my new eating habits and I feel very good about it.. I naturally gravitate to the veggies and lean meat. I cut up fresh veggies tonight so I would have a supply. I boiled eggs and made salmon salad. I was tired but determined. It is so rewarding to be prepared. So today I am also grateful to be prepared. And grateful for my friends who are landlords who recommended a lawyer to assist with the Situation a/k/a operation Love Boat. You have to read this past Friday's post to understand the name.

Anyway as always, more will be revealed!!!

Happy Gratitude Month

I was true to my Halloween Proclamation and I was down two pounds for today's weigh-in so the re-gained pounds are going away (again). Being true to myself is so crucial to eating healthy. No one but me makes the choice!

It is sort of a tradition to talk about gratitude in November. I talk about gratitude often, but make it a point to bring it up in November for the Thanksgiving Holiday. Maybe this year I can celebrate Thanksgiving by actually thanking people. Sending thank you notes or something. I am keeping food on the back burner this year. Sure, I want to make nice meals at the holidays with some traditional items, but it will feel better for me if they are good for us and not something that will sabotage progress.

Back to gratitude and appreciation. I appreciate the blogging community so very much. I can always find hope, strength, inspiration, understanding, humor, good ideas, and more when I take the time to read and cruise my blogging community. I have found unconditional acceptance and support in the past three plus years. I am so glad that so many of us are still posting even if only every so often when we have the time. So for today I am grateful for the blogs. I will try to include at least one thing I am grateful for in each post this month.

Anyway, also grateful I have passed up the candy bowl for what might be the first time in my memories of Halloween. I do recall a Halloween when I was on the soup diet (anyone remember that?- tomatoes, cabbage and onions..yikes!!) where I munched celery and such but even then I most likely had a little something.

Thanks to you all you blogging buddies!!!!

Halloween Proclamation

For me Halloween symbolizes the start of the "eating holidays'"so this year I am celebrating by not eating any Halloween candy! No candy shall pass my lips. That's the Halloween Proclamation. I want to be a pound down tomorrow. And I believe it is possible if I eat the yummy veggies and fruits. In fact right now I am nibbling crisp apple slices dipped in yogurt. I am not a big Halloween person anyway. The timing in my life is such that I will be losing weight during the Holidays and that's a good thing because it means I won't gain any. That's the bright side. I had somewhat of an epiphany at Halloween 2006. I even went to a support group the next day. So Halloween is special in a different sort of way for me now. It is more about my right to choose and treat myself good. The scariest thing in my life is my room and I think I will spend the evening cleaning it up!

Happy Halloween!!!!

It is 8:40 p.m. and no candy has passed my lips. The bowl is still full and sitting out next to the jack-o-lantern. It can sit there forever. I never use the front door. The kids can dispose of it. I don't want them eating it either, but I have decided not to touch it. Ever. The postman can have it. Possums can carry it away. It is exiled. Banished. Maybe the big older kids that come out without costumes later in the evening will take the whole thing.....

You know I LOVE Friday!!

It makes me go "Ahhhhhhhhhh" This one started grouchy and early. Daughter had to make up a test and since I have New Job I can't pick her up after school much so she goes in early for stuff like that. I was tired and so was she. I went to work early which was nice because I got to leave early. Work is good. It's work, though and just not my favorite thing, but then that is why they pay me nicely for it. I appreciate it very very very much. More than I used to. Much more.

Especially today. The tenant at my old house has been paying late. I have been patient and trying to work with her. This time was supposed to be her last late pay month. Last week I came buy to pick up the rent on her payday right before we had to leave on vacation. I was offering her a payment schedule that I thought would help her budget. Half the rent on the first payday, the other half on the second, so long as it fell in the same month of course. She said she'd think about it (sheesh) and made a remark about being concerned about paying for her cruise. Yes, that is right a CRUISE. She said she has been paying on it (while getting her gas shut off, and paying me late) and still has to come up with plane tickets (gosh, I feel so bad for her..) Okay I was flabbergasted.

So I took the check and deposited it in the night drop. I left for our vacation the next day. When I was leaving the hotel with the kids for our walk to the museum that afternoon she called me with a (tall) tale about the bank ATM giving her too much money. Yea, I get too much money at the ATM all the time. It was bizarre. Anyway long story short she said her check would bounce. I said, take care of it. She had a story about the bank being at fault and it being fixed in five days, blah blah blah. I said take care of itand that the check was already in the banking system.

I got back from vacation and called her to follow up. No return call. Today my bank charged back my account. They had tried running it through again with no luck. I called her bank and they said there still was not enough money to cover the check and were puzzled with the tall tale. So I have a felony sized bad check on its way back to me. I called her two times in the morning and left messages to call me right away. No calls. I called in the afternoon and she picked up. She said she'd have to pay me Thursday and I said, the November rent would be due by then and I could not subsidize her lifestyle. She said she might have to move. I noted the bad check was something I could prosecute. I asked if she could come up with any money at all and she said she'd call back, and of course no call back.

I am writing so I don't eat over this. I have been angry. I have been disgruntled. I am not going to turn it on myself and punish myself with food. What I am going to do is pay people to deal with it and let it go. I am submitting the bad check to the prosecuting attorney's office when it comes in the mail. I am hiring an attorney of my own to evict her. I am going to try and sell the house or rent it out again (not my first choice) and take my losses now while I can absorb them and use them to offset taxes on the double income that I am getting for the next couple of months. That's my idea right now. Turn it over to the experts and let it go. No more Ms. Nice. I am fed up.

I wish I could just not think about it at all but it has preoccupied me over and over. It shocks me when people do this stuff. I did not want to be a landlord but it was a choice I made to deal with that situation in 2007 when we needed to move. It has worked up until now for almost three years so I can appreciate it for what it has been and appreciate the fact that now is the best time to absorb the loss. I have a good job, I have severance I have savings and I can pay someone to take care of it. My landlord friends recommended their lawyer who has helped them in two evictions.

So, no food for me. Just a good night's sleep. Sorry for the rant but I had to lay it out there. It bugs me. Taking it personally does not help but I have held up my end of the deal and been more than forgiving and kind. I waived late fees and so on. Trying to prolong the inevitable I guess. But the CRUISE for Pete's sake - that was the last straw. I feel like some airline got the rent money and now I am stuck providing free housing. Okay, that's enough. I want to put a lid on this.

I still love Fridays. And it is STILL Friday..

There was a beautiful sunset tonight after days of rain. It was very pretty and I enjoyed it while driving in my car.

My food was good today but a little more than I wanted this evening when I started thinking about the tenant thing. We will have to think of a nickname for her. Something silly. But now I have shared my tale of woe or perhaps my window of opportunity and I am going to drink a big glass of water and go to bed. Tomorrow morning could be a glorious bike ride, or a snuggly morning at the coffee shop (oh how I have missed my coffee shops) reading if it rains. Yea, I gott clean house, too but need my happy time. It's my prozac.

More will be revealed...My life is full of endless possibilities!

The difference

I had one good day - keeping track and staying with my healthy food and limits. And two pounds came off...the two extras from vacation. It really makes a difference. Now I can move on - today was a good day, too..

I feel like I may be a teeny bit sick so I am trying to get extra rest. Just wanted to check in with a good report.

More will be revealed!

New Job New Habits

Or maybe I should say return of the not so old new habits.. The habits that slowly melted away 56 pounds or so, the habits that enabled me to feel free from the bondage of overeating, the habits that enabled me to feel in control and hopeful, enthusiastic and healthy. I am not so far away from the "normal" BMI that I visited a few times in the last year and a half. Not far at all. My mini vacation was great. I behaved pretty good but could not resist nibbling at the Chicago style pizza we ordered in the hotel room on the first night when we were soaked from walking the Magnificent Mile in the rain. Actually for us it was more like a Magnificent two miles..because we walked the wrong way at first when we were looking for the Art Institute.

I was up a couple of pounds when I returned to the scale yesterday and today. In spite of all the walking (the next two days were dry) and even a morning swim on Sunday, and the mostly good eating I was still stuck and feeling kind of swollen. I am paying close attention to sodium content in my food and drinking extra water. I am writing down what I eat and adding it up. I am blogging tonight after dinner, far, far away from the kitchen. I feel good. I feel optimistic. It is raining again but I am seeing it as the soothing, nourishing rain. The mesmerizing soft sounding, hypnotic rain that lulls me to sleep.

It is the second day of New Job. I was able to shop on my way to work and buy a supply for the week of healthy lunch and snack food. Cottage cheese and blueberries, a lettuce and herb mix, low sugar/carb whole grain bread, turkey breast (gotta watch that sodium on the sandwich meat). I am label reading and putting things back that have too many ingredients. I bought organic salad mix. I brought plenty of herb tea. I am prepared. I have a system of writing my food down on a big post-it note in my calendar book. I tally the day as I go along and keep track of what is left in my "bank" of calorie/fat/etc. Again, gotta watch that sodium. My feet feel swelly and it concerns me.

New Job is fine. I have my own office (whew!) and this one has a door and no interior windows so I can do a few exercises here and there. Speaking of exercises - I have been doing good with my upper back/neck exercises. All the driving on the trip did not have a negative impact because I have exercises and stretches I do while in the driver's seat. Yesterday I forgot about it all while on the New Job and in the evening I hurt for the first time since being off work. So I did my stretches and exercises last night and on little breaks today. I feel much better. Keeping up with simple things that don't take much time can really pay off. The exercises and stretches take minimal time and effort and the pay off is that I feel good. Recording my food intake and doing a little shopping trip and prep do not take too much time in comparison to the pay off of feeling like I can take off these ten pounds and move on.

It's after eight in the evening and I must get ready for bed. Sleep is a huge investment in feeling good and lower my risk of overeating. It is healing and renewing. I like to read positive things before I sleep or look at pictures that make me feel good. Like the horse nibbing at my car that I have included in this post for your viewing pleasure. I sure hope to blog regularly now that I am back in a routine.

More will be revealed!!