Another Wacky Wednesday!!

Say it isn't so!  I had another series of unfortunate events yesterday.  Wacky Wednesday actually started on Monday, when I woke up with a toothache.  

I was able to see the dentist right away due to a cancellation.  Since my hip replacement, I cannot have any type of dental work without taking antibiotics beforehand.  Obviously, I had not.  However, he was able to do something to alleviate the pain and buy me a little time.  From what he could tell, I had either bruised my tooth or the tooth is going bad.  His gut said the tooth is going bad, knowing the history of that tooth.  If he is right, I'll need a root canal and new crown.  Time will tell.  If the pain returns, I have a dose of antibiotics now and a referral to the endodondist so I won't have a delay.

Then yesterday happened.  As I got dressed, I sat down on the bed and heard a clunk.  It sounded like a slat falling out.  Only we don't have slats under our bed.  I thought maybe it was the bed settling or something since we had just moved the frame over the weekend and thought nothing more of it.

I saw the surgeon after waiting an hour, only to learn that I will definitely need surgery.  This time, though, I will be able to have the surgery a little more on my own time.  In the meantime, we are trying some new pain meds.

When I got home, 65MD was already home and we were discussing the best way to use our afternoon.  Before we could operationalize our plan, he noticed that the structure holding up our mattress had come apart.  (The noise I heard & ignored.)  We have a sleep number bed.  With those, there is a box-like structure underneath the mattress rather than box springs.  It is an ordeal to move the mattress with the air hoses and all that involves.  But we had no option.

65MD called the sleep number folks and they offered to send a new structure.  He didn't want that because it would take several days and we needed a place to sleep tonight.  He's pretty good at engineering things to make them work so he re-engineered the structure so that it will never come apart again.  The only thing was we had to go to the hardware store for a couple of small braces.

We went together, planning to pick up my new pain medicine on the way back.  It was during the worst of the afternoon traffic and the car overheated.  65MD whipped into the nearest parking lot, which is where my medicine was so that was a good thing.  He knew that eventually the radiator was going to have to be replaced.  He was stalling until the bedroom project was finished.

We went in the store and got my medicine along with two gallons of water.  We got home and parked the car.  Now, I am stranded at home unless 65MD drives me.  (which is fine with me, I hate to drive!) I'll probably be stranded until early next week,  Graduation is Saturday and until then 65MD won't have time to make any repairs.

Now that I consider it more, yesterday wasn't so bad after all.

• The dentist had a cancellation and I could go right away
• The dentist could alleviate the pain even without my pre-meds
• There is surgery to replace my hip and I can say when I want it.
• There is medication to help me through until that time.
• The car broke down, right where we needed to be.
• I have a husband that knows how to fix stuff and does.
• I  have a husband that will drive me wherever I want/need to go.

Life is good!

Stress!!!

April is Stress Awareness month.  Who knew?  Not me until recently.  In keeping with the theme of the month, I thought I'd share a bit about my own relationship with stress.

I think I was born anxious.  If not, I developed anxiety early in life.  I know stress and anxiety are not the same thing, but for me anxiety led to stress.  Even as a little girl, I wanted everything to be just so.  I wouldn't quite call it perfectionism, that came later.  But if things were just right in my little world, I became anxious and then stressed.  My coping mechanism at that time was to cry.

As I grew and matured, I learned it wasn't a good idea to go around crying all the time and learned to cry when I was alone.  That is probably when I learned about stress eating.  Being young, and active and having a kid metabolism, it didn't manifest itself until later in life.  Even then, I was able to exercise most of it away.

In college, I chose a high stress major and career - accounting!  Maybe being an accountant isn't as high stress as a brain surgeon, but people can get very stressed when they get bad news about money.  I loved making presentations to the board when times were good.  When they were bad, that was another story indeed, especially when there was a 'kill the messenger' type on the board.  Working for myself from home has alleviated much of that stress.  Still, with my personality type, I found stress in other areas of my life.  

In trying to lose weight and put an end to the emotional eating, I'm looking for other ways to ease stress.  Just a few that work for me are:

• Taking a grown up time out - just walking away from the computer screen if it is work and doing something else for a few minutes.  Since I am at home, I can load/unload the dishwasher or something like that.  When I come back with fresh eyes and a fresh mind, I can sometimes see the solution that I could not before.
• Taking a bath - this one is generally reserved for evenings although I could take a bath in the middle of the day.  I discovered this when my father died and I was an emotional wreck for months!  Sometimes, 65MD would gently suggest that I have a bath when it got so bad.
• Scheduling free time - or more like time away from work to do something else like sew or read.  Right now, it is scheduling time to work on the bedroom project.
• Going outside - this time of year is so refreshing to me. I love the rebirth that spring brings.  I love the more relaxed nature to summer, and I rarely get too hot.  (I don't do this so much in the winter time.)  Feeling the sun on my face for just a few minutes makes those worries melt away.  I just discovered a NY and NJ health insurance company called Oscar that rewards their members for going outside and just taking a walk with their Misfit program. Every members gets a fitness tracker and sets their own step goal. Whenever they meet their steps that day, they earn $1 and receive cash reward each month.  How cool is that?

Has anyone got anything they have discovered that works for them?  Leave a comment.  I'd love to know.

Bedroom Activity

I wonder if that title will get me a lot of hits!!

This weekend we moved back into the front bedroom so that we could dismantle our bedroom.  We decided to bring the new mattress to the front bedroom with us.  It is a queen sized mattress and the bed is a double, so we had to move the frame too.  Let's just say it was an ordeal and leave it there.  It was worth it though.  We sleep much better on the new mattress.

Now the carpeted area in the bedroom is almost empty and ready for action!

65MD thinks it will take about 3 days to get the carpet up and tile in place and grouted.  There has to be a certain amount of curing time, which will work out fine since he's still giving exams and calculating grades.

The great divide

This is where the original hardwood ends and the 'new' construction begins.  We haven't quite settled on what sort of threshold to put in.  It can't be seen in the pictures, but the hardwood is not level all the way across.  Something will have to be done to camouflage that.

The bedroom tile

As often happens in home improvement projects, we decided to upgrade the bathroom as well.  It is right off the bedroom and really needs a redo.  It won't match at all.  We both already know that the hallway will be next.  This could be the summer of the house redecorating!

Bathroom tile

And just for fun here is a shot of the art I was given and proudly took home.  It looks great in the living room.  (Which is a good thing, or else, I'd have 65MD in there painting!)

My Week

I can't believe another week has flown by.  I'm still trying to figure out how to work my schedule with just a few hours changed in the middle of the week.  It hasn't happened yet.  Of course this week, I had to take my mother to two doctor appointments.  She won't drive herself to one because requires patients park in a parking garage and she got stuck in one once and vowed never to drive in one again.  The other is her eye appointment.  She can't see to drive home after getting shots.  So that blew two more days.

Wednesday was the last day of class for the semester, and 65MD isn't teaching this summer so after graduation the end of next week, he'll be home more.  He is supposed to be concentrating on his administrative roll this summer so he will be working, but he can work remotely more easily.  I have a feeling that will mess me up again. It will be a good kind of adjustment to make though.

Finally, the bedroom is still in a state of being updated.  Since we are real DIYers, it takes a long time.  Somehow, the bedroom being in a state of flux wrecks the rest of the house.  I've just about given up on doing anything except the most minimal of cleaning.  I know that cleaning will be a huge project when the bedroom is finished, so I'm not letting things go completely.

As is typical when I'm away from the blog, I still think of posts.  I have thought of a lot of food related posts like the evils of artificial sweeteners vs the evils of sugar and should I get a diet cherry limeade at Sonic or a regular cherry limeade.  Which will kill me faster?  Now that it is warmer, I am ready for one of my all time favorites - Icees!!  Since, I'm trying to move away from food related issues in this blog, I'll leave the discussion there.

I would really like to share all of the adorable things my baby nieces do.  I'm sure all of my readers would enjoy reading about them.  But I'm not going to turn into THAT blogger, besides the fact that my nephew and his wife are Internet shy when it comes to their children.  I will honor that.

So for now, I'll share a little about the bedroom redo.  To me, that is the biggest part of my life that I think will be of interest to my readers.  Here are a few pics:

after one sanding

after multiple sandings

before sanding - in the upper left corner you can see where the hardwood ends and the carpet begins

Only about a third of the floor is hardwood, which is original to the house.  The rest is carpet over subfloor because it was added later.  We thought we would recarpet but while we were carpet shopping we discovered some tile that we both really liked.  We agreed right way to tile and put a rug under the bed.  It will look great!  I am planning to make a braided rug from the same fabrics I'm using in the room for the curtains & comforter.  

It will be a huge project for me to make all of that stuff!   It will be a huger project for 65MD to lay all of that tile, or more specifically get the room ready to tile.  (Read move everything out!)  We just shoved the part on the hardwood to the other part of the room for that.  There is no way we can reverse that for the tiling.  There just isn't enough room.

That's where we stand now in the project.  We're going this afternoon to get the tile.  I'll post pictures of it and the swatches next.  (I'm not sure when "next" will be though!)

Wacky Wednesday!

Before I get into the wackiness that was Wednesday,  I want to announce that by popular demand* I am changing this blog to more of a Life of Lori blog with weight loss thrown in.  I feel like I am at the end of the road with blogging about losing weight.  After all there are just so many ways I can say “I blew it again, and I’m still fat.”  I am still trying to lose weight and will share my trials and successes here, it just won’t be the main focus of the blog.

*meaning me and one other person that emailed and said it was a good idea.

Now back to Wednesday – I got up at 5:45 AM.  That is considered morning by some people, but not me.  It is still dark outside, so I say it is night.  Night is time for sleep, yet, I got up.  I was out of bed until about 7:00 AM and my need for being up was settled so I went back to bed.  I got up again around 10:00 AM. ( It was pouring rain so it still seemed like sleeping time to me!!!) All this to say, I forgot to weigh.  In all my years of blogging and well before that, I don’t recall ever forgetting to weigh!  I weigh everyday that I am home, sometimes more than once a day, but that is another topic for another day.  On Wednesday, I simply forgot.  I weighed in the afternoon, but it was high and I don’t know a good factor to subtract.  So, I don’t have anything to report.

I am sure that many of my alert readers are wondering why I am just now blogging about Wednesday, after all, it is now Saturday.  That is the next odd thing that happened.  Mid afternoon on Wednesday, the modem decided that it no longer wanted to work full time.  It gave a click reminiscent hanging up one  of those old phones we once had in our houses and stopped working.  I jiggled wires, unplugged, replugged, rebooted and everything else I could think of to no avail.  I finally called 65MD and he.came.home!  I didn’t quite feel as though it was an emergency.  I was just calling to let him know that I would be out of touch, since at the time we were emailing about some vital topic like what to eat for supper.  I was also texting and IMing with various other folks.  I had to call them and tell them what was going on.  Everyone was super sympathetic.  I did feel sort of out of touch.  What if someone needed me????

Once 65MD came home, he pronounced it dead and set about to obtain a new one.  Only we didn’t know how because we couldn’t look anything up on the Internet.  Finally, he decided to call a nearby store that sold them, except we didn’t know the phone number.  We searched the house for a phone book but couldn’t find one. Finally we called 411!  We thought we were old school until we actually had to be.  65MD called the store.  The clerk said they had modems but they didn’t work in our particular set up.  Then we had the bright idea to call the number on the modem itself.  Much to our surprise we got connected to a service rep right away that was really on the ball.  She heard the clicking noise still occasionally emitted by the modem and knew the problem immediately.  She said she would ship us a new one overnight at no charge, only we had missed getting one shipped out on Wednesday.  It would be shipped first thing on Thursday and we would be back in business on Friday.

It was a strange feeling.  I didn’t realize how many times I checked my iPod to see the weather forecast.  Was it going to rain at 6:00?  I wanted to grill something for supper.  Now, how would I make a decision? How were my baby nieces?  I couldn’t just text their mother and see.   I decided to take some measures to see how much fabric I would need for a new comforter, bedskirt & pillow shams.  But, I couldn’t just google the dimensions of a queen size mattress.    I had to actually measure.  It was disorienting.

Finally, I decided to broil our meat for supper.  It was too risky to try grilling without an up to the minute forecast.  After all, those clouds did look heavy.  I wasn’t sure when it would start raining, or how long it would rain.  Just as the meal was done, just as I had taken the meat from the oven and 65MD had walked into the kitchen, it appeared that there was lightening in the oven.  I had put the hot pan down and reached to turn off the stove when I noticed it.  65MD saw it at the same time and jumped in front of me to turn the oven off himself.  (I don’t know if I was too slow or if he thought he was saving my life!)  The element in the oven burned out.  Sigh!  My stove has two ovens and the lower one burned out some time ago.  65MD had all of that information on his computer so he could quickly order a replacement one should the same thing happen to the upper oven.  Of course, he could quickly order one – on Friday!

I decided to read a book! 

Where Do I Begin?

I'll start by saying not to expect much.  Not many posts, and not a lot of quality!  Between, job changes (for the better). redoing the floor (almost done & finally sleeping in our bed again), and family fun, blogging is just falling further and further down the list of priorities.

Good health and weight loss have not slipped in importance.  There just isn't a lot to say right now.  Weight loss is slow on the No S plan by design.  And, I've yet to have a week where I've been 100% on plan, making things even slower.

Many of my weight loss blog buddies have changed the focus of their blogs from mostly weight loss to more like an online diary with weight loss as only one element of life.  I think that is good.  Weigh loss/eating plans and the like are really only one part of life.  I may follow suit however, I'm not sure my life is that interesting!

I have a great life.  I have a husband that loves me and we enjoy life together.  I am blessed to call my sisters, my friends.  In fact, my whole family just gets along.  That is so much more than most people have.  (I read recently that if you think your family doesn't have the crazy relative you're it.  If that is so, I'm the crazy one.  I'm OK with that!) Other than my hips, my health is excellent.  (Another thing I can thank my family for - good genes.)  65MD and I pay our bills every month and save enough to have a nice vacation fund.  It is all good, but maybe a little boring.  That's fine with me.  I'll take boring and happy any day of the week!!

I'm going to weigh in tomorrow, but not sure if I'll be able to post tomorrow.  If not, I'll be back on Thursday.  

Wednesday Weigh In on Thursday

I weighed yesterday but never got a chance to blog.  My schedule has changed on Wednesdays, so I probably won't be around much on Wednesdays.  I'll still keep it as my weigh in day but I may not report until Thursday.

Yesterday, I was back up to 211.0  It was higher after the weekend candy feast, so I'm glad that is has come down.  It isn't enough to register a loss for the week, but what can I expect.  I can't eat candy and lose weight.  If I could figure that one out, I'd be golden!

I appreciate everyone being so supportive lately.  It helps to know, that there are others with the same issues.  I love getting those comments and private emails saying "I hear you, girl."  It is fine with me that there may not be the answer to immediately drop all the excess pounds right away, but it goes so far to alleviate my frustration to know I am not alone!

I appreciate Staci & Eileen for confirming I was over reacting, Richard for starting the 30 PS challenge, and Beth Ann for quoting my blog back to me and making me seem smart!!  BTW, Eileen introduced me to the No S Plan and Beth Ann isn't the only reader that quotes me and makes me seem smart.  (I'll confess here, that I time or two I've read my own quotes in comments and was shocked that I actually said it!  I must have a screw loose somewhere!) Plus, I have on dear friend that sends me private emails that I cannot live without.  She knows who she is!

I continue to blog because of all of the support I get from my readers.  I've come a long way from the girl who starting blogging hoping to help others.

Normalizing Food

I think normalizing food may be the new trend in weight loss.  A lot of what I am reading seems to point to the idea of not banning anything food-wise to keep from developing overwhelming cravings.  I understand this and agree, up to a point. I know a lot of the weight loss battle is mental.  I get much more of a work out between the ears every day than I ever get with exercise.

I have dieted for so long, that I have mental lists of good and bad food. Good - any green vegetable, most lean protein.  Bad - sugar, anything white.  Foods flip from one list to the other depending on the plan I'm doing, mostly fruit!  Sometimes eating an orange is cheating and sometimes it is a healthy nutritious addition to a meal.

Sometimes, it is good to eat snacks.  Some plans advocate three meals and two snacks spaced evenly throughout the day.  Some plans are strict three meals, no snacks.  Some plans are eat every x hours.  Some plans just give an allotment of calories or carbs and leave the dieter to choose when to eat and how much.

Add to this my own upbringing in relationship to food:  clean your plate, eat what you are served and be thankful, if you don't eat, you'll be hungry later and you can't have a snack. (I should probably do a whole post about my childhood & food.)  These ideas are deeply ingrained.  It still kills me to leave food on my plate!  

I'm still on the No S plan, but I'm struggling.  I still have a good/bad mentality when it comes to various foods.  After all, alcoholics don't have a sip of wine on weekends or special days.  Addicts, don't have a hit of heroin on their birthdays.  I've not studied the definition of addiction, so don't know if I can say that I'm addicted to sugar, bread, or anything else. I don't believe that I am.  I think somehow I live in fear of hunger.

I can't have sugar.  OK.  I won't eat sugar, but I can eat all of the red meat I want.  No problem.  I'll eat that.  No red meat, but I can eat fruit.  Sure thing!  It is like I am always looking for the loophole.  What can I eat that is unlimited.  I'll just pile that in.  I've called it 'on plan cheating' in previous posts.  I don't think it matters what plan I'm doing.  There are a lot of good ones out there.  Most of them will probably even work for me.  But not until I get over this fear of hunger. 

Now, how to make that happen?  I don't know.  My first  thought in my 'all or nothing' mentality is to fast for a time period.  I mean like three days, no food.  I'm not sure first, how to make that happen because 65MD would squawk  And two, I don't think it would help with the idea of normalizing food.  It would make it all bad for that time period.

Ideas?  Has anyone else battled this?  I could use some success stories here.

The Easter that Wasn't - Yet

Our two year old had a virus and was running a fever over the weekend, so we postponed our family celebration until next week.  Fingers crossed that everyone stays healthy.  The poor child has been sick more than she's been healthy since Christmas.

 We didn't decide to postpone things until Saturday afternoon since the two year old's daddy came down with a fever as well.   I had already began prep work for the family gathering, by stuffing plastic eggs with candy and starting some general house cleaning.  I had purchased the food for our meal as well. Everything, including the candy will keep.  And it never hurts to have dusted, right!?!

There was some candy that didn't make it in to the eggs, so I put it in a lovely dish on the table as decoration.  I thought I'd have some on Sunday.  Since it is OK to have sugar on S days and this was going to be a double S day - Sunday and special.

Once we decided to postpone things, I somehow could no longer wait for the candy (mostly kisses and Reese's miniatures.)  I started grabbing a kiss or two as I went through the room.  65MD did too, except he was burning major calories on the floor work!  (which is in the home stretch of completion!!) Technically, it was still not cheating since it was Saturday.

Still, it was way too much candy for any situation, special or not.  Even discounting what my husband ate, far too much of the candy disappeared!  My weight followed suit accordingly.  I'm hoping that, I'll be able to report a loss on Wednesday, but I'm not sure right now.  Grrr!!

In other news, the steroid injection finally kicked in, I think!  Yesterday, I was able to move with little or no pain probably 85% of the time.  I'm hoping that I will continue to improve and suddenly realize I'm in no pain at all one day! 

Wednesday Weigh In

This morning I weighed 210.2 and am thrilled!  I know many of my readers are a little confused right now, remembering that I posted about being in ONEderland not to long ago.  Wondering if I have lost my marbles at being glad to be 10 pounds heavier.  I understand.  Since I haven't blogged regularly in the last two weeks, I haven't shared the whole story.

When I started the No S Plan (no sugar, seconds or snacks except for some S days (Saturday, Sunday  special days)) my weight rocketed up.  I had already regained a bit and then shot up to 213.2 on March 22.  I kept doing the No S Plan as best I could because I really didn't have time or inclination to look for something else.  I was busy and discouraged.  I just couldn't do it.

As easy as the No S Plan is, I still have not been 100% compliant.  Even though it sounded too good to be true, I knew I hadn't given it a fair chance.  Turns out, much to my surprise that afternoon snacks are the hardest part.  I hadn't really realized it because I was eating only a small handful of nuts or something else equally healthy and small.  The problem was I would get three or four small handfuls making it no longer healthy nor small.  Once this plan brought it to my attention, I have been at least aware that I'm straying off plan, if not skipping the snack all together.

That is one of the main purposes of the plan, to identify those small tweaks that need to be made.  Snacking on a small handful of nuts isn't bad. The plan encourages no snacking at all.  The snack should be added to the meal so that no snack is needed.  I'm working on that.  I'm pretty good with portion control most of the time.  My problem is that I mostly don't stop for a proper lunch.  It winds up being too small and of more of a snack nature leading me to want more mid-afternoon.  It is a work in progress, but I am headed in the right direction. (It is nearly 2:00 and I haven't had lunch.  I don't want a big lunch now because 65MD will want supper around 6:00 and I want to eat with him.  This is not unusual.)

So, about my weight.  After hitting 213.2 on March 22, my weight fluctuated a bit for a few days until settling on 211 on March 25.  From then until this morning I weighed 211 every morning.  That has never happened to me before.  My weight has never, ever been stable like that.  I didn't think it was possible.  I thought every one's weight fluctuated around a couple of pounds one way or another.  Just because an individual said their weight was 125, did not mean that that person weighed exactly 125 every single day.  I thought their weight might float up to 127 after a heavy eating period like the holidays and down a few pounds during a lesser eating time, like during an illness.  Maybe I was wrong.  Maybe other people weigh the same day in and day out.  (Most people probably don't weigh every day.)

Anyway, here I am on April 1, with a weight of 210.2 which is down almost a pound from last Wednesday and down three full pounds from the high almost two weeks ago.  I am totally fine with that.  If I can eat the way I have for the last couple of weeks and lose a pound or nearly a pound each week, I am golden!  Other than the issues with bread, which I think are funny, I have never been as calm about food.  This is great.  I hope it lasts!

Just a quick hip update:  I'm still having quite a bit of pain at the injection site.  That will happen, for a while, I'm sure.  I feel like I am walking much better already.  I'm sure I'll get better every day, if I pace myself so I don't regress.  Thanks for the prayers.