I just don't know WHY

We have an old, mismatched, gas guzzling Suburban that takes 20 minutes to warm up. It's been a huge life-saver in the winter when we might not have gotten out of the driveway through the huge piles of snow if we hadn't had it. My dad sold it to us for a few hundred and we haven't gotten the title in our name as of yet.
This morning when Mike left for work it was here. This afternoon at 4:30 when Mike came home, it wasn't. Just like that. I was cleaning the house and getting ready for a family night with all of his side of the family so I was inside all day and other than running the vacuum or being in the shower, I didn't have enough noise that I would have missed that very loud engine.
It's really shaken me up that someone came on to our property and just simply TOOK a vehicle. I was here alone with my children. I was asleep from the time Mike left til about 9 am, too. After calling all friends, family, and neighbors that might have borrowed it and forgotten to tell us, Mike called the Sheriff's office. The officer came out, took our information and had Mike fill out the paperwork but told us he was holding off filing it til later tonight just in case the one person we didn't get a hold of had it.
No call yet to tell us it's found, but I'm hopeful.
The big thing - WHY? Why would someone come out to the backside of a tiny town, drive down a dirt road with 4 houses on it, turn down MY driveway and think to themselves, I should take that old 3 color Suburban with a bathtub in the back. did I forget to mention that we'd bought a tub to replace the one upstairs and since we had no room for it yet we left it in the back? Yeah.

On to something slightly different

I have lost weight, I really have. Last year at this time I was about 310 again and now I'm 278. I worked for that number - not hard exactly, but it was still work. However, the Acai Berry Blend and Cleanse Aware didn't help me lose wight. I did lose 4 lbs from colon cleanse and while I'm tickled to be down by ANY poundage, ew. Seriously? 4 lbs? Again I say, ew.
I've only lost 2 lbs this last month and a half and that's a little short of what I was aiming for, which was 12 lbs. On the upside, while window shopping with my SIL I found I am now a size 22W. Note the W, that means I'm still big, but a size smaller than before. My 24s are too big and most brands of 22 are tight. Not in a painful,red line, sucking-in-to-zip sort of way but more along the lines of an uncomfortable awareness of a tiny muffin top and obvious camel-toe kid of way. I just don't have the cojones to walk in public like that... which you would see quite clearly if you saw me in 22 regulars.
I love the losing, hate the in-between sizing. But who makes a 23 women's tall? in anything? Nobody *I* can afford. I hate showing off my knees in dresses and my ankles in pants. I hate showing them off, period, but it's especially bad when I am trying to look cute. I celebrated by buying a pair of jeans, a pair of shoes, and a super duper fancy dress. Who knows, I my wear it somewhere, but in the mean time I am prepared. And really excited about being a 22.
At least I was. Now that the shock of that has worn a little, I'm on to a new goal of a size 20. I figure that will take about 10 lbs, so I'm giving myself the goal date of June 1st to lose those 10 lbs. A friend of mine has lost a ton of weight and I am going to be a good little lemming and follow her example. She said her doctor was concerned about the weight she'd gained so she gave her some simple guidelines to lose the weight - avoid "white" foods and sugar, eat veggies, lean meats, and dairy (milk,yogurt) daily. So every morning she starts her day with oatmeal and eats normal portions of lean meats and veggies for her meals, having a snack of yogurt, fruit, or some sort of fiber bar during the day. Increase water. She's lost 41 pounds as of yesterday, she managed it BEFORE her goal date!
Considering my self control is spotty at best and I'm doing it alone, still feeding Mike and the kids foods I wont be eating, i don't think I'll make a spectacular showing right away. But I know it worked for her, I've thought about doing this before and I checked out the South Beach diet book for recipe ideas.
On the 29th of March my middle son turned 6. Not only was it hard to handle emotionally but I ate the cake. Like, nearly the whole thing, myself. I cant guess what you're thinking and I KNOW!! Gross. Ten my period and a cold hit on the same day. Period is gone, cold is nearly gone, but the weight is still here. I guess I can't keep calling it water weight if it's still here this long after, right?
In 9 days my oldest turns 8. Wah. I get to face this little scenario again. Then 5 days later, my youngest sister turns 19. WTH is going on here? I'm not that old, this is not happening. The best I can hope for is to lose weight, get healthy, and hope it makes me younger and prettier looking along the way. At least when I lose the weight I'll be likely to live long enough to see my great grandkids :)
I'm heading down to see my family soon. I've missed them all and it'll be good to see them. It's hard to see Nanny going through what she's going through, being in a nursing home, in so much pain, suffering with her dementia. It's even harder seeing her house empty or with someone else in it. But it's great to see Bert and her kids, being around the same ages as my monsters.. er, darlings.. we can get together at a park or large restaurant and no other adult in the group will be giving me THAT look. You know, the one that accuses you of knowingly bringing children into the world and then inflicting them on the public before the age of "knowing how to shut up and be invisible so as not to inconvenience adults". Bite me.
I get to spend time with my dad and his family, I really wish I could see them more. And Maybe, just maybe, I can pin my mom to a firm date for a visit to us up here in the boonies. I hit a bunch of sales after the first melt-off and I have a winter assortment of coats and sweaters for my nieces and nephews, a handful of clothing for my littlest sis, and a shirt for my mom.
I'm so glad to see less snow! I say less, not 'the end of' because still get snow every other day here and it melts off in anywhere from an hour to 2 days. when this stops, I have a bunch of planting and yard work planned. In the meantime, Mike is fixing things around the house. Changing the filter on the pump, building a well house, fixing the toilet and tub faucet downstairs, replacing the faucet in the kitchen, and making preparations for the remodeling the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms. When that's done, we have windows to replace and a new front door to put in... then I get to paint. hehe. this summer is going to be full, for sure. We joined Groupon and got a big discount on ticket to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, so we have plans to go to the coast in the beginning of August. Right about when I turn 31. Hopefully by then I'll be significantly lighter and feel much younger than (and therefore better about) turning 31.

So far SO good

On February 1st I started taking the samples I went through so much for. It's still early days but things are going well. I'm taking 1 acai berry pill and 1 cleanse aware pill daily and I can say it's working. I have more energy in a good way, nothing like it was when I took Metabolite. Ugh, I was shaky and twitchy and easily started the whole time I took it and I never lost weight.
Of course, I'm not just taking the acai and counting on weight loss, I've also made some changes to my diet... well I made them before I started the acai.
~less fat and sugar
~more vegetables and fruit
~big breakfast, med lunch, small dinner with snacks between
~more water, less soda, coffee, and sweet tea
I've reduced fat by choosing better options instead, like mustard instead of mayo, chicken instead of beef, baked instead of fried. Sugar, well, that one was harder. I love my sugar. I know that sometimes the signal for dehydration and sugar cravings get mixed up so I have a big glass of water and a fruit or handful of crackers. If I still want something sweet later, I have ONE of something. Just about anything I want actually but as long as I make sure it's a single serving it's all ok.
More vegetables and fruit isn't a problem either, I just make a vegetable instead of rice or mashed potatoes or noodles. Or keep the carb and add the veggie to it. And water, pshaw. I drink a 24 ounce glass first thing in the morning with my pills and then another with each meal. It's not hard to cut back on sweet tea when I ahve so much water and I let myself have the soda or coffee once a week as long as the soda is diet. Coffee, Whooee, I have whatever I like!!

All of this talk of "no problem, it's easy" makes you a little suspicious doesn't it? yeah, there has to be SOME issue, something has to be less than easy. Two somethings. #1 - I hate exercising. Yeah, I can do it if I have to, but I will find all sorts of ways to avoid it. I get around it most times by getting my workout through normal daily activities. If I go shopping I'll walk around the store a couple of times or break up the shopping list so that I have to go across the store several times. Shoveling snow, playing with the kids, giving the house a more vigorous cleaning. Still, not getting as much activity as I should.
Bigger problem #2 - I can't eat a big breakfast. I'm trying to eat a big healthy breakfast every day and having such a hard time! I never thought that would be a problem (while I'm not pregnant anyway) but it turns out I hate oatmeal or farina without butter or sugar. I can handle one or the other but not missing both. Not even with cinnamon and apples and currants. It gets a little easier if I just add other foods to it like a breakfast of oatmeal, an orange, and yogurt, but sometimes I want a single meal. Either the meal is too small or not healthy or I just plain don't like it. I'm sure I'll find a small number of breakfasts I like and just keep them in rotation.
In the meantime I'm taking the acai and cleanse aware and they're working. I'm down from 284 to 281. Here's hoping it will keep going this direction!

February is nearly here

This winter started a month early, heavy snows that built up with each week or two of freezing temperatures and icy packed down roads, trees laden and bowing. It was gorgeous but a little sooner than we expected it so I hoped, but couldn't bank on, the spring coming just as early. We had one single melt-off of any significance before now, but we actually have DIRT under the trees and on the roads now. It's a bit of a shock after so many unrelieved weeks of white or blue or gray. Silence has given way to the noises of life again, birds and squirrels and dogs so far. The smell of ice and snow is replaced by the scent of soft earth and sunshine again. I love winter and I love spring so I feel the loss of one and the joy of the other being on it's way, though I can't help but think that we are going to have at least one more heavy snow or hard freeze.
My dad is coming to stay for a couple of weeks, we're supposed to go get him in a week and I am really looking forward to it, snow or not. I think he'll enjoy being here and will like the area.
I blogged about my goals for the month of January and while I did try, I failed at least one of them. I managed only time 1-2 days a week to work out. That's not to say I had no time, but getting ready, setting aside time and privacy and then cooling off and shower after took so much more than the 10 minute workouts I hoped for so I ended up avoiding them. I think the goal of working out every day was too much for me and I sabotaged myself. However, I have been pretty good about curtailing my calories from drinks and eating healthier, fresher food with more veggies and no fast food. None!! As a reward I have lost two pounds. I was hoping for 4-8, but this is pretty good for doing so little. I was hoping to do a cleanse and detox, but I have always been pregnant, nursing, or sick and couldn't. Til now. So I refreshed my memory by reading through the Master Cleanse and told my friends and husband I was doing it. Then a friend mentioned that lemons can be hard on teeth.. and I have had thousands of dollars worth of work done in the last two years. Allrighty, that's out.
So I ordered samples of a colon cleanse pill and an acai berry mix to try out. "Sample" my aunty. They charged me for the samples I ordered (under $5 total) and then, being from the same company, made two extra charges. The total was more like $200 after that. Our entire grocery budget. Thankfully family helped us out with food til we got our refund and I called every number I could find on the paperwork and website to make CERTAIN I was canceled or removed from every membership or re-orders. One customer service rep actually argued with me that I could get a refund of even use paypal to buy it at all. LOL.
Now I have the pills and my refund. Win win. I don't feel bad though I normally would because they tried to rip me off. Me losing money would be something I would simply accept and learn from, but taking the food off my kids's plates makes me seethe. That company can kiss my grits, I'm keeping the samples. Since I have them and can't do the Master Cleanse, I might as well try the Acai berry instead, so I'll be blogging weekly or more often if I feel like it while I take the pills. I am actually looking forward to it and while I'm hopeful that it will also help me lose weight, I am mostly looking for a less toxic body. At the best I'll lose more weight and be healthier, at the worst I'll have no change at all and I'll still lose a couple more pounds from simply living the changes I've made. Either way, I'm recording it all, hope you follow along!

New year, new determination.

I'm not much of a 'resolutions' kind of gal so I'm not going to talk a big about resolving to do impossible things like turn my life upside down, read War and Peace, and never eat chocolate again.
*shudder*
Can you even imagine no chocolate? The horror!
Back to what I was saying.... I do want some big changes in my life, but I'm fairly sure that I would fail at an astonishingly rapid rate if I made massive changes, so I'm not. Last summer I stopped drinking coffee and soda for three months straight and though I drink it now, it's no more than once every week or two. I also worked on portion size, weeding fast food out of my diet, and getting more activity.

For a long time it worked. I lost 20 pounds and felt great, but then around the beginning of November, when I was making up a Thanksgiving menu I decided to stop being so concerned. After all, holidays are notorious for packing on the weight and as long as I didn't gain I would be happy. Oops. I've bounced up and down 4 pounds for 2 months and I am tired of it! I want to lose again, however slowly it may be so I have to go back to basics. January has just begun and I plan to take advantage of a new start in a new month of the new year. Too many new? Yeah, I agree.
Keeping it simple gets the best results for me so that's what I'm doing. I plan to do something active every single day for the month, hopefully kicking my butt back in line and giving me the results I need to motivate me long term. When I mentioned this plan to my friends on Granola Chicks, one of them (a fellow member of Spark People, I joined in 2007) mentioned that there is a group on Spark People that are doing the EXACT. SAME. THING. Only they offer a trophy on my SparkPeople page and a chance to win a $300 gift car to Amazon.com. How cool is that? Of course I joined and I did my first workout. Ouch. I feel great, but a little tired and I had to modify 2 moves, a 3rd was hopeless, not even close to something I can do.
I kept my butt moving the whole time and did what I could.
Here's a short list of my daily goals:
multi vitamin
water
workout/cardio activity


See? Simple. Since I'm not sure I could keep it up for too long, I plan on doing it for 4 weeks and then if I think I have the moxi, I'll commit to another.

Family and holidays

When winter rolls around, it's harder for me to go see my family and I try to get in one last, big, visit before I get stuck here in the snow up to my armpits. Don't misunderstand, I adore the snow. I grew up without it unless we went to Mt Ashland and I hated fighting skiers and tourists just to play in the snow. Now we have it all winter long and I have been here 5 years, 2 in Bend, 3 in La Pine and I still love it. It's got a couple of negatives though, like being crazy cold (30 below and frozen pipes) and keeping us a bit more housebound than the Rogue Valley's rainy winters.
This time around we had more incentive to go on a 'last big trip' for the season. Normally it starts getting deep in the end of December, but this year it started snowing in early November and stuck. A lot. We're afraid this will be a hard winter and I don't want to miss out on seeing everyone before we hibernate, especially since my uncle Rob just got remarried after moving to Wisconsin. I missed the wedding, but I really didn't want to miss my chance to meet his new wife and see my uncle. i don't get to see him much but we're close and I missed him.
It was also a good chance to see my younger sister. She's a single mom to 4 kids and works nearly constantly to provide for them. She got to take them to school and then she saw them again for an hour before her night job started and there was no way she could come see us. The roads are bad and her car is too, her kids are in school, she has no free time or spending money... you get the picture.
I have a huge family and I miss each and every one of them, I wish I could spend a month so that I could see each of them for a day or two. Now my brother and his family have mentioned they will be up this way in a month and so has one of my little sisters. Well, both little sisters have mentioned coming up, but I think the younger one is too worried about the welfare of her pets and plants to leave them for too long, so it probably won't happen this year.
It's amazing how difficult and convoluted plans can get when it starts out so simple. I just missed them, I wanted to see them before the worst of winter kept us home. Everyone has time off over Thanksgiving and it was a good time for us too, so we came then. Then one person couldn't get the day after Thanksgiving off and she was upset (can't blame her) and there was a difficult time with religious beliefs and misconceptions about my intentions, then there couldn't be a visit without some sort of bad attitude and/or grumpiness.
Thankfully the good far outweighed the bad this time around as it often does and I got to spend time with my favorite people. I even got to see my reclusive hermit uncle! (I have a surfeit of reclusive uncles. This one stands out as he actually hides when I come over, the others are surly, antisocial, or both.)
I got news of 2 more pregnancies and managed to end a conversation about my lack of pregnancies only seconds before bursting into tears. I can't seem to come to grips. Every single month it hurts when AF comes and even more when it happens skip me without the usual happy reason. I love my children and I always will. I was blessed every time I had one of them and I am still grateful every day they are in my life, they're bright, handsome, funny, happy, loving little boys. Right at this time in my life I hope to have another one of those blessings in my life and the very real possibility that it will not happen is daunting and saddens me.
Wow, that got depressing. Good news, let's see.... I'm getting over my cold. The house is warm and comfortable enough that I forget how cold it is outside - til I want to air out the house. It's in desperate need of it, the smells of cooking, trash, little kids and wet dog are lingering. I plan to give it a good deep cleaning this weekend. The youngest and my husband got sick and are already getting better, the two oldest missed it completely!
More positives, we have great neighbors. One of them plowed our drive and the other came and checked on our cats. Sure, she was just looking for a game to play and had to come into our dirty house to get it, but she stopped to pet them and make them feel less abandoned. December 7th is my last dental work of 2010, how cool is that? it marks the end of the first third of my work and the 12 month countdown til I am finished with it allllllll. I do need to get an appointment for my glasses before the end of the year, I need them so badly.

Fall and kids and shopping

Fall, yes. Kids, of course. Shopping? No. Usually I loathe shopping but I LOVE deals. At GoodWill I found two tops with tags, from my favorite store, Torrid. Eee! My size, cheap, and brand new. Can't beat that right?
Not unless you go to Old Navy for the first time ever and happen to be there 30 minutes before closing on the last day of a clearance on sale items. 40% off the lowered prices. I got tanks for $.75-$3 each. I got a necklace and earrings for $4.59 total. It was amazing!!
I needed new clothes, too. Fall has hit in full force and I'm not fitting my old clothes so well. The first snow of the year lasted about 4 days and was just below mid-calf. So pretty yet so early. We'd gotten the boys new coats, but we were missing boots for the oldest and only the youngest had a snow suit. I love warm sunny weather even if I dislike wearing less and less clothing in public, I adore fall and it's colors and smells and the change it brings, but since we moved to Deschutes County the thing I love the most is the snow. I adore the snow. It's so peaceful and quiet and clean looking. I especially love the shapes it makes on branches and fencing and such.
The indoors being warm and cozy and smelling of apples and cinnamon, kids with pink cheeks and messy hair, the neat little squeak when someone takes the first steps across the snow.
I love bundling up, too. Caps, scarves, coats, and boots. So colorful and cute. The kids are getting so big, I want to share with them the wonderful memories I have of family times and first snows, and cider on cold night, games after dinner and the joy of gathering together with loved ones you might not get to see as often.
It's cold gray days like the one we're having today that make me miss my Dandad even more. On days like this he'd brew a pot and we'd stay inside and talk over coffee. I'm sad that my kids will miss out on those moments but I know they're forming their own as they grow. They're getting so tall, smart, and independent and I'm overwhelmingly proud of them. Handsome little men who look just like their dad. Big blue eyes, sweet little dimples. yup, I love those monsters.