Good morning. This week was quite a slide for me, mainly because there was no time for exercise. I don’t even remember what all kept me away from home, but I wasn’t home, and aside from a fantastic, 50 minute walk through my in-laws’ neighborhood Monday night with a sister-in-law, I didn’t exercise. And there was a little bit of ice-cream consumed. And a chocolate bar. And some potato chips in small quantities. Oh, and there was cake, too. But all of the previously mentioned were legitimately consumed in small quantities. Even the chocolate bar was one of those thin, Hershey bars designed for smores.

I’m blaming it on the fact that I’m pseudo-menstruating.

So that was my “break” week, and I’m gearing up to return to regular exercise and healthy eating next week, possibly starting today.

While I’m back up at 220.5, I’m happy to report that…

Hold up. I was about to tell you that I measured myself 4 days ago and had gone down 1/2 inch in both my waist and my hips since I measured 2 weeks ago, but when I measured just now to make sure, I had dropped another half inch in my waist, and another 1/4 inch in my hips. (I showed another 1/2 inch in my hips the first 7 times I measured, but couldn’t really believe it, so on the 8th time, when it showed a bit between 1/4 and 1/2, I took it).

This brings me to a total of 1 inch lost in my waist and 3/4 of an inch lost in my hips since July 9th. And I know July 9th’s measurements were accurate, because I’d been measuring myself for much of the last couple months trying to decide which size of bridesmaid dress to order for my sister’s wedding, and I measured exactly the same throughout that period of time.

This calls for a celebration.

How ’bout an artsy shot of my tape measure?

I’m never home. We come home to eat and sleep, and are here just long enough to make a huge mess before having to leave again. I tell you what, I’m getting tired of it.

I’m staying home this afternoon but the house is a disaster and I have out of town company coming in a few hours to spend the weekend, so I still have no time. BUT, I’ll tell you real quick that I went to the knitting night at the Mariners game on Tuesday with Hayden. We sat with Marian, Janell, Susan (CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!), and Diana, and I got to catch up with Katie.

Good times.

I didn’t take any knitting with me because aside from having my hands full with Clark, I don’t have any ready-to-go knitting projects. None. I haven’t had any for weeks. Since finishing the green socks, really. The cancer hat gone bad, which I haven’t had time to blog about, doesn’t count.

Also happening in our lives is another horrific bathroom project, except unlike our last one, this one was unexpected. And it’s not pretty. The term “worst cast scenario” has been brought up by professionals. More than once.

Now, you see that black hole on the left side of the picture?

Yeah, that one.

Through that hole is an unobstructed view of our downstairs laundry room. If I had more time, I’d have the girls go down, turn on the light, and wave to you through it, but I don’t. However, I’d imagine you will see many more pictures of my bathroom as time progresses. These are crappy representations of the rot and destruction, but it’s what I’ve got.

So yesterday, in our spare time (that’s sarcasm), Nate and I went out to look at replacement tile. If there’s one positive to the situation it’s that we really didn’t like the pink, textured 8×8 tile that is being ripped out. So at least we’re going to be improving something. But the problem we ran into is that EVERYTHING out there is neutral. Neutral! If you’ve been around here much, you should know without me saying so that we are NOT neutral people. Nate was looking for Granny Smith Apple green. My favorite was actual river rocks attached to mesh in interlocking 11 inch squares (for $20 a sheet, sheesh!).

No one should have to go through this more than once in a year.

We like the look of glass tile. (Which is more than $20 a sheet, or a comparable square foot). Surprisingly enough, after running all over yesterday looking at as much as we could, he seems to be drawn to mosaics. I never would have guessed. So after a very frustrating and disappointing outing, we stayed up late looking at this. Click the links and look around. It’s luscious. It’s not neutral. And it’s relatively inexpensive.

We also had fun looking here, but with very few exceptions, everything was extremely expensive. Some of it was pushing $200 per square foot. But it’s pretty.

The river rock remains my favorite, and ultimately, I’d love to combine the two (river rock floors and green or blue mosaic tub wrap, wall, and shower). The ceiling in our bathroom is glass, so when I shower, I’m showering in morning sunlight. The steam from the shower makes it look like early morning fog, and above me are large maple tree branches. It’s sublime. Can you imagine standing on actual river rock in that setting? Heaven on Earth. That’s all I can think to say.

So, there’s my week. And the funny thing is, you still don’t know most of it. But I’m out of time, and this is already a freak-long post.

FINALLY!!!

I’m under 220 again. I was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen! 219.5, baby! And look at this…

Stars! I’ve had another great week of exercise and looking at my calendar full of stars is very satisfying. The Blue stars are weights and PT, the green stars are treadmill, and the gold stars are walks through the neighborhood.

This week I went on a walk Monday evening, did weights only on Tuesday, treadmill on Wednesday, weights and PT Thursday, and took a great walk yesterday morning. As you can see from the picture, I’ve been doing my Saturday exercise on Sunday this month, but it’s getting done.

I think I need to up the weight I use on my pecs. It’s gotten a lot easier but I’m stalling because it’s no fun to move up. It makes it hard again.

My pants are still tight in the waist, which sucks, but I feel thinner everywhere else. My face looks better. My thighs are bigger, but that’s because I’ve been ripping them up on weights day doing squats. And it’s nice to walk around the house with my hands on my thighs, feeling the muscles in my quads move again. I’ve missed that.

We were busy and social this week, and I had the opportunity to eat junk almost every night. Particularly on Thursday when Nate’s siblings all got together. There was three times as much pizza as was needed, 2 huge cakes, a blueberry pie, some smaller cakes, See’s chocolates, chips, etc.

Did she falter?

SHE DID NOT! Whoot! And it wasn’t that hard, honestly. This whole eating thing I’m doing right now couldn’t be easier. I still look forward to my shakes. They’re still very satisfying, particularly in this heat.

And here I’ll take a side note- It is wicked hot in the house. It was 88 degrees last night inside, according to the thermostat, but it felt hotter. I don’t usually mind a hot and muggy day, but I like it to cool off during the night to wake up to a cool morning. Nope, nothin’. It only cooled down 6 degrees overnight. The windows are open, but there is NO wind. And it’s hot outside, even though there’s a cloud cover. If the clouds burn off and we have another scorcher today, and there’s no wind…. well, we’ll spend the day down in the basement, that’s what. But I’m hoping for a breeze.

So back to food. I bought some fish oil, spirulina, and flaxseed oil at the supplement store this week while buying more protein powder. My juicing book has a few recipes requiring the latter two, and fish oil sounds like a good idea. My friend Michal, who’s losing a lot of weight right now is taking it. I need to get to Costco today to stock up on produce again. I went through it this week, and I’m out of a lot of my juicing veggies.

I’ve done a vegetable juice almost everyday this week in the afternoon, and it’s a real pick-me-up. I was sad I couldn’t do one yesterday, mostly because I wasn’t home long enough, but also because I’m out of cucumbers, bell peppers, and the rest of my spinach is old.

And I know I’ve said so before, but this book is the absolute best.

However my favorite juice of the week is the one I made up myself, mentioned in last week’s Health Group.

How’s your week been?

Clark woke up at 5-something this morning, and the sun was up and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so after I fed him and he fell back asleep, I went for a walk. It felt marvelous. While out, I passed a man trying to get his beautiful white lab-mix in the back of his pickup truck. The dog was resisting. He (the dog) was very tall and slender and had that same, sweet face that Abner has. As I was thinking about him I could almost smell his clean fur, and feel it on my face as I thought about how I used to bury my face into his shoulder while rubbing his ears.

Sigh.

A good memory that made me sentimental.

I’m so tired. I don’t think I’ve recovered from the drive-in on Friday, where we saw Pirates and Superman back to back. We got to bed around 4am. And this week has been busy. We haven’t been home much.

Abby got her ears pierced yesterday.

She was in the chair, the lady had rubber gloves on and had disinfected Abigail’s earlobes, had everything laid out, and Veronica had to go to the bathroom.

I thought the raccoons had moved on, but a few days ago, they decimated my water hyacinths. And just now, in the middle of the day, I have one in my maple tree.

I didn’t think they came out during the day. Aren’t raccoons nocturnal? As of right now, I still have all of my fish, but I’m worried. My pond isn’t deep enough to protect them from raccoons.

Good morning! I’m very pleased with how I did this past week, and exercise-wise, it looks a lot like the last few weeks.

Monday- 35 minutes of treadmill. I was worried about my hip, but even though it is still giving me trouble, I seem to be able to exercise. Thank goodness.

Tuesday- I managed to get to my weights before going to bed.

Wednesday- I did the physical therapy I was supposed to do on Tuesday, plus Wednesday’s 35 minutes of treadmill.

Thursday- weights and PT

Friday- I started out on the treadmill in the morning, and realized after my warm up that it was gorgeous outside, so I went on a walk through my neighborhood. It was glorious. I was gone for about 40 minutes, plus my warm up, and went up many hills.

Today I will get in the weights and PT again. This makes four weeks in a row of good exercise. My calendar has foil star stickers all over it again. My resting heart rate is back at 60, which gives great satisfaction.

Last week I talked about how bad I had been eating, particularly since starting exercise again, and that I was going to do better this week. And I DID!

I’m doing one of my homemade breakfast shakes for breakfast and lunch and eating a good dinner. No sweets. No desserts. No refined carb snacks. It is working really well. I had intended to do more healthy snacking, but aside from the fact that we’ve been busy, I haven’t been hungry. And I think the fact that I’m eating a lot of fruit helps keep me from feeling deprived.

(I made the most fantastic spinach salad a couple days this week for dinner with spinach, grilled chicken, grape tomatoes, mushrooms, chopped almonds, avocado, and parmesan cheese in a dressing of a little bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yum, yum, yum).

At the beginning of the week, I made a list of acceptable snacks and then went grocery shopping to stock the fridge. Part of my problem is that if I hit a “desperate” time when I need to eat something, I can’t always think of a healthy option in the heat of the moment. So I made a list to go to of things I have stocked. I thought I’d need it more than I did, but I really didn’t snack much. Here’s my list, in case it’s helpful to anyone.

1 string cheese per day. I had to put a limit on it, because I can pound 5 of them without hesitation. This week, I only had two.

Freshly made vegetable juice. I made the yummiest juice this week. It was 2 organic carrots, 2 stalks of celery, 1/2 an english cucumber, and 1 red bell pepper (they’re cheap at Costco). I can’t find my notes, so I THINK that’s all that was in it, but I’m not sure. It was a little too sweet, so next time I’m going to try 1 carrot and three celery stalks. One time, I tried adding a tomato and just one carrot, but it was too watered down tasting and I didn’t really like it. I added the carrot back to strengthen the flavor.

Cut up vegetables like mushrooms, cucumber, baby carrots, bell pepper, cauliflower, grape tomatoes, celery, sugar snap peas, etc.

Grapes

Nuts

Almond soakers

Apple

A peanut butter and banana shake if I’m desperate for sweet. It’s on the list because it really saved me once before. It’s nice and rich.

A Talking Rain

Yogurt

Dried Apricots

Hummus and celery

The list is long and varied because if it were just “vegetables” for example, how boring would that be? I’m not always in the mood for vegetables. There are sometimes when I want something sweet, (yogurt, dried apricots, peanut butter shake, carrots), and times when I need something more filling or substantial, (nuts, string cheese, hummus), and times when I’m really not that hungry, but I want something, (Talking Rain). The variety of options is helpful. Having them written out is helpful. If I were just having a sweet craving, I’m going to instantly think about the ice cream in the freezer, and I won’t necessarily think about the yogurt or fruit until later.

Any ideas of things I can add to my list?

How was your week?

Oh, one more thing…. I finally ordered a soy milk maker from Soykits.com. They’re also Wheatgrasskits.com, who I ordered my juicer from, and who gave me tips for growing wheatgrass. As it happens, right now their soy milk maker is $30 off. It doesn’t say that on the website, but apparently they have a newsletter, and they’re running a special. They offered me the discounted price, which I appreciated, and said they’d give it to anyone for the next week or two. They weren’t specific on the timeframe. I bought the kit which comes with beans and a natural sweetener or something. I have beans, but figured it’d be good to try others.

I made a shake for breakfast this morning, like I do every morning, but this is the first time that most of it ended up down the garbage disposal.

You see, I bought a bunch of avocados a couple days ago. When Nate (who doesn’t like avocados) saw them, he said he wanted to make an avocado milkshake because he’d had one years ago and really liked it.

I know you see where this is going, but let me tell my tale.

So this morning, when checking out the freezer, fridge, and fruit bowl to decide what concoction to make today, I saw the avocados and thought that if they make a good milkshake, why not a smoothie?

I’ll tell you why. Because, obvious to me now, ANYTHING tastes good when blended with vanilla ice cream, sugar, and whole milk. That’s why. Yogurt, 1%, and half a banana… not so much.

Ewwww.

It was vile.

So, Nate and I each choked down a glass (because it was made from good food, shame to waste it), but couldn’t bring ourselves to drink any more.

Down the sink it went and I’m left to wonder why in the WORLD I thought it sounded like a good idea.

The “Cold Day in July” song? Well, I assume that what they are saying is that whatever they’re singing about won’t happen until a cold day in July, inferring that it will never happen. Being clever and all, right? Well, it’s cold. And it’s July. The end of the world is coming, I tell you.

Swim lessons are my life, and I’m still really enjoying it. I wish I were taking them, but it’s still really fun to see the girls learning so much and having such a good time. They all advanced a level last week.

I’m trying not to feel like “creepy old lady” when noticing how cute those young lifeguards are.

And wondering when lifeguards were suddenly younger than me. They didn’t used to be younger than me. Unfortunately, my daughters are also noticing the cuteness. Aren’t they too young for that?