11/25/18, Sunday

1. Within Range: Yes, by the skin of my teeth
2. General Wellbeing: 8 on SS
3. 10,000+ Steps: 2982
4. Fitness: walking
5. Self-Care: Got nothing
6. Play/Leisure: Knitting and crocheting edges
7. Intention: Make intentions reality ! Build a habit !!

There continues to be some profound sharing in our tribe. Family dysfunction and dynamics challenge us all, and make life much richer as we break the patterns that hold us back. Nina Simone... the high priestess of soul ! Another reminder of playlists to activate ! Shel, I read the Michelle Obama book on the way home from Chicago ! Loved it ! How lucky we are, zipping by bookstores and checking out new best sellers, sitting in a comfy chair downloading to Kindle at half the price, then off we go !! She carried her 25 pound weights up and down stairs with grace, and saw them as an advantage. You two have a lot in common... tenacity, high bar, CAN DO attitude ! Cecily, the shift in fitness attitude is dramatic. Those endorphins are addictive ! BB, you so TOTALLY BELONG here as an essential tribe member. We ALL do ! David, Miss Bonnie, Shirley, DD, BB, Godmother Diane, PEPS, Paula, Liz, Shel, Ann, Cecily (oh PLEASE don't let me forget anyone !) ... I am so grateful for your daily contributions to my life and maintenance journey. Don't let those pregnancy hormones cause you to doubt that !! Liz, pictures when kitchen is done would be perfect !

Single digits here yesterday, and not much walking. My asthma does not like cold air ! 40's today, so bring it on. Turkey soup in the crock pot !

Diane O.-I'll be making turkey soup today or tomorrow. Colder here today too...but that just means instead of 70s, 40s! My asthma does better in cold weather than mild/springy/allergens weather. I always wait excitedly for a freeze to kill off all the bad stuff. But I cannot say I'd do well with single digits, either!

Bonnie150-So glad to see your posts. They make my heart happy! I have two sisters and my younger sister and I were only two years apart in school and are very close. I've always thought that if my husband passes before me, my dream plan is to move in with my sister again. Although, like sisters do, we're thick as thieves but also can fight like cats and dogs. So excited for Becca to have that relationship.

Weight: 167.8

We got the lights up and they look magnificent if I do say so myself! DH grumped the whole time, but just as I expected, he was really happy and proud when he was done.

Didn't get any more done as his sister came for a visit and halted progress. That's okay, though. Tis the season for family. So today I need to get ready for DH to leave for the week, put away Thanksgiving, hopefully get down non-tree Christmas, maybe make turkey soup. Let's see how much of that we get accomplished!

Weight 122.8, calories 1652. Insomnia leading to eating, followed by weird dreams sleeping on the couch.

Today we are going to a Fort Myers for the sand sculpting contest our friend is in. He will finish the sculpture he started 4 days ago. Awards are at 3 (he is in the advanced amateur category and has previously placed third, then second). Pictures tomorrow. We are all meeting some friends from Aruba afterwards for dinner. Hopefully my total sleep including couch time was enough!

DH was extremely difficult yesterday morning prior to taking a nap. He was like a 6'2" petulant child *****fused to listen and marched off on his own regardless of what I said. Luckily it was just to the pool, but what happens when it is dangerous for him to do something and/or this happens more frequently? Drug him into submission? Scary prospect, but this is the reality I'm afraid of with a physically healthy much larger dementia person. When older people get dementia frequently something physical will slow them down but that is unlikely in DH's case. I told him to sleep in this morning. Hopefully yesterday's episode won't recur anytime soon.

So I continue to book safe travels and decorate like crazy to make me feel happy... I figure that is better than eating or drinking my feelings. I used to use food to cope and my mother used alcohol. My vices cost money but hopefully aren't so destructive in other ways.

Have a satisfying Sunday!

Maybe hobbies are simply play and everyone needs play. It didn't occur to me that my foodie-hobby was incendiary for my compulsion to overeat. They couldn't be separated. (If I had a green thumb instead of high end ingredients and kitchen tools, would I have avoided weighing 360 lbs?)

Maybe transfer addiction is just transferring from one hobby to another. I see a healthy transfer, not harm. Decorate with abandon!

Best wishes, as always, as you walk this road with DH.

Liz, Shel makes some excellent points above about hobbies as "transfer addictions."

Speaking for myself, my most obvious new post-WLS addiction is fashion/style/clothes. Yes, at this point I do NOT need any more clothes. However, that's unlikely to stop my acquisitions. The real sticking point is that I don't want to toss any of them, even pieces I don't wear, although I would happily give them to someone who could wear them.

I may have mentioned before that I have a long obsession with lists. Hence, I enjoy tremendously cataloguing all my clothes in Excel and indexing them by type, color, brand, fabric, and the frequency with which I wear them, i.e., 1W, 2M, 3Q, 4BA, 5A, 6N. Then I build outfits from bottoms, tops, third pieces, outerwear, shoes, purses, and accessories. It's a pleasure that never ends. :)

Plus now I can brag that as I make packing lists for the 3-month move to NOLA, my clothes catalog is proving quite useful. ;)

Holy organizational compulsions, Clothes Cataloger! Gotta be a girl thing, cuz I'm simply speechless.

Thang ya. Thang ya verra mudge.

:)

I remember the wonderful sculptures from last winter- (wow, can't believe it's been a year or more since I returned to this wonderful group of people - time--so fast)

Bring those pictures on!

Weight: 135
Macros: Cals - 1,170, Carbs - 81, Fats - 31, Protein - 108, Fiber - 18
Sleep hours: 8.5
Vegetable/Fruit Servings: 6
Water glasses: 8
Exercise: 12,200 steps + 65" yoga @ home
Meditation: Yes

Did eight whole windshield wipers yesterday. Will go for 10 this morning (yoga @ home starts in a sec). I'm not so sore this morning, so I figure I'm getting my yoga mojo back. My "iron will" (as the Zen Habits guy calls it) on this Ten Day Challenge to Lose Three Pounds is strong. It's interesting that only two days in eating 1200 calories isn't much harder than eating 1700 calories. Start small, every day, increase gradually.

Today it's windy, cold, and rainy. That's OK. I'll still get my steps in (today's target is 12,000). BTW, my great room is like a little gym with hardwood floors that I circle and circle and circle. My spirit animal is a Border Collie.

Today's holiday music will tickle those of you who rode around in the back seats of your parents' cars in the 1940s and 1950s looking at Christmas lights and rolling your eyes as your folks seat-danced and finger-snapped to Glenn Miller's Orchestra rocking out the Yule. https://music.amazon.com/search/big+band+christmas+glenn+mil ler

Today's theme: It's Christmas time ... let us jump and jive!

138.8

Turkey soup--Bring it on.

Geeze, guys, if the manic part of being bi-polar is anything like what I'm feeling right now, I can understand why those who have that disorder would be reluctant to take the medication necessary to "level and blunt" the lows that follow. Endorphins roaring and rushing all morning- or am I just being God-touched this day. What ever. Everything soooverysharpclearandfocused.

Am watching the weather change before me out the windows. Front is between Russell and Wichita. The big event will pass north of us- look out KC and Chicago. DS1 and fiancé driving back home from Denver today. Hope they chose the southern route, I-70 will result in an unwelcome extra day of vacation.

Transfer addiction...Brrrr. Super relate to that term. Oh, the lists. Let's count the ways: **** I started typing them out, then asked myself, "bragging or complaining?".

Maybe it's all about life-energy-essence, and what we do to expend that force that IS our Soul manifest into action? I believe one of our purposes on this earth is to allow God to realize and continue his creative process through our body/mind/soul.

Positive and focused: Spend it freely and use it all up. Those things grow us and are good stuff. All that is play and giving and production is yes. Takes us up, reveals more of who we are and is expansive--yes. Doing ANYTHING with Hands held out and in the light is YES.

Negative and chaotic: Think twice. When those activities move towards stunting us--bad juju. All that is butchered and hoarding and stagnant is no. Takes us down, hides and isolates who we are and is stagnant is NO.

Just about anything we choose to do- the activity does not matter--it's the motivation and subsequent consequences and resulting state of mind/body/soul that shows the truth of what is a transfer addiction or not.

Long post, but have to include this. I discovered this poem (along with the ever pertinent spinner of positive and truth, ee *******s) in 1972. We, Kurt and I, used it as part of our wedding vows in 1984. It is a state of mind I aspire to and want to live in daily.

i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birthday of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any- lifted from the no of all nothing - human merely being doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Life is good. It's all good. bonnie

(apologies for stanzas- dam' OH)