05/21/2020, Thursday

Another fabulous weather day yesterday. 9724 steps and more tidying up of the yard. Made another batch of my weed killer ( 2 gallons vinegar, 4 cups Epsom salt, ½ cup Dawn dish soap) in my three gallon sprayer. It works quickly and doesn't harm the dogs. We discovered an ant nest in one of our raised beds (Orkin sprays the house and the two out buildings since discovering a nest of carpenter ants in our dining room wall, when taking out the window and adding the slider). We changed out the front storm door for the screen door, so all that is left of our formal transition of seasons is rotating winter clothing out and summer clothing in...good for the next rainy day. My WW weigh in is today and I am slowly on the uptick, so I have to focus on grazing more. I crave salt when highly active, and have been drawn to our 100 calorie pretzel bags. I have to combine simple carbs with fat/protein to keep my sugar under control, so those dollups of peanutbutter add up. Have to make some hummus.

Liz, it has got to be hard to live with a chef ! Shirl, you are going to so enjoy your upcoming solitude ! Do you keep your cell phone with you when you are alone and/or have you arranged for someone to check in throughout the day. I can easily see you over extending... BB, so proud of your successes !! My five year surgiversary is at the end of this month... I can't imagine ten years !! Peps, I can't imagine starting a school year virtually. Has there been any consideration of having teachers loop up with their current students to level the learning curve and maximize instruction ? Diane, looking forward to some plant pictures !! Ceci, is all of the Michigan flooding anywhere near your summer home? Ann, eager to hear about your weekend with SD. David, what are your current projects ? DD, welcome to Blue ! What colors are your DD and DH? DC is green, so that makes our lives more interesting. Love to all !

Weight 122.2, WW Bluepoints 9. This is the 3rd week I have been exactly the same on WW weigh in day. I have been keeping screenprints of the weekly graphs they provide with the amount of weight change each week, so I can see EXACTLY what is needed to drop lower in my range. I need to stick to just one high day and keep the rest in the loss zone. Once I lose another 1.5-2, then I will focus on maintenance points. Which I know won't be as high as they allow (28 a day on maintenance). That would be about 1400 calories and unfortunately I know that is too many for me. But I am so enjoying the shift to fruits and vegetables which definitely allows me to have an in-range day without feeling like I am dieting.

DS generally is okay when cooking a main meal that I plan to eat. He made salmon one day and grilled swordfish kabobs yesterday. Both were yummy and he always includes a side vegetable like broccoli with it. Today we are going to make winter squash noodles which I never heard of. DS is betting that I will like them better than zoodles. Apparently they are made with the same spiralizer. I am only in trouble when he ventures into sweets. He also made potato salad this week which is another downfall of mine, but I was able to keep my intake to one day (and hide it in the back of the fridge after that).

Cecily mentioned allergies. Yep, the return here to lots of pollen and especially pollen different from Florida is stuffing me up. I notice it most after a walk when it is windy. You can't help but feel nervous and be assessing if there is a sore throat or body aches involved. I realized it has been 2 weeks since our first restaurant night in Florida so I guess the wait staff was healthy. The first restaurant of the 3 we went to didn't seem as careful as the other two so I felt that we just had to hope no one on staff was carrying it.

Yesterday Justice and I had a great walk around the harbor and today looks like it will be even warmer than yesterday so after my WW meeting this morning we will probably venture out again. I find outdoor walks to help my psyche much more than bereavement groups. I'll start project 1 tomorrow morning (filling the holes in the stair risers from when I removed the old carpet in early December in preparation for painting) .

Stay safe and healthy!

Good morning! We, the 3 of us in the house, are happy so far with our online weigh****chers. It will be helpful to have all 3 of us doing it together. Daughter and I are both in the blue points zone and husband is green. To daughter and I, his point total looks astronomical! Diane, it's quite a challenge you have to balance your blood sugar. On the salt front, I will sometimes take a lime wedge and salt it, as if I was doing a tequila shot, but without the tequila. I don't concern myself with sodium to the extent dieticians tell us we should. When I'm in weight loss phase, it's initially very diuretic, so I go for some salt if I'm craving it.

This morning there was a red tail hawk in our backyard. I enjoyed the concerned tones of the crows, who's that? What are they doing here? Kinda hoping he would get the chipmunk who is raiding my bird feeder. Some cardinals stopped by, and I swear the male cardinal was passing sunflower seeds to his mate with his beak.

This evening we are going to our friend's home for a bonfire/social distancing picnic. It's overcast, but the weather report says no rain and a high of 70. I'm excited thinking about what to wear :)

I slept so late! Normally Fergus wants breakfast and gets me up. He was a good sleeper this morning. Good heavens I am having the weirdest dreams. Last night's were doozies and not in a fun way.

DianeO, the flooding in MI isn't near us. The worst of it if you think of the state as a mitt is over in the palm area nearly to the edge between the index finger and the thumb. My house is in the upper section of the pinky. It's about a 4-5 hour drive. It doesn't help that the water table is so high given that Lake Michigan/Huron (same lake really) are 3 feet above average. There is nowhere for the water to go. So I would expect there will be continued flooding and shore erosion/homes falling in the lake stories the rest of the summer. Luckily our property sits up a bit, but many of our friends and neighbors are not so lucky.

In a moment of weakness and feeling like a bulbous cow, I ordered some smoothies and soups from Splendid Spoon to try to jumpstart a downward trend in my weight. I just needed not to be responsible for feeding myself for a week or so, since my judgment has gone out the window in these months of quarantine. A break from the bad choices if you will. The first smoothie is very... green. It has water, banana, avocado, lemon juice, dates, hemp protein, vanilla powder, matcha powder, and spirulina. Interesting.

Also in my spate of online shopping ordered some Cocofloss. Flavored dental floss, given that one of my nightmares I've been having involves my teeth falling out because I can't get my teeth cleaned due to covid and I was overdue to start with. The first one I tried was dark chocolate. Smells/tastes divine and very appropriately scratchy feeling on the teeth, which I like in a floss! Ah, impulse shopping.

Today I have my therapist and meeting with my knitting group on zoom. A walk for me would be good too.

Hugs to all (I miss hugs!)!

So saying, that's interesting, is not a compliment in this neck of the woods. I'm guessing the smoothie was not so good. Hope other items are.

It didn't make me cringe, but it fell in the "huh, tastes healthy" category rather than the "Ohh, yummy milkshake" category. Lower in sugar than my tastebuds are currently attuned to. Healthy is what I think I need right now, though!

I'm having a bit of a down day.

Probably because today has no real goals to it. Swim lesson days give me a purpose. I can definitely tell you that through SAHM life and isolation life, I have really learned how much I crave structure and goals and execution of plans in order to feel content and happy. And I think maybe my kids do too. I took them out for the first time. I attempted to put on Diane's sweet Elmo masks but they pulled them right off :( Maybe we'll try again. I did take them in my own stroller, and just by virtue of a bulky double stroller, they were far away from others. I needed to order Charlotte's birthday cakes--one for her to smash and one for everyone else. Although her birthday is tomorrow, we are celebrating next Saturday.

Add me to the strange dreams. I've been doing some online retail therapy. The other night I dreamt in ric rac and bows. I'd looked over so many summertime children's outfits that I do believe I created some new designs in my sleep. And then last night I dreamt of metal pigs decor. Charlotte's birthday was to be Charlotte's Web themed and now only loosely so. But I had pinned so many decoration ideas, no doubt that's where the pig decor came from!

Overcast today. 79 but man it feels different when no sun and some drizzle. It's about 50/50 rain chances the entire holiday weekend. Boo. I guess it matches my mood. All kinds of things getting to me today. I sneaked a peek at the scale and it's up. How could that be?! I've walked nearly 15,000 each of the last 2 days and so many before that too. I've been eating smartly. I'm feeling so overwhelmed by the girls and like this is nothing like the mom life I'd envisioned. I'm sure that's true for every stay at home mom, but never more than in the midst of a pandemic. I kinda feel like we were all stuck in time out. and then I feel bad about feeling that way when it's such a minor complaint in the scheme of things. I used to feel successful, accomplished, pretty and powerful in my work clothes. Now I feel haggard, tired, mean-mom-voice, and to the outside world perhaps I look like nothing more than a spot taken away from someone who was actually going to practice law. I'm feeling these feelings so acutely because my parents just relinquished my office space. They really don't have enough work for me, anyway, and it makes sense. But with them closing in on retirement, it's unlikely I'll ever work with/for them. And it was a good deal! I wish I'd taken greater advantage of all the things I could have learned from them! Now is a terrible time to find work. But I'm confident I could ultimately find a job. But I'm worried. Maybe I would be a bad employee and a bad mom. This time is so hard. If the number of steps I unwittingly take per day is any indication...

Do you guys ever do anything for Memorial Day? In my family it has always been the time to visit the gravesides and not just for military. I must say, it's so beautiful over Memorial day. All the flowers, all the flags. But here we are at another first. I haven't been to visit grandmommy's grave since she was laid to rest there. I miss her. Dearly.

Not sure how to pep up the day. I guess to bring it back to a maintenance blog, I guess there's a part of me that feels like I'm having a bad day and "not seeing results on the scale, anyway" so xyz would make me feel better. Ah and actually even in typing this I truly believe that some FOOD PORN WARNING meringue-topped vanilla wafer pudding straight outta the oven like grandmommy made would heal me. Maybe a slice of lazy daisy cake. Thankfully I do not have the ingredients to either

The little town I grew up in had a Memorial Day parade, made up of an honor guard, the high school marching band, some civic organizations, some guys on horses, and then a big group of whatever kids wanted to ride their bikes. After that, there was a program in the school auditorium (the old kind, from the early 1900s, I loved that auditorium) where they read the name of every serviceperson who died in the line of duty, and rang a bell. Very solemn. Sometimes my little town was oppressive, stifling, and a bit mean. Sometimes it felt like Mayberry. Memorial Day was one of the times I loved it.

I love this description! And congrats on WW!

Usually we would have a cookout somewhere for Memorial Day - outside preferably but the weather can vary a lot here at the end of May so sometimes indoors. It was considered the start of tourist season on Cape Cod though it doesn't rev up fully until the week of July 4. I have no idea what it will be like this year, BUT the beaches reopen Saturday! Only 50% of the parking spaces will be available and distancing required on the beach but that is doable. I usually go to the beach I like during the week early and the parking lot is less than 50% at that point anyway.