Weigh -in Day

This is the end of month 5, start of month 6

This week:

Weight: 203
Chest: 39.25
Waist: 38.5
Abdomen: 46.75
Hips: 44

(lost 4 lbs for the month - one lb shy of 50 lb lost!)

Last week:
weight 205

chest 39.5 (not bust)
waist 38.75
abdomen 47
hips 44.5

last month:
weight: 207
chest: 39.75
waist 39
abdomen 47
hips 44.5

original weights/measurements:


Original weight 252

Chest (not bust) 45
waist: 47.5
Abdomen started measuring a month into the diet): 52
hips: 52

It was a rough week...

A rough week, but over.

Dog, for the third Friday in a row was able to get out of the house and out the back yard, but she was found by a person who lives two houses down and didn't get very far away!

Today, I am going to change the way we lock the sliding door or figure out a way to gate it that son cannot mishandle so she manages to get out.

Son, the evening of my birthday, turns up with a large tattoo, which he did not have permission to get. He justified it by seeing it as a memorial to his dead birthmother and sister. When I told him that when you do something wrong to honor the memory of your loved ones, it doesn't honor them, he heard "You are telling me I don't love my birth mom and sister." Oy veh. I saw red cause I had told him flat out not to do it, it's illegal in this state for a 17 year old to get a tattoo without parental permission, and it's something I had told him point blank he couldn't do until he was 18.

But son has this way of justifying everything he does any more, especially around holidays and special occasions. This is a common thing for kids who are dealing with grief, and ptsd. This one actually may be a sign of him trying to deal with the deaths, since when he gets it finished, it's supposed to have his birth mom's and sister's names in roses with the date.

But oh! Dealing with holidays and special occasions is becoming something I dread.

The day was not a fun day. I had to take medicine for my stomach pain that made me sleep the afternoon away. I didn't get to go to the mall, I didn't get my manicure and pedicure done, and I am coping with such weariness.

At least work at the library is going well. I am learning more about how to choose keywords when cataloging. Yesterday, I got to type up a bibliography of works by a man who worked for a Forest Service research station back in the 30s and 4os for someone doing research on him... it's interesting to see what people were concerned about in land management then (especially in his case, how to improve grazing lands), and how old some journals are, like Ecology. It began publishing long, long before it was a household word.

It's such a peaceful, different world, working in the library. I need outlets like that - scholarly, calm and where I feel successful. I quit work when I got married because the boys needed a sahm, and they really did, but now, this is sort of my way back into the working world. It's volunteer, but it will be current work experience. And it's good for my psyche.

Thoughts for the day

Well, friends, today I cross that big 5-0 boundary...but it's also Sean Connery's birthday while we're at it, who is exactly 25 years older than I. And on a more upright note, today is the 100th birthday of St. Faustina Kowalska, who died in 1938, but is one of my favorite 20th century saints. I only discovered she was my birthday cousin years after I learned about her story.

Anyway, today also is the birthday of Regis Philbin and Tim Burton, Elvis Costello and the lovely Claudia Schiffer.

I am in interesting company with by birthday cousins!

Yesterday, the problems I have with my digestive tract flaired up, and my meds didn't take it down, so I went to ER to make sure it wasn't a heart attack. I get spasms involving my bile duct. Hurts in the same areas as heart problems, though, and since women's heart attacks are sneaky, and the meds didn't work as normally they do, I wanted to be safe. It wasn't cardiac, the pain backed down about the time I got all the bells and whistles in ER, but it reminded me of the frailty of life.

My mother only lived 13 years after her 50th birthday. But one of my grandmother lived 46, and the other is still alive and kicking. Life can be fragile, but it is often tenacious, too. And while you are alive, you have the opportunity to touch someone in a good way, heal a pain, say the right word - or be the pits. I prefer the first alternative, sometimes I behave like the second, but that's life. We just pick up the pieces and keep trying.

Because it's my bd, I am going to have something chocolaty today. But not in huge quantities, and not to be brought home (between my tummy and my diet, I just don't think I want to deal with the side effects of overindulging). But it is a milestone! And I want to commemorate it.

Home spa day. And this time, for real.

Tomorrow school begins.

I don't know if I'm happy about it or not.

At least it should mean son gets back on a more regular schedule. And that's a good thing.

But it definitely means the season is changing. One last year before adulthood smacks my son in the head.

But it also means autumn hikes in the mountain, and grouse season and aspen turning golden.

And gives me plenty of time to figure out what I am going to refuse to cook for thanksgiving.

Change

Winter, winter whispers
as aspen leaves turn into gold,
Brilliant moment in the sunshine
to let us know the year's grown old.

Soon the leaves will be falling
like golden snow upon the way,
Vita brevis in the sunshine,
Momento mori touched with clay.

And yet, with every scar from falling leaf
next year's bud waits patiently
through snow and gray and winter's barrens
to leaf out green when time to be.

Alright. Not sure where that one came from...The leaves really are just beginning the very earliest transitions around here, and you have to know what to look for to see it. My mums haven't bloomed yet. Usually right after they bloom, the first snow hits. Yet still, the air, the light, the season says "Autumn is knocking at the door."

And so it is.

Sick Day and mental escape

Last night, my husband noticed my moodiness.

He decided we had to go out to dinner.

I got a greek salad, but I didn't realize it was the style with no greens - just cuke, peppers, onions tomatoes, feta and olives.

Oh, I got them to bring me some lettuce, but it was still too much onion for me. (and I didn't even use the salad dressing).

My body is having its revenge from the stress, anger and irritation of the last two weekends, no doubt.

I need a day to unwind, to do all those lady rituals like touch up my hair color, give myself a facial, and exfolliate my feet, and such stuff, put on my favorite celtic or classical music and relax. I need my son not to let the dog escape again.

We were supposed to do fun things yesterday, and it didn't happen. Yesterday was the pits. Today I am too sick to do anything. Tomorrow I'm expected to feel like chauffering son to his therapist.

There's a place not more than 50 miles from here that has a lovely stream that looks like this...not very deep, except for holes where the trout tend to hang out, but the water is very cold, like many mountain streams.

We ford a place that looks like this, usually in hip waders because it is cold. Beyond the stream is a trailhead that parallels two intermittent streams up to the top of the mountain, which is more a plateau on top, with ridges that peek out above the plateau. There's a spring up there. It's about three miles in from the road and a thousand feet up. As the autumn grows deeper, the spring sometimes is visted by huge flocks of robins, coming in for a drink. I was amazed how many robins hang out there. Once at the spring, I saw a mule deer doe with two younger does, no doubt her daughters following behind as they came to get a drink. It's rare for the deer to get seen in the early fall. They don't normally come down until the snows start. There are a lot of elk in the area too, but I haven't seen more than their signs so far.

There's a place on the trail up filled with aspen, and when the leaves start to fall, it looks magical for a week or two.

We also see blue and ruffed forest grouse up there, which is often our excuse to go up the trail.

I am looking forward to hiking it again. Right now, before the hunting season starts, it's filled with cattle and sheep, because it's got some good pasture in the mountains. But in a couple of weeks, they will be herding the animals off, and it will be left to people like me, to escape from the everyday in a long hard walk up the mountain.

But I like it. There's a point when you're walking up, that you realize that you can see more of the next mountain across the valley than you realized was there, if you were only on the valley floor. It's a breathtaking view, but you have to work for it.

Something to look forward to.