Author: admin (Page 9 of 89)

Last week I had an undeserved good weigh in and today I had a bad weigh in. Probably deserved, although I tried really hard the last 3 days. Still, it is difficult to make up for a bad Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. By Friday, I had several pounds to lose just to break even. So I was glad to be back down and a scant 0.2 pounds under last week’s weight.

This week I’m going to try to be “all in.” That is one of those things that you are or you aren’t. You can’t be “partly all in.” That just doesn’t make sense. So I had to think hard and a little bit long before deciding I wanted this weight loss enough to actually be ALL in. Just a few minutes ago, I decided I was “really hungry.” Last week I would have said, “Well, 2:00 is close enough to 3:00 to go ahead and eat my snack.” But today I said, “It is only 2:00. Have something to drink and 3:00 will be here before long.” I knew that eating that banana at 2:00 was going to mean I would be really, really hungry by supper time and would most likely eat something that I wasn’t supposed to between 4:30 and 6:00.

I reviewed last week’s eating, since I write down everything I eat and when I eat it. It was easy to see what happened. Afternoon happened. Down time. Two of the days I was a bit wired from being at school most of the day. But it was ME that made the decision to react by eating. And it has to be ME that makes the decision to react by doing something more appropriate. One of the big problems was the M&M’s that just “showed up” in my candy jar where I usually have mint lentils that are so expensive I don’t eat many. So this week I gave Dad his super sized dark chocolate candy bar he’d bought yesterday and asked him to put it somewhere that I don’t know where it is. I could clearly see the evidence that, once I start in on chocolate, I don’t stop until I’ve had way too much.  And yesterday, walking into Walmart, when Dad said we needed to get ice cream, I replied that he was in charge of that because it wasn’t on MY list. We got home with none, which I see as a good situation! And he doesn’t really care if he has diet chocolate pudding or ice cream anyway.

So, I’m off to a good start again this week, as I was last week. But I’m am more prepared to expect to be wired when I get home from school tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. And I have this really cool new coffee maker (that I got from an auction Saturday), so I can have hot water just sitting there waiting for me whenever I need it! Now, when I decide to have a cup of coffee instead of an early snack, it is a much easier decision to make because I don’t have to wait 10 minutes for the tea pot to heat up.

I felt like I was having a really bad day yesterday afternoon, because I was really wired after getting home from 3 90 minute classes at school, first time back this semester. So I was sort of eating everything in sight. Fortunately, there wasn’t much available to eat. My biggest digression from healthy eating was the big piece of chocolate cake at the Abingdon Community Center dinner. So my weight this a.m. was only up a pound, which wasn’t really bad at all. And I’m having a great day today, so I should be back to losing again by tomorrow.

I realized, after the fact, that I’d reached my first prize-worthy weight at 195 and the prize for that is a brownie tower (to split with Dad) from the bakery. I didn’t get down there to get it yesterday, because I knew I’d have dessert at the Abingdon C.C. dinner. Then I had to make the decision as to whether I can still have a prize if I hit a prize-worthy weight, then am not that weight any more when I finally get around to getting it. My decision was that as long as I’m not more than a pound higher, it is okay to still have it. So I need to get down to the bakery today and pick up that brownie tower for tonight. It will be better to have it earlier in the week like this than to wait until closer to the Monday weigh-in!

This was the most pounds I had to lose between prizes. Most of them are more like 3 or 4 pounds, and this one was 5 pounds. But early on, I wanted to have to work harder to get to it. And they are not all food prizes – some are shopping things and really big ones are events.

How often do I see another loss the day after my weigh-in, especially when I’ve had a surprisingly good weigh-in?  Not often, by today was one of them. Down another pound to 195 today. Maybe it was the run I took yesterday. It wasn’t very fast, but it was running and my body has historically lost a lot better when I was running regularly than when I wasn’t. I’d forgotten that, since it has been so long since I could run at all regularly. Or at all, really.

Also in good news, I have no stiffness or soreness from the running I did yesterday, so I’m excited to be able to do a little more on Friday. For today, it was bike riding. It was the coldest day that I’ve been out (33 degrees when I left), but I bundled up really well with a scarf and boots instead of shoes (it was my feet that got really cold last time) and Don’s warm gloves. I was toasty warm the whole time. I was a little out of shape for doing hills. I realized that I’d been going down the hill then on the flat pretty much the rest of the time until the last four blocks of hills at the end. Today’s ride included a lot more hills and I was really bushed when I got home.

I am going to post here about my weight loss, mostly for a record for myself of the ups and downs. I also journal by hand in a notebook, but this will be more detail, since I don’t write by hand very good, so I tend to be brief.  If it is encouraging to you, feel free to read; if not, don’t feel you need to!

I stepped on the scale with a lot of trepidation this morning, since I’d had a very discouraging week, weight-wise (I do weigh every day unless I forget and eat first) and was delighted when the slider went down and down from 198, where I’d hoped to be, to 196. As frequently is the case, I’m puzzled about that extreme loss between yesterday and today, because I didn’t do anything differently than the previous days.  But, hey, I’ll take it!

The real joy of the day was when I went for my walk/racewalk/run. I’d done an easy workout Friday, then taken off from all exercise Saturday and Sunday to let my sore knee/leg rest and it was feeling pretty good. But I did decide not to do any racewalking, because that is what irritated it in the first place. So I substituted jogging for the racewalking for the first entire mile, which was a lot further than I’ve run in a long, long time! That was very exciting for me, because I miss running. So I’m hopeful that when I get this weight off, I will be running regularly again for longer distances. My feet still got pretty numb by the time I got home, but I tend not to notice that anymore, since I’ve had it for so long.

I enjoyed what I’d planned for meals and snacks last week. We had soup and a salad every day for lunch, but alternated between canned green pea soup and lentil soup (Progresso), home-made potato soup, and home-made chicken vegetable soup. I discovered my new favorite food – smoked salmon. I can’t explain just how good that tastes to me!! I sampled it at Sam’s Club and bought some, even though it is about $15.00/lb. (maybe more…). I just flake off a little and put it on my salad and that flavor overpowers any other flavor, so I can enjoy it while still only eating a small amount each day. Seriously, if you haven’t tried it, you really should. Dad thinks it tastes like Kipper Snacks, but I disagree – to me it is way better, but it does have that smoky flavor of Kipper Snacks.

Being stuck in this house, unable to go outside (like we were for Saturday and Sunday) is like being in a tiny calf hut that they put the veal calves in. Even walking from one end of the house to the other is only about 20 steps and walking from the living room to kitchen or bedroom is half that many. So we don’t get hardly ANY activity on those days. That’s one big disadvantage of a small house. So I was really glad I could get out today. We did go to Michael’s on Saturday afternoon, so we walked around a little there. And yesterday we went to Walmart, which was a bit more walking. But the days were mostly sitting. UGH!

I got a lot of crafting done, though. I modge-podged a bunch of craft tubes to use for holding my electrical cords; I did some knitting on big needles – working on a scarf for me. I finished a hat for Dad on the knitting loom and started another for someone. Maybe today I’ll also start on a page for the scrap book I’m making on raising my kids. Dad gave me the book for Christmas and I have a LOT of pictures that I could put in it!

Here is the link. It shows the main part of the house and the bathroom, which are now pretty much done. It isn’t really clear, but gives a good idea of what it looks like.

If you want to look at the first video, before it was finished, here is the link

How much life is brought and how much is left behind?

Before I moved I gave a lot of thought to ways that my life would be different after the move and ways that it would be the same. In other words, how much of life itself is brought along and how much has to be left behind. It is really kind of amazing how much of life is actually brought along, but these are the parts of life we tend to take for granted.

For example, I have calendars and books that I use to organize my life. They were packed last and unpacked fairly early, so I’ve continued to do that part of my life basically the same. And that is a comfort, because it is familiar. The computer goes along with that. All the files that I used to make menus and keep track of other things came right along with us, so there was very little disruption in those sorts of activities.

Other things are even more basic. I brought my toothbrush and other toiletries along and set them up on different shelves in the bathroom. But the ritual remained the same. I comb my hair with the same comb after I wash it with the same shampoo and wash myself with the same body wash and towel off with the same towel.  And I weigh myself on the same scale and see the same stupid weight I saw back in Chetek!

I discovered quite soon that piano practicing wasn’t so much about the piano as it was about the music, which came along. So I may be playing on a different piano, but the experience is just about the same, because I’m practicing the same pieces and wearing the same “piano glasses” to do it.

So we do bring a lot of our life itself along when we move.

What didn’t come along?

What didn’t come along was mostly people – piano students, people at the senior center, people at church. These people were not my life, but part of my life revolved around each of them, whether it was a specific person’s piano lesson or a specific person coming up to say a word to me at the piano during Friday Salad Bar at the senior center.

I would not call these people my friends. Our relationships were not that close. So I didn’t know how much I would miss them. But I do, not so much because of them specifically, but because my life was built around those things that I did with or for them. I enjoyed my piano students, but there were many that I found frustrating. Still, the time I spent with them gave a small measure of meaning to my life.  And when you put them all together, it gave a lot of meaning to my life.

I think what I’m saying was that what I brought with me was the mundane things of life – the things that are done pretty much as a matter of course, and give life a comforting structure. But the things that got left behind were the things that gave my life meaning. Realizing this helps me see how much sense it makes that it is taking so long to feel meaning in my life again. I still only have a handful of people around which a meaningful activity occurs. I have 4 piano students. I have one choir director, along with many choir students that I don’t know anything about yet.

But life is gradually filling. I met a senior center director yesterday and that encounter might lead to more meaningful activities. And so I continue to fill my life with new versions of that which was left behind.

Note: I’ll be writing the rest of this narrative elsewhere.

Note: I just realized yesterday that this was supposed to start on October 1. Oh, well, it gives me extra time, I guess. 🙂

When the reality hits

Don made such a big deal about getting his Tennessee drivers license. He waited forever – like about 4 or 5 months, but that had something to do with the fact that if he didn’t have a Wisconsin DL, he wasn’t a Wisconsin resident and, therefore, couldn’t have a Wisconsin nursing license. I’m not sure why that mattered, since I’m pretty sure he has a TN RN license now. At any rate, it was a big deal to him. I didn’t get it at first, because I’d gotten my TN driver’s license months prior to that, and didn’t remember it being a very big deal.

But then I realized that doing this made the move REAL. We were REALLY Tennessee residents and not Wisconsin residents. We are, of course, still in that transition stage where people always ask “Where are you from?” But we are on the road to the time when no one will ask and we will think of ourselves as being from Tennessee, but originally from Wisconsin.

I had two moments that made the move REAL. The first was when Erica had her baby. My first thought was “When will I be able to go over and see her and the new baby?” This was followed, a couple seconds later, by, “Oh, yeah. I live in Tennessee. I won’t be popping over to Shakopee any time soon. Bummer.”

The second was kind of weird, and actually harder. It was the day I realized it was Red Cedar Choir rehearsal day and I wasn’t there. I really hadn’t realized what an important part of my life playing piano for that choir had become.  I really never got close to any of the people in all the years I was there – I hardly knew anyone’s name, even. But it was a big part of my identity and being without that brought home the seriousness of the decision to make the move to Tennessee, maybe more than anything else.

I’m still wrestling with this. I joined a similar choir here in the Tri-cities area – an adult choir associated with the Tri-cities symphony. But I’m singing, so it is a lot different than being the accompanist.

Anyway, I guess my point is that the reality of the move hits now and then. And the rest of the time, I just enjoy the good things and ignore the rest!

Finding a church home

Thinking back over my life, I do remember having a really hard time finding a church home one other time. That was when we were in our early 20’s and had moved up to Rhinelander for Don to do his internship at a large nursing home there.  Before the move we’d been very involved in a church that was quite similar to the one Don had grown up in.

First we tried a couple Baptist churches, but we weren’t used to Baptist theology and felt a bit uncomfortable there. Then we tried another and kind of liked it until Easter rolled around and we found that they didn’t celebrate Easter (they said they celebrate the resurrection every Sunday.) But we were only in Rhinelander about 9 months, so it wasn’t too bad.

After we were done there, we moved to a place where we knew a couple of people (Chetek) and they went to the Baptist church there, so we just went there. It was better when we knew people that were attending. Actually a LOT better.

After that, we were local for the next 36 years, so when we changed churches, it was because we knew people at the new church and wanted to be there.

Now we are in a town where we don’t know anyone, so we can’t go to a church where they go. While it was very nice that Amy had the pastor of the West Hills Christian Church come and meet Don and invite him, that church didn’t end up feeling like “home” to us. The way they worship, and particularly the music, was just so different that we just couldn’t stay. We gave it a good try – about 4 1/2 months.

One of the problems had been that is was rather small and there weren’t any people much like us. I particularly didn’t feel like I fit in – none of the women made any attempts to get to know me at all, even the pastor’s wife. Plus, the fact that it is small meant that we were the only new people, and they don’t really have a way to help new people fit in.

So we decided to try somewhere bigger, then see if there were other people there that were new, as well.  We also picked a church that seemed like it would be a bit more what we are used to – a non-denominational, evangelical church called Fellowship Chapel. I really like the music and finally feel like I’ve truly been able to worship. We also enjoy the fact that there is more age diversity – the first church was pretty much all old people and Fellowship Chapel has people of all ages. We happen to go to the contemporary service, so there are fewer old people and more families and young people, which we really enjoy.

Is this “the church?” Who knows? I didn’t like the sermon this week – I thought is was totally devoid of grace. But, then again, I’ve really liked the other sermons, so instead of giving up and going elsewhere, I’m going to try to get a chance to communicate my concerns with the pastor, if that is even possible.

I know I’m not going to find the perfect church, so I’m mostly looking for a place where I don’t feel “odd” and where I can really worship. I also want a place I’m comfortable going alone, since Don has to sleep all day every other Sunday as it is his third 12 hour day in a row.

I was looking around at people at church yesterday and thinking, “Are these people going to be my new friends?” That is a big reason for wanting to find a church soon – it is a place to find friends of like mind. But finding a place to truly worship in the main reason and I think we are headed in the right direction.

But it is hard because we have no experience at it. So hopefully, we’ll never have to do it again!

So, how about his weather?

I was raised knowing that talking about the weather was trivial. It was something done by people who didn’t have anything “important” to say to others.

Nonetheless, when you have no job, no place to be, no people in your life other than the person you are always talking to, it is hard to find topics to discuss, particularly if you are try to avoid making comparisons with “back home.” So the weather seems to be a fairly common thing to discuss and, therefore, think about a lot.

Truth be told, the weather was also a lot of the reason we decided to trade our life in snowy Wisconsin for a new life in green and temperate Tennessee. So we were actually interested in the weather here on a day to day basis.  But we made the mistake of moving here right before the most unpleasant season down South – the summer.

While Don complained constantly about the heat and humidity, I took solace in the comments of locals regarding the fact that “this is a really hot year, not at all like normal.” I’m still hoping that this “really hot” summer is followed by an equally “really warm” winter to even things out. As Kylene pointed out to me when she moved to Savannah, the difference isn’t the extremes, but the fact that the extremes stay for a longer period of time than elsewhere. So, while we did get hot and humid weather in Wisconsin on occasion, it was nothing compared to day after day after sweltering day of 90 plus temperatures with accompanying high humidity. But we should be able to notice a more positive difference in February and March, when temperatures are moderating here while the cold and snowy and dismal days continue on and on and depressingly on in northwest Wisconsin.

It was a tough summer to endure, though, and I hope our bodies get more acclimated to the continuous heat in a few years. Our electric bill was quite high due to air conditioner usage one month but we’ve been making more use of fans after that one enormous utility bill shocker.

I know there is a lot more to a place than the weather, but when that is why you moved somewhere and when there is not a lot going on in your new life, it can take center stage. I’m looking forward to the passing of this phenomenon as I get more engaged in the important stuff of life.