Category: Uncategorized (Page 8 of 89)

Here it is Friday, already. I’m totally enjoying living in Tennessee today, as our temperature hit 80 degrees, while northwest Wisconsin is digging out from a “snowstorm” that didn’t amount to quite what they were expecting, but certainly isn’t Spring. Believe it or not, trees are already blossoming here. I’m not sure what kinds they are, but there is a beautiful tall pink one that is fully blossomed all over town, as well as a low yellow bush – Forsythia, I think that is. That means that there is something blooming in northeast Tennessee from late February through November. Pretty awesome, if you ask me!!

We had a concert with the choirs last night. There were 12 songs in all, and I only played for 3 of them. So I sat at the piano and tried to look invisible for most of the concert. The one group had all three acappella, so I didn’t even go out with them. But the other three groups each had one song that I played and two that I didn’t! This was a “parents’ concert” for the choir competition that is next Friday down in Greenville, TN, about an hour away. We are leaving at 7:30 a.m., listening to other schools’ groups for a couple hours in the morning, having lunch and warming up a bit at a Baptist church nearby, then our groups begin performing around 1:00 and we are done around 4:15. It is a lot like Wisconsin’s large group festival, except that each group, when they are done performing their three prepared songs for the judges, goes to another room for group sight-reading. You have to do well in sight-reading, too, in order to get a superior rating. We have four groups, a 100 member mixed choir at the beginning level, and a women’s ensemble, a men’s ensemble and the madrigal group. The women’s and men’s ensembles are made up of the madrigal singers, with just a few others added to fill out the groups. And the madrigal group is also part of the mixed choir, to help them stay on pitch on their acappella pieces. So those kids have had to learn and memorize 12 pieces in the last 8 weeks. Any of the groups that receive a superior rating moves on to State competition. I think that is in Knoxville or Nashville, but I’m not sure when it is. I’m quite sure some of the groups will make it to that. The choir director said the madrigal group is the best sounding group he’s ever worked with and he’s been a choir director for quite a while (he’s 42 years old.) If the guys can just control themselves and keep their eyes on the director…

We went out to celebrate Don’s new job with a Dairy Queen treat yesterday afternoon. Then, this morning he made a special breakfast of eggs and bacon and those rolls you get in a tube and cook, then frost with the frosting that comes with them – also to celebrate. All this celebrating could ruin our weigh-in if we don’t get back on track soon!  Then this afternoon I had the fun of redoing our budget to account for actual income starting next month – that was an exciting time for me!

I started another new piano student this Tuesday, so now I’m up to 7. Not making me tons of money, but it is a start! I’ve been going over to school a LOT getting ready for this contest, though, so that is adding up to a pretty good paycheck, too.

I looked back at my weight records, and I’ve been stuck in this two pound range for over 3 weeks. Argh! And the thing is that I’m following my plan pretty well and exercising totally up to what I should. I don’t think I have to be perfect to lose weight, although I might lose it more slowly. But that would be okay, as long as I was losing some. But this is maddening.

So I’m going to do a close study of what I’ve eaten over the past three weeks and see if I can discover any flaws. I’m thinking I might be getting too little oil, since I don’t make it a point to add oil to my diet and with low calorie foods, oil is usually the first thing to go. At least I’ve written down everything I’ve eaten, so that will make it easier to study.

I’m also giving both of us two days totally off the eating plan. We are going to eat whatever we feel like today and tomorrow. Maybe our bodies just need a break from deprivation. But I don’t feel we’ve really been depriving ourselves, except when it comes to sweets. And meats. And breads. Well, maybe we have… And it isn’t working!

So here is the result of the study:  I have to eat way less cold cereal, marshmallows and cool whip. And I could afford to eat more vegetables, such as green beans, carrots, and peas; more raw fruit, such as apples, cuties, and oranges; and more proteins, such as chicken, milk, tuna, walnuts, and peanut butter; and I probably could use popcorn more as a snack.

Down another pound this week. It is slow going, but as everyone likes to remind those of us on diets, at least it is heading in the right direction! But it is so hard to be patient. How I wish there were instant results to weight loss efforts. A pound seems like so little after a whole week of really being invested in the lifestyle of eating less than I want, exercising daily, and giving up all sorts of things.

This is when I have to remind myself that this weight loss isn’t all there is to life. I also had a good week at school – we got a lot of music learned. It was a great weekend in the backyard – we did some work on the yard itself, pulling vines and preparing places for flowers, as well as getting the floor (fencing) attached to the framework for the chicken house. I finished a couple of books, including The Oz Principle, which gave me more incentive to be accountable for my eating, rather than making excuses.

So maybe only one pound, but still a very good week.

Where did this week go? Time had been moving along pretty slowly until this week. Maybe its because this is the week that January ended and  February began, so I was able to go shopping. With so little income, I’m really trying to stick to my rather meager budget plan, so I didn’t go out and buy things like dishwasher soap, paper clips, and hair color until February arrived. So that was a big (and expensive!) day, right in the middle of the week.

I’ve been going in to school to play for the choirs on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for the past four weeks, too, which keeps me about as busy as I like to be. Basically I work three days, then am off four days – nice routine. My lessons fall on Mondays and Wednesdays, but I’d like to have them a bit more frequently, since that is where my steady income comes from. I’ll get paid for going in to school, but not until after the concert and contest, which is the beginning of March.

One problem I’m having is that on the days that I go to school, I don’t drink hardly anything until I’m done at about 2:30. I know I’m not getting enough water, but I can’t really drink much after about 6:30 p.m., either, or I’m up so many times at night. I need to have a plan to just drink and drink between 3:00 and 6:00. I did that yesterday and it helped.

I’m going in to school today, as well. The students have a day off, but the teachers have in-service. When we go to contest in a month, we are taking the madrigal group and the concert choir group, and also putting together a men’s ensemble and a women’s ensemble. Most of the members of those two groups are from the madrigal group, but there are a few others handpicked from the two sections of concert choir. The madrigal group has rehearsed all the men’s and women’s music a lot, but the others have not. So they are coming in today and we are going to work on that music for 90 minutes with each group – girls in the a.m. and boys following. It should be fun, because it is just the good singers. Each group is doing three pieces, and they are not easy, so it will be hard work. We’ll also be rehearsing at 7:00 a.m. some days up until the contest. (School starts at 7:30 a.m., and there are outside music rehearsals just about every day beginning at 6:30 a.m. The choir director gets there at 6:00 ! Ugh. And play practice, when they have it, lasts until 4:30 p.m. Long days.)

Some times I just do things that don’t make any sense. But they are such an ingrained response that I do them anyway. For example, when I’m really, really upset about something – not just irritated or peeved, but really upset –  I make something chocolate to eat. Of course, in hindsight I can see that this was a very bad idea. But I just do it.

So I had an entire jelly roll pan full of these thin little brownie-like bars, frosted with my amazing homemade chocolate frosting. I put them in the freezer, but that didn’t really hide them. It made it a couple steps further to get to them, but that doesn’t really slow me down at all. I ate a lot of them. Hence the bad weigh in. I told myself I wasn’t going to have any yesterday, but I didn’t listen to myself (big surprise!). Today I’m wavering between throwing the rest in the garbage or leaving them for Don to enjoy. But that doesn’t do either of us any good. I should really throw the rest away. I think I will….

But the lesson to be learned here is that I have to recognize habits that serve no purpose. I’m not sure what to do when I’m that upset, but taking a hot bath or even taking one of my relaxation pills would be better. Making something sweet that will be a temptation for days and totally ruin my weight loss efforts is not a good solution. It is just making an additional problem. And who needs that?

I had planned to take about the first 5 or 6 weeks to get rid of sugar in my diet. Sugar as a main ingredient, that is. If there is just a little sugar to make something taste better, that is okay. But if something is “made of” sugar, that is not okay. Last week I only had one thing all week that fit that category – an ice cream cone from McDonald’s on Friday night. I had planned for a treat on Sunday, as well, but decided what with the weigh in on Monday that I would just wait and have the treat on Monday.  I found a couple pieces of cheesecake in the freezer from back before Christmas and we are going to enjoy them tonight.

So, what do I have for snacks? I have Greek yogurt with cool whip (both are a variety that are very low in sugar), diet pudding and cool whip (same here), cereal, toasted cheese sandwiches, and fruit. I’m happy eating the same things over and over, so that is plenty of choices. They are already planned in my menu, so it is just a matter of seeing what I have planned for that particular snack. Generally I have fruit in the a.m., then have something with milk in it in the afternoon. The evening could be anything, but what it is NOT is ice cream or cookies or other such stuff! I will probably add popcorn after I’ve lost a bit more weight, because I do enjoy that. But I also tend to eat too much of it, despite it not having any sugar in it.

It is hard for me to accept the fact that, if my realistic goal is to lose a pound a week,  there are going to be many days where I don’t see a loss at all. I have been the same weight 5 days in a row now, despite sticking with my “weight-loss” plan perfectly. Five days. I know I will eventually see a loss, but it is very frustrating!

On the plus side, though, my cravings for sweets and especially chocolate have all but disappeared. I went five days with no sweets at all. I don’t plan them in my menus, so when I have a sweet, it is going to be something I’ve added. But I didn’t between Sunday afternoon when I had a treat at the talk we went to at the library and last night when I had a McDonald’s cone on the way back from the concert. For me, that is huge progress!

I went grocery shopping yesterday after a full day of work (so I was a bit tired). Even before I got there, I’d decided that I was going to buy myself a treat. I was thinking a brownie of some sort. So I started looking at the different options, which all, of course, have the calorie counts. I wasn’t really expecting to consume quite that many on one smallish item. So I decided against that.

But I did run across something in the cereal aisle that looked interesting, so I bought a box. It was “Girl Scout Thin Mints” cereal – not sure who makes it, but I know it is a “limited time” production. I love Thin Mints and I love snacking on cold cereal, so I figured it was a good bet. Anyway, I opened them on the way home, since I didn’t have a brownie to eat.

And I ate, and ate, and ate, and ate them. One after another after another. I’m sure I had at least four servings of them, one handful at a time, before I got home and put them away. I would have been better off just buying one of those 500 calorie brownies and enjoying what I was really in the mood for. Because, although the cereal was really, really yummy, it wasn’t what I was really craving, so it never quite satisfied me. But I kept trying, yes I did!

When I got them home, I measured them out into ONE serving bags, which I can use as a reasonable snack (100 calories) when I have some extra calories left at the end of the day. And I learned the lesson that it is better to just eat what I am craving than try to substitute something close just because I think I’ll save calories.  Because in the end, it may not.

Taking responsibility for my actions is working out pretty well so far. I mean, after one day. Not exactly a streak, but all good things start somewhere.

Before I left after lunch (I worked at school 3 periods today), I told Dad I wanted hot water when I returned, so I could make a cup of tea AS SOON AS I got home. I also had my snack, but that is long gone and I’m still working on the tea. That is the thing about hot “snacks that you drink” – they take a while to finish, and by the time you are done, chances are the urge to eat something has passed.  So, I am trying to plan ahead and be ready for those times when I might be tempted to overeat.

Because it is up to ME to lose this weight and every action has a consequence.  The consequence of having a cup of tea, rather than scrounging the cupboards for something to eat, is that I am feeling more relaxed without causing myself any guilt. Plus, I can check off another of my cups of tea for the week to make that one goal.

We went to two auctions Saturday. One was a house auction, followed by a regular auction of some, but not much, of their personal stuff, since they had just moved into a much smaller house. The second, held Saturday evening, was a consignment auction , so it was pretty much all small stuff. Obviously, we don’t need a lot of stuff, but we got some really cool things.

First of all, when we walked through to get a feel for the house (we are going to house auctions to understand the process for when we decide to buy something in the future.) Anyway, there was an electric keyboard sort of like mine, Kylene’s and Erica’s in the basement family room. It wasn’t marked as being for sale, but we stayed around to the bitter end and when the auctioneer started going through the house and auctioning off some of the remaining furniture that hadn’t been moved outside, he put that up for sale. We started at $10, and no one bid against us, so we got it for that. The reason we got it (other than the unbelievable price) is that the choir director was looking for another piano so I can rehearse with the girls and he can rehearse with the guys without having to take the guys all the way across the school to the auditorium to do so. He was tickled pink that I got it and for so CHEAP.

Then there was an electric pressure cooker/rice cooker/slow cooker combination that I’d been looking at getting for quite a while. It was basically new – dusty, but didn’t look like it had ever been used. So we decided we would bid on that. There were several boxes of other appliances and things that no one would even bid $2 for, so he put it all together and we came out on top of the bidding at $25 for the whole lot of it. (The pressure cookers cost over $100 new). When we got home and unpacked it all, it turned out we had a deep fryer, this coffee pot that keeps the hot coffee (or water) inside the tank until you dispense it a cup at a time, a waffle maker that you can flip the plates over to make a grilled cheese sandwich maker, some really nice fry pans (heavy stainless steel), a small stainless steel mixing bowl, a heavy double boiler a bit smaller than the one I have, and one of those chopper things like you see on T.V. Everything in all the boxes turned out to be something I will use. That might be the best $25 I’ve ever spent.

From the evening auction, we came home with a bunch of boxes of small decorative things, as well as a sewing machine in a table that we got for $5. Again, no one else was interested in it. Our total cost was around $35 – not as good as the morning auction, but still good. There is a gorgeous crystal butter tray, some really unique vases, more pillows for the couch, a little remote controlled helicopter, a little stainless steel wastebasket that I’m using for a little hamper for underwear and socks in the bathroom (so I don’t forget them on the floor), and other things that were just cool, not necessarily valuable, like a metal egg with a beautiful rooster painted on it, a dragon made of brown marble, a cobalt blue inkwell to go with my blue glass collection, and a couple of beautiful brass and porcelain candle sticks.  We hadn’t gotten there early enough to look at the contents of the boxes, and although there was a camera sort of showing the stuff, it was still hard to see what all was in the boxes. We did throw quite a bit of it away, but we still definitely got our money’s worth.

Altogether a fun day! But Dad really needs to get a job if we want to do this again!