Month: September 2012 (Page 1 of 2)

I’m trying something new, which is fitness classes at 4:00 in the afternoon. So far, it has been pretty slow catching on. It didn’t help, though, that I had to be gone last Wednesday and Friday. But today, I had 2 people I didn’t even know show up for my class! Whoo-hoo!  That means I have one for my Monday tai chi and two for the Wednesday strength class. So far no-one for the Friday aerobics class, but we’ll see what happens this week.  At any rate, I’m excited to be training 3 people I wasn’t training before.

We went on the Parade of Homes today. There were only 5, but we had from noon until 5:00 to get them all in and they were pretty spread out – like from halfway from Rice Lake to Cumberland to way east of New Auburn.  We got out of the last one at 4:50.

We saw some beautiful things. My favorite house was built for a woman a little older than us with a whole bunch of grandchildren. She calls it “Nana’s Little House in the Big Woods.” It has one of those old fashioned wood-burning cook stoves in the kitchen, which actually throws out a lot of heat on a day like today. She has a regular stove, too, of course. Because of this, the kitchen/ dining room area is huge, and I mean huge. They also have a long, closed-in porch along the back side of the house, off the living room. It looks so inviting – really makes the whole house look relaxing. One of my favorite rooms was the little den – probably 8′ x 8′, with a roll-top desk and another desk and some shelves and stuff. And a door to shut so you don’t have to look at all the office mess. There were all the other normal stuff like walk in closets, master bath, fieldstone fireplace. You know … all the important stuff. That we’ll never have! But it was fun to look.

If I weighed a lot more today, after getting back from convention, I wouldn’t have posted, but my weight is better than last week, so I will. For my own benefit, I need to post weights each week, so I know how much I lost that week. I have a code system so you can only see a couple of the digits. So, my goal is A9 and I have 33.8 pounds to lose and have lost (drum roll, please) 1.2#. (Current weight = E2.8) You don’t need to tell me…. I’ve got to get serious about this if I expect to lose anything!!

I’m back and I must say that the best part of the whole experience was going WITH someone this year. The gal from Cameron has only been director a few months and she is even more part time than I am. So I drove and we chatted and chatted all the way down and all the way back. Sure makes the drive go faster and easier!

Then we roomed together, so I didn’t have long evenings by myself. She did go to sleep earlier, but she is a lot older – in her 70’s I guess, although you can’t tell to look at her. She is one of those super cool dressers – besides the senior center, she also works at Fashion Bug in Rice Lake. She is really petite and looks lots better than me in her clothes and she has nice clothes, to boot. She is a very high-energy person and very outgoing. It was fun.

And I learned a few things at the conference, too.

I’m leaving this afternoon for the Dells to attend the annual Wisconsin Association of Senior Centers conference. This year we combined with another group that is involved in providing services for the aging, so it will be a little bigger conference – lots more sessions to choose from. We are staying in a waterpark/resort. Should be nice. I’ll be home Friday evening. Dad and Sherlock will hold down the fort until then.

We have a renter for the upstairs apartment, so she spent the weekend moving in and Dad spent much of it working on little things up there. I spent most of the weekend washing clothes. He brings boxes of things and I wash and dry them before we can bring them in. Lots of blankets and pillows and winter coats this weekend.  Other things get blown off and wiped off, but the clothes are simple  – just toss them in the washer. With the weather so nice, much of it got hung out on the line to dry, but I did take several trips to the laundromat, too.

I also finished a book. I’m reading a four-book series of Christian mysteries that are very good. I finished the second book last night, rather late, and I’m well into the third book today. Maybe you have heard of them – the first is called Camp Refuge. They take place right down by Kylene and Justin, in a made-up island just off Tybee Island and in Savannah.

Today I took off work to go to the district meeting of the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups (CWAG). It was right up in Cameron at the Pioneer Village Museum. I hadn’t been to a meeting in a couple years, and couldn’t pass up a meeting so close to home. We heard a really good talk from the director of the state organization, who is basically a lobbyist for senior issues in the state. He was talking about how our political system got to where it is and what needs to be done to make it more like a democracy rather than having the people who are supposed to be representing people actually representing the corporations who pay them the most. He also talked about what might help politicians to be more honest, because they really are not. Very interesting. Then we got a tour of the museum. I hadn’t been for a couple years, since we took Ethan and Audrey.

Now I’m headed out for a bicycle ride on a very beautiful autumn afternoon!

We didn’t do all that much today, but I’m just sick of figuring out where things go. And wondering where things are. Ugh! All I feel like doing is sitting down to a good book.

Today was Harvest Fest here in Chetek and it started with just glorious fall weather that deteriorated as the day progressed. We’ve had a lot of wind and on again/ off again rain. I went to some garage sales, then worked the second shift (10 to noon) at the bake sale at work. We walked down to the ball field to see the ping pong ball drop at 4:00 but it wasn’t until 5:00 and when that rolled around, we didn’t feel like walking down again.

Dad finished unloading the load of stuff he brought up the other day, then brought another load up today. It is just random stuff. Then he blows it all off and wipes it off, if it seems to need it, before bringing it in the house so I can put it “away,” which is a place yet to be determined. The kitchen is pretty much full, so I don’t want to have to find any more places for kitchen stuff. The desk drawers are still empty, so I need to put all that stuff away yet tonight. I hung pictures today, but I don’t have all of them here, yet. Still, the place looks more homey with some pictures on the walls. I got a lamp for $2 at a garage sale because the switch wasn’t working. No problem-we hooked it to an extension cord with a switch in it and I have it by my reading chair. Very nice! Maybe I’ll take some pictures to post tomorrow.

Better this week. I lost the 2 lbs I gained last week, plus another 1/2 pound, so I am down a total of 3 1/2. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I can actually feel that I’m getting less fat. I also made it over a 0.0 to 9.5, if that makes sense without my actually saying my terrible weight! At any rate, the second digit – the one after the one hundred – changed and that is always exciting!

The day started with a text message from the gal moving out of 123, saying she didn’t finish yesterday, but she thought she’d be out by 2:00. I already had the car loaded and ready to go right away this morning, so I was a bit frustrated. But I went ahead and packed all my glass dishes, glasses, storage containers and such in my dresser drawers (an idea someone at work shared with me, which works greats, since I don’t have many boxes, so I have to empty them right  away and re-use them) amd packed more of the kitchen in the last two plastic storage containers. At about 11:00, I went to Chetek with the first load and to hang all the bedding on the clotheslines up there, and found that she still had quite a  bit to move. But I was able to stash that load in the laundry closet, which was empty and clean. So now I have the car full with what I packed this a.m. and am waiting until close to 2:00 to take that load up and to dry some more loads of laundry at the laundromat.