A New Era

So, I finally go in for a physical. Fasting blood test to check my thyroid levels and cholesterol. I have gained some weight, but everything was fine, except...

My triglycerides went from 98 to 166. Oops.

Although there is rampant heart disease on both sides of my family, I figured that since I exercise a lot and have low blood pressure, I was okay with eating just about anything I wanted.

Nope.

I don't want to go on cholesterol-lowering drugs, so I am changing my eating habits and will go back and get checked in another couple of months. I'm not taking any more meds! I take enough, what with the vitamins and the thyroid stuff. I'm kind of granola-hippie-ish when it comes to taking care of my body. I don't like artificial stuff and I don't believe in taking hormones or, really, anything that is not absolutely necessary. And I don't think cholesterol meds are necessary for me, if I am eating properly.

However, ever since I had cancer four years ago, I have been eating to comfort myself. I didn't feel particularly comforted by anyone or anything else, frankly, and I honestly didn't think I could give up the food. I felt like it was the only thing enjoyable in my life. Hence, I gained 14 pounds on top of the 4-6 I already had to lose. Enough to make me hate my body and feel uncomfortable. I just didn't know how to stop, though. And I didn't necessarily want to. The carbs and chocolate I ate too much of just really did it for me.

Well, not anymore. The party is over.

I found a new book in the library, Shrink Yourself by Gould. It's fantastic--it's a treatise on why we emotional eaters derive so much from eating. He takes the reader through exercises that teach how to solve problems without eating to stop the feeling. This is good for many areas of your life, not just times that prompt you to run to the chocolate. I found its insights extremely helpful and wish I had known these things 20 years ago!

It came together with a triumvirate: the higher cholesterol, and a woman I saw on a PBS fundraiser who advocated eight eating habits that will make you healthier and slimmer.

Drum roll please: after two weeks, I am down five pounds.

I am cautiously optimistic that I will get there this time. I really wanted to conquer the food addiction; while I am not grossly obese or anything, I want to be back into my size fours and sixes. I already exercise 4-5 times per week, and at some future time I was going to really knuckle down on my eating. Well, the future is now.

The eight habits (acronym DIET FREE): 1. Drink lots of water. 2. Include breakfast, and quit eating 3 hours before bedtime (I quit at 7 p.m. unless there's a party). 3. Eat fruit or vegetables first before snacking on something else. 4. Tame your sweet tooth with fruit. 5. Check the fat in everything you eat. 6. Real food--steer clear of processed foods. 7. Eat only until you are satisfied--not stuffed. 8. Exercise, preferably every day.

Now, I knew all these things; the trouble was putting them into practice. And The Four-Day Win by Martha Beck helps with this. She also has a very insightful way to help readers change their habits by baby steps, using her four-day plan. This book has been extremely helpful for me, too. She has the reader imagine two parts of herself: a wild child that is all impulsive emotion, and a strict Nazi-like authoritarian who is constantly trying to tame the wild child. Naturally, this internal war goes back and forth, and she suggests you try to take your real self out of it and imagine these two as tiny different individuals, who the real you simply wishes well. The imagery works!

What I do is avoid carbs and junk, eat lots more fruit and vegetables, and have a little chocolate (about 100 calories' worth) every day. I eat only a little dessert at parties, and I drink a lot of water. I usually keep the diet sodas, if I drink them at all, to one a day. I also eat dried apricots as a sweet treat.

The other thing I do is weigh myself every five days, concentrating on losing only one pound at a time. I figure 1 pound every five days is feasible for me, and so far, so good.

I will have a recap at the end of June--we will see what my weight and cholesterol have done by then!

The Dustiest House in North America, Part II

I have put a dark hardwood floor into the dustiest house in North America.

The Swiffer was covered with pollen on Saturday when I used it. Eeuuww. However, I am glad that I can clean it up instead of it settling in and bugging me forever.

Actually, it's easier and faster to swiff than vacuum. Of course, I still have to vacuum the rugs and the stairs, and the dust shows up on the floor more so I have to do it more frequently, but I don't mind because it gets done so quickly. I have a thing about clean floors: when I do them, I feel like the whole house is clean.

In other news, I am in the middle of making bedding for my daughter-in-law, for whom I would do anything. I can prove this: I spent three hours just making the cording for said bedding. It will look great, though, and she has never had real custom bedding before, made out of decorator fabric which she has chosen. I hope she likes it!

It Never Gets Easier

Sigh.

My poor pristine little Volkswagen beetle just got bonked AGAIN. A guy with no insurance and no driver's license (his wallet had just been stolen, imagine!) backed into me in a parking lot. Fortunately, it's not bad. I can just imagine the look on the body shop guy's face when we bring it in AGAIN.

I ran into an old colleague from work at the grocery store and we spent about 45 minutes catching up. Her three older kids have all graduated from college--impressive!--and her youngest is at UVA. In the meantime, I am trying not to worry too much about mine, who are very close in age to hers. I love them so much, and I am so glad I have them, but I have learned that you never let go one hundred percent. Are they happy? Are they going to church? Do they have enough money?

Life certainly does not seem to get easier. The only answer is faith and prayer.

Newsflash: It's Winter

Let's all sit down, take a deep breath, and get a grip.

It's February: we have had the winter solstice, and it's more than a month to the vernal equinox. That makes us officially in the winter season, when the temperature dips and the precipitation can freeze, creating what we all know as SNOW.

So why is everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off, squealing about the snow?

Yes, I know that we have gotten the heaviest snowfall Washington DC has ever known. So what? We have hurricanes in the fall--that's a lot of rain. Notice the vegetation around here? Takes a lot of moisture to grow all that stuff. It's humid here--there's a lot of precipitation! And the winter temperatures make it into snow! And yes, sometimes there's more precipitation than others! So we get MORE SNOW.

Every network had people out in the snowfall yesterday--and reported on it all day long. Enough, already!

Miraculously, or maybe not, nobody has been killed! I have yet to hear of anyone's roof collapsing (private home, that is. Some commercial buildings have lost roofs).

So can we please just quit complaining and deal?

The Only Way Out is Through

Sometimes, you just have to slog through things before they get better. I have done this, and it has!

We got a new TV. It is fantastic. It's an HD widescreen, and the picture is unbelievable.

I got my article done on time, and the editor loved it.

Our car was fixed, and the color matches perfectly.

The flooring project is going well-except that we have some wood rotting in the floor of the dining room, and will have to replace the french doors there as well. But I love my new floor!

My daughter seems to have had a wake-up call since she did so poorly in school last semester. Let's hope she does better this one.

I had my mammogram and appointment with the surgeon. I am fine. Hurray!

It is true that time heals many wounds, and solves many problems.

Sometimes, Even a Well-Lived Life Sucks

My head is about to explode.

I have been inundated with an avalanche of niggling little problems so far this year that have added up to a lot of stress. I don't deal well with stress anyway; I get headaches and neck aches and want to cry all the time. So it goes.

We started a project back in September--hardwood flooring in our living room, hallway, office and dining room. We ordered the wood and were told that it would not get in until December. Surprise! It arrived in October. We planned on starting the project by ripping out the old flooring in the living room at the end of the month. That plan went awry when I had to go to Utah for a couple of weeks because my mom was dying. When I returned, we opened boxes--and guess what, the trims didn't match the flooring. Back we went to the store. We ordered new trims. They didn't match either. Then the salesman told us we could have the trims custom-matched! Why didn't he tell us that in the first place?

Those finally came in around the 4th of January. We ripped out the living room floor and began. Funny, though: the boards in the boxes of flooring were only about 1-3 feet long, with the majority about 2 feet. What's the deal? I asked at the store. The salesman looked it up, and oh, this is the norm for this flooring. I had originally been told that it was as long as 6 feet. So we are negotiating what to do with the store. Grr!

My house is a chaotic mess due to having ripped out the living-room floor. This makes me feel antsy.

Last week, my bedroom TV died. It started smelling as though it was burning up. I unplugged it, and, indeed, my husband pronounced the end of its life and threw it in the garbage. We've had it since my mother-in-law sold her house in 1989; it was made in 1982. I felt like we should have a funeral for it! I miss it. I want a new one.

I have an article due at the end of the month. I have not been having much success getting interviews with the people I need to talk to. Aaaargh!

One of my co-workers lost her job for not making sales goals--a wonderful woman with whom I have worked for nine years. She did nothing wrong! Things are totally stressful at work. I have had my schedule changed and I am working a lot more, just when I need some time off. Who's next?

My back has been hurting since early November.

I am worried about my kids. And I am going to have to pay the full out-of-state tuition for my daughter, who did not do well last semester and will not get her loan this one. She is trying to establish residency and this is not going well.

Someone hit our fairly new car in the church parking lot on Sunday. It's not badly damaged, but this will probably mean that the fender and bumper will not perfectly match the rest of the car. I hate that.

I had an upsetting phone call with my dad on Sunday night. Though it was not my fault and I did nothing wrong, I feel my dad is mad at me. I am still coming to grips with my mother's death.

I need to make doctors' appointments for a mammogram, my sinuses, a physical, and with my surgeon for a follow-up. I also need to find a new opthalmologist and see the dentist.

We got a new computer and being relatively tech-illiterate, I am having a hard time transitioning between the old one and the new one. (Yes, this stresses me out!)

Yesterday I took a cashmere sweater from the dry-cleaning wrapping and put it on, to discover a hole in the left arm.

But, as a wise friend says, nobody's sick or in jail. Guess I should be grateful, huh?

Gosh, this year has got to get better, right? Calgon, take me away!

Let it Snow!

(Imagine the Peanuts "Snowfall" piano piece tinkling in the background as you read this blog. Sorry I'm too tech-ignorant to put it on here.)

Wow, as I write this, it is snowing like mad outside. Generally, we don't get a lot of snow here in the DC area, but I've got more than a foot on my deck table, and it's still coming down hard. The newscasters are calling this one of the three biggest snowfalls in the history of DC!

Tha last one was a week of storms early in January, 1996. The kids and my husband were off school and work for over a week. Yep, they shut down the government when there's more than a half-inch of the white stuff.

It gets much icier here than in Utah, and because of the humidity, it feels much colder too. I simply will not ski here in the mid-Atlantic because it is so uncomfortable. I vastly prefer the ideal conditions of Alta and Solitude!

The downside is that we had to postpone the arrival of our youngest daughter. We did not want her to be stranded in a strange place, alone, as she was last year. So she comes in on Monday morning.

Maybe we can make a snowman! I am not, however, looking forward to shoveling the driveway.

Take that, Global Warming enthusiasts!