WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR MAY 2015

oceanmelody

Welcome to May, everyone! Such a beautiful day to go sit in the office...

DeeDee2211

Good morning beautiful ladies :flowerforyou:

Thanks Barbie

This is my last month of working...woo hoo!!!! I'm really excited!!! I'm planning on having a fabulous summer just doing whatever I want to do!!!!

Sylvia Yay, I'm so glad the garlic is working for you!!! I haven't had any ants in probably 4 years now!!! Have a wonderful time at the pottery show! Please post pics!!!

Heather I haven't ordered your book yet, but I'm going to. I'm looking forward to sitting out on my patio, having a glass of wine and reading your book!!!

Selena Congrats!!! I checked out your book too, I put a reminder on my phone that your book will be available on July 14!!! Looking forward to reading it!

Mary Wow, you've really had a time with the new phone! I just updated to a iPhone 6 and had no problems at all. I went to the local carrier here and it took all of 20 minutes. Hope you enjoy it once you have everything!

Meg Happy graduation day!!!! Happy birthday early!!!

Janet Myrtle Beach is not that far from me!!! I'm ready!!!! Remember that sunscreen, I've had two skin cancers and I preach sunscreen year round!!!

Margaret Thanks for sharing the art and flowers...just gorgeous!!!!

Cynthia . Hugs!!!! I just got a new pair of prescription sunglasses...love them!!!

Jane Happy birthday!!!

Wish I had more time ! Thinking of you all and sending best wishes to everyone

Hugs,
DeeDee in rainy NC

mollywhippet

Sweet hummingbird video I found on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/141558557649/videos/10153140947447650/

CynthiaT60

https://instagram.com/p/2IxwBFOaV4/
(warning: those sensitive to fox poo, be warned )

cityjaneLondon

Dee dee- I read DH your post about my book and he said "She might need a glass of wine after some of the pages!" :laugh:

Selena - don't forget to remind us when your book comes out. :flowerforyou:

Heather UK

mikesmom1983

Thanks Barbie.
Will post later

Chris in MA

bwcetc

Happy May Day ... who remembers dancing around a maypole in school on May 1st? My husband and I were laughing ... our son had no idea what we were talking about.

April goals ...
-- gym twice a week ... nope ... only went two weeks
-- log every bite and swallow ... nope ... derailed and binged here at the end of the month
-- drink 8 glasses water ... I get stuck at 6 ... better at this ... maybe 50% of the time
-- breathe ... still need to remember this on overwhelming days
-- release (forever) at least one pound ... sadly ... yo-yoing ...

May goals ...
-- gym twice a week
-- log every bite and swallow
-- drink 8 glasses water
-- breathe
-- release (forever) at least one pound
Adding ...
-- finish recipe organization
-- organize laundry so DS#2 can start doing his own ... he's 17!
-- have fun every day ... not really sure how to do this but I like the sounds of it! Help?

Have a great day ladies!

Beth in Western New York
--

barbiecat

I love that the sun never sets on this fabulous group of women. There is always someone here to listen to our happy stories and our rants.

Barbie

Lilymay2

SelenaP63 wrote: »

OK... I hope you don't mind me sharing this but I'm excited and it's late and who else can I tell?

It was a long day and even though I was away from home, I had a really good day as far as staying on track with eating & such.

Well, got home tonight just before 10pm and checked my email. Copy editor sent part of the book for us to proofread but his opening comment was, "I've been thoroughly enjoying this story. I sometimes have to remind myself to edit it!"

Yay!

Thanks all for listening
Selena
Utah

AWESOME, awesome and awesome!!!

Lilymay2

Good morning everyone!!

Just a quick pop in to say hi! The sun is shinning and hopefully the rain stays away until I get my walk in.

Off to have a massage - then off to me mah's house to check in on her. Perhaps lunch with the DIL if she is not too busy at work. Should be home by 2 p.m. Then I need to do some yard work. We have a fire ban on already so rain would be good. I do have a raincoat ....

OH >>>wait a minute ..... the greenhouse is open!! UMMmmmm I better stop ...I may never make it home..

Later everyone
Lillian in West Central Saskatchewan

margaretturk

Thanks Barbie for continuing the thread.

Katla the turquoise horse is the vase the florist used to complement the bronze Chinese horse in the background. Another example where the florist went the extra mile to create a vase to accompany the art work was the French desk. Another one of my favorites from yesterday.

MNMargaret

DamitJanit

Call me crazy but I love to see other people happy and succeeding .

Good Morning Ladies,

Selena, what wonderful remarks from the editor. I know that makes you feel good. Terrific way to end a day!!!

Heather, I loved your post. It is just amazing how we let weight damage our health and often even say the words, but don’t do anything about it for years. I’m so thrilled for you and where you are today. We should all celebrate every day that we can do the things we can, but weren’t able to do a short time ago. So glad you can travel and live life to the fullest.

Joyce, I laughed too, about Sylvia steaming up the mirror before she undresses. I was trying to figure out how she did that? I’d have to run my shower for a while to steam mine, but forgot she is a “hot mamma”. Lol I hope you enjoy the graduation and don’t let the long ceremony get to you.

DeeDee, I have never had skin cancer but have had so many spots removed that were pre-cancerous. When I grew up in south Texas, we lived in the sun and knew nothing of sun screen. Now, I never leave home without it. In fact, if I don’t us it on my lips, I’ll get a cold sore in short order. I can’t remember, are you retiring or just off for the summer? Either way, enjoy doing whatever you want. Maybe it will include a trip to Myrtle Beach?

Beth, OMG, I remember those May pole dances with the streamers coming down from the top. Gosh that seems like a different lifetime. I love your goal, “release at least one pound.” I think of it somewhat as that pesky pound releasing me, but you may have it right.

Lillian, it sounds like a packed day, but I do hope you make it home sooner or later. Have a good one!

Welcome to any Newbies that I missed. Come often and join in the chat. This thing works!! Please sign your post with what you want to be called. It makes it easier for us to respond to you. Also a location is great, be it specific or general. We are happy to have you join us.

April goals were met with the exception of being consistent in my exercising. I do it more to get in shape than to burn calories and need to be consistent.

May goals:
Exercise at least 5 days a week.
Eat healthy in my 1200 calories a day.
Eat reasonably on the cruise.
Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day.
Start line dancing classes.


I hope we are all committed to our May goals and wish us all great success.

The thought for the day:
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.
Try to be better than yourself.
- William Faulkner


Words I live by:
Savor. I have to slow down and savor every bite.
and
Opportunity. Each day offers new opportunities for good health and happiness if we just look for them and choose them.

Janet
Myrtle Beach, SC

fanncy0626

Selena - great news! I can see why you wanted to share that.

Heather - when I am finished reading your book I will give you a nice review. I am so happy that you have come so far and are able to move around so freely.

Joyce - have fun with your family and enjoy your chicken strips! Good job on thinking ahead about your food choices.

Lesley - good luck on your 98 day challenge! With the way that you are so diligent with your exercise and nutrition I know you are going to be very successful!

Beth - I remember dancing around the May pole. making May baskets. I think we used to put our left over Easter candy in them and bring them over to our neighbors knock on the door and then run away.

Good morning ladies! I woke up with my husband this morning and it was raining. We really needed that. I fell back to sleep and no there is beautiful sunshine. after my exercises today I will be cleaning and baking chocolate chip cookies, so that our house will smell and look clean for the showing tonight.

Have a great day everyone!

Mary from Minnesota

cityjaneLondon

Well I've made blue butter icing for the sea, yellow for the sand and green for the island. Guess who licked the beater paddle? Was it me? Oh yes! DH has made a palm tree out of paper. I wish my pirate candles were a bit bigger and I had a bigger ship, but...........
DON'T LET THE PERFECT BE THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD,
I'll be putting it on the cake tomorrow.

Had a very interesting morning sorting through my old writings and trying to decide on my next project. Some of you voted for the novel I abandoned and DS#1 voted for a very strange collage type thing I dragged out of the cupboard. That would be very experimental, but I'm drawn to it. I'm re-reading it now. Then there's my memoir or perhaps another novel which came after WINDOWS and my agent at the time liked a lot. It's called A PERFECT LIFE. (The clue is in the title :noway: ) I'm going to read them all and let them stew at the back of my brain until one of them pulls me irresistibly. :laugh:

DH got the inevitable letter today to say that his operation will be a long time coming! ! ! ! ! ! They were trying to send him off to some clinic or other. He is cross and is staying with the hospital. He could afford to go privately, but he is very principled and considers that a betrayal. I used to feel the same, but I am less principled as I've got older! Life's too short. :drinker:

All you (Joyce, Sylvia etc) who have a lot of physical work to do today, stay safe and don't overdo it. Good luck!

Heather in Hampshire UK

lhannon062709

Hello, all!

Meg: sounds like the shin splints I had in basic training! The only thing that helped was stretching and anti-inflammatories, which you're already doing, so hope it feels better soon!

Michele in NC: It's not that you CAN'T eat certain things, but you WILL pay the price, or at least I still do. Sugar over about the 15 gram range still makes me have something called "dumping" syndrome. My body dumps insulin into my system, and I end up getting, shaky, sweaty, pale, and if I over-indulged to a sufficient degree, throwing up. It can happen within a few minutes after eating or up to two hours later. Milk sugars can do it to me, too, and they do NOT always show up as sugar on a label. Dry chicken or any sufficiently solid food or glutinous food that's not chewed very well will also get stuck in the exit from the stomach area, as well. If I'm not paying attention, I can have a truly miserable evening.

I have one of the oddities that happen to about ten percent--drinking unadulterated water makes me feel as if I've been slugged under the ribcage. Water's specific gravity is quite high, and adding a powdered drink mix or tea or coffee actually lightens it, so I live on Crystal Light, coffee and tea. I CAN drink water alone in a pinch, so I won't die, it's just ickily uncomfortable. Carbonated water still makes me burp like a sailor, so I stay away. Unless I just have some weird urge to burp. There's also a mythology out there that it can stretch the surgical sites, but little proof.

Unfortunately, the easiest, tastiest thing for all of the surgerized to eat is high-fat, high-salt, crunchy carbs. They slide right through, they're yummy, and almost never irritate anything. And they will pack pounds on you like nobody's business.

Oh - and yes, I'm a writer. I'll post links when I get the print copies up--I've got one e-book up now, but I'm still working on the proofing, and I'm not ready for it to go wide-distribution QUITE yet. Almost!

And, last, but not least (I keep going back up and looking at the questions ). My NP wants me above normal range by 5 pounds or so to give me some reserves in case of any future illness. She says her former fluffies have a hard time recovering from illness if they drop to what the insurance people think is a "normal" BMI. If they stay comfortably into the 5-10 pound range of overweight, they have reserves enough to fight off 'flu bugs and such.

Joyce in Indiana: Thank you for the title suggestions! And the answer to your last question is that I froze slap to DEATH after the first 50 or 60 pounds dropped off. I'd had that fat suit on since I got out of the Air Force 22 years prior to the surgery, so it was like losing your parka in the middle of a snowstorm, even at 60-70 degrees. More back to normal these days, although my husband swears I put my hands and toes in the freezer before coming to bed.

Your SIL is more typical than you might believe. Partially it is about losing motivation--but for a lot of people, it's also about losing a coping tool. We use food to deal with our emotions in ways we're often only dimly aware of. So when we don't have it, we simply give up because we have no idea how to cope with our lives at all--our toolboxes are simply empty. The other option is that we take it back to deal with stress. Developing other means to cope is extraordinarily important. Exercise, talking to friends, journaling, writing, whatever it takes. Killing off your greatest tormentor by writing a story, book or poem about them can be enormously therapeutic. It's what I did.

Heather in UK - Could I beg you to please, please post a link to you book so I can go find it? I'd love to read it! If linking to it would be considered advertising, if you could message me with it, that would be just grand...

Prarie - I have the exact opposite problem, I can't stay off the dad-blasted scale, and it is DRIVING me insane, which is why you'll see it in my goals below. I handed it over to my husband, with strict instructions not to give it back until Sunday. Hopefully you and I can find that happy medium, where we can get on the dang thing, but then just get back on it once a week or so.

My April goals were to get in habits of eating right, logging eating and exercise, and losing weight. I did. And then I found MFP, and y'all... and I'm so glad I'm here! Thank you to Barbie, for doing this, and to the rest of y'all for the support, kind words, and warm thoughts.

May goals:

• Get OFF the scale. Once a week, on Sundays.
• Add half hour of flex/core work prior to my run three times a week.
• Add half hour free weights prior to my run three times a week, alternating days with flex/core.
• Run at least four days a week, six if my knees continue to hold up.
• Get distance up to three miles per run in May.
• Keep logging on MFP daily.
• Keep protein at 64+ grams a day.
• Maintain calorie levels where they are now.
• Goal is to lose 4 to 8 pounds in May.
• Don't obsess... fix what's wrong, but then let it go.
• Don't just work at the business of writing. Write!

Lisa's Mantra for May: Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. 
-Samuel Beckett.

Lisa in sunny West Texas

pipcd34

yo peeps

pipcd34

SelenaP63 wrote: »

OK... I hope you don't mind me sharing this but I'm excited and it's late and who else can I tell?

It was a long day and even though I was away from home, I had a really good day as far as staying on track with eating & such.

Well, got home tonight just before 10pm and checked my email. Copy editor sent part of the book for us to proofread but his opening comment was, "I've been thoroughly enjoying this story. I sometimes have to remind myself to edit it!"

Yay!

Thanks all for listening
Selena
Utah

COOL BEANS!!! AWESOME!!

Katla49

Kim: I love the idea of slipping my purse strap into my seatbelt. Thanks for a great suggestion. You are brilliant!

Selena: Congratulations on a fabulous compliment on your book from the copy editor! Have you told us the subject? I’m afraid I may be having a senior moment.

Heather: You’ve transformed yourself and are wise enough to appreciate how much better your life has become. Mine, too! I’m sorry your friend in Nottingham has become so disabled.

Joyce: I understand your DH’s issues with Church-goers. Some of them are really wonderful people, but it doesn’t take many of the other sort to tarnish the experience for some others. You’ve heard the old saw that one bad apple spoils the barrel. I find the Lord easy to love, but only He can love some members of the flock.

Sylvia: Thanks for the hummingbird video!

Cynthia: Poor embarrassed fox. Thanks for sharing. :laugh:

Lisa in WTX: I weighed daily during the active loss part of my journey unless I was travelling and away from scales. Now I weigh randomly, several times a week. This part of the process is so individual that everyone needs to find her own best practices. I like the Beckett quotation.



Yoga today AND DH is going to the gym with me. Yay! This is a big change for him and one that I’ve been praying for a long time now. He did the weight loss with me, but quit logging and put a few pounds back on. He’s still in the okay range there, but I’m so glad he’s finally doing something about his physical fitness! I am hoping it will become a habit.

Katla in Beautiful NW Oregon

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas A. Edison

May Goals:
1. Log every bite and swallow.
2. Cardio exercise at least 3 days a week. Work on flexibility and back
strength.
3. Have fun every day.
4. Drink at least three glasses of water daily, preferably more!
5. Eliminate alcohol. Accomplished but here as a reminder.
6. Monitor sleep. Try to average 7 or more hours of sleep nightly.

pipcd34

uh,, never heard of a maypole... we Mexicans weren't privy to that stuff. :0/

yesterday after coming home I went to an event (was invited by my spin class instructor) to a bike shop here in town (Old Town Bicycle) to promote a new ride called oblideride to raise $$ for fred Hutchinson cancer research center here in seattle. they had beer, wine, snack stuff. there was a raffle of different stuff and the grand prize was a bike! no... I didn't win the bike.... BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTT I did win one of the raffle bags!!!!!!!!!! I NEVER WIN stuff! Kirby gave me $20 bucks and said here, win something! get a bike!!..
i haven't really checked out the bag totally but from what i remember, it had 3 pairs of bike socks (which I was so happened to need more of) a bike messenger bag, water bottle, hat (which I gave away, I never wear them) and what looked like a bike lock. not bad for 20 beans huh.

may is gonna b a busy month. in 25 more days I will be 56!! woo hooo!! party!! this Saturday, we are going to a yearly silent auction benefit, a couple of years ago we rode our bikes there (and GOT LOST!!) , last year it was really raining so we drove, think we are gonna ride again this year, weather supposed to be nice. gonna drink chocolate martini's (called an Etta-tini in honor of Etta's Auction) great food.

then on the 14th, gonna go to Cali to visit family and go to a nieces' bday celebration and I told them to celebrate me too since I will be there and my bday is in that month too. also celebrating the ol lady's (mom) bday that is on july 5, she'll be 80.

thennnnnnnnnnnn SOMEBODY'S gonna be 56 on the 25th! make note ladies, gifts, money, food stamps welcome!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

terri_mom

Happ Friday ! ! !

Mary – I chose to not get a case or box from Verizon, but I did find so many at Amazon that I can’t even decide which to choose, and at a much better price than at the Verizon store. I hope you get your situation straightened out soon. It’s so frustrating to be treated rudely when you just want what is right.

Barbie – Thanks for the new Thread. I am ready to take on May.

Meg – I agree that the more I exercise my abdomen the less my back hurts. 2 nights in a row of muscle relaxers made it about 75% better already, which makes me very happy. I will continue to exercise as much as possible, doing my planks against a wall, then with hands on desk, etc, until I am back on the floor.

Sylvia – That area for public trading is a wonderful idea. I hope many other communities are able to do the same or similar. Congrats on the deodorant savings (so funny).

Janet – about my car. I was stopped at a red light when I was rear-ended. Since I already have a bad disc, the muscles around that area tighten and spasm, so I’ve been taking a muscle relaxer to sleep (never during the day, because I am a light-weight when it comes to those kinds of things). The young man was probably around 23 y.o. and he had to do a field sobriety test after the police were done this me. He will only get a ticket if, when he takes his car to the mechanic, there is nothing wrong with his brakes (that’s what he told me and the police, that something is wrong with his brakes). Since my Dad is a Manager at a Buick Dealership, he took my car to work today to get the estimate. It will likely be more than $500, because it is a 2004 Cadillac, and everything about them is expensive to fix (the car was not expensive to buy, as my Dad helped me get a great deal). And since I work at a clinic, I have been talking to the Physical Therapists about what and how much for exercise. Today I will order 2 cases for my phone, so it will be safe when I am NOT driving in my car. I’m up for Myrtle Beach, too. Sounds wonderful!

Selena – congrats on the wonderful comment from the Copy Editor. Very Exciting.

Update on my car – Repair price for rear bumper = $586. I guess the young man’s insurance premium will go up, as they will have to pay for it and my Doctor and medicine bill ($17).

I do sometimes belt in my groceries or luggage, but never considered my purse. Makes perfect sense.

Pip – so funny about the food stamps! I hope your birthday and party are marvelous.

The decision has been made/adjusted about the contest at work. Since I lost 6 pounds and everyone else gained, we started it again this morning. $20 for 20 pounds in 3 months. The only thing we won’t decide until Monday is if we all pitch in an additional $20, to “sweeten the pot”.

This weekend is a LOT of baseball. Little League tonight, double-header Spring baseball both Saturday (and I work 8am - noon) and Sunday, then another Little League game Monday. Some time we have to squeeze in a little bowling, because DS and DH have a Doubles Tournament coming up in a few weeks, and they have to compete scratch (no handicap).

Now I need to call the Insurance Company of the kid that hit me, so the Body Shop can do their job and start fixing my rear bumper.

Hugs for Everyone ! ! !

Terri in Milwaukee (58 degrees already, going to be a great weekend outdoors!)