WOMEN AGES 50 + FOR SEPTEMBER 2015

Irish Terri - many congratulations on getting under 12 stone. A great achievement! :flowerforyou:

Lisa - You have done your very best. Such a shame honest staff seems to be impossible. It will be great when you are out of there and can get back to the stuff that is important to you.

I am just going off to my favourite food store to buy a few bits for my birthday on Friday. My brother and his wife are coming over for a meal. I want to keep it really easy for me. We are going to start with French fish soup from jars with croutons, rouille and grated gruyere. I'm going to treat us to a small fillet of beef and do it carpaccio in an Asian dressing. No cooking on the day. I will buy cooked chilli squid to go with it and make an Asian bean salad on the day. For dessert we will have cheese, the runniest, smelliest I can find. :laugh: I will pick up a prepared dessert, lemon tart, for DH . My brother is diabetic 2, so no dessert for him.

Talk later. Heather UK

Happy Early Birthday Heather

I love the kitty pictures! All of mine are at least a year old. This is Georgie girl, about two years ago. A stray that the girls found in our yard- had to bottle feed it for a couple of weeks.

My son signed the lease on the apartment yesterday after the inspection! I have two minor repairs to make for the inspector, requirements I did not know about. He needs a smoke detector in the bedroom, not just the hall. And the hot water pressure valve has to be connected to the outside so it doesn't scald someone in the area. When the water heater was replaced, someone was lazy and didn't reconnect the new one. Easy to do.

Getting cool at nights here, 44F last night. I didn't realize it was going to get so cool and didn't bring my huge weeping fig tree in! It should be okay though, might drop a few leaves.

I tried a gluten free pizza yesterday- it was like eating cardboard. It didn't even have enough tomato sauce on it- probably for fear of making the cardboard/ crust soggy. With my son staying here, there have been a lot of pizzas consumed and I was feeling left out. Oh well.

Hugs to all of you!

Heather – Oh I see, the liter of gin was to put the sloe plums in. I'd forgotten about that. I made sloe gin a couple times and it was absolutely heavenly, a beautiful ruby color. Perfect Christmas gifts for friends. A sloe thicket in blossom is enough to tempt me to move south again. It's such a marvellous juxtaposition of extremes: nasty thorns and delicate white blossoms.

Terri in MI – Would it help your grandma to have a sturdy box beside the bed to use as a step?

Nice to see you here again Lenora.

Carol in NC – Sorry to hear you're feeling so sad. A lot of discouraging things have happened to you recently. But this too shall pass. I agree with Mia and Lisa about sending out a job application. Just one is enough to start with. Baby steps, baby steps. The threshhold to taking any kind of action is so high when you're depressed. If you take one small step, you should be proud of yourself. Hang in there. (((Hugs)))

Poop and Irish Terri appear to be healing very well after surgery. They are also among our enthusiastic exercisers. "Coincidence" noted and stored away for future reference!

Janetr – Fingers crossed for equally speedy rebound from surgery!

Chris – I have exactly the same experience of being absolutely ravenous after starting with Stronglifts. The funny thing is that I'm generally okay on training day, but could eat a horse the day after. My PT said that was because weight lifting boosts your metabolism for a full day and a lot of energy goes into repairing the muscles you've used. Boosted metabolism sounds good. Repairing muscle – not so good. Can we interpret that to mean strengthening or reinforcing?

Thanks Mary in MN for your response to Chris. I like your new profile pic, by the way!

Green Bay Tracie – Did the Packers trick you into eating a bunch of sweet stuff? No beating yourself up allowed! Done is done and it won't get any better because you call yourself names. Tomorrow is another day. In fact, why wait until tomorrow? The rest of TODAY is still at your command. Think how proud you will be if you can tuck yourself into bed tonight along with a small victory!

Linda and Lisa – I want a CAAAAAAAAAAAT :sad:

Kim in N Cal – One of my favorite ways to use red lentils is a soup. I grate a big zucchini and fry it lightly in a bit of olive oil, add a half-cup of red lentils and a quart of vegetable bouillion and let it simmer for 20-25 min. Scoop out the solids and run them in the blender, add some shredded fresh ginger, mix in the bouillion and reheat if necessary. If truffle oil is available, I sprinkle in a few drops. The soup is great without it but a hint of truffle oil brings it to a higher level. A friend of mine tasted it and said she finally understood why Esau might sell his birthright for some lentil soup.

Irish Terri – Four cheers for breaking the 12 stone barrier! (Now that sentence demonstrates two cultural differences: Scandinavia does its cheering in sets of four, not three like the rest of the world, and I'm darned if I know of anybody outside the former British Empire who counts weight in stone. I can never remember how many pounds there are to one stone.)

Last but not least, since several of you asked: booze rationing in Svalbard. This goes back to our history as a coal mining town. For years Longyearbyen was a company town, where men outnumbered women about 50 to 1 and the days were an endless cycle of work, eat, sleep. The company provided food, clothing, housing, and the men were paid in the company's own "Monopoly money". It could be used on extras in the company store but wasn't converted to Norwegian currency until the employee left the island at the end of his one- or two-year stint. Obviously the company bigwigs didn't want their workers getting too drunk to work, so they instituted a rationing system for hard liquor and beer – in other words, on the stuff the workers drank. The bosses and administrators were more "refined" and enjoyed a good wine at dinner. But of course they didn't have any alcohol-related problems, no sir. So no limit was set for the amount of table wine one could buy.

And it's the same today. Every adult who lives permanently in Svalbard gets a piece of plastic the size of a credit card. It has little boxes on it for Spirits (2×1 liter for each month), Fortified wine (1 liter every other month), and Beer (24 half-liter cans per month). When you buy something that's restricted, you hand over your card and the helpful staff member in charge punches a hole in the pertinent box. If you buy just half a liter of booze, he or she will write "½" with a magic marker and next time you buy half a liter, that box will get a hole punched in it.

This procedure is now totally outdated. Anybody who drinks up their entire ration is really in trouble and needs help. The Governor's office even raised the question of whether the rationing system should be discontinued. But a majority of the population said no! It isn't that we like rationing: it's the fact that being in possession of a rationing card singles you out as a bona fide resident.

A couple years ago I attended a thesis defense at our local university. The PhD student had been studying causes and predictors of avalanches for four years. In his presentation, he listed factors that had been crucial for success in his research. One important factor was living in a place that offered easy access to avalanche-prone mountains so that he could get out and monitor every single one of them once a week, all winter long. He illustrated the concept of "living in a place with easy access to avalanche-prone mountains" with a slide showing his alcohol rationing card.

Must get back to my students now...
Penny at the

Glo -

GloworminWA wrote: »

Mia - how did you learn to blow glass. Everytime I watch someone do it it's like magic - so beautiful!

When I was young I developed a fascination for watching people blow glass. If we were someplace where there were glass blowers my parents could let me stay and watch while they went off to explore elsewhere. They knew I would not budge from the spot they left me. To this day I continue to enjoy watching glass being blown every bit as much as I enjoy blowing.

Once upon a time (35 years ago – really!!?!) I took a glass blowing class at a local college for the fine arts. I took a single class and wanted to continue, but I landed a job that required a lot of travel which made getting to class regularly impossible so I quit. Somehow 15 years managed to pass in the blink of an eye. Then my father died. As I was cleaning out his desk I found the first piece of glass I blew. He had kept it all those years. I remembered how much I enjoyed that class. I thought about how life is too short to keep putting off doing the things you love. The college where I took classes no longer offered them to people who were not going for a degree so I called the museum to see if they still taught glass blowing. I happened to call on the day that class registration opened up and the beginners class was already full. Since I had taken one class they let me sign up for an intermediate class and I went on to take all the classes I needed to become an “independent” glass blower (I know the safety rules and can blow glass without needing someone watch to make sure I don’t hurt myself or someone else.)and have been blowing glass ever since then.

I started blowing late in life and only blow for 3 hours per week approximately 40 weeks out of the year. All of which means it has taken me a long time to develop the skill to blow well enough to be proud of what I make. However, I enjoy the process tremendously even when I make nothing but a mess. It also uses a completely different part of my brain than I use for work so in some ways it is a mini vacation from work. So I hope to be able to continue this hobby well into my retirement years.

Penny – Thanks for the lentil soup recipe. Sounds easy and delicious. My DMIL (and yes, the D is for Darling) frequently orders lentil soup when she eats out and it would be nice to make her some homemade soup.

14 pounds to a stone says the woman who keeps all sorts of trivia in her brain.

Mia in MI

September goals:
Continue to honestly log food every day
Weigh and measure all food that I prepare at home
Get at least 15 min per day of aerobic exercise
64 oz. water (or what counts as water for my program) daily

Hello, I'm back from shopping! For the Asian salad I bought asparagus, snow peas and broccoli to blanch and mix with radishes, a hint of fresh chilli and spring onions. An Asian dressing. I will blanch the veg in the morning of Friday.
I found some gorgeous mangoes to have for dessert before/after the cheeses.
The main counter didn't have any fillet so I bought two smaller pieces from the aisles. Should be OK. I will prepare that tomorrow.

When I got back we pricked all our sloes with a needle and made a litre and a half of sloe gin.

However my trip to the supermarket was done in high dudgeon as I had a letter from the solicitors just as I was leaving asking MORE stupid questions. And she wants to retain money in case there is an underestimate on the management fees (as there is every year :grumble: ). :sad: :sad: I'm amazed I didn't crash the car! Give me strength!

We have the lawn man outside who comes twice a year to do wonderful things to the lawn. This year was the first time we've used him, as DH had a hernia this year, and our lawn has never looked so splendid and lush. He is doing some scarifying and aerating today. :drinker: Just for a change it is us who are making a horrible racket, though I can hear some strimming from next door. He has got out bags and bags of dead moss and grass. I love watching people work. :laugh:

Great British Bake Off tonight - the semi finals. We will be having Hairy Bikers Spanish style Chicken.

Heather UK

PS - Katla, I think the hotel idea would be a good compromise and you could offer to help or bring something to the feast. I always used to bring Christmas cake, brandy butter and bread sauce to DSIL's for Christmas. Along with a selection of wines. Her organisation skills were so bad that I used to keep out of the kitchen because it upset me too much. I have peeled and chopped the parsnips and carrots for her though. DH always offers to help, but, once he has had a few drinks, always forgets to time things, so I usually write him off. Recently there has been a few references on the radio to dispraxia and I seriously think that is my lovely sister-in-law's problem. It explains so much. I love her dearly though, but she is not a relaxing host. :noway:

Lisa H My dear, you are a marvel! I think you have worked wonders under the circs. I see no failure in you whatsoever. By the way I am also 5'2".

Gloria I know what you mean about getting behind when you are writing a post. I frequently think I hahve got up to date only to find that another batch have posted in the meantime, especially as I have a habit of forgetting to hit the post button lol.

Penny One stone = 14 lbs. 12 St = 168lbs. I hit 167lbs this morning.

Mary from Minnesota I love your new pic. Very glamorous!

Lunch with DGD was lovely. We had a great chat in a little pub overlooking the Irish Sea. (They live up the Noth Coast. Game of Thrones country.

Irish Terri

Good day! Well I am trainning today and sitting at the back computer so see how this goes. The new lady is doing well and this is overtime for me, but the boss scheduled this and so I am sticking it out. Going to be a long day.

Fragmoss--Welcome, you sound like you are a great fit for our group. Come often.

Mia--That is great you are going to sell some of your beautiful glasswork for Hospice. I work with the hospice group here and a group called Compasstion friends. We believe no one should die a lone so we sit with people as they pass. I have found areal peace from doing it.

I also enjoy reading the Plum books and looking forward to the new one coming next month. I agree I would like to be more like the grandma. Just living life and not caring what anyone else thinks.

gritsandsl--glad to see you back. you were missed.

Traciein--I seem to have the most problems with eating in the evenings at home. It is like the food talks to me. So I try and keep busy and lately DH and I have been doing alot of walking in the evenings. That helps. The most important thing is not to give up.

Becca--You are beautiful, caring Becca. I agree about the bees. I get freaked as I swell up when stung. Not fun.

Joyce--glad the lost is found. Good that Charlie is feeling ok even with the low BP.

Janetr--glad to hear from you. Hope today is going well. The first day after surgery can be rough. Sending prayers and hugs.

Katla--Good for you stepping out of your comfort zone inviting people over. I think a veg and fruit tray with some crackers would be nice.

TerriRichard--Congrates on being lower then been in a long time. Happy dance for you.

Lisa--Some people are just amazing. You have done a wounderful job with trying to turn things around and then the help steals. I admire all the work you have done to make it better.

Heather--Happy Birthday early. Sounds like you have a good meal planned.

Miriam==glad son is got the papers signed. Will he be moving in this weekend?

Mary--Hope all goes well with your visit with DB and DSIL. Will they be staying in your cabin?

Well ladies I need to sign off and get somethings done. Have a great day ladies.
Blessings, Vicki GRAND ISLAND-NE

Lenora, re names for you: how about Nana Lenora or Nana Nora (does anybody call you Nora?) or how about Nae Nae (sorry, that song just popped into my head. It sounded like a good idea at the time.)

As for tiny Nana and Big Nana, my cousin is called Big Mama by all her grandchildren and extended family's children. I would hate it, but she loves it.

Along the same vein, Mikesmom, my cousin always called my Grandmother Roy's Mama. Always! The funny thing was, Roy was our Grandfather. She was his wife, not his mother.

Good afternoon! Thanks to everyone for their supportive thoughts. I keep telling myself, "This, too, shall pass."

Mia and Lisa - I did make a call yesterday but got their answering machine. I will try again today if I can find a minute by myself.

Miriam - My son has Celiac and his favorite pizza crust is a mix by Chebe. It doesn't have a lot of weird stuff in it and is "seasoned" with oregano, and maybe some other things. I like it, too! If he has a frozen pizza, he really prefers the Aldi brand (Living G Free?).

I am wiped out today! I didn't take a Klonopin (sp?) before bed last night and my mind wouldn't settle. I should have gotten up and gone downstairs to get one, but I was warm and snuggly and kept (mistakenly) thinking I would go to sleep in a minute. Then at PT, they have found a torture exercise for me! They have me roll a large (exercise/balance) ball up a wall as far as I can and then lean into it. This puts lots of pressure on my shoulder and the muscles that keep my arm from going back as far as it should. I was sweating buckets by the time I finished and am still shaking four hours later. Oddly enough, it also affects my quads and my abs.

I took work home with me last night so I am going to try to leave a little early today so that I can go to BJ's and pick up the box of contacts that I ordered. While I'm there, I hope to also pick up a rotisserie chicken to eat on for the rest of the week.

Janetr - Good to hear from you! Enjoy the drugs!

Back to work I go...

Carol in NC