Woo Hoo! I got in 8,000 steps today! My doctor appt is this Friday. I'm anxious to see the new X-rays that will be taken prior to the appt

My former principal has asked me to sub next week for 3 days. It's math and practically my former position. I told her yes, and will make sure I rest quite often during the day.

Bert

Welcome Beth, so glad you found your way to our little family and thanks for the intro. As Vikki can attest, we are a chatty group but in a positive and supportive way. Your children look adorable. Come as often as you can. With work and family we know that there are times that being computer social may not make it into your schedule. Hope we can help you with your accountability.

Thanks again to everyone for your advice. I am taking notes and will eventually find a way to get it right.

Karla, I normally eat about 3 ounces of turkey on whole grain wheat bread, I got burned out on the rounds but I know I will bring then back this summer for burgers on the grill. I also usually have a yogurt with my lunch which gets me close to 400 cals. I know that the eating is 80% of this that is why I am working so hard to find a way to improve mine.

Zumba was a blast, so fun with the black lights and we had a full class which just makes it more like a dance party than exercise. Circuit in the morning and TRX tomorrow evening and then 4 days off. It will be a "food scary" weekend, so I will just do my best to focus on the time with my friends and the game.

Patti

Quick stop to say mornin' y'all! It's bright and sunny but cold here in OK. I think today I'll have some computer time this afternoon and will get back to chat some.

Cindy - does your dentist offer you the nitrous oxide gas? I'm a big time dentist chicken, too, but my dentist will even give me the gas for cleanings. Insurance doesn't pay for it, at least for cleanings, but it's only $25 per visit to pay for it myself and sooooo worth it!

Good Morning, Ladies! Last night was a rough one trying to sleep, It happens every once in a while. I think menopause is trying to tell me it's not letting go of my body just yet! Today is catch up day......getting the clutter in the house down to a mild roar!, getting things for taxes ready, working on church worship service. Have a great day everyone.

Bert

Good morning!

Beth, welcome (thanks, Vikki, for being willing to expose one of your friends to this bunch of good-crazies)! The fact that you are able to view managing a stressful job, adorable kids and a husband who works a different shift and consider it comical tells me you'll fit right in. Everyone here has a rollicking sense of humor.

Cindy, wish I could transport my dentist's office your way. The office is as warm and welcoming as this group. It's a doc I mind less than others because I get to keep my clothes on! Please let them know you are tense. My jaw muscles are very sore from yesterday -- believe it or not, my mouth is very small (ironic, no?), so all the wide-open stuff stresses the muscles. And they have to maneuver an adult-sized impression tray in very carefully.

Bert, seeing the x-rays will be fascinating. Sounds like you're doing well and what fun to hae a few days back in the classroom next week -- as long as you can look out for your physical self while feeding young minds.

Karla, how is your dad's eye? What about yours? Bet you had fun at the reunion-planning meeting.

Patti, you could start small by going to 4-5 oz. of turkey on the sandwich. If you like deviled eggs as a side dish, you could make them with lowfat mayo or plain yogurt and mustard. Protein for your well-toned muscles.

Confession: I did not track the last two days. I have tracked my breakfast banana and am back ON THIS today. Help keep me honest!

Suzi- had to smile- I wish gas was only $25 here- it is $150. I will use my ipod and the dentist is very kind- I just had all the stuff in my mouth and i really hate the smell of a dentist office.
back later.........
Sending up a prayer of thanks for Paula- I'm sure she can finally take of herself. Thank you for sharing Janet.

Good morning all! We are moving toward the weekend once again, as much as I enjoy my work I still look forward to the weekend; of course by Sunday I am usually excited to get to go back to work again....what can I say?
Hubby and I are headed to my parents' house tomorrow for overnight. I will go dancing Friday night (hubby does NOT dance unless it is a slow and easy style) and then Saturday I have to go to the Portland library in order to complete an assignment for school. The type of dancing is Salsa Rueda; it is salsa type dancing done in a circle and there is a caller like in square dancing. It is a style I learned a while ago but am teaching it for the first time next month so I want to be sure I am confident in what I am teaching. I just love these research exercises

Beth- hello and welcome! I just LOVE that picture of yours; quite precious

Vikki - I think it is good to give your body a rest. Being on the go all the time only ends up in crashing. As far as eating is concerned, well don't let it get to you. Just remind yourself you can do it and why you are doing it. Also, I am the only person I know who doesn't like bacon...just thought I'd throw that in there....

Karla - My dad has to have injections in his eyes too, every 6 weeks. Thankfully they are impressed with how well they are working for him. He doesn't say anything about whether they are painful or not, but my parents are really bad about that...they say they don't want to worry us. I keep telling them it upsets us more when they don't tell us (when I say us I mean my sister, brother, and me)

Patti - my husband doesn't really dance either...though maybe not to the extreme as Edd! He'll dance with me once in a while like a couple years ago when my daughter got married. I guess we are willing to give some things up for the mate who suits us best in every other way. I was going to suggest to you to eat pasta; have you tried different types? There is quinoa pasta, which is my favorite. To me, of all the varieties I've tried, it is most like regular pasta. It holds up better too. That way you would be getting calories and nutrition!

MaryLynn - thanks for the link. I've had to use the government page for school classes in the past but I don't remember seeing this page before

Myra - I am working on getting a similar foam roller to what you mentioned. I have knots all over my body but I think that is what it has decided to do through this illness....I really think I am getting better enough that I may be able to do something about them now. In fact I was talking to a co-worker who is a pilates instructor and she told me to "roll out" my calves. When I told her I didn't have a roller she said "use a rolling pin". I did, and it worked!!! I've been having issues with my plantar tendon on the bottom of my foot; it was noticeably less painful after I worked my calves.

Janet - I have a hard time at the dentist too. When I was a kid I had to go to a specialist and my mom had to give me some sort of sedative before my appointments. Glad you found a good one!

Well I had Alanna yesterday morning (as usual) so didn't get here and so much happened; just trying to jump back in. Hope you are all enjoying your week.

Grace and Peace to you
Jeanette

Wooo hooo! Look at me with time to chat! Thursday’s are a non-Y day for us, so here I am with no real plans for the day. After it warms up some this afternoon, we’re going out to the farm to do a little work on “Tulip”, our RV. Dave needs to change the oil and I’m going to start the mouse poop purge….yuck! As you can imagine with her stored in the barn, Dave fights a constant mouse battle, although it’s getting better since acquiring some barn cats. I don’t battle, I just clean up afterwards because I have a horrible mouse phobia. You might ask how in the world considering I spent the first 35 years of my life living on a farm. Well, it all stems from a time when my Daddy decided my sister and I needed to clean out the loft of a barn that was loaded with a bunch of old oat hay. Literally EVERY bale of hay we picked up had a big nest of mice under it and I had mice running up my pants legs and over my feet and everywhere I looked there was more mice! This incident was preceded by one where a huge rat jumped out at me when I opened the door to the dark pantry in the old farmhouse where we lived. Now I can’t even stand to see pictures of mice or see mice on television. Cartoon mice are mostly OK – Mickey, Minnie, Jerry, but they can’t be too realistic looking. I get creeped out and have an incredibly hard time even buying mouse traps in a package and can’t touch a non-packaged mousetrap without gloves on.

Ugh! Enough of that!

Myra – I loved the pizza crack remark. As hard as it is for me to resist, it’s nothing compared to sugar for me. One of my sayings is that I’m like a rat on crack when it comes to sugar! Good for you and Dennis for making sure your affairs are in order. That’s something too many people neglect. After seeing the struggle Jessi has been through just the past few months, I can really appreciate the difficulty you endure with your own depression. Thank you so much for the insight you’ve provided me with. By the way, I got quite a giggle out of your “closet running” once I figured out you weren’t actually running in the closet.

Lisa – Congrats on your loss! I enjoyed your comments and agree with you that I can’t imagine tracking my food for the rest of my life either. Since Dave does 95% of our cooking, and eats a pretty strict heart healthy diet, I follow WW’s “simply filling” plan which is where you eat from a prescribed list of foods – lean meats, FF dairy, fruits, veggies and whole grains. Low sugar, high fiber, low fat breads are even allowed. You only have to track the things not on the list. That’s something I can see myself following for the rest of my life, although now, while in loss mode, I am tracking everything.

Patti – Go you on the exercise! I would think that if you’re eating your calorie allowance every day, and eat some of your “exercise calories” when you feel hungry that should do the trick. That’s one of the changes WW made to the program when they rolled out Smart Points - not eating your fit points (AKA activity points in the old lingo). That is now the default setting for all users. I did happen to stumble across the place to change that setting if you want to, but I didn’t change mine. For right now, I’m not using my fit points. They’re there and I’m sure are helping me when I go over my allowance. By the way – impressive inches loss. Thanks for the reminder that it’s time to do that again. Enjoy your superbowl trip and the new tunage.

Diane – don’t you just hate it when those dang co-workers bring those dang jumping donuts! I am continually impressed by the schedule you keep. You’re going to enjoy retirement so much!

Janet – that’s a wonderful report from your doctor and how cool is it that she referred you to the boutique sale! I want to see a pic of you all gussied up in that pink silk jacket. That would be so much fun to let a personal shopper play paper dolls on you! Thanks so much for passing along Paula’s good news!!!

MaryLynn – Thank you so much for your contributions to the supportive, positive, inspiring conversations we enjoy here. You and our other “not so newbies” have added so much to our conversations and it’s just wonderful to have all of you with us. It is a wonderful thing to be able to active – especially in our retirement years. That’s been my primary motivating factor to returning to an active healthy lifestyle, because as several have said the past few days, it’s not a diet. Thanks for the link, too.

I, too, am a weather Junkie. I feel naked or something if I don’t know what to expect. Of course, here in OK, it can change on a dime into something life threatening. I actually lost a home to a huge tornado in 1999. Coming from a farm background, we watched the weather at least 3 times a day, sometimes more. When one of my cousins was in the Air Force and first brought his bride-to-be home to meet the family, she asked why we watched the weather so often. My Mom explained that as farmers, our entire livelihood could depend on what the weather did and many farm chores had to be planned around the weather. It was a tough concept for the bride-to-be to grasp as her grandparents were from New York City and she had been a military brat her entire life.

Karla – congrats on the loss this week! Enjoy the time with your dad and brothers and the reunion planning meeting. Several of my classmates and I have had “reunions” at funerals for two classmates over the holidays. Next year will be our 40th and we’re determined to see each other more frequently and at happier occasions. Were you in a large or small class? Ours was really small - we had 43 people in our graduating class and about 25 of us started kindergarten together. It seems like no matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen one another we just pick right back up where we last left off whenever we’re together be it the whole class or just a few of us. Wednesday might be the best day for lunch. Since we’ll likely be hungover, it probably won’t be the day we go sight-seeing.

Cindy – I admire your fortitude to trudge onward through the book you don’t really like – especially considering the bad print job. That’s something I don’t think I’d be capable of. It is wonderful that you’ve been chosen to help judge other people’s writing. Congrats on your no-snacking streak!

Bert – good luck with the doctor visit. They should be impressed with your activity level and the number of steps you’ve been getting in.

Jeanette – Jodi, the cousin’s wife I’ll be visiting in Mobile next week, is originally from Portland, OR and her late husband, my cousin Mike, was an instructor for a number of years at the Coast Guard motor lifeboat school at Cape Disappointment in southern Washington. Prior to his assignment there, he was stationed on the northern Oregon coast, but I can’t remember the town. I think it was near you, though. Regarding your tight plantar tendon, try stretching it out first thing in the morning when you first get out of bed. Stand about arms-length away from a counter or sturdy piece of furniture with your feet about shoulder width apart and turned slightly inward. Lean into the counter by sagging your mid-section as you support yourself with your arms and keep your heels down on the floor. Hold the stretch for 10 counts of 10, leaning your belly closer to the counter with each 10-count. I have really bad plantar fasciitis and that stretch, prescribed by my podiatrist, has kept me out of surgery and allowed me to remain active with 3 – 4 years between cortisone injections.

Vikki – thanks so much for inviting your friend, Beth to join us. The more the merrier. We all have off days occasionally, but your decision to try some classes to change things up a bit is a good one.

Hi, Beth! Welcome to the group. I look forward to getting to know you.

Whew! Mouse poop purged. EeeeeeeeYuck!

It was a really nice day to be out at the farm though. Sunny, although windy and cool. As a very pleasant surprise, the young man who's renting the farm ground came out to finish up the fertilizer job and we had a good visit with him and his wife.

I always feel so renewed after being out there. I would still like to one day talk Dave into building a home out there. I have a particular spot picked out on a hill in the pasture where I can look to the north and see both the house I grew up in and the one across the road that my grandparents built on the farm my mother grew up on; and I can look to the south and see my older daughter and son-in-law's house where one day I would be able to watch my grandchildren playing in the backyard. My history to the north and my legacy to the south. Maybe some day.....