It has been warm enough (5C) today that I was able to take Nellie for two walks and did a short bike ride (only 20 minutes) but I can feel some unused muscles have been engaged.
This morning I saw a flock of tundra swans flying overhead, headed for the Arctic. It is amazing how far they travel. Tundra swans are white and easily distinguished from the Canada goose; they also have different sound which I could hear. On the ground, the little chipmunk was out today too.
I was pleased this morning to have lost between 1 1/2 and 2 pounds in the past week. I think the increased exercise is helping and hopefully the diet too.

Good Evening Crackers!

Well I'm still struggling... the scales dared to go up AGAIN when really they should have shown that pound last week when I stayed the same... Beck had to remind me AGAIN

'The more you focus on your mistakes, the worse you feel. The more you give yourself credit for all the great things you're doing, the better you feel, the more momentum you build and the easier it gets to continue doing well. Make a commitment to CREDIT.'

So as of the 1st March, new start and no chocolate in the house!

Congratulations Bracken on your weight loss, I'm so pleased for you and it is well deserved with the amount of exercise and effort you are putting in. Here the weather is changeable by the day, one day we walked in pouring rain, the next in glorious sunshine, followed by snow overnight... Today as I wasn't walking I made myself salsacise. Did you see that Bob Harper 'From the Biggest Loser' had a heart attack whilst working out at the gym? I read his Mother died from a heart condition.

I've been reading lots lately as I've had to read my daughter's EPQ - a mini dissertation which she has written on "What was the main reason for Oskar Schindler saving his Jewish workforce in comparison to Amon Goth murdering individuals." Hope your own, make believe horror went down well Bracken!

Be good Crackers!

Afternoon Crackers!

Well Bracken I'm slightly confused as on my news feed you have logged in for 45 days and that was 13 hours ago so were you mistaken about breaking your run? And secondly you put that Bob Harper had died - I thought he just had a heart attack but was recovering?

Your writing group sounds rather interesting - why don't you write under a pseudonym to take off some of the pressure? Talking of books have you by any chance got 'The Four Day Win' in your extensive library of dieting books?! I'm tempted to buy it, to read during my 3 week potato free break in the UK!

Sadly I am still struggling... last night I could so easily have ate, just for the sheer sake of eating! However I stopped and went in search of some Beck inspiration and found this quote:-

'If you think, "It's okay to eat because I just need to feel better NOW," remind yourself:"While it may be true that I need to feel better, it's not true that I need to eat to feel better. There are other things I can do to help myself feel better that won't cause me to take in extra calories and gain weight. Besides, if I eat to feel better now, the only thing I'll be doing is signing myself up to feel badly later - when I feel guilty about what I've eaten, when I've reinforced bad habits, and when I've gained weight. Do something else that will help me feel better now and later."

So I made myself go and salsacise for 15 minutes and it did the trick - the moment passed and I felt better for the exercise...

This morning I got out my little book of measurements and weights over the years and discovered it's been a whole year since I last posted in it. That in itself tells me I must have been happy with my weight and measurements for the past year which maybe I've lost sight off. I am currently 2.2 pounds off my target weight and 1/2" larger all over but I'm no longer doing Jillian exercises or daily Rosemary salsacising. However in the past week I have done 3 sessions now of Rosemary and there really is no reason why I can't fit 15 minutes of her into my day so that is my aim for the next 10 days until I depart.

Be good Crackers!

Hello Crackers. I am finding the return to extreme cold here very frustrating. Temps of -14C with the winds which are very high. It is so cold I can only let Nellie out for about 20 minutes at a time. My brother was here for a nice visit this morning; he brought his chocolate Labrador
Retriever with him and Nellie had a bit of a romp outdoors with her. My brother and his family are flying to Arizona tomorrow morning as they will be on a school holiday, here known as March Break. They are off to see our sister there. So far there has not been much snow with this cold although squalls and significant snow has been forecast. I hope there is nothing overnight as they drive to Detroit in the morning to catch their plane, almost a 3 hour drive. As usual, I will worry about them!
One of my short pieces of writing is now on our group website and a second short piece has been sent to the woman who is so ably managing the site. I cannot believe the amount of time I spent revising and polishing those pieces but when it is put up for public display it makes one very self-critical. I have a third ready to send but the group decided to put two a month per person so I am happy to have one in hand.
Regards.

BM, very glad to see that you have arrived safe and sound back 'home' and look forward to hearing about your trip home.
Well, I am sure I have now broken my 50 day log-in run as I definitely did not log-in yesterday although I tried. I was not home; in fact I had not been home since Monday morning (when I did log in) but was away until this afternoon. We have had such appalling weather, especially for March. Huge winds, low temps (-18C yesterday) and snow squalls. Yesterday major snow was predicted, influenced by the even worse weather in the Eastern US. The amount of snow could have been worse but I felt so dragged down by it all that I booked a room for Monday/ Tuesday in a hotel in the nearby city, just to get away (really only a few miles!!) Because it is a school break here and because I did this last minute, the hotel I wanted was fully booked so I had to settle for a less desirable one. Still it served the purpose and had a decent swimming pool. I don't swim but Monday my sister brought her youngest daughter who is an excellent competitive swimmer and she had a very good time so I was pleased to do that for her. Also I was able to take Nellie to the hotel which was a good trial. She has been to a boarding kennel but this was different of course. She did really well- her toilet behaviour is impeccable and she gave only a couple of barks so it is nice to know that if I wanted to take her further afield she should be fine. Still quite nasty today and predicted so until the weekend. The birds had eaten all the extra food I left for them so they, I suppose, were pleased to see my return.

The weather here is still up and down though not as bad as last week- at least no snow. But last night and today are very cold again and an extreme cold alert was issued. It is very sunny today which is some consolation and since the weekend, I have heard a lot of birdsong, especially in the morning when I first let Nellie out. That is one of the great joys of spring to me after the dreadful silence of winter.
Tomorrow evening I have my book club meeting. We are doing Wuthering Heights. I still have my university copy complete with some notations and some excellent critical commentaries included. I was amazed at how much I had forgotten the novel and have enjoyed reading it again.However, it was quite slow going especially with the sections written in dialect. It is really a remarkable book and amazing to me that the author could have written such an intricate and original book given her constricted life at Haworth. I feel I have not really done it justice with just one reading but am looking forward to our group's discussion.
BM, I hope you have recovered from your recent trip- such a long journey.

Hello Crackers. BM, I hope you are now well on the road to recovery. You do have such struggles with your health and it must be difficult being in another land and your husband having to fly away to business. That says to me that you are really very brave.
Yesterday after such a long winter layoff, I finally got back on my horse! He was wonderfully well behaved. I did mainly walking and a small trot but it is a start. He is in quite good shape from the young girl at the stable riding him. I've said that I am reluctant to have someone else riding him but I've been able to observe and she seems very considerate about not overworking him. This is usually an issue with young riders I have seen before. She has also not mentioned jumping him which is good as I am not keen to have him jumped. I just hope she easily realises that as I am able to do more, she will not be able to ride him as much as she has been doing. However, she/her family have not paid for anything (and boarding a horse
is very expensive) so it is not like this was a shared board situation and I'll definitely let her ride when I cannot.
A milder dull day here so I must try and get some jobs done, either indoors or outdoors.

Hello Crackers. Enjoyed your UK post MITM and hope the rest of your trip has gone well. Your hot cross buns anecdote reminds me of helping my grandmother make them so many years ago. I don't think I have had them since the ones of my grandmother. I remember liking them
though they were not a favourite food. It's funny how different foods appeal to different people. I do remember that they were very good when just out of the oven and still warm.
Our weather continues to be up and down and so I have tried to use the good days to get some yard work done. Monday was very nice and I worked for many hours in the yard, raking
leaves and picking up twigs and branches- so many pieces from all the high winds. Tuesday it poured rain so no garden work but today was quite nice so again more raking and picking up.
Yesterday I took advantage of the bad weather to get some other jobs done- I went to the water garden store to pick up some rubber cement to do a bit of patch work on the pond. As I was also near a large garden centre, I stopped in. There was not much in the way of plants yet but there were pots of beautiful pansies. I like them so much as they are our earliest flowers for pots. So I have bought one all ready planted bowl of mixed colours for my front door steps and several packs to be planted. That was partly what I did today so now I have several pots of pansies. I like to get them early as they do better here when it is cooler. I also have a lot of stiff muscles from this work!
Sunday I was at the stable and was told the most shocking news which I had not heard as I do not always listen to the local station. There was a terrible barn fire on Thursday at the stable of a family with whom I am well acquainted. (The riding community here is small enough that
everyone involved with horses pretty well knows or knows of everyone else.) The fire was at 3 a.m during a violent thunderstorm and it sounds as if lightening may have been the cause.
Five horses perished in the fire, despite the valiant attempt of the husband to go into the smoky stable. He was able to open the doors of the stalls but the horses were too terrified to leave; he could not get out the way he came in and suffered injury making a narrow escape. His wife was able to rescue one horse before smoke got to one end of the stable. It was heart breaking to hear about. Fire has always been something that haunts me especially as when I was a child (about 9) my family suffered a barn fire in which we lost cows and pigs. To make things worse, I was told that the family whose stable burned have had some postings on Facebook claiming they probably started the fire for insurance purposes. Can you imagine how cruel that is to have to read. It is very hard in such circumstances to know what to say but I did write a card of condolence.

Just a quick pop-in but nice to hear from you, BM, but sorry your recovery is taking longer than expected. how lovely it must be to have your son and grandson. I hope you enjoy every minute of it. I can not remember the wreath of MITM that is referred to but would be interested to have it described.
Very unseasonably mild here all of a sudden so am hustling to get more gardening jobs done as rain also comes with this mild weather. I am very sore this pm as today I tackled the dreaded pond cleaning! Thankfully I was able to complete the worst part- pumped out the pond, raked out the many sodden leaves in it, and hosed it down so it is basically clean. Now i must wait for a couple of consecutive sunny days as it needs some touch up work with the rubber cement product. The warm weather has brought along some cheery daffodils and narcissus and the tips of many hostas are poking through along with a couple of my woodland
plants, the may apples and the bloodroot.

Good Evening Crackers - I'm back!

Well this time last week I spent the night in London with my Mother as it was my birthday. We were staying opposite the Shard, across on the other side of the river - fantastic view of it and the weather was brilliant. Went to the theater to see 'Stepping Out' (which the film was based on) which was excellent and then the following morning we visited Kensington Palace to see the Princess Diana exhibition on her dresses which were stunning. Up close (behind glass) they were so small and dainty, not in height obviously! And the 'white' garden planted specially this year as it's 20 years ago she died was simply beautiful. We also spotted the Duke of Kent coming out of the Palace, totally alone, who no one recognized except my Mother and me! Needless to say I ate total rubbish from start to finish and I'm just grateful it was only a 1.4 pound gain this week but fortunately we shopped until we dropped so did over 20,000 steps each day.

Arrived back in Austria with the daughter on Monday. Although the husband picked us up at the airport because of our luggage (daughter had all her college books for revision), as we were in Salzburg he wanted to take the opportunity to get a new coffee machine as ours had died during my absence, I have been praying for this day! But when you have been up since 3am... so we still didn't get home until very late. However we eventually found one that made coffee as the husband wanted with whole coffee beans and as it cost an arm and a leg, it will be our 28th wedding anniversary gift to ourselves (which is tomorrow), he gets good coffee and I get to look at something that is pleasing to the eye as the old one was a huge, commercial machine, bright red which did not fit in with the kitchen colour scheme and was so ugly - 18 years living here I have put up with it!

I haven't had time to post as it has taken me 4 days to clean the house from top to bottom and tidy my front garden. The husband whilst I was away cleared the basement floor and dug over the vegetable plot and started planting up but just closed his eyes very tightly to the inch of dust and cobwebs gathering everywhere inside of the house - men!

I've now a house full of Austrian family and having not had chocolate in almost 40 days - I feel quite ill! I made my birthday cake belatedly, dark chocolate and smothered it in little chocolate eggs and may now never be able to face another chocolate egg again!! Next weigh in will not be fun however it is Easter! BM - like most things in my life, my Easter wreath (Bracken - in my profile photo!) is 18 years old and I've never seen another since. I have a tree a metre high, made of the same coloured eggs clustered which I bought at the same time, standing in the hallway.

Frightful news about the stable Bracken - it seems to be the latest thing you can post the most horrible comments online. What is the matter with people? BM - how lovely for you to have family staying, I hope it helps speed up your recovery. Well ladies I will wish you both a peaceful and happy Easter.

Be good! Any progress?

P.S. I had a lovely birthday text message from LMV she has been in Australia for 6 weeks and hopes to join us again soon to shift her excess baggage!