Lots of things to cover, too many to do right now, but I wanted to post a project skinny update.

I am down 1.5 lbs. Am I disappointed? A little. Looking back over the week, I need to focus on water more. And I know that nothing can slow weight loss like not enough water, so this is a biggie. Friday night wasn’t the most stellar points wise, and neither was Saturday night, but I think I did pretty good overall.

The most important part is, I actually started and stuck with it. I know I can do this. It really is a good feeling. And 1.5 lbs is better than none at all.
That is all. More weekend wrapup later.

-amy

6:05 stared at me from the alarm clock and I kept very slowly closing my eyes and then realizing what I was doing and FORCING them back open. It was 6:08 when I ACTUALLY GOT UP AND WENT AND DID MY EXERCISE VIDEO.

I only had time for 10 minutes. BUT I GOT UP!

YAY ME!

-fini

I have been telling myself, and tell you all of you at times, that this is it! Climb on board the skinny train! I’ve been slacking, but now I’m doing it! Yessiree bob, this is me, not slacking!

And then I haven’t done anything. And in addition to not doing anything, I’ve put things in front of me that are not even REMOTELY good.

I have really been feeling cruddy about myself. It is as if every shred of will power has disappeared.

Imagine a pool of bad eating behavior. Not only have I NOT walked away from the pool, I have just been swimming around in the pool occasionally calling out, “OK, I’M GETTING OUT NOW!” “Really! I am!” “Tomorrow’s the day, I’ll get out, I promise!” “Just five more minutes, ma!” “Ooooohhh look i’m all pruney like David Blaine!” “Hey, this pool makes me feel like shit all the time, and yet the ladder to climb out is soooooo faaaaaaar awaaaaay maybe next week.”

And I have really been wrestling with myself on HOW I wrangle up the motivation to get out of that fucking pool. I have to DO IT, and I just HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO.

This week was the big week. I was going to set my alarm early and get up and exercise before getting ready for the day. I was going to make excellent choices, quit drinking so much damn caffeine and no water and subsist on lean protein and fibrous fruit and vegetables and whole grain starches.

The alarm went off Monday morning, and I could have gotten up, I wasn’t soooo tired, but I didn’t. I stopped at 7-11 on the way to pick up my PKR and got a diet coke and a muffin. The kind with sugary sprinkly things on top. This is me for months, feeling like shit about my choices, so I manage to kind of shove the actual choice way down deep inside, and the crappy feelings along with it, but it makes it easier to make that same choice again. And again. And again.

So yesterday, I opened up my weight watcher’s online point tracker thingamabob, entered in my breakfast, my sugary muffin, called up the Pad Thai that I desperately wanted to order for lunch, and sat staring at the fact that 1 cup is 9 points. Does the restaurant serve only 1 cup? Fat chance, 2 and a half, at LEAST. So we’re talking likely, 18-13 points in that take out container.

I stared and stared and I thought about the times in the past when doing this was “easy”. I KNOW it wasn’t actually easy. But the motivation and the will power to JUST DO IT ALREADY was actually there, as opposed to now, when it seems like this impossibility. I got to thinking about why it was a possibility, and I think it was the end goal that did it. This seems like such an easy thing, but it totally was it.

So I looked really hard at those times when it was “easy.”

When I got pregnant with Ethan, I weighed about 295 lbs. Look, I used a real number. Scary, huh? Well I AM scared, and it’s time to get serious, so there you go.

I gained about 40 lbs during his pregnancy, but about 6-8 weeks post partum, I was back down to 295. I wanted to have a V-BAC with Jocelyn (vaginal birth after caesarian), and was told that the only way I’d even have a chance, was if I didn’t gain any weight. Ethan was a 9 lb baby, and the story goes that second babies are usually even bigger. I did NOT WANT a caesarian. That was my goal. I was about the same weight when I got pregnant with Jocelyn, and that goal did it – it gave me the power to act. I only gained about 5 pounds during the entire pregnancy – which meant that my body was actually losing weight, while the baby and reproductive bits were all gaining the appropriate weight. 6 weeks after she was born, I was down 20 pounds to 280 – I had lost it while I was pregnant. That success gave me enough drive to keep at it, and I lost another 30 lbs. I was nursing her the entire time and so was allowed to eat an obscene amount of food to fuel the milk production boob factory, and I also was cutting all milk protein out of my diet, as she had a pretty strong intolerance for it. When you’re eating a TON and can’t have ice cream anyway because your baby will be miss fussypants, it makes it fairly easy – but that’s not to say that it wasn’t hard work and I needed to stay motivated.

When she was about 5 months old, some gall stones decided to lodge themselves in my liver and I developed pancreatitis and spent a week in the hospital. I pumped for that week, but when I came home, nursing didn’t last too much longer. The truth was, I was sick of limiting my diet so much, it drove me crazy, so the breastfeeding came to an end.

With the new liberties allowed in what I ate, project skinny fell by the wayside and my attempts to pick it back up have been pretty lackluster. Before I spent a week in the hospital, I weighed 246. That will be 2 years ago, this fall. As my weight climbed over the past 1 1/2 years, I kept trying and trying to get back with it, but haven’t really had the focus and the goals to keep me on target. The immediate gratification always won out over the long term ideology. Last week, I crossed out of the 250’s and the scale read 260.5 and I knew that this is it. It is time to focus and figure out HOW to get the motivation I need, because this has GOT TO HAPPEN.

I used real numbers. They probably shocked folks, but hey, anyone that looks at me could probably guess. Just because I don’t SAY how much I weigh doesn’t mean I don’t actually weigh it. This is it. I’m serious about this. Thus, full disclosure.

Yesterday I stared at the 9 pts for a cup of Pad Thai and got off my ass and went to Subway instead. I got a foot long so I wouldn’t feel deprived (I was stuffed), but even that is still an excellent choice (especially compared to Pad Thai). Did I have a perfect day? I don’t think stopping at Taco Bell on the way home would qualify as “perfect” but I entered EVERY thing I ate into my points tracker (including the chocolate chip cookie I had last night) and this morning brought a baggie of sugar snap peas to work to munch on. Still got a big diet coke this morning, but I’ve also drunk 2 bottles of water to go with it (and I really need to finish this up cause I need to pee something awful.)

This is it. What is going to keep me focused? I know that thoughts of “I don’t want to be like THAT again” won’t last, because I think them all the time. This time, no more “free” Saturdays. I’m going to track all the time, EVERYthing.

And the thing I’m going to focus on when I want to toss it all, our vacation in August. We are still trying to determine what we’re goign to do, but whereever we go, I want to look better than I do right now. I want to have more energy, and feel good about myself, and I know I can make a difference by then. If I take one little step every day, then in August, it will have amounted to something, and by this time next year, I may have gotten a long way towards a healthier me.

Specific goal time – I’ll go with the standard WW first goal, which is 10%. I’m just going to focus on these first 26 pounds.

And maybe tomorrow I can actually struggle out of bed when the alarm goes off to try some exercise. But if not, at least I know I still am out of that pool.

-amy has to pee so bad g’bye!

First, I stayed up way too late resizing gory paper bunny easter box pictures. I think it was around midnight when I finally laid down. And my brain took a while to settle down, it was going like a mile a minute.

Then, 1:45am, I wake to hear Ethan scream-crying. I hop out of bed and run to his room. The minute I touch him, I know it’s not just a bad dream, he’s feverish. I took him to our bed, got him a drink of water, and some motrin, and stripped off his (long sleeved, thermalish) jammies. I tried to put a loose t-shirt on him, but he refused, so I left him in his dinosaur underwear and covered him with just a sheet.

He stayed quiet, but didn’t go back to sleep until the fever broke, about 40 minute later. I tried to sleep, but I kept having to get up (potty, potty again, Jocelyn screaming in HER sleep only to be totally fine and dead to the world when I got to her room) and other circumstances kept me awake as well (squirmy boy, snoring husband). Finally after Ethan was cool to the touch and had gone to sleep, I abandoned my bed and went into the guest room / office. Only thing is, I have been trying to clean out my office for my parents imminent arrival next week, and the bed was littered with stuff. I moved it/shoved it over the best I could and after tossing and turning for a while, drifted off. It was about 4am when I went in there.

The alarm went off at 6:15, and my eyes popped open. That bed is SO COMFORTABLE. The mattress in our room is much harder, so whenever I sleep in the guest room, I feel like I’m sleeping on a cloud! It’s like sleeping in a nice squishy hug! It’s just heaven! When I am sick and have been sleeping on that bed for a while, I always tell James that I’m not ever coming back to our bed, because the guest bed is so so so so comfy.

But even the comfiness didn’t keep my sleepy, I hit snooze and drifted a little bit until it went off again, but then I got right out of bed and went to check on the boy and the man. They had switched sides sometime in the night. Have to ask James if something happened. He was sleeping soundly, no heat to him, but didn’t want a blanket other than the nice cool sheet.* James and I discussed who would stay home with him, and I hopped into the shower. I was brushing my teeth when Ethan crept in (he loves to sneak in and surprise folks) with a big grin on his face, and shorts on his lower half, and soon started talking a mile a minute about a shirt I had deemed too small this year, but that he wanted to wear anyway. (I relented, I’m a softy, and it turns out it’s not really too small after all.) He was running around at top speed and I began to wonder if he needed to stay home after all. The real kicker was that his Easter party is today, so James and I decided to let him go to school. I hope he does ok.

I forgot my cell phone at home today. It’s in the pocket of my jeans that I wore to the park last evening.

We got home yesterday, I made some sandwiches, piled the kids into the bike trailer, and we rode down to the park. I had been promising Ethan we’d go soon all week, but we had to make Easter cookies for the party Monday/Tuesday (Monday for dough, Tuesday for baking and frosting and bunny box filling). James got home, hopped on his bike and joined us. It’s downhill all the way to the park, which means that it’s uphill all the way home. (not relaly all the way, but there are 2 hills/slopes.) I really wanted to switch the bike trailer to James’ bike and let HIM haul them home, but I didn’t wimp out, and I did it myself. I love my bike so much. Even though it was REALLY HARD, I can just set it on a low gear and peddle all the way up the hills. I’m going at about a snail’s pace at that rate, but it was so cool to be able to ride uphill pulling all that weight and not have to stop and walk the bike up. I remember in college with my … I think it was a 10 speed, I had to walk my bike up hills when it was too hard. Obviously, I just needed more gears!

I thought I’d be sore today, but I’m not. I’m tougher than I thought. Project Skinny seems to be staying on course. My downfall is when I go to the Cafe that is in my building, I start with a piece of mango and pineapple, and then I get the yummy green beans that I’ve no idea how they made (lots of oil? Probably!) and then I get suckered into the chinese section and do I pick white rice? Nooooooo it’s the fried stuff all the way, and then I go to weight my styrofoam container and it’s always over 7 bucks. SEVEN BUCKS! That means I got too much. Bother. It always starts with the mango and pineapple, which I love more than life itself. So yummilicious. I’ve been doing well with ordering a sandwich and getting some fruit all by itself on the side. It also comes to 7 bucks, but I know my turkey no mayo is very points friendly, so it’s all good.

We ordered the Canon EOS 30D and it arrives today. I got the body only, because our friend is selling his lens that comes with it, so we save like 40-50 bucks that way. It will kind of suck when it arrives (it’s coming to my work) and it won’t have a lens so I can’t use it right away, but I guess I have to work anyway. I want James to stop by and get that lens tonight though on his way home, so I can use it tomorrow. He, of course, wants to take the camera to work with him, and get the lens tomorrow, and check it out first. HAHA FAT CHANCE! Besides, he should be working. I’m staying at home with the kids, whose school is closed for Good Friday.

OK. typed too much now. Just goes to show how I ramble a lot when I’m tired. Let’s see.. slept from roughly.. 12am-2am, then from 4am-6:30am. So! I’m working on 4 1/2 hours of sleep today! Should be interesting!

Tomorrow is James’ birthday. Shhhhhh! Don’t tell him, but I got him a cool present, and it’s supposed to arrive today! I hope he likes it. It’s one of those things where he might not (might not like, and also might not have any use for) but I took a shot anyway.

I was talking to my mom the other day about the upcoming trip, and somehow, I asked her to go get one of the books I loved as a child and read me the publisher/copyright info so I could see if I could find it somewhere. She did, and I looked, and I found 2 of my favorites and ordered them. They were published in 1969 and are very large hardcover books with 2 fairy tales in each book. When they arrive, I’ll take pictures, because the illustrations are amazing.

I forgot my footnote, here we go:

* Cool sheets. Don’t you just love cool sheets on hot spring/summer nights? It is hot in our house in the evening, but then it’s always pretty chilly in the morning. I think we should invent a Sheets Cooler. It would be like a electric blanket, only it would be cool, instead of warm. Think about how nice it would be to have nice cool sheets all night long. I always get all tossy and turny after I’ve been sleeping for a while and the bed is all hot from the body heat and the hot night. I like it when you first climb in and the bed is nice and cool, and even though it’s warm out, I still like the weight of a blanket. An hour later though, and you’ve got a hot bed. Yuck. Cool Sheets (TM) from raine designs! (when I start my inventing empire, that’s what I’ll be.)

– amy just waves goodbye limply.

So I have been having problems in the project skinny area.

As in, I haven’t been doing a damn thing about it.

There are some things that have been going on in my head, however.

I don’t feel very good, mentally. (Physically, I feel fine, pretty good, even.) I don’t feel attractive. I don’t feel good about myself. I sometimes feel motivated, but then can’t get the oomph to actually DO it. I have NO WILL POWER WHATSOEVER. I think about food a lot of the time. I crave Taco Bell gorditas! Hello, they’re like 7 points each, which isn’t bad, except that a combo meal has TWO OF THEM PLUS A TACO. And remember the no will power thing? When I’m ordering, do you think I order just one? Right.

Anyway, I have been thinking it’s time to get my butt into gear for the last week or two. I don’t like feeling like shit. And honestly, a lot of the time, I don’t, it’s just kind of those fleeting moments, and then I REALLY feel like shit. I haven’t stepped on a scale, and 2 weeks ago, when I did, it hadn’t even moved up that much, just a pound or two, however, my body feels different, and it makes me want to saw off a limb or something.

There was a very interesting discussion in the blogosphere about gaining weight after marriage. Have you heard about it or read any of it? I am a blog WHORE and so have a ton of blogs that I’m subscribed to and read regularly, and in this case, I got sidetracked to another blog, and then to ANOTHER blog and then to about a zillion other blogs, and read all about it.

This is the post that started it all: “False Advertising”
Is gaining weight after marriage false advertising, or unfair to your spouse?
This is the post that I read next. – Melissa at Surburban Bliss gives her reaction

And this is another post that really hit home to me – if you read, be sure to read her followups as well, when she clarifies a few things

Read them, or not, it’s up to you. I took a lot out of the discussion, but one of the things that I realized with stark obvious realization, is that my husband rocks. I mean, seriously. Many of the entries commented on their husbands’ view on their weight and management thereof, and I have to say, James has never, ever said one word about me, or my weight, not ONE, not in the TEN YEARS that we have been together. I was not a skinny girl when we met, but I wasn’t as “sturdy”* as I am now, either. When we were married, I was at my heaviest ever (excluding pregnancies). I cringe when I look at my wedding pictures and I think, at least I’m not that big now. He has never done anything but supported me in whatever I choose, even when I choose to eat Taco Bell gorditas. And that is awesome, because you know how many gorditas I would eat if the man I love choose to make snarky comments on how I didn’t really need ANOTHER couple chocolate covered raisins? When I talk about it with him, he helps me and supports me, and hides his snacky foods that make me wonder why he is as skinny as he is when he can all that doritos and little debbies and oreos crap (and then I watch him push an unfinished plate of DELICIOUS food away BECAUSE HE’S FULL and realize why)… he’s wonderful. He really is. Thank you honey, for not saying it, for letting me find my own way, and letting me do it FOR ME, because honestly, that’s the only reason to do it.

And so… it’s time to do it. Hide the oreos, honey, because I need to believe they no longer exist in this earthly realm! I may be talking about this more and more, because every time I try to “start”, I lose focus and stop keeping good track, and then toss in the towel with those famous, “Oh I’ll start tomorrow” words, and we all know that that ain’t good. So I may be experimenting with ways to stay focused, using this site as a means to that end.

Wish me luck 🙂 or better, wish me focus, and will power.

– amy takes 2 steps forward, and one step back… and prepares to start the next 2 steps forward.. maybe she can keep it going this time.
*I almost forgot this footnote. Hee hee heee! — STURDY. for some reason that just cracked me up that I refered to myself as sturdy. Yup, she’s sturdy! No little wind is gonna blow HER over! Good foundations, that one! Ok, I’ll stop now.

– amy is flabbergasted that she had to add “shit” to her editor’s dictionary. She also added, snarky, gorditas, oreos, and blogosphere. How did “shit” survive so long w/out being added??? GOOD LORD.

I have been thinking about the challenge my friend Chris has come up with. (Go look! Join the challenge! It’ll be fun!) I thought it was a great idea and waffled on participating because things have been so crazy lately, and I didn’t want to say I would do it and then not find the time to do it. I am always wishing I had my camera so I could take pictures during the day and I just in general wish I would take more pictures, so finally I signed on, and this morning I grabbed the camera and decided I was going to fulfill one of the challenges today.

I helped get the kids into James’ car this morning, with the camera hanging around my neck and I exclaimed, “I’m going to take y’alls picture!” and was all excited, until James informed me that the camera battery was dead and needed charging. Grrrrr.

Anyway, so unless I use some other way of fulfilling a challenge, guess that isn’t happening today. Perhaps I’ll think of something else. We’ll see.

Life has been busy. It’s a good busy. Tonight I have bunko with the neighborhood ladies, and I’m really looking forward to that. Tomorrow is a bachelorette party that will probably last until the wee hours of the morning (except that one of us is going to have to get home at a somewhat decent hour to thank the sitter and send let her go home. Oh, James is going to the bachelor party of the groom tomorrow too.) Sunday evening I have poker with some friends/ acquaintances of Chris’ again – I had lots of fun the first time, this time, I want to have fun and WIN WIN WIN! And then Monday is President’s Day. Both James and I have the day off, but the kids’ daycare/ school are open, and so it will be the PERFECT day to lay our newly purchased from Costco laminate flooring. I sent an email to some friends inviting anyone who wants to help over, because I think a few people at least want to learn about the process so they can do it in their home, so we might have help/ onlookers, or we might be going it alone. Wednesday is my 32 (is that right? good lord, I’m old) birthday, and while we are going to get me a bike for my birthday, it probably won’t put in an appearance ON the ACTUAL DAY, so I’ve informed James that I still want a present on the actual day of my birthday, doesn’t have to be anything fancy (because the bike will be the fancy thing!) Because I do! For the last couple years, money has been tight and I’ve always just told James that I don’t need/ want anything because honestly the bank account couldn’t really afford it anyway. So this year… SCREW THAT! I want me some PRESENTS, DAMMIT! Well, just one, will be fine 🙂 I also told him I want to be surprised, and therefore he needs to come up with it himself, and not just have me tell him what to get me. I can think of a couple of options that I hinted I wanted around Christmas that he could still give me (HINT HINT HONEY!), but something totally different would be fine too.

I just want a present 🙂 On my actual birthday. Which is next Wednesday. It just hit me that my birthday is next week. Damn, life has been busy.

Work has been going well, lots to do and some interaction with folks that I can actually label as “my” clients, and that’s a nice feeling. I think I may pick up a book about project management, or maybe just organization. There’s a lot going on, both at work, and also personally and right now my method is to write down everything that comes to me so that then I have got it on paper and my brain doesn’t feel the need to pop up with the random things I need to do in the middle of other things, like “I have to do up Jocelyn’s invitations!” (which I did, last night, although I still need to do a few more.) Sometimes just purging the brain of all the random thoughts, getting it all down on paper (or website, as the case may be,) is helpful in itself. There’s a great book called “The Artist’s Way” that recommends “morning pages” where you just sit EVERY morning and write, write, write for a specified amount of time or number of pages and then you are done and can go on about your day. There really is something behind that, because if you get all of the mundane out, or the thoughts you’ve been kicking around in your head, it is like you release them and are then no longer bothered by them, and your brain is free to focus on other things.

So my biggest issues right now are sleep, this diet pill I’m currently taking, and the thousands of things that my brain reminds me of every 10 minutes on a rotating basis.

The sleep and the pill thingee are inter-related. I have been taking it for a few weeks now, and I am seeing results. I still don’t know how I feel about it. I think I will be pretty relieved when the 6 weeks are up. I have always kind of been afraid of drugs/ medicine, even when I was a little girl. When my mother would give me tylenol or whatever when I was sick, I used to not swallow it, and then wait until she was gone and spit it out. I just didn’t like the thought of the medicine breaking down and going all through my body doing heaven knows what. I still don’t, but I’ve gotten over it for the most part. Any girl who hits puberty and then knows the horrid bloated pain of MENSTRUAL CRAMPS gets over fear of medicine VERY QUICKLY and pops the pamprin like it’s candy.

So, the drugs. If you interested, it is called Phentermine, and it acts as an appetite suppressant and also ups the metabolism. They don’t make me crazy, which is good, that is always my first fear of any drug. It does affect my sleep though, and my reaction to it. I am not the sort of person who can go day to day on a little bit of sleep. I need 7 or 8 hours a night, or I feel it the next day. And even if I don’t feel it, my mood and state of mind shows it. If I am getting weepy or depressed, the first thing I look at is how much sleep I’ve been getting the last couple of days, and that is usually it.

So first off, I don’t get tired and all ready for bed at the usual times. I still seem pretty awake and alert and my mind is always on the go-go and I have often kept James up for a half hour or 40 minutes just talking and blabbering away while we’re settling in for bed. This isn’t out of the ordinary, in fact one of the main symptoms of me being sleeping is I will get very chatty and just can’t seem to stop talking. The sleepy-chatting and this mind-racing chatting are pretty different though. So I have to make a pretty concerted effort to go get my butt into bed at a decent hour, and it is hard, and I often fail.

When I fail, I don’t feel tired the next day. I sometimes have the same “you are TIRED” body feelings, like I get this emptiness feeling somewhere in my stomach when I need sleep or have had too much caffeine, and I’ll still feel that, but I don’t actually FEEL tired. Also, even like last night, when I went to bed at 11:30, when I wake up in the morning (at 6:30, this morning) even though I’m tired, it’s like a switch has been flipped, and I’m AWAKE. BING! AMY’S AWAKE! Mind ON! Brain GO-GO-GO!

So these aren’t necessarily BAD things, but they are different, and I am not taking this pill every day, I take it for 5 days a week, and then I’ve found that the 2 days I’m not taking it, I need a lot of sleep. Last Sunday James got up with the kids in the morning and I didn’t even notice. I was too busy sleeping. And then that afternoon, I went upstairs and had a nap. I NEVER have naps. I was so set on the sleeping that I didn’t even take off my bra, and sleeping in a bra is never a good thing. My body just needed the sleep.

So, even though this pill makes me Not Sleepy Ever, I need to really make an effort to get my body the rest I know it needs. It’s hard. Especially when the weekend is facing you and it has “staying up past midnight every night” written all over it.

Ok, I could go on and on, but I think that this is probably way longer than a blog entry should be, so I will spare you the torture to reading more of my speedy-brain thought vomit, and let you get on with your day 🙂

– amy never knows if I comes before E, and who knows what’s after C

.. parenting wise. This will be one of those posts where the truth of parenting comes out, although I like to think I’m pretty truthful about it all the time, when I think about the kids/parenting type entries I’ve written on here, I don’t think I’ve written about the really hard days that come with being a parent. So just in case you think it is always golden sunshiney rainbows over here at the Panders residence, and parenting and children just come with the territory and birds sing and dress us in the morning, IT SO FUCKING ISN’T, AND THEY DON’T, AND SOMETIMES IT JUST PLAIN SUCKS. It would just go to show, that within a week of TWO people telling me, “You’re a good mom.” all casual and blase (and no lightning hit them!) that my children decide to turn into demons that wrack the whole patient motherhood thing that I had going on. Because in my opinion, it really is all about patience and not losing your cool. Not losing your cool when you have to tell Ethan 30 times at the auto show to stay right by mommy instead of doing what you WANT TO DO and lose it and blow up and holler and yell and then lasso him so that he won’t disappear from your side. And while we’re at it, muzzle or gag him in some way. Oh, and while we’re at it, I want a pony.

Today I lost it and hollered and yelled. And even spanked, which is something I Do Not Do. That’s not to say that if you spank your kids you are evil, I just personally don’t think that it is the best solution, and for me, when spanking is involved, it means that *I* have lost it, and the parent should never lose it when dealing with their kids. That way danger lies.

Ahh, so now that I’ve told you how bad a mother I am and how I’ve broken my holy covenant with myself on No Spanking Ever, I’ll tell you more about the day. Maybe it’s because it’s over and I’m no longer in it that it doesn’t seem as bad, but I know it was bad, while it was going on, because the frustration and irritation and HELPLESSNESS pressed down on me so hard today that tears came, at least twice that I can remember. It’s one of those days where you just wonder why having kids was a good idea, you know, EVER, FOR ANYONE and you’d much rather leave them on a doorstep somewhere and go fly to somewhere warm and filled with no responsibilities and drink frufru drinks with umbrellas. Ahhhhhhhh…

Sorry. I went to my Happy Place for a minute. I’m back now. By the way, go put Coupling (BBCA) on your Tivo, cause it’s good. I’ll wait.

So Ethan was sick earlier this week, with a fever that Would Not Go Away, and so he was pampered pretty thoroughly, as is any sick kid’s right to be pampered. The after effects however, well, they’re not fun. He’s adopted a pretty sassy attitude, and when usually it’s nipped in the bud with a firm warnings and follow-throughs (we tell him, “That’s 1,” and when he gets to 3, it’s time out.), he decided that he didn’t have to do what I told him, including going to time out.

Add on top of that, Jocelyn, my angel girl who when I think about how many tantrums Ethan had at her age, I marvel that she belongs to us.. could our genes have produced such a nonchalent, easy going little girl? The mind boggles.. Well, the other shoe dropped. All of a sudden, she will start whining and pitching a fit to get what she wants, which is a natural consequence of her getting what she wanted all the time by “UH UH UH UH”ing and pointing. It’s finally clicked in her mind that if she fusses, she’ll get what she wants, and the more the fuss, the faster what she wants will be obtained.

So, EVERY LITTLE THING. I swear, every two minutes, she’ll start hollering and whining, “UH UH UH UH UH!! NOOOOOOO!” and often throw herself on the floor in tears if whatever object she wants isn’t handed to her within 2 seconds. Breakfast was a prime example, I thought, what fun it would be to make waffles.. which used to be a staple around our house on the weekends, and was always lots of fun with kids helping and whatnot, but it was the breakfast from hell. Jocelyn demanding everything at the maximum volume possible, and Ethan trying to outdo her and get my attention. At one point, Jocelyn is screaming, and I’m trying to reason with her and get her to ask nicely, and Ethan is trying to show me something started random siren noises while holding something right in my face and I thought my head was going to explode.

That was just breakfast.

After breakfast, I took the kids to Lowe’s, to buy paint (we’re painting a room in the basement that was recently finished by our contractor) and to Target to get a birthday present. I knew I should have had the color all picked out before I went there, because mulling over paint colors with two tantruming, and COMPETING toddlers is just not fun. Not fun for me, not fun for other customers, just plain not fun. Jocelyn pulling her stunt at least once every five minute period which required me to say, calmly and collectedly, “Jocelyn, what is it you want? Use your words, say please.” about A ZILLION TIMES TODAY has just about driven me to the brink of insanity.

Thank god for vodka.

The spanking happened at lunchtime. Ethan is a very picky eater. He decides he does not like something, and then doesn’t eat it, even if he has never tasted it before. So we have a pretty good rule that he has to have a taste of it, and then he can have something else. Well, we had some chicken noodle soup for lunch, and he instantly would not say a word, and when I told him he had to have a taste of the noodles in order for me to get him seomthing else, he didn’t even say anything, he laid, tummy down, on his chair with his head hanging down toward the floor. Long story short, he started to cop his attitude with me which I wasn’t about to tolerate, and when I told him to go to timeout, he shouted, “NO I DONT HAVE TO!” and various related thoughts at me. The whole ugly scene finished with me hauling him up to his room and spanking him pretty thoroughly. Then I went downstairs and tried not to cry.

The rest of the day went a bit better. After (a non-sleeping) naptime, we went to our neighbor kid’s 2 year old birthday party at the Little Gym, which was exhausting, running around making sure no one broke their skulls, but in the good way when they’re running, playing and having the time of their lives. I was especially amused when the playtime was over, and the eating of pizza and cake took place. Jocelyn is our good eater, and Ethan is our picky picky eater, and the roles were definitely reversed. Ethan ate most of his pizza, and kept running over to the food table for vegetables, including cherry tomatoes, which he thought were grapes. The look on his face when he ate one was priceless, and he unceremoniously dumped the rest of them on my plate as he said, as if I had tricked him, “THESE ARE TOMATOES!!” Jocelyn loves tomatoes, and pizza, but had maybe 2 bites of everything, telling me, “No, mommy!” quite insistently whenever I offered her anything. She got over it when cake time rolled around.

There is one good thing about today (besides the vodka and the fact that the 2 kids are in bed), and that is I lost a little over 3 pounds this week. And when I was getting dressed this morning, I glanced at my skinny jeans, thought, why not? And they fit, not perfectly, but tolerably well – well enough to wear today. It sucked though, because I popped out of bed at an ungodly hour thinking, “I’ll go to the EARLY weight watcher’s meeting!” which I thought was at 7.30. Which is when I arrived. And is also when it actually ENDED. Bugger bugger bugger. It kind of pissed me off, and probably set the tone for the whole day. I think I’m going to stop going to WW meetings for a while. I hate getting up on saturday mornings, and I think I do the same whether I go or not, so we’ll see. I can always start going again if I want.

I should probably go downstairs and help paint. Yay. Paint fumes. I hope my nose doesn’t revolt.

– amy should have picked the blue pill.

It’s been an exciting day, here at the Panders’ household. Except that we weren’t actually in the house when any of it happened, but you get the idea.

First up. Health. And a Project Skinny Update.

I wrenched a muscle in my back on Saturday night. You can probably noodle through exactly what I was doing when it got wrenched. Ahem. It showed up Sunday, and DAMN did it hurt. The knotted muscle was just under/to the side of my shoulder blade, but it was knotted so badly that it radiated all through my back and shoulder and down my arm and even through my rib cage and made it hard to breath, if i was slouching. Monday was no better. I woke up feeling GREAT, and even told James that it appeared to have unkinked. By the time I got to work, however, I was dying. I took two Aleve, and another by the end of the afternoon. The total you’re supposed to take in a 24 hour period is 3. I’ve never taken 3 in a 24 hr period. By night fall I was in agony. My arm felt like I had carpal tunnel syndrome, and my neck kept twanging strangely and it brought on a massive headache. By last night at bedtime, I decided I was going to the doctor, because I just couldn’t take it anymore.

So on the way to work, I called to make an appointment. I switched insurance when I got my job, so I haven’t been to the doctor I selected as my primary care before. Because of this, I couldn’t just see the nurse practitioner, I had to see the Dr., and the receptionist informed me that the earliest time open was February 10th. I was literally flabbergasted. I couldn’t seem to form words.

her: “We have an opening on February 10th.”
me: *silence, and then* “But…. I’m….. How….”
her: …..
me: *trying to form a coherent sentence* “But I’m sick now.”
(I’m sick now? What am I, four?)
her: …..
me: “I just.. I don’t… I … Should I find another doctor then, I just.. I don’t know how to respond to that.”
her: “Hold on a minute.”

She put on someone else, who listened to me whine and then told me they’d try to fit me in at 11am.

So I went to the doctor’s office, early of course, because there’s always new patient paperwork. I filled it all out, being careful to mark everything correctly especially in those, “Do you feel anxiety, sadness, or agitation with no explicit reason?” type questions. Here’s my chance to make sure I’m basically evaluating myself correctly. I went in and did the usually nurse flibber flabber, and then saw the doctor. first we discussed the back issues. I cannot lift my children, under any circumstance. I knew this. Jocelyn weighs 30 lbs, and she’s not even two. I am going to have to really really really try to remember this. Ethan is 40 lbs, and I lift him up and down every day into the truck. Ugh. She gave me some muscle relaxers too, that I can use 3x a day if they don’t make me lose focus, and if so, then just 1x a day, before bed. I can feel them working already.. Ahhhhh..

So, next, we discussed the mental health, which I had noted. I told her about last summer how I really was doing poorly, but going back to work seemed to alleviate a lot of that. I explained how it seems to come on about once a month, and she suggested it might be premenstrual. James and I discussed that too, once, and I told him I’d rather be crazy then have it all be PMS. James of course would rather be able to blame the hormones than a crazy brain, but then that’s a man. All the men who are reading this are probably nodding along with the James take, but I don’t know, it’s just FRUSTRATING, when you vent and storm and get all crazy and then have ALL YOUR EMOTIONS INVALIDATED by someone saying, “Oh, it’s just PMS.” It kind of invalidates YOU, and that sucks. I can see how it would be nice to not be crazy, but it is just as not nice to have yourself and your feelings totally ignored and labeled under “PMS.” SUCKS. I’d rather be crazy, and get to OWN these emotions and actions. But there it is, could just be hormones. Anyway, she said it sounded fine, and if it seemed to get out of control to come see her and we would work it out.

Then, she asked about the general health issues in the past, and I told her about the 2 c-sections, and the gall bladder going out. I hadn’t brought up my weight, so she did, and I quickly told her that I AM working on it, and I have managed to lose 10 pounds since Thanksgiving, but that I was getting frustrated and it was very hard. That is when she suggested an appetite suppressant. (!!!) Honestly, I didn’t think there really was this sort of thing around anymore. I was skeptical at first, but she talked me into it. The downside is that they do beat up on your heart, but as she said, carrying around this extra weight is much worse for my heart. The usual dosage is to take them every day, but she wanted me to take them 5x a week instead, to give my body a break now and then. I had an EKG to make sure I was good to go for them, and I am also going to go back in 6 weeks. It’ll be good motivation to really stay on track.

So, I will state my goal right here! March 7th, is 6 weeks from today.

My goal is to lose 12 lbs by March 7th. that is 2 lbs per week, a very doable goal.

So, trip to the doctor = good. SHe was very nice, very knowledgeable, very good communicator. Muscle relaxed obtained, currently doing their trick on the back, YAY! (Oh my god, you have no idea how much better I feel already). Mental Check – not crazy, if I get crazier, check back in. Project skinny has got the a-ok by the Dr. and now I have a secret weapon in my corner to help out.

So, good day! Cool! I’m feeling good!

But this was actually the LEAST of the goodness that happened today!

This is a long post, so I’m going to break it up into to, because I especially don’t wnat the next part buried at all, because if anything it’s way cooler than me going to the doctor!

So, continued.

Originally posted on a blogger account, and now moved here and time-stamp adjusted.

Our server is down and not blogging is driving me crazy. So, I created this account to at least have a place to post my posts until our server is back up and running. James is upgrading the server so it’s down until the end of the week.

I went to weight watchers on Saturday morning. I don’t think I ever posted about last week’s weigh in. So to catch you up, 2 weeks ago (the week before Christmas), I had a great loss of 4 lbs. Then Christmas and staying home and eating my body weight in yumminess hit, and last week I gained 3.8 lbs. I was seriously bummed. I made rice krispie treats that Saturday thinking the kids would love them, and ended up eating most of them myself (Jocelyn loved them and her face turned into a melting away marshmellowy nightmare, Ethan didn’t really even try them, he’s Mr. Picky). I got back on track fairly quickly thought, and this week I’m happy to report I had a 3.8 lb loss! On the upside, there are no more holidays. I am trying not to look at my total lbs loss and the weeks I’ve been giving this a go and getting depressed. I mean, I have managed to lose 10 lbs over the holidays! That is GREAT (she says through gritted teeth).

So, with project skinny in mind, here is my #1 New Years Resolution. I am putting it here, for all to see.

1. Get a family portrait taken at the end of this year to send out in Christmas cards.

The amount I lose is not in here, though I’m sure I will make lots of mini goals along the way. This year I got our wedding photo negatives scanned in and then uploaded them all to our flickr account. I was looking them over and really just feeling sick about how I looked. This is a real cop-out, but I have to say going off Depo-Provera was the best thing I ever did (A. it did not help the weight thing, and B. it made me full on crazy. TOTALLY! CRAZY! Seriously, I’m scared of birth control now.) Seriously, I’m not *really* one to not allow people to take pictures of me, though I do remember at a recent party holding up my hand in front of the camera that was not even 2 feet from me (I just really didn’t want my pores to be that closely examined) but generally speaking, I’m not picture shy. Looking over our wedding pictures may have totally changed that. Blech. So, as Project Skinny progresses, I would like to have a nice family picture at the end of the year to look at and be pleased over. So there it is.

And while I’m talking about project skinny, I am also happy to report that this weekend wasn’t a full on ignoring the whole weight watchers scenario, like I usually do. I usually just eat whatever I want, and then figure I’ve used up all my weekly “flex” points (just think of them as extra credit) and stick to my daily points for the rest of the week. This weekend, while I did have some nice splurges on things like chicken pot pie and a burger and fries from 5 Guys (yum), I think if I had counted points, I probably wouldn’t even be that far into the weekly flex points. It’s nice to start the week feeling like I haven’t dug a hole that I now have to work all week to climb out of.

I think I will stop now for today, and post later or tomorrow on other thoughts that have been rambling around in the noggin.

Just in case you are suffering from cute kid stories withdrawal, I will let you know that Jocelyn’s new Word Of The Day, is “Awesome.” Yes. She’s not even two, but she will randomly declare, “Awesome… Daddy. Awesome.”

amy rocked the casbah.

I wrote this post on Thursday but didn’t post it. So I’m posting it today, Friday, but changing the time stamp so it looks like it was posted Thursday, which is when I wrote it. I just wanted to be honest about the whole time stamp changing so that later, you wouldn’t come to me and say, “Amy, you CHANGED the time stamp and I just am not sure I can trust you ever again!” Ok. On with the post.

• I spent over 15 minutes (THAT IS A LOT OF TIME!) on hair beautification today. While the recent haircut renewed my motivation in looking like a grown-up, there is only so much time I am willing to spend. So, I was reasonably pleased when the results of my efforts looked, I would venture to say, fairly nice. However, by lunchtime, I once again looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. WHY!? I want to scream at the universe. WHY ME!?! So, I think I’m going to have to get another haircut. I just can’t handle this one.
• I have generally doing fairly well on Project Skinny. However, last week on Friday, my husband left me for the evening to go into DC and drink lots of beer with lots of friends. He deserves it. Even though he always gives me the sad face and makes like he did awful when I asked how his finals went, he once again got an A in two of his classes (third one still waiting) and with school over, I do not begrudge him his beer drinking festivities. Back to my point: I was home alone. With an unchained up fridge. That had some fudge in it. And some newly made sugar cookies. And then the next night was my office Christmas party, you know with the open bar. Anyway, I really didn’t do well for a few days last week, and up until that point, I had been doing “ok”. I got to thinking about “ok” and in many respects, “ok” is really good. I mean, if I continue at “ok” for 6 months, there will still be less of me than if I wasn’t on this project to begin with. Even if it is slow, I will take it. “Ok” is a lot better than doing nothing at all.Now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, I’d like to say HOGWASH! I don’t want to do “ok!” I want to do “GREAT!” And this week, I think I really am doing great. I am not going to make my original goal of losing 20 pounds, so right now I’m looking to get out of the current bracket of 10s that I am in. I think I could even swing a total 10 pound loss by New Years Eve, IF I keep on track and stick with it. I’ve crossed the threshold and left the room of “Well, this is what I want but I don’t feel like it RIGHT NOW” and I am in a new place that feels focused and energized and DETERMINED.It feels good.
• Trying to make Scooby Doo faces and noises (“Arroo!” “Is that you Scooob??”) in the rear view mirror while driving is not a very good idea. Neither is constantly checking out your ‘do to see if it still looks like Shaggy. It does.
• I beleive the battery to my car beeper door-unlocker is dying. I click and click and click and it takes FOREVER. Do they have batteries? Do those batteries last forever? Can I just go to a Toyota dealership and say, GIVE ME NEW BATTERIES OR FACE MY WRATH! and have them comply? WHAT DO I DO OH WHAT DO I DO!
• What is “[sic]”? I see that all the time and I’ve never known what exactly it means. As near as I can figure out, it’s supposed to be an editor’s note that it was published or written with some error or spelling mistake and they didn’t want to bother fixing it but wanted us to know that they SAW it and KNOW that it’s there. Am I right? Is it an abbreviation for something? Please, someone, fill me in.Or I guess I could just go google.