2007 June | I Should Be Folding Laundry

Archive for June 2007 – Page 3

My Weigh-In, better late than nevuh.

June 14th, 2007

I weighed in yesterday, I gained .4 lbs. And that, my friends, makes me a very happy woman. I’m happy because I ate a great deal of unhealthy food, but I feel really differently about food. I’m still definitely enjoying it (too much), but my life is not all about food, or at least it hasn’t been this past week. I definitely indulged (in both food and drink), I think the difference was trying not to stuff myself, I wanted to feel good after a great meal and not sick. Quite a concept.

Also, in the mornings, I have started to stretch and do sit-ups again. Both exercises take me about 12 minutes and it feels so good to stretch my legs, arms, neck and back before starting my day. And Ariel joins in and does a great job. Try it, it really feels amazing.

I work side by side with a very good friend of mine who by nature is a teeny tiny girl. She’s probably a size zero and about 2 feet tall, but luckily I love her and would never do anything to hurt her because of her dainty stature, you know, like push her down or anything. We worked from 8:30 a.m. until after 10 p.m. last night, we had our meals together and I watched how for one, she didn’t care what she ate, meaning, it didn’t have to be greasy and full of cheese, she just needed nourishment and did not want to feel hungry and two, how little she ate. Don’t get me wrong, seeing as as how I could fit her into one of my legs or have her sit on my shoulder for a better view, I know she’s not going to eat as much as I do, but it made me understand, once again, that I do not need to eat SO much.

Maybe that saying "less is more" is fitting here. Less Food = More Health, More Weight Loss Success, More fun shopping, More feeling good about myself.

Sounds good to me.

THE BLOG

June 12th, 2007

So, this is my blog.

I should probably write in it, huh?

Except, I can’t because I’m so tired and my life has felt a bit out of control lately, in a nice gentle sorta way.

My family was in town this weekend, up until tonight. Family from Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan, so when that happens, we tend to pack up our lives and move into my Mom’s house to try to absorb as much of my brothers and sisters and their families to try to last us a long, long time, like until Christmas. No computers, no TV, just stories and laughter, donuts and ribs, ribs that took my brother five hours to cook (grill? smoke? bake? not real sure.) games and well, shopping.

In the midst of it all, Brian and I are still planning our dream backyard which began with the chopping and cutting back of many trees last week. Today we had 24 yards of dirt delivered, tomorrow morning a landscape company is going to come out and grade and seed the new dirt, our new fence will arrive in the morning and that new fence will go up this weekend. All this and I work in Chicago on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday and then we leave for a nine day vacation after that. just a weeeeeee bit busy and feeling a little bit out of control. But nothing a little coffee can’t handle. (by the way, I still have not had Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, it’s been two weeks, but I will be picking up that beverage in the morning, due to the early morning and the LONG LONG day that lay ahead of me.)

And my weight? Well, let’s just say "donuts and ribs" one more time and then we’ll move on. My weigh in is tomorrow, but I’m meeting my ride very early in the morning, so I won’t be blogging about that until late tomorrow or even Thursday, let’s just hope I don’t gain too much, m’kay? I have been wonderfully active, which is a bonus, but probably not a big enough bonus to scratch the angel hair alfredo with chicken I ate tonight. (for the record, when asked what I wanted for dinner, I replied with a veggie sub on whole wheat from Subway, I was promptly, without a second thought, vetoed by my entire family.)

So, there you have it. A nice little update.

Maybe someday, like in eight days, I’ll sit down and read blogs and leave comments.

You know, like a normal person.

My Blogging Story

June 11th, 2007

Chilihead has started a blogging carnival where you can share your blogging story. I’m joining in. Here’s mine:

How did you start blogging?
A bunch of my friends had started blogging, we lived scattered all over the country. I thought it would be such a fun way to share kids stories and my own life adventures. Which would include sleeping, drinking coffee and eating nachos. I’m so exciting, it hurts.
I started with Blogger. I now use Typepad, which I have to pay for. How do I explain that to my husband? I tell him that blogging is my hobby, not knitting. So, I pay for my blogging and not yarn. He doesn’t argue. (he did breathe really loudly when I upgraded my account, however.)

Did you intend
to be a blog w/a big following? If so, how did you go about it?
I did not intend for my blog to have a big following. In fact, I was so freaked out when someone left a comment and I didn’t know who that person was, it totally freaked out. It scared me, I was like "who, wha? what’s going on? how did you find me?" While turning my head frantically looking around. Little did I learn I would soon love to receive comments. Just like you. We are just alike.

What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog?
Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those
goals?
I had really just wanted to share blogs with my friends. It was fun. It was like we all celebrated and commented when someone posted. It took me months to realize there were other blogs out there. I’m serious. I was a very sheltered blogger baby. I did achieve my goal because it was merely to keep in touch with friends.

Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?
My focus changed in the sense that I consciously write differently, to a different size and type of audience. Before I was all like "today we went to the park, and then I went to the doctor and guess what he said? yep, that’s what he said. At 3 p.m. I totally scratched my elbow. And then I went to Wendy’s and then I watched American Idol." When others started to read my blog, I totally felt myself speaking to a much broader audience and didn’t feel comfortable sharing my day-to-day (unbelievably boring) details. So, I switched to more story telling, I guess.

I guess I wish I had branched out earlier, I wish I had read MORE blogs in the beginning. I love reading blogs written by happy, positive people. I’m a much happier blogger now. One year ago I had no idea what a blogroll was but had been blogging for six months.

Do you
make money with your blog? I have made eighty-two cents with adsense by Google. I’m rolling in it.

Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why? My immediate family does read (most of them) and they all really enjoy the blog. I love it when I hear my husband laughing while looking at the computer, I’ll ask him what’s so funny and he’ll reply by saying he’s reading my blog. I like that.

What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger?
1. If you enjoy someone’s entry. Leave a comment.
2. Be yourself.

There is a tree god

June 7th, 2007

And he is raised up in a white bucket.

Yes, they came. Yes, they saw. Yes, they kicked some MAJOR dead tree BUTT! Oh, yes, they did.

I believe that the tree man you see way up there is a Saint. He came on time, even earlier than we had anticipated. His crew of five worked for five hours solid. They went ABOVE AND BEYOND anything we could have expected, the clean-up alone with rakes and a leaf blower took NINETY MINUTES. I could walk outside in my bare feet minutes after they left and they even ground up two of our stumps. I am impressed and so happy and relieved. I kept them very well hydrated because it was this hot outside.

It was the least I could do, I’m telling you, I wish I had better prepared for their "visit" but I didn’t know they would be here until last night and I had no idea it would take five hours. Believe me, I would have cooked them a steak dinner if I had thought of it, but…I didn’t. I’m lucky I had bottled water.

But, when I wrote out the check it certainly made me not feel so bad for not having steak readily available because after I wrote the check my hand looked at my and said "ARE YOU CRAZY?" and then slapped me across my face.

I don’t care. I’m happy.

And then when the tree service was here I received an e-mail from Shannon saying I had won a bag from Kimberlee Faith’s, which are The Cutest Bags Ever, oh my goodness, they are cute. I WON! A lucky day, I’d say. (P.S. Kimberlee Faith is having a sale through tomorrow. HURRY GO, CHECK OUT THESE INSANELY CUTE BAGS.) wow, so many caps.

But now we are under a tornado watch until 5am. Which is great because as if tornado watches don’t make me anxious enough, have them in the middle of night and then I REALLY calm down. I won’t be sleeping tonight.

You know, I found out today that the storm that came through almost one month ago was indeed a tornado, and they say it was about 3/4 of a mile from my house, if that, and now I feel so vulnerable and scared. And I just remember what we experienced on that Tuesday afternoon, and to have that happen in the middle of the night? Well, I can’t stand the thought. I hate it. So, I’m going to go now and get Tornado Ready, with flashlights and candles and bottled water and pillows and blankets and cell phones and computers (for movies for the kids!).

Oh yeah. No sleep for me. Even with my NOAA Radio.

UPDATE: It didn’t even rain last night!

ahhhh…the blog

June 6th, 2007

I’ve been dreaming of the moment ALL DAY where I could A.) Sit Down and B.) Blog, not that I have anything to say, it’s just the idea of sitting and blogging sounded so lovely.

And here I am at 9:31 p.m. finally sitting down. It’s a lovely little place here in this big, comfy chair of mine. Albeit a little chilly. This morning I turned the heat on. THE HEAT. Don’t tell Brian because he’ll think I’m silly, but I did cause it was forty-three degrees this morning, but don’t worry, in true Midwestern fashion, tomorrow it will be ninety-three. I’m serious.

It’s Wednesday. Did you notice I did not do a Works for Me Wednesday today? No? Well, you should play closer attention. If you did notice it’s because it’s a themed day today, the theme is "things to do so your kids don’t get bored during the summer" and I just don’t have much to say about that. Not because my kids don’t get bored, it’s because they’re just now at the age where shaking a rattle at their face or watching Baby Shakespeare four times in a row or jumping up and down while yodeling may not entertain them like it used it. (which is not good news for Brian because he likes a good yodel, oh yes he does.) So, I’ll be sure to check out those ideas just in case my kids do get bored this summer, you can check them out, too, right here.

Today was a very frustrating, stressful day. The kind where your stomach remains in a perpetual knot all day long. And it basically stemmed from the trees in my backyard. I’ve refrained from blogging about it because it’s just plain boring and frustrating and it’s not funny, so why bring it up? But basically, we have had MANY tree services out to our house for estimates to remove two trees and cut back a ton of low hanging branches that are hanging dangerously close to the house. We had two estimates come out before the storm (four days before the storm) and after the storm? Forget.about.it. We were not important. SO, after six estimates, we had decided on a tree service, but we wanted them to come out THIS WEEK as we are hosting a graduation party and thought it would be nice to have it done. SO, we called Tuesday morning, when we were told to call, and tried to schedule. Except they never called me back. which pissed me off.

So, strangely enough, another tree guy (which is how we refer to them now) just stopped by last night and he gave us the cheapest quote. And he felt we could get it done this week. I told this particular tree guy that I would discuss with my husband (when he returned from work in 20 minutes) and we would call him and then I would probably make out with him if he wanted because being cheaper and doing the job this week? It’s attractive, no matter how much dirt is under your nails.

And we did, we called and said "WOULD YOU PLEASE COME TO OUR HOUSE THIS WEEK TO CUT SOME TREES DOWN AND WE WILL PAY YOU ELEVENTY MILLION TRILLION GAZILLION DOLLARS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE NICE OR ANYTHING, PLEASE JUST DO IT." And he was all like "well, we’ll call you tonight or in the morning to schedule."

And they never did.

All I can think is two things:

The first is that we ~~want to~~ will give someone ELEVENTY MILLION TRILLION GAZILLION DOLLARS and no one seems to want it.

The second thing I think about is this: we so badly want to put a fence up, but we can’t because we have to add dirt to our backyard (24 freakin’ yards to be exact), so a landscape company can grade and reseed, which is another batrillion dollars. But the landscape company can’t come out until after the trees get cut down because their trucks will screw up all of their hard work and waste or batrillion dollars. So, it’s up to the tree guys to come over and let us give them our money.

Sadly, we had arranged the dirt delivery for Monday, the landscape crew was scheduled for mid-week and the fence delivery later in the week and then Brian and Lynette’s husband are going to install the fence on Friday and Saturday while she and I drink and watch them work. (don’t worry, we’ll throw bottles of water at them, we’re good like that, good wives, good people.) So, my stress today came from the fact that none of the tree services were calling us back, so were we going to have to cancel everything because of that.

Not quite yet. We left for the evening, which was good for my soul. I needed to get out after a long day of stress, worry and cleaning. We ate Taco Bell and I bought more shorts. It was divine. I checked my messages from Wal-Mart and the cheaper (although not cheap by any means) tree guy will be here in the morning. I was in Wal-Mart skipping and high fiving strangers while singing "it’s raining men." I don’t know why I chose that song, I guess cause it was in my head.

There you have it. Now, friends. Do not get too excited. For if we have learned one thing during this tree-vent-full experience, it’s that our local tree guys are not only all related, who hate each other, but that they are a batch of men who can’t keep their word and who over charge for their services. But that’s okay. I don’t care. I’m going to get dressed in the morning and just hope that I got the one honest guy left in the industry.

I better start writing my check out for ELEVENTY MILLION TRILLION GAZILLION DOLLARS, you know, just in case.

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