Weight Loss Challange Jan. 27 - Feb.3

Good morning all. I hope you are all doing well on the healthy eating plans. It sounds as tho Vic has scored another victory in her corner of the court with at 1.4# loss. And Molly is sticking to her exercising as well as trying really hard to stick to the healthy eating and exercising.. I can't really condemn pizza too much except in the fat content. It does/can have some nice healthful food items in it. Of course the white flour crust isn't all that good either, but as long as we make it a treat it isn't all that bad.

Those fresh produce items from the gardeners of you southerners sound yummy. Except that I don't really care for leaf lettuce. I am learning to like romaine & spinach in salads, but mostly I still like bad old iceburg. I say bad because reportedly it has very little nutrional value after all. It really helps to keep me regular tho so that is a point in its favor.

Breakfast has been another hodgepodge. One whole graham cracker with cottage cheese on it & 1/2 of a small apple with some p.butter on it. I'm just really not hungry this morning. And I didn't eat much last night. Just one of the choc. covered p. butter SnackWell wafers & a 4 oz. cinnamon applesauce. I think I saw some evidence of after sleeping pill eating but don't know for sure what it was. I think it had to do with peanuts and choc. chips that I got from the food bank the other day. I need to give those to Holly or Kris. Meanwhile they will take up residence in the back of the freezer where I hope I will forget about them.

I chopped some ice and removed it from my pathway from the back door and right in front of the garage, then proceeded to fall on the ice in front of the bird yard. I'm not hurt but for once didn't have a phone on me. We get nice warm days which melt the snow and ice, then the sun sets and it immediately freezes again into a solid sheet of ice. I slid all over the drive coming home last night and the gravel road was bad too. It seems the east/west roads(except our drive)are in pretty good condition but it's the north/south ones that are still just sheets of ice.

I need to ask Holly to please lock up the birds before dark tonight. When I got home last night I saw no evidence of any preditor being in the building, but most of the chickens were still outside roosting on whatever they could find. And they didn't want to go into the building even after I looked around in there well. So I left the light on all night for them after managing to convince them that all was safe and herded them inside. I need to remember to unplug it soon. I hate walking across that ice to get to the building. The snow cover has mostly melted so there is no footing at all. Dale, one of my bosses, has a brand new live trap of the correct size for o'possums, raccoons, and cats so I'm going to buy it from him. There is a wild cat at the cafe' that he wants to be rid of so I'm going to try to lure it into the trap and bring it home with me. I'll have it neuter/spayed and send it to a no kill shelter if I can't tame it down. It's a blue and I love blue cats. Our last one disappeared several years ago. I'll be back up to 4 cats again if I keep it. A woman in the trailer park says the cat is hers but she doesn't feed or take care of it and it keeps coming to the back door of the cafe' and meowing pitifully. They just can't have that so Dale says it has to go. He will poison it if someone doesn't take it.

PRAISE THE LORD!! Kyle came up and worked on the TV satallite and the 4DTV box and it was 2 wires in the back of the box that had come loose that was causing the problem. He says it is a solder(?) problem and he may have to resolder it if it keeps coming loose. But I now have TV again, tho I still have to find the Inspiration Channel because I didn't write it down when I had it on before. And TBN didn't come on either. I'm going to go thru a different company when I pay for the new package in a week or so. Boy this makes me so happy. Oh yes, there was a fuse in the box on the outside of the house that may have been to the satallite or to the big 220 window air conditioner that wasn't making good connection so he worked on that and it is better now.

Kim & Howie, hang in there. You tow have both come so far and are such an inspiration to me and others that we know you can do it again. Just remember to set small attainable goals for yourself. Forget about the big long term weight loss and concentrate on 2# - 5# at a time each 2 - 3 weeks. That is attainable with not too much effort or starving yourself which will backfire by your body going into starvation mode. As tho I can tell either of you about weight loss techniques and tips. LOL

Anna, I do not know how you keep up with your workouts and farm work. It makes me tired just to read about it.

Pebble, you aren't whining. You are stating facts as they are in your life right now. What your husband has done with his aunt is so typical of what men do with their childen they have visitation rights to as well as elderly parents, aunts, uncles, etc. They seem to think that if they provide a shelter, bed, and their wife to take care of this person they have done their duty. Fortunately is sounds as tho you have household help to do some of it for you but you still are responsible for seeing to it that it is done each day. With your SIL gone for a while the full load of the shop as well as your homefront is dumped on you. You are in my prayers.

For some reason this has started out to be a bad mood day for me. Not weepy, just in a really sour mood. Some things just keep going thru my mind(stinking thinking is what Joyce Meyers would call it)and I need to snap out of it. Once I take steps to correct the situation causing it I think I'll be alright again. But that will take a few days to get done & will eventually lead to a family member confrontation I am not looking forward to.

Did any of you know that if you turn a cottage cheese container upside down each time after you open it that it will keep for months? Jack's sister told me that last night when we talked. I got 6#s of it at the food bank the other day and was wondering how in the world I was going to use that much before it went bad as I already have most of a 1# container in the 'fridge. She says she had done that for years and has kept it good for months each time. So I rushed to the kitchen and turned those containers upside down immediately. I had already told someone they could have one of them. If I had know there was one in my box already I wouldn't have said I wanted one. That's how I got 2 of them Each is the commercial 3# size. My cats won't eat cottage cheese. The dogs will, but that woman & her children need it more than the dogs do.

I guess I need to go and get some dusting done before I go to work. There is always plenty to do in this big house. And things I let go before that need to be caught up on.

GOD bless and keep each of you. I talk to you late tomorrow afternoon. We are having a dinner and then the annual business meeting after morning services and then won't have evening services.