Thanks

This is Kevin, Bethany's husband. I wanted to make one last post here to thank all of you that have expressed such heartfelt condolences for the loss of my wonderful wife. Many of you also encouraged her when she was struggling, and I want to say how much I appreciate that.

Bethany was a truly loving, caring, intelligent, and fun person, and I am extremely blessed to have had the time I had with her: twelve years of marriage and over fourteen years since we started dating. As hard as this time is, I would never give up the time we had together even if I could. She truly made my life complete.

Thanks again to all of you, not only from me, but from all our family. We have all found some measure of comfort in the overwhelming show of support and sympathy.

Blasted Scale!

The scale and I are not friends at the moment. I am angry. I'm angry at my body for failing to cooperate. I'm angry because I am trying to keep this momentum going, and it's difficult when all I have to show for 4 straight weeks of fairly strict adherence to a weight loss program has yielded a miserable 3 pound loss. I lost more than that the first WEEK I was back on program. I am still well above 300 pounds and I'm mad. I'm sorry. Maybe I should be happy to have lost, but a .8 pound loss for a week of pristine eating is pathetic. I still don't even know why I gained the previous week. I have no idea why losing this weight is like prying up a cement floor. It's just not budging! I feel like my body is my enemy at this point. I have no idea how long this current stint of motivation will last, and I want to work it for all it's worth. I want to lose as much weight as possible while the will is there, but it's just not coming off. I almost feel desperate and panicky when I weigh and the scale doesn't budge much because I feel like my time is ticking down. I know that inevitably a time will come when I'll fall off the wagon again and not be able to pick myself back up for a while. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, but I'm feeling frantic to see some serious movement on that scale...

Meanwhile, in case you were wondering, #1 was the correct response from my creative writing award post. I'll go through them one by one and offer a little commentary:

1. True--I was born at home in 1976 and had never been in the hospital as a patient until I had children.

2. False--My first and current and only husband was dirt poor when we got married. I married him despite his other girl, Sallie Mae (his stack of student loans.)

3. False--Although I do have a cousin who can burp the national anthem...

4. False--As far as I know, I've always had only five digits on each hand.

5. False--I did, however, tell my second grade teacher that I wanted to be one of those ladies that wears short skirts and serves drinks (a cocktail waitress) when I grew up. This was a source of great amusement to my teacher who knew I was a preacher's kid!

6. False--My first car was a heap--a 1981 Datsun 310 GX. It was a little standard shift white hatchback with darling spray-painted gold wheels. Rockin'!

7. False--It would be nice to have that ability--then I could clean house from my easy chair! :D

Trust Issues

I have trust issues. Do you? You trust that if you do the right things, the weight will come off. Then you have a bad weigh-in like mine last week and suddenly your innocence is gone! Each time you approach the scale you feel that fear and trepidation. Will the scale burn you again? That's kind of how I feel this week. All in all, I have had a terrific week food-wise. I have used barely any of my extra points for the week, and actually was slightly under my points yesterday. But there's still that niggling doubt in the back of mind--can I trust the scales this time?

Anyway, this week has been a mess otherwise! My dryer died and laundry is piled up around my ears. I had a repairman out yesterday and it was going to cost more to fix it than to just buy a new one. I've been so busy I haven't had time to go buy a new dryer, although I did pick one out yesterday, but I wanted to check the reviews on it before purchasing. I guess I'll go tomorrow and buy one and arrange to have it delivered...Then today I had to go to my sister's house again to watch her kids, and this time I didn't get lost! My brother-in-law has been recently diagnosed with lymphoma, so he is in the middle of extensive testing and has had doctors' appointments nearly every day since the first of last week. (Please pray for them, by the way. Although lymphoma has a high cure rate, the road is long and rough...)

Anyway, I'm expecting a successful weigh-in this week, so scales, don't let me down!

Creative Writer Award

So I won a new award from Leslie--thanks, this should be fun! I get to make up lies and then you can guess which one is true and which aren't. :D

The rules are:
1. Thank the person who gave this to you.
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link to the person who nominated you.
4. Tell up to 6 outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth.
5. Nominate 7 "creative writers" who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know you nominated them.

Okay, let's see what I can come up with...

1. I had never been a patient in the hospital, including when I was born, until I was admitted for the birth of my first child.

2. I married my first husband for his money.

3. I once won a talent competition for "armpit farting" the national anthem.

4. I was born with polydactyly, or extra fingers.

5. When I was a child, I wanted to be a tightrope walker when I grew up.

6. My first car was an army surplus humvee.

7. I have the ability to telepathically levitate objects, which comes in quite handy when picking up after small children.

Now although I'm usually a by-the-rules kinda girl, I'm gonna have to disobey them here. I simply don't read enough blogs to nominate 7 people for this award, and most of the ones I read already received the award! So I'm just gonna say thanks and leave it at that. Hope that's okay!

What A Day!

Hoo boy. Today was a marvelous day--sarcasm intended. I was supposed to drive to my sister's house, about an hour and 20 minutes from here, to babysit her kids while she went with her husband to a doctor's appointment. Well, unfortunately I took the wrong highway when the road forked and drove about an hour the wrong way. By the time I finally got to my sister's house, it had taken me over 3 hours! I was ready to smack myself. Luckily, my niece is 12, so it was fine for her to stay with the other kids until I got there (late).

As a result of my scenic route, I had to eat on the road. I stopped at a gas station to use the restroom and there was a Subway inside, so I got a sub. I should have only gotten a 6 inch, but the footlong was only $.50 more. That is so stupid to me. Anyway, I only ate half the sandwich, which would have been only about 7 or 8 points. Unfortunately, I was still starving, so I ate the other half, ending up with a not very satisfactory meal that cost me about 16 points! I should have planned better and taken more stuff with me to eat, but I had been in a rush when I left and didn't have time to pack a lunch and stuff. That was not the smartest thing ever. Oh well, I'm back home now with my own familiar food, so I should be fine now.

Oh, I almost forgot! Thank you to Leslie for a new award! I will address it tomorrow...Too tired tonight! :D

Since I've Been Gone...

Well, it's been over a week since I posted, and there's good news and bad news. The good news is that I had 1.4 lb. loss last Thursday. The bad news is that I had a gain this week for some inexplicable reason. I was completely floored when I stepped on the scale and had a 1.8 lb. gain! That is just the worst feeling, I think, when you know you've done well and yet you have a gain. It was totally unexpected and made me very grouchy. I've had four weeks in a row in which I've been very conscientious most days, so I thought I'd have a good loss this week. Grrr! Makes me very angry. No, it's not going to make me go off the deep end and eat like a starved maniac, but it does make me feel angry because I feel like I have had a week "stolen" from me. I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with reasons why I would have gained, but I'm kind of at a loss. I have eaten more "junky" type foods this week, but I have stayed mostly within my points. Last Friday was an off day, but every other day was pretty good. If it had been a small gain, I might blame it on sodium, but 1.8 lbs.? Not thinking so. And so I'm seething. I'll get over it.

It's been kind of a hectic week, but I feel like I'm "connected" to the blogging community again. I haven't been posting or commenting much because of not having a laptop. I could have used our desktop, but it's less convenient for me to have to go in the office where it's cold and try to type stuff. But now, guess what? Remember my husband's promise to buy me a laptop when I got to 250? Well, the deal's off. Because he got a bonus and I already got my laptop! Wahoo! It's bright metallic red instead of hot pink (I didn't like Dell's pink choice) but it's a laptop and I'm happy. :D So expect me to be back posting more regularly, hopefully, probably...

An Ounce Is An Ounce, Of Course...

Unless, of course, the ounce, of course, is a FLUID ounce! Yes, there is a point to this. So I know in my head that a fluid ounce and an ounce of weight are two different things, but sometimes my dumb assumptions get me in trouble. A serving of my Edy's ice cream is 1/2 cup, which is, of course, 4 ounces. Fluid ounces. But if you've ever tried smashing ice cream into a measuring cup, you'll understand why I decided to weigh the ice cream instead of trying to measure it out. Well, on the nutritional information, next to the half cup serving size, they list the serving size in weight--but it's in grams--60 grams, to be exact! Hello, this is the US of A; we don't use intuitive things like the metric system here. I have no idea how many grams are in an ounce. So I think, oh, it's probably fairly close to the four ounces in weight. I weigh out my ice cream, sometimes even two servings, and I call it good. Well, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to Google the equivalent in ounces of 60 grams. Guess what? Waaaaay off. Sixty grams is approximately 2.12 oz. I was giving myself nearly TWICE as much ice cream as I was supposed to! It's a wonder I still lost 2.6 lbs. last week after that...So the lesson here is, don't make stupid assumptions. If you don't know, do the homework and find out, because your assumption could cause you to actually GAIN when you think you are doing well!

And this week I am doing well. I had an off day last Friday when my dad took the entire family to Incredible Pizza. I ate whatever I wanted, but I had only had 3 points for the day before that, so it wasn't too bad. And I've done pretty well every other day. I'm feeling pretty happy about that. I'll let you know tomorrow how it turns out, but I'm expecting another good-sized loss!