To-Do lists and such

Yep, I just plain eat too much for how active I am… or am not. Up the activity level, lower the calories, I should be able to do that. We’ll see, no luck so far. My husband has lost 7 pounds already. No success in this are for me, BUT my progress on today’s to-do list is already impressive at 9am.

laid a fire in the wood stove
fed the cats
put away clean dishes
drove kids to school
got sick hubby breakfast in bed
filled the wood box
started a load of wash
cleaned the cat boxes
knit 2 stripes on the Hufflepuff scarf
put away the rakes and clippers
brought the snow shovels up from the shed
located and ordered firewood
remembered to get chicken out to thaw for tomorrow (yay)

Seems like a long list when I write it out like that but it’s just part of all I need to do today. I’m going to lay that out and see what it looks like…

take trash and recycling to transfer station
drop off check at farm stand
plan and execute dinner
clean fridge
wash dishes
fold and put away yesterday’s laundry
hang today’s laundry to dry
sweep kitchen and dining rooms
clean downstairs bath
pick up kids, probably separately (ugh)
get cash for the wood delivery
finish sewing felted mittens and fleece liners
knit 2 more stripes (I need to finish all 4 house scarves for mid-Dec.)
Try to figure out how to fix my friend’s coat
read at least 2 chapters of my book (probably at bedtime)
clean and declutter a bit in our bedroom
finish planning Thanksgiving feast
start planning Yule feast
look into craft projects for Yule and order supplies if needed

That ought to be enough for one day. I do want to try to have some kind of family activity tonight if we can, though it looks like I’ll be pretty tired by the time dinner is done and hubby is sick. hmm. Maybe we could have a movie night at home on Saturday or a game night. I feel like all I do is write I.O.U.s to my kids for stuff like that. We did have a Mutants and Masterminds game on Sunday but that was pretty much my husband’s doing. He’s a really good dad. ^_^

Clear

Now that I have figured out how to enter what I eat into the food diary it is clear why my weight stays pretty stagnant. I eat too many calories for my activity level. Way too many calories, and beer isn’t helping either. LOL. Who could have guessed? But the new information is how far over the line I am, which isn’t all that much, so it should be fixable. I can also become more active and being able to eat brownies is a pretty good motivation for me.

So, here, now, today, I weigh 165 lbs. That’s about 30-35 more than I probably should be. So, little calorie and step counting app. let’s see what you can do for me.

frustration

why is everything that’s supposed to be easy so fricken difficult? I downloaded some stupid calorie counting app to my phone, you log what you eat and it also counts your steps, you tell it if you are trying to lose weight or maintain weight etc. first freaking day… I try to log two tortillas with cheese, didn’t even get to the tea w/milk because I can’t even get it to accept the stupid tortillas. The search function is SLOOOOOOOW and then when I find the damn food there is no obvious way to “enter” it. I’m hormonal over here people! When I try to log something 3 times and it still doesn’t work I tend to shed a few tears and delete your crappy app. I really felt like destroying my iphone with a hammer so, managing my moods.

I tried googling how to do it but that was useless. Now I feel frustrated, stupid, and still weepy. Menopause sucks, weight gain sucks, technology sucks and drives me up a wall. I am NOT going to text my techie husband at work and ask him to fix this for me. It’s my first impulse but I know how overworked he is and how idiotic I seem when I can’t figure this shit out like a grownup. I hate how I always run into roadblocks every time I try to do something positive for myself. I just want things to go smooth. How come nothing ever goes smooth?

i think i finally figured it out. Hormone levels still dangerously unstable. *sniffles*

PARDON my RANT

my husband posted on facebook that having a new brewery in town, and excellent pizza, etc all right down the street amounted to a conspiracy to keep him pleasantly plump. it was a cute and funny post, worth a laughing emoji from me and several others, but I also replied “You look HOT.” which a friend of mine felt she had to add a ‘shocked’ emoji.

you know how i just posted that I want to be kind? This is not inspiring that trend. i know this chick has some issues around … appearances? being pretty shallow? I don’t know. What I do know is that she complained to my husband that she was really upset because her husband would “basically never be in shape again” … as he was undergoing cancer treatment… for real. My sweet husband, taking this for a wild overstatement to blow off steam pointed out that being fit is hardly the most important aspect of a person and that her husband just being alive at this point is pretty damn awesome, giving her a chance to backtrack, she doubled down. She said it was extremely important and no one could be sexy if they were overweight. My husband is overweight and out of shape due to working full time and being in school 1/2 time. He couldn’t find the time to exercise for approximately 5 years and only started back recently. At the time of the discussion with this friend, he felt it as a real knock, I thought it was maybe her being utterly blind to how her words might hit my sweet husband because she was consumed with her own shit and thinking only about her husband.

Maybe it isn’t fair to revise that judgement based on her shocked emoji but I have revised it. I think she just went out of her way to be openly shocked that I find my husband sexy and it pisses me off. My husband knows he is overweight, his post stated that, he doesn’t feel “hot” he is down on himself over his weight. I don’t have a problem with him being heavy, pleasantly plump indeed. He is gorgeous! Yes, he was also gorgeous when he was in shape, and he was confident and felt better about himself, but I find him sexy ALWAYS. He can gain weight, lose weight, lift weights, not lift weights, it doesn’t matter to me, not in that way at all. I would like to see him be as healthy as he can be and live a long healthy life, but that man is sexy as hell no matter what he weighs. And here comes this friend of mine, adding her shitty 2 cents to MY COMMENT.

I want to be kind but I also want to defend those I love with Blood & Fire. I’m just not down for any kind of bullying and this chick is messing with the self-esteem of one of the best people I have ever known. My husband is intelligent, funny, handsome, hard-working, kind, generous, and many, many other good things. He is amazing and he adores me. He compliments me, encourages me in everything I do, accepts me for the broken, stubborn, nut job that I am, and has loved me through the ups and downs of over 20 years without ever once demeaning me or putting me down. I find all of that sexy. Washboard abs are not a concern of mine. I do not want my husband worrying that he might not be enough for me in any way. So when this person decides to be shitty, even if it is supposedly some sort of “joke,” I am NOT amused. I think I might actually have to say something to her. I’m not sure I can walk past this one.

She recently asked me to decorate for and throw her Halloween party for her, to bring all my decorations to her house and all that. She seems to have wanted to pay me for this but I don’t have the time and can’t even attend this party… so she wanted me to come by before I went to work (7:30pm-midnight) and “just decorate.” I declined, I have too much on as it is. Yeah, so adding being shitty to my husband to that and I don’t know if I want to be friends anymore. UGH!

retail shock-therapy

Took our lad school shopping yesterday, 17, a junior this fall. Getting the kid to try on clothes is usually a trial but I had back-up. My husband was there, which helped, but it was the salesperson that made things go so well. She was enthusiastic about the clothes, naturally, and wasn’t US, I think he allowed that she might have some expertise in proper fitting, cut, color and the like. We ended up with 2 pairs of slacks, 2 pairs of jeans, and a handful of nice shirts to supplement the T-shirt collection he’s been working on the past few years. The lad is going to be stylin’ this year but the prices…

Shockingly it was the second time in 2 days I bought new clothes, actual new, not secondhand, new clothes. I need to upgrade my wardrobe a bit for work, my job is way more professional than anything I’ve had before. So Thursday I bought myself a shirt, a sweater, and a pair of pants from Old Navy, on clearance except for the pants. OMG, I paid full price for a pair of pants… it’s been years and years since I did that for myself. I enjoy thrift shopping almost like a sport. The less I pay, the better, it’s like scoring points or something. It’s a challenge outfitting a family secondhand. Finding things that fit, are decent quality, hopefully flattering, etc. is tough. It used to be sheer necessity, back some years ago, we had so little money. I spent about 15 years of my adult life living below the poverty line, sometimes way, way below, and it was an education. I made sure we always got what we needed, there might not have been any extra, nothing fancy, sometimes bargains turned out to be sub-par but I kept us all clothed.

I miss being skinny, for many reasons, but the free clothes… oh, I miss the bags and bags of free clothes! I used the be the dumping ground for all my friend’s unwanted clothes, my sisters, too, would give me garbage bags full of clothes they didn’t wear anymore. I went years without buying any clothes for myself at all. If someone put on weight they’d think, “Tempest could fit into these…” and I’d get a whole bunch of cool stuff to go through. What I couldn’t use I’d pass along or drop off at a charity shop. Now I’m not 115 pounds anymore. Not a size, 5 or 7, having 3 kids will do that, aging will do that, plus, I love food. How great is food? So great. Yeah, so not skinny anymore, no free clothes.

So yesterday, and Thursday, were filled with sticker-shock for me. Even clearance prices are more than I usually pay. When I shop thrift and charity shops I’m still scouting for their half-price items so I routinely pay about $2-$3 or less for shirts, less than $5 for skirts or pants, and less than $8 for dresses. The full price pants I picked up for myself the other day were $20, I thought that was bad, all the pants we got our son were much more. One pair was nearly $50. Ouch. I’m quite used to getting about 10 pairs for that kind of money. But we can do it now, when we need to, we can afford, at least sometimes, to get our boy brand new clothes and a heaping helping of good customer service. It’s a good feeling but old habits die hard. I know how to build the bulk of a wardrobe out of $50 and yesterday we spent that on one pair of slacks.