Outdoor Fun Planned for Tomorrow

I have to finish mowing the lawn at the duplex tomorrow and work on cutting down all the stuff growing on the fence that my hubby sprayed weed killer on. He will help me with that I am sure.

The fun part is working on my garden and flower beds at home. I am not sure what to do with the slugs on my strawberries. This morning they were just in one patch but I wasn't sure you could put slug killer on them. Other than that I have tons of roses to cut and put in vases. A veggie garden to weed and water and the cucumbers need to start growing up.

I have to mow my yard too and my hubby does the trimming. I plan to let the dog play in her little plastic pool while I am working in the yard. I am not sure why a big German Shepherd likes the baby pool but she has a blast. Jumping in laying down and running around the yard 20 times then repeating the process until she ends up just laying in the pool.

So have a great holiday tomorrow!

Life This Week

Well this past week I have spent a lot of time outside working in the yard and trying to keep the kitchen clean. I have been trying to work on money saving ideas and think of things I can sell that I don't need. I worked two days but I have not gotten a work out in at all since coming home from Florida.

I do have to say I must be burning calories with all the indoor and outdoor activities because I have been maintaining my weight. I am not too worried about it as long as I am active but if i find myself just sitting around a lot then I know I have a problem.

The other thing that has been bothering me is my monthly cycle or should I say my bi-weekly cycle. I have been having a long period every two weeks. I couldn't take it anymore and I went back to the doctor. I really didn't want to be on any type of birth control again but I also don't want to pay my percentage of my insurance deductible for the ablation (procedure to burn the lining of my uterus and slow or stop my bleeding) that was supposed to be done the same time my tubes were blocked. I think I have mentioned this before but the doctor who was supposed to do the procedure at the same time as she did my tubes thought I wouldn't have bad periods anymore because I was on birth control for so long. Well she was wrong and now I have been dealing with 9+ days of a period about every two weeks and spotting most of the time in between. I can deal with a week once a month but this really is making me crabby. I am married and I do like some of those physical aspects that go along with marriage and I rather miss them when I can't have them for long stretches of time.

I will hopefully finish another skirt tomorrow and work in the garden some more. I already need to weed some in the vegetable garden. I will need to mow the lawn again and I will need to pick strawberries. We have a ton of strawberries this year and even thought the birds keep stealing them there are plenty left for us. Our vegetable garden might take some TLC. I am actually going to have to spend some time learning about soil and planting conditions because our tomatoes look like poo. They looked great until we put them outside. Now some of the leaves are turning yellow. Something is eating the broccoli and the cucumbers look good one day and like crap the next. The peppers look great. If nothing else grows I seem to be able to grow great peppers just about every year. Except when the squirrels use them as trees and break them before they get big enough to support them.

I had a really good garden a few years when I lived at my duplex but we brought in a lot of good soil to fill a big hole in the yard and then some soil for gardening so I am thinking the soil here is not as good but I guess the only thing I can do about that is start researching.

I have also been looking into ideas on where we might move to in the future and I don't know for sure but I would love to move. I went to the library and looked for a bunch of books about farming and raising farm animals and found almost nothing useful on anything but chickens and a few books about living a self sufficient life. The latter of the two felt a little too preachy for me. I liked much of the books but I am not going with out running water or electricity and I can't afford to make the change to solar power which they forgot to mention is quite pricey.

So I have had a busy week and I am really tired and will be sleeping before nine. Have a great holiday weekend.

Happy To Be Home Kind Of

Well I am happy to be home but I really enjoyed my visit with my Aunt and Uncle in Florida. I miss them more than I realized. My uncle reminds me a lot of my dad who passed away about 10 years ago. Leaving made me very emotional. 
The other really nice thing was that my hubby was on the same schedule as me and we got to spend a lot more time together. He has to get back to a third shift schedule now and it kind of stinks. 
We have been throwing around ideas about saving money and buying a farm of some sort and growing our own food and having some animals that help support our basic needs. Us city folks don't have much of an idea on how that works though so we have to learn before we decide on anything. Neither one of us really wants to work for someone else for the rest of our lives. I don't know if we really want to have a farm or not but we do want a big piece of land and have minimal expenses. I also want to move somewhere where the weather is not so bad in the winter. So if we start planning now maybe with in the next five years we can move it may take longer we can start with small goals first.  


The first thing on my list for saving money is to eliminate the money I spend on books and use the library that is about three blocks away more often. I am also going to look into the book swapping places. 
Then I think we will sell my favorite car, we have 4 cars and we only need two. My hubby will need to sell his race car that he does not use and I will sell my favorite car. That will give us a low mileage sports car and a Jeep to drive. All the cars are paid off so that is not an issue it will just be extra savings to get us closer to a goal.
We also have to decide if we should move back into our duplex and take the for sale sign off. We could use the rent from the upper unit to pay well over half of the house payment and then we would not have additional rent. We would have to make a lot of sacrifices if we were to do that. It is a lot smaller and we would have to be considerate again because their would be renters in the upper unit. It is not that we have parties or anything but we like our television loud and my hubby is loud in the early morning hours especially on the weekend when he is not working. When we lived there before an elderly woman who was not able to hear well lived there so the TV noise didn't bother her. We are still not sure about that but we do know that we would like to work towards a goal of us not having to work for someone else forever. I guess on Monday I have to head to the library for some books on Farming for dummies and we can explore our options.

Been on Vacation

I left for vacation on May 13th and will be comming home on the 21st in the evening. I am haveing a great time in sunny Florida.

Temptation Sucks!

Well everyday I go to work I try to go prepared with some small apples of some healthy stuff because there is a box of candy bars that sit in front of me. It is a donation box for the woman who works on my days off. She runs a dog rescue and the moderately healthy stuff is often stale. I have been good the last two weeks but it is so tempting and I tend to eat two small apples each day I work to keep the temptation down. That is still less calories than giving in and having one. They are all full size candy bars and loads of fat grams and sugar.


I am just going to have to admit I am a full blow sugar addict. I was actually tired from having to resist that high I get for about 30-60 seconds while I am chowing down on chocolate bliss. I keep trying to remember that the high only lasts while I am eating it because it is very damaging to my weight loss program. As soon as I finish a candy bar I feel the guilt of not being able to control myself but what is worse I want more. One is never enough. While I will rarely eat a second one that day it starts me on a path where I eat one each time I go into work. I also know that foods that high in sugar make me feel crappy when eaten on a regular basis. At least an apple has other dietary benefits. It still stinks that I can't sit there and not think about the candy and I want the dog rescue to make some money and candy sells better than healthy stuff. I am going to have to get me some nuts they are more filling than apples.

I have been very faithful with my healthy eating the last two weeks. When I craved pizza I made a 100% stone ground whole wheat crust and was light on the cheese. No meat on the top either. Then when I was craving ice cream I bought a mini one serving tub of ice cream. One serving only for real it didn't seem worth the cost but it helped me curb my appetite for peanut butter cup ice cream without me killing it by having 4 servings at a time or more likely all day with a spoonful here and there until I realize i have eaten two cups of it. So it was well worth the price to get my little sugar fix and not screw up everything that I have worked for up to this point.

Now that I am not stressing about calories and just trying to make healthy choices I am feeling better and gradually loosing weight. I would love to see faster results but I am going to try to be happy with any results and as long as I don't gain weight. I will adjust that if I step up my strength training but the yoga seems to be hard enough right now. I do realize muscle weighs more and I might gain weight again if I really get on the strength part of working out.

The one thing that the book You On A Diet has made me realize is that I am one of those all or nothing people if I mess up I feel like I have failed and the whole thing is a complete failure and that is why I have so much trouble sticking with a plan. So I am just going to learn that sometimes I make mistakes but I just need to get back on the plan not eat everything in sight because I ate a slice of greasy pizza or a candy bar. I have to accept the mistake and try to make better choices from that point forward.

Coffee Needed Today

I worked a long day yesterday and I am very tired today. I had a lot to deal with at work yesterday and I was stressed out by the time I got home. It got in a 15 minute Yoga video that morning and a 60 minute elliptical workout. I think the Yoga is helping me to stay calm during the stress. If it wasn't 7:30 when I got home I was going to do another short Yoga video but I was starving and needed to journal to get some things off my chest. I went to bed at 9:30 and I slept well.

I have been reading a book called You On a Diet and I am rather enjoying it. It explains how food works in you body. It makes a lot sense it ties all the diet plans together and shows you why they fail. Much of it is because the diet plans leave you hungry because of the food choices you make. Low fat and low calorie diets don't work if you don't make the right food choices. If you don't choose filling nutritional foods you won't be able to stay on a diet. It really explains what foods help you body feel full. I may do a full review on this soon, I am only about half way through the book.

My mother let me borrow this book and it has a lot of useful tips in it. It was what made me think to do some Yoga the last few mornings. One of the sections that made a lot of sense to me was that chronic stress was a factor in hindering weight loss. I peeked to later chapters and it said something about Yoga helping calm and reduce stress. So I am going to try to do a little Yoga every morning. When I am off it will be later but when I work it will be early morning. My job is not that bad right now it used to always be stressful and it started that way when I went back. Things have gotten a lot better between me and my boss (step-dad) but we have to work at it. I have also noticed the weeks I get stuck are the weeks and a few after that I am most stressed out.

There is a lot more to it than that but it is very interesting and it gives you a lot of detail about how your physical body works and how your brain chemistry works. I think it is really worth a read for everyone who has had trouble loosing weight.

Have an AWESOME day everyone!

Sewing Saturday and Some Other Stuff

So Saturday I did not work out but I did finish sewing a shirt and started another skirt. I really like the shirt and I am glad I got it done before we go to Florida. I hope to get the skirt done too that way i have plenty to wear while I am gone. I will get some pictures up after I find the charger for the digital camera.

I still weigh 150 which is not what I was hoping for but that is okay it looks like on good weeks I loose a pound to a pound and a half which even though that is not what I want it is normal. My foot hurt after walking the dog on Friday so I gave it a rest on Saturday. Well sort of since I was standing a lot yesterday I didn't want to ad a work out to that. I have church and then tanning today and then I will come home and work out.

I did get a strange call yesterday from my local Family Video that said if I rented a video in the next two days it would be free and the next two weeks it is half off. My hubby was home for the evening so we went and got Sherlock Holmes. I liked the movie and I really enjoyed getting something for free. They called it a we miss you discount. They give it to regular customer who have not rented in a long time. We have Netflix now and we don't usually need to rent anything.

May 1 Already

Saturday Sewing 

Well the last few months have gone by really fast. Today I am going to sew with my mother-in- law and hopefully get another project done. I started a top and I got stuck trying to make the casing for the elastic in the back. Every time I try to sew it I get bubbles. I couldn't get it flat so i hope she can tell me what I am doing wrong. I was hoping to have it done for Florida but no big deal if it isn't done. I have already taken pictures of all the clothes I have finished so maybe after today I will have another picture to share.

Diet and Exercise

Well my diet is not the best everyday but it is not super bad. I was really craving ice cream yesterday so I did pay a ton for a little single serve thing of ice cream. Well it was a ton compared to a carton of ice cream but it made it so that was all I could eat. I have been eating mostly lean meat and veggies for lunch and dinner and fruit for snacks but I have whole grain cereal or a wheat bagel for breakfast. I made the mistake of buying a carton of ice cream about two weeks ago and I ate it all in like 4 days. Amazingly I lost weight that week but I am thinking that was because I didn't eat any snacks on those day and I was still working out.
I have been mixing my work outs up a bit as it is getting nice outside. I can take the dog to the metro-park and walk long trails with lots of hills and soft ground that doesn't hurt my joints like walking on the pavement. So I walk there and get on my elliptical on work days and wet days. Many days the last two weeks I have done both a morning work out and an evening walk.

Other Stuff

I have been catching up on my reviews for my other blog Dark Novels and I am going to try to keep that up at least until I run out of things to review. I have been thinking of creating a fictional character and telling his or her story each Friday or something. I will have some time to think about that while we are driving to Florida from Ohio and then back again.

On that note I am going to be able to write posts for that blog and schedule their posting dates but I may not have internet access while I am in Florida so I may be absent from this blog from May 13-21 or so.