Oh heck. So this morning, I saw a number on the scale that made
me very happy. And how can I say what it is unless I disclose my
weight? And why shouldn’t I? Why should I be ashamed of my
weight? Well, I’m not going to go into all of that, but I will
say that this morning, my scale said 179.8. I’m into the 170s! I
just hope it stays like that tomorrow. That way I will have
reached my short-term goal of being in the 170s by the wedding.

So yeah, you can do the math now. Also I may as well say now
that in 2001, when I started running, I weighed about 62 lbs
more than I do right now. Dang!

And I haven’t used all my points up this week. I didn’t even use
all my regular points yesterday. (Uh oh. I just realized that in
5 more lbs, my points will drop. Uh oh.) My mom and brother came
to New Orleans yesterday and we had dinner. I was pretty grumpy
because there isn’t much “New Orleans-y” food I can eat (or want
to, I might add) and stay within points. I would have liked to
have raw oysters, as I could have had dozens of them, and still
only used a few points. But the one restaurant they picked
didn’t have raw oysters, and so I had a grilled chicken
sandwich. With a side of green beans. Instead of fries. Now,
don’t get me wrong, I love green beans. But as a side to a
chicken sandwich? No. Should’ve been fries. Sometimes I hate
being virtuous. But this weekend is going to be a free-for-all,
starting on Thursday, so I need to be as good as humanly
possible until then.

Icky weather, but nice weekend.

Spent Saturday night in Baton Rouge with my mom, brother, and sister. Evan took us to see a sneak preview of “Team America: World Police.” Okay, yeah, it was funny. I laughed a lot. But a word of advice to anyone planning on seeing this movie: Do not see this with your mother. Even though I did see the South Park movie with my mom, this made South Park look like Mary Poppins. So heed my advice.

Then we went home and played Scrabble. I almost beat my mom, who likes to cheat, by the way. Watch out if you ever play Scrabble with her.

Then yesterday, I came home and George and I fought a shelf I bought at Target. It took a long time and a lot of cursing, yelling, and throwing things, to get it hung. But now it is hung. And now there are several holes in the wall.

We spent the evening wandering around the French Quarter. We had beignets and cafe au lait for dinner. Mmmm. It’s been a long time since I’ve had fried dough covered in drifts of powdered sugar alongside hot coffee with whole milk. Yum. (I could speak poetically and rapturously for hours about beignets. When I was little my mom and I used to make them nearly every Saturday morning. She would let me cut out shapes in the dough. I loved to watch them float to the top of the boiling oil and turn brown. Yum.)

Anyway, now I have to spend the next few days cleaning the house in preparation for our visitors. Yay!

It is very weird. I didn’t use all of my 24 points on either Wednesday or Thursday. That is very weird for me. Usually, I’m fudging things a tiny bit here and there to mark the fewest points as possible, which I know is bad but I figure it will help me to have something to improve when I hit a plateau. Oh yeah, I already did that.

Anyway, I went to the grocery yesterday and bought all sorts of yummy things, including Skinny Cow mint chocolate ice cream sammiches, and yet I still only ate 23 points yesterday. If that. Plus I earned three activity points. I made the apple-cinnamon wontons from the WW site, and I only ate a couple of points worth. It is all very strange. I’m sure I’ll make up for it this weekend, though. Tomorrow I’m going to Baton Rouge to see my brother and sister. My brother and I might go see that puppet movie at a sneak preview. I hope I can get a haircut appointment for tomorrow afternoon, too. I desperately need one.

Had half a butternut squash for dinner, with a bit of light sour cream and grated pecorino romano cheese on it. Yum, yum, yum. If it didn’t take so darn long to roast those puppies, they’d be my new food obsession. But they end up just like sweet potatoes, which take a lot less time to bake. (And they’re pretty high in points for a big vegetable, butternut squash. Wonder why?)

Eh. Gained .2 this week. No biggie, after last week’s 3.8 lbs I was expecting a little gain. I’m just glad I was able to mostly maintain the loss. Overall, I think I did pretty well last week, eating-wise, especially considering the number of times I ate out (pizza, Chinese, Vietnamese, the party food on Sunday…)

Right now I have one of those Crest White Strips on my teeth. Weird feeling. I just sneezed and it almost flew out. Tee hee!

Am looking forward to doing nothing tonight except watching Joey. Last night, George and I went to the mall to get him some clothes for the wedding for him. Let me just say, George + Mall = Not Pleasant.

Ooh, the power just flickered. Thank goodness for George’s power supply thingy. Didn’t lose this entry. (Yeah, what a loss that would’ve been. Sorry about the lack of interesting things to say.)

I didn’t drink and dance last night! After two drinks at the
Windsor Court (the $10 cosmopolitan they call the Windsor Rose,
for the organic rose petal floating in it and the $9
Pimm’s Cup) I wasn’t exactly in a frame of mind to go dance. Oh
well. I was very tired anyway.

Just got back from Baton Rouge for business meeting. Am tired
again.

Sorry Mar about blowing your cover!

Oh, sorry, Maura, for not going into more detail about how
idiotic the people working the Curves booth were at the race on
Sunday. Note: the idiots don’t work at my Curves.

So I had signed up through Curves to get the free t-shirt, and
when I went to get my race number at the race, I had to go to
the Curves table. They asked which location I belonged to, and
then they found the bag with my name on it. It was mixed in with
the bags from another Curves location. In the bag was my number
and t-shirt and some goodies. I asked the woman if they could
hold on to my bag until after the race. After all, I couldn’t
race carrying a goodie bag, could I? Nooo.

So after the race, Polly and I are in somewhat of a hurry to get
home, so I go back to the Curves table to get my bag. But where
is my bag? Oh, it’s not there! It has been taken to the other
Curves location with the rest of the bags. NOT MY LOCATION. I
glare at the woman for a long time. Polly said later, “woah. you
were mad, huh?” Hell yeah I was mad! People can be so stupid.

Fortunately, I got my bag yesterday. And no, it’s not about the
shirt, it’s about the principle. It’s not like there were 5000
Curves members participating in the race. There might have been
twenty. I wasn’t asking too much. Sigh.

So anyway, onto happier subjects. Had pizza for dinner last
night. Had Chinese for lunch today. Mmmm. Am still within points
for the week, barely. Thank goodness today is the last day of
the week for WW for me. After work I’m meeting the DQ people at
the Windsor Court, a fancy hotel for drinks. Last October we won
the office Halloween costume contest, and won a $50 gift
certificate to the Windsor Court bar. Too bad there are eight of
us who have to split it. So it won’t really be free, but it’ll
be fun. I can only have one drink anyway, as tonight is dance class.

=====
Pam Mather
http://www.pyjammy.com

Yesterday was the Race for the Cure. Considering the heat and humidity were both very high, I think Polly and I did pretty well. There was supposed to be a cold front coming through on Saturday night, but when I got up yesterday morning, I was assaulted by the heat. Blech. I hate hot weather, especially when I’m going to a race.

So anyway, we get to City Park, I have some issues with the Curves people (I signed up with the Curves team) but blah blah blah and then the race starts. Polly and I wanted to run the first and last miles, but there was little shade after the first 3/4 mile so we walked and ran as we felt like it. So I was just aiming for a sub-40 minute race. Happily, we finished in a few seconds under 39 minutes. Not a personal worst, and far from my personal best. Maybe at the next race in three weeks the weather will be cooler? At least we got medals this time, along with a few fun goodies (cereal, makeup bag, mug.) And hey, it’s for a good cause.

Yesterday was exhausting, not only because of the race. Directly after the race, I went home, showered, rushed to Delta Queen, trained Caitlin for 5 hours, went to Anne’s mom’s house for her mom’s birthday party, went to Whole Foods and Blockbuster, watched half of the Royal Tenenbaums.

Ate incredible food at Anne’s mom’s house. White chocolate bread pudding, especially. It must be one of the most point-heavy foods, but was worth every point. So delicious. Was exclaimed over for weight loss (though no one actually said “you’ve lost weight” which is kind of funny. Let’s ignore the elephant in the room. There were lots of “your hair…it looks different”s.)

At Whole Foods, I was saddened by the broken freezer section. Cherry bars all gone! But it was funny, another girl got there at the same time as me, for the same reason. So we tried to get an employee to get some out of the back for us, but it was like a farce. So no cherry bars. Very sad. Must go back. Hmmph.

Bored at work, I decided to go peruse my old online WW journals to see just how badly I did some weeks (over 114 points) and how well I did others. I haven’t looked to compare if the good weeks and the bad weeks meant loss or gain for the week, but I’ll do that later. For now, I’m just having fun reminiscing about the events that led to 136-point-over weeks.

Like Ren’s baby shower with the creamy crab dip and cake. And Mandy’s wedding shower with the Barnes & Noble girls that involved fondue of the cheese and chocolate varieties, as well as gallons of margaritas. And in that same week, our housewarming party, which was insane, food-wise. And when we all went to Bonnie’s house and ate mini-quiches and finger sandwiches and cake and cookies and chips and dips.

Ahhh, the good times! I’m sorry, but those were fantastic times, and it had a lot to do with the food. Of course, I should say it was to do with the company, and of course that was a big part of it. (Who else would’ve brought or supplied the food?) In Louisiana, all gatherings involve food. Maybe it’s like that everywhere, I don’t know, I’ve really only ever lived here. But food and fun are completely entwined. (I suspect it’s like this everywhere, but people here like to think it’s a specialty of the state.)

And I shall end this post now, lest I start drooling over the foods that I suspect will be present at the birthday party of a friend’s mom that I will be attending on Sunday…(white chocolate bread pudding is just one thing I’ve heard mention of…)

Got in my car this morning and realized my dress was on inside out. Hope that doesn’t turn out to be foreshadowing or anything. Fortunately, I didn’t see anyone in the office before I fixed it.

Last night, George and I went to see “Shaun of the Dead.” Now, I don’t like gory or scary movies at all, but this one, I highly recommend! I only had to close my eyes a few times, and it was really really funny. The fact that it took place in London was a bonus (okay, let’s face it, we wouldn’t have seen it had it taken place in Milwaukee or something.) I was afraid I’d have zombie nightmares last night, but fortunately, I did not.

I know I had more to say. Hmmm. Oh yeah, I used 12 of my points yesterday (that’s half of them before my 3 activity points) on Hot Tamales at the movies. Yeah, that’s a wise and healthy use of points! But Hot Tamales are my favorite candy and I don’t regret. No regrets! Mmm. I had to give George the rest of them (they only seem to sell those very large theatre sized boxes of Hot Tamales nowadays) so I wouldn’t use all of today’s points on them as well. Mmmm. Hot Tamales.

Daaang! Woah! Holy cow!

Down 3.8 lbs this week! I wonder why? Oh yeah. Maybe it was that three-quarters of a day of Core I did on Wednesday. (Not really.) Or that I stayed within points this week. Or that I exercised 4 times this week. Or that I have been eating things other than the same old stuff. (Peanut butter is my new thing, and I haven’t had a Honey Nut Cheerio in days.

Anyway, the hard part is making sure I don’t put any of it back on this week. So I must be extra-vigilant.

Oh! I just realized the best part! I’m finally more than half-way to my goal! Only 25.8 lbs to go!