Oh to sleep the sleep of the dead

*251*

  It is almost October. My most favorite month of the entire year. Yesterday I bought a couple pumpkins and some mums for the front porch. I think my days of decorating for trick or treaters is over but Fall decorating could take on a whole new thing for me. Kid number two turns 20 at the end of the month. That will be it. No more kids in my house. I know they were adults at 18 but something about not being a teenager anymore really seals it for me.

  I have been told that a couple people are patiently awaiting my jams. I have not done them yet. So this week I will get it done. I have to make a batch of strawberry and a batch of strawberry jalapeno. I have to start thinking towards the holidays too. Even though I am not eating it, I still like to make treats for others. I found these fancy looking cupcake tins called Tulips. I found out later that they are not very new but they are new to me. They were selling in the discount store. I bought a bunch for really cheap but I think I am going to go there later and grab a few more. $2.50 for a box of 12. I know that I could make them myself if I got it into me to do so. I eventually will but for now I like the colored ones that I found at the store. They are neat because they make your treats look fancy and they have the benefit of a corner to pick up your cupcake with so you do not mess up the frosting. Pretty handy.

  Except for one day where I punked out, I have been going to the gym on a regular basis. My friend A and I signed up about two weeks ago. I have been almost 3 times a week but shooting for four times. I want to do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Fridays. Give myself Thursdays and the weekends to relax. The trainer at the gym said four days is a perfect amount of time. You want to give your body at least three days of rest. I am trying the dreaded elliptical. That bitch hurts! I can only do like three minutes on it but I am going to do it every single day. I do the treadmill, the stair climber and the elliptical. Then I choose a muscle group to work on. I am there a little bit over an hour now. I started to lose my way with the eating. I was eating things that I shouldnt. I ate some greasy stuff that made me really sick and I had some other foods that shot my blood sugars through the roof. I have learned my lessons. I know that I cannot be perfect and there will come times where I will want to eat some things but definitely staying away from fried foods, whole milk dairy, and wheat. Since I started this, I noticed that whenever I eat wheat, I get this phlegm thing going on afterward. I sometimes start gagging, I am guessing a wheat sensitivity.  All is a learning process. So far I have lost 24 pounds.

  I think I told you all about the at home sleep study that I did for sleep apnea...? I am not going to go back and look so I will assume I have. Insurance wouldnt pay for full on sleep study in the hospital so I had to have a monitor to bring home. I went last week to find out the results. Girlfriend needs a C-pap. Most of the time those home tests do not show the full fledged severity of your apneas. Mine did OR mine are so bad that even the home shit picked it up. Doctor said that I stopped breathing 48 times an hour. That is like almost every fucking minute! My oxygen saturation is supposed to be 100% to the upper 90s. Mine would dip down into the 80s on more than a couple of times. So they sent me across the hall at that very moment and set me up with a machine. I have been using it since Wednesday. I have not kept it on the whole night yet but the longest so far is five hours. It will take some time getting used to. I wake up a little bit freaked out and take that shit off. One night I talked myself out of it in my half sleep, left the mask on and went back to sleep. I have the full face mask because I am a mouth breather. I am trying to overcome the feeling of being trapped as in claustrophobic. I have read that in time, it does go away. The full face mask is best for me because I move around alot in my sleep, I am a mouth breather, and I like to sleep on my side. So I need to overcome that shit.
  Lots of news and little links to click on. I have been busy with the yard this week, that is why I have not been around more. Once winter settles in, I will post more. You all know how I do things.
Enjoy the rest of your lovely September 2013.

To can or not to can. That is the question of the day

Ball half gallon canning jar

*255*<-----in the losing inches phase now

  I love that my friend had taught me a valuable lesson. Sometimes on your weight loss journey, you seem to not lose any weight even though you have cut calories and upped the movement. She told me that you lose inches instead, and then you will lose pounds. I am doing the inches thang now. I know this because all my clothes that I usually wear are either fitting looser OR are way too fucking big. I have started to dig into my stash of clothes that were on the snug side or I did not like this or that cause it made my gut show offy more. Today I am wearing a pair of purple cotton lounge type pants but they are for outside. They used to be on the snug side. I would never wear them. I am pleasantly floating in them now. Not too big, more like just right big. I am liking what I am doing. And I am loving all the *new* clothes I am venturing into.
I have to confess though that this week was a week of eating things not on the list. I ate 1/4 of a pancake with syrup. I had a burger with bun and small amount of fries, and yesterday I ate half a small bag of Lay`s. I chalk it up to my period was late and long and I have not eaten a chip in almost 2 months. It had to be done. My sugars were a teensy bit high. I am still eating well otherwise. I will be careful not to do THAT in excess.
 I always said I would never totally deny myself stuff. I have found healthy alternatives to many things but there is gonna be times when I just want it and I am not going to be denied. :)

  I found the canning jar of my dreams yesterday at Walmart. It is a half gallon jar. They come in a pack of six. I bought the last one in the store. And my pack had been opened (i guess they wanted to see how big it truly was). I did not care. I wanted them. I am hoping to find one more pack of six before the winter. I have no idea what I will do with them but I had to own them. They are usually used for people that can juices. I was thinking big jars of tomato sauce or salsa. We shall see.
 It is cooler this weekend. I am thinking maybe I will do my jams tomorrow (Sunday). I want to do regular strawberry. Then buy some more strawberries now while they are still cheaper and the next weekend make strawberry jalapeno. I have enough jars to make a shit load. I am not going to short myself this year. I want to make enough of the strawberry so that the family has enough for the winter. Then I will have extras for giving to friends. 
 So that is the plan, I think. I am going to do some yard work today. Fish for dinner. Canning tomorrow and then the man and I are going to go through our clothes to put away for winter, and get rid of anything we do not want. Full schedule if you ask me.
Oh and he gets to watch football. Lovely lovely football.

I can see me cleaning out our room on my own.

First day back

*255*

  Today was my first time back at the gym in way over a year. The place has expanded, upgraded and I like it. They have new machines, new free trainers and I can see myself being able to do this at least 4 times a week. I went with my friend, A. She signed up too because she realizes that she needs to get healthy again. It is going to be a long road for both of us but we can do it. I may have a bit of a leg up on her on it but that doesn't mean she couldn't catch up in the coming months. I will be her cheerleader and make sure she does not over do it but also that she does not slack off either.
 I plan on going Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. and maybe Friday but either weekend day. So I might do five days.  We shall see. But this is what I want to work up to. I am not going to kill myself just yet.
 Today I am eating something new. I bought Egg Beaters egg whites. My lunch is a country scramble with onions, yellow peppers, cherry tomatoes, a tablespoon of pesto, and daiya cheese.  It actually tastes pretty good. I have a side dish of cucumber, tomato, and onion salad. Trying to round out the meal.
I need to go. I have some food to eat, paperwork to fill out, and laundry to do.
Have a nice week!

Fall Pantry Cleaning

My dream pantry

*255*

   I had decided last night that today was the day that I was going to completely clean out the food pantry. My pantry is two floor to ceiling cabinets (with doors) that are attached to the wall. There are four sets of doors and inside each set is three shelves. Shit load of room for food. One of the first years that we lived here, we developed a moth problem. Come to find out some of the dog food that comes from Walmart back in the day would have moths. You would bring them home and voila..they are in your flour! So I put everything in plastic containers and Ziploc baggies. No issues after that. After that fiasco, I decided I would clean out twice a year, once in the Spring and once in the Fall.

  Cleaning is just a small portion of what has to be done. There are many times when you buy something and you just never use it. Like the cashew butter I have in there. I gave it last Fall, and this Spring to use it. We didn't. So I will check the expiration date and if it is good, it will go for donation. Everything that is old, open and old, or past expiration goes in the trash. Things like old pasta are dumped in garbage so that packages can be recycled (yeah yeah..I am a recycler). Any food that is something we regularly eat that is new in cabinets or was lost in the shuffle stays. Then all the jars and cans need to be wiped down, and shelves cleaned. I buy that fabric netting that brides use to wrap Jordan almond bundles in for their reception and I make bug bundles. I put some whole cloves and some new dried bay leaves in each and tie with a ribbon. One for each shelf. Every once in awhile, I will give them a squeeze. They get changed twice a year too.

  I had these big ideas that I was going to get the whole thing done so that this weekend, I could start canning my jams. But what do I wake up to?
80 deg F and high humidity and pollen count
I cleaned out the top section that carries all of our pastas, grains, dried beans, and boxed pasta crap. I had three opened boxes of lasagna up there. All in the trash. I cannot eat it anyway. That whole area is done but I was sweating like a whore in church during and after.
Yeah, I am done.

Twenty Pounds Down..Ba-Bye

*255*

 This bitch lost 20 lbs! WooHoo!

I do not step on the scale every day. That would be stupid. Your weight fluctuates with hormones and such. It would drive a person insane if today you weighed 179 and tomorrow 174 and later on that day 181. You have to spread them out during the week.  But for some reason this morning, I was compelled...to...look.
 255.
Wait. What?
Get off the scale. Get on the scale.
 255.
 Get off the scale. Move the scale to another location. Get on the scale. 
255.

Holy shit.
  Five pounds away from 250 and then say good by to the 50s and hello to the 40s. Friday I go to the local gym with my bestie and we are both going to re-join. She wants me to walk with her in the mornings. Then I can go back later in the day to get a more intensive work out. Not planning on over doing it at all. I am going to go slow. I might be really slow in the beginning just like my friend but eventually I will ramp it up to more extensive exercises to build muscle. Especially in the gut.

Anyway, I thought I would share. Tonight`s dinner is going to be two fillets of oregano and garlic crusted Tilapia cooked under the broiler with some rainbow salad and sugar free jello.
Yummy!

Hot steamy days and Cool Autumn nights

*259* <---that is right. Not a typo!

    A warm September Sunday brewing. Not sweating but it could happen.  I do not care because the air conditioner is going out of the window. I want fresh are to blow through until I have to close up shop for the winter. We are getting a new to us couch to replace the disgusting dog love seat. Ruby killed it through her puppyhood and now it is a sad stinking mess. It is going out on the back patio with the AC. We will be doing a dump run probably sometime in October. Someone we know has to leave their apartment because they cannot afford it so they are giving us their couch. It is not spectacular but it is good enough until we have the floor done and replace it. If it has good springs in it, we will keep it for the basement man cave.
  I am in a good mood today. I am going to re-arrange the living room to accommodate the new couch. I have plans on Friday to buy the paint for said living room with all the crap you need to paint. Need to get it done. Floors in October hopefully. The living room is going to be a slate colored grey and the kitchen and dining room are going to be like a peacock blue. Something really out there. I like bold colors with white trim.
   The journey of health is doing well. I have lost a total of 15 lbs in a month. I had a couple slip ups. I learned my lesson though. I have purified my gastrointestinals to the point that if I eat certain things, I will be spending the better half of the day on the crapper. Blue cheese dressing is one of those things. Basically I have deemed all commercial salad dressings off limits to me. I will stick with my red wine vinegar and sometimes a small bit of olive oil. I had a pumpkin iced coffee and asked for one pump of the syrup, no sweetener, and two creams. There was way more than one pump. I had to take a shot of insulin when I came home. I still have not eaten any junk food or take out food at all. I have tested the waters (and failed) with some things that would be deemed ok with me. I tried those small corn tortillas to have tacos with..FAIL. I tried a low carb pita thing made especially for low carb eaters...FAIL. I tried brown rice...you guessed it. I am thinking I will have to wait until I have lost a significant amount of weight before I can introduce low carb options when it comes to rice, bread, and pasta. Maybe after I lose 100lbs.
  I will have the cash next week to buy sneakers and sign up for the gym. Once I introduce regular exercise into the mix, the pounds will drop the fuck off. 15 lbs in a  month with no real exercise but just moving around more. Imagine what that will be with an hour of formal exercise a day at the gym plus the stuff I do around here.
It will be so amazing..I hope.

  I need to wrap this up. I have some cleaning to do before the new couch arrives. You have a great Sunday!
 

My little helper

*260*

  At the bottom of this page you will see a ticker that I added with the amount of weight I have lost so far. It is part of a program called Myfitnesspal. It is a free calorie counter, diet and exercise journal. You can use it on the computer or download the app on your phone. You use it to track your food intake during the day. It tells you if you are within your calorie range. It also tracks your water consumption and exercise. When you add in exercise, even walking stairs, it adds calories to your daily total. To lose weight, you try not to eat any of those added calories. It has helped me alot in determining what I should and shouldnt eat in terms of carbs and fat. You have it listed on each food choice how many sugars, carbs, sodium, fats, etc. I thought I would share with you all since maybe you would like to join me.
 OMG! I have to tell you. Kid number 1 has been in a mood for the past couple of days. Last night she made home made chocolate chip cookies and left a note. She made them to say sorry for being bitchy lately. How sweet of her. How horribly sweet of her. LOL
 I took them off the two plates and put them in the cookie jar. I have not eaten any and I dont plan too. Home made cookies are a major weakness. This is a test. God is testing me. I will win that test. I am not going to screw up a  month (today) of healthy eating. 14 lbs lost in a month. That is insane! At least it is for me. Wait till I start really walking more. It is still too humid for me. Once it is a bit cooler, I will strap on my sneaks and I am off.
Give myfitnesspal a try and if you like it, I am glad.