Not quite “THE” Talk

Tonight Evangeline came to me with a library book from school about the human body. She said she just wanted me to read a couple of pages to her. She said she wanted to find out how she was born. So with trepidation, I read the page with photos of a pregnant woman at different stages of gestation. It “explained” things in a very vague manner, and Evangeline looked puzzled. She asked, “So, how does the baby get out.” I explained this to her. Her jaw dropped. “That would hurt a lot, wouldn’t it?” “Yes, it does,” I responded. “Can’t they just cut you open?” she asked. “Why, yes, they can,” I said. I added, “But getting better after that hurts, too.” Then she said, “I’m not having a baby.” I told her I understood why she said that, but that I hoped we would have grandchildren some day. She said, “The boys can have children.” Before the conversation was over, she had changed her mind and said, “Charis and I will each have 5 children, and the boys will each have 6.”

Countdown redux

Ok. So I haven’t lost any more weight. I have been pretty faithful to the diet I’ve been on, but I haven’t met my exercise goals–minimal as they are. So I am tweaking the diet, going to a doctor to get some input regarding some possible health issues, and working harder on the exercise goals. I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve Been Tagged

by Barb
Editorial comment–I feel a bit honored to have been tagged. I confess to not hitting the blog circuit much in the last oh, 18 months, or so. So I don’t get included in the little “blogger games” very often. Thanks Barb.

Four Jobs I Have Had:
Vacuum cleaner salesperson
Janitor
College Instructor
Marketing Copy Writer

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:
Pride and Prejudice
Broadcast News
Groundhog Day
Wives and Daughters

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over:
The Starbridge Series by Susan Howatch
A Room with a View by EM Forster
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
Moo, Bah, La-La-La by Sandra Boynton

Four Places I Have Lived:
DuBois, PA
Ft Lauderdale, FL
Nashville, TN
Auburn, WA

Four TV Shows I Watch:
Gilmore Girls
ER
Trading Spaces
Monk

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation:
Hawaii (The Big Island)
Kwajalein, Marshall Islands
DuBois, PA
Niagra Falls, NY

Four Websites I Visit Daily:
realtor.com
Mark Horne’s blog
My bank
google

Four Favorite Foods:
Chips & salsa
Any dessert that has lots of whipped cream
Asiago cheese bagels from St Louis Bread Co (or Panera for you non-St Louis people)
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Four Places I

Countdown

In my last entry, I talked about my need for more exercise and diet. Well, I’ve not come close to meeting my exercise goal for the week, but I did manage 2 walks with my friend, 1 treadmill session, and 1 walk with my little girl. Hopefully the next week will be better.

On the diet front, I stayed pretty close to the program. I sort of eased into things about 2 weeks ago, but got officially on board with a diet a week ago yesterday. I lost 5 pounds so far. Not bad for 10 days to 2 weeks. I hope it will be a bit better next week as I tweak some of the choices I make.

My goal is to lose 100 pounds. That sounds pretty ominous. So I’ll start with the goal to lose 50 by my birthday in July. It’s a total of 26 weeks from the time I started until then, so that’s a loss of less than 2 pounds per week. That doesn’t sound quite so overwhelming. Although the endurance through to the goal is the hard part. Hopefully, once the first 50 is gone, that will motivate me to keep going until the second 50 is gone.

I really don’t want this to be a flash-in-the-pan sort of effort. That’s part of why I decided to write about it here. But I have written about weight loss efforts before, and as we all know, they weren’t successful. I don’t want to make excuses for past failures. I just want to focus on the task at hand.

Hopefully, you’ll check in now and again to see how I’m progressing. I’ll still blog about other things, but this will be a regular feature.

On a completely different goal, I wanted to note that I have challenged one of the high school girls at church to read Les Miserables with me in 6 weeks. I’ve had this book for 16 years, and I have never been able to get past the first 30 pages. In conversation, it came up that she has been trying to read it for the past 2 years, so I told her we could work on it together. We are also trying to get others on board. I’ll try to keep you posted on how this endeavor goes as well. Perhaps success on another long-time failure will motivate me in the weight loss area too.

A Desire to be Healthy

I just got back from walking to the park near our subdivision. I took Charis in the stroller after lunch, so we could enjoy the nice weather today (upper 40s and sunny). It takes 8-10 minutes to walk to this park. It’s a nice walk now because the county just recently extended the trail to the road that leads to our subdivision. Up until about 3 months ago, we really had to drive over there because there was no easy (or safe) access on foot.

The walk involves going up a couple of large inclines–to call them hills would be an insult to real hills. I have to confess that I really struggled to get to the top of these inclines. I had the incentive that if I didn’t make it to the park, Charis would be highly disappointed. Then on the way home, well, we had to get home.

Many who read my blog know that I have struggled with being overweight for most of my life. However, despite that, I have been able to handle most physical activity with little problem. As an adult, I lost a lot of weight (the year I snagged Mark and married him). Since then, I have for a variety of reasons gained that back plus some. The last year we were in Oklahoma, I was exercising at a gym very regularly–4-6 times a week. While I didn’t lose lots of weight, I felt pretty good and it took quite a lot of activity for me to get winded.

This past year in St Louis, I have allowed myself to get more undisciplined than I have ever been with regard to exercise. I have done very little. I have gained even more weight, which is quite disturbing. But it is even more disturbing that I am now struggling to walk up a slightly inclined street. In the last couple of months, I have noticed feeling winded after climbing stairs, too. This has bothered me, and now I am even more bothered by today’s occurrence.

So I have purposed in my heart and mind to exercise more. I have been walking with a friend two mornings a week for the last few months, but I have to up the anty if I am going to be around to see my children grow up. For now, my goal is to keep up with the 2 mornings a week of walking, to go on a walk with Charis to the park twice a week, and to walk on the tread mill for 30 minutes twice a week. After a month, I will evaluate my progress. and determine how to proceed.

You should know that I have also started a diet. I won’t mention now which one it is, but I am working that angle as well.

If you read my blog, and you think of it, please keep me in prayer that I can be disciplined in this effort. Yes, I would love to be thinner and look better–who doesn’t want that? But ultimately, I want to preserve the basically good health I have had all my life and improve upon it for my future and for my family’s future.

Big Girl’s Day Out

Today Charis went to Parents’ Day Out at a nearby church that has quite an impressive early childhood center. She has been carrying around her back pack in the house since her older siblings started school in the fall, so she was quite thrilled to go to “school” of her own today.

I expected her to cry and give me her regular “drama” like she does when I take her to Sunday school. But when I was getting ready to leave, I said to her, “Bye Sweetie. I’m going to leave now. Have fun.” Then she said, “Will you come back for me?” I told her, “Of course I’ll come back to get you.” She started down the slide in the middle of the room, waved, and said, “Bye Mommy.”

I guess the next 15 years of my life will be one empty-nester experience after another.