Stuff and Failure!

It has been a long couple of months... A lot of things have changed, both good and bad, and I am getting used to a lot of things being different and interesting and challenging and sometimes hard.

For instance, every single day with Leah is something new. There are days she wakes up and I think, "Who the heck are you!?" We are right on the verge of walking, I feel it in my bones. We've been going to the play park at the mall and I see her studying the other kids and really working for it. She's climbing steps now--she only goes up one or two, but man, that scares me! I can't turn my back on her for a second and she's up the basement steps. We put up the gate about a month ago, but if I forget to close it when I run up to get a drink or find the phone, bam! I come back and she is sitting there a step or two up, grinning ear to ear, considering making the rest of the journey.

Her little health scare with the heart murmur affected me more deeply than I care to admit. From the moment the nurse said something about it until we met with the cardiologist today, I have lived in a new kind of worry that I didn't know existed. Oh sure, since becoming a mom, there is the kind of generalized worry that I think most of us feel about our kids, but this was concrete "is my baby going to be OK?" worry. I pressed my ear to her chest about a thousand times this week, listening to her heart beat and praying. When Dr. Allen said, "This is the most minor heart murmur, I really had to concentrate to even hear it, don't worry and you don't need to come back", I could feel my shoulders dropping and the tears filling my eyes. I held it together until I got in the car and called my mom. Then I barely got out the words, "She's fine" before completely losing it (while hurtling down I-95 at 70 with a big truck behind me. Oh and it was raining.)

Today has not been a great day. She did not sleep well at all last night--she was up at 1:30, 3:30, and 6:30, which meant so was I. I've been going on the assumption that she is trying to pop out some molars, but then I remembered it's been 9 days since she had some vaccinations, and they said we could see the effects of those vaccinations 7-10 days out, so now I'm wondering if perhaps the crankiness is due to that more than teeth. It took us almost 2 hours to get her to sleep tonight. I have to say, when she grinned up at me when I held her and rocked her, I didn't mind so much. I just hope she sleeps tonight. I remember thinking last night, "How the heck did I do this a year ago!?" but she would sleep during the day, and so could I. Now she's a ball of fire. I swear, I was hanging out at the play park this afternoon like a zombie. I came home and slept for the better part of 2 hours. So of course, now it's midnight, and I can't sleep again! AUGH! I'm trying to decide if I should take Leah to the doctor or even call them tomorrow, but then with the teething, there's nothing they can do about it and if it's a reaction to the shots, we just have to wait it out...

The house is a bit of a shambles, but I am attempting to get back to it. When I think how utterly clean it was just a couple months ago, I'm a bit embarrassed I fell off the wagon. The Easter dinner followed by Leah's birthday party were two big events that just kind of swung things square into disasterland--tons of people helping out, putting things where I still haven't found them, everything getting moved, dirt and grass tromped in and out, food tucked into the back of the fridge. Leah is such a clotheshorse, I haven't done her laundry in over a month and she still has tons of outfits. I haven't done towels. The pile for the yard sale grows every larger.

Speaking of which, I'm thinking of having my yard sale on Saturday, May 1, weather permitting. If anyone would like to join me to make it a "multi family yard sale", please feel free. I would be happy to go elsewhere, except that I am thinking of selling some furniture, and I have no means of transporting it to anywhere other than my own yard. I have 3 folding tables, plus my dining room table, plus our spare dining table. You may need to bring your own tables and definitely some chairs... I'll provide coffee and donuts. :-) Let me know if you want to sell some stuff! Our neighborhood is usually pretty good for yard sales.

Anyway, my control journal is back out for FLYLady again, and I did two huge loads of laundry, lots of dishes, and have gathered up tons of trash today. I have a bunch of bags of "stuff" in the back of our car to drop off to my sister this weekend when I see her and then I'll be able to fill the car with garbage and haul it to the dump (yeah, like I'll have time for that this weekend too!). Still, I'm happy with how things are shaping up already, and just have a few areas of touch up before really getting into my routine again. I think it got so clean that I started thinking, "Oh, I can skip that this week, it's already plenty clean!" and that is the first pitfall on your way to disaster. Michael and I are presently debating the laundry issue. We've been using those new Purex sheets you may have seen advertised on TV. I thought they'd be a blind guy's best friend when doing the laundry, but a) they are kind of pricey and b) he doesn't like them (says the clothes don't smell fresh enough and he's not sure they're getting clean). Consequently today I went grocery shopping and picked up laundry soap, but I got the liquid, not the powder. He prefers the powder since it's easier to measure, but it's also $4 more expensive for 20 fewer loads. So now we are trying to come up with a system for him to use the liquid without making a huge mess all over the place. I don't know what we're going to do. We are thinking of trying a turkey baster that he could use to suck up the detergent and shoot it into the compartment for the washer. There's already hemming and hawing about whether that'll work or not, but it's the best idea we've had thus far.

We officially closed the door on the exchange student idea, unfortunately. My friend who is a coordinator is totally stressed out this year by the job and didn't seem able to follow through on the steps required to finish our application and get Caroline here, so we decided to ease her stress load and forgo the whole thing. We emailed the school and let them know of our decision, and hopefully now Caroline will be able to find a family quickly and enjoy her year.

This weekend is a biggie--I have choir rehearsal on Saturday morning and then my friend Kris is coming down from Springfield to have lunch. Saturday evening we have a 50th birthday party to attend in Burke. Sunday is the big concert, and I have to be at the concert site at 3:30 in the afternoon. This is going to make for a long day for Leah and Michael, so I decided to take Leah to rehearsal with me on Saturday to give him a little bit of a break. I don't know how that's going to work, but I do know I need the rehearsal time. If it doesn't pan out, I will simply have to leave rehearsal, but hopefully it'll be fine.

The exterior of the house is complete in terms of paint and shutters. I need to get a picture of the new shutters, but I am really happy with the end result. Hopefully our doors will get here soon and we'll be in business with this year's renovations. I have decided to take up mowing the lawn myself, since the kids out back are not interested in doing it. I need to take our mower in to get a new blade and then it should be operational. It'll be interesting trying to start it, I haven't started it up in a couple of years, so we'll see if it still runs. Otherwise, I'll go get a cheap mower, but there's a repair shop right around the corner that I'm going to take it to for the blade, since we've been through several without finding the right one. Then I will take a stab at mowing. I've never mowed before, but I have to say, I'm kind of looking forward to it.

The big thing from this week was the tire debacle. I don't know. As I blogged before, dealing with car issues is my biggest stressor, and this whole situation is exactly the reason why. When the tires first crapped out in December 2008, I did a ton of research on the web and calling around to various stores to try and find the blasted size this car required. Finally, the only place we could get them was at Firestone, and the guy at the Firestone dealer informed me that there were no high mileage tires in this size, the best I could get was a 30,000 mile tire. They cost me over $700. Ok, fine, I didn't figure I'd be doing 30,000 miles worth of driving in a year and half, but whoo boy, was I wrong! The majority of it was while my dad was sick last summer and we were going back and forth to Vermont every day and to Star Lake, and just getting to and from Plattsburgh. Then there were the weekly trips to Baltimore before Leah was born, all the driving to and from Maryland during the court proceedings, doctors appointments, etc and our appointments in Richmond. To say nothing of trips up north while I was still working, book club meetings, travels around town, leisure travel, etc. It's just been nutty. So of course, three of the four tires failed inspection, and one was on the verge of it. And the guy at the garage says to me that he can stick a high mileage tire on the car, made by a company other than Firestone, for the same price as the Firestone tires, and depending on how long we have the car, we may never need to buy another set of tires. So I ask you: Did I get screwed by Firestone? Or am I getting screwed by the inspection guy? I lean towards getting screwed by Firestone only because I have been going to this particular garage for inspections, etc for a long time and I do trust them there. But it REALLY pisses me off that one way or another, someone is not telling me the truth about tires and my car. We are also pissed about the sheer price of the things--$800 is more than we paid for the Myrtle Beach condo, and it more or less was a good hunk of our nest egg for the coming year that we had set aside out of our tax return. I do believe that we will be fine and dandy, honestly what's left to possibly break?, but it'd still be nice to have that money in the bank, just in case. Anyway, all that being said, it only adds to my stress level to get two radically different opinions about the tires, pay the same price for two radically different tires, and know that somewhere, someway, somehow, I was screwed by a mechanic. This only makes it that much worse the next time I have to have something done--the stress ratchets up again.

As for other aspects of life... Everyone keeps inquiring about the Weight Watchers stuff. I have more or less fallen off the wagon. I keep thinking about it, but by mid-day I'm done. I just don't care. I want the results without the work (haha, don't we all!?). There are so many pitfalls and temptations out there and there is a big part of me that is tired of resisting. As more and more people are more and more successful, I feel like more and more of a failure, which is making it harder and harder to even feel like trying. I am thrilled for other people's success, but it makes my own inability to commit that much harder to come to terms with. I know I can "just" get right back up on the horse and get going, but I am getting more and more depressed about the whole thing. I keep seeing May in the mirror--I joined in May of 2008, and I think that maybe I should recommit myself this May. I don't know. I keep making these arbitrary deadlines and they keep passing and I keep not doing anything. I just need to get my butt down to a meeting and get going. I just don't feel like it. I guess I need to have myself a good cry about the whole thing and then forgive myself, let the past go, and get started. It just sucks is all. I feel like a big fat failure and that is not the place from whence you can really start over. You need to feel some sense of "YES I CAN!" before you do. And I know I can, I just don't feel it.

There are a lot of things fallen by the wayside at the moment. 80 Plates, I don't know if I'll ever finish it. I get depressed just looking at the blog. I can't think of any other countries I'm dying to do and all the research I have done into it has been good, but it's a lot of work, and I am short on time. There are only so many pieces of the Susan pie to go around. And I suppose that is something I am struggling with a bit. What do I want to devote myself to? I sat down and made a list the other day of all the things I feel passionately about that I would like to do something about. For instance, every time I drive to the mall, I feel very badly about the homeless people out on Rte 3 begging for money, and I would love to do something about it. But what exactly? Michael did some research into volunteer opportunities for me to work with the homeless population here, but then I have to consider that this would require additional time away from my family, which puts the burden of childcare on him. And while Leah is finally starting to warm up to him, it is far from a smooth road at the moment, so it requires being willing to go out and just hope for the best while I'm gone, which robs me of some of the enjoyment I get from doing things. I would also love to be an AFS volunteer, a literacy volunteer, volunteer at the library, considering a part time job when Barnes and Noble opens here in town, considering launching some sort of business on my own about which I have several ideas. I want to go ten thousand different directions, and I can't. For my own sanity, I just can't.

Anyway, Leah's already been up once during the writing of this post, so I'd better roll on into bed before she gets up again. A little sleep is better than none. Thanks for listening to my whining if you've made it this far!!!!

Stuff!

Well, my husband must really love me, is all I can say. This week, I'm out 4 nights. Sunday I had choir practice, Monday I had book club, tonight I am going to see the Harlem Globetrotters with the Heplers, and tomorrow I am going up to see my friend Debbie from DBVI for dinner. He has been so, so patient and taken such good care of Leah while I've been sowing my wild oats. Although, I will say, we had a little incident on Sunday that I thought was pretty hilarious.

I came home from choir practice, and he says to me, "Susan, Leah threw up on her shirt." I said, "Oh really? What did you do?" "I washed it off with a washcloth, but then it was wet, so I just took it off her and put her to bed. I covered her up nice." "Yeah, but what is she wearing? Did you put PJ's on her?" "No, I don't know how, I just put her to bed and covered her up." I went upstairs, and sure enough, there was Leah, sound asleep wearing nothing but her pants and socks. I turned the heat up a bit just in case it got cool, and let it go. But I thought it was hilarious and so new-dadish!

My in-laws stopped in for a quick overnight on Monday on their way home from Florida. It sounded as if Florida was a bit of a bust for them this year--much cooler temperatures than usual. Still, I'm sure they had their usual good time, and it was real nice to see them an extra visit, even if I was gone for most of it. Book club was a lot of fun, although it was awfully strange without Judy there for the first time in 5 1/2 years. I have heard through the grapevine that this may be a permanent state of affairs, so perhaps it'll be something I have to get used to, but I haven't heard anything about that as yet. We were hosted by Maggie at her house, and it was her book that we discussed, but unfortunately she got a call right as we kicked off and had to leave because her daughter had a little fall. It was great that she trusted all of us to be in her home without her, and fortunately she got good news about little Natalie--no broken bones! We did clean up after ourselves and got a nice note from her yesterday, so it reminded me again of what a family the club has become. Everyone really is there for you when you need them.

Yesterday I was feeling a little blue, so I texted Cindy and Wendy to see if they wanted to have lunch with me (Manda, do you text? If so, I need your number!). Cindy replied that I could come on over to her place, so we made plans to have lunch at Chick-Fil-A and then I would go to her house for a Cricut tutorial. Just as we left Chick-Fil-A, my phone buzzed and it was Wendy! She said she was free for lunch tomorrow (which is now today) and did I want to meet her at 12:30 at Chick-Fil-A. Hahaha Good thing they like us in there!!! So we are dining at CFA this afternoon. They have a wonderful greeter/drink refiller/hostess in there named Deborah and as we were leaving, I said to her, "See you next time!" Little did I know next time is 24 hours later!

Last night we had dinner with the Heplers at Chilis. I had to get my Globetrotters ticket from them and will meet them up north in Stafford today. The game is at North Stafford High, and since I have been to Stafford High for basket bingo and Colonial Forge for choir practice, I think I'll have covered the local high schools now and should know where all of them are.

LOST last night was amazing--not quite as good an episode as last week, but awfully good nonetheless. We really are getting down to the end, only 10 episodes to go, and they really are starting to make sense of the whole thing, even though there are still many unanswered questions. I am enjoying the hell out of it, and will be sad when it is over, but at least I have my DVD's and I can go back through and re-watch the entire thing from start to finish to see what I've missed and what makes sense now in light of later episodes, etc. I haven't kept up with Project Runway as much this season. I think last season was such a bitter disappointment, and this season I just don't seem to care. Isn't that awful? I was such a fan. And this season has been so much better than last season, I feel kind of guilty for not watching! I read the Project Rungay blogs to see who wins and loses, and maybe I'll catch up eventually, but just haven't felt like it lately. I also haven't felt like staying up to watch Hoarders, but at least I've been catching up with that on A&E's site.

For anyone who has asked, no, we still have not heard anything about our exchange student. We are just waiting to hear if the school will accept her. We were hoping to hear by the end of January, but then with all the snows in early February, we still haven't heard anything and here it is March! We would love to get in touch with her and start getting to know her a bit better, but I guess we just have to be patient and let things take their course.

In the meantime, we've decided to do some flipflopping of our house if we are able to. We are going to move the home office downstairs into the basement and make Mike's office upstairs into the extra bedroom. This makes sense for a number of reasons: 1. Caroline will have a closet! 2. When the baby wakes up at 6:00am and wants to play, I can take her downstairs and not have to worry about waking up a slumbering teen! 3. The guestroom is a bit larger than the upstairs room, so I could put up a desk for my new scrapbooking hobby! 4. Mike can go use the computers and radios as much as he wants at any time of the day or night without having to use his headphones or worrying about disturbing anyone. 5. At night when we are all doing our own thing, we will still be on the same floor and easily accessible to one another without having to holler up and down the stairs. 6. Our upstairs floors are really creaky and it won't keep anyone up any more if they are trying to sleep in the spare room if someone's moving upstairs and creaking around.

The two questions that will hold this operation up are: 1. can we get that room wired for ETHERNET and 2. can we get his radio antennas wired into that room. He's got a buddy from the ham club coming over to have a look, and then we'll ask our friend about the computer wiring. He could go back to using wireless, but I've been informed he does not want to do that.

Once we find out if it's possible to do this, I'll have to go on a marathon painting binge, since I'm sure Michael doesn't want a pink striped office. It was a lot of work and I enjoyed it and loved the stripes, but I think something a little more subdued will probably be better for a man cave with a wife-corner. I will probably also repaint the office, but maybe not. The color does match all the bedding we already have, so I may just leave it for now and if Caroline doesn't like it, she can help me repaint it. If anyone wants to help paint or move furniture, we'll pay in pizza, beer, or whatever else floats your boat!

We are excited that Mike and Lesley's niece is moving to DC this summer, so even though it's not Mike and Lesley, it's the next best thing :-) She is coming to stay at the Cookie Jar this April and I'm going to take her apartment hunting while she's here so she can get off to a good start when she makes the move in June. She is a great gal and of course we hope this will be an even bigger incentive for Mike and Lesley to move on up here too!!! :-) Damn the housing market is all! But I know they cannnot resist Leah's siren song, so I have a funny feeling they'll come on up sometime sooner rather than later, as Lesley said :-) Jennifer and I have been swapping emails back and forth to figure out a game plan, and we have just over a month to figure out what we want to do, so I know it will be great. I'm of course going to steer her towards living on the Virginia side of things, because we know how those Maryland types are. Haha!

As for Weight Watchers, well, it seems like I get going and then I get off track. I really did great my first week back, down 4.2 pounds, and then BANG! The snow storm hit and we sat around and ate brownies and cake and did puzzles and read books and stuff. Then the storm was over, and we went to Greensboro and enjoyed ourselves. Then we got back and I just couldn't face it the first week, and that week turned into two, turned into 3. I know it is something I need to do, I have made concrete goals for myself and I want the results, I just have to get into a mindset of where it's going to happen. I remember where it all went terribly wrong--we were up in Plattsburgh when my dad first had the attack and we went to the store, and I thought, "F*** this, I'm getting some Doritos." It's all been downhill from there. I know I can, and I know I will, it's just a matter of when! :-)

As for FlyLady, everything is just great! I do a quick clean every day, and my in-laws were SO impressed when they walked in Monday. They were like, "you have done a lot of work around here!" Between that and Michael's "It's a whole new Susan!" campaign, I guess I was a real slob before :-) But I'm happy with how things look and how easy it is to maintain. If I could just get Leah to pick up her toys...

I guess that's about all the news that's fit to print from Fredericksburg. I am very nearly ready to break out my Cricut and get scrapping, just need to go get some pictures printed off at Walmart and then I'm going to town. I'm so excited. I'll post some pictures of what I create. I got a couple of extra cartridges at Joann's yesterday since they are 50% off right now, so I can use different fonts, etc. on the book. Cindy gave me a great tutorial yesterday, so I'm feeling pretty confident I'll be ready to scrap in no time!

Hope everyone else is doing just dandy :-) Drop me a line, update your own blog, let me know what's going on!

Late Blogging

Well, courtesy of a nasty Trojan that got on my computer somehow over the holidays (which one of you bastards downloaded what, Family!?), I have been extremely limited in what I could do. As in, Twitter worked and nothing else. I could get on the main page of Facebook about 50% of the time, but couldn't do anything, including change my status, once I got there. Thus do I owe many of you comments and notes back and I will try to get to them this week.

Anyway, I wanted to do some blogging on New Year's Eve/Day, but had to wait until my new computer arrived from the Stan Clan, which it did last night. And then we were up till 11:30 tweaking the settings, so I was too stinkin' tired to do anything but crawl into bed.

Alrighty. Well, it was a race to the finish, but I managed to finish the year at approximately 105 books read. Considering that by the time my book club met on December 8th, I had broken 100, this is not much of an accomplishment. However, I do say approximately because I noted that I had forgotten to post many of the things I'd read on GoodReads this year, so there may have been some I forgot about.

This leads me to my first 2009 Plan (I refuse to use the word resolution, as I can't be sure what the heck might happen this year after what I endured in '08, so no sense resolving to do things I'm not sure I can keep up with): to be better about logging and blogging my book reads throughout the year. Mostly this will take place on my GoodReads profile, so if you're interested in what I've read, then feel free to head over there and friend me. However, notable books will still be blogged about over here. After I finish off this post, I'll be starting a new one about the last 3 books I read, all of which I think are worth mentioning.

I have four other reading goals for 2009:

1. To read all my book club books in time for the meetings, regardless of whether or not I like them. This presented an extreme challenge already with finishing off The Shipping News in time for the December meeting, because I absolutely hated it. And this month, although I LOVE our book, I am struggling to finish The Lace Reader, as thus far it's not a terribly festive little book and it's a rather festive time of year. But I will have it done in time for our meeting in a week and a half.

Yes, girls, confession time, I haven't read every single book. Bad Susan! I have tried to read every book, but frankly, I never used to force myself to read books I couldn't get into after 50 pages, so it's a whole new world for me out there.

I noted that I haven't posted this year's reading list for the Lit Chicks, so here's what we'll be reading so far:

* The View from Mt. Joy by Lorna Landvik
* What Was Lost by Catherine Flynn
* Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
* Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
* The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Schaffer
* The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

Obviously, several people haven't yet selected their books, but already we have an intriguing and eclectic mix of books here. I'm excited about this year's reading list!

2. This year, I will read Gone With the Wind. Sound familiar? That's because I pledged to read it last year, but I didn't. Since visiting Mike and Lesley in Atlanta, I have really wanted to read it, but oddly enough, putting it on my wish list at Paperback Swap hasn't garnered me a single copy! So I'm going to have to go and pick up a copy at either the library or the store.

3. Jacalyn and I were sitting around talking the other night and her hubby mentioned reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and how tedious it was. For some reason, this led to the two of us deciding that we must embark upon reading it together. She's got it on audio and is going to make me a copy for when I finish The Lady Elizabeth. The good thing about listening in the car is that I'm essentially trapped, so I feel confident that I can finish it within about 2 weeks' time.

4. My sister told me about the Alphabet Challenge. I don't know where she heard about it, but apparently the goal is to read one book with a title corresponding to each letter of the alphabet. I will complete this, though as far as I know, Sue Grafton hasn't gotten to X yet, so I'm slightly concerned...

So those are my reading plans for the year. I expect I will probably break 100 again this year, for a perfect trifecta. At least, I hope to! I'm about halfway through my first book, You Can't Curl Your Hair With Holy Rollers, which is very entertaining. It should be a rather quick read, but I've been so exhausted at the end of each day that I haven't gotten done with it like I thought I would. Today, perhaps.

So 2008 was a year I was only too happy to say "good riddance" to, although I am the only one in my family who feels that way. Michael listed off the good things about the year, many of which I agreed with, but overall, I spent a year in a lot of unhappiness, which led to a number of poor choices, and a few good outcomes as well.

I don't want to get too deeply personal here, as for the most part I try to keep this as a day-to-day blog of just the basics of my life. But 2008 will be remembered as the year I decided to basically eat myself into an early grave. I was so despondant with the way things were turning out, with relationships with my family, with our inability to start a family of our own, that I just started eating. And I didn't stop for two months. At the end of that little orgy, I'd gained 20 pounds, I looked and felt even more miserable than I already had, and it was in danger of becoming a downward spiral until only one conclusion could be reached.

But fortunately, there was a glimmer of hope shining at me, and not only was I able to work through some of the issues that I was having with the family--though they are by no means fully resolved--I was able to take strength from Annette, Russell, and Amy having the courage to join Weight Watchers, and decided to do the same. I will never forget the feeling of dread that first meeting-stepping on the scale with a total stranger. It was humiliating. While my leader didn't care a whit--I guess after a while numbers are numbers to them--to me it was proof of just how far I had allowed myself to go. I resolved then that if I could just get it together and put myself back into the driver seat of my own life, I would never let that happen again. Will I be successful? I don't honestly know. I do know that I have lost 56 pounds in 7 months. I weigh less now than I did at our wedding. I feel better, I am exercising, and I am working hard to conquer my personal demons one day at a time. I fell off the wagon this past week, so I'm somewhat dreading the scales tomorrow, but having not gained any weight at all over Christmas, I'm willing to give myself a little leeway. But I'll be back on the horse on Saturday, and won't look back.

So, I do resolve to continue with my Weight Watchers efforts and with working hard at being an honest person and saying what I need to say, even if that might be hurtful at times to others. I can't go back to how things were in March of last year. And I won't let my real self be covered under thick layers for the sake of others any more.

Additionally disappointing was not being able to see Mike and Lesley last year for the first time since we've become friends. We have selected Mike and Lesley to be our children's guardians, should we ever have children and then die a sudden and definitely most tragic death. I picture something painless yet dramatic. Still, we didn't get to Atlanta this year, and with Lesley's crazy work schedule, they weren't able to get to Virginia either. Hopefully next year the four of us can take a nice beach vacation somewhere, even if only for a long weekend. We all deserve it, and Lesley and I have to go parasailing together. So I plan for that to happen.

On the bright side, we did get to finally meet Russell and Amy and see Annette again--thank you, Annette, for bringing us all together as friends! :-) It was a wonderful trip and I have such happy memories of our time in Savannah. Hopefully we will be able to do it again sometime or get you all up to Fredericksburg! ;-)

The final thing I hope to keep up with this year is a daily gratitude journal. My book club gift this year for the gift exchange was a The Reading Woman engagement calendar. Starting yesterday, I jotted down a few things I was grateful for that happened during the day--things like The Stan Clan's friendship, snuggling with my niece, and one of the games on my Wii that I enjoy playing. I've got the calendar here by my computer, since this is where I typically end my days, checking my e-mail "one last time", and I can jot a few words down and remember the things I have to be thankful for. By the end of 2009, I should have a lovely momento of the wonderful things about my life, as I definitely don't remember much about the good things of 2008--though the General can rattle off a steady stream of them. Mainly I remember the warmth and comfort of friends and friendship and that is what I'm most grateful for in 2008.

So, those are my goals and plans for '09: reading, gratitude journal, Weight Watchers. I've learned not to expect too much, not to promise too much, not to plan for too much, because you certainly never know what curveballs life is going to throw your way. I hope 2009 is gracious and good to all of you and to all of me :-)

Thank you for reading and being a part of my life. Who knows where this blog may lead us next!

Oh What the Hell...

Everyone else is doing it. I might as well jump off the bridge too.

This morning, I roused myself out of bed at 6:00am and at 6:30 stepped through the front doors of my first Weight Watchers meeting. It was slightly terrifying and the group leader was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of a morning person, but they managed to make me laugh, which was good considering where I'm starting from and where I'm looking at going even for my initial 10% goal.

I'm sitting here debating between the core and the points business. I'm leaning towards the points only because it feels a bit more structured and I feel like I need some structure. On the other hand, the muffin I am eating for breakfast just turned out to be 5 points. But at least, I get to eat a muffin.

I think it's probably going to be tremendously boring for you all to listen to me blog about being on Weight Watchers, so I'll just keep a little running total to the side somewhere when I begin to REMOVE weight, not lose it (the instructor says we always start looking for what we lose). And we'll see how it goes. My mind is a whirlwind "But I have book club!" "but I have Judy's wedding reception!"

Yeah, but I also have the whole rest of my life to live. And I'd like to see it last a while.

So wish me luck. I officially start tomorrow with the counting and portioning and so forth.