I'm off to the dog sit today. Probably won't have a lot of online access.
I'm kinda glad to be away from home for awhile. DH has gone over the edge re holiday drinking/eating. He is now screaming at me any time I try to point out that excessive drinking, followed the next day by driving on the highway, is not a good combo.
I'm hoping this will all be over by Monday and he'll really give the healthy lifestyle a try. He is taking small steps toward it but his mind is definitely not there yet.
For me the holidays were a time to stay in control, despite all of the crap food and drink offered/gifted/served to me.
For DH they were (apparently) an excuse for a drunken blowout binge. So I'm about a decade and a half ahead of him in my lifestyle approach.
I feel so sad for him. I hope he doesn't wind up an obese invalid like the rest of his family. Nothing I can do but wait this out.
The shared effort at shoveling snow is over. Now the Boston snow-police are out giving tickets to those who shovel snow on to the freshly plowed streets - a tradition felt as a right to long time tax payers in the city who, incidentally, have few places to put the stuff.
Sending supportive thoughts, Dagmar, that the New Year brings a new prespective to your DH.
Thank goodness someone is buying the product & using it, leading to the continuation of its commercial empire & advertising buying, so I can continue to enjoy it every winter.
I don't mean the actual exercise program. I am too much of a wimp to try that. Also, I have this over-civilized apartment, with the old waxed oak floors, Aubusson carpet, Victorian chairs covered in velvet -- an environment in which there is no corner available for me to start doing exercises that will involve thump, thump, thumping to alarm the neighbors, pool of sweat on the floor, etc.
No, I mean the infomercials incessantly pushing P90X. I watch them on TV at the gym during my solo sessions on the elliptical. Man, if that is not motivation, I don't know what is. If that guy can do handclaps while propelling himself upward off the ground into a pushup, damn it, surely I can finish the next 30 seconds at resistance level of 12.
And I really love the phrase "muscle confusion."
And it's nice to look at those guys' bodies, all baby-oiled & posed in flattering lighting.
No one will kick sand in their faces on the beach anymore.
(Then, after the video shoot, they can go lie on tanning beds & do their laundry & they will have fulfilled their GTL requirement for the day.)
Dagmar, maybe your husband needs to hit bottom during this holiday before he'll begin to think about how healthier habits would clear his head & keep him from hitting the lows that inevitably follow the binges.
Bill, do you have the same Darwinian fight for parking spaces that ensues down here after big snowstorms? In my old apartment, I parked on the street for several years, and I used to hate cleaning off my car, and clearing a space, & then having to go somewhere. Inevitably, I'd come back & someone would have taken my immaculately carved-out little room, and I would have to subject my car to crashing into some messy space that someone had barely cleared, just enough to free their car. Or there would be no space at all, since the piles of snow reduced the curb space considerably, and I'd circle the block repeatedly, waiting for someone to drive away. In some cities, I've heard that neighborhoods agree to the "save your space" convention, where you put lawn chairs or garbage cans in the space you've cleared, to mark it & save it. But my neighborhood was more lawless & competitive than that, and those markers would never have been recognized & would have been trashed in the snow bank or led to "snow rage" arguments on the street.
((reveling in the thoughts that I don't have to deal with snow))
Well, I was a bit off with my DD's weight, but not far. She's 195 at 5'6". She's "super stoked" to start the P90X thing, but doesn't know if she'll survive the workouts. She does like the meal plans and all the tracking stuff. Frankly, I hate diets that give you meal plans. I like to eat what I like to eat and hate for someone to tell me otherwise. I mean, what's wrong with eating egg white omelets every morning?--you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, my Dad was admitted to the hospital yesterday which means my wheelchair bound Mom is stuck at home. My brother and SIL left town to visit her parents for a week so there is really no one around other than the neighbors (who are doing far more than I would expect). Basically, my Dad was having chest pain prior to coming here for Thanksgiving and he decided not to tell anyone because he was looking forward to the vacation. Once here, he had no problems at all. But back home he started feeling ill again. Wheezing and being unable to cross the room without sitting down to rest, slurred speech, chest or stomach pain. We thought that he should be on oxygen 24/7--something that his stubbornness is saying he doesn't want. Anyway, he was admitted for pleural effusion and now they're trying to determine if it is blood or an infection around his lungs. It's pressing on stuff causing the chest and stomach pain. We tend to think it is blood because his bleeding time was way off, so we think he was getting too much coumadin. We'll see. He should be home this weekend.
But thanks to the neighbors for all their work. The next door east neighbor is a paramedic and basically he told my Dad that either he was to call an ambulance right then or call his doctor first thing in the morning. Of course my stubborn Dad waited til morning, but the doctor sent him straight to the ER. And the neighbor to the west was going to have a nice New Year's Eve party for the neighborhood, but canceled due to my Dad and one neighbor who is sick with a cold. She instead is going to fix a quiche and bring it over and stay with my Mom for NYE. It's good to have friends.
Dagmar, hope you can find some solace on the dog sit.
Saef, you crack me up. I had to read aloud to DH your passage about the P90X infomercials.
Allison, I'm with you, I can't stand meal plans. What if I don't feel like eating a salad for lunch or fish for dinner? I need the flexibility that calorie counting gives me.
Hugs to you Allison. I hope your dad does okay.
I have no idea what my dd weighs but it is much more than your dd. Dh and I spent a long time talking about it yesterday. She is doing so well with her studies and has two great part-time jobs. If she could only get her weight under control. Sigh....
And hugs to you Dagmar. I do hope your dh comes around.
So DH is doing a New Year's Eve show at a bar and left no contact info so that his band mates can tell him this. If he continues drinking today up north, stays the night, and then shows up at home tomorrow he's in for a rough night.
I am not sympathetic.
I will be spending NYE with my cats and then at the dog's house. No time to arrange anything else (DH and I had a plan which is now in the toilet).
No drinking, eating or sulking allowed. The dog and I just signed up for a 3K walk on New Year's Day called, appropriately enough, "Hair of the Dog".
I will then go over and visit DH and be insufferably cheerful and healthy.
Dagmar - to you honey. You are more patient than I would be in your dealings with DH.
Allison - hope your dad is okay. I love that the neighbors are going to hang with your mom instead of having the party, that is so sweet.
Micele - sorry DD is still struggling with her weight, that is a hard one to get a handle on.
Saef - the P90X commercial story made me snicker.
Bill - I would never have thought about getting a ticket for shoveling snow from a parking space into the street. Weird.
Jessica - good job on not overstuffing on the food, even if you ate a lot of junk! And good luck with your next round of houseguests!
DH is back at work, has been back since Tuesday actually. He still feels pretty queasy, but is soldiering through it. I just feel run down and tired. Tomorrow is an off day, which is good. Whew.
I have no idea what my dd weighs but it is much more than your dd. Dh and I spent a long time talking about it yesterday. She is doing so well with her studies and has two great part-time jobs. If she could only get her weight under control. Sigh....
Oh, Michele, you have no idea how much this post of yours resonated with me. My parents used to have such talks together about me, too.
I didn't see them as sympathetic expressions of concern, though. I saw them as intrusive & as setting a standard that I felt hopeless in meeting. I was running the rest of my life so well, why did I have to be perfect in every way?
Let me hasten to add, I know that's not how your husband & you are thinking. You just want her to be happy & healthy. But I'm overly attached to my surviving parent, because of what we went through with my father's suffering & death from stomach cancer in 2008, and have reverted back in some ways to a relationship that resembles what we had more than 20 years ago, which gives me access again to old feelings of adolescent rebelliousness.
Anyway, I've got the same feelings as you & your husband, with a role reversal. I'm concerned about my mother's health & her eating habits, which I'm witnessing intimately during her visit with me. I wish she'd eat more vegetables. I wish she'd take a walk every day. I wish she didn't pile up pills at her placemat at breakfast & dinner. But what can we do, except watch & be ready to talk, if approached?
DH is back at work, has been back since Tuesday actually. He still feels pretty queasy, but is soldiering through it. I just feel run down and tired. Tomorrow is an off day, which is good. Whew.
If I had my way, I would issue an edict in which nearly nobody had to work during the week between Christmas & New Years.
I've been working all through this week, and feel vaguely resentful about it, though not of people who were smart enough to take time off. I should remember this about myself, that I get aggrieved & full of intense self-pity when I'm poring over spreadsheets & editing PowerPoint slides for the salespeople at our company while I know, I JUST KNOW that elsewhere, people are taking advantage of the 70% off sales & going to matinees of "True Grit."
Yesterday, I succumbed to the temptation of sloth & kept walking away from the spreadsheets to the dining room, where the TV was playing a marathon of "Toddlers and Tiaras." I kept lingering in the doorway with my decaf maple nut coffee, watching & watching. False eyelashes on eight-year-olds. Six-year-olds gyrating their booties. Big hair on third-graders. The fascination of the abomination!
(Why has everyone named their daughter Kaylie or Brianna? Why would someone name a child Brooklyn? To me, living down here, it would be like naming one's child Staten Island.)
Today I'm sworn to keep CNN on all day & put my head down & finish those PowerPoint slides.
But I can't wait till a day off, to luxuriate in whatever idiocy appeals to me.
Saef - your posts are good for me. I've been somewhat resentful of having to work and of being sick and run down this week, which hasn't been helped by the fact that I am the only person in the office today. Nor by the fact that I was tending to sick child and running around crazy all week last week when I was on vacation. Your last post made me laugh out loud, something I really needed.
I have a friend with a daughter named Brianna, but to her credit she planned out the names of her kids in high school and pulled Brianna from a fantasy novel we were in love with at the time.
There were three Brooklyn's in DSS's pre-k class, two in his kindergarten class. And not the same two from pre-k...
When I mentioned the names of two of my clients' kids (different families) - Savanah Lee and Sierra Rae - DH asked me why they were naming their daughters after strippers.
I too am working during this week (although this dog sit is an easy one and my cats - yes I'm having to go home and feed them - are also easy) and I too have a vague feeling of being very put upon .
I don't really have any days off - Christmas didn't count - this year but I remember what it was like last year to actually sit around the house for several days and get cuaght up in all sorts of reading/writing/daydreaming stuff.
I'm already plotting how to not travel over 1200 kilometeres next year. DH is in agreement (for once) with me over this. I think it was the expense of the catsitter, car, and motel ($600+ all told) that put him off going to see his family for 2 days next year.
to you all. I'm still alive, had a nice and busy Christmas. Now trying to get everything ready to leave for Hawaii on 1/10. Housesitter is coming by this morning to get caught up on all the stuff (it's the first time we've used her).
It's been cold here, and windy, but yesterday was the first snow we've had since early December - and it was only 3" or so.
Made it through Christmas maintaining my weight so I'm happy about that.
Dagmar - you are much more patient with your DH than I would be. Enjoy your "Hair of the DOg" walk.
The names thing is funny. I worked with a girl who's girls were named Savannah and Sequoia. And there were a set of twins born at the hospital I worked at named Millennium and, oh my, my mind is failing me, but it was worse (if that can be) than Millennium. I went to school with a boy named Madison, and now my best friend's niece is named Madison.
We are working this week, although several of our suppliers are not. It makes for a very slow week. We contemplated taking the week off, but thought that many of our employees didn't have the vacation time for it and simply cannot afford to go that many days without pay, so we are working. My office assistant is off today, but that is not for her convenience. It's been raining here a lot and the big storm caused a substantial roof leak in her (rented) condo. Several calls to her landlord and the HOA office went unreturned before Christmas and today the HOA president, an inspector and the HOA's attorney are inspecting all the damaged units (her's is currently without a ceiling in her bedroom and several walls have been reduced to studs). They're planning on suing the roofer who did repairs last year.
No real news on my Dad. I talked to my Mom last night and she said he had gone for some tests, but he wasn't sure what the tests were. He's had a few more units of blood, so obviously he's bleeding internally. I'm sure I'll know more when my SIL calls (she's a nurse and works at the hospital where he is--but not as a nurse). She's on vacation, but plans on talking to the doctor directly about my Dad's condition. My Mom was a bit disconcerted when the doctor called her the first night (so late that he woke her up) and asked if my Dad had a living will (which he does and since he was at the hospital last year they should have it on file).
hope you can find some solace on the dog sit.
you crack me up. I had to read aloud to DH your passage about the P90X infomercials.
which is now in the toilet).
sit is an easy one and my cats - yes I'm having to go home and feed them - are also easy) and I too have a vague feeling of being very put upon 
.
next year.
to you all. I'm still alive, had a nice and busy Christmas. Now trying to get everything ready to leave for Hawaii on 1/10. Housesitter is coming by this morning to get caught up on all the stuff (it's the first time we've used her). 