Weekly Chat June 16 - 22
 

Hey All! Happy Monday!

I’m a little stressed today. Lots to do. I’m going on my last trip for like a month, Philly. Which means I have to go to my internship and take care of a few things (eventhough it is my day off), go to CVS, pack, and do some cleaning in my apartment so my roommate doesn’t kill me. Plus of course I lost one of my contacts yesterday and they just changed my script so I haven’t ordered new ones yet, that means I have to call see if they will give me a free trial pair and order some. Luckily they know me there are will hopefully help me out. I also will get to the gym!

How is everyone elses day?

OMG...Sorry that I have been MIA lately...this has been a CRAZY week.

I'm not sure how much you guys have been hearings/seeing about the horrible flooding in Iowa, but we are right in the thick of all of it. It seems like Iowa City is going to be looking a lot like Cedar Rapids here today or tomorrow. Cedar Rapids is such a mess right now! 100 something city blocks are under water....hundreds of homes are ruined. The entire downtown area is a mess!

I left Iowa City last Tuesday...thought I was going to be going back today. Not happening lol. All the roads are closed...every bridge is out and the interstates are all closed off. The flood stages are supposed to peak today or tomorrow. I almost don't even want to watch the news. They already have horrible flooding by the river...ug! Our house should be ok. It is pretty high. I really hope it is ok. I'm not going to be able to get back there to save anything. We weren't in the manditory evaculation area, but the suggested. I almost feel guilty being here and not helping...if I was stuck there like so many others, I would be out there sandbagging. That would be quite the workout.

So...that is kind of scary. I really hope our house is ok. One good thing is I got my cat here with me. I brought her home because she had a vet appointment. My roommate and her dog got out late last week (they momentarily re opened one of the highways out of Iowa City). She almost didn't make it out. She has been trying to find away out of Iowa City, but htye had all of the roads blocked. She saw them blocking the traffic again in her review mirror when she crossed the barrier.

Ok...so, the flooding is a mess. I DO have a great news though! We got a place! Yup, last week Steve and I went looking around Dubuque and found a really nice appartment for $450 a month. It is one out of four appartments in a huge Victorian House. Plenty of room for parking and allows cats. It has two bedrooms. A cute livingroom (it i all dark panneled wood...ceiling to walls), a nice sized kitchen (no dishwasher, but we will just make do lol), and a HUGE master badroom. My bedroom has a walk in closet! So, I am pretty excited about that. We both are! We are offically moving in early July...we are going to do some painting the 1st though the 5th/6th and move in on the 6th.

So, that is one thing...the other is I think we are getting a new car! Yup, my purple people eater is about the hit the dust. We had decided to try to fix the air (I've been without air for about a year and a half). We found out a lot of the wiring is about to go when they went in to take a look at the air conditioning, the air is also basically unfixable. IT would cost between $500-$800 to fix the stupid car and it might not even fix the problem.

So, we are looking at a 2007 Cheverolet Cobalt Metalic Blue (a really dark blue...almost purple!). Yeah, I guess we don't mess around. LOL, no we figure if we buy a cheap $500 car we will be making up for it with fixing during the next few years. We found a great deal! These cars are great on gas milage (36 mpg on the highway and 31 in town). It is small...in a color that we both like, and within our price range. We are looking at around $10,000 ...gosh, that sounds like a LOT of money. Car payments are only going to be about $190 a month though. So...that is kind of exciting! A few silver linings in this mess we have going right now in Iowa.

Diet wise I'm doing ... ok. I am sticking pretty well to my diet. I am right now without a gym. I have been meaning to get out and walk, but I've been so busy. I will need to see where I am at on Wednesday. I miss working out though. I don't know if we are even going to have a gym left when I get there :(

Sounds like your week is starting out kind of rough :( Busy at least. That sucks about your contacts...I hope they work something out. I'm sure they will. :smug: I hope you get time to run to the gym.

Oh! And ladies! I fixed the link to my diet/weddding blog. We have a little less than 19 weeks before our wedding (my Fiance' started the countdown lol). I am going to try ot add some more today too...I think.

Tessa, love your wedding blog. Just saw you will also be having an ELCA service...we are truly crazy the same!!

Hope things get better in your neck of the woods. Glad you can find some silver lining in it all! We had all of the flooding down here last year and it was NUTS, but in the end everyone is okay and the water did recede! Hope you come out unscathed.

Hard to believe this wedding stuff is coming up so quickly!

As for me, the scale is up, i'm bloated and that's about it. But it'll all be okay!! We also got some wedding stuff up and running. I need to call on a cake still, but i have gotten several other things done, so i'm feeling good about that! If i can get the water out of my system i'll be feeling wonderful!

We're also still looking for another dog, so we'll see what happens...just waiting it out.

AND finally it is HOT here...95ish or hotter. Gotta love that!

Sorry to hear about your floods Tessa! I'm from SE Minnesota originally and we had floods really bad last year. There are still people in FEMA trailers and now the floods are starting again. I hope everyone in the whole area is ok.

I'll have to read your wedding blog too. I've just recently changed my wedding plans. My fiance and I were going to have a destination wedding in Mexico, but we realize it will be very expensive and then not as many people will be able to attend. So we are going to have it at a nice hotel on the ocean near where we live and then leave from there for a honeymoon, then family won't have to worry about passports etc.

If I lose 1-2 lbs per week at most I can meet my goal way before the wedding, which we plan on November of next year. So I know I have plenty of time. What I'm worried about is procrastinating. I've told myself before "If I start now, I can lose so much weight before "this" or "that" (summer, a vacation, a wedding etc)... and I always wait until the last second to be motivated. I do NOT want to do that this time around, I want to be 125 by my wedding day. Does anyone else worry they won't make their goal by their wedding or goal date?

Hope everyone is having a good day!

Well today is working out. I got contacts so I’m covered there. I went to my internship (which was good because I talked to the other student who is going on the trip and we are on the same page on everything), went to CVS and bought the stuff I needed, went to the gym, did laundry, decided to hook up the other VCR so I could re-hook up the Wii and play Wii fit. Now all I need to do is pack and put away my laundry. Woo Hoo! Also on a good note I did not get Chinese for lunch and dinner like I was planning on (going out of town = little food in apartment). Instead I made a reduced fat peanut butter and banana sandwich for lunch (I went to the gas station and bought a banana just for that) and then made mac and cheese (with fat free maragine and fat free milk) and broccoli for dinner. Dinner didn’t taste as well as I hoped (which is weird because normally I LOVE mac and cheese) but oh well still better on my waist then Chinese.
Otherwise I’m a little disappointed because I was trying to change my airline ticket to stay an extra day or two because I have friends in Philly but it is going to cost like $300 so no go and I feel as though when I talked to my friend she may be blowing me off. She knows I have a tight schedule and the best day I have available is tomorrow so I suggested we get together for dinner or if she wasn’t available for dinner then for drinks later (I’ve been talking about this for like 4 weeks) and she tells me today that she is volunteering at the thrift store tomorrow and probable wont be available. I keep telling her I have no idea how late I’m going to be the rest of the week so I don’t know if I’m going to be available but whatever. I can say that I’ve made every effort.

Colaz – Hearing about your evacuation makes me realize that things could be a lot worse. Good luck and I’m sorry. Also it sounds like your new apartment is very nice, I gave up my walk in closet when I moved and miss it terribly.

Skinny – Good luck with wedding planning, remember drink lots of water that will help with the bloating.

Julie – My ultimate goal only kindof has a date, it is a working goal in my opinion. I would like to be there by my birthday in October, I don’t know if it will happen. If it doesn’t then I’ll push it back to my lawschool graduation in May. I try not to focus on the dates because that is so much pressure and I want to continue to lose my weight the healthy way and not do a crash diet or something like that.

OMG I want junk food. I'm having a major sweet craving ... like ice cream or m & ms. I just had a 100 calorie cupcake pack but that isn't helping. I have to go to the store downstairs in a bit to pick up something for my trip and I'm afraid I'll give into getting some junk food. Blah. Ok I'm going to try and focus on packing and looking at my small clothing as a reminder of why I shouldn't go get a jumbo bag of M & M or a pink of ice cream!

Weird day today...I was supposed to be working 12 hours but they ended up not needing me in the morning and only needing me for an hour at night. That's all great, except that having to go BACK to the restaurant meant I couldn't really get a whole lot done during my day. I did finally get a haircut, though, so that was a plus.

I've been having more foot pain than I usually do lately, and it's making it a little hard to go to the gym...I have plantar fasciitis so I'm used to it, but this isn't fun :( I hope it gets better as I'm leaving work for over a week to do a theatre class.

Remember -- you can conquer that craving!! If you still REALLY want something sweet, maybe grab an individual hard candy or chocolate (they always have those by the register!!) That way, you'll satisfy the craving without a HUGE sweet binge that I know I would EASILY fall prey to!

Ok so prior to going to the store I remembered I had sweet potatos, so I put one in the oven and baked it. I figured that was a better choice because it is 1. fairly low in calories, 2. sweet, 3. full of fiber and nutrions, and 4. filling. While it was cooling I went down stairs and picked up what I needed for my trip (I'm going to be truthful, I bough a fifth of malibu to take with me since I know PA there are limited stores you can buy booze).

Arts - my SIL had the same foot problem and had to get surgery for it. Have your weight loss efforts helped it at all. That sucks that your work sent you home and then made you come back for only an hour.

I made an original goal of July 19th to lose 25lb. I started the first day (officially) in April, and figured I had almost 4 months to drop the weight. Sounds simple enough, but here we are, almost a month exactly from my goal date and I still have 15lb to lose which obviously unless I work out for 5 hours a day, I am not going to get there in time. I've come to the conclusion however that it's OK, I will get there one day, and it's 1lb at a time. Think of it that way. Every lb you drop, it's one more lb closer to your goal weight. When you set a specific day for yourself, you get stressed out a lot easier. I found when I told myself it's OK, eventually I'll get there instead of set a specific time goal, I exercised and ate better, and didn't worry as much if I saw a gain on the scale. Good luck to you!

This week hasn't been as good, I'm BACK in the 140s for the 54343th time. Grr.

remember -- my weight loss hasn't really affected it. It's really more to do with the fact that I'm on my feet ALL the time (waitressing), I dance (ballet and jazz), and have CRAZY high arches. Allllllllllllllllllll bad things that definitely lead toward plantar fasciitis. :( AMAZING conquering that craving, though. I'm seriously very inspired by your willpower!

Hey everybody! Oh Mondays... Even though I really like my job, knowing that I have a full week of work before the weekend is really disheartening.

I think the pressure of everything is getitng to me. I've been having trouble sleeping. I have an issue with perfectionism. I try and be the perfect daughter, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect friend, the perfect dieter, the perfect associate and well it's pretty hard as I'm sure you all know. The main reason is I feel like they overlap. If I try and be perfect and one aspect of my life then there's no way I can be perfect in the other. For example, I have been trying to join my friends in their weekly dinners, but in doing so I am going to restaurants all of the time and gaining weight. Hmmm

Yes Julie I do worry i wont' make it to my goal by my wedding. I have adjusted my goal though, so it will all be fine. My first goal was to get to 135 by March and i haven't hit that yet. A 3 month stall will do that to a person though. EEK!

Cookie Monster- I hear ya on the perfectionism thing. If make a mistake in something, I'm the hardest on myself. Especially with weight loss. I have to constantly work at letting things go, but it isn't always easy.

Skinnybeach- You've done quiet well! I'm sure you can lose a little more weight by the time of your wedding, even if you dont drop all of the pounds, you'll look toned up and beautiful!


I work 12 hour night shifts and I've had a few nights off now (I only work 3 per week) and now I have to go back in tonight. I am bringing my own meal, but it's SO hard when people order out, because what they are ordering is so much better (but worse for me) than what I packed. I'm eating what I bring tonight!!!

I did something goofy to my ankle. Funny thing is, I didn't DO anything. I stood up from a sitting position, and it feels like there is so much pressure in it, and it needs to crack or something. But it hasn't. Who the heck knows, I just hope it goes away soon, not to mention I'm a nurse and I walk a ton at work!

Have a good day everyone!