[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Eating was on plan, CREDIT moi. Snacks remain a problem as the house is filled with goodies of some sort or another. Just feels right to dip in. Dinner was our third evening in a row to eat the pot roast. No complaints from me; it's an ideal comfort food. Bok choy was the veggie. Never tire of that either.

Excitement was bringing the recycle bin to the curb then noting that I was the only house on the street doing that. Turns out that yesterday was a Federal Holiday - no pick ups from our Department of Public Works. I must have encountered this sometime in my life when Christmas fell on Sunday and just don't remember. Our big debate was whether we can recycle Christmas wrapping paper. After carefully reading the site website, we had to go through the bag we'd collected when opening gifts and remove all with metallic glitter or 'frocking' (might have the wrong word for anything attached to the paper). After a few minutes of work, our recycle bin only contains legal material. Seems like a lot of effort for such a small dent into saving the planet.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Congrats for finding a co-ed acceptable Christmas rom-com. That would be a challenge around here. Yep, the physical book of Atlas of the Heart is just stunning.

maryann - Look forward to hearing how your pickleball experience turns out. It's exploded around here. I do enjoy reading how much you admire your DS and his path in life.

Karen (karenrn) - You're a kind spouse to work to create frozen meals for when you're away in Thailand.

curlyjax - Yay for your DS being willing to let you know his plans for the near future. LOL about exchanging the sweatshirt for your DS, "I forget how big his torso is."

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

family dinner skills Try the following strategies: . . .

Take a walk. Excuse yourself and walk around the block, if you find you're getting too stressed or tempted.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 154.

[curlyjax]

Yesterday was a mellow day. I got DS's sweatshirt exchanged but that was it from my list. I picked up a few groceries from the nearby store and didn't make it to Wegmans as DD hasn't made her list. DS disappeared to his friend's house at noon and I didn't see him for the rest of the day. I ate a few healthy things and quite a few cookies too. I only got into a minor squabble with DD, and then we went to my widow friend's house for a game night with her girls, which was quite fun.I did not get a walk in but oh well. Back to work today and I am quite ready to be out of the house and with other people. It is a quiet, reflective time this week and i'm ready to think about what needs to get done in the house etc. I never got my vision board done last year- January would be the perfect time to do it.
Gardenerjoy- how nice you found a romcom that would work for both of you.
Maryann- I hear you about the unconditional love, it is very difficult at times, and it is so hard to let worries etc go. Parenting is such a hard job. Wow, that is a lot of family to be around!
Bill-I have that same question about recycling wrapping paper, good to know. I should have said DS torso is long, not big, like his dad's was- he was 6'4" and had trouble getting things like shirts to fit his long arms.

[karenrn]

Good morning coaches,

Food was pretty much on plan yesterday, but I did have some leftover cherry dessert. Dh cut his smaller so he has one more portion, but mine is gone which is good. We had a nice walk yesterday. Previously dh walked much slower than I do so I figured I would have to slow it down for him, but since he has been walking for over a year and a half every day he's off work he has really sped up. Our paces are perfectly matched now. Didn't do anything big the rest of the day other than a couple of phone conversations and ordered some holiday goofy headband things for next year for hiking.

This morning I'm meeting my regular hiking partner to hike. It looks like we will have rain for a couple of days beginning tomorrow, so I want to get out while I can. I can always go to the gym when it rains.

Have a great day!

[maryann]

Good Morning, Coaches.

I packed up from the house for a week's travels. Ranch to Pismo Beach to Monterey. I made a food decision that worked out quite well yesterday. I told myself I had enough holidaying. Another week of it could be tragic. So I got out my leftover Prolon fast boxes. The crackers have gone bad but the soups and bars are still good. I packed up a box for the week with my vitamix machine, protein powder, goji berries and dark chocolate. I am allowed to supplement with any veggies, fruits, legumes, or protein that pass my way. It worked last night. I made the butternut squash dry mix in my vitamix. It cooks as it mixes. A miracle. It t]Took the edge of hunger. Focused on the babies. Excellent job. Six more days to go. I am experimenting on reconstituting goji berries for a kale smoothie. That will help when I am in a hotel . Feels good to have plan. I have cut down my sleep pill from two to 1 and woke at 5:00 am. That feels better. 7 hours sleep. I immediately starting drinking water when I woke up.

I have a free trial for chess.com lessons. It is very interesting and I feel it is a more productive use of my mind than duotrigordle. Besides, there is a social aspect with clubs and such as I retire. Again, I must mix these new hobbies with calorie burning ones as well. I did do yoga yesterday.

BBE; How is the Brene Brown. I have given the "woman in the arena" plaque to many a friend.
Karen: Awesome for matched paces with DH.
Curly: It is nice to have a mix of family and quiet work. A vision board sounds helpful.

[gardenerjoy]

We got out enough yesterday to fetch the mail and put the trash and recycling bins out. We'll want to do that again today, bringing the bins back up our steep driveway. It's supposed to go over freezing today so that should help with the residual frozen stuff on our steep driveway.

I appreciated being back to a more normal eating plan yesterday.

Exercise +65, 1450/1700 minutes for December

maryann: I've been enjoying lichess.org since DB and I went to the Fischer/Spassky exhibit in the summer. I downloaded their app on my phone and play puzzles a lot. I gave Story Time Chess to the great-niblings for Christmas. The initial report is that the 7-year-old nephew liked the chess part and the 4-year-old niece liked the story part.
The traditional Waldorf salad has mayo, but I saw recipes on the internet that used yogurt instead. Any creamy dressing would give a nod to the traditional. A vinaigrette would probably be tasty as well.

BillBlueEyes: Oops! I just realized that getting our bins out last night might not have been the right move. Checking the city website....Yep. Pick up is tomorrow. Sigh. Well, we'll have to work that one out.

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Spent most of the day attempting to use a "convenience" made available by the institution that holds my retirement monies. To be inconvenient, they require a notarized signature from DW that she knows that I'm taking the money. This is to protect THEM from getting sued in case I'm stealing from her. (By law, she has legitimate dibs on retirement money put aside when I was working while married to her.) In past years, we go to the nearest branch of our bank and spend time in the office of a young "Vice President" who manually does the deed. The new convenience offered is to get her signature notarized on line by a notary who looks at her driver's license held up to my computer's camera, has their robot ask questions about her that they've pulled up from somewhere, and then do an electronic notarization. All for only $25. Sounds like a winner. Alas, the form they sent me had to be uploaded to the notary's web site and something glitched; it just wouldn't appear even after haughtily announcing that the upload had completed. DW reminded me that we both enjoy the walk to the bank where we're treated like important customers. We'll try again today. I do have an attitude about those places where life is supposedly made easy - but isn't.

Eating was on plan, CREDIT moi. Dinner was dahl - the pot roast is, unfortunately, all gone. I spent some time reading on the couch where I could see the Christmas tree. Such a joy. This year, as always, I begin to lobby that we keep it up longer. Also this year, also as always, DW lobbies that it goes before the needles all shed at once and she can have her living room back. I reminded her that we have a relative that kept his tree up until the 4th of July one year. She reminds me that he's starkers, in her humble opinion. I do try to remember that it's not the only living plant in the house. Where "living" is loosely used for a cut tree. Especially one that has stopped consuming water.



Joy (gardenerjoy) - Going up and down a steep, icy, driveway is tiring work. I've been getting short videos of folks in Seattle crawling down the icy streets. Crawling! Sliding down your own driveway would be a pain.

maryann - Bon Voyage on your one-week travel to familiar places. You sound prepared with your eating plan. Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart continues to engage my attention. I fear I might begin to think of it as a "self help" book at some point and slow down.

Karen (karenrn) - Smart that your DH cuts his cherry dessert smaller to make it last. Neat that you're at the same pace now.

curlyjax - Yay for each small task completed. Game night sounds fun.

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

family dinner skills Try the following strategies: . . .

Do deep breathing. If things get tense, take relaxing breaths (instead of a drink).

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 154.

[curlyjax]

Work was pretty quiet. We had some cabinets put in which will be helpful as we get a lot of donated equipment, and can store them there. I should focus on clearing out my office a bit and go thru old files etc. 2 of us ended up going out for a sandwich, and then I got into the chocolate kisses that are still sitting around. Something stressful happened near the end of the day which affects my colleague more than me fortunately (she says guiltily) but I still ended up stress eating a bit. We ended up getting chipotle for dinner, and I watched tv for hours and got nothing done. Oh well, i'm calling it a relaxation day with no fighting at least. The house is such a mess I don't know where to start and I seem to be unmotivated to do anything. I did sign up for the no BS workshop on January 1 for losing weight, so that will be a good way to kick off the new year.
Gardenerjoy- I had to remind myself it was a holiday too.
Maryann- sounds like you have a good reset plan going.
Karen-Fun to have some goofy things planned for next year.
Bill- I have similar feelings as your DW, I'm ready for it to come down now. It has to come down before DS goes back to school so he can dispose of it anyhow.

[gardenerjoy]

We managed a short walk yesterday with a lucky coincidence of being out when the smarter neighbors put out their trash and recycling bins, so we got a bit of a visit, too.

We'll have a high well over freezing today. I'm hoping that it warms up quickly enough that I don't have to clean up the car in order to do a grocery run this morning. We managed to go an extra day from what I planned, so I'm grateful for that. Looking ahead, weather shouldn't be an issue for next week's shopping.

Tomorrow's high is predicted to be over 60, which is pretty hard to wrap my head around.

Exercise +55, 1505/1700 minutes for December

[karenrn]

Good afternoon coaches,

I did get out for a hike yesterday and then went to the Whitney Houston movie in the afternoon. It was sad since I thought she was fabulous and then to get into drugs and an early death. It also showed that her Dad acting as her manager made a mess of her finances. Seems like that has happened often to stars. Food was pretty much on plan, but I did have an extra snack. I woke up extra early today and no hiking cause it is a rainy day. It feels like a Washington kind of day, cloudy and damp. I went to Costco and the regular grocery store. I needed all the paper products at Costco and some other things at the regular grocery store.

GardenerJoy We're in the low 50's and will be 50's and 60's for ten days, so you are about the same. Looks like you'll be getting colder again though.

Curlyjax No BS should be a fun way to get refocused. It sure would be easier for you if people didn't bring so much candy and things to the office. That would be my undoing.

Bill I'm wanting to leave my tree up a bit longer too. It feels so cozy and Otis is just loving it. Dh says it's coming down this weekend and I suppose he's right.

Maryann Have fun on your travels this week. Well heck no wonder you are sleeping such a long time some days. I'm glad one pill doesn't knock you out quite as much.

[maryann]

Good Evening, Coaches.

Another marathon day. Yesterday's food did not good to plan at all. I put it to bed. Today's food was much better including taking Mom, sis, nephew, niece and grandbaby to Il Fornio. I had a salad and a small side of pasta. ta - da. I will head off to Pismo Beach at about 9 for the next reunion. Mom is well enough to go. I think she felt better when she got out of the house. All around a successful day except for some sad news about my oldest niece who is deep into addiction with 3 little kids. My prayers will be my focus to help. I am heading out in Spring to Annapolis where they live. All I can offer is my experience, strength and hope as a recovered alcoholic whose son has never seen his mother drink.

I think I'll play a ten minute chess and hit the rack.
wave to all.

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Continued with the quest to get the Spousal Waiver Form notarized using an online service. It's such a good idea that I want to figure it out for future use. Solved the problem of uploading the form; don't know exactly which trick worked, but I tricked it into uploading. Got DW in the chair next to me with her driver's license. Jumped through the hoops. Then she had two minutes to answer "personal questions" that they'd gleaned about her from public information. She FAILED!!! "Too many wrong answers; you can try again after 4:03 pm." Just amazing. She failed to answer questions about her own past to their satisfaction. We aren't, of course, told which questions she failed. Certainly she correctly answered that her Toyota was black. And the model year. But they offered five ranges of time for the duration that she's lived at this address and none of them covered how long we've been here; had to check "None of the above." l suspect we'll never know.

Went back at 4:30 pm after our time-out sitting in our cubby. This time she passed the tests. Held up her MA driver's license to my laptop's camera: front, then back. Answered the standard serious questions from the online notary who we could see on a zoom-like screen like, "Are you doing this of your own free will?" The notary digitally applied a signature to the document along with his stamp and signed off. We paid the $25 fee by credit card; uploaded the notarized document to the place holding my retirement money hostage and got a message back that they'll be gracious enough to send us (our) money to live another year. We used notarize dot com because that's what was recommended. (I notice by Google search that a bunch of options exist.) Despite our snafu's, I recommend it.

Eating was on plan, CREDIT moi. Trip to the supermarket was uneventful - maybe ten percent of us wore masks. The news headlines of massive new waves of COVID cases apparently aren't believed by most folks in my line of sight. Spent a short bit of time in the dark last night just sitting with out Christmas tree feeling its magic. Brings out the warmth of my childhood like nothing else can.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - LOL at "when the smarter neighbors put out their trash and recycling bins" because I feel that way when I get caught a day early. We're also predicted to have a burst of warm days. My cynical side thinks that it's getting us set up for the bitter month of February.

maryann - Il Fornio looks like a nice restaurant for a good pasta. I wish you well when attempting to help your niece.

Karen (karenrn) - Ouch for the reminder that Whitney Houston's life ended early.

curlyjax -A relaxation day is a good thing. Neat that your DS's schedule for returning to school gives you a hard deadline for removing your Christmas tree.

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

family dinner skills Try the following strategies: . . .

Defuse the tension. A little humor goes a long way when things are tense. Make light of others' critical comments. Let them roll off your back.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 154.

[gardenerjoy]

We had an HVAC guy in at 7 this morning. We've got a plan to fix the problem in the upstairs unit to get it fully functioning again. But it will be at least a week before the parts come in.

I'm grateful that we have a plan and that we can afford to implement it. I'm grateful that the plan isn't to replace the entire furnace. I'm grateful that we could afford that, if we had to, but it's great that we don't. I'm grateful that it's going to be quite a bit warmer in the next week so that the part of the furnace that is functional can do the job.

In other words, there is nothing here that I need to eat over. I just want to keep reminding myself that all is well, because parts of me think that 7am service calls and incoming parts and future service calls mean that things aren't well.

Exercise +55, 1560/1700 minutes for December

[karenrn]

Good morning coaches,

Food was on plan yesterday. I took 1/2 a Costco sleep aid to see if it would get me back on track with sleep. I had a really good nights sleep and then got out for a couple hours of hiking with my friend. I stopped at the store on the way home to pick up a couple of ingredients for a cabbage salad and some bulk steel cut oats. Now it's time to get in the shower and dressed and then I've got a few hours of batch type cooking. I'm going to bake tofu and roast sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, butternut squash and other veggies and make the cabbage salad. With all of that we can make meals for at least a few days. It's a cooler somewhat grey day so warming the house a little extra with the oven on will feel good.

I'm getting prepared to buy a new car. We don't buy cars often, so it doesn't seem routine to me. I had to move a little money and I'm thinking about what I want and watching videos on how to negotiate. Here I thought it would be good to be able to say we're paying cash, which we may or may not, and the videos say that isn't good. They would rather we finance because they can make money on that too. Interesting. I'm hoping to get a very reliable new or nearly new SUV. I've been driving my BMW X3 for 12 years. It is a 2007 and we bought it in 2010 with 7,000 miles on it. It has been a reliable car, but now I'm starting to worry about it. I can't do electric because of my longer trips and I want a less expensive car that when it does need service doesn't break the bank. I really hate this kind of thing, but oh well.

GardenerJoy I'm glad the heat will be fixed and it isn't a huge deal.

Bill What a hassle to get your own money. Are you moving it to your single account? Is that why they need the form. I just moved money from one of my retirement accounts to our joint trust and they didn't ask for that. One of the cars I'm considering is a Toyota RAV4. My friend has had one for seven years without one problem.

Maryann I'm glad your Mom is feeling good enough for a nice outing. I'm so sorry about your niece. I would think your experience would be so helpful for her to see your success and that it is possible.

Waving to Curlyjax and Penny!

[maryann]

Good Evening, Coaches from Pismo.

Exhausted but first family meal here went very well. The teens and twenty somethings had a great time. Awesome. I played scrabble with Mom and SIL then went with them to hotel. i left the boys to do whatever they want. I am exhausted.Food was better than yesterday so that is good enough for me. No exercise but I will walk tomorrow.

Karen: I am so happy DH is in charge of motorized vehicles. What ever he says goes. I pay for half out of my account. Easy enough because we buy trucks and service vehicles for the ranch and we only deal with fleet service. Good Luck with your research.
Joy: Household needs do stress me as well. I think it goes back to living in a house when my father did everything and he was often explosive. Paying for services was not an option when I was growing up.
BBE; Yes I have embraced online fixes. Depositing checks, signing off meetings at work, Instacart to send food to Mom. The only thing I haven't accomplished was getting her meds delivered. A good friend that lives next to her jumped in. What would we do without friends.

Off to do some chess lesson. i got creamed by my nephew. I am in the middle of learning overall planning and not protecting pieces. In process is just fine.

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Walked, CREDIT moi, to include an errand at the drug store. They keep pushing for me to let them deliver prescriptions. I resist because I religiously check their tiny bag to see that it contains exactly what I expect. My take is that it's very easy to fix a mistake while standing at the counter rather than to make the argument that a pill bottle that left their store doesn't contain the right stuff. I presume that if I refuse it at the counter it goes back into stock but if it's been in my home I presume it has to be discarded. Don't recall ever catching the pharmacist making a "mistake." I do recall receiving a pill bottle with only three tablets, "to last you for three days until we can restock." Glad I was standing there for that one.

Had to face Valentine's candy at the drug store. Valentines!!! The sugar-drug pushing at the very place where I go to get health-sustaining drugs is a travesty. The Christmas candy aisles are all buy-one-get-one-at-50%. Awkwardly, that annoys me because it should be 50% off. Then I'd feel like a hero for refusing. The Christmas wrapping paper was half-off.



Joy (gardenerjoy) - Amazing that you had a 7 am appointment with your HVAC guy. Such good news that it's a reasonable fix. Super Kudos for having gratitude that you're able to make the fix rather than annoyance that you have a problem.

maryann - Congrats for being able to play a family scrabble game - without killing each other. It's neat that you're taking your chess seriously.

Karen (karenrn) - Congrats for getting 12 years out of your current car. Most of the people we know find us odd that we drive a car that long. [Nope, I was moving retirement money into our joint account. The place where I had earned it is super conservative protecting itself from lawsuits from spouses claiming they were excluded. A minor annoyance; we still get our money.]

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

Memory Box Cards

The first time you follow your plan during family dinner and find that experience particularly meaningful, file it in your Memory Box, as Heather did:

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 155.