The last few days have been a struggle for me. Lack of sleep was the main trigger. Today I found out there is a lot of pressure for me to move. I currently rent my apartment through a program for people with mental health problems. It's very affordable (only $350 a month). I am scared that I am not going to be able to afford more then a room in a boarding house somewhere. This is very stressful for me.

Diet wise I guess I am doing ok. I still haven't gotten on the scale though.

Heather (lostbutstilltrying): to the group! We do share lots of support and encouragement here, so feel free to jump right in! Sorry you are struggling with depression and anxiety right now. Most, if not all, of us can relate, so you are definitely NOT alone! Congratulations on your 35 pound weight loss so far! Keep on rollin' with it!!! We will be here to cheer you on! So happy you posted.

Amy: I think I cross-posted with you yesterday, so missed saying hello. Glad to hear that Snickers is feeling better. Are you all packed yet? When is the big move date? Sorry your allergies are giving you fits!

Holly: Are those big blackflies horseflies, as Amy asked??? I HATE those things!!! Any bug that bites is NOT a friend of mine! Your descriptions of your desserts are killing me, but thanks for the warning note beforehand, so that I can mentally prepare for my spontaneous salivating while reading. Have you been out on your bike lately?

Fi: Thanks for checking in! Keep on BERPing, but make sure you are taking adequate breaks, too!

I am also lost on the "BB" thing. Is it a TV show?!? Please forgive my ignorance!

Trish: So sorry you are going through a rough time and that there is pressure on you to move. I will keep you in my prayers. Hang in there!


Going to work out at 4pm, so gotta run! Take good care, everyone!

Vermont- Cycling class is great. I think I'll go again on Friday hopefully.

ibelieveinme2- Yep, she's my little girl! Hopefully we can try KK again and it won't be so crowded.

seabiscuit- I call them horse flies too, until you mentioned that I wasn't sure if they were the same thing as black flies.

Welcome lostbutstilltrying!!! This is a great group, I know I get comfort from talking to everyone.

Monte- BB stands for Breaking Bad. It was a show about a chemistry teacher who began cooking meth in order to pay the medical bills as a result of his cancer. Really good show.

lilturtle- I will keep you in my prayers in regards to your housing situation.

ibelieveinme2- Hope your workout goes well. I skipped my workout today because we're having some severe storms. Don't really want to get stuck at the gym longer than necessary and don't want the possibility of hail damage on my car. :/ This is the first day I've skipped in a long time, so I'm not worried. I'm more bummed out than anything. Today was a lifting day. I LOVE lifting!

Heather - to our group! VERY supportive and gosh so nice here I hope you feel as welcome as I do to say hi, gripe, sob, or smile

Sabrina - - bummer you missed out on your gym time! especially doing something you love! do you lift heavy? I only have dumbbells that go to 15.

Kathleen - how was your 4 pm workout?

Trish-that must be really upsetting to have to deal with, I hope it works out! try to get some more sleep if you can

Fiona - chugging along with the BERPing! I bet you're so glad you started weeks before the arrival of the furry pouncers So you mourn the end of Breaking Bad as much as me?? for WEEKS after the last episode I would google "I miss breaking bad" to try to find support forums

Amy - - I hope your allergies weren't as bad today, as the day you had to leave volunteering early.

Monte Cristo - Hi! I planted some annuals in pots for the deck and steps, and potted up some herbs - dill, mint, thyme, chives, parsley.

Sorry about the mysterious BB (Breaking Bad) reference, guys! of course it was the joke about the meth/allergy medicine that made me think of it.

Oh and up here (New England) 'blackflies' are small, bodies are bigger than say, a mosquito but they are small bugs. BUT they have teeth like razors! they HURT when they bike (yes, like a horsefly HURTS when they bite) and their bite can swell on some people, but itch like crazy for everyone. If I carry an AfterBite stick and use that right away, it's helpful. But if you scratch and break the skin, then use the AfterBite, it feels briefly like you poured gasoline on an open wound The best thing about them is that they do disappear in a couple weeks. Then we can enjoy being outdoors.

I did get to ride my motorcycle to work today, it was cool when I left home, about 42, but I layer up; and then the ride home was fan-tas-tic

Dessert description warning! Dried cranberry scones (recipe from King Arthur flour website, fantastic recipes there); ginger muffins with a tangy lemon glaze; raspberry walnut bars; and over 80 mile-high biscuits with a honey-butter wash.

You will think I am but during the summer, I do work one afternoon a week (Wednesdays) at the awful stinky deli/bakery store; it gives me gas/pocket money for the week, and I do like some of the customers. I was there today for the first time since mid-April, and it was so slow, I got to sit at the counter and play Candy Crush for almost an hour! and the best thing about it is when I am leaving after 4 hours with my cash Oh and the satisfaction of leaving the place cleaner than I left it.

So I won't have time in teh morning to say hey, it will be my one morning a week that I cook breakfast at the Club, to give the breakfast/lunch cook a day off. Then I do desserts for the day. So I will say hey tomorrow evening

Another day of the BERP. I'm slowly but surely making significant progress. I'm looking forward to when I have a place to put all the stuff that's emerging from boxes. I'm almost there: I just need to twist Bob's arm a little harder, because he's promised to help me box books—an activity that gives me back spasms very easily—so I can move X & Y & Z into the freed-up bookcase space, thus opening up a small bookcase downstairs where I can start organizing paper & letters & stationery & stuff on its shelves.

My 13-yr-old great-niece Grace—who's very creative & wants to be a vet (cool!) when she grows up—is coming over on Saturday for her first 4-hour block of helping me sort clippings (i.e., images for collage) into the boxes I have all set up in my collage studio. That room used to be my writing room, during my career as a book reviewer and nonfiction writer, but it's slowly being transformed into a proper studio. I really look forward to the day—not too far in the future if Grace likes the work (I'll be paying her minimum wage) & comes back again & again to help me sort clippings—when I'll be able to walk into that room, and everything will be neat and orderly, in readiness for the creation of art. =happy sigh=

And the place downstairs where Bob's going to build the cat tower is almost ready for us to move into the design stage. I've been looking at some fabulous cat furniture on the Web, which is so expensive they say they will have to "quote you a price" after they sit down & discuss your needs (whoa...). I plan to shamelessly copy it, as best as I can tell from the photos, in drawing up my design. =wide grin= I've changed my mind about having it be natural wood, and am thinking instead of spray-painting the whole thing black—glossy black with as close to a mirror-like finish as possible. That would be so awesome, for our orange cats to climb up to the top of a modernistic black tower!

Tomorrow is my monthly weigh-in, first thing in the morning. I can't really tell if I've lost weight this past month, but it would be a nice surprise if I have.

Thinkin' about all of you...good night...

Today was my monthly weigh-in, and I can't believe it: I lost 10 pounds! In one month! Gee, the BERP must really be burning some calories...

This means I finally completed my second mini-goal of getting down to 280. And at 272 now, I've taken a big step toward my third mini-goal of getting down to 260.

=big smile & raised eyebrows=

MonteCristo, IBelieveInMe2, VermontMom and everyone thank you so much for the welcome! It will be really nice to be among people who can "get it" when I say I'm having a down day.

I finally caught up on the whole month of may thread and I have to say I am impressed! You folks really move and stick to your eating plans like pro's not to mention tackling tough stuff with considerable gumption! I hope you all know how awesome you are!

lilturtle - Hi! I think you are doing great, I hope that you can tackle the sleep issue - for me that makes everything, and every emotional swing much worse. Right now, I'm at a rough patch, so I am taking a sleep aid just long enough to get me back on track. Would that work for you?

FleurDeLis - I have been thinking about getting into a gym and trying some weight lifting, do you have any advice for a beginner?

VermontMom - I miss BB too! I think any TV show that gets you involved enough that you are regularly shouting at the TV characters is good TV

Fiona W - your collages are very cool! Super congrats on the 10lb loss!but please please tell me what BERP is, I am going crazy trying to figure it out!

To everyone else HI! I hope we can talk/type in the future!

I am off to go dig through my closet as I have my first job interview in almost 4 years tomorrow (I'm very anxious) and I have no idea what fits! Good luck, thanks for being here one and all - and have a good day!

lostbutstilltrying— Sorry to be cryptic with the BERP reference: it stands for Big Entropy Reduction Project. It's a massive effort to declutter my house and bring order to my collage & other art supplies. Thanks for the kind words about my art! If you're interested, I made what I think is an amusing collage about the BERP. (The other folks have already seen it.) Good luck with your job interview! =smile=

Work sucks right now. I've been frantically trying to figure out what one of our departments is doing wrong to screw up all the money flow between the plants (I'm an accountant) and it has me so stressed. Every time I bring it problem up to that dept manager he just says "that's what we were told to do" which is not only supremely ridiculous (we would never ask someone to do the stupid they are doing) but it doesn't even matter. IT IS WRONG!! Quit trying to blame everyone and just SHUT UP AND LISTEN!! The problem must be fixed, Corp is getting very upset. I've been working all week long trying to find their problem, which is next to impossible because they've been doing work WITHOUT EVEN USING THE SYSTEMS!!! So it is all invisble. I've been having panic attacks again, and I can't sleep well and I'm so angry right now I could punch the dept manager right in his smug face. Thankfully my manager is just as pissed and has escalated it to the plant manager so hopefully that will get something rolling (she is great, always has our backs) but Jumping Jehosaphat it is FRUSTRATING!!! I haven't gotten a single other thing done all week, and my yearly goals are due today. I want to scream and cry and punch things and eat fattening food. I could really use a drink.

lostbutstilltrying - Thanks. I didn't sleep much last night so I think I am going to call my doctor.

MonteCristo— Oh man, I hear you about ultimo-frustrating screwups like that. My husband (who used to work for NASA) & I are both retired, but we are currently suffering due to the government causing our health insurance & pharmacy coverage to lapse despite the fact that my husband's retirement paperwork, all in order now, dates his retirement & continuation of benefits as September 2012! We have wriiten confirmation of our coverage and everything, but it's one of those deals where X agency needs to communicate Y info to Z person elsewhere. Despite dozens of phone calls by Bob & me, despite receiving more letters confirming that everything is supposedly in order, our insurance & pharmacy coverage is non-existent, even as I write these words. We're both paying for very expensive name-brand medications out of pocket, because what else can we do? I just hope we don't have a medical emergency! Anyway, sorry to prattle on: I just wanted to say I really understand how exasperated you are. But hang in there on the healthy food front: you know that binging out on bad stuff will just make you feel worse in the long run. You will be able, one fine day, to look back on this period of time and say, "Good for me! Even though I was stressed to the max, I didn't take it out on my body!"

Trish— Sorry to hear insomnia is dragging you down: it's not helpful to be feeling so poorly right when you're facing possibly having to move, is it? I hope your doc can help you, and I hope, too, that you get your living situation sorted out OK. I'll be sending positive vibes in your direction!

Hi!

I'm sorry that this isn't a long reply but I'm using my iPhone to reply and I don't have much battery life.

I got up early today to go take the train to Philly for medical appointments. I got caught in a rainstorm -lol!

Then I saw one of the new docs, this one was for my anemia. I think he is nice but I completely disagree with his insisting that his fellows will see me most of the time. I told him twice that it's my right to not be seen by them as I often feel uncomfortable. He said that the hospital is to teach students and we disagreed. I'm not sure what I'll do next. It's interesting though, at my ortho after him, I saw the fellow most of the visit and he was quite nice and thorough. I spent more time with him than my actual doc. I guess I'll rethink things.

Take care! Hi Holly, thank you, my allergies are still a pain! How are you? Hi to everyone else!

Amy

Thanks for the encouraging words, lostbutstilltrying! Now that I know I'm 10 pounds down, suddenly I'm appreciating how much easier it is to get through some of the formerly tight-squeeze spots in the rooms I haven't cleared yet. Funny how it can work that way...before I weighed myself, I was actually wondering if some of the boxes had moved! =laugh=

Well, today I finally got Bob to help me box books in my collage room. He worked hard, too: he labeled the boxes with a jumbo marker exactly according to my instructions, not arguing with me once, and each time he got two boxes full, he carried 'em all the way down two floors to the basement—and those basement stairs are steep. Then he'd have a brief cool-down and get right back to boxing books again. I was working at the same time to square away the accumulated pile of sundry paper scraps and items worth clipping on my work table, so when my great-niece Grace comes over on Saturday, we'll both have places to put our boxes of clippings while we work at sorting them into the appropriate labeled boxes. Bob and I working together got a lot done!

Y'all would laugh if you could see our house right now: one of the most daunting aspects about this enormous job has been figuring out where to organize things, in rooms that had no open spaces. But now the solutions are just popping into my head. For example, once I got the stairs going up to the second floor cleared, I took post-it notes and on the wall over each step put a letter, or two letters, of the alphabet. My whole jumbled collection of little postcard books and boxes is being moved upstairs to the newly opened shelves in my collage room, so I'm using the stairs as a way of alphabetizing them. I'll grab half-a-dozen books/boxes of postcards, climb the stairs & put each one neatly on the side of the step where it goes—C for Cézanne, R for rabbits, V for Vienna, & so on—then come back down and do that again. After about four or five such trips, I get winded and have to rest, but slowly the collection is getting organized.

I'm already starting to fantasize about choosing some Saturday night in September and having Bob's whole extended family over to meet the kittens. I know what we're going to serve (wine 'n' cheese 'n' crudités), what cards I'm going to use for the invites, the whole bit. How spiffy the house will look by then! The few people we've allowed inside during the past five years will be totally gobsmacked! =grin=

Hi there!

Fi, way to go on the weight loss and getting organized!!!

I'm about to head to sleep...but I'm glad it stopped raining at least for now. I'm debating cutting my hair a bit shorter. Currently it's a few inches past my shoulders, I'm thinking of going just above my shoulders.

Wow, I'm sleepy...good night!

Amy