Wow! It's the last week of June! Could someone please make time slow down a bit?

I leave for New Mexico next Sunday to help DD with wedding plans. We've discovered that there's only so much you can do long-distance; otherwise, you gotta be there! So I'll go for a whirlwind week of wedding dress shopping, menu selection, picking hotel rooms and the million things involved in a wedding. As of right now, we only have a date and location, so there's much to get done.

I figure I can dress shop for me here in Pittsburgh, or more likely, the Nordstroms near Cleveland. That's where everyone here goes for special occasion clothes. We're supposed to get a Nordstroms locally, but not for another year. I'm hoping to find something that doesn't scream Mother Of The Bride; something with just a bit of style. DD says she wants both DH and me to walk her down the aisle, so I'll be on display too.

I went to get fitted for my knee brace but have to wait a week for it, so I'm off to the gym with my drugstore brace just to keep everything where it belongs. I missed way too much gym time between the cruise and not feeling well for the past few days, so it's time to hit it hard.

Today I take one of our cats to see the kitty cardiologist. Her vet thinks she has a hole in her heart and I'm hoping that something can be done to fix it since she's only 2. Dumb as dirt, but very sweet and loving.

So how's everyone? What's going on in your world?

Hmm, where to begin. I've been overwhelmed taking care of dd. She is getting better, but it is a slow process. The doctor's are happy with her since she is gritting her teeth and doing what she's supposed to. I'm very thankful she was in good shape pre-surgery or I don't think she'd be doing this well. She wakes up alot at night from pain, I've been getting up with her because I feel like I should, but I'm sure getting tired. While she can catch up later I've got a life going on.
I went for an ultrasound on Friday which said my due date is 25 days earlier than by the calendar! Eeeek! Now I don't know what to think, except I better start getting some stuff ready for this baby. My last regular appointment was 2 weeks ago and I haven't gained since then so that is a positive at least. I am having some sciatica which is unpleasant. I'm trying to keep moving through it. How annoing!
Meg-I've had to do the knee brace thing before. Not the most attractive but far better than pain.

Lily-Congrats on that new grandbaby!

Anne-I hope you're still feeling well.

Everyone else-Have a great week!

Oh my gosh, Joy, you just lost three weeks!! I'd be panicking but you seem so calm and together -- well, I guess you've done this before.

Poor DD -- I hope she's feeling (and sleeping) better soon.

My first was due Feb 4th. My doctor sent me for an ultrasound just before Christmas because he thought I would deliver this big child a month early. I told him "Can't, I promised to work over New Years."
I still think most women know when they're due.

Meg~we're due for our own Nordstrom in 2009. It's strange why we've never had one in our valley--the family has a home here, they donate huge amounts of money (and have a building named after them) at a local church that has a private school. But they finally negotiated and we'll finally get one!!!

When I was in Vegas, I saw a Tadashi store--I didn't even get close enough to see inside much, but wow, I wanted to go in. The dresses are so spectacular (and expensive!!!). I actually own a Tadashi blouse that is so nice. I think Nordstrom carries some Tadashi. I don't know if that is the look you're looking for for the wedding, though.

Yup--women KNOW when they'll deliver (IMO). I knew my son would be born on Christmas. And he was. I knew it months before. Joy, you'll do just fine (and then you'll have to change your username!).

Everyone have a great week!

Good morning everyone! I hope you all had a good weekend.

Meg - mother of the bride dresses can be such a hassle! My mom has been looking for a while now and finding nothing, and my fiance's mom has had even less luck. I hope your knee brace helps and your cat is ok!

Lisa - glad to hear your DD is recovering. You know, I had no idea that babies were ever ready to be delivered before 9 months, I thought if they were delivered early it was because there was a problem.

Lily - congrats on the new granddaughter!

Count me into the group of people who have fallen off the wagon. As soon as my scale was down to 130 again it jumped right back to 134 and has been bouncing around 131-134 for a couple weeks now. I know I'm not helping with my eating. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that even my bad food days now are way better than an average day at my high weight. Still, I need to get things under control.

I should be getting the results from the blood tests my rheumatologist ran today or tomorrow. I have been watching too many episodes of "Mystery Diagnosis" and "Diagnosis Unknown" on discovery health channel lately and now of course I am paranoid and think there must be something terribly wrong with me. I'm giving up on the acupuncture at this point since it doesn't seem to have helped much.

Does anyone have big plans for the 4th? We're making it a five-day weekend and I'm hoping we'll do some fun day trips around the state. I'd love to find a good pick-your-own farm too. The only one I know of nearby is just an apple orchard, but since Indiana really is farm country I know there must be others nearby.

Lily~sorry I forgot to congratulate you! Congrats!!! You'll be busy with the grandsons this week!

Jessica~my plans for the 4th are to relax! I have to have DD to school on the 5th by 5:30 AM for her to catch a bus to go to LAX for her flight to China. Then I work all day, come home and do laundry so I can pack for my own trip to Hawaii. We usually climb onto the roof to watch fireworks. The park is a few miles away, but we can see the fireworks okay as we're up on a hill. Sure beats the traffic when actually going to the park to watch them. I just love those medical shows on Discovery Health! Some of the time (especially on Mystery Diagnosis) I figure it out before they announce it! DH just rolls his eyes! My newest favorite is Impact: Stories of Survival.

Hi maintainers,

Not a good day today. I woke up at 3 in the morning to the freezers alarm beep. It is a goner, and it was only 10 months old !! And the first service appointment i was able to get is next monday, so i now have an enormous amount of mostly meat & fish in my fridge which i have to process.

Funny how such a thing can really throw you off track. I ate 2 icecreams because they were "spoiling", and I now am a bit nauseous. I had done better to throw the stuff out, & that is what I did with the rest. But with meat & fish i find that hard to do. I'll probabely have to cook the lot tonight, so I'll be able to eat it in the nex days.

Have a great day all,
Rabbit

Allison - The funniest thing about Diagnosis Unknown is that on every episode I've seen of it, the "mystery" turns out to be that the sick person is being poisoned by their spouse! So far I've seen episodes with arsenic, thalium, and ricin poisoning. The most recent I saw (the ricin one) was so crazy. This guy's wife was poisoning him, and yet after he found out she was poisoning him, she had threatened him with a knife, she became an alcoholic, and had to be remporarily committed to a psych ward, he still left the kids with her when he moved out of the hosue. ??? She ended up setting their house on fire and two of the three kids died.

Anyway I like Mystery Diagnosis better because it is almost never poisoning!

Hello,
I'm new to maintenance and having trouble with it.

I was on a very restrictive diet for quite a while and I stuck to it
really seriously. Recently I started eating a maintenance level of calories,
which is much higher, and I had wine and sugar and white rice for the
first time in ages. After having these previously forbidden foods,
I felt amazingly great, I slept better, I could exercise better, I suddenly
love my family more intensely, I can think more clearly, and many good
things I didn't realize I was missing while I was dieting. The bad part
is I've suddenly become obsessed with getting more food all the time.
More food, more sugar, more wine. When I was on the restrictive
diet I could handle the constant gnawing hunger, but now I'm
getting sudden low blood sugar jolts and spikes of craving,
EVEN when I eat low-carb and no-carb, and the cravings are driving
me crazy. I could force myself to eat low-carb for a while more, just
to silence this insulin roller-coaster, but what after that? I'm not going
to live a low-carb lifestyle forever. I need to be able to have
some wine and a dessert once a month or hopefully once a
week without causing a tailspin. Or maybe I have to choose wine
or dessert or white rice but not all on the same day?

I think being on the very restrictive diet has made some previously
sane part of me turn desperate, or maybe my body is trying to
tell me it needs something, or maybe I've gotten lazy and greedy.
Probably all of the above.

Did any of you have trouble mentally or physically or biochemically
with the "shock" of the transition from loss to maintenance?

Lisa

My butt is killing me this morning I started lunges again cause my squats were doing well squat and now my butt and thighs hurt like **** thank goodness.I never though years ago that there would be a day I would be happy to be hurting. I have also switched my reps when lifting(was doing 12-12-12 on some days and 12-10-10 on others I now do (12-10-10-8) and have lost some more inches ,no pounds though but I would much rather loose inches.lol. With these reps I am also doing better at bicep curls which is the one exercise that I have a hard time getting my weight up (I am still at 10 pounds each arm).

Our shed ,eaves(sp?) and decks are painted. Now if I can just remember to get gas whenever I go to town ,I never seem to,so I can mow the lawn. Our yard will look like a field probably before I remember.lol

We had a good weekend at the shore. I took our 5 year old niece out on the Hobie Wave on Saturday and DH went out on a catamaran with a spinnaker on Sunday. We ate out both Sat & Sun and I scumbed to eating peanuts at my MIL so my weight's up again. I think I'm mostly water logged from all the sodium. I expect it will be down again mid week.

If you want to read a really good book, pick up A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini who wrote The Kite Runner. It's the story of two Afgani women and how their lives intertwine from 1970 to the present. It's beautifully written and amazing to see how different their lives are from ours.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who checks out what other people buy at the grocery store. I laughed when I read how someone on this thread groups people into unhealthy, healthy, and healthy for themselves but not their kids. It's so true, how are kids going to learn how to eat properly if they're only feed junk.

We have some friends that I've always teased that their kids only eat 'white food'. The kids only wanted chicken fingers, french fries, grilled cheese sandwiches and vanilia ice cream. So that's what they feed them.

Lily - glad to hear that both grandbabies are healthy. My brother's wife is pregnant with my parents' first grandchild. They are so thrilled to finally have one to dout on. This Sunday is the baby shower.

Hi everyone, we had a fun time at the lake yesterday. I actually got up the courage to try skiing. I was able to get up out of the water a few times but my arm strength isn't great and I couldn't hold on for very long. The kids and DH make it look so easy, but it's not that Easy. LOL. The 18 yr. old does amazing spins and jumps and flips with the wakeboard. We had lots of other boats pulling over and watching her and cheering her on.

Last night I had DH drop me and Shelbey off around the lake and we walked the 3 miles back to where the boat ramp was. We didn't know it was that far, but it was. It felt good to get in some extra exercise.

I'm seriously back on plan now with eating and exercising now that all the births and birthdays are done for a while. Of course 4th of July is just around the corner. Food that day will be grilled chicken, grilled fresh veggies and watermelon.

Lisa, I've had a little of the same problem that you mention with adjusting to maintenance. I switched from doing low-carb to Calorie Counting. I have to remind myself constantly to take it easy on my meat portions. It really is a totally different way of eating. I was strict with low carb while losing wt. (except for fruit) but I knew that I couldn't eat that way forever. I had to give up my full fat mayo, full fat sour cream , full fat ranch dressing, fatty butter, bacon, sausage, and tons of cheese. But, I much prefer getting to have some wheat bread, wild rice, wheat pasta and potatoes. It definitely takes some getting used to. I try to always log my food in Fitday to make sure that I'm getting an appropriate amt. of calories. This really helps me a lot. It does seem that if I stray and have something sweet, I have a dangerously hard time of getting right back on plan. I take Metformin everyday for those blood sugar swings. I definitely feel that it is easier to handle eating out with Calorie counting.

This is the book I'm taking to read on the plane trip to Hawaii. I loved his first book, The Kite Runner.

Morning all! I am back among the land of the living - and, sigh, working - after a 3.5 day weekend. We left Thurs noon and after a short stop to get a HepA 2nd shop, drove south for a 6 pm wedding. We ran into a lot of smoke from a forest fire further south, and were stopped for construction for about 20 minutes, but got to our campground by 5, changed and were at the wedding location on time. They got married at a lodge on the Kenai River (world renouned salmon fishing), on a deck at water leve. Very nice service, with vows they'd written themselves (including one by her that she'd never sell his "stuff" (bikes, fishing equip, etc) while he was out "playing") The food was incredible. The appetizers alone would have been enough: spiced shrimp, all kinds of fruit, crackers and cheeses, salmon spread, eggplant pate, but no.... There was a full dinner of BBQ'd salmon and chicken, spinach salad, broccoli salad, and rice, with desserts, lemon bars and brownies, plus of course the wedding cake! I did pretty well considering. Had no dessert, a bite of DH's cake, small amount of rice. The shrimp appetizer was so good I had to move away so I wouldn't be thought to be hogging it. The only downside of the whole evening was that the smoke got worse and we had to move indoors, and several people with asthma were really bothered.

We camped overnight in our truck (which got covered with ash) and left after eating our brought-from-home breakfast. We did stop for of course. Back in Anchorage we did some errands, including picking up my race info and bib. There was a pasta dinner put on by Team-in-Training at 4, at which I ate only moderately, followed by team meetings (with photos!) for last minute instructions. Found out that the wife of a guy I used to work with was on the Anchorage team, and was running the full marathon.

Sat morning we were back in Anchorage by 8 - I swear they tell you to get there an hour before race time so you have time to wait in the potty lines. It was pretty a pretty amazing time. The full marathon started elsewhere (though we all finished at the same place), but there were a ton of half marathoners. Over 3,800 people total had registered for the event. I walked continually for the whole 13.1 miles (except for 2 potty stops) but was not quite as fast as I would have liked. Still I finished and that was my goal! I ended up raising about $3,100. I did speed up quite well just after the halfway point - heard a noise, and there was a bull moose in the woods about 50' from me! The weather was cool and even showery at the end, so a good day for walking/running. Afterwards I was starving, and would have eaten anything you gave me! We had PB&J sandwiches in the finish tent for Team-in-Training, and DH and I went to grab some late lunch. I ended up having some chicken, and then a latte with a friend later on. At dinner time I was still hungry and ended up eating some spaghetti with meatless sauce (at home).

Sunday, I wasn't as stiff as I had anticipated - whew. It was a day of chores since we'd been gone - mowing, laundry, groceries, etc.

Now I'm back at work, sigh, and a full 5 day week to boot.

Sorry it's all me, me, me. I'll go now and catch up with the rest of you.