[Meg]

And a Happy St. Patricks Day to all of you! Anyone doing the green beer or corned beef and cabbage things today?

Rotten night for sleeping last night, so I'm up ridiculously early. I'll hit the gym when it opens and then get groceries. My knees are having a bad spell but thankfully they don't slow me down on the elliptical. I don't know what I'd do without that machine!!

I know I'm not going to be able to stall much longer on the knee replacement, but when I look at my calendar, I don't see free time until mid-September. At my next appointment, I'm going to ask my knee doctor if he'd do both knees at once. I'm in good enough shape that I think I could handle it. Still thinking ...

The weekend was spent doing taxes and it wasn't pretty. I still have to do some research on NY tax law to see if DH has to pay it, even though we're PA residents. Ugh, ugh, ugh! Regardless, we'll be writing a big old check to the IRS.

I really appreciate everyone's thoughts and wonderful suggestions on our thread about improving the Maintainers forum. Feel free to add more ideas! I'm going to talk to Suzanne 3FC this week about ways to reorganize our forums to make them as friendly and helpful as possible.

So enough blabbing from me! How are all of you this week? Any goals? Any events? Any challenges?

A special to our moms-to-be, and Kery and Lily who have been under the weather.

[joyofsix]

Good Morning and Happy St. Pat's Day I'm up early because I went to bed so early. It was a crazy weekend so I turned in at 9pm last night. It felt good. I had a NSV yesterday when I got into my 'sexy' jeans. They're nothing special, they just have always fit me right. They've been too tight until yesterday. Exercise yesterday was skating with the Brownies. Saturday I got in a nice yoga session so I'm feeling hopeful this morning. I hope everyone else's weekend was pleasant, productive or both.

[LisaMarie71]

Good morning everyone, and Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I had a nice weekend, though it felt much too short. I didn't really do much, but I felt pretty good. I did a prenatal yoga/pilates workout Saturday that felt good, and then I took a nice long walk yesterday. I plan to walk and possibly do yoga tonight. I'm feeling much better about being active now, so I want to take advantage of it before I get enormous and can't move around as well!!

Right now all I can think about is my ultrasound Wednesday, so I can start calling the baby by the right pronoun instead of he/she! I just have to get through two days of school and then I get a day off. Then two more days of school and I get a whole week off!

Hope everyone's Monday is good!

[lilybelle]

Hi everyone, I'm up very early too. Lucy needed walked at 5:30 AM and that started my day. I'm on my second cup of coffee now. I was in bed by 10PM so I don't feel any need to go back to sleep.

Meg, sorry you are in the 2 state tax category too. We live in OK and DH works in AR so we always have to file for both states. This yr. we are actually getting a refund which usually never happens for us. I'm putting the money towards remodeling my house.

I'm loving my new floors. I went and bought a new swiffer wet jet yesterday and a dust mop. I hope it helps make it easier to keep the floors clean and mainly the dog hair up. I think that with all the new tile and wood floors that I'll be thankful to not be vacuuming so often.

Since I have turned one of our 5 bedrooms into an office/computer room , I'm considering tiling the floor instead of using wood flooring. I'm not sure though if this would be a turn-off for future prospective buyers. Any thoughts? (Our girls will graduate in 2 1/2 yrs. and we plan to sell this big house and buy us a cabin at the lake.

Today will be a little tough for me on the eating front. After being sick for so long, this past weekend I didn't pay much attention to what I ate. So, it's time to get myself back on track. I have noticed though that I'm eating quite a bit less than I usually did. No gym workouts lately, but surely painting and tiling floors counts to burn some calories. Last night DH grilled NY Strip steaks and I was full (and stopped eating) after only about 1/3 of mine with some green beans and salad.

I'm feeling better now but not back to 100%. I still have a cough, but the nausea/vomiting/diarrhea/headache is now gone. It seems more like an Allergy problem now with the Pollen count rediculously high. My yard is full of those little purple honey-suckle like flowers and bees are everywhere.

DH returns to work tomorrow. It will be a quiet week here with just me and Lacy and the dogs.

joyofsix, WTG on the sexy jeans. I bet those felt good!

LisaMarie, I hope you get some rest and enjoy your spring break. That is so exciting that you get to know the sex of your baby real soon! It does make shopping for baby so much easier. I didn't know that Shane was gonna be a boy and I had all pink stuff picked out. I had a lot of returning to do.

[rockinrobin]

Good morning everyone. And a Happy St. Paddy's Day!

TAXES!!! Oh I have got to get moving on that one. Big Time.

Meg, if anyone could handle a double knee replacement, it has got to be you.

Lily, I'm glad you're feeling somewhat better. 100% is right around the corner.

Joyofsix, jeans NSV'S are simply the greatest! Congrats.

LisaMarie, so exciting about the ultrasound. Let us know how it turns out. A blue bundle of joy or a pink bundle of joy . Glad to hear you've been so active.

My weekend was really, really nice. I did overeat though. . Not awful, but not great either. And my weight is up - again. So, I'll spend this week doing my darndest to get back down. Oh well. I'm okay with it. Feeling very confident, oddly enough.

Oh, and I'm having guests over again this weekend, Friday to be exact. Saturday night is a BIG, BIG party at a good friends house. Yeah, I had BETTER have a good week.

I've a very busy day/week ahead. I've got so much to do today, paperwork, phone calls, getting my house back in order, shopping and I just keep on procrastinating.........

Have a good one folks.

[Megan1982]

Happy St. Patty's Day everyone,

I'm not doing corned beef and cabbage, but I did make (half whole wheat) Irish soda bread to bring to work this morning. Though we're not Irish, my dad always made it so it makes me feel closer to home. Add me to the list of those who slept badly. After a perfectly fine weekend, yesterday I got really upset over a stupid little thing and just got myself really worked up. Can we say overly emotional? Anyway I'm still in a mood about it. My roommates are freaking out b/c their toilet is broken, they are convinced the septic system is about to explode (I haven't seen evidence of this...), and our dishwasher has been kaput for a month now, and somehow it's my responsibility, not theirs, to deal with our slacking landlord and her family to get these fixed. Anyway I can at least fix the toilet myself. Heaven forbid someone else should do something around the house.

Clearly I'm tired of always having to be the responsible one. Thanks for listening to me complain.

Ok. I've been a little slack the past week. This is Bikini Boot Camp week. I'm going to do 3 weightlifting workouts and 5 cardio this week. Food will be OP. No excuses.

Meg, sorry you slept badly too. If you will need to get both knees done, sounds like doing both at once might be a good plan - 1 recovery instead of 2 makes sense to me.

Joy, congratulations on wearing your "sexy" jeans!!! What a great NSV!!!

LisaMarie, ooh, what an exciting ultrasound this week! Glad to hear that you're feeling good about your yoga and walking.

Lily, I hope you continue to feel better. Your house must look great!

[tomandkara]

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I forgot to put on green this morning so I need to go change.

This weekend was pretty much the most disastrous thing, eating-wise, that it could have ever been. It started off not so bad on Thursday night with our nice dinner out. I stuck to my plan, but then Friday turned a little south and Saturday got even worse and then Sunday was just a blow-out. I'm up six and a half pounds since my weigh-in last Thursday and I totally deserve it. I'm disappointed and discouraged and just a little overwhelmed by life right now. I need to drum up the motivation to make a plan and then get back on track but with everything else going on my energy and oomph are just completely sapped.

I did at least keep up with my running. Goodness knows where I'd be if I had thrown that out the window, too!

So, I'm in a weird place where I half want to turn this around and half don't feel like I can. Just blah.

Kara

[AnneWonders]

Meg, wow, double knee replacement. Wow.

joyofsix, congrats on the sexy jeans.

Lily, just reading your posts make me tired.

Robin, I know you can get your good week in!

Megan, I understand your frustration with the roommates. I have never been able to live with anyone happily until I got married, and some days I wonder about that. Too much dealing with other people's nonsense. Here's hoping someone else steps up for you.

Kara, are you still enjoying having Tom around? Good for you for running.

I feel really blah this morning. DD pitched a little fit this morning and successfully manipulated her father into letting her watch TV. I'm not even sure he's aware he lost one. I was too tired to do much but snicker about it.

I have to take my 1hr glucose screen this morning and am not allowed to eat any sugars. I get why eggs and such are OK, but I must say I don't really understand why my instructions allow me white toast while a banana is outlawed--both are pretty high GI. Sigh. I'll play along though. I hate having anything but carbs for breakfast so I'm feeling pretty grumpy. I'm thinking even the orange soda they give you is going to taste really good at this point. Oh, yeah, even the sad, weak, mostly-decaffeinated beverage that passed for coffee that I was drinking is gone now in the interest of managing heartburn, or perhaps I should say HEARTBURN, so I'm REALLY grumpy.

I think I'm going to go take a shower soon, and fantasize about a big glass of orange juice.

Oh, yeah Meg. 91 days.

Anne

[Kery]

Good afternoon everyone.

Meg -- I hope you'll find something that works for you knees (and that it's not too painful right now?).

Lisa -- Congrats on the jeans NSV!

Anne -- I'm not sure I understand either why the toast is okay, but the banana isn't. Some medical mysteries...

The back is getting better, except that I had to good along the way and react badly to one of the medication (which made me miss a class this morning, since puking all over the teacher wasn't exactly an option :rolleyes). I hope the new meds will have less joyous side-effects. Still wondering how I'm supposed to start lifting again, since I'm not sure how to "use only my arms and not my back" when doing free weights. But I'll see. The gym will be closed this week-end anyway, so, moot point.

[paperclippy]

Hi everyone!

Meg - a double knee replacement sounds painful!

Kery - sorry the meds they gave you had bad side effects. I wish side effects just didn't exist!

Megan - I know what you mean about being the responsible one. It sucks that your roommates expect you to do everything!

Kara - We all have slipups. But they key to maintenance is realizing you had a slipup and doing something about it! I'm sure you will be able to recover and get right back on track.

Hi Lisa, LisaMarie, Robin, Anne, Lily, and everyone else!

I had an amazingly successful weekend. As I continue to inch toward my red line my confidence and willpower have gotten a lot stronger! This weekend I ate lunch at a mexican restaurant and dinner at my in-laws' house (including birthday cake for my brother-in-law), and I didn't even go up to 1700 calories either day! Last night I arrived hungry at the in-laws' but I didn't touch any crackers, chips, or wine before dinner, took small portions of the high-cal dinner foods and big portions of veggies, and ate one piece of the birthday cake but refused seconds. I may have been too careful though, my total for the day came in a little under 1200. Better that than the over 2000 I usually eat at their house! AND my weigh-in this morning was 138.4 so no damage was done!

Does anyone have experience with obese pets? DH's parents' dog is starting to look more like a sausage. They cut her dog food in half, but continue to feed her large quantities of table scraps and not take her for walks! This dog is basically the pre-rinse for the dishwasher and the garbage disposal for leftovers. I think we all made it pretty clear last night that they need to take better care of her, but I don't think the message sank in.

[WaterRat]

Morning. We had gorgeous weather here for the weekend. We ended up going for a hike up our local butte - 881' elevation - late yesterday afternoon. It was sunny and the views spectacular, but soooo windy at the top. We said, yup, it's the top, and went back down.

Meg - I think both knees at once is the preferred method these days. I know two people who've had it done this last year, and they both had both done. You'll do fine if they're any indication. Neither is particularly active and both are over 65, and they're doing great. I've got an appointment to talk to a new ortho when I get back from AZ. Hiking yesterday reinforced that I need to do something in the near future.....

Jessica - good job on the eating front this weekend. A couple friends who've had overweight pets. One thing they've said is that dogs are used to the same volume of food, so they've had good success with adding a can of green beans to supplement the reduction in dog food (hey, this eat more veggies thing works for pets too. )

Kery - hope you're on the mend. You deserve a break!

Kara - is it because Tom is home that you're struggling? I know you're enjoying this time because he's been gone, and will be again soon, but in the not too distant future, he'll be there all the time.....

Anne - 91 days is not too bad, eh? Did you read that our governor is pg?(why you should know is beyond me) This is #5 for her, and she managed to get to 7 months without the general public knowing! Amazing.

Okay, gotta get to work. My normal 10 am Monday meeting has been moved to 9:30, which means I need to leave in 1/2 hour.

[alinnell]

I had a long weekend. Saturday, DS and I got up early and drove to San Diego for his Botball tournament. He was one of about 27 teams competing. He's in 7th grade and most of the teams are juniors and seniors in high school. After a day of competition, his team ended up 3rd in the day's competition, but they had seeded 2nd and with the documentation, research and development and other scores added in, they came in 2nd place overall. Pretty impressive. Next up is the world conference in Norman, OK in July.

We were headed home when the traffic stopped just outside of Anza--on a two lane road. It was cold--35 degrees. After an hour we finally got moving again. Apparently a storm had gone through earlier and dropped a couple inches of snow. Then in the dark at least one car ran off the road. We were too far back to have seen if there were others involved. At least one fire truck and ambulance were sent, though. After having gotten up at 4:30 AM, we finally got home at 11 PM. Needless to say I was tired!

Sunday consisted of sleeping in, running errands and napping. My kind of day!

Today I woke up to a higher than normal scale weight. Probably had a lot to do with eating at the Cheesecake Factory on Saturday and fast food for breakfast and dinner. Not a good way to start my birthday, but oh, well, it happens. I'll be getting back on track after Wednesday (when we'll be going out to dinner to celebrate and go to DD's concert).

[AquaWarlock]

Meg, Double knee replacement sounds scary indeed, when you have it scheduled & done, hope you have a speedy recovery.

Megan, Ohh... I remember those kind of roommate woes.
Hope they are not getting you too worked up (or knocking you off plan).

Joy, congrats on fitting into your sexy jeans -- speaking of which, I still have to find a pair for me-- more difficult than I'd imagined.

Allison, Happy birthday and glad you're not too stressed out about the indulgence. I have no doubt you'll work it off!

Jessica, congrats for staying on plan over the weekend.

Kery, I'm not quite sure how to work the arms w/o the back either with free weights -- maybe check with a trainer @ the fitness center? The onlymove I know that's more arm focused is the prayer bench bicep curl, though I'm sure a little back-work is involved there too.

-----

Saturday I had planned for a caloric splurge but pretty sure I overate beyond that -- but at least I got it out of my system.

Sunday, on a near impulse, I signed up and ran a 10K race. Was surprised that I timed out at 48:16 (my last race time was 58:53) -- which worked out to a 7:45 mile ~ and here I thought it'd take me forever to beat 8 minutes! I celebrated with a healthy carb brunch at a nice little macrobiotics cafe (tried something new -- a moroccan-spiced tempeh & veggies whole-wheat wrap with a side of curried cauliflower salad -- way surpassed my expectations!) Anyhow, I have two more 10Ks coming up so hoping I can improve upon that time now

Happy St. Patty's & hope you all are having a good Monday (alas, no corned beef or cabbage for me -- never really had a taste for those -- but if Irish soda bread sneaks its way into the office . . .)

[Megan1982]

Originally Posted by alinnell

Probably had a lot to do with eating at the Cheesecake Factory on Saturday

mmm, cheesecake...

Ahem, I mean, oh hello maintainers. Don't worry, I might be dreaming of cheesecake, but I'm still planning on hitting the gym hard today. No cheesecake IRL.

Aqua, way to improve your 10K time! Come to my office, my soda bread turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

Allison, sounds like a busy (and exciting for DS!) Saturday. Glad you got to relax Sunday - that sounds really nice.

Pat, glad you enjoyed your hike, even if it was windy.

Jessica, great job controlling your portions at your in-laws! My parents dog is a chubby lab. They are very bad about giving him table scraps, letting him "rinse" dishes before they go into the dishwasher, feeding him from the table, etc. etc. My dad is the worst by far - he'll be eating a pack of pb crackers or something, and of course the dog is sitting there staring at him eat, and he'll give him whole crackers. He is a super sweet dog but begs constantly. It's the people food that's the problem, not the dog food, in his case. His dog food is quite portioned out. If the owners keep giving the dog human food, I don't know what you can do - you have to convince them to stop, or cut back a whole lot. It's not good for the dog!

Kery, I'm glad to hear your back is feeling better. You'll figure something out with the weights.

Anne, bananas, white bread - I don't understand either. Sorry to hear you're grumpy. At least it's only 91 days, as opposed to 98 days like a week ago. I'm sure it seems interminable to you, I'm just trying to be positive. At least your DD's antics are making you laugh.

Kara, what? Blah? I'm recruiting you for my bikini bootcamp! There is no blah in boot camp! Get that butt moving missy! Clean eats! Besides, think of all the extra cardio you're getting with Tom home.

Robin, we must have posted at the same time this morning. I hope you get everything done today.

[alinnell]

Originally Posted by Megan1982

mmm, cheesecake...

Ahem, I mean, oh hello maintainers. Don't worry, I might be dreaming of cheesecake, but I'm still planning on hitting the gym hard today. No cheesecake IRL.

We INTENDED to have Cheesecake, but for those of you who are familiar with the restaurant, you'll know that they serve outrageously HUGE portions. No one could possibly eat a meal AND have dessert. My MIL ordered a lunch special-- cup of soup, small salad and half a sandwich. Seriously, the cup of soup was easily 2 cups (a medium bowl) the salad was twice that size and the half sandwich? They must not understand what half means. It was a whole sandwich. FIL had salad and pizza (another lunch special). It was enough for 2 people. DH, DD and I all had different sandwiches--none of us was able to finish. Since we were so far from home, taking half home with us was not possible.