Maintainers Weekly Chat January 17 - 23, 2011
 

Martin Luther King day is a holiday here in Massachusetts. Should be easy to get to the gym and to remove the hard drives from two more computers that need to be junked. I need a pill that makes it easy to let go of stuff - like one of those expensive diet pills that make you feel like you're doing something useful because you're spending a lot of money.

Good Morning all!
 

Good news on the DH front. He and I had a long chat yesterday re his job/health, etc.

He's been wanting to quit :eek: his current job because he says he can't start any kind of diet/exercise program while under so much stress :stress:. Economically that would put us in a really rough place. I have been reminding him of this for the two years he's been talking about this.

But yesterday morning I told him to go ahead. "if that's what it takes my dear, do it" was the phrase I used. By the time I got back from work in the afternoon he had come up with a much more sensible alternative (he is a really bright man who can look at a problem from all sorts of different viewpoints. He just gets "stuck" sometimes).

And he's gone out for a walk (without prompting or accompaniment from me) for 3 days :carrot: in a row. He's found he likes the local greenbelt, which runs along a creek, for winter walking. In the summer it's too stinky for him but it's working for now.

I hope this is a new trend. I will have to get in there and :coach: if he suffers a setback (he's kinda all or nothing) and I've bought some DVD's that I'm hoping will give me the skills to deal more effectively with DH and other people.

Happy Monday! (is that an oxymoron?)

Dagmar :coolsnow:

Good Morning ! Dagmar hope the new plan works for DH . Every day he does it will help. I find it very difficult to motivate another person, it needs to come from within, Cheering him on , though should be a great encourager.

Good morning--hope you don't mind if I join you this week.

Don't know if we've met, Dagmar, but I read most of last week's chat. Hope the DH stays with walking. I walk about a mile and a half six times a week--I like the fact that it's free and convenient.

And Happy Monday isn't an oxymoron when it's a holiday! ;)

Hi, Bill and bargoo.

Saef, that commercial you referred to in last week's thread is the ASPCA's commercial. I hate it too. I change the channel every time it comes on. The ASPCA is one of the few charities I donate to, and I'm on their monthly donor program (they take $$ out of my credit card each month automatically). I feel like, I give them money every month, I shouldn't have to watch this heartbreaking commercial!

Bill, enjoy your day off!

Dagmar, glad to hear DH is on track again. :hug:

Michele, congrats on your vow renewal!

Hi Bargoo and Oboegal!

Things are pretty good here although work is being stressful at the moment (suffice to say intellectual property is a pain, and I'm having trouble getting the right documents to the right people). Usually work stress for me is just that I have to get something done in a very short amount of time, which I can handle pretty well. This stuff is of an entirely different nature and it's kind of freaking me out.

There is such a thing as a happy Monday! When it's a holiday from work! I get MLK Day off, too, which is really nice. I did start off my day when I woke up lying in bed for a few minutes thinking about what a remarkable man Dr. King was.

To do today: Go to the gym, update my iPod playlist (part of my New Years ideas to keep me motivated at the gym!), and do some computer work for my community theatre group. First thing when I got up this morning, I put the ingredients for black bean soup in the slow cooker, so that will be cooking all day while I work.

Yesterday I went to my first benchpress competition training section of the year. Our previous trainer left us for the year, sad, but another trainer from the gym is taking over, and my usual training partner is there. Still just the two of us women and a bunch of guys, but there weren't as many big hulking men or angry music yesterday. My shoulders and triceps are sore today! I think I need cardio and abs/core this morning.

Hi Oboegal! Jump right in! Does your name come from actually playing the oboe? I played clarinet for about 5 years when I was a kid, but gave it up finally bc I hated practicing.

Dagmar, glad DH is out walking. I'm sure it's really great for him to know how much you support him, even though he decided quitting his job wasn't best right now.

Bill, wow, I need one of those pills too! I've gotten better about holding onto things but there's room for improvement. My mom won't let go of anything, and 2 of her siblings also hoard stuff (almost to the point of the "Hoarders" show). If there's a hoarding gene, I think I got it. :o

Have a good day all. :)

ETA: Jessica, we posted at the same time. Good luck with the intellectual property, don't let yourself get too stressed out by it. You & Saef don't get me started - you say "Arms of the Angel" and images of those poor creatures start flashing through my head and I start welling up!

Wishing I had the day off of work.....It will be quiet here--no mail, no banking, and several employees took the day off. I doubt the phone will ring much, either.

I'm back OP this week after suffering from lack of interest last week. I only lost half a pound last week as compared to the 5 I had lost the week previous, but that's okay, too. I know full well that half a pound to 2 pounds is normal. I'm still on track for meeting my goals (which I'm about to plug into my Google calendar so I'm a bit more motivated).

DD is leaving Thursday afternoon to go back to school and she decided that she doesn't want to cook this week so I planned 4 nice recipes from Cooking Light to do for us. Tonight is "fried" chicken tenders (panko breaded and baked) with a chipotle dipping sauce. A nice salad to go with it.

Does anyone have a good remedy for getting rid of gnats? Our office is across the street from a waste disposal company and we're pretty sure that our influx of gnats in the office is due to this. We do have plants in the office, so they might be residing in the dirt, but I have a spray for this and use it faithfully to no reduction in the gnat population. I read on the internet that they're drawn to the smell of vinegar and to put a jar with holes in it near the gnats and they'll fly in and won't fly out. Well, three weeks of a jar of vinegar on my desk and no gnats in the vinegar and still several flying about. I swear, I can kill one and another miraculously appears to take it's place.

Good Monday everyone and a good one it is as I also have the day off! Dh is on a plane to Canada for the week but dd and I are probably going to get our nails done and go to lunch (if she ever wakes up!)

Allison-- glad your dd and you have had such a successful time cooking and losing weight. My dd has been doing WW with my dh since the beginning of the year. Dh decided to leave me out of it since she and I had a negative experience with it (she was/is jealous of my weight loss). She called dh yesterday to tell him how great she is doing. I am cautiously optimistic. She said she had lost 8 pounds already! She loves to cook and she reads cooking blogs. She has been finding healthier recipes and/or adapting other recipes and has been happy with the results so I hope she can keep the positive momentum going.

Welcome oboegal! Glad to have you here!

Hi to everyone else.

Happy Monday everyone, well hopefully lol.
The weekend was a complete bust for me as it was my birthday yesterday and I had a weekend full of celebrations. Went out for drinks with friends then a slap up meal on Saturday night, then had a family celebration yesterday which was fully catered.
Although I went to step class on Saturday morning, I really did lose total control from early evening Saturday, which carried on til bedtime last night. By bedtime last night I felt gross, my stomach was fuller than it's been in months and I was SO tired.
I dreaded today getting back on plan again but I just dived straight back in, went to do my usual two gym classes, and apart from being REALLY hungry I know I'm going to be fine. Just hoping I can repair any damage by weigh in day on Friday.

Hello all! Atlanta is finally beginning to dig out from other the weather of last week, felt like forever. I still have ice and snow on my driveway, but the roads are pretty clear most places.

My challenge today is to fight with the cable company to try to lower my cable bill. I think I'm at the point where $220 for phone/cable/internet is about to push me over the edge. That and to get back on plan with my food after a terrible weekend. I did great during the snow and ice, then dived headfirst into a bag of doritos over the weekend.

I've read everything, will come back and answer later. :) :wave:

A quick post at the end of my lunch hour at the office to say "hello." My IT consulting company does not see it fit to honor Dr. King's memory today. We're supposed to use up the one-day "Floating Holiday" that they give us, which I wanted to do, but the two coworkers who back me up have children off from school, and they wanted the day off even more than I did.

We're supposed to have icy rain tomorrow, which I dislike more than snow. Thankfully, that's one of my work-from-home days & I can stay safe indoors looking out from my French doors into the courtyard of the building, where the ice will make the trees look gorgeous.

I'm also trying to declutter. I'll give you a link to a blog by Brooks Palmer, a professional declutterer. No, he won't have lots of handy organizational tips. But he's into motivation & into the psychological side of cluttering & clearing clutter, which is sometimes what we all need.

http://brooks-palmer.blogspot.com/

If I'm trying to motivate myself, I watch "Hoarders" (nothing makes me vacuum, wash dishes & throw out paper like an episode of "Hoarders" -- whew!!!) and then read Brooks Palmer for a little while.

Works every time.

Saef - DH & I don't have today as a holiday either, though I can't do much from an HR or payroll standpoint today with all the banks and federal offices closed...

Hi Megan--yes, I play the oboe. I've been playing the flute longer and think I'm still better on flute, but I'm more in demand as an oboist for obvious reasons. My "day job" has nothing to do with music, so it's a nice outlet.

Wow, you're a serious lifter!

Hi, Allison--glad you're back on plan. I went off the rails a bit Christmas weekend and one other time during the winter break, but have been doing well since then.

Hi, michele!

saef, I also dread freezing rain. We were forecast to possibly get some today, but it didn't materialize. I grew up in Brooklyn, and I still have a vivid memory of an ice storm in about 1974 (I was in junior high school) that was miserable, but the trees were indeed gorgeous.

Isn't it pointless on some of these days, Shannon? Our office is decimated from people working from home, because they must tend to children. Though some school districts lost the holiday because they have already used so many snow days this year.

I love the Floating Holiday. It's the Company's way of acknowledging diversity. We are supposed to look into our hearts & see if we want to use our one, single Floating Holiday allocated each year for Martin Luther King Day. Or Cinco de Mayo. Or St. Patrick's Day. Or Yom Kippur. Or Chinese New Year. Or maybe Samhain. Who knows? But there it is, your single day to express your ethnicity & beliefs. Pick your holiday, folks. And God help you if you're a Chinese-Irish pagan married to a Jew.

That made me snicker. :)

So do you tend to use your floating holiday for something unrelated to anything just to be fair? :)

Shannon, I use it for Easter, which isn't considered a holiday by the Company, but which has always been an important holiday in my family, right up there with Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Oboegal, if you're talking about 1974, you're probably referring to the famous Ice Storm, the one that was the subject of Rick Moody's fiction & Ang Lee's film.

If snow is a beautiful nuisance, ice is a deadly beauty. It looks like a glass palace, when it's all finished. But it's awful for driving. Worse than snow.

To everyone who bawls over the SPCA commercial or changes the channel, are we heartless creatures or the opposite? Something to think about. I say the opposite.

Also, I'm trying to decide what I think of the guy who plays "Mayhem" on the insurance commercials. I think I'd like to slap him. I think that's why they cast him. I think he looks like someone who'd be really obnoxious to you at a party or in a bar, if he came onto you. Or like a person whom you do not want to be promoted to become your boss.

I have to change the channel when the SPCA commercial comes on. The music - sappy pap IMHO - isn't what makes me cry. It's the expressions on the faces of the animals. I'm getting weepy :dizzy: typing about it - geez!

We have freezing rain, rain, snow flurries, and sunshine forecast for tomorrow. Plague of locusts anyone?
Walking and driving in the freezing rain is my least favorite part of the job.

That and cleaning diarrhea off puppies who have done it in their crate and then slept in it. BLEAGH! :barf:

DH and I have a romantic :rofl: date tonite. We are getting flu shots together.

Just thought we'd end Monday on a high note :lol3:.

Dagmar :p

The Mayhem guy makes me laugh a bit. Can anyone really be so obnoxious and be able to cause so much harm without really understanding their actions? The first ones about the teen girls texting were so funny. My DD even dislikes the guy which makes me think that I did a good job raising her (so she wouldn't do something like that and think she could get away with it).

I can't imagine a company not observing Easter. Hmmm. We even give our employees President's Day off.

Isn't Easter a Sunday? I'm confused...

Jay

Jay, yes, of course, I mean Good Friday, although in some parts of the country, like where my mother's family is from, they also call the following day Easter Monday. (But where my mother grew up, they also get off from school the first day of deer-hunting season.)

Dagmar, these recent developments with your DH sound promising. I'll be thinking of you tomorrow while listening to the weather reports around 5 AM. I hope the weather holds off most of its nastiness till after your dog-walking tomorrow.

I am ready to face the weather this morning (got my bug spray for the locusts :p). After the flu shot I felt a bit strange so went to bed at 8 p.m. last night.

I slept through until 4 a.m. this morning. That's totally a record for me! I find (the 1 or 2 times a year I get enough sleep) that I am a different person when rested. Calm, confident, and totally sane.

That is something I'd love to feel more often.

Great Tuesday all!

Dagmar :coolsnow: :rain:

Alas, it's not a great Tuesday, thus far anyway. What a mess outside. To walk to the gym this morning over the ice, I had to put on my YakTrax. (A few years ago, when I still ran out-of-doors almost daily, I used to run over packed snow & ice wearing my YakTrax.) For those who aren't familiar with this marvelous invention, see their website at http://www.yaktrax.com/Products . No, I have no connection with them whatsoever, I'm just a fan of their ice-cleat-like products. I gave my late father a pair for Christmas one year & they were definitely in the Top 10 Well-Received by Dad Christmas Presents of All Time.

It's the kind of day where I'll put all the lamps on throughout the house to make it brighter & probably start a batch of whole-wheat bread during my lunch hour.

Good morning everyone! Another dreary day in Atlanta, at least it is rain and not snow. Dropped my car off this morning to get my remote start system installed, Christmas present from my parents. Too bad I couldn't get it installed before the heavy duty cold last week! :)

Saef - I could have used YakTrax last week! None of our running stores carry them and people sure were fussy about that last week! Try to keep your house bright to offset the dreary! :) We do close on Easter Sunday, being a seven day a week business.

Dagmar - sleeping until 4am is late? Wow! Enjoy your rain of toads today. :)

Allison - I don't know who the Mayhem guy is, I don't watch enough mainstream tv that isn't on Hulu. :lol: Oh wait - the one that is in the car when a tree falls on it? Texts while crying and hits someone's car in the parking lot of a shopping mall?

:wave: Good day everyone!

Shannon~the Mayhem guy is in commercials for Allstate insurance. Here is a link to some of the commercials Mayhem. It even has a montage of all the commercials. Pretty funny.

Sorry for all the yucky weather on the east coast. We've got sun and warmth here--so much so that my furnace didn't kick on this morning. We got up to 80 yesterday.

saef, thanks for mentioning YakTrax--I definitely need to look into those.

Dagmar, I sympathize about the sleep thing. My whole life, since early childhood, I haven't been able to fall asleep until I was good and ready, but I used to sleep soundly through the night. The last couple of years, I seem to wake up several times. I can usually cobble together a decent night's sleep, except on those nights that I wake up at 3 AM and can't fall asleep again.

One weird thing--I've always been a night person, with my ideal sleep time 1 to 2 AM and my ideal wake time 9 to 10 AM. For the last couple of months, though, I've been getting tired between 11 and 12 and waking up for good between 6 and 7. I don't know if it's connected to weight loss or age, or if it's just random.

I think the Mayhem guy is annoying/entertaining, like Carrot Top or Pauly Shore.

It's 34 degrees and overcast but forecast to get colder through the day, so I just went for my walk. Now they're forecasting snow tomorrow night and Thursday.

So DH's new routine lasted all of 3 days. And he's quitting his job tomorrow (at least tonite he says he is).

I gently suggested that he go for a walk but he sat down in front of the TV and opened a bag of chips 5 minutes after dinner.

Sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with a particularly obstinate 12 year old.

SIGH.

Myabe the pendulum will swing back the other way tomorrow.

Dagmar :tired:

So sorry Dagmar.....

regarding DH
 

I think the reason :?: I post so much negative stuff about DH is that I'm posting in relation to what's triggering me to overeat/emotionally eat. etc.

He has his good moments too (but you don't see those because they have little to do with maintenance, diet, etc.).

So I will share one from last night.

People talk about being a "dog person" or a "cat person". I find I like both. DH and I were talking about this last night. He thought about it for a bit and then said

"I guess that makes you bi-petual". :lol:

Great hump day all!

Dagmar :coolsnow:

Dagmar, I can relate to the feelings. I'm not coping well with this bad weather, which I've responded to by staying indoors, except for trips to the gym. I haven't been eating, but I've been browsing & bidding on eBay too much. Months ago, I needed clothes, since I was trying to create a wardrobe for my size 10 & size 8 body (a little smaller on top than on bottom). Now, I don't need anything, as I've overbought. And am regretting it. I need to find other ways to occupy my quiet or anxious moments. Like reaching out to friends -- I'm not very good at responding to e-mails or returning calls. I claim that I don't have time. But apparently I have time to scroll through endless auction listings. To repeat my resolution: Less time online. (As she writes this on an online message board. Ha!)

Dagmar: So you're going to support both of you on your petcare business while he sits at home and mopes once his "weight loss program" gets tiring? Jeez. I bet you wish you hadn't made that "If that's what it takes, do it" statement!

I think you need to make it clear that he has to "pull his own weight," so to speak. I had to do that with a partner once. I was paying more of the expenses because I made more money--but one day I realized that all I was doing was enabling my partner to live a life of semi-leisure, instead of using my money to save for my retirement. And that suddenly seemed really stupid to me.

Live and learn...

ETA: Cute puns don't make up for being irresponsible.

Jay

Good morning, everyone!

Dag: I've been reading your posts about DH for several years now. I hope you can both find a positive way to deal with DH's latest bout of existential angst.

Saef: I've also been posting a lot (this board and others) recently, and realizing that it's turning into a bad habit. Many times (like now) I'm just procrastinating the inevitable trip to a job that right at the moment isn't going well. Other times, though, I go on line because I'm bored. And then I feel bad because I realize that I just don't have many hobbies, other than going to the gym. And that's a pretty lame hobby, in many ways. Gee, so I racked up more miles on the Elliptical to Nowhere this week. Whoop-te-do. Moreover, there's only so much time one can spend at the gym, especially when you reach an age when recovery time slows to a snail's pace.

Shannon: Glad Atlanta is finally getting back to normal. We're in "normal" weather mode here, too, which means 20 minutes of sleet followed by 25 minutes of freezing fog followed by an hour of soft light snow followed by an hour of sunny melt-age followed by sub-zero temps. Gotta love central NY.

OK, enough procrastinating. Off to the gym, then to work.

//b. strong,
Kim

saef and kaw: Yes, I know what you mean. Where are the real people in my life? Not that people here aren't real--but what I mean is, if I died tomorrow, none of you would even find out. I'd just be another poster who stopped showing up. And the same is true for all of us. Lilybelle is a good example--people wonder about her, but we don't know what happened to her, and we might never know.

Jay

I have been worried about Lilybelle, last we heard from her she was waiting for a liver transplant . Don't know if she had it .

Dagmar, I hope everything works out with your DH. If the job really is what is causing all the problems, maybe a change is just what is needed. Is he planning to get another job just doing something different?

Speaking of DH's, mine is still on his health kick. He's been faithfully logging all his food for nearly two weeks now. I've been cooking recipes where I can keep the sauce separate, so he can either have no sauce or less sauce depending on what he wants (he is watching sodium very carefully to try to lower his blood pressure). It has been pretty enlightening. When I log my food, I only really pay attention to calories, and a bit less attention to protein/fat/carb content. I never even looked at sodium. It turns out that although we don't feel like we eat a lot of processed foods, they sneak salt into nearly everything! Did you know that most of the raw chicken you buy in the supermarket has been injected with saline solution? Or that jarred pasta sauce has massive amounts of salt? Even some veggies have a lot of salt naturally!

I had heard this, Jessica. When I was still fat, and in the early stages of losing weight, and my blood pressure hadn't yet come down -- it's excellent now -- my doctor once told me that he saw no reason why anyone should ever eat celery, given the level of sodium it contains. To this day, I'm afraid of raw celery sticks.

But the prohibition ends there, for me, as celery seems to me to be a critical part of that essential triumvirate for starting so many good & healthy dishes: Sauteeing an onion, two diced carrots & two sticks of diced celery in a bit of really good olive oil. The celery seems like an elemental part of that blend of flavors. I'm just not worried enough about that to cut it from my diet. I've cut out plenty of other stuff, but celery is staying in my mirepoix.

You scared me a little, there saef. About celery, I mean. I really like celery and lately have been having 2-3 stalks for my snack. I just had to look it up. One large stalk (11") has 51 mg sodium (2% daily value). Whereas an 8" long carrot has 50 mg sodium. I guess the better choice is sugar snap peas with 3 mg (but more calories than celery)...I don't think I'll give up the celery.

I came home to a near disaster yesterday. Thank goodness I left work early or it could have been even worse. Buddy is on arthritis meds and sometimes they mess with his insides. Monday night he'd been having what we call a bad night. He couldn't get comfortable and he was in and out and wheezing and coughing and falling for over 2 hours. He finally settled down and had a good night's sleep, but obviously something was bothering him as I came home to find he had had explosive diarrhea--in the garage, laundry room and into the living room. I had to wash the laundry room rug (on sanitary), use bleach to clean up the tile (and walls!) in there and the living room, then into the garage where I had to pull the carpet runners to the front driveway to spray them off. What a mess! It took me over an hour to get it all cleaned up. Meanwhile, he went inside, laid down in the living room and fell asleep. He's fine today (but as a precaution he's eating pumpkin with his meals and I skipped his dose of meds last night to give him a break).

I have to thank the kids, though. They came home at the same time and DD cleaned up the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher while DS built the new kitty box (we bought one of the automatic ones).

Today should be better. I'm going for a hair cut so my day will be nice and short!

Yuck Allison! I've certainly come home to that more times than I care to mention! I've never heard of giving dogs pumpkin. Is is supposed to settle their stomachs? My girls are usually pretty good to help too but they never know quite what to do!

My Vet told me to give my dog pumpkin.He was having a lot of irritation and yelped when he had to do BM. I aslo find that sweet potatoes work, too,

Pumpkin (and probably sweet potatoes) have a lot of fiber and that helps the diarrhea (and constipation and I think upset tummies). I buy it canned--the 100% pumpkin. Don't use pumpkin pie filling as that has sugar and spices in it. Dogs love it! I actually have to give it to both (even if only one needs it) because the other one feels left out if he doesn't get any! You can Google it, there are a lot of pages that recommend it.

Cats love it too! They sometimes need fiber for constipation problems. We buy the organic version but that's just us.

Jay