Jacqui, I'm sorry to hear about Ichabod, but you do know what's best. Your new grandsons' will prayerfully alleviate most if not all of the sadness. :hug: You're a great fur-baby Mommy :hug:

OMGoodness Jacqui, I would sure love to be in the 160's by next week. My daughter made a marble cake. Oh my goodness it smelled like choc chip cookies :drool:. I wanted a chunk of that cake so bad, it's really dense. Instead I ate the edge off because since it is so dense the edges were rock hard due to bake time and they would just throw it away (it was only the darker side) ... so I threw it in my mouth. I guess that's a confession. Other than that I had an OP day :)

Carol what were some of the side effects from the medicine? Did you mention the dizziness to the doctor? I know you believe you know what caused it, but one can never be too careful :hug:

Carol Sue, I'm sorry to hear about the additional meds. I do hope it works well for you without side effects this time. Thank you. I will get more pets eventually. They bring too much joy to my life not to. I might space them out in age this time so I don't lose them all at once though. All my pets except Ichabod lived to a ripe old age. Even my remaining cat is 15 and I fully expect her to live another 5 years. It's so unfair that Ichabod, who is only 4-5 years old, has some fluke heart condition that caused paralysis. He is so young. My youngest cat ever to die before was 15 (too young) and my oldest, 23. If this was just a matter of Ichabod being disabled, I would care for him for as long as he would live (I even had a friend who made him a walker), but he has bad days too often when he's in pain, he has lost a lot of weight because he isn't eating much now, and in the last 2 weeks he's developed a sore on his foot that started out like a pinprick, but is the size of a dime now and won't heal because he has very little circulation to his feet. He's so sweet, my little lover boy, and it's so sad.

Thanks Rennie. I don't think that one little edge will probably affect the scale much if at all. Hopefully it won't affect your blood sugar much. Just stick to plan other than that. You can do this.

Evening all!

Mars your trip sounds amazing....some day I hope to get to Cuba, hopefully before it gets commercialized too much.

Love2b150 hey there.

Wannabehealthy I would never be able to control myself at your buffet. You're stronger than I am :)

Jacqui I'm almost in tears for you and poor kitty. I do love my fur babes, esp. my sweet kitties. I'll sending peaceful vibes across the counties tonight.

I had a slight panic attack tonight when Mr. Darcy didn't come running when I called him. After twenty minutes I went back out and called again...no kitty. I looked up and there he was on the roof of the additition. I went in, up the stairs and into the bathroom. As soon I opened the window he came running in. Crisis over.

Today's menu.....

Break - McD's sausage burrito w/hot sauce and ice tea w/stevia
Lunch - Amy's cheese/bean burrito
Snack - skinny popcorn
Dinner - chicken cutlets w/mushroom lemon cream sauce and angel hair pasta, spinach salad w/maple Dijon vinaigrette
Night cap -seriously thinking about a whisky sour later if I stop feeling so full

Hola, Mars! Welcome back! Tell us more! Nature? Cities? Was your group around a lot of other tourists?

Carol, why're you in a casino? getting lost here..hope you came back with more $$$

Aw right, love2be, I can read about all this pumpkin and bacon stuff without being affected, but Great Gravy Goodness, WHY did you have to mention that chocolate cake?

Poor Ichabod. RIP. (I'd still like to volunteer to be your new pet, Jac.)

I hear ya on the meds, Carol....hope they do the job for you quickly..p.s. I know an 18yo on bp meds..

I feel like I'm falling apart.. After a dentist appt this wk, I now have to think about periodontal disease. Ugh. I have a water pik, take good care of my teeth and don't eat sweets. Just Ugh...They look fine, btw. X-rays showed bone loss...commonly occurs with RA...Going to the rheum next week..I expect a new round of meds, as the heroin hasn't improved things.


aaaaand I'm still fat. Pooping well, but still fat. Still having bran cereal for breakfast, not hungry and not eating much. I'm up 5lb and not losing. I'm also stressed from work. Oh Oh OH...I won the lottery this week! :carrot: :carrot: :carrot: Whoops...that wasn't me.

p.s. Jac...I'm house broken....mostly

Jacqui I was hoping that Ichabod was tooling along. I'm so sad to hear the news, on the heels of your other losses too. I'll be thinking of you today, and sweet Ichabod. You have given him a pleasant life on his own terms. Choosing a humane end is abut the most loving thing you could do. I wish there was a way to ease the loss...:hug:

SeeMyFeet, Even though it feels like you are falling apart, you are doing a good job taking care of yourself with the things that are arising. I hope you get some new meds that work. Is it the meds making the weight gain/difficulty losing? That really sucks.

My trip was almost entirely bird counts, but we had some time to do other things--visited the Bay of Pigs museum, Che Guevara's hideout during the missile crisis, walking around Havana. But mostly in nature preserves, villages. A few touristy areas, but mostly not. A smorgasbord of lodging, incl.resort hotels, simple beach front cabanas, private hostels. A 4-star hotel in Cuba may or may not have hot water. They have been through some very tough times; things are better, but still tough. The villages are picturesque, and even seeing the country out of the bus was fascinating, eg sharing the interstate with horse-drawn carts & bicycles, old American cars, new Russian & Chinese ones.

SMF We live relatively close to 3 casinos, withing 1-1/2 miles. DH is probably addicted to gambling, so we go a few times a month. I hold the purse strings so he doesn't gamble away the house, and the money we spend is AFTER all the monthly bills are paid. I'm not crazy about it, but the food sure is good!

Rennie, did you think that because that little piece of cake was dark and hard and didn't taste good that it wasn't fattening? LOL If you're going to eat something you shouldn't be eating, don't waste it on a part that's going to be thrown away, anyway! Have a bite of the middle of the cake and enjoy it!

Prairie Queen, I have weaned myself off most carby foods and especially sweets. It's because of my diabetes. DH usually has 3 desserts, and they don't even interest me. I would rather go back through the buffet a second time. Or third. They used to have regular ice cream and I would get a scoop of strawberry topped with hot fudge sauce. Now they changed it to soft serve ice cream and it's runny and doesn't really taste very good, and there's no toppings. So now I don't even go over and look at the dessert bar. You'd think I'd lose weight. Most people blame their weight on their lack of control with sweets and snacks. I don't eat them and my weight won't budge.

Jacqui, my friend had a cat who was only around 5 years old and developed blood clots. I don't remember what her symptoms were, but they took her to a vet and had to put her down right then and there. The vet said nothing could be done for her.

Most of our animals have lived a long life, except for 1 dog who developed cancer and had to be put down at 11 years old. He should have lived to be at least 15 or so.

Oooohh Mars, what lovely words for Jac!

And what a wonderful snapshot in time you have for that part of the world! I know what you mean about views from the bus...I was in Beijing when everything was frantically being built and polished for the Olympics. We drove through a new settlement area, slums actually, where workers formerly from the countryside were living. They built a stacked warren of tiny one-room dwellings, probably from scrap building material and, surprisingly, mostly brick, and I'll never forget the image when I looked up from the taxi window and saw the most amazing spaghetti-noodle nest of electrical wires floating in the air that fueled all the new TVs, which you could see blaring from the open front doors! I doubt that part of town is accessible now, as the govt was quickly walling it off and surrounding it with clean, spacious and westernized touristy shops.

and you panged my guilt nerve. Last night was the first time this week I exercised. Lots of excuses...car trouble, forgot my gym bag, but let's be honest and call it laziness.

Gaw, WannaBe...I know what you mean about not eating sweets and not losing....Good thing I'm a patient and understanding person, else I would punch holes in the table after reading all these "whoops, my mouth fell on the cake and I at the whole thing, but lucky for me I dropped 5lb overnight" comments on this forum. And, no, I can't blame the meds. I wish I were a more proud person--I'd be strutting and bragging and patting myself on the back for having such an exceptionally efficient and stupendously Superior metabolism! "Baah Ha Ha! You can't starve ME!!"

Originally Posted by Wannabehealthy:
... Have a bite of the middle of the cake and enjoy it!.

...words to live by...:rofl: :rofl: Boy Howdy! I needed that chuckle.

I gotta weigh in on the cake, pun intended! I LOVE that hard crusty part. :drool:

Thank you all so much. You made me cry. Of course, that's not hard today. I've been crying on the drop of a dime. I'll respond to you individually tomorrow. I know you understand. :grouphug:

Today, I weigh 171.

Hi Everyone :wave:

Jacqui :hug:

Jacqui this must be 'all pets go to heaven'day, because my mom had to put her 19-year-old malti-poo down today. . . Her one and only. Her sister from a different litter was my little Lily that passed three years ago.

Friday's menu ....

Break - McD's sausage burrito w/hot sauce and ice tea w/stevia
Lunch - leftover chicken w/mushroom-lemon sauce & angel hair pasta
Snack - skinny popcorn
Dinner - homemade meatball hoagie w/o lid
Snack - two drinks because it's Friday and the start of nine days off work!

I'm going to have to be so careful this week with overeating at breakfast and lunch since it will be very easy to overdo it while home all day. I've got lots of "jobs" planned to burn some extra calories if I can stick with it. Today I really need to finish the garden chores before the real cold sets in. And, of course, there's always plenty of cleaning to do in this big old farmhouse....it's a dirt magnet (having four pets indoors doesn't make it any cleaner either).

Today, I started out with organic oatmeal w/stevia and a teaspoon of low-sugar Apple topping that I canned last month. It was lacking something though. I think tomorrow I'll add a small chunk of Irish butter to "richen" it up.

Have a great weekend all!

Ugh! I had all my personals written and ready to send and when I hit enter, I discovered that my internet service had been interrupted and my computer was offline, and of course, hitting the back button didn't help to save what I had written. So frustrating! I don't have time to re-do them now, but I will try again tonight. I hope everyone is having a great day! I weigh 171.

Today's menu.....

Break - oatmeal with stevia & cooked apples, Coke Life
Lunch - leftover chicken w/mushroom-lemon sauce and angel hair pasta
Dinner - bourbon chicken w/broccoli and rice
No snacks!