Thanks for your thoughts. Her name was Allison, by the way. I decided to do more unpacking tonight. I reached into a box and the first item I pulled out was a gift she gave me. I decided that was her saying "good bye."


______________


Chapter suggestions:

Foods that friends bring over to your house.

Food picked off of someone else's plate. If it's your DH's plate, it is a minus calorie.

Food given to you by a child to share.

I'm sure I'll think of more

Rhonda

I love the suggestions! They made me laugh! I'm sure the book will be a best seller!!! Today is the first day of our two week + Good Friday spring break. It's going to be sunny and 80 degrees here in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm getting outside today

Rhonda, your gift story made me smile. It's funny how that happens so often after a loved one has left us. Hang in there, I'm sending prayers and good thoughts your way.

I'll check in with you chicks later. TTFN

Sloan, don't forget Wine -- its really a fruit!

Well, I updated my tracker. I'm actually the same as I was at the end of january --1/29 was the last time I updated it. So, I guess thats a good thing. Its going to be a quiet day here -- dd and I both have the day off. She's having a friend over, I'm going to get our tax stuff together (having them done on Tuesday) and then I need to start getting my dining room together for Sunday. Just need to get the leaves into the table and turn it around. We are only having 8 on Sunday.

Have a good day!

Have we mentioned the chapter on eating kids' leftovers yet? (Like crusts of PB&J's and the like).

Putting on a baby shower for my brother and sister-in-law tomorrow, but it's going to be very low key. I am shopping for food for it today and cleaning house tomorrow morning.

My feet have been swelling like something crazy since it got warmer here. It was over 80 degrees here yesterday! But luckily it's supposed to cool down, so hopefully that will help.

Time to get the girls to school,
Angela

Hey Chicks! I'm busy, busy, busy finishing up my puppy preparation and getting ready for the holiday. My eating is not stellar but neither is it horrible. I hope you are all well. I've been reading but not a lot of time to write.

Rhonda, I am so very sorry for the loss of your friend Allison. Sometimes life just isn't fair. I know exactly how you feel. Somedays I'm just not over the loss of my best friend, Cindy. I try to honor her by remembering her life but sometimes I just feel sad. Our birthdays were a week apart so it's coming up soon. I try to celebrate on her birthday. I hope her children will be well taken care of.

Angela, you're right. We need a chapter about the "mothers duty" to eat her kids' leftovers! I hope someone is helping you with the baby shower. That's a lot to take on when you are close to delivery yourself.

Vickie, I've been busy today, too. I have prepped two dressers for paint, painted two kitchen chairs, accompanied my parents to a meeting about a house, and now I'm finally sitting down. My eating has been just like yours. Tonight is my anniversary, 28 years, so DH and I are going to sit out on the deck and share a bottle of wine. Not exactly core, but it fits in with the chapter about food eaten at celebrations, and it is a fruit serving

Paula, the wine IS a fruit serving, right?


Have a great evening, y'all!

Sloan, the teacher left a senior in charge of the soccer team. I was just a warm body. I sat on a grassy hillside watching while chatting with a young player who has a broken wrist. It was good getting to know him. he told me he was a "nerd athlete." He's in the top 10 in his class. I had a blast all day. The kids were wonderful. I do worry about how the chemistry kids did on their test today, though.

Rhonda, what a beautiful thought. That probably was Allison's saying, "Good-bye."

Vickie, you're going to enjoy your new puppy.

Curtis is extremely allergic to animals, so we don't have any pets. No dogs, no cats--nothing but wild birds. But Curtis is worth it--and when I pet his bald head, he purrs.

Paula, I'm weighing the same now for over a year, but it's about 40 or more pounds higher than it should be. Sometimes I just wish I could accept myself for who I am.

Bad day. Second day of glorious unseasonably warm temperatures. I should be thrilled. Too bad there is a decaying dead something or other under or deck. We can't access under the deck. It's only about 4-6 inches off the ground and has boards around the exposed sides to keep this from happening! Thankfully, I found a guy in my town who will remove alive or dead critters and sanitize. Bad news is he is probably going to have to disassemble part of our deck. He said he'll put it back as good as he can.

Yikes! It stinks SOOOOOOOOO bad.

Hope you all had a better day.

Sandra, that's quite the mental picture you paint. Does Curtis know you told us all that he purrs? How CUTE is that?

Happy Anniversary Sloan...yes, wine IS a fruit serving. Always has been, and always will be. Enjoy.

Vickie, ooh wee, good luck with that mess.

Angela, good luck with the shower. We have about 10-12 coming here on Sunday. I'm just lining up the food and saying "help yourself." And....I'm buying the ham and potato salad from a local Bar-B-Que place. I'm learning how to entertain!

I'm starting to take a protein supplement, powder mixed with water. It can't be Core, but I need more protein according to what I'm reading and what the trainer is telling me. I'll have to watch the calories even more closely.

Also, I've been diagnosed with "moderately severe partial sleep apnea" and I have to have another test next week.
Oh well, I guess I get to wear one of those funny masks. I have a close friend who wears one and he said it made all the difference in his energy levels. DH is next!

Have a good night,
Rhonda

I am laughing thinking of what a new person on our forum would think....
" what a great diet with all the foods that don't count... "

I just watched Pretty Woman...Love that movie...




Sandra ..that is too funny about Curtis purring..

Vickie..it was a warm day here also...I finally broke down and found my shorts...
That is awful about the dead animal under your deck. We had a dead animal downwind from us last year and that was bad enough...

Rhonda..are you going to get an apnea mask??? Let us know how that goes...

Night all

Ewwwwwwwww, Vickie. I hope you get the dead critter removed quickly with as little damage as possible. Curtis knows I talk about his purring. He's all right with it. He just wishes I'd pet him move.

Rhonda, I'm anxious to see you and am hoping to get the jumpstart I so desperately need.

Nancy, "Pretty Woman" is a great movie with a fabulous song.

Mornin' chicks, I've got another busy day planned. First, I'm going out to lunch with my sister and neice to celebrate my sister's birthday, then I'm going to the hardware store (my second home) to pick up some pulls for the two dressers that I started painting yesterday, put a second coat on the dressers, and cover the cushions for the kitchen chairs that I painted this week........ Is your head spinning? Mine is! I am excited about the decorating part of this remodel, but we still have some work to do on the remodel part. Dining room floor is going in on Monday, and living room carpet is going in on the following Monday. That's why I'm I painting furniture now. I can paint inside and not worry about getting paint on the floor. I've go two end tables to paint, too! I plan to do those next week before the carpet is installed.

Needless to say, my eating is "on again/off again", but I'm still paying attention. In the past, I would use all this "busy-ness" as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted. NOT THIS TIME. Being here with y'all has changed all that for me. Even if we fall, we can always come right back here to get lifted up again. I love my chickies!

I'll check in later to see what y'all are up to. TTFN

So Trapper Nick removed two possums, both dead. I'll spare you the details. He cleaned up and sanitized with an enzyme. I asked him what to do to keep them from going under our deck and he said to install hardware cloth. There's already solid wood under the deck so I'm not sure how this will help but I'll talk to our handyman.

Since I'm not sure that is going to work, I started researching. I found this product called HotShot. It's available through Amazon and seems like it contains a hot pepper solution. Do you think that it would bother a dog if this were sprayed around the edges of a deck that a dog would have to walk over?

http://www.amazon.com/HotShot-Possum...0324936&sr=8-1

Vickie

BTW, he said things burrow under concrete patios so if I hadn't already been told that wasn't a fail safe solution....I'd know it now.