Garden! Welcome to the nicest and bestest group in 3FC! YOu will love all the gals here!

Nell, Welcome back!

Marie, that salad sounds great. I know what I am making tomorrow for lunch!

NewLeaf, My yellow tomatoes are coming along nicely.. but those reds are slower than Molasses in January! Might be December before they are ripe!lol

As for book signing.. decent turn out. I was happy with it until one woman came up and said quite loudly, "You are MUCH bigger than I thought. But it's nice to know someone of your SIZE is confident enough to try things most BIG girls wouldn't dare try."

I coulda reached across and smacked her.. instead I smiled and sweetly said, "Size has no bearing what kind of person you can be. Even the most beautiful, thin person can still be ugly on the inside."

She didn't know quite how to respond, but the ladies around her smiled as she skulked away. Made my day!!lol

See everyone Monday!!

Kudos for handling a tough situation with more grace than the person deserves! Good for you! I love your answer and will have to steal it!

Read your post to Hubby and he's still laughing about your answer!

Hubby put in the doorjam and hung the picture; we will have to buy some trim to get the door to fit but that's okay. I didn't realize that the door wasn't painted, just primed, so now I have to paint it also.

Newleaf, Yes, the other eye. Soon I'll have a matched set! I'm really looking forward to throwing my contact and solutions away! Our orientation for Bible study is the following Wed, at a new church, so I can't wait to see what I can see! I tried to schedule the surgries so it wouldn't interfere with BS but this was cutting it a bit close, LOL

patchworkpenguin - good luck with getting your other eye done. Even now, 9 years after having my laser eye surgery, I still marvel at how well I can see. Thank goodness for modern medicine!

Hotsplashes - I admire you for keeping your cool and putting that woman in her place at your book signing. I'm one of those people who thinks of a good comeback hours later, when it's way too late.

newleaf - you were right about the cat. I lasted all of a week after we lost our little black cat to cancer. Yesterday, we went and got two 3 year old female ragdoll cats from a breeder. She was selling them because they had already had some litters and she wasn't going to breed them again. They are supposed to be really good cats for kids and so far, so good. The kids adore them and I'm really happy.

Nell - good job on your vacation! That's always a bonus to maintain.

Marie - we have lots of basil, too! Pesto sounds like a great idea.

gardenerjoy - welcome! Thanks for the info on the chard. That's a common crop around here, so I'll have to try it. Do you know a good way to prepare it?

I had a tough week after our cat was put to sleep. I'm still stuck at 180 pounds, but I am definitely losing inches. My weight training workout yesterday was pretty tiring and I had trouble doing my cardio afterwards. Today we hung out with the kids and had a great day. Tomorrow, the sun is supposed to be coming back out so we'll be off to one of the waterparks.

HotSplashes - WOW, I can't imagine somebody saying that to you; how rude! You handled it incredibly well...

PatchworkPenguin - Good luck tomorrow!

PresMaggie - Oh, I LOL'd that you got new kitties already... I'm glad that they are bringing you some joy

Onmyway: I think I'm going to make pesto today. I have a ton of basil in the garden. It grew really well this year!

Marie: thanks for the advice -- I weighed myself this morning and now I feel like I've taken the first step on this journey instead of constantly putting it off for another day.

patchworkpenguin: sending healing energy in your direction for your surgery tomorrow

newleaf123: I once got free beet greens at the Farmers Market because a woman bought the beets but didn't want the greens. She tried to give them back to the farmer, who didn't want them, so I said I'd take them!

Hotsplashes: What you said to that woman was just perfect! Like presmaggie, I wouldn't have thought of that great comeback until she was long gone. Good for you for thinking on your feet!

Presmaggie: I put our chicken and green stir-fry recipe on my 3FC blog. I'm too new to post links -- but the blog link is in my profile on the left, so I'm sure you'll find it. We eat a lot of greens this way -- often fixing it once or twice a week. My husband says it's the best dish for normalizing his digestive system when it gets out of whack.

I'm working through Stage 1 of the Complete Beck Diet for Life. I just finished The End of Overeating by David Kessler and was convinced that I need to work on overcoming the conditioning that the food industry has given me to eat high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt foods. But he was a little skimpy on the details of how exactly to do that. Stage 1 of Beck has lots of details for one way of doing it.

I haven't decided if I'm going to do the food plan in Beck -- I haven't really looked at it yet. What do you all do for food plans? One thing about being an over 40 dieter is that I'm pretty sure I have the experience to invent my own customized plan that would be perfect for me (and probably no one else in the world). So, I may do that.

newleaf - I guess you know what it's like to want to have cats around. They are wonderful company for me when everyone's out of the house.

gardenerjoy - thanks for the recipe! I think I'll try that this week. It's great that you have a peanut sauce recipe because all of the bottled sauces have garlic in them and I'm allergic to garlic. Now I can use this for other recipes, too!

I did come back here this morning because I have finally broken through my 180 pound barrier! With all my exercise, I'm surprised it has taken this long, but I'll take it when I can.

GardenerJoy - funny re: the greens. I asked at our market what they do with them and the answer was use them as compost... Seems like a waste...

PresMaggie - congratulations re: breaking into the 170s!!! Hooray!!!

I had a wonderful lunch now -- I sauteed the beet greens in olive oil. When they were almost done I sectioned up a tomato and threw it in to warm. Put it all on a plate, drizzled lemon juice on top. Yum!!!!!!!!!

Good morning everyone!

Had a nice relaxing day yesterday. DD had an early soccer game and then I took a group of her friends to the pool. Met the nicest woman with a newer baby. You really do forget how little your kids once were! I'm getting used to the idea of being back to work. I'm ready to get back to eating to lose. Thanks for all of your encouragement this summer!

Presmaggie, great news about the new cats. 179 - You rock!

Gardenerjoy, stepping on the scale is a BIG step in owning this journey. Sounds like you have done a good job preparing yourself. These boards are a great source of info about various diet plans. Good luck!

Patchwork, we will be thinking of you tomorrow. It must be very exciting especially after the success of your last surgery! Keep us posted!

Hotsplash, great comeback! Glad to hear your book is doing well!

Nell. Welcome back! Hope you had a great vacation!

Marie, less than 20 to go, you are in the homestretch! Your DH's picture gave me a good laugh. I'd think twice before opening the fridge with that looking at me! LOL

Newleaf, Your lunch sounds delicious! Makes you wonder how many other things we easily discard taste good?

Hi to anyone I may have missed. Have a great day!

Just checking in for the day. I let April out this morning and when she came back she had a big rawhide bone in her mouth. We don't give her rawhide so we wondered where it came from! We still don't know! Hubby checked the fences to make sure she didn't get out and into another yard, so the only thing we can think of is that someone {a neighbor?} gave it to her?? We took it away much to her disappointment. Weird!

Hubby took the next week off from work so be with me and work on the bathroom with my dad! Yay, This may mean Hubby and I {April, too} will spend a night at my parents house while grout dries, etc. This should be interesting. Mom and I have a workshop for Bible study all day Wed, also. I need to get my things {and self} together. The new year has snuck up on me!

Thanks all for the well wishes!

Maggie, Sorry for the difficult week but yay, on the 179!

Joy, I feel I do better with a custom plan than following someone else's plan. I get to improvise that way also.

Hi Nell, welcome back!!! Great job on maintaining during your vacation. That’s never an easy feat.

Penguin, I was looking for seeds and there weren’t any so I decided to look thought the dregs of the garden plants. There the plants were. I was thrilled, especially since OMW got me addicted to Tomato Mozzarella Pesto salad. Also, you’ll love the solid doors for the laundry room as they help reduce the noise from those machines. Yeah for DH being with you for the week. That will be nice. And I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow as well.

Newleaf, you are on an exercise roll. Pretty soon you’ll be addicted and just love it. I really don’t think it takes long to get to the addicted level – probably as long as it takes to get out of it after one doesn’t exercise for a couple days in a row.

Hotsplashes, we have our friend OMW to thank for the salad. I can see how she’s addicted to it – I am now too. Make it with your yellow tomatoes. My sister gave me a yellow one when I was on vacation and it was great. And OMG on the RUDE, A$$NINE woman. Excellent job on the verbal comeback. That was AWESOME!

Presmaggie, excellent addition to your family. I know some people have this thought that when you get another pet after one has passed away that you’re “replacing” them. That is such garbage, there is no replacing. My belief that there’s so much emptiness from a pet passing and that a pet person has such a big heart, that it’s important to fill the emptiness and give a new pet a great place to live and love. Those kitties are so lucky to have you! WTG on the barrier being broken. Both the 180’s and getting to just overweight!

OMW, sounds like you had a great day yesterday. Sometimes it seems like just a bit ago that my kids were babies and now they’re in their early 20’s. Time sure does fly. Enjoy your group of new students tomorrow.

Joy, congrats on taking that first step. It’s the hardest! I think you are right on the customized plan for yourself. I bet you know if you are a quantity or quality food lover. (Of course we probably all like high quality and quantity but weigh which one is more important). I found I am a quality person. I HATE no fat food imitations for the most part. I like the real stuff. So I made my choice to make my life around quality, healthy food. If my portion is tiny, I can be fine with it. But I know several people who made the opposite choice wanting lots of food with the sacrifice of great taste. It really is a matter of what is more important to you. Then you base your diet around that. Eating something that someone else designed is short term and most of the time is a setup for failure to maintain. In my case, I know that when I reach goal, the number of calories will probably relatively close to what I’m doing now as it’s not as hard to move a 135 pound body as it is a 212 one. When I began my journey, I made a commitment to myself (after really focusing on the quality/quantity issue) that I will weigh daily and log my food every day the rest of my life. That there will never be an excuse not to do it. I told DH to demand my food journal if he suspects I’m not logging. Anyway, really think about this journey in the terms of forever because for those of us in this nasty fat boat, it is life long.

Today I'm going to knit leg warmers on my knitting machine (I don't know how to hand knit). It's so cold in the morning when I drive my topless Jeep (high altitude makes chilly nights) that the blanket I wrap around my legs isn't cutting it. I tried to buy some and the store didn't have what I wanted - then I remembered my knitting machine, so that's my objective for the day. During today's training with the dog behaviorist, I volunteered to donate a wildlife stained glass for a silent auction fundraiser. So designing something is also on the list. Most importantly is my non-elliptical day means I'm going to swim. I always swim one 1 mile swim at some point every summer. I think today will be the day unless my wrist doesn't hold out. It does a 1/2 mile swim ok so I'm going to go for it. So much for my day of rest...

Marie

Thanks all for the well wishes and prayers. I'm excited about my second cataract surgery now that I know what to expect and what the results will be. I'll check in as soon as I can!

Marie, I did another load of towels tonight and leaned the new solid doors up against the opening to see what the difference was. Now I'm afraid that once they are installed I'll never hear the dryer buzz! always something!

I hand knit {usually baby hats and bootie sets} but considered getting a machine at one time, I thought the setup would be more trouble than its worth? I have a bit of yarn stashed away I had intended for a sweater that I've been considering pulling out and making a rectangular shawl out of. Maybe when it gets cooler here!