Lydia - so sorry to hear about your BP. My mom has freakishly high BP so it is something I worry about myself. Hope you get it under control. And, good luck in your studying!

Cheryl - I'll be glad to post the links to the exercises when I get home tonight. I did more last night and am totally feeling it. Don't know if they will be as tough to anyone else, but they are beating me down. :-) I'm not the most coordinated individual and balancing on the ball is harder than I thought!

I'm at the hospital all day today with my MIL - she had surgery for uterine cancer this morning.

I'm thinking of you and your MIL today, Shannon.

Sorry to hear about your BP Lydia. I really think there is a genetic component as well as a lifestyle one. You've done a lot to try to alleviate the problem and I think you don't need to feel you're a failure at all! Think where it would be if you hadn't lost weight and gotten in shape..... My DH who has never been overweight, and is in terrific shape has high BP - kills him to take meds, but hey, I'd like him around longer. He also has an acid reflux problem he takes meds for and tries to go without every so often - it comes right back.

Man a contentious meeting this morning with lots of talk, no action except to form a "working group" to continue the discussion ..... Sigh.

I'll be here tomorrow than gone til Sunday! YAY! I'm going to a quilt retreat where as the name says, I get to retreat from work and home, and to quilt with 29 of my friends It's held at a camp and they feed us lunch and dinner. I have healthy breakfasts and defined snacks packed (yup, even some dark chocolate) and am resolved to stay away from the junk food table that always exists at these events. It's a pain to pack up everything for 3 days, but I get so much more done than at home. A friend will come in to feed the kitties, and I'm off guilt-free.

Have fun, Pat. Used to do a lot of machine quilting, but hand quilting drove me nuts. Now I can't see well enough to even try

My should/back/neck is finally healing. I haven't done any upper body since last week- just lots of legs and cardio. Did a treadmill run this morning with no pain, but will miss lunch time lift due to meetings. My boss is trying to talk me into joining a Wed. night yoaga class with her- I may do it. Maybe venture a light upper body workout tomorrow if nothing fires up again

Shannon- I hope all went well for your MIL yesterday.

Lydia- There's such a huge genetic component to BP. You've worked so hard and literally done everything you could. Happy studying

Off to meetings in Philadelphia today- and it's supposed to snow The drive is dreadful at the best of times!

Mel

Philadelphia? How exciting!! I know you are going there to work, but have you ever run up those stairs like Rocky? Yes, I am a huge dork, but someday I want to do that. And everyone around will think: TOURIST!

Lydia, you deserve great props for controlling what you can control. Certainly your BP would be even higher if you weren't so fit and focused on exercise and nutrition.

Pat, have fun at your quilting retreat. I've had (yes HAD!) to make a couple of quilt squares lately for some pregnant ladies and the whole time I just prayed my bobbin wouldn't run out of thread cause I don't remember how to reload it. Pretty sad, huh?

Mel: Careful during your drive today. Hope the meeting is productive to warrant the trip. Oh. And please take the yoga class. It's such a beautiful way to meet the flexibility component of fitness. At least I think so. Just don't let the instructor sit on your back. No serious here. They get all excited when they work with me and think I should be able to bend all the way. Not. Go gentle.

Shannon: to your MIL. I hope you are doing well too.

Pat: You so deserve a nice retreat such as this. Glad you found a cat sitter and can go free of mind. Enjoy the surroundings of your friends. I don't quilt but do have morning "retreats" with my girlfriends as well. Actually, there are several circles I get looped into and I always feel so "nurtured" after leaving. It's good to surround ourselves with friends. 'Specially after the types of meetings you just described. ~sigh~

Yep. I'm at peace with the BP thing. I'm going back on the meds and know that its not just something that I totally within my control. It really is okay. I also know the difference between being on them and not. It's subtle, but there is a difference. I feel so much calmer when taking them too. I think it may be why I've been feeling this low level of anxiety. It must be my body's response to the higher bp. And all this while I've been blaming it on the uncertainty of the economy.

Okay. Another marathon day of studying. DS2 is in preschool this morning so it will be much easier today.

Mel - I'm glad your back is starting to feel better. Hope the drive today doesn't make it worse again, and be careful in the snow!

Pat - your retreat sounds like fun. You have been running pretty hard it seems lately, so relax and unwind!

Lydia - hmm... wonder if I can find a medication to take to help my low level anxiety from the economy... hmm.... I'm glad that the meds are helping. Good studying!

Cheryl - your pic with your dogs looks great! You looked like you were having a great time!

My MIL came through her surgery fine - they did a full hysterectomy with lymph nodes and also removed her appendix because the doctor found a mass on it. We have to wait until we get everything back to see if that mass was cancer as well. She was in a room and settled by noon yesterday, should be walking around this morning. I'm worn out - getting up at 3am yesterday to get her to the hospital by 5, then staying at the hospital until almost 9pm wore me right out...

Cheryl - those swiss ball exercises I was talking about - I've been doing these three for legs that I got from Lydia in another thread...
And, the ones that have been killing my abs are these -
Side crunch - the balance on this one is still really hard for me, I'm not moving fully in the correct plane yet...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODSOE...eature=related

I can't do very many of the reverse crunch yet...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEUou...eature=related

I can do the regular version of this bridge pretty well, the one legged version is harder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6VT4q_lJZ0&feature=related

I've also been doing the basic swiss ball crunch and some of the twists - they are really helping my balance on the ball. I don't think mine has enough air in it, though...

I'm really liking the Ridgeline Fitness videos for the ball - downloaded them onto my iPod. There are several that I haven't gotten up to yet.

Thanks, gals. I'm getting excited to go. I packed up my projects to work on last night. And my non-refrigerated food. Clothes are easy - jeans and a couple t-shirts, underwear, pj's..... I have to bring my own bedding and towels as well. I'm just getting a sleeping bag out of the camping stuff.

Mel - I absolutely do not do hand-quilting! I love my sewing machine.... It's ready to go too. Oh, and have to remember the light....

So unless it snows a whole bunch, my exercise will be walks around the camp (I've never been there, so no idea what's available).

Today I'm hitting it hard at work and trying to get some things finished up. I have a number of things with March/April deadlines which are coming up fast (and one with a 2/27 deadline - that's on the top of the list).

Shannon - hoping your MIL is doing okay, and they don't find more than they knew about. I had a hysterectomy (uterus only) in 1980 and they took my appendix as a matter of "you don't need, we're here, let's take it out." My sister on the other hand had first her appendix out, then an ovarian cyst, then gall bladder....

Mel - have fun in Philly. Like Midwife, it's a place on my wishlist to visit.

The weather report was wrong, just slush

Midwife- I have run up those stairs! Many times as a kid...but a few years ago DD and I were going to a special exhibit and ended up in a mob scene at the base of the stairs. Some guy came along with a clip board and asked if we wanted to be extras in a video that was being filmed by...ta da... Will Smith! We signed the releases and sprinted up the stairs to meet him! We eventually saw the video and dd was fleetingly visible in it and I, mercifully, was not

Mel

That's cool, Mel!

Ha! I have 2 Will Smith's on my iPod!

Summer, summer, summer-tiiiiiime! (Makes me happy to listen to when it's cold outside)

Shannon, thanks for the links. Wow, that reverse crunch looks, well, impossible! I might need a helmet to try that one! Like you, I don't think I've been giving the swiss ball it's proper respect!

Lydia, my friend sent me a pic from a scooter run that we did on Valentine's day (last Sat). Not on the scooter, but me and my dog Grace at the rest stop. Of course, with my big orange "so you can see me a mile away" coat on, it's hard to tell the diff, lol. (I'll have to attach it, since I haven't gotten as far as using photobucket or another photo hosting site yet.)

Pat, enjoy your retreat!

Fran and Midwife, !

Yesterday the boy (ds 12) and I spent some time working on the mushing cart, which we're taking for a run tomorrow. We've putzed around with it in the neighborhood, but this will be our first "real" run with the cart. Today we're going to do some gardening, and hope to rig up a climbing rope...the boy can climb it, and I can try to do the baby version of pulling myself to standing from the ground. I'd better quit putzing on the computer and do something useful now!

Cheryl - funny that you mention the helmet and the reverse crunch today - I rolled off backwards last night and bumped the top of my head into the wall when my cat came in and rubbed against my leg scaring me...

Seeing the giant spiders and worms that sometimes show up in my basement, I totally understand freaking out when something fuzzy touches your leg unexpectedly (and you don't have sight of it!) Too funny!

Gosh, today for the first time in a long time, I'm not hungry. I ate some fat! I had a "real" (ie, not natural!) PB sandwich for lunch today and even though I used a very small amount of pb (2 tbsp) it was such a difference to eat enough food of substance. Got rid of the, "wow, I just ate and I'm still hungry" feeling. Has also stayed with me for longer than 3 hours too.

I'm struggling to find good abs work that I can feel results from. I've tried crunches, ball v-ups, reverse crunches, etc. Next I think I have to move on to decline crunces. I've tried everything in both books and the website. Except the ball raises, which hurt my back and cause my hip flexors to feel like they're going to spasm for some reason.

So that's the latest here. Snow again this weekend, sigh. Did ya'll know that we switch time (spring forward) on March 7?? longer days only 2 more weeks away! That's a reason to celebrate!!