Happy May Day Chick Chat
 

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HAPPY MAY 1st!

Still cold and more rain due this afternoon, but it's May! :) Warm sunny days ahead!
My new book was in the mail yesterday, so I spent last night reading it. About the only difference I can see so far is that Dr. A really stresses the important of exercise in all Phases, and he explains each Phase in more detail. I only skimmed through the recipes quickly, but I wonder, are they new recipes or just ones from his cookbooks? I'm taking the book with me today so I can finish reading it.

Well, I'd better go see what I can put together for tonight's supper, and I want to get in the 4 mile WATP before I leave this morning. It's an errand-running morning for me before I pick up Maggie at noon.

Have a super day, everyone!

Morning Cottage!! My book came in yesterday too. Just skimmed it over, but of course my eye caught the tiramisu recipe. May try it soon. Looks like there are a lot of new recipes in this one.

My husband's aunt and uncle are coming to pick up my MIL so she can visit with them for a few days over on the coast, so I need to scramble to get the house straight this afternoon before they get here. I think I'm just going to throw together a quick chicken salad (with grapes and toasted almonds and celery) for dinner today to save time. Love that rotisserie chicken for quickness!!

Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Happy May to everyone. Cottage is right - glorious days ahead even though today is pretty cold here. We actually had some snow yesterday!

This morning I go to town for a fitting of my compression stocking. I sure hope it helps the swelling in my leg - at that price, it should! I'll hit a big grocery store when I'm there for fruits and veggies. I'm craving asparagus and hope I can get some from the States. (I don't buy Mexican.)

Donny finished spiffing up the dog garden yesterday so things are really looking good out there. I'm not sure if Hershey appreciates it but I sure do. He will be back later today to start the gardens behind the barn. It sure is great to have the help as I've been very frustrated over gardening the last two years. "I really must cut back" is what I say every summer but then spring happens and I get my green soul back. :shrug:

When I was a little girl, we used to make paper baskets, fill them with flowers and hang them on neighbours' doorknobs. I think I'll pick myself a wee bouquet today just for nostalgia. :encore:

Have a lovely day and do something flowery for yourself. :flow2:

Good morning... a bit chilly here but going to be a nice day.

DH woke me at 4:30 to tell me he was in horrible pain from a gall bladder attack and had been all night.

anyway at 5 am i gave him two vicodan and 3 benydryl (25 mg each) in the hopes of getting him to sleep. he fell asleep and now i'm not going to work till he wakes up.

oy this being married cramps my style....

oh monthly loss was 4.4 pounds.

'Morning, Cat. That salad sounds great. I may pick up the stuff when I'm in town.

Nessa, sorry about your DH's pain. Hope it's a quick recovery. Yes, marriage does cramp one's style! :rofl: And Lady, you got style!

:wave: Just a quick hello today. I was on the road all day yesterday and have to be in the car again in less than an hour :( I hate long meeting days.

I'll try to stop in for personals tonight.

Nessa! "Being married cramps my style." :rofl: Oh, honey, I know exactly what you mean! :lol:

Ruth, the girls and I always carry on that Mayday tradition! Their grandparents live in the carriage house on the property, and we always weave triangular baskets full of wildflowers and hang them on their door, and the barn doors, too. :)

Cat, that salad sounds yummy! I have salsa chicken in the oven right now, but I cooked extra chicken just so I'd have it for a salad. ;)

Cyndi, have a safe day on the roads! I hope your meeting isn't too dull!

Flyby for me today.

I SOOOO didn't want to go out and jog this morning. Made every (very good) excuse not to, even though I know the reason was I just didn't want to. But I tied on my sneakers and put on my fleece head to toe and did it. It wasn't my best performance, but I did it.

Now to get these kids getting ready for school...

Now, Fluffy, aren't you proud of yourself for getting out there and just doing it? Don't you feel terrific?!!! ;)

I just finished a 3 mile WATP w/weights workout. The only problem I have is that my hands get all sweaty and it starts to get hard to hold onto the weights! But I'm so glad you gals encouraged me to try those workouts with all your enthusiastic talk, they're great! I can do one of them on the days I can't make it to Curves, or even do a short 1 mile in conjuction with my Curves workout. ;) Now I'm enjoying a delicious bowl of steelcut oats with dried berries and nuts, and I drizzled a little sf rhubarb sauce over it. YUM!!!! After that, I have to get dressed and get myself out of here. I'm off to a good start, though! :)

Hi ladies! It is a good morning as the baby slept 6 hours last night -- woo hoo!

I am off to walk with another mommy friend this morning, and then I am hoping my MIL will babysit this afternoon so that I can get a pedicure.

I'll be back in a bit for more!

Cottage - I looked at the recipes as well, and noticed the same. I was really hoping there would be more new recipes but it seems that they are just repeats from the many cookbooks. Oh well, I like the new exercise plan.

Cat- That chicken salad sounds awesome. I'm definitely craving something like that. :)

Nessa - Hope DH feels better. With that much medicine, he won't be up for awhile!

Cyndi - Morning! Have a good day.

Nat's Mom - Woooohoo! You gotta love it when the baby sleeps!
Ah, pedicures. I remember those days.

Again, not much going on today. Woke up early when a passing loud truck woke up DS. Going to get breakfast started in a little bit. Probably just something easy like scrambled eggs or something. I also have to write a test for DH's class.

It's a very nice day, and I would like to get to the park later.

Morning Ladies! It is supposed to be a great day with a high of 75! Good night for grilling out and I just happen to have salmon!

Cottage I may just have to give this WATP a try!

Cat Chicken salad sounds great!

Ruth We were talking this morning that we really need to get our garden going this weekend. I always plant too much!

Nessa I feel for you with hubbies pain! Also congrats on 2 years on SB, I am approaching my one year myself this month.

Cyndi, Fluffy, Natalies Mom and Zeff :wave: hope you chicks have a great day.

Me Life as usual but I have to share a NSV with you all. For the last 3 weeks we have had these construction guys working on our block putting in new lights and crosswalks. Well apparently they find me a tad bit attractive because everyone in the office laughs when I go outside because these guys stop what they are doing and start to nudge each other! I maybe pushing 40 but it sure is nice to be the center of attention. Of course I am in a small town and there isn't much to look at! Am I wrong to enjoy the attention? :devil:

Alright enough patting myself on the back, you chicks all have a great day!

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It's a special day today! It's cold here, but at least it's sunny, and we have tons of beautiful flowers to enjoy! I just realized that the huge hedge outside my window at work is lilacs! Can't wait for them to bloom... :cloud9:

I hope you're all enjoying a beautiful day and glorying in the beginning of spring! Have any of you ever done a maypole dance? I've always wanted to but never had the chance.

Wow, Cottage, you oughta join us on the reading thread more often! ;) You're a fast reader! I got my book yesterday too, but I'm immersed in the Beck book and Eat, Pray, Love right now, so I haven't looked at it, though I'm dying to. I combine the order with a couple of books I couldn't find for cheaper used--Julia Cameron's The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size and The Food and Feelings Workbook: A Full Course Meal on Emotional Health Looks like I'll be spending my summer trying to get my "head and heart" to diet! ;) There are so many SBD cookbooks now that I would be surprised if the recipes were new. You never know, though... :shrug: Did they look like they included less expensive ingredients? I know that was one of the complaints for the first book--that the recipes called for very expensive ingredients.

Cat, your house looks so gorgeous, I can't imagine anyone would notice any disarray! ;) DH made a very delicious salad, like the one you described, the other day. I can't remember where I got the recipe, but it originally had pineapple and mandarin oranges in it. We just used chopped fresh orange and mango in place of those. Other ingredients were halved grapes (green and red), celery, water chestnuts (crunchy!), and toasted almonds. The dressing was made with some mayo and some non-fat plain yogurt. We let it sit overnight and it was so yummy! :T I ate mine over a bed of cabbage for extra crunch and veg.

Oh, Ruth, I'm so glad you celebrated May Day when you were a girl! I've always heard of that custom and thought it was just lovely! :love: If we ever have kids, I think we'll bring back the tradition! Enjoy your flowers. I love what you said about your "green soul"--the same thing happens to me! ;)

Nessa, you are such a good wife! Poor DH...has he had surgery for the gall bladder problems? Does it relate to things he eats? Is there some kind of med he can take for it? Sounds awful! :headache: :congrat: on the loss! YGG!!!

Cyndi, drive safely! I listen to books on CD when I drive--and even when I'm just tooling around town. It actually makes me excited to get in the car! :lol:

Cottage, what a lovely tradition to carry on with the girls!!! :love: How do you weave the baskets? I'm dying to know! As for the chicken, the last two weeks, I've been marinating a couple pounds of cleaned chicken breasts each Sunday and then grilling the whole batch. Then I have a bunch of cooked chicken in the fridge to do a variety of things with during the week. This week I used an Orange Cranberry Vinaigrette made by Organicville for a marinade. Have you found these dressings and sauces yet? They are amazing and sweetened with agave nectar!!! :hyper: I'm so excited to find them! Sounds like you made a great start to your day! Also sounds like it's time to invest in some of those very althletic-looking weight lifting gloves, girl! ;)

Run, Fluffy, run!!! :hat: Good for you, girl!

Stephanie, you hot thing, you! :flame: DEFINITELY enjoy the attention, girl! It's a result of all your hard work! ;)

:wave: to everyone who comes while I'm typing...hope you have a great day!

Me:
I'm thrilled it's Thursday and am already looking forward to a delicious "lie-in" tomorrow morning! :cloud9: I think part of the thrill is being about 99% sure that I'll have the summer off from work! DH and I have lots of travel plans and I'm excited to enjoy seeing family and friends again.

DH and I are going to a wedding in a couple weeks and I have no idea what I'm going to wear. I really don't want to buy anything new. I think I might wear the dress I wore to a friend's wedding last fall--it's brown, which isn't really seasonal, but at least it looks okay. :shrug: I'll have to get a sweater to go with it, though...all the cardigans I have aren't the right colors to go with.

Off to the gym after work and then off to do the errands I forgot to run after the gym yesterday. :rolleyes: Sometimes I think I'd lose my head if it weren't attached... Anyways, I hope everyone has a

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Hi Ladies,
Happy May Day!! It has been awhile but yes, I'm still alive. I hope everyone is doing well. The move is over and we are in Germany. Baumholder to be exact. They finally pinpointed DH's orders. Unfortunately, they didn't pinpoint us until we got to Frankfurt. Baumholder is a beautiful area with screwy weather. One minute it is bright and sunny the next it's freezing cold and lightly snowing. Go figure. I don't know if I've gained or lost weight but I do know I've been totally off-plan. My clothes are still fitting comfortably so I have my hopes up. We are finally starting to feel settled here in Germany, of course that's until we move into our home. We are sharing an internet connection with the entire hotel. It's really hard to get online.
Laurie- Belated thanks for the Christmas market info. They sound great. I hope the dollar makes a gain against the euro soon or I won't be able to shop at them:(.
Kara-My DH is going to be stationed at baumholder but also has to report to k-town about once a week. We are going to be living on the economy in a town called Altenglan which is between both bases. It's about 15min from Ramstein. I've been told the best commissary is at Ramstein so I'll probably be shopping there often. When are you and your family scheduled to come? or are you here already here? I wish that we could live on post. The utilities here are rising like crazy and the monthly stipend for it isn't rising at all. I really didn't think it was that big a deal until a Sargent Major told us that he moved on base because he couldn't afford the utilities. Yikes my DH is only an E6. That housing rule was in effect though so my DH's commander put a memo into housing saying that they needed him to live between both posts so that he can report to either duty station. It really sucks. Anyway hopefully this internet connection will allow me to check-in more often.
Have a great day ladies!
Pohai

Why isn't this week over yet.

Boy has this been a tough and crazy week for me and I'm thinkin it's all TOM fault. I have been so down & depressed and just feeling weird. This morning I found myself stopped at a green light and running a red one - I mean big time running it. My hormones are crazy and my eating is junk for the most part which between the eating & the TOM no wonder the scale is up 4lbs.

Happy May Day Ladies!!!
Being a California Girl, seasons aren't really pronounced like they are back east, but it's still nice to know we are headed into summer.
Cottage - Great job getting out and doing your WATP. I hope your day is lovely.

Cat - Salad sounds fantastic! Have a wonderful time with your family!

Ruth - Hope all goes well w/ the fitting. And here's to hoping you get your asparagus.....I can't imagine being without it down here. It's truly a staple.

Nessa - I feel your pain, I was woken up last night w/ my dh coughing right in my ear. I got up, went potty, came back and not only was he coughing now, he was SNORING!!!! Sometimes sharing a bed is not all that it's cracked up to be!!!

Cyndi - Enjoy those meetings!!!!

Fluffy - Great job on the run, stay motivated!

Nat's Mom - Love pedicures......keeping my fingers crossed for you!

Zeff - Good to know that there's not too many new recipes. I'm a cookbook-a-holic. Just glad to know that I don't have to buy another one right now.

Pacer - Enjoy the grilling! And congrats, it's nice to know that your figure is being appreciated!!! That's awesome!

Laurie - OK...I give....what's a "lie-in"? Nice to know that you and dh have the summer off. I love working for a school and having a lot of time off, however my dh has a regular job, so really I kind of get bored. I have no one to play with.......but I can't imagine it any other way!

Browneyedgirl - Welcome back. Enjoy your May Day!

Me - Last night I was sad that Brooke was kicked off idol last night. I was really hoping for Jason, but I think he still has the teen girl vote. I'm going to start voting next week. I really want David Cooke to win. Tonight is Survivor, I'm excited to see Nat go more crazy! That girl was NUTS last week. I've got two parent meetings today and an admin. meeting today at work....So so much for getting back into the swing of things from my conference. Friday's an in-service, non-student day so maybe I'll get to my work emails then. Have a great MAY DAY!!!!!

ENJOY!

Gonnabe - Hang in there....TOM will be gone soon. Remember, one day at a time!

Hmacneil - I'm a cookbook-a-holic also. The first thing I did when I got the book was flip through it to find the recipes. I was kind of sad when they didn't have more new recipes but I have a pretty big arsenal of SBD recipes and I don't often have to repeat. The resources here are awesome! I do enjoy looking at my old cookbooks and seeing what I can convert.

Gonna, that's pretty bad stuff, hon! :hug: Have you seen a doctor lately? I think it might be worth a visit, at least, to your OB/GYN to talk about TOM, if not get a good physical. That kind of stuff happens to me every so often, but it's never lasted more than a day and is usually do to overwhelming stress in my life (like a couple weeks ago when my friend lost her son--on my way to the funeral I made a wrong turn on to a major one-way street in my town...it's been there for years, but I just forgot. You know?). Truly, that sounds serious enough to check things out--could be anything from your thyroid, to a vitamin deficiency, to TOM. If it *is* TOM, you have some serious PMS side-effects and maybe the doctor can help you with that. :hug: Let us know how things go.

Welcome back, Browneyed! :hug: Glad you're safely in Germany. Even if you can't afford to buy anything, you can still visit the markets--smelling is free and the smells there (roasted and sugared cinnamon nuts, gluhwein, etc.) are AMAZING!!!! :love: I hear you on the Euro, though. It makes my gut twist every time I pay for something over 5E! :yikes:

Good morning all.

We just got new Cisco IP phones today at work, so everyone is trying to figure out how to get the things set up and working. It's very strange. You just don't plug it into the RJ11 cable. It's plugged into the PC, and some other weird things. Then it needs an IP address.... What happened to good old analog phones? Granted, I work in the IT field, but still.....

It's also the 1 year birthday of my company - so there are parties all over - "Come celebrate with birthday cake"... "Party on XX floor..." Great for the diet - all that yummy food... More water for me please :)

Well, I'm down 6lbs since I restarted this journey, I hope it continues. As a "yeah me" present, I'm going to get pampered tomorrow. Mani/pedi, and some wax work done... Now all I need is the full spa treatment - that's my gift to myself when I get into the 'ones'.

Have a great day all, time to go to a meeting, then figure out this stupid phone.

Kara-I just read your post from yesterday. I totally understand the meltdown. We had a week to get our things packed and our house cleared and DH's out-processing to take care of before we left. There were times when I wanted to crawl up into a ball and cry. You are going to be stationed in Ramstein right? Ramstein is located in the Kaiserslautern area aka little America. Ramstein even has a Chili's. I wouldn't be to worried about adjusting there. Most Germans speak English. Everything should be just fine. I'm not sure if they fly you into Germany commercially though because you are air force. But for us, we got into Frankfurt and as soon as we got off the plane we went to baggage claim. After they look at your passports there is someone from the military who takes everyone to the USO. At the USO they do a quick in-processing for the soldiers and after that they put you on a bus to your base lodging. There are a lot of soldiers who are at the airport only to help out military coming in from America. They are very helpful. They even help with the luggage. Chances are there will be more than one military family on your flight to Germany. When we came in there were 3 families and 5 single soldiers.
I don't know what rank your DH is but they did pass a law that anyone below E7 must live on-post. My DH has to report to 2 bases so the commander put in an exception for us. While I was looking for a place to rent the average house in the Kaiserslautern area goes for 250,000 euro and up. The Kaiserslautern area is fairly expensive housing wise. They did just open a new housing area near Landstuhl that is primarily Americans but I'm not sure if those houses are for sale or just rent. The utility prices are sky-rocketing causing a lot of military to move back on-post. Here in Germany you pay a monthly utility bill but at the end of the year they check your meters and if you used more than they averaged you have to pay the difference. If you use less than what they average you will get a refund. The OHA is very good. The COLA is really good as well. The OHA and utility allowance is paid in euros but the COLA is paid in dollars. According to other spouses the job market here is awful. Unlike conus installations where job priority is given to spouses, job priority here is given to Germans. In regards to your car, unless you have a USAEUR license, you can't drive in Germany or on US installations. You can obtain a international driving permit from AAA but they don't recommend that you do that. To get the license you have to take a 4-hour class and a test. Germans are very strict when it comes to driving in Germany. You can get a German license but that costs $2000. All of these things will be explained when you get to your home base. I recommend that you have a lot of money because the dollar is so awful against the Euro everything is insanely expensive. Your lodging will be taken care of for you but your meal allowance won't be given to you until the lodging turns in your vouchers. The lodging here held on to our first voucher until they found out what date we were leaving the hotel. Apparently, standard practice. Of course that means no meal allowance. The allowance appears on your pay check. They take forever to do things here. We had to pay out of pocket for lodging and meals. Our DLA went entirely to that. We have yet to be reimbursed for any of those costs and we have been in Germany since the 10th of April. Our COLA hasn't kicked in yet either. Meals and taxi's will cost a lot.
Anyways this is getting too long. If you have any questions just PM. I'm taking up too much space.
Germany is a beautiful country though. The people are very friendly. Oh and I know it's against SBD but man the bakeries are insanely good. Watch out for that sweet tooth.

Laurie- We were in Weisbaden when they were figuring out where to put us and we went to a bakery there and OMG!!! We walked out of there having spent 20 euro and it was worth every cent.:devil:

Hey everyone, another fly-by for me. Don't even have time to read everyone else's posts. Appraisal notices are stuffed and ready to be mailed tomorrow, so the protests and what-not will come flying in Monday morning. Sigh. A County Appraiser's work never ends! ;)

Have a great day ladies! Time for me to move on!

Thank you Heather & Laurie :hug:

my day is actually starting to shape up a bit more I made the decision I was not gonna let the :devil: win