@MusicCandy @SadMe70 A place to communicate

You are pretty funny.

Nope the preschool Director is hard in the saddle. I guess she wants me back next year - she is hard to read. It seems like she talks to the Teachers as peers, like they are working together on things - but with me she just dictates- like I haven't had 25 years of experience. It makes me feel like my mother used to , intimidate and scare me. At least that isn't my main income, so I really don't care so much- except for thr work I have put into organizing a year of lessons for 3 ages. That is work I hate to waste, plus I love the children.

Also- I NEVER thought of putting rum in smoothies - Thanks for the hint! . I am going to try not to do tnat. My drinking is almost always right before bed and I'm actually just trying to get drowsy and go to sleep. But as we know, it doesn't always mean a deeer sleep. I'm working on a plan for next week to start Something. I've decided to not go to the Boss retirement party at all. I was going to go for an hour and then go to work since it is my actual work shift - but I will lose my OT pay if I give up those 2 hours so I'm going to make up an excuse. I'll do something later- maybe a girls night out with the techs and include her too. There is a riverboat cruise here in Richmond that is dinner and a band- that sounds like more fun to me.

Good for you with the cheese and yogurt- I never tried anything like that, but I've never had goats either. So sorry about your chickens. I don't know if I mentioned it, but the preschool hatched 10 chicks for them, to watch. It was great for them. I wish I had advice about your babies, but I hope someone with some experience there can help Ah- the country life. I forgot which county you live in- ??

Dave and I have a groupon for a historic tour in /charles City County - Edgewood , plus one at Grand Cavenrs. I like day trips.

Happy cheese making.

I clearly am going to have to add "control alcohol consumption" to my list. Last night I started out with a modest half glass of wine while cooking. After dinner I sat down with my son to watch Netflix for an hour and got another half glass along with some Hershey kisses. Still ok, but then I got into the Drambuie, because drinking whiskey on top of wine is always such a good idea, and ate even more chocolate. I drank a lot of water before going to bed, and drank more water every time I got up to pee (3 times!) so I didn't feel bad this morning, but I sense the potential for a bad trend! I did do a 30 min online cardio video this morning too, my first exercise in several days. Last evening I planted about half of the plants I bought. Went out to plant more today and it started raining. Maybe tonight.

What is your position called at the preschool? She ought to respect your experience more. You are clearly a valuable member of the staff there, between your experience and your love of the kids

Sounds like you have a good excuse for not going to the party The riverboat cruise sounds a lot more fun! I always see fun things like that to do, but I never know who to do them with. The few times I go out with friends I end up feelng weird and wishing I weren't there. Some people from work were talking about doing a trolley wine tour from Fredericksburg. Maybe I will go if they do that.

I am in King George County. My son and another boy put together a chain link dog run yesterday inside the pen, with the back of that flush to the coop. It doesn't fit exactly so we have more to do to block up potential entryways. I have 11 chicks in a brooder box in the kitchen peeping away. I hope we can make a safe place for them by the time they are big enough to go outside!

Do you have any day trips lined up?

I just got called in to work for a CT, and I had a minute to catch up with you. Drambui used to be a fav of min, I don't keep it in the house though because I have NO self control. I have to control the environment- like putting the wine I can't drink yet far far away in the basement. I don't have a plan yet and I may not start with the wine- maybe some other goals. I'll let you know.

I will hope for the best with your little chicks too. They are so cute! I am employed at the preschool as "Music Teacher". Actualy, that is a pretty good deal for me being on the payroll as opposed to per diem as I have done it before as far as taxes and record keeping goes. Plus they do ask me to sub sometimes and then it's no hassle for them. We will see .

I like Memorial Day Services when I can possibly go. They have a big one at the VA War Memorial on the James downtown- but on call makes that difficult. I did watch the concert in DC last night and cried the whole time. They had wounded Vets and Family survivors - but they added actors telling their story. Of course the music was beautiful too. I heard on NPR a Vet reporter say it can be painful to thank a Vet for their service on Memorial Day because it is supposed to be the day to remember those who died in wars- and they all have memories of buddies and friends that they are grieving over. That is the purpose of today- it started out as Decoration Day with the ladies after the Civil War. He did say it is OK to just be present with them and say something like "Have a Meaningful Memorial Day" I never thought of until I heard that interview. I may get a chance to stop by the Memorial after the ceremony.

Have a great trip to yoour Mom's and I hope it all goes well. GET UP AT 7

I like your phrase control the environment. That is how I lost weight over a 2 year period and then kept it off with little troube for 2 years before starting to work at the school. Stuff that tempted me too much was just not in my house. I have no self control either, so I avoided eating stuff by avoiding being around it. At school there is no control and no avoiding.

Drambuie was one of Dad's favorites. He introduced us to it, and we used to sit down and have a glass together sometimes. When he was in the rehab place and still planning to come home, we were going to do a last toast once he got home. Since he didn't make it home, we took the bottle and toasted him when we went to see him before they took him away.

I have been eating pretty well since school ended (only 4 days so far, but it's a start). I know my sister is making me a birthday cake while we are at mom's, but I will try to eat well other than that. Alcohol of course has been bad so far, but I think that will go in waves. I haven't exercised much, but I was outside for hours yesterday moving around. I also haven't gotten up quite at 7 each day, but since I was productive every day, it's ok.

Today I have a bunch to do this morning, then packing and heading to mom's. Very excited about my trip. I also have lots of audio book stuff to listen to - 2 different novels and one of the Great Courses (I used to listen to those a lot when I drove more).

It is nice that you are on the payroll at the preschool. My older son was a soccer ref for a few years in high school and college and they did non-employee compensation (1099 I think). Usually his income was low enough that he didn't have to filel, but one summer he also worked at Walmart which gave him just enough that he had to file, and then he actually had to pay self-employment tax on the ref income of about $1000.

I hope you got a chance to stop at the Memorial. I don't think I have seen that.

I hear my son up and moving around to get ready for work. I'm going to go tell him goodbye since I won't see him until Sunday.

Nice to hear ypu are making the transition to different scedule with school out. I have had a pretty good week so far and now its Thursday and back to the work week-end. I have thought some more about the retirement party for my boss and I decided that I really should go for just a little while as I first thought I would. I did get an extra 2 hrs of OT on Memorial Day and that would cover the 2 hours I'd give up work by going. She has been a good boss for the most part and helped me to get the salary increase when I added CTs ( at that time it wasn't required, I just did it).So it seems like the right thing to do.

I did start a "plan" this week. I decided to drink 20 oz. water in the evening before I have wine. It has helped me by not drinking the wine when I'm actually thirsty- just as a treat. Also adding a fruit. Last- I made a rule to record how much wine I drink. I have a small 4 oz glass to measure. I make sure I just don't keep adding to my glass before its empty so I can count the amt. easily I have been drinking 2 glasses each evening.. I read that in a lot of cases just keeping accurate records tends to decrease the amt. of whatever you are tracking. I did all that this week, and will aim for the same next week. Of course, I am exercising some every day too as that is a pretty ingrained habit.

I know you are visiting your family, and I hope that goes well with lots of laughter and celebrating all the special times. Dave and I toured the plantation house near the "big" ones on Rt. 5 - Berkley and Snhirley are near by, but Edgewood is smaller with the family that lives there giving the tour. It is chock full of period pieces and they have restored the rooms to civil war period elegance. It was a personal( not canned talk) tour. They have it as a B&B too with one of the bedrooms haunted! It was a beautiful relaxing day trip. Back to work.

When is the party for your boss? I'm glad you will have enough hours to cover going to it. I hope you have a good time too!

How is your plan going so far? The like the idea of drinking so much water before any wine. I very much like the measuring idea. I used to pour myself one wine glassful and that was it. Now I pour a half glass and keep adding to it without any idea of my total consumption. I clearly also sleep worse the more and later I drink the wine. I am still thinking about a new checklist chart to make for myself for summer (exercise, PT, eating) and I think I will add something about wine amount. Are you recording your wine consumption and drinking your water first?

Have you been eating your fruit? What kinds do you like most? I like most fruits but find that I don't eat them nearly as much as I should.

Sounds like your day trip was a lot of fun! I don't know those houses you mentioned. The small personal tour sounds really nice!

I really enjoyed my trip to PA. Mom, my sister, and I spent Wed-Fri with masks and gloves on cleaning out the nasty cluttered basement. We sorted and bagged and burned. We had a junk hauler come. They filled a 16 ft box truck, took that to the dump, and came back for the rest. Talk about a lot of stuff! Most of the smelly papers/books are gone, but we kept some things to still look through. They will all have to be gotten rid of, but we did not have time to go over them carefully. The vast majority is gone. On Sat, Mom and I went to a big natural foods store she goes to sometimes. Nice pretty country drive, and great store. Then we hiked 3 miles on a rail trail. (I did 30 min exercise videos two other days and that was it for my exercise that week.) I came home Sunday and met my family at our Indian place in MD for dinner.

On Monday my depression came rolling back. I miss being in PA, it was raining again, my husband was annoying, and I was scared about my cervical epidural steroid injection for that afternoon. The shot was scary and uncomfortable, but quick. I went home and took my stressed out self to bed with an ice pack and some ibuprofen, and had a 2 hour nap. I took more pain med and more ice to bed last night, and today so far I have less pain from the procedure itself. My neck still hurts but that will take a few days to kick in. I am really counting on this to work! I miss planks, pushups, bench press, other weightlifting, swimming. If I can get back to all that I know I can lose enough weight to fit into my pants and skirts again.

My eating was not stellar up at Mom's because my sister made me a birthday cake. She has taken some cake decorating cakes and it was fun watching her make the flowers etc. The 3 of us ate the whole cake in 2 days, mostly my sister and me because Mom eats really well. We also ate pizza one day, but other meals were pretty good.

This morning I did one of Leslie Sansone's 1 mile videos and had my breakfast. I am running a bit later than I should, but will be going outside to the goats shortly. There is actual SUN outside and no depression so far today. I am working on making a safe space for my new chicks because they are getting too big and stinky for their indoor box. It is sloppy and gross out in the pen from all the rain, but at least there will be sun above me! Going to start with tie-wrapping some plastic fencing over the top of the new chain link pen to keep out aerial or climbing predators.

I hope your week is off to a great start!

Hello! Last week was very productive despite bad depression on Monday and slight on Wed. I spent most of the week outside doing projects, and one day making cheese. I did at least a little cardio each morning. I have been still sleeping badly and can't drag myself up at 7, but I'm usually up at 8 and since I did a lot all week it was ok. The weekend was less productive but I still got stuff done. Yesterday I got started so late that I was outside in the baking heat and then felt awful all night, so I did make myself get up at 7 today. I feel tired and pretty awful but I got stuff done and came in when it got hot, like a sensible person! (Also, doing a 20 minute HIIT cardio workout before going out in that heat yesterday was another bad idea!)

My meals, treats, and alcohol have stayed under control. Combined with being really active last week I lost 2 pounds! I hope I can sustain this. All those pants and skirts just waiting to be worn to work in the fall!

I bet you are glad the boss' party is over. We had some guys here to replace our roof on Saturday and I just couldn't go outside and work. I helped my son carry some stuff from behind the house to the pickup truck in front of the house so he could go to the dump for us. One thing was an old truck cap. While we were carrying it everybody on the roof started laughing. I have no idea if it had anything to do with us, but of course I assume it did and I could not bear to go out again until they left. I am so completely socially awkward! My son said who cares even if they were laughing at us. Those guys are up on a hot roof all day and you don't have to do anything that hard. He is right so why do I let stuff bother me like that?

I know all about piles of stuff everywhere! I feel for you!! I basically have no living room. My husband had to set up his office in there several years ago because he can't get to the basement where we both used to have home offices. That was bad enough ,but a few months ago he got into HAM radio and now there is radio equipment everywhere, constantly boxes of stuff he ordered sitting all over the floor and sofa. We don't have a big house and there really is noplace else to put all that stuff, so I probably will never have a living room again. He also put up a 50 foot antenna behind the house which I find super ugly. I'm not at all a tidy person myself, but I hate all this stuff everywhere.

I made a new 5-item daily checklist for summer. I'm not doing well on physical therapy or stretching, but exercise, treat/alcohol consumption limitation, and "mind" stuff is going well. I subscribed to calm.com to try their various guided meditations and sleep stories to see if I could sleep better. It's not really helping me sleep but I enjoy it and it probably does me good to calm my mind now and then, even if only briefly.

How is your plan going this week? I can totally understand some extra wine on an particularly upset day. I think that's ok because you got back to your plan after that. There has to be room in any plan for having a bad day. I have a very hard time sticking to one glass on any day, but I've managed that for the past week. I really like the water idea. I am not great at remembering to eat fruit either, even though I like it a lot. I have found a lot of good frozen fruits that tend to be better than some of the "fresh" stuff at my grocery stores. On the day I got so hot outside, I made a smoothie with a couple different fruits (no rum!) just to rehydrate. It was a tasty, fun treat.

Did you think of what you might add to your list?

Uggg, bad food day yesterday. My husband and I went out shopping for some garden stuff and went out to lunch at a sushi place that we like. I've only been there at dinner before and always got the all you can eat sushi. I didn't want that for lunch so I got a bento box and picked shrimp tempura. Turned out almost everything on the plate was fried and not very tasty, and the "salad" was pile of plain iceberg lettuce.

I made a good dinner and had a fruit smoothie with some alcohol, but not too much, but then I drank a totally unnecessary glass of drambuie, which led me to eat double my chocolate ration. I also then felt totally unmotivated and didn't water my plants outside. While we were watching TV, even though I had already brushed my teeth, there was a container of peanuts out on the bedside table so I ate many handfuls of them. I wasn't remotely hungry, they were just there.

Grrrr, I will do better today!!

I have been away from the PC a few days for a very good reason - I had the chance to go to VA Beach for 2 days and even though I'm usually not spontaneous about trips like that - i worry something will go srong or I'll forget something I have to do ect. - I gtr things together and fiance and I went. It was a free cottage week my daughter won on FB and she couldn't stay the whole time. ( had to get back for an EXAM at school and she got an A !) We had a wonderful relaxing time and it was a good way to get over the bad feelings at home with the backyard. I just have to put things in perspcetive. He has always been a junker, and I know that- but my yard has to be cleaned up and he is working on it! He cares so much when I'm upset and that helps.

But I didn't keep up with any plan at all.Ate and drank what I wanted and walked and played in the ocean- it was so very nice. The boardwalk had bands along the beach late night and lots of families out -it has improved a lot since I lived in Tidewater, I am committed to go back during the summer. It is a 2 1/2 hr. drive but worth it.

I know what you mean about being sensitive when people laugh at something you do and it seems silly. I could never take a joke or a prank for a very long time. I got my feelings hurt and worried over it a long time. Finally, I got over that but I was over 50 - so take heart. Age may do that for you too.

I finally got back on the scale and it is just about the same, maybe a pound up. If you lose a pound a wek- that is really good. Don't beat tourself up too much over one bad meal. I hate it when I eat fried food too- it just makes me feel fat. And like you, an extra drink increases my desire for snacks and whatever is handy. I haven;t planned anything extra to my list yet - but I will. The short vaca put that on hold. I already miss the ocean. I'm back at work tonite and will be here the rest of the week-end so I'll ck back in. I helped Rachael with a Father's Day card and put in some movie tickets so she and my ex - her Dad can go one day. She stays with him on weekpends when I work. He is behaving OK for now and he does enjoy time with her and she with him. Abi will prob. have a cookout with them on Sunday. I am thinking of you Father;s Day as you remember your Dad.

I hope you are doing OK. For some reason, I just feel blah and unmotivated this whole week. I think I may need more fiber. I have not been paying attention so it serves me right. Haven't had my fruit every day and pizza and cake for fiance's birthday- and of course my usual wine--and I did not track. Working outside to help with the clean up to make the neighbors ( and me too) happier. Ypu know how it is when you feel down and you can't manage the energy to even start getting back on track.

We did do something fun for his birthday today. We went on an eagle watching pontoon boat James river tour. I didn't know much about them , but the guide is very knowledgeable since he has been on the river 25 years and he knows all the territories and history of the individual birds and pairs. We saw most of them plus a lot of ospreys and other wildlife - very educational and a nice time on the cool river. A lot better than a movie. Then we took my Mom to a birthday lunch with him and me- and it was her usual drama even though it wasn't her birthday. She is just hard wired to demand attention and I know that won't change - it still aggravated me.

Now it's back to work tonight and the weekend at work too. I don't dislike my job and sometimes it is a distraction from just feeling down. I think I will get back to my 2 goals at least and try to add some quality fiber/ and water. Hope your early morning goal is working for you.