Oh gosh, where to start? Sure, there's an update on yesterday's to do, but I also want to rant.

Update.
Did the vacuuming in the kitchen!! (I finally looked up that word!)Yay! I really have to do the rest of the house, but to be honest, my lower back started hurting again. Last June, I was in so much pain from this, I could barely walk, couldn't sit or stand, for the entire month. It was horrible. I mean, I claim to be a slug, but as soon as I have to slow down or stop, I relearn how much I do. Even if it is non-essential. :D

Ok, the warm water with lemon isn't working out for today. I'm having a second cup of instant coffee instead. Yesterday, it was 1:00pm before I finished the lemon water, and so, I didn't get the full 80 oz worked in. Not only did I get the Other things done, (took two hours and an extensive search to find Ameet's tape and now I know where everything is in the house) I got almost everything else done as well. :)

It seems I fall down the most in personal care. No stretching, no working out, but then, no crazed Halloween candy binges, either. The only bad thing I did was each some fajita chili mac, with 'mac' being the bad carb word. You see, for eaons, I followed the low-fat way of life, literally keeping my fat grams below 20 on an average day. In an effort to lose weight since I'm considered borderline obese on the charts,(I'm 5'3", wear a size 12 on a really 'fat' day, and weigh 160-165) for four months I followed a low-fat 1500 calorie a day diet AND worked out no less than three times a week with 30-45 minutes of aerobics (target heart rate 145, a little high for my age, but I needed the workout) and another hour of weight training (free weights). I was at 160 when I started and in four months gained another 5 pounds. Yeah, it was muscle, but still, it edged me ever closer to obesity. This was very discouraging. Even when I went off the diet, my weight didn't change.

So how did I manage to lose 10 pounds in two weeks and keep it off until the "Halloween" incident? Atkins. I know, it's got a bad rap because of the beginning's requirement of less than 20 carbs a day for two weeks. It works, and helps to break your sugar craving. Don't think you have one? You'd be surprised. I dare you, if you don't think you need sugar but are eating potatoes, rice, and bread, to go a week without eating any sugar. Think that you can throw out your sugar bowl and call it good? Nope! Ketchup, salad dressings, coffees (mine is black and near esspresso) and teas, plus a lot of other things have sugar in their list of ingredients. I would say give up bread, because that does have tons of carbs and no redeeming value. If you're not wanting to deviate from the pyramid, eat something like Grapenuts for breakfast, whole wheat crackers with lunch, and brown rice or whole wheat pasta with your three squares.

This is turning into the health post. Anyway, I didn't do the face thing or the retainers thing. Since small fry is back at school (I'm going to call and make sure she's fine as soon as I'm done here), I want to clean up myself and go work out. I'm soooo out of shape. Our nearby Bally's closed last spring, I'd signed up for a new gym in May, but couldn't even drive there until July. :P (back pain, remember?) I'm not a wimp about pain, too much, since I'd had a kidney stone a while back and thought it hurt a little, but not unbearable. I was more afraid it was my appendix because it did hurt, was a new pain, and in that general area.

Plus, I'm achy from all the house cleaning. (thinking I'm going to let the manic cat out of the bag) After I posted here yesterday, I started cleaning and didn't really stop until 11:00pm when my hubs got home from class. (it's SQL sys admin) I washed the sheets, made the bed (at 9:00pm, just in time for bed, ::snicker::), did dishes, laundry (my sister's since there's only a couple of loads and mine was done). The fun part of the day was cleaning out the guinea pig's cage and then cleaning her. :D My child and I ran some water in her bathtub (the child's tub, not the pig's) and let her swim. There was a shallow end, and little Squeeky would swim out to the deeper end.

We didn't do the Monopoly game, but did install it here on the computer in the kitchen. Nickelodeon and computer games, does it get much better than that for a 7 yr old?

The child wants mittens. The child doesn't want to buy mittens but wants me to make them. Since child has had fever (yesterday) but still plays outside for recess, mittens for child has moved to the front of the 'knitting projects' queue. I'm dying to knit, since I didn't get to do a stitch yesterday.

Oh oh oh! I'm teaching a class on Quilted Christmas Wallhangings and have 9 people signed up! Isn't that cool?! It's my first class to teach in this, and I'd only prepared 10 kits, plus one for me to do. I'm going to set aside 2 hours, the length of the class, and see if I can stitch it up in that amount of time. It's a crazy quilted picture of a snowman. I didn't even think of doing an instruction sheet, but will have to do that soon.

Ok, since this is a long-assed post, I'm going to go ahead and type out all of Friday's daily tasks as a refresher.
Friday
Morning stretch
24-32 oz of warm water with .5 fresh lemon juice (don't want to, but will probably drink this out of guilt for trying to skip this)
Breakfast of fruit serving or egg white omlette (will probably skip breakfast, rather shower and go work out)
Lunch-greens with a little bit of protein (rethinking that breakfast idea, since typing lunch made my tummy growl)

I need to add that whenever I go over say, 50 carbs in a day, I wake up starving and tummy hurting from hunger the next day. Odd, because if I eat the same amount of food the day before but keep my carbs below 50, I just don't get as painfully hungry.

Snack of veggies (probably won't do this, since I'd have to go to the grocery store for fresh ones and I'm just not in the mood to run in for just one item)
Make beds
Pick up dirty clothes
Hang up clean clothes
Do dishes, wipe counters and stovetop
30 mins of aerobics (I do need to start out slow since it's been a while. this doesn't make me happy, but doing something is better than nothing, I suppose)
Grocery shop for the week (crap. disreguard the veggie excuse. I need more dish soap, anyway)
Clean Squeeky's cage (Done yesterday!!! woo hoo!! I'm ahead in one thing!!!)
Drink 80 oz of water (not tough because I plan on sweating it out. :D)
Evening stretch
Evening face and tooth maint.



Other things:
You know, this is Friday, and even though I was 'out' on Mon and Tues due to migraine, I really don't want to do anything but knit and watch movies. I do both at the same time because the knitting is fun and hearing dialogue helps with my screenwriting abilities. All movies start out as written words, so it helps to turn off the visual and really listen.

The thing is, these two careers are so much fun, I put them off until the crap jobs are done.

That being said, I have a hardcopy of my list excerpted here, that goes on the fridge. I need to make up a new one, adding plant care and car maintenance since the spider plants are looking peaked and I'm overdue on an oilchange.

The 'official' other list, then:
Water plants
Clean out car, possible oil change after working out.
I'd really like to get the broken chest of drawers out of child's room and put together the new one ($30, new, at Kmart, less than the thrift stores were charging!!) Don't know if I'll do that today, but would like to, just to get all the freshly folded clothes put away.
Work on quilted wall hangings while watching Friday Night Bonus Treks on the new TNN
Deposit miscellaneous checks from car payment (we sold, he pays), state of MO, and hub's birthday money (was Nov 5, he was in class, we will celebrate this weekend)

Forgot to rant! :D Here's the topic: Homeless person(s) have blog and websites with added features that paying blog customers get. Yeah, the computer is at the library, but still, they're homeless and yet still PAYING to blog? The added features mean that much to them? Me personally, I am more than happy to have ads here and on my Geocities homepage if it means I can live in a nice home. (the home is 2600 sq feet. since I'm still training the rest of the family to pick up their clothes, trash, and dirty dishes, the cleaning falls to me. everyone else is at school or work during the day, so I'm more than happy to do this, but if it's not in the sink, hamper, or garbage can, I don't know it needs my attention. this also explains my constant cleaning.) Um, sorry, that's ANOTHER rant. Anyway, here they are paying, asking for donations. I guess it bugs me to be asked to give money to someone else. I know they really need it, and some part of me feels sympathy, but honestly, we get at least 3-6 telemarketing calls a day, junk mail from charities asking for our money, and then of course the normal bills. The bottom line is I don't want to be asked to send money to support a homeless persons PAY website when I don't feel I can afford my own.

That being said, I probably could spring for a pay site, but that would mean less money for yarn, which means less knitted items, which means less profits in my designer knitwear business.

Gad! It's 10:40am already! Thanks for reading and catch you tomorrow.