Happy Day!

In honor of my 10% weight loss, I ordered myself a matching skirt & top and then another top all in a smaller size. Received them today & I thought that I may have to hang them up for incentive, but it all fit. YEA! Happy Day!

Thanks to all who read this blog & have given me so much encouragement to continue on this journey. Your comments and e-mails mean a lot to me. Peace!

Advise

Happy Birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! You can't tell that I'm a "Leo" and like attention, can you? Today is my 56th birthday. Guess I'd better change my blog introduction. Anyway I feel 76, maybe even 86. I'm tired & I am either hungry or suffering from indigestion. How does a person know?

Do you ever wonder what a certain age ahead really feels like? I do. When I was 36, I'm sure I wondered what 56 would feel like. What would I be doing? Where would I be living? Would I be married to "hubby"? Would we still be together? Would I be healthy? If I remember right, I weighed about 25-30 pounds less 20 years ago?

I read about a mental & emotional exercise to do... Imagine that you are 18 years old and you have to give yourself some advise or words of wisdom from yourself, a 56 year old, for example. That's a tough one. I have professed for years that one of my mottoes is "Look before you leap, but take that leap." I still have to say that's true. Take the time to look before you leap into a job, relationship or move, but if there is no outstanding obstacles, take the leap. Enjoy the free-fall!

Another one of my mottoes is.... "You always make the right decision, at the time." In other words, when you make a decision, you believe it's right, or for the best decision at that time. It may turn out later, that a better decision could have been made... but at that time, it was the right decision. Enjoy the ride!

I guess life is sometimes like a parachute fall and then landing in a roller-coaster. First you wonder if you're going to survive, then you wonder if you want to survive. But survive we do, until it's our time to go from this earth. Enjoy life! Peace!

Buddies

I have quite a few "buddies," best friends in my life. I also call them "sisters," although some of them of are only sisters of the heart. However, my sisters of my family are my buddies too! How lucky can a person get?

I have six sisters and one brother. I am the oldest and the youngest two (twins) are seventeen years younger than me. There were a few times that strangers would mistake me for their mother when they were infants. My sisters and I have an annual weekend get-away to have fun, laugh, cry and shop. We usually go to a different location every year because we get quite rowdy. We laugh hardily and loud, so we always get a stand-alone cabin or house to stay in so that we don't disturb the neighbors. Anyway, we have had 8 weekends & this October will be our ninth WWW. WWW stands for Wild Women's Weekend. I think that name got started about our 3rd annual weekend when I found these pins for all my sisters that said "Wild Women Don't Get the Blues."

There are some in our family that are "wilder" than the others, and that would be the five oldest. Somehow the wild genes in the family dissipated when it got to the twins. Maybe because mother was actually on birth control for three plus years before they were conceived. Maybe because there was actually a break in the action (births in the family) by four years between them and their next oldest sister. Maybe because they (the twins) saw all the trouble we older ones got into and caused. The twins actually act their age unlike the rest of us!

Anyway I have gotten off the subject a bit, but I consider the twins my buddies. Robyn reminded me that when they were seniors in high school, I had moved back home from California and stayed with my parents and them until I figured out where I was going to work and live. That fall of 1985 we three would get up and go walking about a mile and a half before they headed to school. We would swing our arms and pretend to be grabbing an imaginary good-looking guy in front of us.... his TUSH! "Tush, tush, tush," we would repeat as we swung our arms. We probably never got up our speed of the walk, because we'd start laughing.

My walking buddies and I are walking again. Robyn is in central Wisconsin, Raylene is in northern Wisconsin and I am in southern Texas. Thanks to email, we are going to report to one another about our walk/run every day. We're going to be accountable to one another on our exercise and our food. It should be interesting. I think I'm going to imagine Tom Selleck's tush in front of me.... OOOO WEEEE! You can't stop me now!

Oh, that's right, I'm married. Sorry, hubby, I can grab your tush anytime. Let the Wild Woman in me not get the blues! Peace.

Donation

Let me say this upfront, I am a selfish person. I do not donate items to food shelves. I do not donate time to worthy causes. Basically, I do not donate much of anything unless I might get some thing in return such as in a raffle. For three years hubby & I donated almost every Friday night to help run a meat raffle so that we could raise money for our lake sportsman's club. The money was used for scholarships for area graduates. The main reason I stuck with that for that long was because I could drink beer while I was "working" and when I bought a paddle (ticket), I might win some meat for the freezer.

I have felt guilty about not donating more, especially to food shelves. I think every church we have been involved in has asked for donations to the local food shelves and I seldom have brought anything. I usually forget until it's the Sunday for contributions. Even my previous employer asked for canned goods just before our annual Christmas party. I always remembered to bring food then because I would get an extra ticket for the prize raffle. I told you I am selfish!

So, I think hubby was surprised when I told him a few weeks back that "when I lose 10% of my weight, I'm going to donate that many pounds of food for the food shelf at church." Two weeks ago, it was announced that this Sunday's contributions should be canned meat. I knew that I was close to my 10% goal, so I started thinking of what I could get.... canned ham, tuna, chicken, etc. Friday night I went to the store and I bought my canned meat. It took a lot of cans to make up the number of pounds that I lost. It almost looked ridiculous in my shopping cart. So today I brought them into church. I told hubby that I wanted to bring all these cans into church so that I would know how much more I weighed just 8 weeks ago. Granted, there some extra weight for the cans, but those cans of meat were down right heavy! I know people could probably see the strain on my face of carrying them and of course, hubby looked kind of foolish walking in with nothing in his hands. But I did it! I carried those cans of meat and thought of all that extra weight I carried around day after day just 8 weeks ago.

I found myself looking forward to the next 10% and being able to donate twice as much as I did today. Heck, it felt so good donating, maybe I'll start doing that type of thing more often. Peace!

Cry

I cried. I ended yesterday's blog with admission that I cried. I ended it that way, not to evoke sympathy. I ended it that way to acknowledge that I am human. Sometimes, I have to remind even myself of that fact. I seldom cry and yesterday's cry was nothing more than some tears coming down my face to mix with the sweat and a couple of gasps (or grasps) for breath. It was over almost before it started. It was nothing more than that in the physical sense, but something more in the spiritual sense. Note: I did not write emotional sense, I wrote spiritual.

It was a cry of sadness, it was a cry of resignation, it was a cry of desperation. I am not sure what it all signifies. Perhaps humility or humbleness. Perhaps a realization of aspects of me that I'm not proud. Perhaps none of the above.

I have a goal in mind of a weight on the scale that I think will be indicative of healthy and fit "Rayna." It's a hefty goal in the aspect that it will entail losing 30% of my starting body weight.

I am a thinker and a reader. I think a lot, therefore I am sometimes a creative writer, sometimes not. But I have noticed that I am thinking about this lifestyle change and weight loss change .... way too much! It invades my thoughts & space way too much. I awake in the morning and I'm immediately wondering how I will do today with my changes, with my food intake, with my weight. Granted, I should be thinking MORE before I eat spontaneously, in order to make wiser food choices. But other times, I do need to relax and not think. I need to be able to give my body and mind a rest from thinking. I'm trying so hard, it's exhausting at the same time as it's exhilarating.

This blog is a creative outlet for me to express my thoughts and feelings. However, one thought begot another thought. Before I know it, my head is swimming in thoughts that I think that I have to get out on paper (in the computer). It's a release to write, because I get my thoughts out, I can relax and go on with my day. Or as in today's case, I can go back to bed to catch some more sleep-eye. Part of me thinks that I should stop this blog as the more I blog, the more I think and as I wrote earlier, thinking is exhausting. Part of me.... needs to stop rambling and ................ PEACE be with you!

Team Meeting

There was a PES Project team meeting this morning and here are the minutes of the meeting.
P= Physical, E=Emotional, S= Spiritual

5:17 am Meeting began
S= OK Rayna, time to get up and get walking. You know you will feel energized once you do.
5:18 am Rayna gets on scale and has gained 2#
5:22 am Team starts walking
P= I am going to start this meeting with a complaint. Everyone looks at me like I'm the "bad guy" when she (Rayna) gains weight, but who's out there 6 days a week walking in the morning. Me! You girls are sabotaging me.
E= What do you mean? I'm helping her celebrate her loses of weight. She deserves to celebrate, doesn't she?
S= Yes, but we're not helping if we don't make her act with reason. I am trying to feed her with thoughts of hope and possibility.
E= Well, Rayna has always been a wayward, strong-willed, out of control child. What else do we expect other than this journey will be a roller-coaster ride, up and down? Besides that, why can't she have a snack or treat now and then? She deserves it.
P= Emotional, you are as up and down as Rayna's weight and her compliance to this project. One day you're high on hope and celebrating and the next day you're whining. You need to get with the program here.
E= Everybody else gets to eat what they want and still be trim and fit, why can't Rayna?
S= No, everybody does not eat all the snacks, sweets and fatty foods that they want. Look around you, most trim and fit people eat small portions, lots of healthy foods like salads, veggies and fruits. We need to be the voices of reason for Rayna. We need to work together on this project.

More discussion of the same was held.

6:11 am
P= OK girls, we're almost home. Let's agree to march together. 1, 2, 3, march, march, march! Girls we're going for one more lap, we're going to make it 3 miles today!
S= Whoa! We didn't stop for our water break to refresh us!
E= Wait a minute, we're supposed to go home after 2.5 miles. This is no fair. I'm tired of this meeting. I want to go home, I'm going to cry!

2.6 miles Rayna cried.

Results

I did have a lot of my blood levels tested and though my cholesterol is about the same as 6 months ago, which is not totally discouraging as it was not bad then. I am encouraged that my glucose went down to normal instead of being high. I feel very good about that as my dad has diabetes, discovered in the past few years.