C'moooooooooon July. Hurry up already!

"And then, such scandal! You would not believe what she did next!"

My sister is coming tomorrow to visit for the weekend. I haven’t seen her since daddy passed away, and it’s the first visit that doesn’t have some other purpose except for it being a simple visit. Of course, she can only squeeze me into a weekend, and part of that weekend will be dedicated to Satan. She’s up in Seattle today doing some consultant work, and will be driving down tomorrow, and flying out of Portland on Monday. I’m excited to see her. She always makes me laugh.

I’m going to sneak off on Sunday, when she’s playing golden-child with my mother and driving her all over the place, to go and pick strawberries on Sauvie Island with some of our ORS folks. It’s going to be nice to do an ORS event again. I won’t be wearing my new dress quite yet, since it’s only half a dress at the moment. I’ve been draping it on my dress-form and hand-sewing everything, and right now, only the front portion of the dress is attached. It looks funny. I still have to make a new petticoat and shift (which I might just make sleeveless) and I’m going to make some pantalettes too I think. Not quite sure... it depends on what I can swing before the 31st of July. I might not hand-sew the undergarments.

Today’s office special is what happens when I am put on hold with the EPA for extended periods of time. The reports are coming along, but with everything else, I confess I’m pretty stressed out. I want this month to be over! The adoption certification workshops continue to be informative but still are tiring. We got a small reprieve on Tuesday because Mr. and Mrs. Moron did not show up to that session and as we suspected, their absence caused the seminar to end an hour before scheduled. Hubby and I were able to get home at something closer to a reasonable time. I wish they’d stay home every time; we’d be much less tired. We are now in the stage where we are going to sign criminal background checks, submit fingerprints, and are filling out the small packet of forms to get the home-study process rolling. After today there are only two more sessions next week then we’re done with that bit. We’re in crunch time now at work for the EPA report submissions, and I also have a site inspection tomorrow morning with one of our regulators and a mammogram on Monday to take additional bites out of our prep-time. We’re hoping to have them all done by the 30th, I hope so. I feel like my head is going to explode. I could use some deflating, like a real vacation, but that’s not an option. :::groan:::

I hit 19 pounds the other day, and haven’t budged since. We’ll see. My average per-week loss has gone down to 1.3ish pounds a week. I’m not drinking the water I should be drinking, and I can’t do mornings without my thermos of green tea... so I’m sure that, plus the stress and everything else is contributing to my slowing weight loss; but I’m still losing so that’s really awesome. I got into a jeans size this week that I haven’t been able to fit into since 2003. It’s an amazing feeling. I found some jeans for $5 at the Sears outlet store and got a couple of ‘interim’ pairs so I’m not walking around in super-baggy pants all the time, which I’ve been doing a lot of lately. I actually see how my hips have gotten smaller now. I want SO bad to hit that 20lb mark. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I’ll hit that goal on my Tuesday weigh-in. Hubby has hit the 40.2lb mark. He looks amazing and is also wearing smaller pants. We are both going to be due for a wardrobe overhaul pretty soon. I will definitely have to remake or alter my regency stays for sure—they close all the way with ease now and seem a bit loose. ::urgh:: I JUST made them. Anyway, that’s another update of my inane life. I might have something *interesting* to say soon enough... we’ll see. Right now it’s just all about the stress. :::GAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!::: /rant. ;)

Chicon au gratin.

One of my favourite meals as a child was chicon au gratin.  Chicon (endives) are a Belgian staple when they're in season, and it's a huge crop there.  Endive is delicious served fresh, chopped into little pieces in a mayonnaise/lemon vinaigrette. It's the BEST salad to have with a rare tuna steak.  Mmm. But endives are also delicious cooked. They have a natural sweetness and bitterness that just works wonders with cheese and savory foods.

This dish is particularly good for our weight watchers regime because even with cheese sauce, it's surprisingly light.  I've learned to make a light cheese sauce without going through the effort of making a real béchamel which requires butter and flour. This meal amounts to about 14 points (if you use two medium potatoes per serving).  I reached 19 lbs this morning by the way. It's so exciting! I've gone down two sizes.  Anyway... I digress; here goes:


Start with four fresh endives. These California-grown endives are a bit anemic as endives go, but they'll do the trick. They can be a bit expensive, but you only need four for this recipe.

The first thing you are going to do is cut out a little cone out of the base. It will make them less bitter. It's something Tati taught me, so just do it. :)

Once you've done that, you want to put them in a pot and boil them until they turn a sage green and are softened. Not too long.

I actually took these out too soon, They were still a slight bit under cooked.  Anyway, quarter them lengthwise when they're properly cooked.

Now it's time to pull out the deli-style lean ham.  Cut super thin, it's 1 point for six slices! So you take a quarter of the endive and put it on the ham.  Roll it up like a taquito.

Put your little ham-rolls into a shallow baking dish.  Now for the sauce.  You can do it the proper way, béchamel and all or do it the weight-watchers way.  For a béchamel, you will heat a tablespoon of butter in a saucepan, and let it brown a bit.  Add in a tablespoon of flour and brown it, and then add the milk gradually while whisking.  Then you'd add in your cheese etc.  


I put 3/4 of a cup of 2% milk into a saucepan, and added some grated nutmeg, a little bit of salt and pepper.  

You want to use a good, firm gruyere.  Some domestic cheesemakers think that gruyere should be like a softer cheese, it should not.  It should be a firm cheese with a strong flavour. If you want a bit of a kick, add a little bit of parmesan. I used about a cup and a quarter (or 12 points on the scale) of grated gruyere.

Bring the milk to a simmer, and add in the grated cheese, whisking all the while.  I added a couple of teaspoons of corn-starch to thicken up the sauce, I confess.

Once you get the sauce where you want it, pour it over your little ham-rolls.

Sprinkle some cheese over it and huck it into the oven at 375°.  While that's cooking, take out four small/medium sized potatoes and cut them in two, and then quarter those.

Pop them into a pot with some water and a sprinkle of salt.

Boiled potatoes are a big staple in farm-country in Belgium. They are completely integral to the yumminess of this meal.  

When it's baked, broil it for a second to get a nice brown crust on the top.  Serve it up with your potatoes, sauce and a nice green salad.  Voila.  It's SO good, trust me.  Bon appétit.

Updates updates updates.

Another Father's Day without
Daddy. :(  I miss you papa.

I know I’ve been quiet of late, but it’s been a busy week, granted. We are about to embark on week 2 of our adoption/foster certification course; week one has already been extremely eye-opening and almost too much to bear frankly. The trainer is former caseworker, and her anecdotes are full-on depressing. How she keeps a smile on her face every day after seeing the very worst of humanity, I do not know. It’s a late night after each session, and it’s emotionally exhausting. It’s even worse when there is a couple there that can’t STFU. They stop the session to ask the most inane questions I’ve ever heard.

“The kid we have, her mother believes in Buddha. I don’t know anything about Buddha. She might freak out if we kill a fly because they believe that everything’s reincarnated. We go to the Sandy Assembly of Christ (or whatever), we don’t believe in any of that stuff, should we not take her?” SHE IS EFFING TWO! WHO CARES??? They turn EVERYTHING into something about their foster case and waste everyone’s time. It’s so annoying. We could get so much out of this session; our trainer is wonderful, if it weren’t for Mr. and Mrs. Moron. I don’t even know how to broach it with the trainer because she’s so nice and indulges them.

This class is made up mostly of foster-parents, there are only two couples there that are really interested in adoption (oh, the moron-couple *might* adopt their Buddhist two-year old if the parents don’t shape up). Most of the fosters there are relatives. A set of grandparents in their seventies, a man who said: “I’m here because I have a stupid brother”, while his wife tenderly cradled an infant girl... there is also a lady whose son’s best friend has nowhere to go and hasn’t lived with his parents since he was three. Lots of sad stories.

Some sad facts from the class: the majority of abuse (markings and bruises) cases that are opened in Oregon are for infants. Neglect and abuse cases are predominantly due to drug problems with the parents (Methamphetamines are a huge problem out here). Oregon instituted a law that allows people who do not want their kids to walk into a hospital or police station and hand the child off without recrimination. We discovered, and I did not know this, that when a child is taken away from a parent, the parent has to pay the State child-support. That’s why most people don’t want the state to take their children. They don’t necessarily want to keep their kids out of the foster-system; they just don’t want to be responsible for paying child-support, getting into arrears and having their income garnished. Kids are also ‘cash-cows’ and having kids entitles people to all sorts of state services and support they wouldn’t get if they didn’t have kids. So parents fight pretty hard to keep kids they don’t really want so they can continue to be lazy, useless wastes of space living off of the system and breeding indiscriminately. It’s hard to find empathy for people who look at children as a means for contributing nothing to society. Especially when people like me are tripping over themselves to have a child, and they abuse the privilege they’ve been given.

::steps off soap box::

This is a tough process. I drove home after the first session crying. There are SO many kids in the system with no stability, no sense of permanence, with the desire to be loved unconditionally, to be given a chance, to be valued by someone. And there are so few people out there with room or finances, or patience to help them. It makes me want to take more than one, but we have such a small house and we are always struggling financially. We’ll see how it all pans out.

On the weight watcher’s front... I have reached 18 pounds. I can’t believe I’m so close to the 20-pound milestone. I still don’t really *see* the weight loss on me, but it’s definitely there. Case and point... I got Matilda (my dress form) back, and when I measured myself to adjust her to my size, I realized that I’d lost a few inches (three inches) pretty much everywhere since I last adjusted her. The scale isn’t lying to me, but it sure feels like it. It’s slow but it’s moving along. Hubby is at 39 pounds (probably 40 by tomorrow). He is shrinking away, his clothes bagging on him quite ungracefully. He is fabulous, I am so proud of him. I wouldn’t be successful in this if it weren’t for his example. A lot of people drop out of the program because they have unsupportive family and friends who want to enable them to fail so they don’t have to feel accountable for themselves. We are lucky we are doing this together and that’s probably why it’s working so well. It took me two months to get on board and to do the program instead of pretending along with him, but once I saw his discipline and his results, I would be stupid to not at least *try*. Especially with a program that promotes a healthy, slow weight loss rather than fast results with no long-term ‘training’ on how to eat well. When I did the Atkins diet, I lost over 45 pounds in a few months, but when I stopped eating bacon for snack-time and went back to a ‘normal’ diet, I gained it all back and then some.

The Lupron injections are continuing. I had my third one last week. I’ve tempered out a lot though since the first injection. That first month I had a whole lot of crazy going on, it was like all my emotions had been run though a distiller or something. But it’s been a lot closer to normal since, with the occasional bout of tears whenever I see a puppy on TV or something. The hot flashes have slowed down a bit, but they are still happening, but mostly at night. One benefit is that I haven’t cycled since my first injection. It’s like a vacation.

I’ve been sewing myself a new costume. I’m going to make something marginally adjustable so if I continue to lose weight, it will still fit me. I need to figure something out for my stays though, because they close all the way now, and in another month, they will be useless if I keep dropping pounds. This is particularly annoying because stays are a lot of work and I *just* made these ones, it was one of my last sewing projects before I stopped sewing for a year. I made myself a new hand-sewn mob-cap out of organdy, and I have a new hat for summer. It’s so nice to be able to focus on costumes for me for a change. I’ve even resolved to hand-sew this gown, which I’ve started the bodice for. My stiches aren’t necessarily pretty, but hopefully they’ll mostly be hidden. Hand sewing is really relaxing. I haven’t given up using my machine completely, mind you, but it’s easier to lie in bed and watch TV with a needle and thread than it is with a Husqvarna Viking balanced on your lap (or more realistically, it’s more comfortable than being hunched in a chair, squinting over your sewing).

Here are some tiny baby pigs.

::gazes at you impassively:: o_o

No time for an office special today.

Monday Schmonday. ::bleaugh::

Well, it’s a Monday. Without a doubt. This month is going to be crazy. Along with the EPA reports that are due at the end of the month, we’ve got the adoption seminars until nine twice a week. I’m completely bewildered as to how we are going to manage it all, but hopefully we’ll pull through.

I made some more figurines for the lovely Miss Stephanie R. This time it was Spongebob Squarepants characters. :D  Here are some pictures she took. My favourite is Squidward. I accidentally broke Spongebob’s nose off, so I had to superglue it back on, so it looks like he’s got a snotty nose now. Oops! I like Patrick and Gary (you can’t see him well in the cake pic) the least.

Stephanie's Cake is faboo. I love the 'sand'.

AH-DERP DE DURRRRR!

Squidward looks like how I feel most of the time.

Who knew sponges could get congested?

I’ve been seeing the -16 lbs. a bit, especially in my face (and boobs). All I can focus on now is how uneven my skin looks! And my nose is red like I have gin-blossoms or something! I swear I am not a lush. Ha! I look tired because I AM. ::groan:: And to top it off I’ve had a day-long migraine that makes even wearing my glasses intolerable, so I’ve spent the day squinting with my face inches from my monitor. Attractive.

I cropped out my desk because it's a huge mess.

Weekend... let’s see. Saturday, hubby was off on his Ducati to ride with his fellow Ducati club members—so I had the day to sew. Unfortunately, since it’s been a full year since I actually sewed something, everything was just scattered everywhere or piled in corners in the catch-all room – Uh, I mean the guest room/possible kid’s room. So I spent Saturday digging through stuff and getting increasingly angry about the fact that I was digging through stuff. I picked up an old tack trunk and a huge tote full of fabric remnants and marched them to the end of the driveway and taped a free sign to them. Even on our less-traveled gravel road, someone came by on Sunday morning and took the stuff. That was easy enough. By the time moto-man got back from his 350 mile round trip, I had finally found my fabric and other elements for my project but was too pissed to do anything with it. So it’s all consolidated in a box for later sewing. I made meatballs instead and grumped around until bedtime.

Sunday was a fun day. In spite of a trip to the dump, and a breakfast that we had to wait an hour and a half for, I had a delightful time with my horse. I even made some stupid movies of him, as if they’re any different from all the other stupid movies I make of him. I can’t help it. He’s a golden horse-god, and he’s so beautiful in summer; his fuzzies gone, his thick neck, his handsome face. Just being around him brings my blood pressure down. I had a nice ride, worked the heck out of him (his fat pads on his shoulders are going down, hopefully the saddle will fit him properly again soon).

Then (with me reeking of horse and still soaked from giving him a bath and covered in dirt from the riding arena)we went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean. It was pretty good. I was glad there wasn’t the same old ‘forbidden love and misunderstanding’ story again with that kid and that chick. The visuals were pretty. I don’t know why they bothered making it in 3D, I don’t think it really gained anything with it. It was a relaxed day. I wish it hadn’t ended. Now it’s Monday. I don’t like Mondays.

Okay I’m done being a curmudgeon. My creative juices are nil today. No office specials for you! I’m going to start a photo-essay on this new dress project but I’m not posting it until it’s done. I also have to make a new set of stays because my old ones are no longer tight on me. I guess I am losing lots of weight, but I’m just not seeing it. I’m still at a plateau as of today. Hubby has lost 37 lbs. as of last Wednesday.

Tiny hats, possible ninja porn and thoughts of adoption.

Friends on Parade. Today's office special.



I feel like I’m insane sometimes. I guess mostly because I want to do so many things and I end up having no time to, or if I do have a bit of time, I’m too damned tired to do anything. I just want to check out from the neck-up and just watch a bunch of back-logged DVR recordings of Judge Judy and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.


It’s hard to pretend the world doesn’t exist though, when you’ve got a vacation rental next door. It’s bad enough that the right side of our property is dominated by a tree-chopping, pot-growing doofus with unending hours of pot-business and a dog that never stops barking. But having the Larson house turn into a full-time vacation rental has been kind of a pain in our ass, and I’m being kind when I say that. We already have an issue with people who come up to our neck of the woods to vacation. People who leave their homes to go camping or to go stay in a vacation cabin don’t really perceive the area they’re occupying as anything more than a recreational venue. They give no heed to the folks who might appear to have to leave at ungodly hours in the morning for a job; a job that is where these visitors likely live, which is a hell of a commute. No, they just want to have fun.

Most of the time, the house will be rented through the management company by a single couple. They pay the base amount and head up. On the way, they get on their phone and start calling every one of their friends and say: “Hey guys, we just got a cabin up in Welches... come on up!” then they go to the slopes at Timberline, and invite the people they meet in line at the lift-ticket line too. By the time they show up after skiing, there are six or seven cars crammed into the driveway, they’re sucking on a hookah outside the front door, laughing it up in the hot tub at 2 AM and having a good ol’ time. We’ve seen sometimes as many as twenty people in a cabin that is supposed to have a maximum occupancy of 8.

The weekend before this long one, we got ninja/martial-arts photo-shoot weirdoes. They arrived in single car first, and then more arrived a bit later. Next thing you know, they’re moving all the furniture outside onto the little porch in the rain, and then took a brief moment to photos in the back of the cabin of their slick-ninja jumps and moves. They were all decked out in their martial-arts togs, from the split-toed socks, armlets and headbands. They were leaping high into the air while their friends snapped photos. As the day wore on, the number of cars increased in the driveway, and they retreated indoors where we could hear “Hyooh” ::thump:: “Hyah!” ::crash:: “HAI!” ::tumble:: “OUF!” ::boom:: all the while the tall windows facing the front of the building flashed from their photographs and glowed from their special lighting—well into night hours. I told my husband that I was becoming increasingly convinced they were shooting ninja porn in there. By 2 AM, two of the cars had left, and by 4AM, they were gone, and the furniture had been put back. Our dogs were stressed and frazzled but were finally able to settle down at 4AM. The next day, the lady who the rental management company pays to clean the place called out to my husband who was working on his bike out back: “Excuse me sir... but do you have any idea what the hell went on in here? Oh my God!” She went on to complain about how awful the task of cleaning this rental was compared to others. Apparently the management company isn’t too good and doesn’t really care if it is a party house. She told my husband that they don’t listen to her when she tells them that more people had to be there than they claimed. They don’t care. The management company is out of Portland, so I imagine they don’t get out here very much. I have fantasies of renting a giant backhoe, sticking the arm and bucket scoop out like a huge fist and punching it right through the Larson cabin. It would be so nice to not have neighbours. People can be such thoughtless jerks. Then I’d turn that backhoe towards the other neighbour and end his pot-operation once and for all too. Ahh, dreams. ::sigh::

June harkens the month of adoption/foster-care seminars. I’m not quite sure what to expect, but we’re signed up and I’ve set it up on my outlook calendar, so for a month, my Tuesday and Thursday evenings are going to be late nights home. They start on the seventh and are twice a week, every week until the end of the month. They start at 6PM and end at 9PM. It will be worth it though. I’m trying not to get too excited. It’s going to be a rough month, squeezing in these late seminars... and we have to take this on with a realistic perspective. But regardless, I can’t help but think of little dresses, murals and children’s songs. I’m such a dork.

I start small. This one needs a bit more height.

I’ve been working on some new hat designs because of the Oregon Regency Society’s first Regency Retreat which will take place in December. You can get more information about that here. I will be holding a hats and bonnets workshop, and I will be not only revamping my existing pattern (it’s time). I’ve learned a lot more since I first made that pattern and it needs to be redone. In addition to that, I’m delving into other designs as well, including a nice riding toque designed after the ’81 Pride & Prejudice hat Lizzie is wearing. I’ve started making my usual miniature mockups. I may just keep my miniature sized hat patterns and sell them for dolls. :) I’m excited about creating new patterns. The first pattern is really popular, so I’m hoping a wider variety of hats will be just as popular too. By the time the retreat comes along, I’m hoping to have at least 4 hat designs to choose from for the participants—all ‘mined’ from period adaptations. I have some great ideas and examples, including Emma’s (Beckinsdale) triangle hat/bonnet and a twisted square hat.

I now have to put together some Spongebob characters out of polymer clay for an S-II cake project. I can’t forget, I promised her these by Friday. I’ll post pics of them when I’m done.

Today's office special is just another of my random whatevers that came to me as I poised my hand to sketch. Middle monster came first, then I added the girl to join him in his cheerful march, and then I thought, hey, we need a smiling fluff-ball. We always need smiling fluff-balls bouncing along as we march. Anyway, have a lovely week (it’s a short one! YAY!)

By the way,  I am stalled at 16 pounds this week, I'm afraid.  Too much 'falling off the wagon' and too little water!

Happy Tuesd... Oh nevermind.

Fastest Office Special in History. Don't ask about the tadpole.
Just had 'one of those moments?'

Sixteen pounds have left my body... can you believe it? I can’t. I don’t see it AT ALL, except for two pairs of jeans that were already moderately loose on me that now fall down my bum and reveal my fissure de plombier—most irritating.

WewHew!

I’ve been not-so-bloggy lately. Not so anything to be honest. It’s been an inordinately stressful past two weeks. I learned on a first-hand basis exactly how much the local news media can blow things completely out of proportion and incite unnecessary fear in people. Pretty soon they’ll be running headlines like: Playground of Death... the culprit... GRAVITY! Your child can be critically injured in playgrounds! Or Fatality on the Fly... how mosquitoes could potentially be your DOOM! I mean seriously...? I refuse to watch local network news anymore because what they report is so completely separate from what the truth is. Yikes. Anyway... suffice it to say, the incident that brought the news media down on my company was not a shade as bad as they painted it... but what can we do? Oh well.

What’s new? Well... nothing much. I’ve been dying to sew but my BFF (who doesn’t like me anymore because I haven’t seen hide or hair of her for WEEKS) is holding Mathilda (my dress-form) hostage. I haven’t gotten the ransom note yet, but I wager I’ll find one like this one on my windshield very soon:

I want to drape the back of my new gown on her. Damnit. There is NO way I’m hauling my big butt two hours down and two hours back on a precious weekend, nor am I going to get home at nine PM on a weeknight... I’m too TIRED. So I’ll have to be creative I guess. My body is changing shape so I have to allow for some flexibility because the event I’m making it for is in July (although there’s one in June I’m considering rushing the project for—a picnic at Delaford that involves the picking of strawberries which sounds divine.

I finally got everything back up and running on the ORS and RSA websites. Holy crap! What craziness. It’s nice to know that the group is in good hands. And we have events up again! Finally! I’m super excited for S-II’s retreat! Yay! Check out the events page for details.

Satan is still Satan (for those of you who don’t read my blog regularly, I refer to my mother as Satan). She is quite upset that none of her daughters were willing to drop everything for a super-short-notice trip to Puerto Rico to celebrate her birthday (in spite of the fact that she habitually forgets all of ours every year). “You don’t have any vacation time? What if I pay for the tickets?” Umm... No. If I’m going to use my precious vacation time, it’s not going to be doing anything even remotely involving my HM (High Maintenance) mother, that’s for sure. It wouldn’t *be* a vacation simply because she’s part of it. No way, José. A vacation for me constitutes going where *we* want, with whom we want. Too many times in my life I’ve been invited places on other peoples’ terms and ended up being a at their mercy and becoming housekeeper, caterer and babysitter while everyone went on with their normal lives.

The last vacation I had on my own terms (to some degree) was a trip back to Europe in 1992 when I did a 12-day ‘round’ with my good friend at the time, Catherine, who was French and was married to an American. We flew into Charles de Gaul, from there we hopped the train to Brussels, then Luxembourg, then Metz, then we went to the Alsace region (and went into Germany for a day) and then mosied our way back towards Paris to fly home. She visited family and friends, so I was a bit at her mercy, but it was still fun and we had the freedom to stop and wander around towns of those old-style daub and wattle, cantilevered medieval buildings, drink white wine at local wineries and dine with friends. ::sigh:: I am so due for another vacation like that! I’d really like to show my husband Bretagne and Normandy (and let him see the Omaha and Utah Beach graveyards and Mont St. Michel first-hand)... take him up to Scotland, visit Denmark (for him to see old friends from VESTAS) and Norway to Belgium and Holland, and then down to Italy. That would be so nice. Someday. Someday.

A weighty whopper of a Wednesday

This office special was inspired by the
brief glimpse of blue sky we saw yesterday.

Hello all! I’m in a good mood for a change. Go figure. I’ve been so grumpy lately I’m not even bearable to be around I imagine. Poor hubby. :0D

I’ve finally hit the thirteen-pound mark. Things are moving again, I guess. Water is the key. There are a few things I am learning about this process:

1) it’s easy to think it’s not working. You’re doing everything right, eating the set amount of daily calories and you’re not losing weight... sometimes it’s just a matter of making a minor adjustment and to keep plugging away; but I can still see why so many people just walk away from the program. Plateauing can be disheartening. Luckily I have a wonderful support system in my hubby (who weighed in at 29.4lb mark last Wednesday), so he kept me from being discouraged.

2) This is a healthy way to lose weight. It’s not the way everything *thinks* you should lose weight, and it’s not a fast way to lose weight. The general consensus is diet and exercise and it’ll drop away. That’s what they’re pimping on ‘The Biggest Loser’... working the fatties into jiggling mounds of sweat and indignity like they’re at torture-boot camp. That is not my cup of tea. I’m not a jock; I’ve never been a jock. I used to find every excuse in the book to avoid going to PE class or participate in it, and gaze wonderingly at the kids that would bounce around like over-caffeinated psychos and run the whole mile and think ... wow, that person is a complete lunatic. It’s just never been my thing. It’s heartening to know that I can still lose weight and not be forced to run around like an over-caffeinated psycho.

3. This ‘lifestyle change’ (you are not supposed to refer to Weight Watchers as a diet you see) does one incredible thing... it makes you appreciate food a lot more. You take a lot for granted when you’re not really thinking about what you’re eating. You just go ‘yum’ and cram it into your mouth. But when you are limited to a certain daily allotment of calories, how you choose to consume those calories becomes the challenge. You aren’t deprived by any means on this program. You can eat whatever you want on Weight Watchers, but if you decide to go to McDs and stuff a greasy burger down your throat, you might not be able to eat much else for the rest of the day. So you end up avoiding these things so you can eat more for less so to speak. You avoid bad things like burgers and fries and red meat and pizza and chocolate mostly because you want to not feel hungry all day after you’ve satisfied that yen. You start making things you like with better ingredients, leaner products, less oil, etc. You don’t actually realize it until afterwards as you look into your pantry and fridge and sort of take stock of what’s changed about their contents. Things you love just seem to taste better, it’s more of a treat and an indulgence when you have to earn it.

4. Sometimes you fall off the wagon (which you are allowed to do... you have a weekly ‘wagon tumbling’ allotment of 49 points to do naughty things on. We hardly ever use those points but it’s nice to know they’re there for holidays and such). It’s okay. Just pick yourself up off the ground, dust yourself off, and start fresh the next day. It’s all good.

BUT you don’t *have* to fall off the wagon. You can do naughty things and still be *on* the wagon. There are all these little things out there for the ‘lifestyle changers’ that hit that naughty spot. There are these little slider burgers that you get with soft ooey cheddar on them for five points each, which hubby and I will indulge in when we’re thinking about burgers. We count out and oven-bake fries when we want to be naughty. Lean Cuisine makes these itty bitty dessert-plate sized pizzas, and Dan came home last night with these wafery dessert things from Skinny Cow... Oooooh my Goddd they are SOOO GOOD. Just eating those little indulgences are like partaking in the ambrosia of the Gods when you don’t eat them habitually. That one little 100 calorie bar was like heaven in chocolate form. Four points of heaven. It's a significant possibility that those little chocolate bars are the reason for my good mood today. Who knows?

That's a pretty big chunk.
I've dropped a little over two of 'em.

5) It’s working. I’m losing weight. It’s not ghost weight, or water-retention fluctuations... I’m actually losing poundage. It’s pretty astonishing after feeling so defeated by it. And I’m not starving myself, for putting myself through diets that yo-yo my weight, like when I did the Atkins and then gained back the 40lbs I lost + 10 more. I *am* challenged by other factors, my PCOD for instance messes with my cholesterol and my insulin levels and makes losing weight all the harder, which is a pain in my butt. But even with that and my plateau weeks included, I am averaging 1.8lbs lost a week. That’s nothing to snort at. Even my boss said something to me about it. “If I may ask, how much weight have you lost?” he asked, but before I could fully reply he said: “15 pounds, huh? About 15? It looks good.” GLOW! I’m noticing it a teeny bit now. My jeans are looser, for one; and my double chin seems to have receded by a smidgen (I could be imagining it). I don’t have a goal weight; I have a goal ‘appearance’. I’ll stop lowering my calories when I get to the point where I can look in the mirror and say: “Okay, I’m good with this.” Then I’ll go into maintenance mode and hopefully stay there. I really, really, really want to sew myself a regency gown and have it look like it’s supposed to look on me.

When I lived in Belgium, weight wasn’t ever really an issue. I’m not saying I was skinny, I wasn’t. I was healthy. And when I went through puberty, I was curvy. I was size 10 in 7th grade and I had D cups. I was DD by the time I was in ninth grade. But I wasn’t overweight by any means. I only gained weight when I moved to the US, and I think that has a lot to do with the amount of calories that are served per meal, the type of food and believe it or not, the frequency and time of meals. I ate 4 meals each day before. Breakfast (light), a huge lunch, goûter, which we had at around 4PM and it was something as simple as a tartine (a slice of bread with something on it... pate, cold meats, cheese, Nutella and some cornichons or something) and dinner which wasn’t even close to the proportions it is here. Lunch was closer to the dinners served here. You’d have soup, then a plate with meat, starch and veggies and salad. I ate a lot. I know I did. I like food too much; and I also ate bad things, like tons of fries with mayonnaise, and waffles, and chocolate of all sorts. But I never had a weight problem until I moved to the states. I gained 40 pounds in the first three months here (it was also partly culture-shock and depression that contributed to that weight gain... I hated it here when I first arrived and went into this weird state of fugue. I’d left everything that meant anything to me behind; friends, horses, a life, so my heart was broken and I had nothing in common with this crazy mall-riddled country).

I'm amazed how well the detail is maintained in the printing process. Exciting!

Aaaaanyway... MY SPOONFLOWER FABRICS ARE HERE! They are SO cute. OMG! I had to scale down the graphic size on the ‘Cameo’ one. As you can see in the picture, it’s pretty giant. I scaled it down from 12x18 to 7x10ish. Hopefully it won’t be so ginormous.

This scale might work for a bedspread or curtains or something.

I also have another special project underway. I found some beautiful voile-like cotton with a delicate roll-pattern on it. So I have bought a number of other things and plan to make myself a new gown for the Pittock Mansion picnic in July. I have been accessorizing as well, and am so thrilled with a few of my finds. But these will not be revealed until July 31, and I will also be posting a project journal on the costume piece, something I haven’t done in a while (this is the first sewing I’ve done in about a year... the last gown I made was for Faren so she could go to the Fox Hunt). It’s weird to feel excited about costumes again. It’s been forever.

My mom brought me this item when she came for Mother’s Day on Sunday:

Those bedazzled sails are just my sorta thing. ::ugh::

It’s obvious she put a lot of thought into what I like and pays attention to what I wear because it’s *just my style* ::eyeroll:: What’s worse is she said to me once again: “I got this for you. I’m sure it will fit, it’s huge.” And the reason I waste my time with her? The jury is still out on that one.