On the Road to Long Term Recovery

I can't tell you how many times I've been on a diet and got sick, usually a cold or flu. I immediately stop dieting start eating toast, soup, pie! enchiladas! tacos! whatever makes me happy and said Oh Well, when I'm well I will go back to dieting. Not this time. I focused on it through being sick - acute bronchitis -although the scale stopped moving I just stayed on plan. By sticking to my diet through it all, I accomplished a lot of things.

First, I proved I can stay on plan. [Huge, huge, people. No comfort food for the sick and weary. Huge.] Through thick and thin, I proved I am stronger than food. I don't need more or different food to get well. In fact, I learned that what I'm eating is healthier to stick with when I'm sick than eating "anything and everything." Giving my body less trouble by giving it less to digest, I saved my energy for getting well.

I also learned that what I've always heard is true. Your body is smart - it will hold on to nutrition while you're sick and when you're start getting well the weight will come off. I continued drinking a gallon of water every day, that was hard - especially when I was coughing so much - I can't tell you how many times I peed my pants with all the water I was trying to hold on to while coughing wildly! Oops too much information . . . anyway, just stuck with it and today the scale (finally!) showed 2 more pounds lost.

Well, I feel like I'm coming out of a coma with the years I've spent overweight. It's like "the missing years" or something. It's like being sick for years and not really getting it, just keep on going never paying attention. Well I have my attention now and I'm protecting my health and protecting my "rehabilitation" process.

Gonna keep going, I'm still only at the beginning of this Recovery.

peace.

Blink and it's Gone

What's the difference between cleaning your house when you're healthy and cleaning your house when you're sick? Answer: You need to take more frequent rests, yes, but because you're moving slower you see more that needs cleaning, so somehow your house ends up cleaner, weird, huh? Takes days to do what you usually do in hours, but I found I was, again because of being sick and moving slower, more thoughtful.

I even moved some kitchen utensil drawers around, you know - every time you go to make a salad you go to a certain drawer for the knife and oops - it's in the drawer to the left. Well, today the knives got put in the drawer I open every time I want a knife to chop veggies - finally. Only took 10 months to give in to the knives telling me where they belong and just do it. And the drawer by the oven now holds the hot plates and pot holders, instead of the wine corkscrew & stoppers. Duh.

I crawled around on the floor and cleaned up the kick plate. Wow, that was fun! No matter how much you sweep, mop and swipe at it, nothing cleans that kick plate like a crazy woman on the floor with scrubber sponge. Nothing.

I take that back, I'm not crazy, I don't ever have a really completely clean house. We go in and out, we're gardeners, people come and go. At any one time you will find mulch, leaf bits, bugs, dirt, and the obligatory dust from open doors and windows. The only time I get 99% of the dust is when I ceiling to floor vacuum and trust me, it doesn't happen often and it doesn't last long. Outside is in and the inside is out. But my kick plates, for today, shine.

Now if I could just get well, gonna crawl my way back to bed and let the dust bunnies rule the night.

PL&F, y'all.

I just came across this photo of Ringo Starr on the internet - can you believe this guy is 69 years old? Wow, unbelievable. Gotta love it. Makes me smile. :-)

Bead Dreams & Wishes

So I seem to be a little preachy these days - between raving about nutrition and ranting about taxes. I tend to go on, I know. There is so much going on in the world all the way to around the neighborhood and around the house. Let's change the subject.

Last year at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show I bought several, okay let's define that at about 72 vintage swarovski crystals. Some were rivolis. I've spent a year collecting all the right beads to create jewelry with them. I've completed one piece, and starting a second. It will be a sunburst pendent to hang from an ndebele necklace. The twisted ndebele rope is two varities of gold on gold beads so it will serve as a neutral base for additional pendents to the original one made with the necklace. The first rivoli piece I made was an over the top string of seven starbursts with the bezeled rivolis surrounded by 4mm then 6mm swarovski bicones. It's an intricate, labor intensive piece, the easiest part being bezeling each rivoli. After completing the bracelet I immediately saw a thousand variations that would be interesting and provide an outlet for more of the rivolis from last year's Tucson show. I have a goal to finish using every swarovski purchased last year, as January 30th I'm off again to work at the 2010 show. I will be at To Bead True Blue show, working for Santa Mé Designs. The show is at the Doubletree, Reid Park. It's a great show, and there is a website listing all the vendors at www.tobeadtrueblue.com. Check it out.

Tucson is great - even for seed beaders like me. I get beads for a fraction of what they cost anywhere else, wholesale prices and large quantities, it's like being a kid in a candy store. I have to set a limit before I go, take cash and that's it. Hard, but have to realize there are only so many beads I can work with until next year, and I am doing this to earn money, not spend the entire paycheck on pearls, swarovskis and more and more seed beads.

Thought for the Day: You can never be too thin or have too many beads.

Therefore it follows: I'm dieting hard so I can have smaller clothes, so I can have more room in my suitcase for Beads!

FYI Your Tax Dollars at Work

From the Tax Breakdown Project 2008. [taxbreakdown.org]

Your $1.00 made up 0.000000000034461% of the total federal budget of $2,901,861,001,000. Here's how your government spent it:

Department of Health and Human Services: $0.24 (24.096%)

Social Security Administration: $0.23 (22.553%)

Department of Defense--Military: $0.2 (20.1%)

Department of the Treasury: $0.18 (18.091%)

Others: $0.06 (6.001%)

Department of Agriculture: $0.03 (3.068%)

Department of Veterans Affairs: $0.03 (2.87%)

Supplementals not Offset by Spending Reductions: $0.03 (2.539%)

Department of Transportation: $0.02 (2.31%)

Office of Personnel Management: $0.02 (2.211%)

Department of Education: $0.02 (2.019%)

Department of Labor: $0.02 (1.802%)

Other Defense Civil Programs: $0.02 (1.692%)

Department of Housing and Urban Development: $0.02 (1.53%)

Department of Homeland Security: $0.01 (1.489%)