Monthly Archives: February 2011

I’ll be honest and say that I’ve fallen off the wagon quite a few times.  I know I need to recommit but as usual, my willpower sucks and I haven’t been able to.  I haven’t GAINED any weight but I haven’t lost any either.  I’m not going to make excuses because frankly, there aren’t any aside from my lack of willpower which has ALWAYS been an issue.

I think a main problem is social drinking.  My friend Laura, who works with my husband, is also from CT and she often comes over to watch UConn games with us.  She brings something to eat and I make some kind of appetizer and we usually have a few drinks.  Now, what we eat usually isn’t too bad.  Lots of times she brings a veggie platter and I make something fairly healthy.  But then the drinks kill it.  And last weekend, we wound up across the sgtreet at the neighbors’ house which led to me going out to a bar with my neighbor and drinking even more than I usually do (which I paid for the next day…I’m not 25 anymore!).

Last week my hubby announced that maybe he would go on a diet with me.  His weight has creeped up and so has his cholesterol.  Now, like I said before, whatever I do will be a lifestyle change so I only considered things that would lead to that.  So,  I had to sit down and think what would be best for us to do together.  I’ve done the South Beach Diet with success but then I remembered we would be having houseguests several times over the next month and a half so that night be too hard to stick too.  So, we settled on the old Weight Watchers Core program.  I have the food lists and most of the info.  When he got home from work that day, I showed him the food list and he was surprised at what was on it.  I explained those things could be eaten without limit (aside from a couple of carbs that are limited to how many servings you can have a day) and that we’d have to count points for anything not on the list like alcohol.  I explained the flex points you get for the week as well as exercise points.  We talked about cutting back on what we usually drink (martinis for him and wine for me) and came up with some low point alternatives.  We set a start date of Valentine’ Day because he is in CA for most of this week on business.  I figured I would take that time to take inventory of what we had and to try to get rid of some of the junk in the house and stock up on some healthy stuff.

So, this past weekend I made sure to be better about my choices and in limiting drinks.  We did go to Wendy’s one night but I had skipped lunch that day and we looked at it as sort of a farewell to that kind of food (not that we go out for fast food often AT ALL).  We didn’t drink much at all…not even yesterday for the Super Bowl.  The fact that he had to leave EARLY this morning helped with that.  And the chili I made to eat during the game actually came from a Weight Watchers recipe blog and was pretty much all Core ingredients.

Today I started getting rid of the junk.  I was surprised that we didn’t really have much around.  I’ll keep things like Goldfish, etc. on hand for the kids but I am going to try to stock up on fruits and veggies for snacks.  I’ll make a trip to Whole Foods to stock up on allowed grains, etc. (barley, quinoa, WW couscous…things like that) and maybe some lentils and dried beans too plus some seafood.  I’ll use this as an opportunity to try new recipes too.  I’ll plan my meals and shop only according to that.  I’ll stock up on stuff for salads for lunch for both of us.  We both like salad with a bit of protein on it.  I’ll also make a trip to the gourmet shop to get meat.  They sell natural, grain fed meat and their stuff always looks MUCH leaner than the stuff sold at the grocery store or Costco.  I’m willing to pay a little more for better looking meat that I know the source of.  One of hubby’s big worries was his daily trip to Dunkin Donuts but he already started ordering his coffee with skim milk and Splenda and he’s drinking it that way at home too.

Since it’s just the girls and me this week, I’ll probably eat a lot of salads for dinner.  I do have healthy meals planned like baked chicken tenders and sweet potato fries but some are a little less healthy so while I may sample a little bit, I’ll try to load up on salad.  I bought some pears for snacks and I have some clementines and grapefruit too.  I plan to start taking my steps this week so I can be ready to start on Monday.

I think with both of us doing this we may see more results than if we were doing it alone.  Wish us luck!

As of tomorrow, I will finally have my bedroom back.  No, I didn’t lose it but it had not been itself in almost 6 months as the result of a bathroom flood.  What a mess.  I guess I should start from the beginning.

My husband has a handful of emplyees in his company’s Sacramento, CA office.  He has to tavel out there at least twice a year, usually for about 5 days at a time.  This past August, he sceduled his trip fr the week after school started.  Our oldest was starting frst grade and we figured she would adjust to that just fine.  So, on a Tuesday morning, off he went.

Somewhere around midmorning, I went to use our master bathroom.  As I went to ull my my shorts up, I noticed they were wet.  There was water on the floor all around the toilet.  “Oh shit,” I thought.  I tried to flush and saw that not everything ewas going down (luckily all I had done was pee).  I tried to flush again and noticed that it seemed water was coming out from under the toilet.  I sent dear hubby an angry text accusing him of leaving me a clogged toilet (not too far fetched…he’s done it before!).  He replied that it was fine when he left that morning.  I threw some towels on teh floor and decided to come back later with the plunger, after the water had gone down a bit.

Fast forward an hour or 2.  I go back to the bathroom to see even MORE water on the floor…inching toward the door.  What the…???  Then I noticed yucky water backed up into the tub and the shower.  I went into the kids’ bathroom and saw water backed up in their tub too.  That’s when I knew it was more than a clogged toilet.

This is the point wher everything kind of becomes a blur.  More water came into the master bath so I called a plumber.  He diagnosed a clog in our main drain as well as a broken fange ont eh toilet which is why the water wound up on the floor.  There would have been  NO damage to the floor if that damn flange hadn;t been broken.  he called a water restoration company for me to clean up the mess.  I had to get the kids fed and occupied in teh middle of all this and I still hadn’t taken a shower.  I was also freaking out abouthow much this was going to cost since we had just paid an unexpected expnse due to our AC crapping out.

The water restoration were there until 11 at night.  apparently the guy who had innitially come to take a look had told his people it was a clean water leak from the toilet…like the valve had ben open. Ummmm, no  SO they had to get more supplies.  When they left at 11, there were 2 HUGE fans inour bedroom alone with 2 dehumidifiers.  I was not going to be sleeping in there.  I finally took a shower in the kids’ bathroom, blew up the Aerobed and went to bed.

Hubby ended up flying home the next day.  The insurance bguy told us we might have a cap on how much we would be paid becuase it was considered sewer water (it wasn’t).  That freaked me out all over again.  We got even more freaked out when the adjuster came and told us he had never heard of a cap like that.

In the end our bathroom vanity had to be ripped out along with all the flooring in our closet and more than half the flooring in our bedroom.  They also had to cut out drywall a foot hight in the whole bathroom and into the hall and bedroom.  It was 2 weeks before we could sleep in our bedroom again.  We investigated and found out the cap we had was due toa rider that was pretty much required here in FL (not sure why the adjuster didn’t know that) so we were srill worried about paying for it all.  But then, we got some greatr news. The insurance company did NOT consider the flood a sewer backup and we would paid the full amount estimated by our adjuster.  The claims person could not beleive I had been told otherwise.  I was kind of shocked too.  I had worked in insurance and you NEVER give out infi when the claim is initially called in because you don’t have all the facts.  This guy had freaked me out unnecessarily.

So now we had to take the steps to put everything back together.  First we had the water restoration people come and replace the drywall.  then we had to order a vanilty and wait for that to be installed.  Once that was installed, we had to order the counter.  In the middle of all this, hubby had to paint the bathroom.  Finally, a couple days before Christmas, we had our bathroom back.  now it was time to get the bedroom in order.

Hubby started painting.  Once that was done, we went and ordered our flooring.  Almost 2 weeks passed and we wondered why we hadn’t gotten a call that it was in.  Then the installers called saying that they had a note that we were supposed to pick up the flooring on Jan. 30.  Ummm, no one told us that.  Finally someone from the store called and said that the flooring had been in stock all along.  Ummm, WHAT?????  NO ONE TOLD US THAT!  WE could have had this floor installed like 2 weeks ago!  I was PISSED.  So, hubby went and picked up the flooring.  Today I finished pulling up the rest of the old flooring and tonight we’ll move all the furniture out.  Tomorrow they will come to install our new floor.  And tomorrow, we will have our bedroom back.  It’s about damn time!