Where Was I?

Wii Fit Update 3

2008-07-25T21:12:00.003-06:00

There has been no progress.

Well, actually, one bit, The last day I was on, my Wii Fit Age was 28, which is one year less than I actually am.

The Wii Fit Age is calculated by your current BMI and two Balance tested the game gives you. When I first started, my Wii Fit Age was 44. So a 28 is pretty good.

I am not losing weight very fast, but with only a week of days under my belt, I cannot expect much movement in that area. However, Since being struck down by the uterine pains from hell (I should patent that) I have not stepped on the Fit.

See, on the Fit, if you do not have much time, you can do a body test, which takes only seconds. It's just a weigh in and the two balance tests. But holy crap, I've been feeling crappy! Hubs was On the Fit and did an hour. When he got off he said "I did an hour. That's really good considering I did not feel like getting on!"

I kind of felt like he was making a dig at me becuase I have not been on it, and said so : "lets see you get on some weight benches and do fifty reps while a donkey kicks you in the nards, See if you feel like it then!"

He explained that he was proud of himself and was NOT trying to make me feel bad. I think though, It shows that I myself am feeling guilty for not going on the Fit!

And I WILL get back on, but not until I can stand up straight without feeling stabbing pains from both my back and front!

Week From Hell

2008-07-25T21:03:00.002-06:00

This wee promises to be a hellish one. it started three days ago when I got my period. After not having it for four months, it is quite the shock to the system! Not only am I dealing with hellish cramping and back pain, but my skin is seriously suffering too.

I find my self reading (and clicking) link ads on face book that say best acne treatment and Clear Skin NOW!

I've been trying the tried and true creams and ointments in my bathroom, but all it is doing is drying out my skin. And really, dry, flaky skin is no better than oily pimple covered skin!

I am hoping that this will be over soon, all of it, not just the craptacular skin I have been dealing with.

Dammit

2008-07-24T01:13:00.002-06:00

It's past one in the morning and I am still awake.

I do not want to be awake.

I am, in fact, very tired.

I just cannot seem to get comfortable enough to fall asleep.

I'm going to go play my S&W tickets on facebook.

And hope I will be tired enough to sleep when I am done.

Bad Light

2008-07-22T11:34:00.004-06:00

I took a series of shots last night and not one of them turned out. I had to do some MAJOR tweaking in PhotoShop last night to get it too look like this :

The series turned out like this. All of them washed out, faded, absolutely ZERO life to them! And I am not quite sure what went wrong. I had the camera set to fast action/kids shot, optional flash (the flash did not go off) it was about an hour to sunset and the sun, what was left of it was to my back.

I thought fleetingly about going to the other side of the kids to take pictures, but the sun was still above the house to the back of me, and going around them meant a long walk across the deck, down the stairs and over to the sidewalk becuase my dad is pretty anal about his flowers LOLz.

So. Was there a better setting for me to use? I find that at the beach I also get washed out pictures. Should I be going into manual and playing with the wee buttons? Cus those confuse the crap out of me.

Wii Fit Update 2

2008-07-21T11:48:00.002-06:00

Ok. Point in it;s favor/ I'm no longer horribly stiff in the morning anymore.

Point against it/ We have our first Wii Injury. I pulled a muscle in my lower abdomen doing the Push-Up-Sideways-Plank "Strength" Exercise.

While the soreness of my tummy will not stop me from Fitting today, It will prevent me from doing a lot of the exercises on the Fit. And that pisses me off. However, i do agree with hubs that by taking it easy for a bit my tum tum will heal better, faster, than if I continue to push.

***hubs thinks that Me taking a before picture and then an after picture would be beneficial, not to blog, but for me. I cannot bring myself to actually photograph me as I am right now lol, what do you think? Take it or no?***

Insert RANT here

2008-07-18T21:18:00.001-06:00

I cannot be the only person who assumed that on her 20th birthday, when I finally got out of myu teens, that acne issues would STOP being a part of my life. For crying out loud! I am 29 years old and STILL buying acne cream! In fact, in five years, I will have a teen in the house and be buying double - some for him, some for me.

I have yet to figure out the trick to making my hair behave, and on the rare time I am able to tame it into submission, I have zits I need to cover and I end up ruining the look!

I'm so tired of it.

A Wish List

2008-07-17T12:11:00.003-06:00

the other day Hubs and I hopped into the shower together. We needed to be somewhere and did not have a lot of time to get there. As fun as showing together sounds, Hubs and I do not do it that often simply becuase a lack of room! Oh and he hogs the shower faucet too!

The way our home is situated, there is nothing I feel ready to sacrifice to make room for a bigger shower - maybe one with multiple shower faucets, but eventually, most likely when this house is paid off, we will move to a new place.

There are only three things I will look for in a new home,

1. The Master Bath. I love my nightly baths, and absolutely require the bathtub be suitable for my needs. The one in this house is a super deep tub, I love it to death!

2. Patio doors off the kitchen to a deck or patio in the back yard. This is a must. I will not move into a home that does not have this ever again. EVER.

3. A finished laundry room. Walls, roof, flooring, The laundry MUST be finished. There are too many places for spiders to hide in an unfinished room.

I'm pretty sure that It won't be too hard to find a house that meets all of these requirements!

Not A Winner

2008-07-17T12:03:00.002-06:00

I told my friend Sheila that the minute I won the lottery I would buy a plane ticket to head out to Missouri and see her.

I just checked Wednesdays numbers and as per usual - Not A Winner.

People talk about getting flight deals all the time, My sister in law went from Winnipeg(Manitoba) to Mexico (Not sure what part) for 99 dollars a ticket.

Hubs and I checked for flight deals to Mexico - his sister and husband are living there right now so we would not have to pay for a hotel, just the plane and food. But the cheapest WE found was seven hundred PLUS - for ONE person!

WTH?

Wii Fit Update

2008-07-17T11:54:00.002-06:00

According to my Wii Fit trainer, the left side of my body is weaker than the right and my lower back is not as strong as it should be. I also have horrible posture, and overweight and have little to no arm strength.

This might discourage some people but, damn, its all true. I will NEVER have any sort of strength in my wrists, thats a given, they have been broken and re broken way to often, but it is very encouraging to me that this ..computer chip... knew just from the exercises we have done, where my weak points are. It makes me feel like using the Wii Fit to become a more healthy me is an actual possibility!

As for the bad posture, a huge part of that is how I sit at the computer. My laptop is on the kitchen counter and I sit at a kitchen barstool - a backless one, and am slouched the entire time I am here. I need to got to an office furniture store and find a chair that will give me the support I need.

And? I need to get off the computer every now and then!

Kids are entertaining!

2008-07-17T11:34:00.002-06:00

My six year old just watched an infomercial type commercial for a product called ShamWow. He came to me and repeated basically word for word all the wonderful goodness that is The ShamWow. He is determined that we need it!

He does this with a lot of commercials. Not toys, surprisingly, its always an item that he thinks will help ME. I remember once him singing the whole Tide song when they fist came out with the tide spot remover. There was also this .. ball thing. You put your fabric softener in it and it will open at the appropriate time, and man, he bugged me for weeks that i needed that four our laundry!

He is a very sweet kid, I bet he could hear a commenrical for laughlin hotels and he would do his best to convince me and hubs we needed a romantic getaway!

A new me

2008-07-13T17:47:00.002-06:00

In the past month I have cut out chips and cookies. I have stopped putting sugar in my coffee (I still use cream) and most importantly, I have added a daily walk. Usually, the walk is no more than ten minutes, but I keep a brisk pace, and it is EVERY day, not just one day a week like I used to do.

Now I plan on adding diet pills to the mix.

Although I have already lost three pounds, I want to lose a whole lot more - like thirty, and I do not want it to take me six years! I have been reading up on diet pills, the different ingredients, the risks and benefits, and maybe most importantly, I took a list of ingredients to my doctor and asked him if the pill was OK - he said yes.

I am fully aware that diet pills are not the answer to my weight problems, and that they work only as long as I take them, but with the added lifestyle changes, watching what I eat and adding exercises (I will be getting my Wii Fit on Tuesday), the diet pills will give me a boost in weight loss to encourage me to add more and more exercises and more carrots instead of granola bars covered in chocolate. Plus, most of my eating is becuase I am board and snacky, the diet pill I am looking at has appetite suppressants - as well as an energy booster, less food - more exercises, its win-win!

And I can only hope that when I get down to the weight I want to be (115-125 - which is still overweight for my height) I will be so ingrained in a healthier, more active lifestyle, that I will be able to continue to keep the weight off.

When my pills come - I had to order them online, I will keep every up to date on how it goes!

Napping in the pool

2008-07-13T17:43:00.003-06:00

This afternoon I got into the pool and it was freezing. Perseverance is your friend when it comes to pool water, however, and within ten minutes I was very comfortable in the water. They boys ditched me shortly after that to play with water guns so I tossed one of their inflatable pool toys, a crab, in with me and laid belly down on it. Then? I fell asleep.

I was, and still am very confidant that sleeping on an inflatable crab is a safe way to pass a hot afternoon, but after commenting on a blog about how I had spent the afternoon, I was informed it was not safe at all.

So maybe I should go and get some cheap term life insurance, so that when I fall off the crab and somehow do not wake up from the freezing cold water going over my face and I die, the kids and hubs will be taken care of.

Or, better yet, Next time I nap in the pool I will use the inflatable elephant!

Pocket Money

2008-07-13T12:22:00.002-06:00

Each of my three boys has a money jar. They earn money through tooth fairies, grandparents, and odd jobs I force them to do for quarters.

While we were setting up and filling the pool on Friday my eight year old was filling up the inflatable pool toys. He filled the first two fine, but when it came to his, he was distracted and overfilled it, popping it.

Because we had warned him approximately 400 times to watch how much air goes in, and he did not, we explained that he would be responsible for buying him self a new pool toy.

So last night each boy dig into their money jar and we drove to the Dollar Store. But it was closed.

That was last night, this afternoon I told the bopys that when I finish this cup of coffee and get dressed, We would go to the DS and they could spend their money.

Keep in mind, the dollar store is full of toys and gimmicks and candy and ..well everything!

Stuperman - 4 - told me he will buy a new plate. With a spoon! And thats about as odd as my cat ordering Phentermine 37.5 mg

I mean! All those toys, and he wants a plate?? I guess it is no weirder than my 6 year old telling me he is going to be buying a new party hat..

..But I know what looks nice!

2008-07-08T08:12:00.002-06:00

I will fully admit that I do not know a lot about cars. (Though there are plenty of places, like this, http://www.corvetteguys.com/corvette-exhaust.html ,to learn more!) [isn't the internet grand?]

I have leaned how to check the oil, and which side of the car the gas tank is on (did you know there is a little arrow on the dash of the car that POINTS to the side the tank is on?) I can even fill up the windshield wiper fluid container thingy. although, on our old car, since I couldn't figure out how to open the hood, that was a problem. With our new car, it has a hood-pop thing, so thats pretty easy!

Anyway, I might not know a lot ABOUT cars, but I sure do know what looks nice! I LOVE older cars, from the late fifty's - early sixties, especially, I love all the chrome they put on the cars back them.

And I like the Corvette, but then, I am pretty sure that everyone likes the look of the corvette. Right? Sleek and shiny with its rocking roar from the exhaust - we have a thingy every summer Downtown where everyone brings their old cars, or supped up new cars for a show. The cars are parked and the street is closed and we pedestrians get to climb all over the different makes and models, drooling over the chrome and gadgets! - anyway, at the car show there are at least ten different corvettes being shown off - so that right there is a pretty good indication, right?

Reading Material

2008-07-06T22:06:00.002-06:00

A bunch of bloggers that I read are publishing books. Well, some are still in the middle of writing the book, others still are searching for a publisher, and some I have already seen for sale over at Amazon books.

this is actually kind of neat. Not that they are publishing, or looking to be published, but reading about their struggles with writers block, reading their euphoric words when they finish a chapter or resolve a story conflict.

I guess, in effect, watching the book be written.

Some of the books I will not look for in stores becuase the subject matter does not interest me, and others I am eagerly waiting for them to finish drafts and find a publishing house so I can read it. It does kind of make me sad though, watching them write write write, while I sit here with a thousand words aching to escape my head, but no paper to write them on.

What I did over summer vacation the weekend

2008-07-06T21:53:00.002-06:00

The weekend started early for me, Wednesday. Thats when the boys left to their Grandparents for their week long summer vacation. Wednesday and Thursday were lazy days, I did NOTHING, but by Friday I had gotten quite bored! Thank God for ipods, I am so used to the noise the kids make that the house seemed WAY too quiet!

Friday afternoon I removed eight wheelbarrows full of dirt from the back alley, getting it ready for landscaping. This took all afternoon, and I am pretty sure I broke my armpit. Hubs said I might have pulled a muscle, but it hurts so bad that I am damn sure I broke it. If so, I want to be in record books for the first person to break a non breakable part of the body!

(Woo! I rock!!)

Saturday's all day activity was cleaning out the hell hole that is the garage. It was NASTY with all the kids toys, sand and mud, even sticks they had brought in. My father in law is coming over tomorrow to help me put up some shelves so I have a bit more storage room, and I am trying to talk hubs into getting a little 8x8 shed for the back yard.

Now it is Sunday, and I have cleaned the house (except the floors) in preparation for Monday when I will not have MY kids, but will have my friends two children. (I will be baby sitting them for the next two weeks)

I guess I shouldn't have fooled around Wed and Thur, becuase I did not get everything I wanted done, but hey, at least I got a good start on it!

Wii Love to Play

2008-06-29T12:26:00.002-06:00

Continuing from the theme of the last post - weight loss- I will be getting a Wii Fit. As of yet, I am not sure if I will be ordering it off of eBay - it costs almost twice as much doing it that way - or buying it in a store.

Buying it on ebay
Pros: They will have one for me to buy.
Cons : I will have to wait on shipping.
Cons: With shipping, cost is much higher.

Buying it in a store
Pros: Save money
Pros: will know it is being bought from a reputable dealer
Cons: Very hard to find. Still

According to the pros and cons lists, I should be buying it from a store. But. I'm rather impatient..

I wonder how the Wii is made. The Wii fit looks kind of like a scale, but how does it know what you are doing on it? Same goes for the WiiMotes. How on earth do they work! I wonder if the machine part of the Wii is full of ram, like a computer is?

Whatever. Doesn't really matter HOW the Wii is made, its a darn cool thing!

Oh Dear

2008-06-28T21:53:00.002-06:00

The other day I let Stuperman "play" with the camera. it's a very sturdy camera, waterproof, dust proof, and apparently fall proof as it has been dropped several times with no problems.

AHHHHNYway. I let him play with it and when he was done I scrolled through the pictures to see what he took. Then I deleted them. ALL. Especially the one he took of me sitting at my laptop. I knew I had gained weight but oh man. I had no idea how bad it looked until I saw those pictures.

I need to do SOMETHING. Something... I need to start walking, work my way up to jogging. maybe even running! But mostly? I need to stop nibbling on chips and cookies. Stop baking cakes, muffins and squares. Maybe start on some of those weight loss pills? Maybe even start taking some bodybuilding supplements!

Less snacks, more action, thats gonna be my motto from now on!

(Now, who holds the secret to making snacks taste gross?)

Pull Tabs!

2008-06-23T12:18:00.002-06:00

I have made no secret of the love affair I have been having with Face Books Pull tabs application. it's OK, my husband knows about it - What I love about pull tabs - as opposed to the Scratch and Win application, is the odds of winning are WAY better. For example, I started playing S&W about six to eight weeks before I even knew Pull tabs existed, and yet, i am on stage four Pull tabs, and stage three S&w.

Another example? I won 80 tokens in scratch and win this morning, and yet, when I played pull tabs yesterday I won over 1000. Yea. It's like that!

Sometimes, on pull tabs, you win big - really big - like this - thanks to the handy dandy Xnumber. Scratch and win does not have that! Now, don;t get me wrong, You do not always win a huge amount, see, this one only won eighty tokens - which - let me point out, was the same on one ticket as I won with 23 different tickets in Scratch and Win!

And, lest you go away from here thinking every ticket is a winner, we have this - the "Sorry Try Again" Ticket. But, even with losing on, say HALF of the tickets you buy, you still have a better chance for tokens with the Xnumber than with S&W. Plus. Look how cute and polite they are when you lose!

Then there are the errors. Every face book Application I have ever come across has errors, but I htink, Pull Tabs might be subject to a few more than the norm. Some days you pull a ticket, and then reload due to error, pull a ticket, reload, pull, reload, but, pull tabs are too addicting, too much fun, to be bothered by some silly error message? Right?

Now, with all that being said, SEND ME PULL TABS!!

Heart attacks break more than the heart they attack

2008-06-18T15:46:00.002-06:00

As a person with a family member who has had several very bad heart attacks, I take heart health seriously. My father in law, due to very high cholesterol has had three heart attacks. They have completely changed they way they eat and exercise regularly now.

My husband, however, thinks he is immune to sudden cardiac arrest due to his age. I need him to realize that heart attacks are not an old person disease, that the way he treats his body now, in his youth, will come back to haunt him, and myself in our older years.

One way to do this is by educating him. Since I am home all day I have lots of time to search online for various resources such as the video library at HeartLibrary.com.

If you know anyone, or you yourself have a heart problem, or they run in your family, you owe it to yourself and your loved ones to be educated.

Butterflies? Maybe. Hopefully.

2008-06-18T15:39:00.002-06:00

For years, probably six, hubs and I and the children catch caterpillars, and put them in jars and bug cages. We feed them fresh grass and tree leaves and spray a fine mist for water.

We always hop to see them cocoon and , eventually, turn into butterflies. Late last yea we gathered some caterpillars and for the first time, had a successful cocoonage. Unfortunately nothing happened after that.

The other day I was at a friends house, her place was crawling, literally with hundreds of caterpillars. She offered me a jar and me and Logan caught eight of them and brought them home. For two days they sat in the jar with wilted leaves and no air holes waiting for me to get off my duff and transfer them to the larger bug habitat.

This afternoon, Logan and I went into the woods to gather fresh grasses and leaves for the transfer. We pulled the tick out of the jar and were happy to note that there were five happy crawly caterpillars on it. I turned the jar over to capture the last three, only to have leaves and caterpillar poo fall out. Just as I was about to reach my hand in the jar to scrape them out, I saw three cocoons!

I'm a bit upset that I did not get them transfered to their proper habitat before they reached this stage, but that is way overshadowed with the joy that they have actually cocooned. we have NEVER, in all the years we have captured them, had caterpillars cocoon so fast!

Needless to say I am very excited about this, and hope to see butterflies soon!

oh em jee The BLAHS!

2008-06-18T12:49:00.002-06:00

Ok so, I woke up, LATE, this morning, and of course this would be the morning that my middle son has to be at school early to catch the bus for his field trip (called the school, he got their JUST in time, his elder brother took his helmet and bike for him to put away, or would not have made it)

Eight minutes after I got up, the kids were dressed fed and hurried to school, and I sat down at my laptop to do my face book scratch and win tickets. Not that I am addicted to them. becuase I'm addicted to pull tabs, and one addiction is enough, ya know?

I got about half way through them when The Blahs set in. Just like that, I was exhausted. I convinced the three year old he wanted to watch a movie in mommy's bedroom and went back to bed.

Now I am up, and dressed, and drinking coffee. I have done the dishes and swept the floors. I should feel happy, at the very least, content, but I am SO tired, all I want to do is curl up on the couch for another nap - and yet, I got nine hours of sleep last night!

Maybe I should get some energy pills..... either that, or much, much much more coffee!

Momma Said

2008-06-12T15:45:00.002-06:00

..that there would be days like this.

At 930 this morning the power went out. not a huge deal, as we have plenty of light from the windows and sky lights, and I can occupy the toddler with crayons and play doh. The problem was :

1. I had not made any coffee yet, and not knowing how long I would be without was really irritating to me. Its like when you want a smoke and all you can think of is your next smoke, I was getting the "Nic Fit" urge, but for coffee! Very stressful. I even tried to stick a filter over a cup with a few table spoons of coffee and drip hot water ( from the tap - so not that hot!) over it to brew a cup !

can we say desperate? And by the way, taking hot tap water and trying to make your own cuppa java? Doesn't work. By the time anything comes out the other side of the filter, not only is it weak, but its lukewarm. Sadness.

and

2. The new security system, which, I can work, kinda, but not really. When the power went off, the battery back up keeps the doors and windows and ect working, but an alarm beeps every three minutes, six sharp beeps, telling me it is off. For the life of me I could not remember where me and hubs had put the instructions book, and it took me almost an hour to locate it, only to read that all I had to do was push status, read the notice about the power failure, and push disarm on that part. it would disarm that alarm, the power one,but not the rest.

DOH!

THEN, after I got all that figured out and the power came back on. (which, by the way, as soon as the lights came back I was up and making coffee, I was worried that the power would go back out and I would have none.) So with the coffee brewing and the dishwasher running ( I loaded the dishwasher while I waited for the power to come back - again - thankful for the kitchen skylight!) I decided to hop online and bug the twitterer's with my tales of woe. Only. No internet.

[Insert gasps of shock and awe. Sympathy is welcome]

So I called the ISP provider, after running a diagnostic thingy on my end (I sound all smart, don't I?) and he got me to a bunch of stuff - unplug here, watch this light there, click here there and everywhere. We also talked about the weather. Its been raining for two days where he is. Non stop. Crappy!

Anyway. After about twenty minutes of trying this and that, the tech guy decided that the power outage had fried my modem and that I would need to head into the city and swap it out - at no cost- I was all, woe is me, no interwebs! Whatever shall I do?

Then, magically, it started working! And uhm. here I am! I bet you didn't even know I was gone, did you!!??

As for making supper tonight? I'm VERY tempted to suggest going to a franchise restaurant's tonight, just for the heck of it. I'm sure that the three year old would love it too, even if just for the chance to get out of the house! He even tried talking me into letting him go out int he rain because "Look Mom! I have an Umbrella! Umbrellas are for the raining days! Now I can go outside!'

But I was all "NO". And he was all "WAH". And that dear interwebs is how my day went. How was yours?

House Keeping Question

2008-06-09T22:35:00.002-06:00

What do you use to clean your floors?

The majority of our floors is that laminated click wood flooring. We have it in the living room adn hallway upstairs and it covers 100% of the downstairs floor. In the kitchen and bathrooms we have linoleum, and in three of the upstairs bedrooms we have light beige carpeting.

I bought a Swiffer for the wood portion of the floors, and had been washing the kitchen and bathroom floors by hand. I did not like the residue left when I did the linoleum floors by hand so I switched to using the Swiffer for those floors too. This however, gets expensive ans the Swiffer needs fancy smancy cloths on it to wash.

So what kind of mop should I be using? I do not want one that will break constantly - thats why I had been doing the floors by hand, my mops kept breaking. I was thinking about getting a microfiber mop but do not know how well they will hold up to a house with three little boys a dog and a cat!

I sweep before I wash, but there is still a TONNE of cat and dog hair that gets picked up, whether I am washing by hand or mop. I like the idea, also, of a mop that has a machine washable head.

Also? The coffee stains on my bedroom carpet? How do I get those out? I tried an oxygenated carpet cleaner thing (oxy?), but it did not work :o(

303.9 Percent. That's a lot

2008-06-09T22:25:00.002-06:00

I was reading in the local paper. Well, not the local paper, but the one for a city ten miles from us, that housing in our town is up. WAY up. Like a single family home is up 350% from LAST YEAR, and our place, a duplex, is up 303.9%. All in one year!

Our new neighbors paid 137,000 more for their house than what we paid for it. AND, we paid LESS than 137,000 for our house. The kicker? Their house is the exact same as ours. Same footage, same layout, same everything.

When we applied for our mortgage we had to jump through hoops. I have no fear of foreclosure on our place because the mortgage lady made damn sure we could afford the month payments on our loan. But in 2007 a new kind of mortgage lender was allowed to operate in our province. This mortgage lender acts much like the ones in the states, meaning, they allow you to be approved for way more that you can afford to be approved for.

Here is a great example. At the place hubs works, there is a guy who was approved for 250,000 MORE than what we were approved for three years ago and yet he makes the same wage as Hubs - and no, his wife does not work - just like me.

Fact is, with housing at the price it is now, mortgages that are 40 years long are the norm (ours is 20 years) and if you want a house now, you will have to loan outside of your comfort range. When housing prices started rising less than six months after we bought our house I was thankful we bought when we did, but now that I am seeing houses sell for more than double what we paid for ours I feel like we are blessed!