I lost 3.5 lbs in February.

Yay me!

While I did not make my goal of 5 lbs a month, I am happy to say the crack down in the last week made this month at least respectable and not abysmal.

This makes a grand total of 18.5 lbs. I’ve also updated my project skinny chart (link on the side).

Now to keep up the momentum into March 🙂

I’m having computer issues that are really truly going to drive me around the bend.

At work, firefox has decided to freeze up whenever I try to load up a page on my localhost (basically, a webserver on my computer).

This means that I have to use IE to work on anything.

I HATE IE.

At home, my internal wireless card in my laptop is not working properly. It will be connected to our wireless network and then disconnect for no reason, and not be able to reconnect. I click “repair” and wait for it to do it’s thing and cross my fingers that it will be able to reconnect. It does this about 15 times in the span of a half hour.

I AM SO FRUSTRATED I WANT TO SCREAM.

IN OTHER NEWS:

So, February has not been a good month for Project Skinny. I have only lost 1 pound so far. Is it silly to try to go for a 4 lb loss in the last week of February so that I can keep my 5 lbs a month goal?

I don’t think it is, especially considering a few things:

I have a lot of weight to lose, which makes big numbers a big easier than for someone who only has 10-15 lbs to lose,

The first week of a weight loss program can often throw up big numbers. (for me in fact, it was over 6 lbs, back in November.)

I think with me hovering up and down half a pound most of the month, if I really get back to basics, quit dinking around and GET ON IT! a 4 pound loss is feasible.

So I’m aiming for that. Wish me luck!

We’ve decided to have Jocelyn’s birthday at home, and we’re going with a paper doll theme. Which led me to go looking everywhere for paper dolls online.

What a lovely time I had!

How cute is this?

So yeah, kind of cheating, as these aren’t really photos.

but I don’t care! CUTE!!

OK people.

I totally fell off the wagon (oh, and in more ways than one, lemme tell you) on this photo a day thing.

I KNEW this was going to be tough, because well, yeah, I’m me.

So every day that passed w/out a photo, I thought, should I put up an ass load of photos and hop back on the wagon? Set up a lawn chair, with a little table next to it with a nice cold diet coke and wave as the wagon trucked off down the dusty road with all it’s photo goodness?

So yeah, I was on the lawn chair sipping away. But I guess I don’t want to throw in the towel yet, so here goes.. all my missing 366 photos.

As Thursday ended, doom and gloom threatened our nation’s capital in the form of.. ICE STORM A-COMIN! HIDE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN! and so, since the next day was my birthday, I greased the wheels of corporate america by saying to my boss, “boy, if it’s bad tomorrow, I may just work from home.”

Ahhh, a relaxing day of working at home on the couch in my underwear jeans covered with a blankey with Pride & Prejudice playin’ on the TV.

BUT my plans were foiled, FOILED I tell you by the nation.. well, specifically, my kids’ school also catching the doom and gloom and deciding not to open on Friday. Doh.

So I took the day off and spent it with my kids. Here is my birthday… in photos (and more words, because hey. I’m a wordy bitch.)

First, I woke up, grabbed the laptop, hit refresh on the school’s website, and saw those fateful words: CLOSED.

Unfortunately, I was up anyway. So was James. So I made him go get mE my PRESENTS!!

The kids came in and snuggled into bed, and I opened up my 2 presents.

This one was from me, that I’ve been coveting since before Christmas:

I heart Amy Ruppel. Next year, I’m buying myself a painting instead of just a print. Hopefully before next year!

Next was James’ present for me:

Isn’t this the best? Circa 1951, I am tickled tickled tickled.

I also gave james really good word of mouth with my mom later, because when I told her he got me a vintage doll making sewing book, I didn’t bother mentioning that it was rated high priority on my amazon wish list. Aren’t I a fab wife?

So after we got all that bothersome gift giving out of the way (I do have one more gift coming, it’ll be a late present) we got up and had breakfast of biscuits (from a refridgerated tube) and scrambled eggs. James kissed us goodbye and headed off into the (as far as we both could tell, ice-less) world to work.

So the kids and I got busy and made carrot cake:

Ethan insisted on NOT licking the batter, because it had CARROTS IN IT. He also insisted that he would NEVER taste this CARROT CAKE. “MY GOD woman, you know how to ruin EVERYTHING, INCLUDING CAKE, WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME?!” was pretty much, the epitome of his thoughts on the subject of carrot cake. Jocelyn took his beater and licked it clean along with her own.

I took the opportunity to take some much needed pictures of Ethan lego creations:

Here is his latest. A forklift:

Which can go up and down:

and the platform thingee comes off:

Just for the record, an attempt was made to lift the chocolate soy milk container, but we are still working out the engineering technicalities.

Then, Jocelyn let me play “hair” with her, except that it was really more like, she ordered me to do her hair in EXACTLY the way she prescribed, and WOE UNTO ME if I misinterpret her directions.

She wanted “crazy braid” hair, and pointed very specifically where she wanted each braid:

We had lunch. Notice that most of us (yes, both of them) are still in their jammies. Most of us also have soy chocolate milk moustaches.

Peanut butter and honey for Ethan:

Peanut butter and banana for Jocelyn:

Me? Peanut butter, banana and honey, of course.

Next, I sent them upstairs where they managed to not kill each other and were even reasonably quiet, for 2 hours of “quiet time” while I didn’t get any work done, but instead talked to my mom and my sister while not posting photos on this blog (which was the intended purpose of blessed “quiet time” time).

I finally unlocked the toy room door and let them out. Then I chained them to the couch and made them watch Totoro while I alternated between playing internet backgammon and mah jong.

Then I marched them upstairs and forced them to beat cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar together. I topped it off with making them lick the beaters clean.

Then we frosted the cake, daddy came home, we anxiously awaited the sitter, and we took off, hollering, “SO LONG SUCKER!” for a long night of carousing (japanese way-too-salty tepenyako, with no alcohol) and partying (hanging out in the bookstore until the movie started, watching Juno, and then heading home.)

Yeah! that’s how we party it up for 34. When 35 rolls around, I will probably just head to bed at 8.30 and call it good.

That’s right, today is my birthday. And I’m having a dilemma.

I haven’t lost much this month, but today I am finally lower.

But it’s my birthday! I wanted to go to a japanese steakhouse tonight, but you know those places are pretty bad on the healthy food scale.

The real sticker is I have an appt with my doctor to check up on the whole weight loss thing one week from today.

ARGH.

We will probably still go to the steakhouse. I just need to eat LESS of it!

Now… I’m off to make myself a cake 🙂 Carrot, with cream cheese frosting.

(scary ice today has caused the kids’ school to close so i’m home with them today.)

(i really hope to get back to posting soon, and ahem, i’ve totally fallen off the photo a day wagon and am still debating whether to try to get a bunch of photos up or just can the whole thing. I guess we’ll see.)

How much do I love this?

A lot.

Weekend Catchup

So, as you know, we went bowling on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. It was NOT fun, however, to arrive and be told that the wait for a lane was 1 hour long. We decided to go get some ice cream and then come back. Even ice cream did not help convince the kids to leave the building, so enamored were they of watching all the bowling.

Also, just so you know.. it’s exausting bowling with small kids. The getting up and sitting down and up and down and making sure the little fingers stay away from where teh ball comes out and the helping pick up the very heavy ball and the moving of teh weird metal contraption and the cheering, and the making them wait until the lady in the next lane goes, and OMG SO EXHAUSTING.

However, it was fun.

And I will say, the bumpers came in handy for me as well!

THE SCOOP ON ALL THE SICKNESS

So everyone went to school the last few days of last week, as I reported. Thursday I ran to Target to pick up some veggies and valentines for the kids’ upcoming valentines parties and still beat James and the kids home. I hit the button on my answering machien while I packed frozen veggies into the freezer to hear our pediatrician’s voice telling me that the 24 hour (or is it 48 hr?) strep test? For Ethan? From I took him in to the too-hastily made doctor’s visit when really his symptoms hadn’t really changed much and he kept telling me his throat hurt but I was convinced he was workin it to stay home another day and play on the Wii? THAT strep test?

Was positive.

So veggies safely stowed into the fridge, I hied my way back to Target and filled the prescription she had given me in case of just such an event. As an added bonus, I was now starting to feel kind of overly tired and had more congestion going on than before. I know, just so wonderful! Luckily, a call with explanation to my doctor yielded her calling in a prescription for me w/out having to go into the office. James having seen her just days before helped that, no doubt.

So yeah. Entire household on the antibiotics. I guess our (james & mine) family practice doctor had the right idea when she said the entire family should be treated.

Everyone is doing much better now, thank you, with the exception of Jocelyn — who is still so dang snotty and coughy and it’s day 7 of antibiotics and shouldn’t she be feeling better by now? I may just phone the pediatrician and see what she thinks. James was also STILL complaining of sore throat pain as late as Sunday. I think they both had a pretty nasty version of this. Blech.

THE REST OF THE WEEKEND

Saturday dawned with me rarin’ to go. Mountains of laundry was piled up to be washed. Rooms were tidied up and cleaned. Litter boxes were dumped and refilled (ok just the one). I even cleared out the area next to my side of the bed which has been strewn with magazines, books, cards, toys, kleenex boxes and more magazines and books for years now. Ethan, as he was casually running through the room, came to a dead stop and stared at this area, before finally commenting, “Wow. Very clean!”

I ran out of “Must! Do! Everything!” energy just short of actually wielding any sort of cleaning product and attacking the bathrooms, which really is a pity, and spent most of Sunday sitting on my laptop playing mah-jong, freecell, internet backgammon (when the wireless thingee decided it COULD connect me to our wireless network afterall) (Damn all the neighbors who have made their networks secure – don’t they realize I might need them to play backgammon???) while watching old episodes of Scrubs.

Seriously. Remember how addicted to ms. pacman i was? Now I am all about mah-jong and backgammon. so nice and mind-numbing. Those are games I can get behind = no thinking required!

Monday dawned with everyone having clean sheets and towels and a mountain of clean laundry to put away. Yay.

-amy

EVERYONE is at WORK and/or SCHOOL today!

However, Jocelyn clung on to me like a barnacle and cried when I finally pried her off and scooted out the door. That hasn’t happened in probably a year or more. Very sad 🙁

NOW I HAVE THE MOMMY GUILT!

Ethan tried to insist that he was sick, but he had no fever all day yesterday and methinks he was working it a bit.

NO MOMMY GUILT THERE!

Hopefully by the weekend, everyone will be back on the “healthy” side of the spectrum.

I’ve decided I’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do for Jocelyn’s birthday this weekend. Her birthday is March 10th, so we’re getting close. We originally thought we’d do a party at home, maybe rent an big inflatable bouncer, and eschew all the different party venues that our kids keep getting invited to (chuck e cheese, pump it up (warehouse full of inflatables), etc.) But now the thought of the party at our house is making me tired. The cost of these venue parties is what gets me, but then I started thinking about how much we would spend even if it was at home and then add on the stress of cleaning before and after… I don’t know, maybe I’m just stressed out in general but the thought not having to worry about all the party at home particulars is starting to sound good. I need to look into bowling alley parties, as I think they’d be a lot cheaper than the other alternatives.

Also, in the past, we’ve always specified “presents not required” on the invitations, as we wanted to keep the present expectation low. I’m starting to waffle on that too – if new stuff comes in, then that gives us a good reason to clear out some older unused things, right? Plus, they’ve now seen the presents that other kids get at their parties – Jocelyn probably won’t notice quite yet, but I know that Ethan will be grilling us on this point. My thought is maybe we should let them get presents from friends, but I don’t think James has changed his mind, so we’ll have to discuss.

What are your thoughts on parties and/or presents?

-amy

Now, I realize that money is one of those things that you are not supposed to talk about, along with religion and politics (and I’ve been pretty good on all those subjects on this here blog so far). I really debated about posting this, as it crosses a line about how much information I want about me and my family out there for all to see. But I feel like there are probably a lot of normal people out there plodding along like we have, who don’t like their situation and who might benefit from hearing some of this.

Without going into too much detail, I’ve been crushing on all the personal finance blogginess and podcasts out there in the inkernet. One of my new years resolutions was to get a better handle on our finances. More than just making sure the bills were paid on time and then spending on whatever until the rest was gone. Probably not a good plan, right? Right! We’ve let some debt accumulate and so it was time to pull my head out of the sand and get moving on it.

(I have even started a super secret money blog in order to keep me motivated. Hello, I am fickle. I need things to keep my attention from wandering when something shiny walks past. And no, I’m not telling you the url. Some dirty laundry should only be read by STRANGERS! See above re: how much information i want about me and my family out there.) (If you’re a stranger, maybe I’ll tell you.)

Obviously, the first order of business was to start spending less, which James is already good at, and me, not so good at. I stopped eating out at work (except for group lunches) and more importantly, on the WAY to work. While this is a good first step, I still needed to know where our money was going and get it to go where I wanted it to go.

Now, I handle the finances in our household, a role that James is fine with. Discussing money and budgeting in our household has not been without stress, conflict, and outright tension. OK, I admit it, when he sometimes (rightfully so) criticizes the state of our finances, I would usually throw up my hands and say, “Let’s see YOU pay all the bills then!” and it would stop about right there.

So the very big important second step was getting the budget in order. I know how to budget – a handy spreadsheet will suffice for most everything, really, but I ran across some budgeting software purely by chance (linked off of one of the personal finance blogs I’m crushing on). It’s called, “You Need A Budget.” Catchy, huh! I’m a quicken user, and I have tried using the budgeting part of quicken, but have found it lacking. Usually I just ignore it, and assign things to categories as the transactions occure. Which, yes, shows you WHERE the money went, after you spent it, but doesn’t not help you put it where you want it to go! And yes, assigning a $200 Target bill to just “household: groceries” is me lying to myself, don’t you think? 🙂

So enter You Need A Budget – this program is really cool. It’s not produced by a company, just a guy who decided to put his own budgeting system into software form (it was originally an excel spreadsheet, which you can also purchase) and there you go.

Now this is the part where I should just point you to the software and let you look further if you’re interested, but I can’t. I love it so much, I’m going to get into it right here. I don’t blame you if you skip the rest, but there’s some touchy feely crap at the bottom, if you want to just skip to there.

The software has 2 main screens – the register, and the budget. The budget screen has the month at the top, with a big number, which is your available money. Then there are all the categories. To start, you switch over to the register, make an income entry which is whatever your checking account balance is, and then when you go back to the budgeting side, voila, that number is there as “available” to budget with.

So then, you think about what you’ve got coming up, (the phone bill, the gas bill, the kids’ piano tuition, groceries, etc.) and in each category, you assign what you think you’ll spend. As you enter numbers for each category, the available amount decreases. You keep on doing this, until you get that available number to 0. Now all your money is ASSIGNED. It all has a JOB to do. You can make or change categories to fit your needs.

Now, as you go through the month, you enter your purchases in the register, and it will show up as “spent” in the budgeting screen. You can see with a quick glance that you’ve spent $79 of your $400 grocery budget, and it will even show you the available balance left.

It used to be that as the month went on and our checking account balance dwindled, I would grow worried & concerned $600 left in the checking account used to be, “what is going to happen? will that stretch far enough?” Now, in my budgeting screen, if I’ve assigned amounts to all the categories I can think of (including some categories for yearly expenses, like car tax and tuition) and see that I still have $600 “available” – it’s like I “found” money to put into savings or towards debt!

There’s a whole other side to the software too, which is the methodology, called the “Rules” which I also adore. I am not going to get into them much though – if you want to read more, it’s on the website.

I could go on, and I WILL go on, if you really want me to. But I won’t go on any more right here. If you’re looking to get your finances in order, this is a great piece of budgeting software.

TOUCHY FEELY CRAP

Let me just say this – the best part about this software? James and I are on the same page. He still doesn’t really look at the budget, I’m pretty much handling all the money… But no one feels like they’re being told what to do, we’re in this together and there are no more arguments, we both know where the money is going, and we are both on the same page. We have made some very specific goals and our budget reflects that. You HAVE heard that money is the #1 cause of divorce, right? (OK, I just made that up, but it MIGHT be true!) While we still have work to do in front of us, it is nice to have a plan, and nice to know we’re pointed in the right direction.

Also – It really makes me think twice about buying stuff. It’s very freeing. I don’t feel the need to buy useless crap anymore. Crap that only clutters my home and we don’t really need. I know this feeling won’t last, and there’ll be times when I just want the INSTANT GRATIFICATION of a new whateverwhatsits..

But you know what else? If I do? There’s money in the “Amy’s fun money” budget category for whatever the hell I want.

-amy

OK, first off, since I haven’t been going to the actual meetings, just zipping in to the WW office, weighing in, and then zipping out, I have switched back to online only, which is only $40/3 months, instead of $40/month. If I start to get all slacky slacky again, then I’ll know it’s time to cough up the dough and head back to meetings. I feel pretty good with how I’m going though.

That means I’ll be weighing myself on my own scale and not the super picky down to 1/10 of a pound WW scale. My scale is not-so-picky rounds to the 1/2 pound scale. So being the anal retentive weirdo that I am, I’ve gone back and rounded all my past weights to the half pound as well.

And in so doing, I realized that I screwed up the January numbers in the last post. So just for full disclosure, 7.8 was *not* an accurate number, I screwed up the math – it should have been 6.8, not 7.8. And ALSO, I went by the total from last week’s weigh in instead of waiting until today’s weigh in. Since technically, today’s weigh in is weight I lost in January, I should include that. I think I was leaving it off to give me some padding for February, but tsk tsk to me. Just incase you don’t realize, I AM still weighing in every week, but I am only reporting monthly numbers to the blog

So, including THIS week’s weigh in, and switching all the numbers to rounded .5 numbers, the new total for January is 9.5 pounds, for a total of 15 pounds.

So yeah! Once again, huzzah to me!

A couple of other things that I meant to write yesterday but didn’t really have the time. (I’m home today, with a sick Ethan. thus all the typey typey!)

When I went to the doctor for my brick of snot sinus infection, she was (as she always is) concerned about my weight. It makes me feel so bad, because EVERY time I go in for something, she talks me up on the whole weight loss, and it seems like EVERY TIME I’m always, “Yes, well, I’m working on it, it’s been hard, I can’t seem to stick with it,” etc etc. This time, I felt kind of bad, because I had had a gain over the holidays, but still semi decent because my overall weight loss since november was still a loss, not much, but still a LOSS! Still though, in the past, I get around the 10-15 lb mark and then lose steam. I start making excuses, I start eating too much on one day and then trying to “make it up” the rest of the week and then the whole house of cards falls apart. I just can’t stick with it. I was feeling somewhat good to report a loss, but it was very apprehensive, and I told her so.

Two years ago, when she gave me the talking to, and I was on weight watchers, she gave me an appetite suppresant to help me out. I think it worked physically, but the mental game was too much, I petered out and I basically went back to eating too much.

Well, she gave me a prescription for it again. The first week was tough, because it basically beats up your heart and makes you feel like you’ve had too much caffeine. The first couple nights, I couldn’t fall asleep until 1 or 2 in the morning. It got better after the first week, and now I don’t feel jittery, pretty normal actually. I think it’s working pretty well.

Again, every time she’s given me the talking-to, she has wanted to see me back in her office in 6 weeks to check up on the weight loss. I never usually make check-up appointments when I’m there in the office, I wait until it’s closer and make them, so I would head home, the weight loss and my will power would peter out, and I would just never make the check up appointment.

Well people, my check appointment is made (MARCH 3RD!) and I am not going to peter out! I keep thinking to myself, “If I can lose 5 lbs each month (which should be EASY, that’s not even 2 lbs a week!) I will have lost 60 lbs by the end of the year. You can do this.”

I hate to be so happy go lucky optimistic, because I just know the shoe is going to drop and I will throw in the towel and start swimming around in doughnuts and ice cream with no will power whatsoever… But then at the same time I really do feel like I’m doing good. I have stopped going to mcdonald’s every morning, I’m bringing my (healthy) lunch in every day and thus am not tempted by eating at the cafe (omg, their chicken marsala is so good) – these little things means I have got a good leg up on sticking with this.

I must say, I feel pretty good. You now how I said up there that 10-15 lbs has been my petering out point? I’m at 15 lbs total. And no petering going on!

Tentatively… Apprehensively… I feel good 🙂 I can do this.

(Now I need to come back and read this post every week!)

-amy