Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Waiting for time to go
Jack has his follow-up shots for his two flu shots. It's been a month since the first ones so it's time to finish up the series. We have to drive to West Virginia for that. We had freezing rain last night and school is delayed two hours. I'm hoping the roads will be OK for travel by the time we leave for our 10:00 a.m. appointment with the nurses. Then we're coming home to finally trim the tree. I plan to do the bulk of it this afternoon and then leave some for Emma to do. She usually loses interest pretty quickly anyway.

Maybe tonight I can make some progress on my Christmas cards too! We'll see.
Wednesday Weigh In
Lost this week: 0.2 lbs.
Lost so far: 19.4 lbs.

So I haven't thrown in the towel at all, but I'm really going to try to maintain this month. I don't have it in me to be a hero and be 100% on program in the face of the holidays. Maintenance will be my goal. This weekend was pretty overwhelming. I was completely stressed by traveling in the bad weather and then arrived to the bosom of my family with fresh cookies and bowls of candy laid out all over the kitchen. Completely reasonable, I wouldn't ask any different, but a challenge nonetheless. The we ate out at CiCi's Saturday night and Red Lobster Sunday. The next night we went to a "Family Fun Night" for Emma's preschool, which would be known as indoctrination by any other name. The theme of the talk for the parents was nutrition and how to handle the holidays. The speaker said, "This is not the time to try to lose weight." She was preaching to the choir.

Don't get me wrong, I know it's possible. I've lost weight in December before. However, I'm really trying to see if I can't maintain a balance, which may be as much if not more of a challenge that actually losing for me.
Daddy saves the day!
Our highly anticipated plan for Saturday was to go to Noni's to see the cousins. We hadn't seen them since Disney in August. Then came the snow. I'm deathly afraid to drive in the snow, but the cousins had issued an ultimatum to their mom, "If Emma and Jack weren't going to be at Noni's they weren't going." (Sounds impressive, but the threat didn't have much in the way of teeth to it). The cousins were already there, so I had to go. It was slippery though. I packed up the car and the kids, including bags for overnight if the snow got worse. I headed out with terror in my heart.

Sure enough, I slid onto the road from the driveway. Then I couldn't get traction to get going. I drove to the next driveway and turned around and came home. "It's not worth it; I can't do it." I would be in heart attack mode the whole way if I tried it. My tires were too bald for the snow. We had known that but had waited too long to do anything about it.

M offered to drive us himself. He'd drive us over in the snow and drive back to work. Normally it's a 1 1/2 hour drive over four mountains. I didn't even want to do that as a passenger. So we compromised that we'd at least drive to town (8 miles) to see how it was. Then we'd see if the Exxon could possibly put new tires on the car for us.

Long story, short ending, it all worked out. There was one car in front of us for tires. M dropped us off at the library while he went back to help change the tires. We were there for an hour and a half before he came back to pick us up. It snowed the whole time. Then he drove us to Noni's and drove right back home, through all the crap. Our hero. No kidding.

He drove back over the next day and we went out to Red Lobster to make it worth his while. As if making his entire family, plus extended family, happy and grateful wasn't enough.

Here are the pictures to show the beneficiaries of his effort (Photos courtesy Aunt K and her cell phone):