"The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems."

A while back I was getting my gloat on about how little sugar I needed to survive. Sort of like methadone. Only the last few days my theory has bit the dust because every time I have tea with sugar I feel ill. Sugar is trying to kill me and I don't like it, the whole thing is un-american. I guess slightly sweet tea is no longer my opiate of hunger and I'll have to start eating food or something. Speaking of which I bought a cantaloupe yesterday and I already sliced her up so there won't be any explosions this time around. It was a very motivating explosion. If I thought everything I didn't deal with in a timely matter would blow up I'd never have a to do list.

I've been using the slightly sweet tea to take me through mealtimes without needing a lot of snacks. I'm in this whole "it worked before!" mindset but seriously this isn't before and if before had gone so well there wouldn't be a before there would just be a skinny now with a different wardrobe. This is me letting go of "what worked before" because that was what, two years ago and things have changed a lot. It's really easy to lose weight when all you eat is pizza and dessert and you switch to yogurt. When you're eating yogurt and salad and you still need to lose weight things are different and also you're older and essentially I'm saying it's no good to whine about what used to work because that day is not today. I'm not making so much sense what with the nausea so bear with me while I try to convince myself to move forward instead of navel gazing the past.

In the present I haven't had to change my meals all that much, mostly I watch portions better and send all of matt's treats to work with him and it had been working. I had started looking at new foods and meals to get the things I need without adding points I don't need but most days I don't plan snacks. I see how many points I have after adding my planned meals and then I just eat whatever until I'm out of points. This is not a plan, just a series of reactions to situations and what I might have in the house. I definitely have the time and I'm working up the motivation (really wish something would explode) to plan my whole day and build a routine.

I had the most success in a routine environment where I couldn't get whatever I wanted whenever. My last year has been a little like that but also putting me into a lot of unsolicited food situations and had me driving past fast food twice a day which is really out of the norm for me. I can count on my hands the number of times I stopped but it's one of those things the more you do it the more it seems like the thing to do and I so don't need to go there. I'd do best locked in a room all day with a hole for a food tray, like solitary confinement. Makes me wonder why no one's invented the prison diet.

"Nobody deserves a mime."

Matt and I had a long weekend of physical labor and emotional anguish and today was really long. I know some people think we spoil our pets but if you wax rhapsodic about punching our dogs and you don't know why that's the wrong thing to do you're not my friend and you're not my family and I kind of don't want you in my house again ever. I've been fighting the grumps all day because that person was totally in my house all day long and ignoring someone like that only brings so much satisfaction. I did have a very good walk this morning with my very good doggies and it helped a lot. I've always liked to run when I was in a bad mood and it always helps, it's harder to get that same rush just from walking but you do feel pretty great when you get to the top of a trail and the sky is so blue. The crippling cold always brings the most beautiful clear blue skies, something to be thankful for when you're chipping the frost off your nose.

Today I received a dress I ordered a while back. It's from etsy and it's really adorable except that it's much too big. I love it because it's blue and it has pockets but seriously the sucker is huge. I can't return it so I might try taking it to a tailor unless anyone has any better ideas? I'd love to say I could alter it myself but I like to only screw up things I make for other people...I think the pressure would be too much. Part of me is thinking I should have known better than to order a dress online without trying it on but it was very cheap and is so unique I couldn't resist giving it a shot. C'est la vie.

"They're in England. I don't think they can tell which way my back is facing."

So, apparently walking with poles has already been invented. There goes my fancy new career in inventorship because "nordic walking" already exists. Look, here's a website. And it has instructional videos incase walking with poles is too big a concept to grasp, maybe it's the gum chewing that's holding me back. On the interesting side the weight watchers website lists nordic walking as an exercise and I get a lot of points, points I didn't get when I called it "hiking" so now I feel even more virtuous, and also hungry. It amazes me that weight watchers has it on their exercise list when they don't have Mott's applesauce or Friendly's ice cream as food options. I thought it was a regional thing but they have every kind of Stonyfield yogurt known to man and that's made in New Hampshire from standoffish puritan new english cows so it's a big mystery to me.

That's all I had to say about that. I've been "nordic" walking for a wee while now so I have no idea how many activity points I've actually been earning. I adjusted yesterday's activity because I remember it well enough but now I'm sure I earned more than 63 activity points last week and I'm not sure what that means toward my results for the week. I've been hemming and hawing about how many activity points to eat because generally if I'm hungry I eat something so I don't feel like I haven't been eating enough. I definitely don't not eat something because I'll go over my points. I might eat something different (i.e. I really don't eat pudding all day every day) but I don't walk around feeling deprived because the points whisper in my ear. Guess we'll see what happens next week.

"That was real manly how you shrieked and all."

I guess I technically didn't lose "nothing" this week but it feels like nothing. I probably could have lost more if I got a haircut or used a loofah and still Weight Watchers has reduced my points. Do they do that when the current points fail to make a difference or when you lose x amount of weight or do they just re-evaluate every month? I'm confused because it feels anti-climatic. I guess it's good to re-evaluate and I have been sitting all week when I wasn't walking the dogs. I had placed myself as a stander because when I'm working I'm doing all the active house things for someone else's house but now that I'm not working I've spent a lot of time on my rear. For example the only thing I did besides paperwork yesterday was to cook pudding. And then I ate the pudding, twice actually, and now that I have fewer points I can only eat one pudding a day and dammit weight watchers THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!

We're preparing for our hike and the temp has come up from zero to ten so I'm feeling pretty good about it. Zero was not enough degrees but ten I can live with and since it's only 8:30 it can only get better. The bonus about it being so cold out is that it's beautifully clear and sunny which is good for the mood as long as you have enough clothes on. The woofs and I are preparing to start our day with a beautiful walk and a smoothie and back to the paperwork saltmines. They tell me they have a nap scheduled because they always have a nap scheduled and if I'd known they spent so much time sleeping while I was at work I wouldn't have been harboring all of this guilt about leaving them.

"If anyone gets nosy, you know, just... shoot 'em."

Lately I've been really worried about my impending financial ruin and it turns out that I don't have any money because I haven't made very much money this year. I'm working on my taxes and somehow the fact that I am financially insolvent had escaped my notice until just now. I actually feel better now that I see the actual numbers and have proof that I've been earning below the poverty line because before I thought I was just spending like a skinny blonde starlet (which I know I don't because whenever I look at my budget the only thing I have to cut is chocolate and that's not going to happen. I thought my records would show more positive things as in more money being made but if I had made more and had this little to show for it I'd probably be more upset and need more chocolate which we simply can't afford.

Enough of the overuse of italics, back to the exercising. Today I hiked with my snow shoeing poles which I did purely for the extra arm exercise and it worked out very well. My muscles feel nice and worked but not dead or dying so I think I'm going to keep it up. I don't need them as much as when I'm snow shoeing but it is helpful going up and down slippery hills so it's not just vanity that'll keep me using them all the time. My weight is hovering just under where it was last friday so if I'm extra careful today I might show a loss for tomorrow. As per above I'm very motivated to keep the losses coming because Weight Watchers ain't free and I can gain weight for nothing so uhm yeah gotta keep the losses coming.

I'm also thinking about how much it costs me to eat weight watchers style and where I can cut. First to go will be organics and fresh produce...which saddens me greatly. Unless I can sell lots and lots of things on ebay we'll definitely be changing how we eat around here. I've been getting a little slack with my grocery budget and that has to stop now. It's not all doom and gloom, I've found some wonderful bean recipes that are cheap and full of fiber and low in fat. Since I'm not working I have plenty of time to cook and budget and be really in tune to my meal plans and costs and be really anal about it. This is about to be the most exciting blog ever!

"I don't have the energy to drag your lifeless body to the dumpster"

Jolie is currently fascinated by the computer screen. She's trying to get the letters as I type. This puppy is completely hilarious. Earlier I had a youtube video of puppies playing and she and knox both had their heads right to the speakers trying to figure out where the puppies were. I wish I had a video camera because I never want to forget the looks on their faces as they poked around the shelf...not here...what about over here...nope...hmmm. It is 4 degrees out and I'm procrastinating. I'm a big whiner and I'm tired of this single digit nonsense weather. I know it's maine and it's winter and I'm a fool to complain, I guess I am getting soft in my old age. My face is a mess from the extra cream, at least I think that's what it is. I'm torn because pimples are better than other kinds of skin damage but I also wonder if the extra cold just keeps pores locked up like maximum security. If I had the cash for a facial I'd go because I don't want to look like a pimply kid on the imaginary job interviews I have lined up. It's ironic that the time you really need to put money into your appearance to land a new job you can't because if you had the extra money you wouldn't need the job in the first place.

My weight is bouncing around a little higher than my last weigh in. I was all concerned about muscle water when hello it was all hormone related. I cease to amaze myself when it comes to not knowing my body at all. It's coming down slowly but I've had kind of a sloppy week of eating. I haven't actually gone over my points but I know exactly how many points are in a single pack of chips ahoy and I don't even like chips ahoy so that's where I am this week. I've been hitting the smoothies hard, which I'm really getting into even though it's freezing outside. I need one of those mulled smoothie recipes, microwave smoothies, hot toddy smoothies maybe. I'm making due with the cold ones till the hot ones catch up and I'm learning to wash the blender right that damn second because when I'm lazy about it the cleaning time expands exponentially. It only took me three weeks to learn that so I'm officially almost as smart as my dogs.

Ooh, it's five degrees now. Snowshoeing usually makes me very warm, except for my face, so I don't know why I'm being such a grouch about it today. I've only been going every other day instead of every day to give the muscles a little different exercise during the week. You'd think hiking and snowshoeing would use the same muscles but they amazingly don't, not all of them anyway. The arm muscles in particular don't get much exercise hiking unless you bring out the poles which is an option really, but it's important to rest. I started out feeling like I had to snowshoe every single day to get the most money out of the shoes I bought and the most exercise out of the winter like I wouldn't have opportunities to exercise in the summer. The way my mind works sometimes amazes me, I should really be on a compound in nebraska with a stockpile of rifles...I really missed my calling.

"I've already been injured once this month!"

It's 20 degrees now at 9 o'clock and I'm really excited about that because yesterday's high was 18 and that lasted only about ten seconds while we were snowshoeing up the mountain. Seriously, we went up the whole mountain on snowshoes and my rear was so cold when we got home it took over an hour to thaw out. So all of my parts are looking forward to a warmer show shoe trek today but especially my ass.

Yesterday at the market I bought more bananas because smoothies are a way of life now and I bought frozen strawberries also for those smoothies because raspberry seeds cause unpleasantness when added to a smoothie and brummel and brown yogurt spread because I'm finally trying to work butter out of my diet. I super hate the idea of eating processed fake things instead of a little less of the real things but butter just has so many points and it's not like I need it for survival. The yogurt spread will let me make a grilled cheese a little more point friendly and toast and since I don't eat those things all the time it seems like a small concession and also it's yogurt so where's the hate? Embracing change is my new motto as of three seconds ago.

Embracing the change is going to be really challenging actually because I'm instituting a spending freeze (which really should have always been there I've just been sloppy lately) and also looking extra hard for a part time job. I've needed a part time job for awhile but it's been on the backburner because even though I have no idea where my time goes go it does and it feels like I don't have time for a part time job but my checkbook says differently so here I go looking. My unemployment last time around was sad and pathetic and it took forever to get things moving in the direction I wanted to go in which was anywhere really so I'm a little apprehensive about the process this time around. Read a lot apprehensive, the apprehensivity is key to this communication. Vital. Embracing the change is feeling a little bit like gritting my teeth at the change but I'm working on it. Without butter. Change is hard.

"Cowering in a closet is starting to seem like a reasonable plan."

I had this very, very smart friend in high school who once missed a whole day of classes because she saw a man with a gun in her house and was too freaked to do anything but hide in her closet. The man was her brother and the gun was a paint gun and he liked to spend his mornings before school shooting the train that went by their backyard. She didn't ever sleep and I think it added a little crazy to her genius and probably right now she is curing cancer or building a car that runs off of pop tarts. I've been thinking about her all the time lately, her electric blue camaro and the crayon scribed notes from her parents she would forge. I think of her lately because I feel like I'm trying to find myself in my new life, I'm trying to be very present with my wants and needs and I really miss that girl. She was awesome in every possible way.

One night we were driving home from Boston and she got very serious in the backseat because she thought the lights from the on coming traffic was a plane landing and she told us she loved us because she really thought we were all going to die. I don't think I have ever been that honest, not ever. She was the definition of an open book, all of her thoughts and feelings were true and expressed well even when they weren't because it just felt like life to be with her. I don't know if I ever appreciated her the way I should and I am full of regret now. I know that high school was way too hard on her because she didn't have the hard shell I can't seem to get rid of and that fills me with regrets too.

I am trying to be more open, especially as things are happening around me that are out of my control. I'm trying to go with the flow and be present and all the others things you hear on television show therapy sessions but I feel like a nut that's too hard to crack lately.

Matt and I and my babies are preparing to take a long, cold walk and I'm trying to empty my mind and be full of the experience but it's work. How do you folks let go when circumstances feel like they're boxing you in and cookies are not an option?