"'I see you looking at my cookies..."

This morning has seriously sucked. Last night Knox wouldn't give up barking at the cat. We all got really crazy and angry and there was shouting because we are bastards. Knox had to go to the potty and we just wanted to sleep and I feel really bad about it. And in the midst of all that barking and shouting Jolie was chewing on something hard plastic...only she doesn't have any hard plastic toys. And I thought "gee, where did I put my glasses after our last potty run" and lo and behold Jolie was chewing on my glasses. My new glasses as of June, I think, are now completely ruined. It's only hundreds of dollars, NO BIG DEAL.

And then something happened with the furnace and Matt was swearing. And then he was swearing about his toast not being in the fridge, and then I went back to sleep full of fury. We just went for a walk, our usual morning run, only Knox went off to bark at a dead porcupine and got three quills in his nose. That's when my brain exploded. I lost my shit and no wonder the dogs didn't want to come to the screaming crazy woman. So I chased the scared, injured dogs all over the woods because I am a calm, assertive pack leader. And an asshole.

So, I'm full of guilt and anger and I'm tired and we're going to the park! To take a walk! Because it's SO beautiful out. If they were children I'd be buying them ponies.

"I had an alarm, I had nerve gas, I had a yogurt."

I downloaded a ton of coupons from stonyfield farm and subsequently I bought a whole lot of yogurt. So yogurt is my main snack right now. Yogurt all the time! In the future I won't download every coupon I could possibly use so I don't end up buying an entire cart full of yogurt at once. Not that it's bad to eat yogurt all the time, I feel very morally superior with my fat free yogurt snacks.

When I was visiting my sister I picked up a really great tip about portioning, not that she meant to. Most of her dishes are plastic and disney themed so she served us cereal in her teacups. She apologized for it but I think it was brilliant. Cereal is one of the things that I definitely have visual problems with so using a tea cup for cereal is pretty much the best idea ever. She says they use them for ice cream too on occasion and that's a great idea too. The need to fill a bowl is so strong and it's so much easier to fill a tea cup. It might be the easiest most obvious thing ever but I think it's the kind of simple genius that makes healthy habits easy to follow. And also now I feel like I'm allowed to buy all the beautiful tea cups I want!

No smart ass title today, just a really beautiful blueberry field turning with the leaves!

"it's the guilt that puts the weight on"

Back from Halloween in New Hampshire with the kids. The dogs were so tired after all the cuddling and playing they could hardly walk when we got home. Dogs and kids had such a good time, we all did and it didn't occur to me until it was actually halloween day that I didn't buy any halloween candy save the bag of candy corn I dropped in the dish water. I think that might be a first for me, all the years past I have bought candy for kids that will never come and usually it's gone before the 31st anyway. I didn't even think about it this year. I've been fighting that "I have to have some!!!" feeling that comes up around foods like that. I keep telling myself I can get what I want whenever, I don't have to have anything now let alone a whole bag of it and that always works. If I have to have a snickers some day I'm just going to buy one, it's the "I shouldn't" and the "I'm not allowed to" that always get me in trouble...reminding myself it's not now or never is a great tool for me.

In that department I'm back to running tomorrow. I think my legs enjoyed the break but it'll be good to stretch them again. It's not that I can't run at my sisters house but it's more trouble with leashes and cars and I never get a good night's sleep there. I don't know how she functions with all the chaos. Actually, we discussed napping because naps are a priority for her and I've never been a good napper. We don't speak the same language when it comes to napping but then I get 8-9 hours of solid sleep a night and she doesn't so obviously she needs a nap all the time, and a tranquilizer. I really appreciate my bed and my house and my life after stepping into someone else's for awhile. Through all the sleeplessness I learned that jojo is a very good guard dog. She woofed relentlessly at my sister's husband who came in late afterwork and didn't meet the dogs properly. I tried to tell her he wasn't a burglar but she would have none of it, not yet twenty pounds of piss and vinegar.

Back to reality tomorrow and maybe I'll even weigh myself just for kicks. In the meantime, a very cute song my sister got stuck in my head...

"I try hard not to make the same mistake more than three or four times."

The woofs and I just finished our second awesome long jog for this week. It's amazing how much faster the walk goes when you run it. We ran twice as far as we usually walk in almost the same time. I shouldn't be amazed but I am. I thought running that route would be a bigger ordeal but it seems our long walks have put me in good shape because I don't feel any of the pain or frustration with myself I felt when I used to run on the road. And we haven't been eaten by a bear yet so it's all good.

Somehow I'm just not afraid of the critters anymore. I'm done with that because I have no intention of sitting in my house because there might be bears in the woods in Maine. And with the racket we make no way will anything cross our path on accident. I am a bit worried about the hunters though because I think probably the bears are smarter. Hunting season starts in exactly two days and I really hope it doesn't mean we have to stop running just when I'm starting to really like it again.

I'm kind of amazed at how easy it is to start this time. I've been underestimating the power of our long walks because I'm not any thinner. How terribly vain. Anyway, my legs and my lungs must be getting stronger because I didn't get any of that feeling like I couldn't take another breath or step. Except for dodging the loose rocks, the ground is much softer and easier on my knees than the paved road.

My goal is to rebuild a sense of routine into my life because that's when I function best and not just in a weight loss way. Doing something everyday makes the difference between choice and habit and I'm not allowed any more choices because I suck at making good ones consistently.

"Thinking very often resembles napping, but the intent is different."

There are these bins at the front of my grocery store which are always full of things that no one would want to buy ever. It's always obscure jello flavor overstock or last season's paper goods. Who wants to buy fourth of july themed paper products in October and especially who needs a pallet of them, seriously. But anyway, the point is that I bought something from the bins of destitute marketing failures and it was this:




Who wouldn't be interested? I wonder what they were thinking, was it like "hey, we like gingerale...we like green tea...why not?". Actually it was pretty decent, I don't know that I'd go out of my way to buy it again or that I'd buy enough to survive the apocalypse but I'm not horrified. There are so many products that come out and you really wonder why they had to go there. Do there really need 15 different ways of selling a peanut butter cup, does it really increase Reese's market share to come out with a new peanut butter cup derivation every 3 months? What is the word for creating your own competition, is there a business term for that? At what point are the new products coming out going to be so ridiculously unnecessary that evolution just ends? I thought it was those disposable toilet brushes but the sun keeps rising so I guess there's something more ridiculous yet to come.

"Cupcake, your middle name is trouble."

Today I met a cake that was too much for me. It was my clients birthday and we had a lovely lunch at the new Irish pub in town with a guinness chocolate cake for dessert. The cake was very good, but it was also four layers which was three layers too many. It's so weird because I have been looking forward to an excuse to eat cake guilt free. Until today at least. This morning I wanted to wear some new pants for the special occasion but uh oh, they didn't fit so hot. Which is why I came home to do pilates for ONE HUNDRED HOURS. I hate it when clothes don't fit that used to fit, it breaks the illusion that nothing is wrong. I like being delusional and eating cake and pretending nothing is wrong. Bummer.