Seattle Tower Building

I'm subscribed to the Seattle Daily Photo blog in my Google Reader. Today I saw this post, showing details of the art-deco Seattle Tower building. There are some beautiful touches in the marble floors and the period light fixtures. Here's one photo from the site:

Weight Loss Progress

To put it simply, there has been none. My biggest problem is probably snacking at night when I go down to the family room to watch TV with James. I also ride the exercise bike, but not enough to offset the snacks I eat sometimes. And it's doing me less good if I'm also eating something; otherwise, I'd be working off calories for some of the stuff I'd already eaten at meals.

I had a scrapbooking day here on Saturday, and,among the food I had set out for people to eat were wheat thins, carrots, cucumbers and lowfat dip. My friend Gilda brought some very tasty grapes, too. So throughout the day I found myself largely snacking on those things, along with a few potato chips here and there, but basically eating healthy. I think I need to have more things sitting out like that on a regular basis so that I'm grabbing what's handy (healthy options) instead of searching through the cupboards for what might sound good at the moment (usually not as healthy options).

Also, for the last two evenings, I've been working on making sailboats for Ben's nursery out of foamboard. We didn't get his nursery room back until he was 7 months old, and it was in the dead of winter. We haven't painted it yet (waiting for a little warmer weather) and I haven't gotten any decorating done, which is just sad. So I'm working on the sailboats to get some of the room decor finished and ready to put up when the room is painted. Initially I was going to put them up, then take them down for painting, then put them back up. But I'm probably going to end up with about a dozen sailboats of varying sizes that will need to be affixed to the wall with that sticky poster-hanging stuff, and I so don't want to take them all down to paint, only to have to put them all up again. Instead, I think I want to get the room painted in March, then get the sailboats up, some stencils painted of beachy things and just get it all knocked out.

Ben needs a fun room to hang out in and more interesting things to look at during diaper changes. Not that he'll actually lay still and cooperate for diaper changes, but maybe it'll distract him for a few seconds, at least!

Anyway, all that was to say that working on the sailboats has been keeping my hands busy, which means I haven't been snacking. Especially on things like buttery popcorn, which would like greasy marks on the foam. So I think another key to weight loss for me is to find things to do with my hands when I'm watching TV so that I don't end up using them to stuff snacks into my mouth.

Hopefully I'll have a better progress report in a month or so. Time's a-wasting and Rachel's birthday (my goal for losing 33 pounds) is fast approaching. I'm not sure I'll reach the goal by then, but if I've made good progress, I'll be feeling good and will be motivated to make it the rest of the way.

What to do with the time?

Here's that time in the afternoon when Ben is down for a nap and Rachel is watching TV, when I debate what I should do with the time. Should I put receipts into the Money program? Play some Scramble? Read Facebook status updates? Clean up the kitchen? Clean the bathroom? Put away laundry? Put away the groceries and household supplies I bought this morning?

It always seems like there are so many things to do and so little time to do them. Every day is a juggling act, trying to fit in the necessary things, like keeping the house fairly clean, with the important things, like spending quality time with my children and not only keeping them occupied so I can do things, as well as the essential things, like working on hobbies or spending time online so that I have a little fun me-time here and there in my day. Plus there's spending quality time with James in the evenings and on weekends (something that's too lacking on certain days) and keeping up with my Bible Study, which is a Beth Moore one. If you'd ever done a Beth Moore Bible Study, you know that it involves a fair amount of homework in 5 lessons per week, in addition to the video session you watch when you get together with the other people doing the Study. Annoyingly, I had 2 lessons remaining yesterday evening and my Bible Study meets on Tuesday mornings. So I did one after the kids went to bed and the other right before I went to bed, staying up a little late to do so.

Only after I woke up this morning and had gotten ready did I remember that we didn't have Bible Study this week because our school district had yesterday and today off. I doubt I would have gotten any more sleep because Rachel came into my room shortly before my alarm went off, anyway, and by getting up and getting ready I was able to run some errands instead of just puttering around and wasting the morning. But it would have been nice to have gone to bed a little earlier last night since I didn't have to rush to get them done by this morning. Oh, well. Guess I'll be extra prepared for next week.

But I digress...it actually seemed easier to get things done when James and I both worked and Rachel was in daycare. We had someone who came and cleaned every other week, which helped greatly with keeping things clean and organized, and we had a pretty specific routine we'd follow in the evenings: pick up Rachel, head home for dinner, spend a little time playing with her, get her ready for bed (usually including a bath or shower), then do some cleaning before watching a little TV and heading off to bed. Of course, I usually ended up getting far less sleep than I needed, even after she was sleeping through the night. And our Saturdays were frequently taken up by errands that we didn't have time to do during the week. And I hated having Rachel in daycare for nearly 55 hours a week.

So it wasn't all good, that's for sure. And I think that if I just start figuring out ways to manage my time better (less Facebook? the horror!), things will run more smoothly than they did then. It's easy to remember the past with rose-colored glasses, and I suspect that there were more frustrations and feelings of "we never have time for anything!" than I remember. While there were things I appreciated about our lives then, I much prefer the way they are now.

Anger

I'm finding myself getting angry with my mom this morning. I was talking with her yesterday, making plans to bring the kids down for a visit today so she can give them a few little things for Valentine's Day. She asked if we'd done anything and I told her I had a scrapbooking day with friends and that James and Rachel had a Daddy/Daughter Day. (James and I also went out to dinner on the 13th, when our church's college group had a Kids Night Out, but I didn't tell her that.)

She then told me about all that my oldest brother did for his family. 2 dozen roses for his wife and chocolates or something, and balloons for his kids. She said he always "does it up" for her and is good about that.

Even though she didn't say anything about James, it still felt like one of those situations where I needed to defend him. I didn't, though. Not really her business if we make a big deal out of Valentine's Day or not. We never really have because it seems silly to make a huge deal on this one day of the year because marketers say that we should. Shouldn't we be treating each other special throughout the year and looking for little things we can do and say? And if we're doing that, then Valentine's Day is a nice day to be reminded of love, but doesn't have to be a production.

Anyway, I'm still annoyed about it today because it felt like one of those "Look what a good guy HE is" types of things. I don't like that I'm now in a situation where I feel like I always have to be on the defense, or where comments that wouldn't have stood out to me in the past now do. I don't like that she's so stubborn that she may never admit that she's wrong, even if she thinks it. I hate that our relationship is tainted and will likely never be as close as it once was, even if it gets better. And I find myself not wanting to spend time with her lately because it feels like work.

This is better than at Christmas when I wasn't even sure where I stood with her and if she was going to cut off all contact, but I'd sure like to be a long way from this. Frankly, I would have liked if we'd never gotten here to begin with, but that can't be changed now. She still needs a better job, but more than that, she needs some serious emotional and spiritual healing, and she needs to grow up. It sounds out to say that about a 62-year-old woman, but she truly does lack maturity in some key areas of relationships. I hope that there's a time in our relationship when I can gently suggest counseling, because I believe she'd greatly benefit from it. But that time is not now.

I Am Pathetic

61

Undoubtedly you can beat my score.

A few Lost montages for your viewing pleasure

The first one's my favorite.

The Anal-Retentive Chef

I still miss Phil Hartman and am greatly saddened by the circumstances of his death.

Some Things I Miss About Living in California

• Having a nice diversity of restaurants nearby - including an AWESOME Hawaiian restaurant (Aloha Food Factory in Alhambra); a Cuban chain I loved (Versailles - the sit-down ones are better than the quickie version at Universal Citywalk); Yang Chow, really good Chinese food (one in Chinatown and one on Rosemead in Pasadena - or is it Arcadia?); and, believe it or not, Wienerschnitzel (the closest one is 52 miles away)
• Warm summer evenings with cool breezes
• Palm trees; streets lined with beautiful purple jacaranda trees; roses that didn't constantly get black spot or rust
  
• The Street Fair on Myrtle in Monrovia, including eating Rudy's Carne Asada Tacos from their booth - really tender, yummy meat
  
• My free annual pass for the Krikorian Movie Theater
• Weekly dinners and occasional DTS movie marathons with Buffy friends
• Seeing the waves roll onto the smooth sandy beach in Santa Monica
• Going to the Strawberry Festival in Oxnard each May, and staying at the really nice Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach Resort while there
• The remodeled Santa Anita Mall
• Having Disneyland Annual Passports and being close enough to drive there easily
• Being able to drive to San Diego for vacations
• The Festival of Lights at Griffith Park at Christmastime
• Wearing spring clothes for Easter, and not having to wear sweaters with them

Obviously, I miss our California friends, too. Many have since moved to other states as well, and the busyness of life had already started to make our visits with our still-local friends less frequent than we would have liked. But I miss those times that we had with them and knowing that they were nearby once things were more settled. I am grateful for the friends we have here in Washington, though, and for the friendships we've been able to maintain long-distance as well.

I thought about doing another post with things I don't miss about California (e.g., horrendous traffic), but then I thought "Hey, why be all negative?" So instead I'll soon be posting about things I like about living in Washington.

Barney Stinson is Awesome

How Has This Man Not Been Identified?

I saw this article on MSNBC this morning. Today is the 1-year anniversary of the killings of 5 women and the wounding of a 6th at a Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park, Illinois. The killer came early in the morning, when not much money would have even been available. No one can figure out a motive yet, and no one has come forth to say they recognize him, despite an excellent description from the one woman who survived this brutal attack. He's a black man, age 25 to 35, standing 5 feet, 8 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighing 200 to 230 pounds. He had a receding hairline and thick braided hair, with one braid sporting four green beads. They also have an incredibly detailed police sketch, as you can see above.

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago when I drove by another plus-size women's store, and found myself wondering if they'd caught the man who did it. It's unbelievable to me that, with the sketch they have, no one has contacted the police with information, or even to say "That kind of looks like this guy I know/work with/have seen at the local grocery store." He has to look familiar to someone. The braid with beads is specific enough that it should stand out to somebody. I'm sure it's been gone for a long time, but there were probably plenty of people who saw him with it sometime prior to the murders.

I wonder if people started posting this information on their blogs, Facebook pages, MySpace pages, etc., if it would get to someone who would recognize him and do the right thing. I hope you'll consider posting it somewhere.