Yay! Blog! v1.0
Category: Shaping Up

After a month (okay... over a month) of pigging out, I am going back on my low carb diet. I ate my last Dulce de Leche Cheesecake bar from Starbucks yesterday. I had my last Iced Venti Decaf Mocha with Whipped Cream. I had my last giant loaf of onion rings from Tony Romas Friday night. And my last plate of quesadillas from Texas Land and Cattle Company Saturday. Now it's back to bacon, chicken, steak and salad. Oh... and water. Lots and lots of water.

Today's weight is pound zero. My goal is minus 24 pounds.

Wow... I've gotten so much done the past couple of days! As I wrote yesterday, I was going to take some old antifreeze to the household hazardous waste facility yesterday after work. I was a little worried it would be hard to find, or they wouldn't take the antifreeze. But it was great! It was a drive-through facility and a guy came right up to my car and took the antifreeze with no problem. Woo-Hoo! And as I was driving away, I found something to take a picture of for the 26 Things project.

Then this morning, I went by a computer recycling place to drop off the two old computers and monitor that have been cluttering up my house for several years. That place was a little hard to find, but I was persistent and was able to dump those things off before noon.

The coolest part of the day, though, was that I finished clearing out my storage room at UHaul. Yippee!! That's money in the bank, Baybay!!! It took me two trips, and I brought home around 14 boxes. There were 4 boxes of Christmas decorations, 3.5 boxes of vinyl records, a box with stuff that belonged to my mother and her family, and more boxes full of stuff from my childhood and college days. That hobbit picture is a book report I did in junior high. I threw the report away, but not before taking a picture of the wonderful cover I drew. Dang... my drawing skills are so lame. The sad thing is... I don't think I could draw as well as that now!

Anyway... I still have a long way to go to get my house decluttered, but I'm getting there. And now I have a holiday weekend ahead of me to rest and play! I hope you all have a great holiday weekend if you celebrate July 4th!

I'm looking forward to the weekend (starting tonight when I get off work). I'm still on my decluttering/cleaning quest. It's going great. The charity I give to is coming to my house this morning to pick up the aquariums I cleaned on Wednesday, an old suitcase, some crutches and 3-4 garbage bags full of STUFF.

Tonight, I have two missions from the FlyLady group. One is to clean out the silverware drawer. What a cool mission! I bet I can throw or give away some stuff in there, too. The other mission is to go through all my books, and see if there are any I can give away. That's a tough one. I actually started to do that last night before I knew what the mission was. But I love my books so much. I might find some I can part with, though.

Tomorrow, I'm going to my UHaul storage room to bring home 4-5 boxes of STUFF. I did that last weekend and found a bunch to give or throw away. Maybe by the end of July, I'll have the storage room cleared out and won't have to pay the monthly fee anymore. That'll rock!!

I also need to mail some packages tomorrow.

For fun (as if that wasn't enough ), I'm going to watch movies on my TiVo! Woo-Hoo!! What are you doing this weekend?

I'm going to skip the Friday Five questions today. I don't feel like getting that personal today.

I took down the Health Log thing where I was tracking my weight, exercise and water intake. My weight has fluctuated, but really hasn't gone down. I don't consider that a failure because I suspect it would have continued to go up if I hadn't made some changes. I've established good routines for drinking water and exercising. I'll continue with those, but I'm concentrating on getting my house decluttered and cleaned. Once I get that done, I'll concentrate on decluttering my body again.

Speaking of decluttering... I've added a link to FlyLady's Declutter Challenge on the main blog page at the top left. It's really kinda fun! Each day, she posts something to declutter for 15 minutes. Today is the bathroom cabinets. So I'll spend 15 minutes in the bathroom going through the cabinet under the sink and throwing out stuff I don't need. If that takes less than 15 minutes, I'll get in the other cabinet and start working on that. Even if I don't get through the whole thing, doing 15 minutes is better than doing none!

I actually look forward to seeing what each day's declutter mission is. I'm not sure if she's going to post missions on the weekends. I hope she does!

I've been going through closets and bookcases and crates, etc., and sorting through the junk to find stuff to throw away and give away. Amazingly enough, I'm getting rid of more than I'm keeping. That's saying a lot because I've always been a big packrat.

I'm putting the "give away" stuff in bags and boxes to give to a local charity. When I was a kid, all that stuff would have been saved for a garage sale. Ack! I can't stand the thought of a garage sale. I can't stand the thought of actually taking money for my cast offs. I can't stand the thought of pricing all that crap. I can't stand the thought of advertising it. I can't stand the thought of getting up early and dealing with all the people coming to buy stuff.

And I especially can't stand the thought of haggling. I hate haggling. I hate it at garage sales. I hate it at car dealers. I hate it with realtors.

If I were queen, I would make haggling illegal. I would make it so that if you're selling something, you set the price you want. Period. If you're buying something, you buy at that price or you walk away. Sheesh... why do we have to do that haggling dance? Ugh.

Back to garage sales... I remember people used to steal stuff at my Mom's garage sales. Stuff that wasn't even priced very high. What's up with that? So you'd rather go to hell for stealing than pay $1? Or is it that you can steal it and then confess your sins and everything is okay. You get something for free and still have a ticket to heaven. What a deal.

The thing I worry about with donations, though, is that someone who works there will take the stuff they like. I don't mind if they get first dibs and pay for it into the charity fund. But if they just take it, it would make me mad. I'll never know, though.

Bottom line is that all that stuff is not cluttering up my life anymore. And I don't have to deal with the hell that is a garage sale.

I'm doing well on my quest to become a better person. I've lost 5 pounds so far (although I'm sure I'll bounce back up a little before I go down some more). And last night, for no other reason than "I wanted to", I cleaned my bathroom sink, faucet and countertop. I mean a really deep clean with bleach and ajax and a toothbrush for the hard to get to spots. I also got rid of a bunch of earrings that were broken, and some makeup I never use. Why I was keeping those broken earrings is beyond me!

Tonight, my assigned mission from the FlyLady is to clean underneath the toilet. Ick. But "ick" means it needs it!! Anyone wanna join me?

I need to make some lifestyle changes. One of them I already blogged about (rearranging my house so that my 'puter is in the dining room). Today I decided I need to get into better shape. I'm going to start exercising again, and drinking a boatload of water.

I'm not going to go bananas with it, though. The thing that has worked for me in the past has been to walk for 20 minutes on my treadmill for two days in a row and then take a break the third day. So that's what I'll do. The key to walking on the treadmill is to get some good songs in my Nomad MP3 player, wear some shorts or a shirt with a pocket that I can put the player in, and have some good headphones that don't fall off my ears while I'm walking.

By the way... my treadmill is inclined, so it's not like an easy walk or anything.

I guess I'll blog my progress. I'll weigh myself tomorrow. That will establish "pound zero," and we'll go from there. Wish me luck!

And for today's super human trick: I will attempt to eat an orange for my afternoon snack instead of a Three Muskateers.

It's not often that I go into full blown diet and exercise mode. That's hard. I won't make excuses, but I do know I need to eat healthier and exercise more. And even though I don't throw myself into it completely, I try to take little steps when I can make myself. Like right now... I'm trying to be candy bar free (failing today with chocolate covered cherries... yum!), and I'm drinking a lot of water. I find that if I drink a lot of water, I do better. Sometimes that motivates me to do other healthy things. I also walk up three flights of stairs at work a couple times a day. Sometimes more. Yeah.. it's not much, but hell... it's better than nothing.

Anyway... I find it easier to drink a lot of water when I have a water bottle with one of those squirt tops. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's more fun than drinking the regular way? Or maybe it's less work? Whatever it is... thanks to whoever invented the squirt water bottle.