Smooth Sailing

The USS Jack and Ella

Ella and Jack loved fixing up an old carton into their boat yesterday.  Each side is painted a different color and, by the end, we had seats (stadium seats leftover from our days cheering on their Daddy and the Georgetown track team), a number for the boat (68 at Ella's insistance), and a nice rope attached at the front so I could pull them across the deck.  And the best thing?  They loved it so much that they wanted to take it home!  My decorating plan doesn't really have room for a small boat. . . .

My life has had happy sailing since my last post, too.  I lost 2.2 pounds at my WI on Wednesday (26. 6  since Christmas).  I also dipped down into the next decade--yay!  I record my weight every morning and enter it onto the physicsdiet.com site.  I love how it coverts them into an average weight, so that the minor fluctuations in weight don't have such an impact on the graph.  On the graph, green is good.  Here's my graph since Jan 1st.  There are a few spikes (red) and plateaux, but the trend is good.  You can spot the three dramatic down trends when I did 17DD cycle I (beginning of Feb was the first and I'm just finishing the most recent).  My average is just about 1 pound per week.

I had to squeeze in my run this morning to get to my hair app't on time, so I ran faster.  Another minute off my pace!  Notice my little Nike+ runner girl in the upper part of the side bar.  The pace there says 13:04 per mile, but that's the cumulative pace for all my runs and walks over the past few years.  The pace kept going up as I mostly walked last year, but it's definitely turned around.  I'm hoping to make the Nike+ girl's pace go back under 13 by the end of next week.  Today's pace was 10:53 per mile. :-)   My method of running for an increasing distance every time my ipod announces that 5 more minutes have passed works really well for me.  I'm now running 80% of the time (run 4 minutes, walk 1 minute).  I'm going to have to  start running earlier though, the weather is edging into the 90s and definitely getting more humid.

We're driving down to Wilmington NC next week to celebrate my FIL's 90th birthday.  We're rented a huge beach house that will accomodate 12 of us (DH and me, all our children, their spouses, and all the grands.  It should be really fun.  I've planned the party.  A tea party.  According to the RSVPs we'll be about 35.  I'm going to bake (scones and brownies) before we go, Laura is going to make the birthday cake (she has a white thumb!), and I'll get fresh fruit when we're there.  Pink lemonade for the kids, clotted cream and strawberry jam for the scones, some nuts, a nice selection of teas and we're calling it on the food offerings.  I found a rental place there that assures me I can walk in and walk out with teacups, linens and whatever else we need.  I've reserved the poolside clubhouse at my FIL's condo, sent the invitations, have supplies for the grandkids to make a happy birhday poster, and am running out today to buy a box of balloon magic (helium, balloons, and necessary acoutrements in a box).

We'll be returning from Wilmington with three of our grandchildren in the car! Ella and Jack are going to stay for a couple extra days (John and Tobey have to get back to work on Monday and this works out for childcare and gives them a chance to be with their cousins longer).  We'll also have Rose, Laura's youngest who is eight and enjoying her first solo summer visit with us.  (We've worked out a great deal with Laura and David--we get to have their kids come here  for a few weeks in the summer when they're 8, 11, and 14.  It works out so that we get one child each year and we have a lot of fun.  Ben (11) will come next year, and then Jeannine (14) the year after that!  We'll have a wonderful time!

Rose when she was 7.

We're going out to dinner tonight!  One of DH's international students (he teaches an advanced law course at Georgetown) invited us to dinner to meet his parents.  They are Italian and we'd had the student to dinner a while ago.  We lived in Italy for a few years and have some other connections.  It should be fun.  We're going to the Chart House in Alexandria.  I've got to peruse the online menu to make my choices, though my brain is trying to remind me about their Mississippi mud pie.  I'm trying to ignore that, we'll see.

Hoping to take a nice long bike ride, tomorrow.

Wake up Call, Wi

Well, I had a week of ignoring my well-established diet and exercise routines.  Nothing over-the-top; I didn't eat any Halloween candy, but I had lots of little "splurges" every single day.  I craved brownies, for instance, and made a 1/16th recipe (two brownies).  Another day I wanted toast with my soup at lunch, so I made one piece (with butter), ate it and then made a second (and ate it, too).  I ignored my own advice and went out for Thai food on the  night before my WI, AND I had popcorn after that.  And so on. . . . I did exercise 6 days out of 7, but aside from one run and one good bike ride, the exercise was not great quality--I sort of phoned it in.  I'm here to tell you that that doesn't work.  I gained 5 pounds at my WI (and I don't even want to think about how many sticks of butter that adds up to).  My lovely little physicsdiet.com graph which was so nice and green now has an entire week that looks like the new Republican congressional map--all red.

Sooo, my WI was my wake up call.  Kind of like when we travel and have a plane to catch in the morning.  We ask for a wake up call.  I wake myself up pretty well and always wake up several times in the hour or two before the wake up call.  Then I drowse back to sleep for a bit more.  But when that telephone finally rings, I hop right out of bed and get to work.

Now is the time.  I'm awake.  I REFUSE to go back to that mindless kind of eating. I am "on track" so far this morning.  I just got back from taking E to school and tucked baby J in for his morning nap.  I'm posting this (part of my "on track" plan is keeping on blogging on most days), having my morning quiet time, and then doing my Sweatin' to the Oldies DVD.

My clothes still fit and, ironically, a couple people mentioned how slim I looked yesterday.  I'm turning the helm 180 degrees and heading this ship back safe waters and on a course to my goal.

Ciao for now

Plan B

The exercise schedule in my head called for a long run this weekend.  However, my two littlest toes on my right foot have been getting a little too close and I have a very painful corn that's developed between the toes.  Painful as in it hurts to walk without a layer of silicon between the toes.  Painful as in no way I was going to wear anything but roomy clunky shoes to church this morning.  Painful as in running hurts and would most likely exacerbate the problem with my toes.  You might have noticed in the upper right of my sidebar, that my little Nike+ running avatar is dissing me.  :D I may start wearing it when I walk with DH at night, just so it gets some action.

Not exercising is not an option.  I did kettle bells last night [only 1 more session until my guaranteed results!!] Today, I needed some good cardio.  Biking to the rescue!  I so enjoyed my long ride with Sharon on Thursday that I've decided to explore some more of the great biking trails in this area and expand my repertoire of biking routes.

Today I went the other direction on the Mount Vernon Bike Path, towards Alexandria.  Another glorious day.  I set off about 2:30 without a distance or time goal in mind.  I decided I'd just bike and turn around when I felt like it.  The first part of the path is very familiar to me as I usually do my running on that path.  The bike took me further, though, and I saw some beautiful neighborhoods and areas of my city that I'd never seen.  I ended up riding about 20 miles in two hours.  My little toes felt just fine.

I'm still taking encouragement from my physicsdiet.com charts.  Losing slowly, but losing.  Oh, I was able to finally wear the green dress (size 10P) that I bought at the beginning of September.  Here's my chart from Aug 31 to today.  [you can click on the chart to enlarge the picture]

What do YOU do when your exercise plan doesn't work out?  Do you have a Plan B?

Quick Update

Hi all,

Another wonderful day.  We changed our plans a bit and instead of biking today, we hiked in Sky Meadows State Park.  An overcast morning opened up to a beautiful sunny fall afternoon.  I took some great pix, but forgot to pack my download cord.  We're enjoying a very nice B&B in Leesburg and tomorrow morning Sharon and I will bike on the W&OD (Washington and Old Dominion) bike trail back towards home (~30 miles).  DH, still sporting a whole arm cast will drive home and meet us at trail's end (or earlier if we call him).

I did not go to my WI today as we were running late AND I didn't get in my last chance run.  I thought about going to the meeting here tomorrow, but it's after our B&B breakfast.  I don't want to hop on the scale right after breakfast AND we want to get a relatively early start.  I think I'll just skip this week.  I can't share any new pix, but I'll leave you with today's physicsdiet chart--showing lots of green.

Happy trails to YOU, too.