Moment of Repose

The view from the porch.  

This was a small post I composed last week. I had some connection problems with my macbook so didn't get this posted.  I'll post again in a couple days with a recap of recent events.


Hi all! I'm sitting on the porch of the beach house we rented enjoying the night falling, the sound of the waves and the wonderful evening breeze. We got here this afternoon, I made supper, went for a quick run on the beach, and then DH's dad came over for supper. The fellas have all gone off to find an ice cream place, but I opted to hold down the fort, instead. Our daughter, Laura, and her family shd get here in the next hour or so. They live near Seattle, and we haven't seen them since Xmas. johnny's family (our neighbors in Alexandria) will arrive tomorrow. We're looking forward to a fun family time! DH'S dad turns 90 on Saturday and we'll host a tea party for around 35 people. I'm pretty well prepared and determined to enjoy the family time and not stress! Here's a picture of the birthday boy taken right after supper.

Almost 90!

 Just had phone calls from Laura and Tobey and both families expect to arrive tonight around 1 AM. A few hours late for the Seattle gang and one day early for thecAlexandrians! Joy. We love our kids! It's only about 10 now, DH and I may go down for a "midnight" swim in the surf while we wait for them. He's driving his dad home now. He did all the driving today, 6 hours, so maybe he'll want to nap instead. We'll see. Lost .2 at my WI yesterday.

 We had company, a nephew and his family from Atlanta, for two days this week. We did a bit of sightseeing in DC, Washington National Cathedral, and the went for a bike ride. The two children, 10 and 8, we're troopers and did the 13 mile ride with no complaints. We took along a picnic lunch and let them play in the park for a while.

 We left this morning about 30 minutes after they did. Our cooler was loaded up with things for the party and so was the trunk of the car. Usually I bring all my diet friendly things along, but this time we stopped at Harris Teeter as we came into town. I made eggplant parmesan for supper. Yum. Hoping to keep up with my running while we're here. I might try to see if we can borrow bikes from one of the local cousins, I brought along my biking gear.

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.

We Interrupt this Long Hiatus to Bring You a Post!

Hi all!

Yes, I'm still here, and yes I'm doing just fine.  In the month since I've posted, I've survived a two week killer-cold, hosted my aunt and sister for a week-long visit, biked over 100 miles, run 36 miles (mostly in the past week), shaved more than a minute off my running pace, lost 8 pounds according to my morning weight record, fit back into some formerly-too-tight clothing, and generally done well and felt great about my progress.  I'm still there.  Sorry for the lack of posting.  I'm still trying to find a balance between my workouts and my connections with you.  I pretty much kept current on your posts, but I've slacked off on composing posts.  I miss it.  That cold really did knock me out--I was taking afternoon naps every day and going to bed super early and doing no structured exercise.  Maybe I can catch the wave again about posting.  Hope so.

The 17DD/WW Core combination is continuing to work well for me.  The WW Core plan calls for limiting grains/pasta to whole grain varieties and to one portion per day.  I had no trouble with the whole grain part, but, in the past, I'd edged up to three portions per day.  With the 17DD influence, I've reduced that component to less than one portion per day.  Eating bread and pasta always makes me want more bread and pasta.  Not eating them, makes me lose weight more easily and I'm over early cravings for them.  I choose losing weight and no cravings.  I eat pretty simply, but we occasionally work in a dessert or a dinner out.  I'm practicing portion control--it makes a real difference.  We haven't used the dinner size plates for a couple weeks--that trick of small plates making the offering look bigger works!

My DIL has gotten a great internship which has her working long days.  My responsibilities with the youngest grandchildren keep me on my toes three days a week.  Today after nap time (did I mention I LOVE nap time) we did art.  Jack made a motorcycle out of saved milk bottle caps, mini-popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners.  Ella made a ballerina doll out of wooden beads, pipe cleaners, scrap material, and yarn.  Each was quite pleased with his/her project.  Art is not my strong point, but love and a well-stocked art box go a long way.  I'm happy to let them do as much as they can--Jack had a ball painting the bottle-cap, motorcycle wheels  orange.  I wield the glue gun, and help out with cutting and other tricky parts, but they do a lot themselves.  They actually come up with a lot of good ideas.

I'm really pleased with my running recently. It took me so long to feel comfortable about running after my surgery a year ago March, that I really thought I'd probably not run again.  Not so.  I'm finding I look forward to running and while I'm not planning a late life career as a marathoner, I think there's a lot of running in my future.

I'll leave you with some random pix from the past few weeks.

Ella and Jack decided DH's soccer cones would make great hats.

There is a bumper crop of poison ivy growing all along my
favorite running path.  I'm hyper allergic and hyper careful!

I had a great day biking with Sharon (Gains and Losses).
This was the beginning of the WO&D trail.

Dame's Rocket was blooming all along the
trail that day.  Beautiful and fragrant.  

More WO&D.   Doesn't this make you want to grab
your bike and come to Virginia??

Wild iris growing along the running path today.  I probably could
have had an even better pace had I not stopped to snap a few pix!

I'm at that very happy place where I'm entirely sure that I will reach my weight loss and fitness goals. This year. Maybe by the end of summer.  Once again, I'll try to be better about posting more often so you can peek in on my journey.

Ciao for now!

No News . . .

In this case, no news is good news!   I admit to an epic fail at my goal of posting once a week in April (sorry!), but the rest of the story is full of successes.

On the exercise front, I've passed some invisible barrier in the past couple of weeks and it's coming much more easily now.  I'm enjoying running, and yes, it's now a lot more running than walking.  I've been going out for 90 minutes a few times a week and each time, my distance increases and my pace gets faster.  I'm not trying to embark on a racing career, but I'm feeling good about being able to run, and to feel like a "real" runner, again.  My ultimate goal is to be able to run 4 or 5 miles a few times a week.  For now, while the weather is great (not too hot!)  I'm doing a little more.  Follow my running with my little Nike+ avatar at the top of the right sidebar.

My biking has also gotten better.  As the weather has gotten so much better, I'm getting in about three good rides a week.  My balance issues of last year (that followed my spine surgery) are a thing of the past (YAY!) and I'm using my road bike a lot more than my hybrid.  I'm inspired by Lori and Michele in their biking successes and working on my endurance and stamina.  I'm also scheduled to take a basic bike maintenance course so that I won't have to trudge home walking my bike if I have a flat tire or other basic problem. You can follow my biking progress in the DailyMile widget in the right sidebar.  Thanks to Michele for the idea of using DailyMile.  A few nice long bike rides and several decent runs for a total of 99 miles over the past two weeks.  YTD total miles is at 407 as of April 15!

I am continuing with my own approach of using 17DD and WW Simply Filling with good results.  I'm losing every week at my WI's and am firmly back in "wonderland" again.  I'm averaging losing about 1.3 pounds a week.  Not bad for a 60 year old!  At this rate, I hope to be at my goal weight by the time we go to the beach in August.  I'm at that happy place now, where clothes that were not fitting are now fitting well or starting to get loose!  DH has reached his WW goal weight and son Jay has lost a little over 3 pounds since February.  Neither has a weight problem, but both are in "fighting trim" now and looking quite good.

I'm trying out new recipes and continuing to make our favorites and we're eating well.  Tonight I made roasted fennel.  I took the bulb, cut it in 2/3" slices, dipped it in a mixture of one part balsamic vinegar and one part olive oil and sprinkled some parmesan cheese on the top.  I roasted it in a 400 degree oven for 20+ minutes so that it was golden brown and quite tastey.  (the original recipe called for two parts dijon mustard to be added to the mixture, but I opted out of the mustard!).

I'll leave you with one picture from the past few weeks.  None of me, I was the photographer.  I'll try to  do better about getting myself in the picture next time.

DH and Ella, who has finally learned to smile for the camera!

Have you ever thought that you couldn't lose weight after a "certain age?"

Everythings Coming Up . . .

As others have noted, our spring, too seems to be coming about three weeks earlier.  I've taken some pictures over the past ten days that I thought I'd share with you as I let you know about my incremental improvements.

Aren't the red tulips pretty? I like the basic red and basic yellow tulips.  These are quite large and look almost like poppies when they're fully open.  I'm falling behind in keeping up with my garden tasks.

 I've been ratcheting up my exercise.  I've done six 5+ mile  "rawks" (run/walks) over the past couple of weeks.  I listen to a book on tape and have my iPod tick off the 5 minute intervals during a 90 minute period.  I run for an increasingly long distance at each interval.  It's fun to see my total distance for 90 minutes increasing and my pace per mile decreasing.  Still very slow, but getting better.  I love being out and seeing things.  This big tree is just coming into leaf. That's the new Woodrow Wilson bridge over the Potomac River in the background.


A different section of the same path (the Mount Vernon bike path, along the George Washington Parkway) has a long wooden boardwalk over an inlet.  It's one of my favorite sections. One time I saw a beaver swimming from that exact spot. He swam toward me and then under the bridge.  I'm also on the lookout for the prothonatory warblers that live in the wooded section you see to the left across the bridge.

 The yellow tulips wanted equal time.  Such a lush display.  My enemy the squirrels (or maybe a deer) ate off about a third of the blooms last night, but there are still a lot left to brighten that corner of the garden.

These little babies are Individual Chocolate Souffles.  The recipe was featured in the WW weekly handout a few weeks ago.  I made them for dessert a couple of days ago.  OMG (that's Oh My Gosh)!  They are wonderful.  I'll put the recipe on the recipe page in the right side bar.  Only 3 WW points plus, and very tastey.

My last two WIs have been good!  My losing streak is intact; I've lost at every WI since Dec 8th (there were a few weeks that I missed weighing in December and January).   I'm continuing my regimen of doing WW simply filling with flex points from W thru F and then doing 4 days of 17DD Cycle I.  That's working for me.  I stick pretty much to what is laid out in Cycle I, but occasionally have one fruit in the late afternoon (either my allowed 2nd fruit or a "bonus" fruit).   I am getting better about keeping the three "splurge" days from getting out of hand.  The chocolate souffles were dessert one night.  Another night I made a Cooking Light recipe for Double Plum Baked Chicken--yum!  I keep my breakfasts and lunches fairly simple and plan and splurge for family meals.

We took a lovely sunlit bike ride today.  My odometer (on my road bike) read 17.6, but DH's read 14.  Sadly, I think mine is not calibrated correctly!  In any case, with my increased runs and a couple  of long bike rides, I am adding 86 miles for the past two weeks for a grand total of 308 miles.

I'll leave you with a picture of my iris.  I almost pulled these out because they didn't bloom for several years in a row.  Look at them, now!

Have a great week!  One of my goals for April is to blog every week, rather than every other week.  We'll see.

Out of the Box

I was standing in line at the grocery the other day idly comparing my cart full of stuff to a cart in the next line over.  I confess I felt a little prideful.  My cart was brimming with good, good-for-you things.  Beets, cabbage, carrots, apples, kumquats, carrots, fresh ginger, greek yogurt, mayer lemons, chicken, tilapia, olive oil.  The other cart, when I really looked at it, seemed to be filled with boxes.  Hamburger helper, jello, cereal, frozen waffles, pasta, pizza mix.  Some people come out of the closet.  I have come out of the box.  I buy very few processed foods any more.  That's a good thing.

On the weight loss front, I've kept up my streak!  I've lost at my last eight weigh-ins and, with the help of the 17DD, I've lost 13.6 pounds from my 2012 high.  What's working for me now is to stick with the basic Cycle I from Saturday to Tuesday and then to relax to WW Core (Simply Filling) with some of the extra weekly points thrown in from Wednesday through Friday.  Strangely enough, I find it easier to stick to the more restricted diet on the weekend.  This is probably because DH is very supportive and trying to whittle off a few pounds to get back to his WW lifetime goal (he's lost about 10 and is just a couple of pounds away).  I'm gradually learning how to enjoy the "extras" without going overboard.  It helps me when I know that I can enjoy popcorn or a dessert or brown rice once in a while.  Or cookies.   I made my sister's killer Oatmeal Cookie recipe yesterday, but changed it just a bit to make it a little more figure-friendly. I took a big plate of them to our Bible Study (they usually get grapes or pineapple from me, and it was fun to bake for a change).  Those were all  eaten and when we got home, I noticed that Jay had put all the rest into a tin box.  I sent those with him to work today.  Of the whole batch I just had 3--not bad.

Sweet and Sour Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

You might notice that I have a new recipe page that you can link to in the right column.  A few of you had expressed interest in my Stuffed Cabbage recipe.  I remade it and wrote things down.  I based it on a recipe for Sweet and Sour Cabbage rolls from Eating Well, but I made some changes to suit my tastes and requirements.  They were dee-lish.  I also put a recipe for roasted parsnips and carrots there.  Talk about tastey!  And good for you.  Try these. (oh and I just added the Oatmeal Cookie recipe . . .)

The penny finally dropped (love that expression!) and I now know that I can use my trusty little ipod nano 6th gen to record my runs on nike+ without messing with the nike+ kit.  You might notice that my little nike+ avatar in the sidebar is running again.  Yay!  I'm mostly walking so far, but the distances are getting better and the running bits are getting longer.

Virginia Bluebells

Like many of you. we're having an early spring.  I was surprised to find that my Virginia bluebells were in full bloom yesterday.  We're about 2 or 3 weeks ahead of last year's season.  I've spent a few hours doing spring clean up stuff in the garden, but I need to push myself to get out there soon to finish up, because I think the awful hot humid days when it's not fun to do heavy garden work are galloping toward us.

Oh and we had our first after-supper bike ride of the season last weekend.  I love this.

Mileage report: with the increased running and a few bike rides I'm adding 46 miles for the past two weeks. YTD 222 miles.

I am washing my hands about 60 times a day and doing lots of hot water loads in the washing machine in an effort to avoid the nasty little virus that is plaguing my little grandchildren.  Jack and Ella and their parents have been trading it back and forth for the past couple of weeks.  Hm, I think I'll go wash my hands again. . . .

Have you come out of the box??

Busy Day Check In

 I can't believe it's been two weeks since I last posted here.  They were a good two weeks!  My brother, his best friend and my 88 yr old aunt came for a long weekend inbetween.  We had a great time together, mostly talking, playing games (NYT crosswords!), watching Maggie Smith outtakes on YouTube, and cooking and eating delicious healthy food.  You'd never believe my aunt is 88--she's loads of fun and it's always a party when she's there (and, no, there was no alcohol involved :-)).

I completed Cycle I on the 17DD and lost a total of 10.5 pounds.  Then I transitioned to a WW approach for two weeks and gained 3 pounds.  Partly overindulging in foods I'd missed (hello brown rice) and partly having houseguests for 5 days (two batches of Lori's Flourless Chocolate Chip Cookies--Warning!:  don't go there if you don't plan on having them; the picture alone is enough to make you want to preheat the oven). DH and I decided to do Cycle I together for 5 days to get back on the straight and skinny.  Today's the last day, and I'm happy to report that those 3 pounds and a bit more have left the building.  Hoping for another good WI tomorrow.  I have a streak going with my WIs.  I've lost at my last 5 WIs.  There were a couple weeks when I didn't go, but still, not bad, right?

On the food front, right now I have my Slow Roasted Plum Tomatoes in the oven.  I'm planning to use them to make a Roasted Tomato and Basil soup.  I've got a big bunch of basil waiting and the tomatoes smell wonderful, they're got about 20 more minutes until they're done.  Here's a quick picture from the oven.  Wish I could send you the aroma, too!

I also made some Stuffed Cabbage.  I was thinking about my mom's cooking and remembered that she used to make Stuffed Cabbage.  I didn't have her recipe but perused the Joy of Cooking and Google to come up with some ideas.  I wanted mine to conform to my 17DD requirements (using ground turkey rather than beef), but it seemed doable.  I used lean ground turkey, chopped onions, celery, carrots, mushrooms, basic marinara sauce (Amy's), low-sodium soy sauce, Lee & Perrins,  and salt & pepper for the filling.  I browned the meat and then added the veggies until they were tender, then the other ingredients.  I steamed the cabbage leaves until they were pliable and wrapped a spoonfull of filling in each leaf.  I tucked them seam-side-down in a pyrex dish, added a bit of low-sodium chicken broth and cooked them for about 30 minutes.  I didn't write down amounts, but I wish I had.  They were dee-lish!   Here's a picture. Looks like we had roasted tomatoes at that meal, too.  I told you they were good.

Today I have an unexpected day off from babysitting the grandkids.  I'm on my 4th load of laundry, cooking my soup, catching up on blogs, and planning to get out and do a "rawk" (run/walk, borrowed stolen from Shelley). I need to load up a new audio book on my ipod as I just finished Believing the Lie (Elizabeth George, a Detective Lynley mystery).  A great book that has me gnashing my teeth that it'll likely be two years before I find out what happened to one of my favorite characters!

Oh, I'm also going to drive over to see my friend, Mrs. Elliott.  She is my choir director's mom, who moved up from Alabama to an assisted living place near to her daughter. Mrs. Elliott turned 90 last week.  She's fun and bright and always glad to have company.  She didn't know anyone here except her daughter and was missing her friends so I've sort of adopted her as my "mom" and try to see her at least once a week.  

Here's a picture of little Jack.  He was quite taken with the "real" carrots (as opposed to the baby carrots one usually encounters these days) we found at Whole Foods.  He wanted to eat one right away.  I washed and peeled it, but he wanted the green top left on it.  He ate every bite (except the green, which he tried, but declared "Yucky!)"  Don't you feel rather virtuous when you load up your grocery cart with great looking veggies and scorn the offerings from whole aisles of processed foods?  I do.

We had some snow flakes yesterday, but biking weather is coming closer and closer.  I, for one, can't wait!

Oh, not great report on the mileage project.  I finally recovered from the heel blisters and enforced croc wearing and reclaimed my Nikes a few days ago. Total mileage for the past two weeks is 26 miles.  YTD total 176.  I'm hoping to up the ante now that I can wear real shoes again!


What's your new favorite healthy recipe?