It's best to not stick your head out the window of a moving vehicle and shout in glee...

Less bugs caught in your mouth that way!

I lost 1.5 pounds this past week.  I'm pretty sure that it's less because I didn't get in as much water as I meant to.  Things just tend to get away with my thoughts and I totally forget to drink water.  I don't drink anything!  I really need to work on that, as it is one of my goals, AND because it's just better for me to keep myself fully hydrated.

Don't get me wrong, though, I'll definitely take 1.5 pounds, as opposed to a gain!  I was so worried that I'd gain some of what I'd lost in the last few weeks back.  I don't know why I was worried...I didn't stray into the naughty foods beyond reason this past week...but I think it was mostly because I thought I'd jinxed myself.  Thank goodness that I didn't!

My daily exercise is still going strong, 50 minutes on the treadmill, 6 days each week.  I'm really proud of that, going from my extremely sendentary lifestyle to exercising and getting my target heartrate up to fat burning, that's impressive for me!

School is good.  I turned in my first English essay last Thursday, and we were assigned our next essay topic last Tuesday.  So this time around I'll be writing about music videos, their message, what the deeper meaning is, if any, and compare and contrast to others.  I've chosen music videos from the 80's because the 80's rule; Debbie Gibson's, Lost In Your Eyes, Poison's, Talk Dirty To Me, Def Leppard's, Love Bites, and Madonna's, Like A Virgin.  Should make for interesting writing...and hopefully reading!

Spanish is going...I'm really struggling with my conjugation of verbs...but I'm determined.  I may not end up on the Dean's list next year, but I'll know how to speak better Spanish, mark my words!  Of course, I'm not saying that I'm going to strop striving for all A's, but realistically I just don't see that happening in Spanish class.  But I'm still gonna try!

OK, maybe scare is the wrong word to use...maybe, disturb would be better.

Gnomes...and clowns.

They both belong in the same category, in my opinion. They're evil, scary, devious, and appear to be hiding something behind their big grins.

What, eh, disturbs you???

I got on the scale this morning, and, as you might have noticed my ticker in the top right, I lost a whopping SIX pounds this past week! 

Now people, before you get all concerned, I'm eating!  Sometimes, I think I'm eating too much.  But I'm changing my habits.  No longer do I head to Starbucks for my frappaccino after classes during the week, nor do I hit McD's several times a week.  I eat healthy dinners that my husband prepares on a daily basis (ok, ALMOST daily), smaller portion sizes, healthy desserts like peaches and nectarines and grapes, as opposed to ice cream.  HOWEVER, I am not denying myself my favorite things.  Once each week, on Saturdays, I treat myself to McD's.  I get a caramel frappé, three mcdoubles, and a large fry.  Normally, I am only able to finish the fries and a burger, sipping on the frappé most of the evening, leaving two burgers left over for whenever. 

I bought two pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream almost a month ago, and ice cream, ladies and gents, is my weakness.  I have only ate one pint of the two!  I'm just not craving it.  And when I think about wanting something sweet, I go to the fruit in the fridge before I go to the ice cream.  OR, we also have Minute Maid's frozen juice bar that are a treat, as well.  I'm not depriving myself.  I'm not starving by any means.  I'm getting in around 1000 calories per day, give or take. 

I am exercising on a regular basis, walking at the correct target heart rate speed, as opposed to going as fast as I could, as far as I could, in the least amount of time that I could.  In doing this, I'm burning fat instead of muscle.  All calories are not alike!  Burn the right ones!

I'm getting my water in.  It was one of my Hot 100 goals, and I've been doing awesome at it.

Another goal was to put the most effort that I could possibly give towards school and my family.  Well, my family is fine, however, I didn't do so well on my first spanish test.  Oh, I passed, that's not the issue.  But it was with a C+.  What the hell???  I can do much better than that.  And it's because I didn't study nearly as much as I should, for it.  So, that's my goal this week, in particular, to get my flash cards created and work on those.  I need to learn the conjugations that we've went over, backwards and forwards.  No excuses!

So that's it for the week.  Obviously, I've gotten a lot of things off of my chest in the past couple of days.  Woohoo!  It's my mutli-posting again!

The other day I was watching the first season of Drop Dead Diva's second episode, The "F" Word.  She reiterated what I've been telling people for many years now...it's OKAY to say that you are FAT, if that is, indeed, what you are!  Don't fluff it up by calling it various other adjectives like large, full-figured, yada yada.  We are what we are....do we believe that by calling it something else that it will make it less so; or that others will believe we're less fat if we call it by another name?  I used to think that way a very long time ago.  I could never call myself fat.  I was so embarrassed by it, and I would turn red as a beet if anyone so much as LOOKED at me, let alone called me fat.  I'd end up in tears, more times than not.  But it wasn't until I was in my 30's that I began to accept myself as being who and what I was.  I accepted that I will NEVER be a size 4.  Hell, I'll never be a size 10!  But that's ok.  I'm becoming more and more healthy by choosing the right foods to eat, the right amounts to eat, and by exercising on a regular basis.

When I first began to accept myself, I took a picture of me and did a bit of photoshopping to it and came up with the following image:

I'm not saying that it's healthy to be fat.  Far from it.  But being fat doesn't mean that you can't enjoy life, enjoy being you, and love every moment of it all.  And if people give you that LOOK, and we all know what that is, look them straight in the eye and tell them.... "I know I'm fat, but I'm cool with that!"  Nothing makes a person speechless, embarrassed, and chagrined, than being confronted with what they thought they'd never be confronted with...because they felt that they were somehow superior to us.

Be proud, be you!

First, to set the mood....a song...

First, I want to clarify something....I don't feel anger about this any longer, but it took me quite some time to not.  What I feel is hurt, a deep hurt....and, hopefully, if you're a fellow dog lover, you will understand why.  I just need to write this down; I hope that it will help aid in my healing over this issue.

When I was little, around 6, or so, we got a Cocker Spaniel puppy and we named her Mitzi.  My childhood is FULL of memories with her in them.  We even bred her 4 times and enjoyed baby puppies (22 of them, to be exact).  You can imagine, that this sweet dog was most definitely an integral part of my growing up.  She lived to be, I think, around 14 or 15 years old (people years, of course), before she died.  Towards the end of her life she was blind and deaf and very obese.  She was this chubby little Cocker with such a beautiful and sweet disposition, and, as long as we didn't move around the furniture, she didn't do too bad at getting around!  She gave love just as freely at the end of her life as she did when we first got her...more so, even.  (Doesn't love grow when it's nurtured?)

I grew up and left home to be a nanny for a year.  I lived only miles away, but in a different city.  One day I came home and Mitzi wasn't there.  I asked my mom and she didn't say anything, and I didn't really think much of it.  I thought perhaps she was outside.  So I let it go.  Then a few days later when I was there again, I again, asked what happened to her, and joked that my mom had taken her to the vet to have her put to sleep.  Again, silence from my mom.  When I looked at her, I knew that that was the correct answer.  She had, in fact, taken Mitzi to the vet and had her put down.  Now, I don't know if Mitzi was sick, or if the vet suggested that she do it due to quality of life, I don't know, and my mom has never been terribly clear about the whole thing.  But whatever it was, Mitzi had given us 14 years of her life.  When I prompted my mom, she told me that she had taken Mitzi to the vet and left her there before she was put down.  THAT is the part that hurts me.  Mitzi is the only family pet that we ever had, whom we didn't bury in the backyard.  I don't understand.  And what I REALLY don't understand is how my mom could have just LEFT Mitzi there, in a strange, cold, sterile environment, surrounded by strangers, in her final moments.  She just LEFT her there...after Mitzi gave us so many years of her LIFE...never leaving our side, always there when we needed to cry, or a hug, or just the contact of warm love...  My mom just left her there.  Abandoned in her final breaths of life.  And she didn't even want the body to bury her.  She just...threw her out like a piece of trash.

What I don't understand is how my mom, who is an animal lover like myself, although maybe not as extreme, could do that?  I sit here, with tears falling down my face and my mini dog snuggling up to me with a very concerned look on her face, just uncomprehending of such an act.  As hard, and as heart breaking as it will be when we lose our babies, we will always be there, by their sides, until the very end.  I can't imagine not being there.  After all of the love, tears, hugs, kindness, understanding, consolation, and acceptance that they've shown us....how can we think about NOT being there???

OK, maybe I am still a bit bitter about the whole thing.  I think about it every so often, and it just makes it hurt all over again...like the proverbial bandaid ripping off of a wound.  My heart hurts for Mitzi's fear and terror, being left in such a cold place with her family nowhere near, unable to see or hear, abandoned and alone.  Why on earth did my mom do such a thing?  I've tried asking her about it a few times, but she never gives me any straight answers.  Perhaps that is why I'm unable to leave it in the past.

I don't want my mom to think that this is an attack on her or her present character as we all grow and learn from past mistakes, and I'm almost certain she's learned from this particular one, but it's lived in me, festering, bubbling up from time to time, and this anger takes over, quickly overcome with hurt and sadness that it happened at all.

Mitzi, I know you're waiting for me on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, no pain, full sight and hearing restored, playing with your other friends, there.  I can only hope that you can forgive me for not being there...for surely I would have been, had I known.  I would not have deserted you in the end.  To you, I dedicate this song....

Free box of Kleenex just in time for the weather to start turning, bringing on the sniffles.

Just click here and then click on "Send a Pack". 

It will send one to you, and to someone of your choice.  :)

I was thinking to myself earlier today, whilst trying to locate the THR for obese people, that being short really messes up exercise info.  Most information out there is based on the average woman's size/height.  We already know my size is far above where it should be, but my height, that's where things get tricky.  See, I was looking for songs to jam to for exercising, and came across numerous sites that said along the lines of "these are great for warm ups and these are great for full on cardio..."  The thing is...my legs are too darn short to walk that fast!  My full on cardio is their equivalent of warming up!  So basically, all of the songs that I'm able to listen to with the right BPM are slow and boring....  So, of course I just said f**k it and downloaded what I wanted.  I just think it sucks.

OK...vent over.  :)

For a better part of this morning, I've been searching for what the average target heart rate should be in morbidly obese women.  It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, or a needle in a stack of needles (as Dr. Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds, likes to say).  But, FINALLY, after figuring out my resting heart rate, my maximum heart rate, yada yada (of course, all of these are based on the average body), I found a website that told me the percentage of my maximum heart rate that I should be targeting for MY exercise regime.  If that makes any sense, and you're still with me, after figuring that out, I found a calculator that corroborates my findings, so I thought that I'd share it with you.  Thank you, Nutribody, for providing us fatties with the information that we need the most.

I knew that, being morbidly obese, my heart rate was going to be different from that of the average woman's body.  I just needed to find it online!  The page also has the other regulars...BMI, etc.  But the THR calculator is spot on if you're obese.

I woke up this morning and remembered to get on the scale before doing anything else...except pee.  Hey!  Every bit counts, right?  So anyway, I get on, expecting at best a maintain, at worst a gain of a pound or two.  It's been the bloaty, uggy, feeling that I was thinking was going to be the culprit.

I got on the scale, too a deep breath, and looked down.....

I lost 4 pounds this past week!  FOUR POUNDS!!!!  I'm totally stoked, of course.  I had no idea.  I mean, I KNEW that feelin' uggy was making my appetite non-existant, but THIS was much better than I'd hoped for.  Needless to say, ran back into the bedroom and jumped into bed next to K with a big grin on my face.  When he didn't respond, I put my grinning face 2 inches from his and just held it there.  He opened his eyes not 5 seconds later.  I told him my news and he was proud of me, too.

I spent the rest of the day feeling uggy and doing my English paper.  I got it finished after about 4 hours of steady work on it.  Funny, but I don't really think of it as work.  I ENJOY writing...go figure.

Anyhoo...just wanted to give the news of the update, and hope everyone out there in cyberland is going to have a great week ahead of them!