My Super-Doper Weight Loss Discovery

Remember back before my house sold when I was eating my way through my stress and I topped off the 5-6 pounds I gained during the pandemic last winter with a few more? Guess what! They’re all gone now plus a couple of extras and I hit a low I haven’t been at since before the pandemic. How did I accomplish this blissful feat? It wasn’t a planned diet nor did I lose any limbs but since I started the packing process I’ve been so busy that my step counter says I’ve been reaching my daily goal of 6,000 step in the middle of the afternoon---instead of closer to bedtime, if at all---plus for some odd reason I started buying BelVita Breakfast cookies. I don’t know what’s in those suckers but I can eat a serving size package at 7:30-8 o’clock and they keep the hunger away until noon-ish. Not bad for a 230 calorie, flavorful cardboard-like breakfast.

At noon I’ve been drinking an Atkin’s meal replacement shake which is nothing new for me to do when I'm busy and they keep me from thinking about food until 5-6:00 when I’ve been having a Stoufer’s or Atkin’s frozen dinner or take out. It’s been several weeks since I used up all real food in my freezer---chicken, beef, salmon, pork, homemade chili, etc.---and I haven’t wanted to buy more. Same with my pantry, I’ve used up as much stuff as I can. Most of the snack foods are gone from the house and evn if it wasn't by evening when I’d normally be tempted by them, I’ve been too tired to walk out to the kitchen to scout out what's left in the cupboards.

I’m glad I decided not to upgrade my wardrobe before the move. If I can keep this up through the fall and winter I’ll be in a smaller size by spring when I'll have fun wearing out the pages of the L.L. Bean catalog. With a gym roughly a 100 feet from my new apartment door and two on-campus restaurants that will be serving far better and healthier food than I’ll been eating since before the pandemic, there is no reason why I can’t keep this ball rolling to a new me.

And guess what else is new! I got my long, pandemic driven hair cut off. Gone are the sexy locks and in its place is an easy-breezy style. It still isn't as short as I’ve worn it most of my life but I told my stylist I wanted to get rid of four inches and leave two-three to possibly get cut off at my next and last haircut with her. I'm going to miss that girl! She’s helped me grow my hair out to the longest it's been since I was a child. It's been a fun distraction when I had the time to mess with it. Growing it out and getting haircuts every four weeks doesn’t compute for some people but my hair grows fast and needs to be trimmed and thinned like clock work or it goes Afro. Not that there’s anything wrong with having an Afro but that style on white-bread me gives me nightmares of what my high school senior photos looked like when all the cool girls in my class had straight-as-a-pin pageboys.

The son-I-wish-I-had came over this week and we make a game plan for the week of the move which settled my nerves down considerably. His sons are helping Tim load and unload the truck---he's licensed to drive large vehicles and has been doing so for decades. They are all work horses and great people to be around if you don’t talk politics. Tim owns a business that includes moving stuff out of houses and cleaning them up after people move out. He gets a lot of business from banks that have done foreclosures and realtors who sell estate houses. In both cases families tend to walk away from a lot of the contents. Tim will do a good job for me---he moved me into this house---and I’ll be saving several thousand dollars. Not that I’m using him to save money. I was to be his Guinea Pig to see if he wanted to expand his business to offer a service of helping seniors downsize and move. 

We both did some research into the idea, including having him sit in on a couple of free estimates I got from companies who do that sort of thing. In the end, he decided the senior moving service business is not for him. The two businesses we sucked information up from both have retail shops to sell the downsizing stuff they get paid too well to pack up and haul away. They charge $75 an hour per person. Tim's going rate is a two hour minimum for $75 then $35 per hour after that for his wages and $25 for his extra workers. One of the downsizing specialists had actual dollar signs lighting up her greedy eyes when she walked through my house like I was too stupid to know I had some valuable stuff she could charge me to haul away, then sell to line her purse.

I've got to get back to work. I have a small chair cushion to cover and an oil lamp to clean---both sentimental pieces from the cottage where I spent all my summers growing up. I need to get that lamp oil up to hazardous waste and return the shoot stapler that I borrowed for the cushion project. It's a wicker chair I used as a toddler and I was planning to used that chair as a toy box for Levi...but we all know how that's turning out. I don't know how to say this without sounding "???" but thoughts of leaving my life with Levi behind in this house is hitting me harder than leaving the memory triggers of husband behind. I saw someone walking a schnauzer yesterday and out of no where I burst into tears. I guess six months of mourning the fact that I'll probably never had another fur baby is not long enough...  ©

Freaking Out!

I suppose freaking out is too strong a statement. Maybe wimping out or having a meltdown is closer to the fact? For some odd reason (or many reasons) tears have been close to the surface the past few weeks. One of those reasons is the on-going saga of my getting ready for my move to a continuum care campus---which in turn has caused me: 1) to depend on ambient too much to get some sleep, and 2) to depend of comfort foods to be my new best friend. Keeping the transition saga company on the ‘Things to Worry About' chart is stuff beyond my control---the pandemic, some issues my brother's family are going through, the housing market and worrying that the seller’s market will burst just as my house goes on the market, depending on hired help to get my house ready to list. Wouldn’t you think with so many situations I can't do anything about that I’d focus more on what I can control? Like my diet? My eating is so out of control it would take a baseball bat alongside the head to knock me back into the healthy eating zone. I'm still buying salads and fruits as well as the cookies, ice cream and carbs. I didn’t stop eating what I’m supposed to be eating, I just added my drug of choice to the mix. Sugar. Lots of sugar. I’ve been here before. The only thing that pulls me back from the Sugar Abyss is writing down every single morsel that passes my lips. I guess that's called 'accountability' and apparently I'm not mad enough about myself destructive behavior to go there yet.

You would not believe what I just went thought to get the correct spelling of ‘abyss.’ It involved a google search, my Franklin Word Master and a lot of yelling at Alexa because apparently in my dyslexic brain ‘obelisk’ and ‘abyss’ are pronounced the same. (When I check the spelling of a word, I always check its definition which is how I find all my brain farts in the Wonderful World of Writing.) I even tried to move past my obsession with that word by using the phrase Sugar Brink or Sugar Ledge instead of Sugar Abyss but I can be a stubborn creature when I argue with Alexa. And even that made tears roll down my cheek, wondering if my new neighbors be able to hear me yelling at my virtual assistant. Given all the fights we have over words on a daily basis why do I dream about getting another Alexa that isn’t tied to my Kindle? Some mysteries cannot be solved by applying logic.

Anyway, where was I with my ‘freaking out’ post? Stress. Yes, I’m stressed out and even though Levi my Might Schnauzer died two months ago, I’ve cried over him more these past two weeks than I did right after he passed away. I haven't been this "weepy" in years. My lawn treatment guy left a dog bone in a plastic bag with his invoice hanging on the door. Cue the crying. My cell phone calendar reminded me to give Levi his flea and heart worm medications. Cue the tears. And do you know how many cute dog videos pop up on my Facebook feed? They’ve always been there so why did they start effecting me now, two months after Levi’s passing? Probably for the same reason songs on Prime County have become crying cues again. I need more sleep, less sugar and a couple of huge hugs. Gosh, it's been well over a year since another human and I have touched. Damn pandemic! Makes me want to fake a choking event just to get someone to do the Heimlich Maneuver.

I got invited out to lunch by two of my Gathering Girls pals and found out the group, as we knew it, has reached its demise. We had a good run for nearly four years---meeting twice a month for lunch, but it looks like we’re not going to survive the damage the pandemic did to our good times. Last summer we were meeting in a park since the restaurants were all closed down and I was fully expecting to start that up again once we get past the unseasonably cold weather we’ve been having. But these two women told me they and a third member of the group don't want to meet in the park anymore because the picnic tables are too uncomfortable. Another member has COPD compromised lungs and even though she’s fully vaccinated she doesn’t want to go to restaurants but would do the park and sixth member of our group is afraid to get vaccinated which makes a few of the other ladies in the group nervous to be around her. Restaurants here are still not operating at full capacity and, for me, it isn't fun to linger over lunch when people are waiting to be seated. The handwriting is on the wall, there is no way to make everyone happy. 

I was the person who always sent out the bi-monthly emails to keep us meeting every 1^st and 3^rd Mondays. Even during this past winter when no places were open I still sent out the emails to keep us all touching bases. But at lunch I passed the job of coordinating future lunches and RSVPs on to one of my lunch companions who also had a bone to pick about meeting at a centrally located restaurant we often went to before the pandemic put us in the park. It seems that three in the group want to do spur-of-the-moment lunches instead of on fixed dates and they want to bounce around to different places. We've done a little of that bouncing around, especially in the early years, even tried rotating who picked the restaurants but neither worked as well for getting full attendance like going to our 'default place' did. Sitting at lunch this week, the negativity took me by surprised and I felt chastised which---real or made-up in my sleep deprived head---made me sad, like I hadn't been sensitive enough to the winds of discontinue. And it makes me a little mad that I had to come home and remove a summer's worth of 1st and 3rd Monday luncheons off my day planner. After doing that, I deleted Levi's medication reminders off my phone app calendar. Change is hard but I plan to take Socrates' advice to heart. ©

Loss, Love Affairs and Old Movie Lines

One of my Gathering Girls pals has a daughter who volunteers at a place that’s like a food pantry only instead of giving away people food and goods the store-front charity gives away pet foods and gently used pet supplies to people living on the edge of poverty. The idea is to help them keep their dogs and cats from being surrendered to animal shelters. I have not disposed of much of Levi’s stuff---not ready for that emotional roller coaster yet. But that first week after he passed I did, however, drop off everything with an expiration date...food, treats, medications for fleas, ticks and heart worms and water additive for dental care to the above mentioned charity.

Fast forward to now when I just dropped off three baby/pet gates and two dog beds. I know in the long run it would be easier to pull the band-aide off and get rid of all of Levi’s stuff at once, but I can’t seem to do it. Before this turns into a Country/Western song about a girl whose dog died and she lost her pickup truck in a poker game and she feels low enough to do a duet with a whippoorwill, let me say that I haven’t owned a pickup truck since 2002, we don’t have whippoorwills in Michigan and I haven’t played poker since my teens when all I owned of value to lose in a card game was my roller skates, a bike I rarely rode and a bunch of diaries that my best friend and I occasionally used to play Diary Roulette. The key to winning that game was to remember key dates in each other’s daily activities…say when I knew my friend got a phone call from a boy she liked and there was a good chance she’d rambled on in her diary about Harold or Stan or whoever was her current crush. We can’t all have poignant, Anne Frank-type diaries and thank God for that.

Not even in my twenties when I was dating a guy who’s idea of going on a date was to spend Friday nights at his married sister’s house playing card games was poker among the games we played. Those people and their endless, empty-headed chit-chat that went with the card games drove me crazy but that was back in my Be-a-Chameleon days to get a man so we played cards every Friday night for a year. If we hadn’t broken up we’d still be playing cards on Friday nights and there would never had been a Levi in my life because he didn’t think animals belonged inside the house. I dated two guys from farm communities and while I'm not sure if the other one felt the same way about turning animals into household pets, his stick-up-his-butt father surely wouldn't have approved.

Aaron. Ah, yes, that other country boy: Remember the Grant Wood 1930s painting of the gloomy farmer with the pitchfork and his equally gloomy wife? Had we gotten married, that would have been me, living a life where I disappointed my in-laws because I’d never won first prize at the county fair for my apple pie or anything else for the matter. Not much call for an art major on a farm. My lack of interest in all kitchen related activates didn’t put the odds in my favor of marrying a guy in line to inherit the family farm. If I had known that going into that relationship maybe I would turned up my Chameleon Charm and brought his father a few casseroles. But I didn't and one day Aaron took a severe beating from his father when he got a little too dreamy-eyed over having a future with me, "that ‘college girl’ who was unsuited for farm life." Nothing breaks up a sweet, cream-and-sugar romance faster than a few cracked ribs and a lot of black and blue bruises from a leather belt.

He came to see me a couple of days after that beating, before hopping on a bus to Chicago where he’d planned to get a job that didn't involve milking cows and plowing fields. A few weeks later he was back on the farm. His physical wounds had healed but I doubt his spirit ever did. Gone was his sexy smile, his sweet touches and our easy-going banter and laughter. I didn’t see him again for 5-6 years and he introduced me to his perfectly-suited-for-farm-life-and-father-approved wife. If that chance introduction had happened after instead of before the movie, The Way We Were was released I would have quoted Barbara Streisand’s character Katie when she said, “Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.” And after we parted Aaron, like Hubbell with Katie, would have given me a longing, last look from across the street that telegraphed he wished things could have been different while his wife looked like she had a thought bubble drawn over her head that read, Ohmygod, that was HER wasn’t it! 

And maybe it did happen that way. After 50 years memories and imagination tend to blur. All I really know for sure is that life is messy and our summer romance would have made a great country/western song about a guy with a pocket full of regrets who was haunted by his memories of laughing and singing and being silly with a city girl. Or maybe that song would be more along the lines of Garth Brook's Thank God for Unanswered Prayers where a guy and his wife have a chance meeting with a girl he wanted way back when, before he found the true love of his life. 

I don’t even remember Aaron’s last name. It doesn’t matter. He’s a single thread woven into the Tapestry of my Life, a rich tapestry of people and events that sometimes make me wish I'd quit reading romance books and write a couple instead.

And by the way, if you think you're hearing the theme song to The Way We Were about now, you'd be right. That's me singing...  ©

Memories
Light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way we were

Scattered pictures
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were

Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply to choose to forget....

Art...I Don't Want to Do This!

 

Have I mentioned how much I hate selling art? I haven’t actually listed or sold any yet but the windup to get ready for the job is driving me crazy. The windup includes watching online videos on how to pack big things but the biggest problem is getting the material needed to ship them---glassine paper, corner protectors (for the framed art in the house), large sheets of cardboard or core-board for the unframed stuff and extra wide bubble wrap. I’m still looking for egg crate foam for the framed stuff. Not the typical shipping supplies that I’ve kept on hand these past few years. If my husband was alive I’d be chewing his head off about now because he’s the one that put me in this situation. How? He loved the western artists especially James Bama, Wayne Cooper and Gordon Snidow and every year when he’d go out West elk hunting he’d come home with a new, signed and numbered print. We ran out of walls to frame and hang the stuff but that didn’t slow down his obsession and fast forward to now when I’ve got a 31” x 41 ½” faux leather zipper case full of 14 unframed prints to measure, research, photograph, write up, prepare for shipping and finally list.

Some guys bring shot glasses and bed bugs home from vacation. I suppose I should be grateful Don had better taste in souvenirs and he spent his nights camping in the mountains---or that he came home at all. One time out West he stretched out on a large, flat rock to take a nap and woke up with a rattlesnake curled up on his tummy. His hunting buddy took a photo or I would have thought they were telling a tall tale which has always begged the question: Who takes the time to photograph a thing like that? His buddy said he thought about killing the snake with his hand gun while the two of them slept---holy crap!---but he decided against it because his aim wasn’t that good. The Cliff Notes version of the story is it took long stick and a very nervous Don who had to stay as still as a fence post to end it.

Back on topic: Another problem I’m having with gearing up to sell prints is figuring out a starting a bid and a Buy-it-Now price. I’ve discovered that a lot of people trying to sell prints on e-Bay don’t know the difference between a poster quality print and a signed and numbered or artists proof prints. From what I’m seeing in the unsold section is that buyers do know the difference and that’s a good sign for me. I have never done Buy-it-Now sales on e-Bay until this month and I’ve been selling off and on e-Bay since 2000. I can’t believe I’ve never tried it before. Within an hour of listings fifteen things I had four things sell at my pie-in-sky price while their rock-bottom starting bids were passed over. One of those early sales was a folding wash basin, field gear from WWI. We have a leather donkey footstool (also turn-of-the-century) and that basin was what the donkey "drank" from. I love that old guy and will hate to see him go.

I have had great success selling a few big items on Facebook Market Place this past weekend. Levi’s antique fire hydrant that was in my dog pen and a large, four-sided glass showcase that was in our library and held the small collectibles I've been selling off. Both sold within 24 hours of me listing them. The fire hydrant, however drove me crazy or rather the people who contacted me about it did. Within an hour I had 32 people messaging me with offers. The first guy who set up an appointment to pick it up bellied out on me at the last minute because his wife “wouldn’t let him buy it.” In the meantime seven or eight guys kept checking back with me to see if the first guy who had the appointment took it. And way too many of the people who sent messages need to brush up on their communication skills. It’s like the old joke about the proper use of capital letters i.e. there’s a difference in meaning between “Help your Uncle Jack off his horse” and “help your uncle jack off his horse.” People would send messages like ‘20’ and that’s all. Took me a long time to figure out that meant, “Will you take $20?” Uh, No! It’s listed at $50 or BEST offer. The couple who ended up with it bought it for their dog to use instead of their their shrubs. They were super friendly and easy to talk with as they dug it out of the ground. Two antique fire equipment collectors offered $80 and $95 but they came late to the party. I think Levi would be happy that his fire hydrant is going to another canine. ©

A lady who collects tigers had been looking for a larger showcase than the one she's outgrown. She was thrilled with this one. While her crew was here to load it in a truck one of the guys bought the two animal skulls that I had de-cowboyed out of my living room last week. He got a good deal and I was happy I didn't have to list them on e-Bay. It felt good to be wheeling and dealing again.

This is hydrant that I just sold. It was made in Tennessee in the '50s and was used in Colorado where my husband bought it and 2 others. We rode all the way home with those hydrants on the floor of our motor home. One we sold right away for what we paid for all three. A smaller hydrant, early 1900s, was on display in our garage for years. It sold at the auction house last summer for over $200. I hated to see that one go. It had a lot of brass on it and was a real cutie. I don't know if it's true in other places but old fire station equipment has always been quick sales for us.