atlanta

I know I said I was going to talk about the water park, but I'm too lazy to scan the photos that they took of us as we came hurtling out of the water slide.  I'll get it done though.

It's just that I saw a little preview of the newest Housewives show on Bravo.  It's Housewives of Atlanta (something like that).  Let me say, those people are living large.  Unimaginable wealth.  Conspicuous consumption.  I don't know, it just seemed even more than the Orange County or NYC housewives.  Some of them are/were professional athletes.  So, you can imagine the bucks involved.  It will be interesting because all but one of the women are black.  At first I wasn't sure why they picked the white chick, but then I saw why when I saw how she bought an Escalade after a short phone call to her sugar daddy bigbucks.  That she's DATING.  So beyond anything I could imagine.  So it'll be interesting to watch.  Not that i want to live like that.

The whole Atlanta thing sparked my interest because my sights are set on Atlanta at the moment.  Gary came home telling me about a job opening there.  Civilian job.  It's at a base that's on the BRAC list, so it's slated to move to Ft. Eustis in 2011.  Does Ft. Eustis sound familiar to you?  Well, that's where we were living before we moved here!  We moved there at the start of this journal.  Gary told me about the job and I immediately got online and began to look at houses FOR SALE!  This is a huge deal for me since we've never owned a home.  The next day Gary popped my bubble, I think he got cold feet.  He told me he was just thinking about applying for the job.  Here I am ready to sign up for the Disney marathon!  I've got our lives planned out already!  Um, do you know how many houses are for sale in the Atlanta area??  It's unreal.  Overwhelming.  And with a BRAC move coming up, it'd be impossible to sell, and then the houses would be jacked up in the Eustis area with all the new people moving in.  anyway...that's just being negative... LOL!

On related news, Gary told me today that the assignment officer for O5's is someone we know well.  So if he gets passed over again and we decide to stay in, we may get a shot at actually choosing our next assignment.  Yeah, we can dream.

I talked to my mom today.  She's been really missing us.  She misses all her grandchildren.  I know a lot has to do with the fact that they just moved back to Alabama, and us kids are so scattered.  She was just begging us today to apply for Huntsville.  Um, you don't apply for jobs, and there has to be something open.  I kinda thought they might be happy about the Atlanta thing.  That's not too far from either Alabama or NC.  No.  She told me her dream was for us or my brother to buy the big house (they bought the little MIL cottage on the property and the Big House is still for sale) and all of us to live next to each other.  Yep.  She can dream.  Ain't happening.  My brother has declared he didn't ever want to live there again.  He's one of those that once broken free of the small town he doesn't want to go back.  Me, I'm homesick for it.  I would LOVE to live in the big house.  Tear down that 5 car garage and put in a ginormous pool.  I'm a southern belle at heart.  I want to live in The Big House.

It's late.  I need to hit the sheets.  School starts early tomorrow.  Oh, yeah.  School started today.  It was a short day, but the boys enjoyed it fine.  Ryan came home with a fever.  He still had it at bedtime, so he'll probably stay home tomorrow.  We'll see how he feels.  Stink way to start school.

pictures in Maui

We took a 3night/4day trip to Maui this past weekend.  I'm not going to bother posting pictures of the scenery, because frankly, I didn't take a whole lot of those kinds of pictures.  Some, but not really a lot.  This is my 3rd trip to Maui.  But I do want to post a few family pictures I took there.

Okay, picture loading problems, so I'll have to summarize here while you browse through the album above.

First, Jake and Ryan at the summit of Haleakala.  It's the dormant volcano in Maui.  The elevation is 10,000 ft., so it was quite cold, rainy and windy.  It was around 43degrees, so that long sleeved t-shirt and thin jacket and shorts just didn't cut it.  (at least we weren't wearing slippahs like some other tourists there!)  there was no view that day.

The next picture is me and Gary and my dumb hat.

Next, it's a horrible picture, but I had to include it so I could deconstruct it.  I'm feeling that the dumb hat would have served me well to cover up the out of control, curly, wild, gray hair and the large Henderson forehead.  Notice the belly bulging on one side.  I always saw this on myself, but never realized that it was visible to others until I saw this picture.  I'm horrified.  Here's the explanation of what is going on here:  From various surgeries, I have a large scar going from my bellly button down.  I've always had a bit of a "butt belly" where it goes in at the scar and bulges out on either side - like a butt.  (doesn't that sound pretty?)  The last surgery was for my c-section and after then is when I started noticing that one side bulged more than the other.  Now I know it's not just in my mind.  Oh, I'm holding up the peace sign because that is a Peace Pole I'm standing next to. (and that's my Honolulu Marathon finisher shirt I'm wearing <wink>)

The next picture is a nice one of the family.  We are at an overlook somewhere on the infamous "road to Hana".  This may be our Christmas photo this year.

The last photo our waiter took for us.  We were at a little organic pizza joint in a hippy town (at the beginning of the road to Hana) named Paia.  It had a fabulous homemade wood fire oven where they cooked the pizzas.  The restaurant is called Flatbread Pizza and I highly recommend it.  So let me tell you about our experiences in this town.  When we embarked on our road to Hana trip, I had some food leftover from the Haleakala trip the prior day that I had packed for my lunch, so the guys needed to pick up sandwiches for their picnic lunch.  We stopped at what I thought was a small grocery store - called Mana foods (IIRC).  It was a natural foods grocery store!!  LOL!  It was so funny seeing the expression on their faces.  Like ducks out of water.  I directed them to the deli counter and pointed out that they could make them turkey or roast beef sandwiches that didn't have sprouts bursting out of the sides.  LOL!  And guess what?  They even have chips!  So they were set with minimal fatalities.  The next day, our last day in Maui, our plane didn't leave until 2:45, so we had time for lunch.  I had read about the pizza place, and they agreed to go there.  Hey, it's pizza, how strange could it be?  When the waiter started talking about the organic and healthy ingredients they use, I was a little nervous.  Not for me, but for them.  We found a cheese pizza and a pepperoni pizza.  The pepperoni was, naturally, nitrite (nitrate?) free.  Whew.  They survived.  The salad was delicious, even if it was topped with some sort of seaweed stuffs.

Well, it's getting late.  My next entry will be about our water park adventure.  We still have our sunburns from that.

aoljurlAdd, aoljurlAdd_1

he's gonna give me a heart attack one day... plus diet stuff

my husband, that is.  It happens every single night.  You'd think I'd remember and be prepared for it.  I'll be at the pc, doing Lord knows what.  I waste so much time on here, usually looking at recipes or reading the latest cat-fight on whatever group du-jour.  I'll also have the t.v. on.  And he sneaks up on me.  Okay, he says he isn't sneaking.  His version: he's a 200+ pound man in a white t-shirt (not in camoflage) making kissy noises.  My version: he's creeping up behind me and all I hear is strange noises and see shadowy movements in my periphery.  It always scares me!  Okay, fine.  He does it every night to say goodnight to me.  So I shouldn't be so high-strung...  (and he shouldn't have that mel gibson crop circle movie on either)

But he creeps up on me at other times too.  He's very stealthy for a big guy.  The only time he doesn't startle me is when he's rubbing his feet on the carpet in order to shock me.  LOL! 

I've been MIA for a while.  It's because I'm on weight watchers (have I mentioned this yet??) and I'm doing the core plan, which has a little bit of a learning curve.  The rules are easy enough, but I need to learn a new way of cooking.  It takes a bit of time to plan meals and journal all you are eating and hunt and peck through other blogs trying to find recipes that I and the family will like.  I've enjoyed almost everything I've made.  I'm digging barley and bulgur, but the recipes out there are so limited.  People seem to think that tabbouleh is the ultimate bulgur recipe and that's about the limit of what I can find.  Well, I'm not wild about it.  I think the bulgur is too light and fluffy for it.  Like it's going to blow away in the trade winds.  (needs a good gravy to weigh it down - LOL!)  I know, that's a lame reason, but I definitely have my ideas of what is right and wrong food-wise, despite what the experts say.

Okay, what is my honest opinion of Core?  Well, I'm very proud of what I"m eating.  I feel like it's very healthy.  No sugars or breads etc.  I'm looking forward to my next cholesterol check.  It's a little bit (a lot) challenging to eat in a public venue.  This is definitely a fix-it-yourself lifestyle.  But I"m doing all right.  The first week cravings have dissipated drastically - but they are still there, just waiting to pounce.  Some old habits still nag at me.  I had gotten into the bad habit of buying a York Peppermint Patty at the checkout counter a little too often as a treat.  Before bed snack, either a little peanut butter or a little bag of fruit chews.  Very hard habit to resist.  I still "need" to snack a lot, but now I choose fruit or I get in my milk.  My bones thank me.

One of the big tenants is to eat to satisfaction.  Meaning, you have to be aware enough to know when you are satisfied but not stuffed.  I'm so used to stuffing myself, that I haven't quite figured out how I'm supposed to feel.  I've also learned that my satiety meter is slow.  I'll sit there after a meal wanting something to top it off.  Not that I'm necessarily hungry.  Logically, I realize I just ate a wonderful meal and ate plenty.  But I don't have that "done" feeling, and my mind is prowling like a tiger.  If I manage to get distracted and stop thinking about whatever I'm plotting, the satisfaction feeling eventually comes.  I'd say it takes 45 minutes to an hour.  That's too late, IMO.

Okay, as far as weight loss.  I'm not so sure about it.  I lost a whopping 4 pounds the first week.  That's huge for me.  The next week I lost 3!  Incredible.  The 3rd week I gained 6/10 pound (I had to weigh like 20 times to get the scale to settle on a number - I choose whatever weight that shows up 3 times).  You can imagine what a downer that was.  I tried to tell myself it was due to bloating.  I weighed myself all week and my weight was creeping up.  I came so close to throwing in the towel so many times.  So my weigh-in today was a bit better. I lost 4/10 pound.  But I don't totally trust it.  See, because I weighed a couple pounds higher throughout Sunday (I know,stop weighing myself!!) and went walking sunday night and sweated like a pig.  So in the back of my mind I'm saying it's water weight I lost.

Gosh, I hope no one is reading this because it is truly a stupid self dialogue here, but it's what I'm thinking.  No one said it had to make sense or even be sensible.

I know all the platitudes - you've started adding a weight routine, maybe it's muscle mass.  (yeah, right, those 5 pounders are really packing on the muscle)  Or, you should judge by how your clothes feel, not the numbers on the scale.  (well, my clothes fit just the same, thank you very much)  I have real doubts here.  But I HAVE to be doing better for my cholesterol.  I'm holding out for that number.  If my cholesterol goes down significantly, then I'll stick to it no matter what the scale says.

Augh!!!!  There.  I'll say it again.  I hate that I can't just treat food as fuel.  How on earth did my mind get messed up without me even being aware of it????  Who knew???  I always thought of myself as a well grounded, solid person.  Yet I can obsess about dumb stuff as well as the rest of 'em.  ('em would be nut jobs)

It's late.  I need my sleep.  THAT"S why I'm not losing!!  I need 8 hours.  Ha!  6 to 7 hours is more like it.  Actually, that's a good thought.  If I go to bed earlier, I won't be tempted by a bedtime sneak-snack and I'll be getting all my sleep.  Yep.  I'm gonna try it.  It'll have to start tomorrow because it's almost 11 now.  The boys are up at 6 despite our efforts to get them to sleep in during the summer...Obviously, we'll not have transition problems when school starts back...