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Feb 14, 2010

Eating My Way Through Blissdom

February 14, 2010 By

OK, so my weigh-in this week wasn’t fabulous. I gained two pounds. Not a disaster by any means, but still not a welcome sight on the scale.

I can assign some of the blame to the incredible food at Blissdom. While I rarely ate an entire meal that didn’t consist of small bites of food carried past me on a tray, those small bites added up. Truthfully, the alcohol calories probably did more damage than the food.

While I was expecting a little bit of a gain, two pounds was a bit of a surprise. When you factor in that the Opryland Hotel is roughly the size of a small city and required a half-mile walk to get anywhere, two pounds seems a little unfair. I’m sure I burned some calories with all of that walking – sometimes in heels!

So this week’s plan is to get back on track. Drink more water, watch my portion sizes, and all that boring stuff that actually works. I had a great time at Blissdom, but that’s no reason to eat myself back into the 190’s again.

Filed Under: weigh-in Tagged With:


Feb 11, 2010

Blissdom Musings

February 11, 2010 By

So last week was filled with a road-trip to Nashville for the Blissdom conference at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. Not only did this mean getting to catch up with so many bloggers I know and love, many of whom I consider friends, but it also meant several days away from work, bills, and the crippling stress I’ve been feeling lately. In other words: I desperately needed this trip.

First: the location was beautiful. The Opryland Hotel is too amazing to be believed. There is an indoor river, people. AN INDOOR RIVER. It’s like Las Vegas in Tennessee. And the conference had a lot of great perks, including a private concert by Harry Connick Jr. on Friday night.

There was also the unexpected perk(?) of the National Tea Party Conference also being held at the hotel that weekend, including a guest appearance by Sarah Palin. Despite my having vastly different political views from the tea party attendees, watching Catherine (Her Bad Mother) discuss political science with men dressed as George Washington and Paul Revere was worth the entire trip. (Drunk on glory, Catherine!)

I didn’t approach Blissdom this year like I’ve approached past blogging conferences. While I still cared about what I wore, I wasn’t frantically rush-ordering new business cards or thinking about what kind of swag I could give out to be noticed. My game plan for Blissdom was simple: have fun with friends, maybe meet some new friends, and learn more about blogging and/or myself.

I succeeded in my plan.

I laughed more in that half-week than I have in probably a month or more. I filled my days with friends and fun. After four years of knowing her online-only, I finally had the chance to hug Amy, aka Mrs. Chicken, in person. And in meeting her, I was relieved that she was everything and more that I expected her to be. Spending time with her was like visiting with an old friend, because at this point she is an old friend.

At past conferences, I was often more aggressive at seeking out new people and “networking” to build my blog presence. However, I’m burned out on networking for the goal of building a brand or blog audience or popularity or whatever is the current buzz word of the moment.

So I took a more laid back approach. I was happy to fall into conversations when it was natural. I loved being introduced to women that my friends already knew – in every case, I saw why my friends liked them and found myself liking these women in return. But I felt no need to force myself into a conversation, and most of the time I forgot to even give anyone my card unless they gave me theirs first.

(Also? I used up the few leftover business cards I brought with me. I will have to get more for the next conference.)

As for learning more about blogging? I did a little of that, too. While I was tempted to go to sessions on monetizing your blog and growing your readership, I instead decided to stick with the basics of how to write a good story and how to let my voice come through my writing. I think I’ve been fairly good at those in the past, but of late my story has been getting lost. I want to find that story again, somewhere in the fog of working night shifts and sleepless days. My own days aren’t coherent, and as a result my story is disjointed and fractured as well. I think finding my story again will go a long way towards my 2010 resolution/goal/whatever of finding happiness again.

Oh, and I also learned that I can get up the nerve to sing karaoke without a single drop of alcohol in me in front of a room full of women I adore and admire. That took a whole new level of bravery, but I’ll say I had a lot of fun and will likely do it again. (Thanks, Casey, for helping me get up the nerve to do it, and Mishi and Heather for joining me on stage!)

After the disillusionment I felt after BlogHer last year, I’m now looking forward to BlogHer 10. Blissdom, this smaller conference that reminded me a lot of BlogHer 06, helped me throw away all of the stress of jockeying for position with my blog and simply enjoy the community and friendships I’ve made along the journey thus far.

Blissdom was truly bliss.

Photo by Heather, Domestic Extraordinaire

Filed Under: Blissdom, love, me me me, memories, people who don't suck, sisterhood Tagged With:


Feb 4, 2010

And The Numbers Keep Going Down

February 4, 2010 By

189.2 last week.

This week? 187.0. Another 2.2 lbs gone!

For those keeping track, that’s 6.3 pounds gone in less than a month. And it means I’m rockin’ the Loser Moms weight-loss challenge.

I was going to complain that working the night shift is my greatest challenge to losing weight, but I’m starting to think that it might be helping in some ways. When I was at home 24/7, I also had 24/7 access to my fridge and the contents within. It was so easy to grab a snack, and then another, and then finish my daughter’s snack…

Now, three nights a week I work for 12.5 hours, and during those hours I’m lucky to get a chance to sit down and eat one meal, and otherwise only grab a few snacks here and there. I pack my own lower-calorie snacks to avoid the expense and calories of the vending machines. The day I work, I sleep for part of the afternoon, meaning I often skip a meal so my midnight “lunch” isn’t my fourth meal of the day. When I’m done with work, I sleep most of the next day, thereby skipping breakfast and lunch. I try to keep track of how many meals I’m eating each day, but sometimes one gets missed. And if it’s a busy night at work? So much for that meal I planned on – I’m lucky if I can drink a cup of soup or shove a granola bar in my mouth.

So maybe night shift is helping my weight loss. It’s still killing any ability to workout regularly each week, but if it’s preventing me from overeating, I guess that’s not a horrible thing.

Here’s to not screwing it all up by overeating at Blissdom this weekend!

Filed Under: weigh-in Tagged With: ,


Jan 31, 2010

Make Sure You Walk Away With The Right Kid

January 31, 2010 By

On Friday afternoon I found myself running late after a doctor appointment, rushing home to make sure I didn’t miss Cordy’s bus. She is dropped off at our door, and if we’re not there to get her off the bus, they will only wait so long before driving on to the next stop. In our school district, that means you then have to pick up your child from Children’s Services, which no one wants to do.

I got home right at the time she’s scheduled to get off the bus, which is actually never the time the bus arrives. It has never arrived at that time – it’s usually coming around the curve about five or ten minutes later. I left the front door open to wait for her bus. Five minutes pass. Then ten. At this point I’m starting to wonder if I was too late. But I know her bus driver well enough to know that she’d wait at least five minutes if she happened to get here on time. Where was that bus?

Another ten minutes passed, and just as I was beginning to panic and consider calling the school district to ask where I need to go to get Cordy, I hear the bus coming down the street. And then I see it slowly inching along, pausing at each address, and coming the wrong direction. Ah, it’s a substitute driver today. Now I know why she’s late.

I immediately started to walk out the door toward the bus. I noticed an aide on the bus moving around and doing something, all while Cordy sat in her seat and waved to me from her window. As I crossed in front of the bus to get to the bus door, a taller child in a blue coat suddenly met me around the corner, smiling. This bus carries a lot of children with varying special needs, and this boy didn’t seem to notice or care that this wasn’t his house and I wasn’t his mom.

I peeked up into the bus, looking at the smiling driver and aide. “Have a good afternoon!” the aide yelled to me.

“WAIT!” I yelled back before the door could be closed, “This isn’t my kid.“

The aide and driver looked at each other with an amused look. “What?” they laughed. I guess they thought I was making a joke.

“This isn’t my kid,” I said more insistently. “THAT is my daughter,” I growled, pointing to Cordy who was sitting right behind the driver. Cordy was still smiling, also probably thinking this was all a joke.

The aide immediately looked puzzled and yelled for the boy to get back on the bus, quizzing the boy, “Well, why’d you get off the bus if this wasn’t your stop?”

At this point the driver appeared to have a moment of intelligent thought with the revelation, “Oh, so that’s why she was saying ‘Mommy! Mommy!’ when you were walking to the bus.” Um, yeah, ya think? I suppose that would be why she was saying that. Is the school district that desperate for substitute bus drivers that they’ll hire anyone off the street?

Finally, the aide unbuckled Cordy and helped her down the stairs. I held Cordy in my arms as the aide and driver again tried to laugh about the mix-up. I glared at them and walked away, holding onto MY daughter.

It wasn’t funny. It was dangerous, it was careless, and it shouldn’t happen. Were I not all the way to the bus, they could have let that boy off and drove away before I could object. And who would they have given my daughter to? Cordy likely would have reacted the same way the boy did – she trusts adults, and probably would have willingly stepped off the bus, even knowing it wasn’t the right stop.

The district will be getting a call from me on Monday, urging them to make sure their substitute drivers are more careful about making sure special needs kids get to the right home safely. Some kind of safety procedure needs to be in place so that each child is matched up to the right address. I don’t care if it’s a seating chart or names on the seats or some other plan – a simple list of addresses and names isn’t enough.

I was worried that I had missed her bus. But being given the wrong child really scared me. I want to know my daughter will get home safely each day, and I want to trust that her bus driver will take her to the right address and only let her leave when one of her parents is there to take her hand.

Here’s hoping her regular bus driver will be back this week.

Filed Under: Cordy, rant, school Tagged With:


Jan 27, 2010

Week 3 Weigh-In: How’s it Going?

January 27, 2010 By

Well, I seem to have totally missed last week’s weigh-in. I mean, I weighed in, but didn’t get a chance to update here because I was spending the week caring for a very sick little Mira.

Last week, my weigh-in showed I was at 191 lbs. That was a loss of 2.6 lbs for the week. I’d like to credit my stellar eating and exercise habits, but I think a lot of that weight loss was due to being pinned down by a feverish, sleeping toddler, leaving me unable to get to the fridge.

So this week, I wasn’t sure what I’d see on the scale. I’ve been doing OK on eating, but thanks to my insane work schedule I do end up eating a lot of convenience foods, and often those foods are late-night runs to fast food. (Look for a new post soon on the perils of night shift on a diet.) And then there was yesterday, when I came home from a particularly awful night of work where I didn’t get a chance to eat, and found half of a Papa John’s pizza in the fridge. You should know that poor innocent pizza didn’t suffer as I devoured it quickly at 9am. Add in a bowl of misery ice cream last night (did I mention work has me a little stressed?), and I was sure I’d see a bad number on the scale this morning.

I nervously stepped on the scale this morning and held my breath as the numbers flashed up and down to settle on my true weight, then exhaled quickly just in case oxygen does carry some microscopic weight to it that we might not know of. The number finally stopped flashing.

Drum roll, please………

189.2  (!!)

Folks, I haven’t seen the 180’s since before I was pregnant with Cordy. That’s five and a half years.

I’m thrilled to be even further away from the 200 lb mark. When I crossed back under it last year, I vowed to never see my weight start with a 2 ever again, and the further I go away from that 2, the more confident I feel that I’ll keep that vow.

This also means I’m now less than 20 lbs away from my wedding dress weight. I always said I’d love for us to renew our vows someday in my old wedding dress. Should we ever decide to do that, I might just be able to zip that thing up again without splitting a seam.

So my grand total of weight loss thus far is 4.4 lbs in two weeks. It’s nothing spectacular, but slow and steady wins the race, right?

Filed Under: weigh-in