HAPPY BIRTHDAY! ANOTHER ONE!

Can you believe it? In our little group, we have birthdays two days in a row!

Today is Pat's birthday!

We all hope you have a WONDERFUL and HAPPY day, Pat!

(And please eat a little birthday cake for all of us!)

THE STRESS TRIPLETS!

Carol-Ann, Jeanette, and Pat at the coffee shop!


I just got back from a wonderful visit to Canada to see my mother and Carol-Ann and her family, as well as Pat who also lives in that area. What a great time we all had! I loved every minute of it.

Before I left home to fly to Toronto, Carol-Ann, Pat, and I were joking by email that we were all having so much stress (mostly work-related) that we should call ourselves the stress triplets!

Last Sunday evening the three of us got together at Artisano's, a wonderful coffee shop and eatery near Carol-Ann's, and spent a great 4 hours gabbing and at times laughing so hard that we could not see for the tears! I fear we drew a great deal of attention from other patrons, but they were very kind to us! When we started taking pictures of each other, one nice lady came over and offered to take a picture of all of us together, so here it is. I'm pretty sure that this past week has gone better for each of us because of the great fun we had on Sunday evening and the friendship and support we gave each other! The stress triplets are old enough to know that stress shared is stress divided, and the support of understanding friends is priceless!

Carol-Ann and I have certainly wimped out on weighing in this week, haven't we! I haven't even been brave enough to get on the scale to see what I weigh, let alone post it here! We really did not do too badly when I was visiting her, but since I came home I have been eating everything in sight as I try to catch up on my work.

Sometimes all my best plans are useless. I had hoped to keep up with my client's dictation while I was gone (an internal medicine doctor), and so I had my laptop with me to do just that. All was ready, and then his recorder malfunctioned! He could not send me his dictation until the night before I came home! For just a minute, I wavered in deciding whether this was yet another irritation to ruin my day, or if it was a blessing from God which allowed me to forget all my work and have fun! I decided to count it a blessing and it really was!

But...there is definitely a downside to coming back to overwhelming non-stop hours sitting at my computer trying to catch up, typing until the bones practically start poking through the ends of my fingers. I am almost caught up now, though. All I have left to do are the records for Friday's patients which he sent me last evening so...(deep breath)...I am feeling pretty good about it.

Now if I can just get my weight loss back on track...

Jackpot?

Well, here I am being both late and early. Although I did weigh in on Monday last week, our internet was down so I couldn't record it! So I am recording that reading tonight and it is "late". This morning, for some unknown reason, I stepped on the scale a day early and was pleasantly surprised to see that I am down a bit! But since today is Easter and we were eating a bit of this and that extra today, I've decided to record an "early" weight! Who knows! By tomorrow morning I may have gained 3!

Now the eagerly anticipated reading for this week just has to be Pat's! Has she done it again?! We should start a jackpot like our local 680 News Radio -- they have a weather guarantee which climbs by 100 dollars a day whenever the weatherman's forecast has proven to be correct within a couple of degrees or so. The last I heard (haven't listened to the radio over the long weekend!) the jackpot was sitting at some outlandish sum of about $17 thousand dollars! For some reason I think of Pat whenever I hear 680 News has maintained their guarantee!

My Trip -- Part 2

In 1977 (many, many moons ago -- in fact, was I even alive then??), I was engaged to Barry, but we did not plan to get married for another long year, so I enrolled in the one-year secretarial course at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. That was an excellent decision because what I learned that year has been the foundation for all the work I have done since then. Typing, grammar, and shorthand skills weren't the only benefits, though. Three of us students -- Pat, Frances, and I -- became friends and spent a lot of time studying together and hanging out between classes.

Over the years, Pat has been just wonderful about keeping in touch with me. She wrote lots of letters before the days of email and sent pictures and Christmas cards. I have not been nearly as good at that as she has, but I have always admired her ability to do it so well. Thirty years later, we still love to keep in touch which is much easier now with emails back and forth and blogs and such! Still, there is nothing like getting together and gabbing the hours away over coffee, which is exactly what we did during my visit with Carol-Ann. Here is Pat, looking back at me from across the coffee-shop table.

This is a weight-loss blog, so I am duty bound to say that I totally resisted the urge to get more than coffee! We were surrounded by goodies at this wonderful coffee shop, but I raised my chin and stiffened my upper lip! (Actually, I better be honest and admit that I had just eaten!) Now, though, we are starting into the Christmas season with all the goodies and big meals that go with it.

This is my plan: Keep drinking more water, take only one helping at meals, give in and eat only one little sweet each day, and run around like crazy to burn off calories!!

On a more serious note, though, I have been thinking about how in some parts of the world there is no need for weight loss because there is not even enough food to sustain healthy life. So let's remember this Christmas to be very thankful for our many, many blessings!