The Harsh Truth/Goodbye, Neil

The harsh truth is this.  I can’t eat what I want.  Not only can I not eat what I want, I can’t even come close to eating what I want.

Back up to 177.4 after what, just a couple of weeks of not being abstinent?  It’s truly amazing that what took two months to lose by eating (sort of well) can be completely erased by just a couple of weeks.  And I was by no means out of control with food, I was just eating some stuff I don’t eat when I’m abstinent.  Like gummi bears, kind bars, a whole grain bagel with cream cheese at Starbucks.  Nothing really heinous, just not so tightly controlled.

Discouraging!  I feel puffy.  I feel like I have a double chin (I actually sort of do).  I don’t know what to do.  I’m going to have to go on starvation rations to lose any weight at all.  My feet have this slight swelling that only I notice, because I am very well acquainted with my feet, but my shoes leave strap marks when I take them off, something that never happened before.  I went to the doctor for it a couple of months ago.  It wasn’t my normal doctor, she was out of town, so they sent me to one of her associates, a youthful dweeb of an MD who just happens to be my husband’s doctor and seems to take very good care of him. 

Well, Dr. Dweeb, MD, couldn’t ascertain any swelling but since I had a blood clot a few years ago while pregnant he sent me for a venous Doppler ultrasound—the NEXT DAY, because it could be a blood clot presenting in a weird way (his comment, not mine).  I took an afternoon off work and showed up at the ultrasound center and waited a very long while to find out that Dr. Dweeb had not written the venous Doppler ultrasound order properly and thus they couldn’t do it.  No pleading or reasoning with them worked (I know he meant bilateral!  Both legs!), and attempts to call Dr. Dweeb were unsuccessful as it was a Friday afternoon and his office is closed on Friday afternoons.

I gave up and never had the scan, but then a couple of days ago, I noticed the foot swelling was a little worse than it has been so I tried to make an appointment with my doctor.  The person on the phone took my information and apparently looked at an appointment calendar because she informed me that I had an appointment on September 21 (with this tone that implied, how dare you ask for an appointment when you already have one for over a month hence) and I would just have to wait until then, as my doctor is booked until December.  When I politely asked what happens if someone gets sick and needs to be seen, she mumbled something vague about trying to work them in with a different doctor.

Well, so much for trying to catch things early.  Granted, the swelling is slight and there is no pain, but it would be nice to find out what it is and potentially treat it before it gets worse.  I apparently don’t have a blood clot because it would have caused me problems by now (up to and including death!), so that’s good.  I think I’m just overweight and sit too much, but who knows. 

In the good news, I’ve stepped up the walking because I had this dawning moment of realizing I was doing nothing but Bar Method DVDs (which are incredibly difficult but not aerobic) and then sitting all day, and the dogs were getting quite fat, so with the temperatures moderating, I’ve managed to take the dogs for several evening walks to the desert where they can dash about madly, off leash.  The walks can’t be bad for me, even if they’re not hard-core.  I am almost 50 with creaky knees, after all.

Other good news:

·         My youngest is settling into first grade.

·         I (as well as my husband) are gainfully employed.

·         We have a comfortable house, which is only partially a sty today.

·         The pool is algae free.

·         My New Car Fever has temporarily abated, and I’m keeping my current car clean and pleasant.

·         I enjoy freedom of speech and get to vote in elections.

·         I get to listen to Green Day when I arrive at work in the morning.

·         Temperatures have fallen below 100 and September draws near!

There are a million other good things I could list but I’ll save them for another day. 

But there is one more thing to remember.  For a compulsive overeater like me, There Will Never Be Enough.  So why even start overeating at all?

Easier said than done.  Stay tuned!

Post Script:  Just found out Neil Armstrong died.  I can actually remember watching him stepping onto the moon.  We sat in our living room in 1969 watching the grainy black and white images on the TV.  My mother had tears in her eyes.  It was so dramatic.  All the boys in my class wanted to be astronauts.  What brave men those guys were, given the technology of the time—there were so many things that could have gone wrong, and as I recall it all hinged on them being able to take off from the moon and meet up with the other spaceship orbiting around the moon, and then lining up exactly right to be able to hit earth’s atmosphere without bouncing off . . . what a feat of human genius.  It brings tears to my eyes right now to look at Neil Armstrong’s young, brave face in his official Apollo astronaut portrait.  What a great guy.

I got to shake Buzz Aldrin’s hand once, and have spoken to Frank Borman many times (we went to the same church and he had a hangar at the airport I used to manage) and I treasure those two, but Neil Armstrong was an icon.  What a great thing he did.   

1930-2012

Homeownership--A Manifesto!

Even before the great mortgage meltdown of 2008, I was never a believer in the concept of a house as an “investment”.  Really, this is true.  I had this whole soapbox rant I would do when people would talk about buying a house as the “biggest investment you’ll ever make”.  Yes, I know that many, many people have made it big in real estate.  But ultimately, your house is a place to live, not some kind of retirement account.  In fact, with your basic 30-year mortgage, is the house really “yours”?  All I’d have to do is miss a couple of payments and whatever company happened to hold my mortgage at the time would foreclose and evict me.  I’m paying for housing, just like paying rent, without the benefit of being able to pick up and move if I need to, and without  the benefit of having a landlord to pay for major repairs and upkeep.  And should I need to move and can’t sell my house, I’ll be up the creek, having to pay for the house as well as housing in my new location.

That being said, there are many good things about homeownership.  Once you have kids and pets, it’s nice to not have to worry about rental property rules and keeping the place clean enough so you can get your deposit back.  You can paint and decorate however you want.  And there are always uncertainties with renting.  The owner can decide to stop renting the place, rent can go up, repairs can be deferred to the detriment of the tenant, etc.

Early in my relationship with my husband, I was giving my soapbox rant about a house being a place to live and not an investment, and he chuckled and pointed out that “yet, you are a homeowner”.

And I am, and have been for a long time.

I’ve learned a lot from each house I’ve owned and tried not to make the same mistakes, but I’ve found there is no such thing as a perfect house.  Here is my assessment of my various houses over the years:

2031 Harrison Ridge Court:  a true “starter” house, a HUD foreclosure bought for $71K.  About 1,100 square feet.  A cute two-story, but so, so cheaply built.  For example, there was no insulation around the sewer pipes so every time a toilet was flushed upstairs, you could hear the water rushing down the pipes as you sat downstairs in the living room.  Lovely.  It also had the thermostat right by the front door so every time the front door was opened, either the AC or the furnace would turn on, whether it was needed or not.  And the placement of the furnace was such that it made a deafening roar that drowned out the TV and normal conversation.  In the summer, the upstairs was unbearably hot.  My ex-husband and 22-year old son still live in this house.  I believe this area has been hit hard by the mortgage meltdown and this house, 22 years after we  bought it, is probably worth much less than we originally paid for it.

Lessons learned:  Yyou get what you pay for, starter house neighborhoods don’t stay stable for very long (hello, 12 people crammed into a 3-bedroom house with front yard serviung as parking lot), and square footage is key—the closet sized bedrooms that work for a baby and a 4-year old are woefully tiny as the children and their accoutrements grow in size.  And thermostats should not be anywhere near an exterior door!

305 Townsend Terrace:  This house was huge, over 2400 square feet, but on a busy street corner and not in good repair.  It was constructed of cinderblock, completely uninsulated, with ancient metal casement windows that wouldn’t close all the way, so it was cold in the winter.  I paid $83,500 for it which came out to less than $30 a square foot.  There was plenty of room but a lot of it was wasted space and ended up just being closed off most of the time.  Interestingly, this was the only house I ever made money on.  I sold it for $130K after living in it for less than four years.  Home prices were going up and I benefited from the gravy train.

Lessons Learned:  Busy street corners are noisy and people like to throw trash out of their cars.  Insulation is important.  Big houses mean more work and more money.  Every day the toilet flushes without event is a good day.

2004 Rose Lane:  This house was ug-ly.  A hideous one-car garage extension had been put on without any consideration to how it fit with the design of the rest of the house.  Irrigation pipes, wrapped in crumbling black insulation, had been installed across the front of the house, in full view.  It was horrible.  I still don’t know why we bought it.  We did everything “right”, getting the home inspection and all, but this house had SO MANY PROBLEMS it was a true money pit.  I can’t even begin to describe everything that broke in this house, but a lot of it involved plumbing and big, watery messes.  We did a ton of work to it, not just repair but a lot of improvements, and made it absolutely beautiful inside.  It had a nice flow to it, a big family room area with bathroom that we used as a teenager suite at various times and a beautifully private back yard, a huge shed that had electricity and tons and tons of storage space, but it was just one car away from a busy street and with the old single-pane aluminum windows it was noisy and cold inside.  After one too many major repairs and a neighbor accidentally crashing her car into the house, necessitating months of fighting with her insurance company and dealing with contractors we just couldn’t bear it anymore.  I paid $141K for the house and joyously sold it for $150,000 four years later even though we had probably put close to $50K in repairs and improvements into the house, including adding a back screened porch and completely replacing the entire air conditioning system and ductwork, remodeling a bathroom and replacing all the flooring.  The day we went to the title company to sign the papers to sell the house was one of the best days of my life.  Literally. 

This is an actual picture of the neighbor's crashed car in our house. 

Lessons Learned:  We bought this house from a slumlord (excuse me, real estate investor in trailer park properties) who lived out of town and used it as a sometimes winter residence and didn’t care about it, and it showed.  Busy streets have cars on them at all hours of the day or night.  Get a home inspector you really, really trust (ours completely missed rotting ductwork that cost thousands to fix).  Look at the neighbors’ houses before you buy and determine if they seem to be running a permanent yard sale, junk business or used-car lot from their residential property.  Don’t over-improve.  The day I realized how much it would cost to replace the aluminum windows, added up how much I had already put into the house, and how much I’d ever be able to sell the house for, was the day I was done with it.  Third replacement of kitchen floor due to yet another plumbing problem contributed to my ultimate hatred of this house.   

Current House:   We tried.  We bought it from people who lived in it for 30 years and had maintained it beautifully.  It has new windows, double paned, low E.  A metal roof that should last a lifetime.  The master bathroom was remodeled and enlarged with a whirlpool tub and glass shower enclosure.  The master bedroom is spacious but not cavernous—perfect-sized.  It has refrigerated air and you can switch from AC to heat at the push of a button.  It’s mostly a great house.  But perfect?  No, not at all.  It’s about 200 square feet too small and has an old-fashioned layout that was hard to fit our furniture into and results in wasted space  There is no place for large storage.  The garage doesn’t have access into the house.  It has an unheated, ancient swimming pool that we can only use for about three months out of the year because the water gets so cold.  But we’ve decided this is the “forever” house so we’re staying.  And we’ve certainly had repair issues—a hot water heater that sprang a massive leak one day and had to be replaced, irrigation pipes that burst, sending cascading streams of water down the street (just as the codes officer happened to drive by!) ,  but so far (knocking on wood here) nothing too terrible. 

Lessons Learned:  Storage space is important.  Access from the garage directly into the house is nice.  Make sure the built-in drawers under the kitchen counter all stay shut properly.  Shag carpet and pets just don’t mix.  When the pool is your own to worry about and take care of, it’s a lot less fun.

Conclusion:

I know there is a huge industry of many professions built around homeownership (mortgage lenders, bankers, title companies, loan servicers, home inspectors, home improvement contractors, insurance companies, HGTV, surveyors, etc., etc.,) and it is a huge economic engine, but it seems to depend so much on the concept of more, more , more, moving up, getting the better, bigger house, constant improvements, granite countertops, multi-head showers and making people not satisfied with what they have.  I fall into this trap myself, and it’s not sustainable and it creates angst.

Nevertheless,  I guess I’ll keep being a homeowner for a while.  Where I am in my life, with five pets and a child still at home, it works for me.  But if I ever have to go back to renting again, I certainly won’t look at it as “throwing money away”, because it’s not.  As my dad, who has NEVER owned a home, always says, you’re paying for a service.  A landlord to pay for the repairs, no maintenance woes, freedom from house chores on weekends, and the ability to pick up and move whenever you need to.  No grass to mow or siding to paint or roofs to replace?  Freedom . . .  peace of mind . . . tranquility—if that’s where you are in life.

On the weight loss front, nothing good to report.  Not abstinent (though not spiraling completely out of control yet) and up two pounds.  Went to a meeting and had a great chat with my sponsor last night, but high stress level is keeping me away from working my program with any consistency at all.  Not good.  Stay posted!

 

What to do?

A terrible two weeks of stress (mostly work-related) have finally derailed my efforts, though I hung on by my fingernails for a long time.  I stayed abstinent for a long time but my portion control wasn’t the best, so my weight loss stalled at the 171 range, then I ate something sweet (I think it was a couple of bites of a Peach Supreme pie while out for coffee with my daughters) and then it all began again.  I call it being “back on the sauce”.  I’m not in full-blown out-of-control eating mode but I can get there pretty quickly, and then I will rapidly gain weight.  At my age, it’s pretty discouraging how quickly one puts back on the weight that was such a struggle to lose.

I also have had to miss three weeks of OA meetings (reasons:  vacation, working late, feeling ill) so that isn’t helping.  And in all honesty, my abstinence was pretty wishy-washy.  I avoided white sugar and white flour, but I was eating all sorts of other stuff (lots of nuts, raisins, and other calorically dense foods).  No wonder I was losing so slowly, which made me get discouraged.  Which left me vulnerable to that "first compulsive bite".

So what to do?  Can I establish a realistic eating plan that I can live with long-term that will result in a slow but discernable weight loss, enough to keep me going?  Is it realistic to give up my trigger foods of white sugar and white flour forever, which is essentially the OA model?  The longest I’ve ever managed to do that is for about 9 months, and it’s pretty difficult given how pervasive these items are. My Big Birthday looms, and I’ve always given myself permission to eat whatever I want on my birthday, which doesn’t work well in practice because it usually takes me weeks, if not months, after that lovely day of eating Krispy Kremes and ice cream and chips and lattes and more, to get back on track. 

I was reading my cousin’s blog (she invented an exercise method, The Bar Method, which I do via DVD, and has a lot of devoted followers) about what she eats.  She’s 5’5” and weighs 114, a weight I DO NOT aspire to, and I guess people always ask her what she eats so she wrote a blog post about it.  It was pretty interesting to see what she eats (which is very little but not totally perfect nutritionally), but what got me discouraged about the post was she had a link to a website that calculates your daily caloric needs based on age, weight, height, and activity level, and according to this website, I only need about 1900 calories a day to maintain my current weight of 171, and to lose a pound a week I can only eat about 1400 calories (my stomach growls just thinking about it) and to lose 2 pounds a week, which I don’t want to do, I can only eat nine hundred and something calories a day, which would be starvation rations.  Yuck, I guess being firmly in middle age means my metabolism has really, really slowed. 

In the good news however:

• My six-year-old started first grade this week.
• My oldest is finalizing her wedding plans (wedding in December)
• Today is the one-year anniversary of my husband’s emergency bypass surgery and the doctors say he is doing very well.  Glad you’re still with us, 99.99%!
• The end of the long, hot summer is in sight!

The Best Vacation Ever

The Rub wasn't a problem!  I remembered I had some workout shorts, made of moisture-wicking fabric, that worked great for the water park!  And the water park was lenient!  People walked around wearing all sorts of things.  No one seemed to be hassled for wearing shirts OR shorts.  In fact, this absolutely wonderful place had several swim-up bars (interestingly placed near the kiddie water play areas) and you were allowed to take the alcohol anywhere in the park!  It was amazing!  I had a drink each day I was there!  It's set up with hotel rooms all over the place, too, so you can walk out the front door of your room and be right in the park.  I cannot say enough about what a great experience it was.  We will definitely be back to the Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels, Texas!

As a bonus, it worked out that my cousin and his family were free so we drove up I-35 to Austin where he lives and got the treat of seeing them for dinner!  And he brought his mom and stepfather who I love and I literally had not seen in twenty years, at least!  Enough with the exclamation points!  But we had such a great time, and on the drive back we took a route through the Texas Hill Country which I had never seen and was really pretty.  It was a completely successful trip.  Thank you, portable DVD player that plugs into cigarette lighter.

Have stayed off the sugar and white flour, even on the trip and during a recent brush with head lice, enough said, and inaccurate scale, this morning on weigh-in day, indicated I was down .8 pound  Downward trend continues!  Wish me LUCK!