Category: It IS all about me

Still haven’t found that weight I lost

I got a really nice comment last week from Carolynn, saying she’s lost a couple of pounds after reading about Calorie Counter online here, and she asked for a Plan B update. Then yesterday, a friend said she’d just called Dr Bishop to make an appointment for herself. Actual requests for topics and the need for daily blog fodder? Perfect!

For those of you just tuning in, after finding myself last August at 192 lbs and a good 20 lbs heavier than I was pre-pregnancy, I went to see local weight-loss specialist MD Douglas Bishop and following a no sugar, low refined carbs diet of 1400 calories per day, I lost 30 lbs (and went from a tight size 16 to a loose size 12) in about six months.

The good news is, I’m still down about 30 lbs overall. Impressive, isn’t it? I hit my goal weight just before I came back to work in February, and in the almost three months I’ve been here I’ve been up a pound or three, down a pound or three, but mostly keeping it off. I’m right around 161 lbs, and seem to be half way between a size 10 and a size 12 in jeans. (I swear to god, I am *cursed* to never, ever have a perfect-fitting pair of pants!)

progress
This is my weight-loss chart from Calorie Count. It inspires me to look at that big drop!
(The blue line is the actual weight loss and the green line is the “trend”,
ostensibly to make you feel better over the peaks and valleys.)

The bad-ish news is that I’m slipping on my eating habits, and while it doesn’t seem to be sabotaging all my hard work right now, I’m sure it might in the future! I eat a lot less quantity-wise than I ever did before, but I’m still not eating enough fruits and veggies (that should improve with the summer crops coming in) and am starting to slip and have daily “treats” instead of occassional ones. I’ve been really good, though, about not buying lunch downtown when I’m working — I’m too busy at lunch time out scoping photo opportunities for my 365 project!

I’m still going to the gym every Saturday, and hope to add in a trip on Wednesdays in the summer when Beloved is home from work. Chasing after three little boys does expend a lot of energy (who am I kidding, it’s only Lucas that I’m chasing, but I’m chasing him every waking minute!) and I seem to spend a lot of breakfasts and lunches at home eating bites of something at the counter while I pack schoolbags, unload the dishwasher and tend to the other minutiae that make up a mother’s job, so maybe that’s a good part of why I can cheat and not regain the weight too drastically.

Funny, though, how I was so enamoured with my new sleeker design at Christmas time, and now with bathing suit season coming up, I look in the mirror and think, “Hmmm, a little flabby here and a few too many bulges there.” Just as I seem doomed to be forever in ill-fitting pants, I think I’m stuck living with my inner critic no matter what I do!

More reruns: The Sweater Story

I’m blogging over at Family Jewels again today, and it’s a topic both dear to my heart and important for you to read, so get on over there and read it, okay?

But if you still can’t get enough of me today (frankly, I’m a little sick of me these days!) here’s a golden oldie from my way-back archives, The Sweater Story.

I’ve been back at work for about three weeks now, and I think I’m finally into the rhythm of the office again. I’ve been working on some pretty high-profile stuff around here, so I get lots of face time with senior management, which is nice for a new employee although some days I really feel like I’m in over my head.

Today was an especially busy day. We had our usual all-staff morning meeting, where I gave an update on my project to the group, and I had a couple of drop-by-my-cube meetings with colleagues. I also spent about 30 minutes on a conference call in my director’s office, sitting across the desk from her while we talked to some of the folks down in Southern Ontario region.

It was about 10:30 by the time I finally made it to the bathroom. I was washing my hands when I caught sight of myself in the mirror and noticed it. IT. In that moment, I became truly cognizant of the definition of mortified. On my sweater sleeve – my creamy white cotton knit sleeve, no less – smeared from mid-bicep to near my wrist, was a painfully obvious, incredibly nasty two inch wide smear of baby shit. Suddenly I flashed back to the pre-dawn gloaming of Tristan’s room, where I rushed in to grab a little cuddle before running for the bus. I picked him up out of his crib and slung him onto my hip to deliver him to Beloved, blissfully unaware of the toxic ooze seeping out of his Pampers and ingratiating itself with my arm.

As I gazed at my sullied reflection in the mirror, I tried to console myself: “They won’t notice. It’s not that obvious.” It WAS that obvious. THEY NOTICED! You would have to make a Herculean effort of avoidance to miss it, and I just knew my colleagues weren’t up to the task.

I tried to at least mitigate the damage. First, I tried to rub it off. Have you ever tried to rub dried baby shit off cotton ribbed knit? Then thought maybe a little water might do it. Which worked, inasmuch as it diluted the stain by about 20 per cent and spread it over an area about 300 per cent of the original stain. So I rolled up the sleeve as much as I could, which did a great job of drawing attention to the goodly part of the stain still visible, left the other sleeve down, and tried valiantly not to make eye contact with anyone in my office for three months.

Rerun week continues with A Love Letter to My Daughter, Who Will Never Be

(I’m guest-blogging this week over at Canadian Family magazine’s blog, Family Jewels, so it’s nothing but re-runs back here. Since I’m writing today about why sons are better than daughters, I thought it would be a good day to share this one from my archives, originally posted in September 2007.)

To my darling daughter, who will never be:

It may seem odd to begin a letter with a farewell, and perhaps even moreso a farewell to someone who never was, someone who never will be. But I needed to find a way to say goodbye to you, my daughter, because even though we never had the chance to say hello, you’ve always been a part of me. You’ve been with me – the idea of you – my whole life. As far back as I can remember, I expected you. I spent my life preparing for the act of mothering you. I carried the potential of you, my daughter, close to my heart, and in quiet moments I have loved to savour the imagining of you. But now, through the vagaries of fate and nature, it seems you are simply not to be.

It’s a wonder of the human heart that it can be filled with boundless joy at the idea of a son, and yet haunted by regretful longing on losing the idea of a daughter.

I am sad to have lost the opportunity to know you. I feel an empty hollow in the place I’ve always reserved for you. After a lifetime of expecting you, I’m struggling to let go of the idea of you, and with that, the idea of us as mother and daughter. Having felt you so keenly in my life, have expected you so fully, the reality of life without you still perplexes me slightly. “What do you mean I’ll never have a daughter?” It’s like trying to imagine a world without the colour red. Red has always been there; red belongs in the colour scheme of life.

I like to imagine that you would have been like me, but better. The best of me and of your father distilled, and improved upon by that which would have been uniquely you. You would have been precocious, and willful, and you would have kept your doting brothers wrapped around your little finger. You would have grown into a strong and capable woman, and you would have become, with the passage of the years, my friend as well as my daughter. We would have shared things that only a mother and daughter can share, and I would have treasured our unique relationship as much as I treasure the relationship I have with my own mother – a relationship I could only hope to replicate, as it would be impossible to improve upon it.

It may seem to be a little strange to say goodbye to someone who never existed; who never will exist. But to me, you were as real as the sunrise, as real as the stars that shine at night. I can’t touch those things either, but that hasn’t stopped me from believing in them. But now, after a lifetime of anticipating you, I relinquish you to the stars and banish the idea of you to the speculation of long, dark nights. What might have been, what will not be. In the darkest of those nights, I think of three lost souls, three babies miscarried, and even poor Frostie, and I wonder. I wonder if you were there, if you tried to arrive, if there was some great ironic twist of biology that prevented me from gestating a girl. I’ll never know.

While I may have spent my life expecting a girl, I’ve been delighted by the inherent joy of mothering my boys. My boys; those odd and adorable creatures whom I love beyond reason. I truly had no idea how wonderful it is to be the mother of boys. And though I can’t imagine life without them, the arrival of each boy somehow only deepened my certainty in your eventual arrival.

But now, finally, it’s time to say goodbye to you, my daughter, as I embrace with my whole heart the idea of spending my life being the princess, the diva, the queen among my coterie of men. I’ll miss you, my girl. I’ll miss holding a place for you in my life, and I’ll miss what might have been. I’ll have to adjust my sense of self, too, my sense of how my life will unfold from here. But my heart is full, and I have more blessings in my life than I ever dared hope for.

Goodbye, my beautiful daughter.

Zed-versus-Zee, the first in a series of reruns

Here’s another secret I’ve been keeping from you. (Two secrets in one month. Can you believe it?) I’ve been asked to guest-blog this week over at Canadian Family magazine’s Family Jewels blog. How cool is that? My first post should be up there later today – come on over and say hello! (Edited to add: it’s up!!)

I didn’t want to leave poor old blog completely neglected, though, and there simply isn’t enough time for two blogs and a photo habit this week. Instead, I’ve plumbed by not-inconsiderable archives to find a few favourite posts to share with you this week. You can call them re-runs, I’ll call them buried treasures.

First up, from 2005: Zed-versus-Zee, A Love Letter to Nancy.

It’s Nancy’s fault. She asked “So, which one is it (zed or zee)? Anyone know? And should we really care? Is it really a Canadian versus American thing? Or something else?”

Ooo ooo ooo! (dances in chair, waving hand in the air) I know, I know! I care!!

In fact, my darling Nancy, it is not so much a Canadian thing to say “zed” as it is an American thing to say “zee”. According to wikipedia:

In almost all forms of Commonwealth English, the letter is named zed, reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta. Other European languages use a similar form, e.g. the French zède, Spanish and Italian zeta. The American English form zee derives from an English late 17th-century dialectal form, now obsolete in England.

Is it really worth all this debate? Even Shakespeare himself cast aspersions on the dignity of the 26th letter of the alphabet with an insult I’m going to try to work into at least two conversations today: Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter! (King Lear, act II, scene II.)

You got me curious, though, so I did a little bit more research on the subject. According to the Concise Oxford Companion, “The modification of zed to zee appears to have been by analogy with bee, dee, vee, etc.” It seems Noah Webster, the dictionary guru, seems to have mass-marketed the “zee” pronunciation, along with the incorrect spelling of “centre”.

Apparently we Canadians aren’t the only ones feeling the effects of the Americanization of the “Sesame Street” phenomenon you mentioned and its influence on how you learned to say zee versus zed. I found a research paper titled, “Can Sesame Street bridge the Pacific Ocean? The effects of American television on the Australian language.” The introduction to her thesis talks about how just like here, Australian kids learn to say “zee” by watching Sesame Street and their parents correct them to say “zed”.

Sesame Street’s influence also gets mentioned in this chapter from the textbook Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance. He says,

With the use of “zee” stigmatized, it is perhaps strange that children should learn it at all. One source is pre-school television shows beamed from the United States, notably one called Sesame Street, which was almost universally watched by children in the 1960s when it had no serious rivals… Sesame Street and its imitators promote the alphabet with zeal, almost as a fetish, thus ensuring that their young viewers hear it early and recite it often. The “zee” pronunciation is reinforced especially by the “Alphabet Song,” a piece of doggerel set to music that ends with these lines:

ell em en oh pee cue,
ar ess tee,
yoo vee double-yoo, eks wye zee.
Now I know my ey bee sees,
Next time, won’t you sing with me?

The rhyme of “zee” with “tee” is ruined if it is pronounced “zed,” a fact that seems so salient that many Ontario nursery school teachers retain it in the song even though they would never use it elsewhere.

More than just ending the alphabet song with a jarring non-rhyme, the zed/zee conundrum poses problems for people trying to market technology across the border. CNews reports on a Toronto law firm who lobbied Bell Canada and Nortel to change the pronunciation from “zee” to “zed” in the directory on their voice mail system:

“We’ve had inquiries about why it is the way it is when we’re Canadian,” said Tammie Manning, a communications analyst at the law firm. “(People said) we’re not the States. We’re independent. Why should we be subjected to that?”

Several officials from Nortel insisted the technology to make the switch from “zee” to “zed” was simply not yet available. But by mid-afternoon Friday, following several calls from a reporter, the company’s director of corporate communications said Nortel would change the “zee” to “zed” as soon as possible.

And then, of course, there is the infamous Joe Canadian rant from Molson’s, which although overplayed and out of date, still merits mention in the discussion:

Hey, I’m not a lumberjack, or a fur trader, and I don’t live in an igloo, or eat blubber or own a dogsled. And I don’t know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada, although I’m certain they’re really, really nice. I have a Prime Minister… not a president, I speak English and French, not American and I pronounce it About, not A-boot.

I can proudly sew my country’s flag on my backpack, I believe in peacekeeping, not policing, diversity not assimilation, and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal. A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch, and it IS pronounced Zed, not Zee… ZED!! Canada is the 2nd largest land mass, the 1st nation of hockey, and the best part of North America. My name is Joe and I AM CANADIAN! Thank you.

So you see, dearest Nancy, it DOES matter, in a patriotic sort of way. Aren’t you sorry you asked?

Time Travel, recycled and re-used!

This is the first meme I ever did, and I liked it so much I did it again the next year. I intended to do it every year, but — like so many of my great intentions — seem to have lost it in the shuffle. As Homer said about the roasted pig: “It’s still good!”

15 years ago today I would have been:

  • finalizing my divorce (big, happy smile)
  • unpacking boxes after moving in to my first “own” place, a room rented in a student house in the Glebe shared with five other people
  • delirious with reclaimed freedom and terrified of being out on my own

10 years ago today I would have been:

  • finaling the plans for our July wedding (another big, happy smile!)
  • living in the Glebe a block away from that student house, in a gorgeous little bo-ho attic apartment with a balcony perched off the kitchen like a tree house
  • a month away from finding Katie, the world’s best doggie and my first baby

5 years ago today I would have been:

  • at home on maternity leave, with a newborn (Simon) and a two year old (Tristan) in the house
  • massively, pathetically sleep-deprived
  • a post-partum hormonal toxic disaster

1 year ago today I would have been:

  • at home on maternity leave with a newborn, a four-year old and a six-year old in the house!
  • coping with three much better than I coped with two, having just laid off our first nanny
  • taking Lucas for his first visit to the Children’s Hospital

This year I am:

  • thrilled with my new four-day work weeks
  • obsessed with photography in much the same way I’ve been obsessed with blogging for the past four years
  • very, very busy but very, very happy

Today I:

  • forgot to buy my April bus pass (the driver let me ride anyway, bless him) and forgot my building pass at home. Sigh.
  • will celebrate the early spring warmth by going for a photo-expedition at lunch time, perhaps behind the Parliament Buildings or over to the National Gallery.
  • am worried about my dad.*

Next year I hope:

  • to have a little bit more free time on my hands
  • to have a little bit more control over the chaos and a few more projects checked off the to-do list
  • to be doing more or less exactly what I’m doing now — but better!

(You like the vagueness here? Goal-setting was never one of my strengths!)

In five years I hope:

  • to be thinking about looking for a four-bedroom house
  • to be *this close* to having all three boys in school full-time
  • to be rejigging my priorities to be putting a little bit more emphasis back on my career

This was really fun to do, and surprisingly difficult on the prognostication parts. It’s quite interesting to read the ones I’ve written before and see what I chose to note as important at that time, too!

Let me know if you play along!

* My dad is in the hospital with a subdural hematoma, and they’ll have to operate some time in the next few days to relieve the pressure on his brain. It sounds a little bit too much like an episode of House for my liking. They don’t know exactly how it happened, but suspect it came from a tumble down some stairs quite a few weeks ago.

It’s still March, I have time to squeeze in one more post about breasts!!

So now that we’ve established that March is officially breast month here, let’s end the month with a flourish, shall we? And then we’ll have to find something else to talk about in April, lest I be compelled to change the blog name to “Postcards from my Bra”. Penises, perhaps?

Ahem, anyway, here’s a little secret I never told you. (I *know*!! Who would have guessed that I was capable of keeping a secret from the Interwebs? Not me, and certainly not Beloved!!)

So anyway, about breasts. Right. Last summer, I did some research and asked my GP for a referral to have breast reduction surgery. This is something I’ve toyed with, pondered over, and secretly desired for most of my adult life. I was completely fed up with trying to find bras that fit; at the time, my measurements were in the 35-36 range for band size and an F or G in cup size — the land of cup sizes beyond DD gets a little sketchy in the consistency department. More than the ill-fitting bras and puckered buttons on my shirt-fronts, though, I was sick to death of constantly being damp and itchy under my breasts and from having to reach under me and tuck the damn things out of the way every time I rolled over in bed. (Pencil test – ha! I could keep an entire stationery store hidden under there.)

The final injustice, though, was the sheer number of times my nipples were knelt on or stepped on while a toddler or child moved anywhere near me in bed. After a lifetime of being vexed by my breasts at every opportunity, I was more than happy to chop them down to a more manageable size. The idea of being a C cup seemed like winning the lottery… and if they would throw in a wee bit of a lift to get my nipples up and out of risk of being tucked into my waistband, so much the better.

After screwing up my courage for a couple of weeks, at my annual physical I asked my GP to make the referral for me. I wasn’t sure what kind of wait list I’d be facing, and I wasn’t ready to actually go through with the surgery until some time this summer or later, but I wanted to get in and see someone and explore my options. To my great consternation, a couple of weeks later my GP called to say that the surgeon wouldn’t even see me until my body mass index (BMI) was below 22, which would be at around 176 lbs for me. I’d just started the week before with Dr Bishop’s weight loss plan, and at the time I weighed 191 lbs.

I was furious. Furious! Not so much because I’d been thwarted — I wasn’t exactly convinced that I wanted the reduction in the first place. I was angry, though, that someone shaped like me could be denied this surgery sight-unseen, based solely on what are increasingly questionable calculations. No doubt I was overweight, but I was far from obese. I felt like the doctor should have at least seen me and assessed me in person.

By the time I was down below 170 lbs and within the surgeon’s “acceptable” weight range for a consult, I had lost my courage again. I haven’t called back to make the appointment. Part of that is, of course, because when you lose 30+ lbs, you do lose inches everywhere, breasts included. Part of that is the fact that we’re likely within weeks if not days of weaning Lucas — or, more specifically, of Lucas weaning himself. My band size is back down to a 32 or 33, and my cup size is somewhere just above a DD. To paraphrase an old favourite quote of mine, I used to be a 34DD, now I’m a 34 long. I’d still like to get it done, but I’m just not sure if the annoyance factor of dealing with my breasts as they are outweighs the annoyance factor of going through with the surgery.

I may yet screw up my courage enough to follow through on this, but for now I’ll wait it out and see how the ‘chafe’ factor plays out this summer. In the interim, though, I really do have to get myself a couple of quality bras. None of my old pre-pregnancy ones fit anymore — that in itself is enough to keep me happy for the time being!

Project 365: meta-pictures!

As promised, here’s the picture that accompanied the article in yesterday’s G&M. Conveniently, also Day 50 of my Project 365!

50:365 Look Ma, Wii're famous!

I had a much better week with the project this week. Some really fun shots and some neat opportunities. For Tristan’s birthday, we brought the kids bowling and I used the black-lighting to play with slow-sync flash, like these:

47:365 Fun with slow-sync flash

and

Slow-sync flash 5 (47b:365)

I liked the way this one turned out enough that I’ve finally replaced the five-year-old gravatar photo of me holding Tristan in a diaper and baby Simon:

46:365 Me

And I got out on Sunday and took some great pictures of the old fence I showed you the other day, and some of the ice on the Jock river breaking up. That and some old shoes gave me lots of photo fodder for the week:

Ice 1 of 2 (48b:365)Ice 2 of 2
Fence posts 1 of 248:365 Fence posts 2 of 249:365 Spring is fickle

Most of these have captions on Flickr, if you want to click through for a peek. There’s a perfectly good reason I took a picture of those old running shoes crusted in snow!

Hey, who’s that good-looking family on the cover of the Life section in today’s G&M?

Oh look, it’s us!

A couple of weeks ago, a writer from the Globe and Mail got in touch with me to ask about “Gaming Moms”. We chatted for a bit, and told her that while I’m not exactly a gaming mom, I have grown quite fond of our Wii after some initial reservations about bringing a video game system into the house. She asked if she could send a photographer over, and I said, “Hmm-let-me-think-about-it-okay-how’s-right-now?”

gm-10mar09

(Yeah, whatever, they juxtapositioned me playing video games with my family against Michelle Obama going to the gym. Thanks for THAT, G&M editors.)

The article itself is on page 2, and there’s a second picture that I like so much more. I’ll scan it tonight and put it up for you.

And yes, as a matter of fact a quarter after five on a weekday is perhaps the most inopportune possible time that one could invite a photographer from Canada’s National Newspaper over for a photo shoot. Hungry kids, tired parents, and the boys absolutely torqued with excitement: “We get to play Wii? Before dinner?? On a school night?!?”

Bit of a shame that she didn’t mention my other child, the blog, in the article. Ah well, one more clipping to add to the family therapy scrap book!

Plan B, six months later

Wow, it’s hard to believe that it’s been just over six months since I started my “Plan B” weight-loss plan. (And, for goodness sake, did none of you think to mention at the time that “Plan B” is a morning after pill as well? It took me months to figure out the google traffic!) Anyway, at the time of my last update back at the beginning of December, I’d just reached my goal weight of 170 lbs and hoped to be down to 160 lbs by the time I went back to work. Well, it took a little bit longer than that, but can you believe that for the first time since Beloved and I met back in 1995, I’m below 160 lbs?

In six months, I’ve lost almost 35 lbs (!!) and 6 inches off each of my waist, my hips and my bust, plus another inch or two off my thighs and even my arms. Woot! And to be totally honest with you, I’m not really even trying anymore but the weight keeps trickling off. Remember all those clothes I bought for back-to-work on Boxing Day? The pants and skirts are all too loose on me now! (Which begs the question: is it worthwhile to bring them in to be altered? Or do I have to re-buy in the next size down? And can you please just tolerate me bragging for one more second while I tell you that for the first time in my adult life I’m now wearing a size TEN in jeans?!? That’s down from a very snug 16 just six months ago!)

So because a few of you have asked me, here’s the six-month overview of how I lost 35 lbs without losing my mind!

  1. Sugar is evil. I think the number one most important thing I did in the active weight-loss part of this diet is cutting out as much sugar as possible. That means not only no cake and (whimper) cookies and chocolate bars, but really reading labels and trying not to eat anything that has fructose, glucose, maltose, honey, molasses or any other sugar derivative in the first five ingredients. In the first couple of months, I ate so little sugar that when I did eat a doughnut, my stomach actually ached. Now that I’m in maintenance mode, I’m a little more liberal with the sugar, but if my weight starts to creep back up, it’s going to be the first thing to go.
  2. Cut way, way down on refined carbohydrates and starches: bread, cereal, rice, pasta, crackers, pitas, oatmeal, tortillas, all that wonderful stuff. I tried to eliminate white flour products entirely and choose whole grains whever possible. (Whole grains are absorbed into your bloodstream much more slowly, leaving you feeling satisfied longer, and are altogether more healthy for you. And remember: multrigrain does NOT mean whole grain.) This was the hardest one for me. I’d eat one serving of organic heritage whole grain cereal for breakfast, and two other choices with dinner. Now it’s just routine, but a low-carb lunch was nearly impossible for a sandwich-lover like me at the beginning!
  3. Fat is not the enemy. (Sugar is the enemy.) I’ve kept a lot of full-fat foods in my diet, and I think they’re the reason I feel like I’m eating like a real person instead of eating rabbit food all day long. In the last six months I’ve eaten enough nuts, avocados and cheese to sink a ship. Seriously, not a day goes by that I don’t eat cheese of some sort. It’s so satisfying! And I’m not afraid to fry up some mushrooms in a little butter and oil for dinner, or drizzle a little oil on my veggies, or skimp on the salad dressing. Now, I’m not saying you should deep fry everything, but the official doctor-prescribed diet I was on called for five servings of fats per day, and I actually had to step up my fat consumption to meet it.
  4. Think whole: whole grains, and whole foods. Whole as in “not processed” or processed as little as possible. Real foods, as they come from nature, are better for your body than any chemically-altered pseudo-food advertised as low-cal or low-fat. Rather than eating a frozen entrée for lunch – which, by the way, is nearly impossible to find without some sort of pasta or rice or other enriched-grain product! – I’d cut a whole red pepper into slices, eat it with hummus (protien) and a couple of pieces of cheese (protien) and a glass of vegetable cocktail. My favourite lunch is either one of those mini-cans of spicy Thai chili tuna or a couple of ounces of sliced smoked salmon with a couple of ounces of cheese and a big handful of cherry tomatoes. In other words, the fewer ingredients the better.
  5. Don’t let yourself get hungry. In the beginning, I’d eat first thing in the morning (my 2/3 cup of cereal – and because it’s whole grain and full of fibre, there’s no sugar crash and I feel full for most of the morning), then around 10:30 (usually either a hard-boiled egg or a banana), then lunch, then another snack around 3:00 (often 10 almonds – surprisingly satisfying!), and dinner around 5:30.
  6. Dinner is for “normal” eating. Because I’d been careful most of the day, dinner did not really change much over what I used to eat. Hamburgers (home-made, of course!), fajitas or tacos, chicken parmasean with spaghetti, chili, pot-roast and veggies, hearty soup with crusty bread, even pizza… these are a few of the staples in our dinner rotation. Again, the key is moderation and portion control. And loading up on the veggies!
  7. Speaking of fruits and veggies, the last thing I’ll say is that it was a lot easier to load up on veggies when I started this back in August in the midst of harvest season than it is now in the dark heart of winter. I’m really trying to stick with organic produce wherever possible while also respecting a 100-mile rule, but there’s only so much you can do in Canada in February when you’re addicted to tomatoes and red peppers!

I really hope this doesn’t come across with the evangelical zeal of the recently converted reduced, but I am still rather shocked by my own success and am more than happy to share it. So far, even three weeks of sedentary cubicle life hasn’t had the detrimental effect I’d feared, and I’m the same weight today that I was back in 1995 when Beloved and I first met. Not bad, being on the cusp of 40 with the body I last saw at 25 — and three giant babies later, to boot! I guess I’ve earned the right to brag just a little bit. *grin*

Shameless, I am. Completely incorrigible.

I just can’t help myself!

30:365 Vote for our Mom!

Hey, if you won’t vote for me, do it for them. Don’t make my brazen exploitation of my kids be in vain! (Truth be told, they were great sports. Tristan’s developing a fine sense of humour, and as soon as I told him it was a grownup joke, he was in without question. I told Simon his sign said people should give him Smarties, and he was in, too.)

And hey, lookit that, because this is my lastest picture for Project 365, I can just segue into my weekly review of that project, too. See, multipurpose exploitation!!

23:365 Melty24:365 Vote for me!! Vote for me!!26:365 Snack time!
27:365 Winter day at the park28:365 Pest

When I could draw myself away from using my children for my own nefarious purposes (and really, why else would one have children in the first place?) I had a bit of an addiction to photos of the Parliament Buildings this week. They’re lovely in any light!

29:365 Parliament in pink
25:365 Mooning the Peace Tower

And (speaking of segues) I’ll likely have at least one more photo to add to the Parliament Building set today. Sounds like President Obama will be arriving on Parliament Hill just about the time I can take my lunch break. Got my camera and my scarf and mitts (it’s snowing, of course) and I think I’ll go check it out. This morning I was walking up Sussex just in time to see a motorcade pulling out of the US Embassy and heading toward the airport – no doubt the Ambassador heading out to greet his boss.

[Edited to add: I was there! Tried to get to Parliament Hill to get pix of people rolling snowballs to stand on to get a better view – does it get any more Canadian than that? – but by the time I left at 11 am pedestrian access was blocked. Instead, stood on the E&C patio at the corner of Colonel By and Rideau and shared an elevated planter with a little boy of 10 or so years old to get a better view over the crowd. Felt the lovely surge of excitement as the crowd cheered and waved when the motorcade past — but was too busy taking pictures to actually figure out which Cadillac One might actually have Barack Obama in it! Will post pix tonight!]

All that, and it’s my parents’ wedding 43rd anniversary today too, something that needs no segue. Happy Anniversary, Granny and Papa Lou!