Weighing in

Took my 5'9" fully grown 16 year old son to the psychiatrist. He weighed in at 210lbs. Out of curiosity I stepped on after him (didn't let him look). OMG I weigh 212! *sigh* I have NEVER weighed this much. Even 9 1/2 months pregnant after having gained 70lbs during my pregnancy I was still 7lbs less and I lost 20lbs the next day and 20 more pounds within the next 2 weeks(gave birth to Bob and most of it was water weight).

My sister's wedding is in 2 months. I'm Matron of Honor, and my little sister is... little. I already look freakishly tall next to her as she is only 5'3" and I'm 5'7". (This is my little sis and my niece and nephew).

I went to the doctor for a check up. Will find the results of my thyroid test soon, and need to be fasting for the rest of the tests. My doctor is very understanding about my stress levels. I told him that I was worried about not being able to stay on my meds consistantly, and he advised me that I should be able to go back on my meds full strength unless I'd been off them for more than a few days.

I mentioned how upset I was about my weight gain, and how frustrated I am that I can't sleep. He was very sweet and said he would like to see me lose 10-15lbs, but he wasn't going to give me a hard time about it (because I have enough stress). Of course I wouldn't mind losing 10-15lbs but would prefer losing 70-75! This is not a good weight for me, and no matter how many times I watch How To Look Good Naked (which is a great show by the way), feeling good about myself doesn't mean I don't need to lose the weight.

So I started South Beach yesterday. Now I've got to figure out how to start exercising. I'd love to take my fat dogs out walking, but the Husky (80+lbs) pulls so hard she's miserable to walk with.

My sweet fat Prince Cuddles blew his ACL again, and is limping (we can't afford to get it fixed right now) so no walks for him.

Princess, our "puppy" is so undisciplined... ah, who am I kidding...

it's COLD out there. I am NOT an outdoor person.

It's just going to have to be me and Richard.
I want to go from this -------------------------> back to this.

This is realistic I think. The picture on the right was after having two kids, and only 10 years ago.

School Count Down

2 weeks, 7 hours, 40 minutes



I can't wait until school starts. Even my kids can't wait. Most of them need the structure and have had to act out to get the restrictions that regular Summer days don't provide.



Bear started football practice at 12:01am Monday morning. What idiot decided midnight was a good idea for the first football practice of the new school year? Poor hubby had to take Bear to practice, hang out for 3 hours, drive him home, and still get up for work in the morning. Bear now has practice every afternoon for 5-6 hours for the rest of the Summer, and he's fighting with his girlfriend, so I shouldn't have much more trouble out of him.



The kids are loving the aerobics every morning. It gives them such a feeling of accomplishment and a reason to get up every morning. Not to mention how great they feel that they're doing something good for them that is so much fun... OK, that's bull crud. They hate me for it, whine the whole time, try to fake their way through it ("my knee hurts," "I am too moing my feet,""I'm only going to do it for 20 minutes and then I'm stopping"....) , but at least they've stopped fighting me quite as much.




I have found one great way to keep them moving. If they don't do it well (and I keep them moving, but am not demanding perfection) or if they stop? They get to do the Gilad tape with me! Gilad is HARD! So far I've only had to make each of the girls have to do it again once! Ponito loves it and is always enthusiastic, energetic and really excellent! Bear does it all wrong and might be hurting himself more than getting any benefit from it, but now that football practice has started I'm done having him do it anyway. Have to give him props though he went after it without complaint and worked through to the end without stopping (once we switched to Gilad).

I've called and left messages with Nebraska repeatedly. No one is returning my calls (at least I don't think they are, I lost my cell phone last week so they might be calling that number. I turned off the service (beause I was afraid Bear had taken it again), so hopefully they hadn't left any messages on it before I shut it down. I have no idea how to check it remotely.

America's Got Talent is over, and I better get some sleep. I'm single parenting it for the rest of the week while Hubby teaches scuba diving after work every evening and does check out dives over the weekend.

2 weeks, 5 hours, 55 minutes

Hubby doesn't want to come home

Life is too crazy around here as usual.

Ponito is still working on paying back his "fine" (has to pay back double the $10 he made) for selling porn to the neighbor's 10 year old.

Bear is ungrounded almost completely except for 3 more days of not being allowed to talk to his girlfriend because they lied about her father dying so she could come over while Bear was still grounded. After several doctor's appointments, the good news is he doesn't have a hernia! The bad news is he has protein in his urine that they can't explain (so for 24 hours he gets to collect his urine in a jug - thank goodness he is old enough to handle this himself!).

Bob is now 13... 'nough said.

Kitty is still waiting for insurance approval for admission to residential treatment.

I am still a stay at home mom so I can keep Kitty and everyone calm and regulated - and take everyone to the therapists and doctor's office (last couple of days that's averaged 3 visits a day). The bad news for me is I'm sitting on my tuckus messing with my computer all day and all night (insomnia) and I now weigh over 200+lbs. Last time I weighed this much I lost 40lbs in the next 3 days and gained my beautiful daughter, Bob. *sigh* The good news is I now have the time to do aerobics every day.

I'll have to get a picture of the whole crew doing aerobics. My 4 children, my niece (age 7) and nephew (age 10), and my mom (won't tell you her age! ;) ). We were all working out to Richard Simmons, but Bear insisted that Richard is too gay, and he can't handle it. My personal theory is he doesn't like the fact that he is not very coordinated and has trouble following along.

So today we tried Gilad. You canNOT say that Gilad looks gay! You can however say that his sessions are very HIGH impact and much harder than Richard's. The girls all dropped out. The little boys did pretty well (they're pretty active and wiry). Bear hung in there, but he couldn't do the steps right, and I'm betting he'll be sore tonight. He insists it's Gilad or nothing though. Tomorrow I'll have the girls do Richard and I'll teach the boys how to modify Gilad to low impact.

You can definitely tell Bear and Kitty have got some coordination issues and problems with their brain wiring. Kitty is also very overweight (mostly due to the medications). The girls had their well checks yesterday and Kitty weighs less than 1lb more than Bob. Bob is over 5 inches taller!

Hubby is still sane (though I don't know how) with as little sleep as he gets from all the stress. He found out today that we're being sued by a former employee for backpay (we owe it to several, but so far so good on the others), add that to me being sued by a former client, and that's a lot of bad news. We've talked about bankruptcy, but don't know if we can afford the lawyer. Hubby is as honest as the day is long and doesn't want to welch on anything. I don't either, but I'm trying to be practical.

The property for the business is officially foreclosed on, but we do not have to be out just yet. Our new rented office space will be ready on Monday. We've been packing... slowly. It's hard to do because I don't feel comfortable leaving the kids (even with Grandma). I'm so upset that Nebraska is dragging their feet on this. Kitty should have been almost out by now!

I hardly ever answer the phone anymore. Almost every call is a debt collector or an agency offering to negotiate debt solutions. I spend most of my time on the computer, but between the new website I'm helping start, all the blogs I read (245+ blog posts I was behind on) 125+ e-mails, and 3 pages here... even when I stay up until 5:30am (did I mention my meds don't help with my insomnia) I can't seem to catch up.

I don't blame Hubby for not wanting to come home. I wish I had a magic wand that could fix everything. OK, enough whining! Going to crawl into the bathtub with a trashy romance novel and pretend I don't have kids!

Please say bad things come in threes

So since I was supposed to take our only car to a networking meeting Thursday night, and Friday was going to be a logistical nightmare with the boys out of school, the girls needing to register at public school, the meeting to review Kitty's assessment results with the new school district, Kitty having meltdown after meltdown, not enough money to cover payroll...

the car breaks down on the way home from Bear's therapy. We had just made a u-turn because I thought I had forgotten to pick up one of Kitty's meds when it died (I realized after it died that I was wrong).

Apparently this was God's way of reminding me that I promised to get more exercise - so we walked home (only a couple of blocks and luckily the park on the way had a bathroom - I had to pee! Stupid males laughed at me when I complained that the seat on the outdoor potty in 40 degree weather was darn cold!).

So Grandma loaned us her car and Poppy helped Hubby tow the dead car to the shop. I missed my meeting, but decided Kitty needed me home anyway.

Today started fairly smoothly. Hubby drove the girls to the private school for their last day (and to finish tests). The boys had the day off so we let them sleep in and then had to talk them into getting ready to go. Why is it shoes go missing on days like these? I had to find 2 pair!

Of course I forgot my phone.

One of our clients who was supposed to make it possible for us to get a decent size check to cover payroll, of course didn't come through.

Kitty's assessment review went pretty well, they were very clear with the new school district that Kitty needs a resouce classroom (small group setting) for pretty much everything and PE would be overwhelming. I don't think they totally agreed, but we have a good starting point for the ARD - which of course is the bad news.

They will schedule an ARD as quickly as possible, but no one recommends Kitty starts school until her schedule is hammered out. So she gets to come to work with us.

I had so much fun filling out all the registration forms, twice. With all their already redundant questions.

Bob had worked so hard to finish her Texas History coursework, and now the public school insists on making her take 2 exams on her first day to prove that she learned it. Even though the private school is accredited. With any luck she'll get to take an extra elective instead.

Hubby and I missed a client meeting to go to the meeting for Kitty.

We had to pay the private school for half this month's tuition for the girls ($500+)

Luckily our car was repaired relatively cheaply ($500+).

Hubby went back to work for a meeting with one of our biggest clients. The client just layed off 14 people and told us that while they love our work, they are canceling the project.

Kitty had at least 3 meltdowns.

Then it got more fun, but this post is long enough.