Not the best trip I’ve ever had …

I’m back from London, which is probably a good thing on many levels. For one, it was a working trip so I didn’t do anything touristy at all. For another, I missed my family a LOT. And finally, I’ve had better trips. In fact, this was probably one of my worst trips ever. I know it could be lots worse, but all in all, I hope to never have another trip like this again.

The flight over was bumpy, but I expected that. There have been some pretty high winds in the UK, so as we approached the coast, I wasn’t surprised to find my sleep interrupted by turbulence. I got some sleep, though, which is more than I can say for my first trip over in September. The flights from Houston are all evening flights, so sleeping on the plane is essential to maintaining sanity. After we arrived, I took the Heathrow Express from Terminal 4 over to Paddington, which is where my hotel was located. Since I made a New Year’s goal to be  more “me” I decided to try out a new hotel, The Hotel Indigo. I read the reviews, and noted that there were some comments about the rooms being small, but I thought they couldn’t really be all that small. By American standards, the Hilton Paddington I stayed at in September has very small rooms too. I thought it might be a bit smaller than those rooms were, but I was in for a big surprise.

When I arrived at the hotel around 11 am, my room wasn’t ready, which I expected. I checked in, unloaded my bags and headed back to the train station about two blocks over to take a look around and check out food options for the week. But after about 30 minutes of wandering around, I sat down on one of the seats where folks wait for their train. I realized 30 minutes later I wasn’t really feeling well, so I went back to the hotel and asked for my backpack, which contained all my electronics including my Nook Color. I figured I would just sit in the lounge and wait for my room to be ready. The hotel staff, upon hearing I wasn’t feeling well (my head was pounding) leaped into action, fetching my bag, getting me some water, and getting a room ready as quickly as possible. In about 20 minutes, the room was ready and I was on my way upstairs. I had no idea what awaited me.

In the room, I found a bed that I eyed dubiously. Was it really a double bed? It seemed really small, but since I haven’t slept in a double bed since I was about 18, I couldn’t be sure. My bed at home is a king, and I have an absolutely huge bedroom, so I decided to give the hotel room the benefit of the doubt. Except, when I got ready to unpack, I realized I only had about 18 inches of space to hang up my things. And there wasn’t anything with drawers (like a dresser or chest) for me to store my unmentionables. I used all the hangers in the “closet” and the rod was packed full. The rest of my clothing went on a couple of shelves in the wardrobe. But what to do about my now empty suitcase? There was barely enough room around the bed to walk, let alone store a bag, and my options were very limited. I finally settled on putting the luggage holder used to pack and unpack, in the corner opposite the door coming into the room, and putting the bag on that. Of course, that meant I had about six inches of space to get around the bed to the bathroom, so I ended up going across the bed most of the time to get to it. I asked a co-worker to come by and take a look to see if I was just being a “spoiled American” or if the room was indeed very small. She agreed that it was too small, and I decided to move to a new location (which I did on Wednesday).

Once I got to the hotel on Sunday, I realized that I’d left my computer power cord at home. Great.

Monday was fairly simple – went to the office, went to dinner, nothing exciting, except that a co-worker did have a power cord I could use for my machine that he let me borrow for the week.

Tuesday, I went to the office, dealt with issues there (and there were lots of issues, trust me), looked for a new hotel, made reservations, and went back to the hotel. I wanted to grab some dinner at the little Italian place down the way from the hotel and bring it back to my room. Fortunately they do “take away” food (a lot of places in London don’t), but after I placed my order, I found they don’t accept American Express. Bummer. I went back to the hotel and ate in the restaurant there. I had fish & chips and it was pretty good, except for the mushy peas. I don’t like peas to begin with, and mushy peas are disgusting looking. Ick! Oh, and I packed my stuff to leave the hotel.

Wednesday, I woke up early, checked out of the hotel, and got over to the Hilton at Heathrow Terminal 4 with little trouble. I got checked in, but of course, at 8 am, my room wasn’t anywhere near ready, so I left my suitcase there and went on to the office, where I dealt with even more nightmarish troubles. My co-worker and I went out to dinner at a place called Pizza Express – it’s not American pizza obviously, but it wasn’t bad.

Thursday was probably the most challenging day there. I had to meet my team at a different location, where I’d never been before. My co-worker warned me that it would take about an hour and a half to get there, so I left my hotel at 7:15 am (we were to meet around 9-ish). I made the switch from one Tube line to another with no trouble, then the train would move about 20 feet and stop. Wait five minutes, move another 20 feet, and stop. The driver eventually said that there was a problem “up the track” and he apologized for the delay. The hour and a half quickly turned into more than two hours. And when I finally got to where I was going, I had some trouble finding the office where I was supposed to be. But once I got there, all was fine. The day went by pretty quickly, albeit with more surprises than I thought necessary, not all of them good. That evening, we went to a steakhouse called Gaucho’s that was pretty good. The drinks were good, the food was good, the company was great. We had a lot of fun, and it was one of the better meals I had while in London (the food there doesn’t do much for me). However … we stayed way too late at the restaurant, and I missed the last train going to my stop for the hotel. I had NO cash on me, and I knew from the last time I was there that most cabs don’t take credit cards. Unsure what to do, I got on the train going in the direction I needed to go, but unsure what I’d do once I got to the end of the line, which happened to be one of the airport terminals. I had my husband here in the States trying to find some alternative for me to get back to the hotel, but I only had about 20 minutes – the time the train was above ground.

Something most people don’t realize is that Heathrow closes down some time around midnight. As in, there are no planes in or out until the next morning around 6 am. It was 1 am when I reached Terminal 1, I was a bit worried I wouldn’t be able to get back to Terminal 4, which is some distance away. I asked someone, and was told to go out to the taxi stand in front of the terminal and take a cab. That’s fine, except I didn’t have any cash, but what else could I do? I went out and found the taxi stand, where a woman was directing the cabbies. She looked at me and said, It’s cash only. I looked her right in the eye, and say, “No problem!” Except, of course, I didn’t have any cash. I climbed into the cab, figuring that if worse came to worst, maybe I could get the hotel to pay for the cab and add it on my bill. I knew there was a cash machine in an alcove behind the registration desk, but I also knew that I didn’t have my PIN number for my AmEx card, and I wasn’t sure if my personal bank card would work over there. When we got to the hotel, I played stupid and told the cabbie I didn’t have quite enough money and I would run into the hotel and be right back with the cash. Lucky for me, he was the easy-going sort and agreed. I ran into the hotel and went to the ATM machine, and prayed. And prayed some more, and nearly hit my knees when it spit out the cash. I went back, paid the cabbie and went up to my room.

Friday passed peacefully enough, and before I knew it, I was on a plane back home to Houston. I have to say, Houston has never looked so good as it did on Saturday afternoon. I guess I was never meant to be a world traveler, because I do love being home with the people who mean the most to me. I may not like Houston all that much, but I adore the people who live here!

 

2012 Goals

At this time every year, folks start thinking about their new resolutions for the coming year. And then by the second week of January, they’ve forgotten most of them. I am, sadly, no different. Every year I have big plans, but in no time at all, they dissipate into the ether like ghosts on November 1st.

Looking back on my 2011 goals, I don’t think I did too badly with them. There are still areas where I can improve, to be sure, but overall, I did make progress on them. So, some of them will show up in my 2012 goal list. But I want 2012 goals to be a short list of things I can focus on, not some long list where things will get lost. This is what I’m thinking for 2012 …

Eat healthier meals (i.e., more fish, chicken and veggies, less red meat and boxed foods).

Spend more time being me (quilting, reading, photography, etc)

Make larger strides at work

Spend more time with my family

Enjoy my vacation time, even if I never leave the house. This means NOT checking emails and turning off my work cell.

Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? We will see how it plays out in the coming year!

 

A Year in Recap – 2011

While I haven’t done a lot of blogging this year, it’s definitely been a wild ride for our family. So much has changed for us, but much of it has been positive.

The first part of the year was fairly quiet, I think. Chris turned the big 3-0. But, I don’t remember any really big happenings, except that I was hired permanently after spending a year working contract for the company. In June, my daughter moved back in with us, after graduating from high school. She lived with her dad for the previous five years, so having her here on a daily basis took some adjustment, but now I think we’re settled. She had huge changes in her life – she graduated from high school, moved 75 miles to be here, got her very first job, and started college all in a space of about three months! And my son started his junior year of high school – that was sort of hard on me!

In September, I made my very first trip out of the country (if you exclude Mexico) to the UK, for work. I’m going again in a couple of weeks, so the new may wear off that very quickly. LOL In October, we made the decision once and for all, to let the house I bought nearly five years ago to be foreclosed on by the bank. That was a difficult decision, to be sure. But we found a house to rent in the same neighborhood and moved in November. Everyone agrees that the new house has a much nicer layout than the old one, but sometimes I still miss “my” house. It breaks my heart to think that I lost that house because the bank was playing games with me. But in the end, maybe it works out for the best; we had a wonderful holiday season in this house, and it’s not quite over yet – we still have New Year’s Eve and Day coming toward us!

We hosted both of our families on different days for Christmas – mine on the 24th, Chris’s on the 25th. It was a great experience, but in the future, we think we’ll spread them out some. I don’t think my family will be adverse to celebrating a week early – due to work schedules, everyone couldn’t be with us anyway. If we change our family gathering to the weekend before Christmas, I think we can make it work next year.

This year has just flown by, and I’m sure next year will not be different in that regard. But I’m looking forward to another year of awesomeness with my family.

 

I’d like mornings better if they started later. ~ Author Unknown

I have a “carpe diem” mug and, truthfully, at six in the morning the words do not make me want to seize  the day.  They make me want to slap a dead poet.  ~Joanne Sherman

Anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m not a morning person. I’ve never been a morning person, and at 43, I feel confident in predicting that I will never be a morning person. I am frequently aware of the sun rising, thanks to having colleagues in London who, by the time I manage to get my computer running around 6:30 am, are already thinking about what their evening plans hold. However, most often, I don’t take the time to really notice the sun coming up.

This morning, my daughter had to be at work at 6:45 am. She, like thousands of others who work retail, is in the throes of helping those doing their holiday shopping. Sadly, her truck has died a horrible, terrible death, and we have only one car at the moment. Since I need mine today, I found myself trekking to her store to drop her off at a very inhumane 6:15 this morning.

I first noticed a hint of color just as we left our neighborhood, a faint paleness in the sky to the east, just a tinge of navy blue among the black. Moments later, I saw a hint of palest orange reflecting off the clouds on the horizon. I was driving, though, so I had to focus on the road, dark as it was. But just moments after that, something caught my attention in the corner of my eye – a small break-through of orange, and a shift of color from navy to a dark purple – that told me this sunset would be beautiful.

Despite the fact that I’m not a morning person – if I am going to witness a sunrise, I’d rather do it from the other side of midnight – I am a photographer, an artist at heart, and I have watched more sunrises than anyone with an aversion to 5 am should ever see. I’ve stood on the beach at 5 am, camera on tripod, freezing my buns off, waiting for the first peak of a sunrise. Unlike sunsets, which can be somewhat predictable in their results, a sunrise is always a surprise. It’s really difficult, at 4 am when you wake up to go shoot a sunrise, to really know what it’s going to look like, unless it happens to be pouring rain, at which point, I generally crawl right back into bed and go back to sleep. But without that key indicator, one never really knows what’s coming with the sunrise. I have found the most beautiful, photo-worthy sunrises take place in the fall or winter, with partly cloudy skies and slow breezes. The hard part sometimes, particularly when the moon has already disappeared for the night, is determining how clear or cloudy the sky may be.

This morning, the conditions were perfect. Kerstin asked me if we could stop to get donuts, and I was somewhat distracted, considering in my mind how one would translate the sunrise I could already tell would be spectacular, into a quilt. Once I started home after dropping her off, I was able to watch the sunrise without really taking my eyes off the road. It was beautiful. By this time, a thin strip of orange was visible on the bottom of the clouds, which had taken on a deep periwinkle color. As the moments passed, the orange became wider, and the periwinkle grew darker. Above that, however, was the most brilliant blue that occurs in nature. That color of clear skies dotted with clouds of gold, purple, and orange.

A few more moments passed, and more clouds turned orange, their fluffy brilliance appearing almost painted by an unseen hand in the sky. This is when some clouds take on an almost unnatural look, looking as if they were smudges of color on a canvas – they just never look real to me. I’ve often wondered what causes that, but never remember once I get to a computer to actually try to find an answer. At any rate, my breath caught a little in my throat, and I waited for the scene to unfold.

Suddenly, the sky looked like an inverted ocean, full of purple, orange and gold waves moving gently. An old photographer friend of mine once told me, don’t forget to look behind you when taking sunset photos. There’s a lot going on back there, too. That’s also true of sunrises, although in this case, I couldn’t really see behind me. I could, however, see to either side of where the sun was coming up. Peach, purple, orange and blue cascaded across the sky to either side of the sun, which was just beginning to peak over the horizon as I reached home. I stood in the garage, watching the rest of the show unfold – the clouds became a deep orange color, the purple was pushed further out of my field of view … and then, just as suddenly as it had become a magical sunrise, it was over. The sun was up over the horizon, and the sky looked like an ordinary sky. the orange coloring and the cloud definition was gone, it looked slightly overcast and dull. It looked like the sky normally does when I remember to look out of my office window in the morning. It was over.

But the memory of that sunrise will stay with me throughout the day. It was a great way to start a day that I wasn’t so enthusiastic to meet this morning. Maybe it’s God’s way of reminding me that even the mundane routine things can be special, even spectacular, if we take the time to really appreciate them. Message received, Sir. Message received.

If you want to know what I saw this morning, this is a very rough photo, taken with my cell phone, from my driveway. Even in it’s roughness, maybe you can also appreciate the beauty in the mundane!

 

Two more days

And the bulk of the move will be finished. On Tuesday we move the furniture, with the exception of the pool table. While we may be able to move it ourselves (others have done it, I know), we have opted to have professionals do it for us. It will be the very last thing to move, though.

Today, after the Texans game, I’ll be headed to the new place to clean up a bit. We’ve moved all the boxes over, and the kitchen is unpacked and my studio is mostly unpacked. Once we get furniture in, I can finish unpacking the clothes that go in the dresser (the kids do their own moving stuff like packing & unpacking), and making some changes to the house to make it more livable for us – like removing the towel bars in both bathrooms to make room for bookcases. While the house is large, storage is at a premium, particularly in the bathrooms, so we’re having to make some changes there.

But, the bathrooms DO have clean towels, and have been cleaned (and will be cleaned again before we move in, probably tomorrow). In fact, about the only thing missing at this point is furniture. I was determined that since my vacation officially begins tomorrow, I didn’t want to spend the entire time packing, moving, and unpacking. I think we’ve done a decent job of having things unpacked that could be unpacked, so we won’t be living with a mountain of boxes for several weeks – which would drive me nuts, and cause me to spend my entire vacation unpacking, at least until everything was sufficiently put away. My closet is slowly filling up with clothes – I take a few every time I go over there, leaving only enough here to get me through till Tuesday. I’ll be so glad when this move is over!

What I’m really looking forward to is some studio time, even though it will now be in my bedroom. And Thanksgiving! I can’t believe it’s less than two weeks away. And of course, I’m really looking forward to spending time with my husband and kids while I’m off. I am so excited about the next eight weeks or so, I can hardly contain myself – the holidays in a new house, new decorating opportunities, and just the excitement of the holidays themselves practically give me a contact high! LOL I don’t know why I’m so excited for the holidays this year – maybe it the relief of four years of stress, or maybe just the idea of being with my family, but this holiday season will be fantastic, I know it.

 

Hard to believe

But it’s nearly Thanksgiving! In just two and a half weeks, we’ll be celebrating one of my favorite holidays. I really love this time of year (I think I’ve mentioned that before), and this year I’m really excited to decorate a new home for the holidays, spend time with my family, and get moved.

The Big Move will take place on November 15th. We’ve been moving some things over in the last week – bookcases, boxes, dining table, just to list a few things. I’ve started to unpack boxes, too. Everything that goes in the kitchen has been put away. Linens are put away, so everyone will have clean towels & washcloths when we move in. My studio is being unpacked, so when we move in, I can just bring in my tables & machines and voila! I’m ready to finish Christmas projects.

Before you know it, we’ll have zoomed past Thanksgiving, right into Christmas. What I don’t understand is, why do so many people zoom past Thanksgiving right into Christmas before Halloween is even over?! I love Christmas, I really do, and maybe it’s that I’m getting older, and want time to slow down, but I was a bit irritated to see the Christmas decorations up all over town on the first of November! Even the Home Owner’s Associations in our area have decided to put up decorations. What is up with that?!

I saw something the other day – and I really wish I could remember where it ws, but I can’t – about “Respect the Bird.” It was all about not skipping over Thanksgiving and getting caught up in Christmas. I think this is an excellent idea. We spend half our lives wishing it away, or ignoring it (anyone else remember being a kid, praying to grow up?), and the other half wondering where the time has gone. This year, I am going to make an extreme effort not to over think Christmas before Thanksgiving. I’m going to enjoy every minute leading up to Black Friday (which is an ominous name in it’s own right, isn’t it?) and not try to leap too far ahead. Like any quilter/artist/crafter, I will be working on gifts before Thanksgiving, but I won’t turn on a single Christmas song (never mind that I was singing them last week without even realizing it), pull out a single string of lights, or even consider a Christmas tree until the evening of Thanksgiving at the very earliest.

Instead, I will spend my time moving, unpacking boxes, working on making gifts for the holiday season, determining what I’ll make for Thanksgiving dinner, and enjoying the time with my family. The day after Thanksgiving, I will turn my thoughts to Christmas, but until then … the reason for THIS season is the Bird!

 

I know I’ve been bad

At Posting. And I’m sorry about that. I’m hoping that things will slow down a little in the very near future and I will have more time for blogging and other things I love doing. Please bear with me … the move, work, and stress has just about made me crazy. But I think things will be better soon.

Sadly, our dog Frasier passed away suddenly on Friday. He was such a huge part of our lives, and we miss him terribly. He was totally awesome, and even though he wouldn’t ever really hurt anyone, he was very serious about his “watch dog” duties, prowling around the house making sure it was secure, barking at anyone (or any cat) that passed by outside, and sleeping in the hallway where he could keep an eye on both kids, me and C. I’m not sure how a dog keeps an eye on anyone when sleeping, but he did. Since he was only six years old, and had never really been sick with anything other than an ear infection, and wasn’t sick when he passed on, we were in shock when he died. He went from being happy, seemingly healthy and loving to being gone in less than 15 minutes.

We have rented a house in the same neighborhood where we currently live. It’s great. T can still go to school where he’s been going, and we’re still pretty close to my office. It’s not the same layout as our current house, but it’s still very nice – in fact, there are some things I like about it better than our current place. For example, the kitchen, breakfast and den are all open to one another. But it is three bedrooms instead of four, and it doesn’t have a true gameroom. We will be using the formal dining & living rooms as a gameroom, which is fine with me, and C will have an office instead of me having a dedicated studio. Instead of that, the master bedroom will double as a bedroom and a studio. Since it’s pretty much ginormous, I’m ok with that.

There’s a lot of work to get the house ready to live in, because it wasn’t cleaned before we got the keys over the weekend, and we already had a service incident (a toilet tank broke upstairs, causing water to come through the ceiling into the office; fortunately we hadn’t move anything in there at that point), so we probably won’t move for a couple weeks yet. We’re fine with that, because we still have tons to do in the current house, but that means we’ll be split between two houses for a couple of weeks – some stuff here, some there.

Once the new place is cleaned up and we have everything situated, I’ll try to remember to post some pics. Maybe around Christmas … 2013 …

 

 

Boxes, boxes everywhere!

We have been packing for the last week, and I am pleased to report that nearly all the packing is completed. We still have a few things in the master bedroom to pack, some dishes and glasses in the kitchen, and some knick knacks, but for the most part, we are in pretty good shape. And that’s a good thing, considering we’ll start moving in just over a week from today. We have a plan …

We figure we’ll get the keys on either Monday or Tuesday next week – Monday would be better, but some people are funny about giving them to you early. Once we do have them, though, we’ll start moving boxes and small furniture items to the new house and unpacking as we can. We would like to have all the boxes moved and mostly unpacked by the 15th, when we will be moving the furniture. We hope that by the time we move the big pieces of furniture, we will only have to put clothing in dresser drawers and unload the last bit of kitchen/bathroom stuff and voila! Unpacking finished in a couple of hours.

Well, that’s the plan anyway …

 

 

The End, or a New Beginning?

I’ve mentioned here before the struggles we’ve had trying to hold on to our house. It’s been a horrible experience, which I have not documented here for the sake of a little privacy, but suffice it to say that no matter how hard we tried, we were not able to work things out with Bank of America. After years of trying to come to an amicable agreement, we have decided that our health and sanity is more important than trying to hold on to this house. And so, with mixed emotions, we have decided to let go of the house and move on.

I know that there are few folks who will take responsibility for losing their home to foreclosure, but the brunt of this problem rests squarely on my shoulders. It wasn’t that I willfully or even accidentally missed any payments that caused my problems. I didn’t suddenly lose my job and face a loss of income. And I didn’t have some massive medical issue that made me miss a payment. No, none of these things occurred. My problems with this house started with a payment that my mortgage company at the time, Countrywide, claimed had been returned to them for non-sufficient funds. It took them four months to decide that the payment had been returned for NSF before they let me know about it. That’s when they decided to add exorbitant fees to the account, going back to the first day of the month for the “returned payment”. Of course, upon receiving their letter, I immediately called my bank to find out of the check had ever been presented – after all, the money was still in my account, and I couldn’t locate an NSF fee from my own bank. My bank insisted that the check had never been presented for payment, and thus, never returned for non-sufficient funds.

I called Countrywide to try to make the payment, and to discuss the fact that my bank said the payment had never been presented. I also hoped to get them to admit the mistake and reverse the fees. To the contrary, they told me that not only would they not accept the payment, as it was now a “partial payment,” thanks to all the fees they had added to my account, they would not reverse or even reduce the fees, and they in their turn insisted that the original payment had been returned. I asked to speak to a supervisor, thinking someone at a higher level would help, but never could get past the first line of customer service. I hung up and made a trip to my own bank.

At my bank, I again checked to be sure that the original payment in question had not been presented for payment. It had not, they assured me. I asked the bank manager to write a letter stating this, and he did. I sent it to Countrywide, asking them to again reconsider their position, reverse the fees and accept the payment. Weeks went by before I got a response – no way, it said, in effect. By now, one payment was returned to me, one was the original payment in question that they claimed had been returned by my bank, and another payment had been refused as the account was “seriously past due.” I called again, and was told that they could “redo the loan” and fix all the issues. I agreed, thinking that at least everything would be caught up again. I was told that during the period in which they were reworking the loan, not to make any payments. That was not a problem, since they wouldn’t even accept a payment, so I waited. And waited. And waited some more. I’d call every so often to find out what was going on, and would be told it was in progress. Seven months later, I saw a man outside my home taking pictures. I went out and asked him what he was doing, and he said it was in relation to the loan by Countrywide. I thanked him and went back inside.

Three months after that, I finally had the new paperwork in hand. A total of ten months had gone by since they started the process to “rework” my loan. During that time, Bank of America announced plans to purchase Countrywide, so I was concerned that might throw a kink into the works, but I was assured it would not. I signed the paperwork, returned it, and waited for my new payment information. I got that about two weeks later, and I thought, “Good, it’s done. I can get on with life again.” But I believe it was this mis-step – allowing Countrywide to “rework” the loan – that has caused all of the problems I have since experienced. On a fairly regular basis, I would get letters from BofA that would state I owed them a dollar amount that was in the thousands of dollars, and a demand for payment of that amount. The first time, I called and the customer service rep told me that it was a mistake and to ignore it. That was fine until a few months later when I received another letter, and the amount had increased due to late fees, and advising me they wouldn’t be taking anymore “partial payments.” I managed to scrape together the money, thanks to a bonus at work, and paid it. The CSR I spoke to assured me the account was caught up. At the end of 2009, I received another letter claiming I was behind on payments, even though I had bank records to back up my assertion that I was not. In the second quarter of 2010, we made a very large payment to catch the house up, and I received monthly assurances that all was well, until the end of 2010 when we received yet another letter claiming we were once again several thousand dollars behind. It was then that I decided I was done.

In the midst of all of that, I received two letters on two separate occasions from my Homeowners Association that said the dues had not been paid and they would foreclose on the house. Those dues should have been paid by BofA, but they never were, despite the fact that when I requested an account statement shortly after the last letter from them, my escrow account had almost $8,000 in it (my taxes and insurance did not total $5000).

I’m done. I think we have done everything we could reasonably do to hold on to the house, including attempting a loan modification, for which we were told we did not qualify. We considered filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy but eventually decided against it. While it might help in the short term, at the end, we would still be with Bank of America, and the shenanigans would begin again as soon as the bankruptcy plan was completed.

So, while this is the end of one era – of realizing the dream of owning a home – it’s the beginning of another. Understand, this isn’t a decision that was easy to make, and we don’t take walking away lightly. We have fought to keep this place for the last three and a half years. But enough is enough. My sanity is worth more to me than this house, as much as I love it.

We’ve found another home in the same neighborhood. Our address will change, but our lives will remain much the same, only with less stress. We were lucky enough to find someone willing to rent to us despite the bad credit, and for that I will be forever grateful. She’ll be getting Christmas presents from me for a long time to come. I’m sad to leave my home, but excited for a new beginning. I have loved this house since the moment I stepped into the model home, and I have spent many happy occasions here. I will miss it. But it’s time to look forward to making memories in a new home. I cannot wait.

 

A journey of a thousand miles …

Begins at McDonald’s. Nooooo, that’s not right. Or is it? I don’t know if I started gaining weight with a trip to McDonald’s or if something else brought it on, but I’m pretty sure this journey didn’t necessarily start with a single step. I think many mis-steps brought it on. But that’s ok. I’m on a path – albeit a path I’m scared to walk (because of the very real potential for failure) – and I am doing my level best to stay on it.

My last post brought comments that suggested I check out myfitnesspal.com, which I forgot about before I made it home that evening. Yeah, I’m good like that. But knowing that I need something to keep me focused on my goal (i.e., a tracking program), I remembered this morning that I have something I downloaded on my phone, which was pretty impressive. I got back to my desk and checked it out. Would you care to guess what it is? Yeah, it’s myfitnesspal mobile app. So, I already have an account there, but I’d never logged in on the computer, and I hadn’t used the mobile version but maybe once or twice since downloading it. But today I’ve logged my food in to the program, recorded my weight (lost one pound since my last check in two weeks ago; progress!), and toyed with the site. It’s a slick site; if you want to track your fitness goals, it’s the place to be, I think. And I like the fact that I can carry this with me on my phone and have it anywhere. THAT is handy. It took the goal I have, asked how much I want to lose every week, and calculated my calories to get there. Impressive.

Before I even looked at myfitnesspal, though, I decided that I don’t want to overwhelm myself by making too many changes, so I thought I would focus on one meal – lunch – and make changes. I packed a lunch today, and it was pretty healthy, and was about 400 calories. I felt pretty full, actually, which I was happy about. But sitting there looking at the calories of everything I ate, I decided that maybe I don’t really WANT to eat two pieces of toast and two pieces of sausage in the morning. Maybe I’ll just cut that in half. And the fried chicken for dinner really wasn’t horrible, but in the future, maybe I’ll cut the rice in half and add a salad.

I’m reminded of Fly Lady. If you’re not familiar, Fly Lady is a woman who started a housekeeping revolution. She starts off her followers with one simple task – clean your sink, and keep it clean. Her theory is, if you see that one always-clean spot in your home, you will be compelled to clean the rest of the kitchen and keep it looking nice, because who wants a clean sink but a dirty countertop? Even though I told myself I would only focus on getting my lunchtime habits under control for the next two weeks, once I saw the difference between my calorie intake for lunch versus the other two meals, I began to think of ways I could easily make changes to breakfast and supper. And honestly, it made me think about hunting up my body for life book to get the exercises, which I can do at home, and get started on that again.

So maybe my journey began in a McDonald’s, or a Pizza Hut, or maybe my own kitchen. But it’s going to culminate in a slimmer person at some point down the road. It won’t be easy, I know, but now I know I’m ready. Bring it.