I have, by my scale’s account, lost nine pounds so far on my weight loss endeavor. I think that’s pretty good, considering that I really only started trying to lose weight less than a month ago. When the average recommended weight loss is one to two pounds a week, I consider nine pounds in three weeks to be a major triumph.

But what I’m really pleased about is that I can already feel the results in my clothing. Right now, I’m wearing an old pair of pajama bottoms that I was pretty sure I would have to retire because they were bordering on uncomfortable when I would put them on. They are by no means loose at this point, but they are comfortable. I no longer feel like they’re trying to squeeze the life out of me. And I’m noticing it in my dress slacks too – they feel a little looser every time I put them on lately. That’s quite a switch from them being a little tighter every time I put them on.

As I’ve said before, I look at this as a lifestyle change; I have changed the size of the portions I eat, and a good deal of what I’m eating on a day to day basis. But I refuse to give up everything that I have enjoyed in my lifetime. I know that “eating clean” is the big thing these days, and I support anyone who wants to do that – more power to any one on their diet, so long as they aren’t eating small children and domestic pets. But I am finding the “clean eating” group to be a very preachy set of folks, which I find both annoying and amusing. Many of these people aren’t on a dieting website to share their knowledge of what they’ve been doing all their lives to maintain their perfect physique and unquestionable ability in the gym. Most of them are there for the same reason I am – they needed to lose weight. Some of them needed to lose a LOT of weight. I need to do that myself, so I am not throwing rocks at anyone in that position. But the reality is that anyone trying to lose weight should do what works for them, not what a bunch of uneducated folks on an internet website says someone should do.I think a lot of fear-mongering takes place on the internet, and it causes people who don’t educate themselves to run around either giving bad advice, or following the bad advice others have given.

For me, I am living the life I feel most comfortable in. I doubt that I will give up things like buying my meat at the grocery store, certain convenience foods, a soda or two a day, and sugar. I like the convenience of some items, and the taste of others. And cutting portions and counting calories is working for me – nine pounds lost in a little more than three weeks proves that.

One thing I have begun to realize – but not yet ready to fully embrace – is that I need to cut back somewhat on the carbs. And there’s a simple reason for this – they are very, very tasty, but they are very calorie-laden. One cup of pasta has at least 200 calories, whereas one cup of most vegetables, without oil or butter, has about 50 calories. If you do use some oil or butter, that would double the calories to 100 per cup. I can eat a lot more veggies for 200 calories than I can a pasta side.

That said, I’m making spaghetti for dinner tonight. I ran my recipe through a calorie calculator and found that half a cup of my sauce has about 100 calories, so dinner consisting of one cup of pasta, half a cup of sauce, a slice of garlic bread and a salad will have about 450 calories, and it will definitely fill me up. Who can ask for anything better?

Plan for the coming week:

• Continue to track what I’m eating every day, even if it’s not the best thing for me to eat.
• Do a better job of meal planning for lunches, and have it packed up and ready to grab before I go to bed every night.
• More water, fewer sodas. I have been drinking, on average, three sodas a day. I would like to cut it back to two. I am thinking of replacing one soda with club soda – I have a SodaStream machine here at home, and I love it. Club soda has no calories and no sugar.
• Join a gym (!)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

On Friday night, Chris and I decided that we’d like to have shrimp for dinner. I went to the grocery store where we usually buy seafood, and found shrimp to be $12/lb! W O W. I don’t know why it’s so expensive, but it floored me. Last time we bought fish from this same store, it had a musty taste to it – in two years it was the first time that had happened, but it sort of turned me off to buying fish there. My dad (the consummate fisherman) tells me that fish gets a musty taste when it’s been improperly frozen. And the fish wasn’t exactly cheap – $8/lb. We could only really afford to eat it once a week or so. I’ve never really been a fish person – it’s only been in the last couple of years I let Chris talk me into trying it, which is odd considering I’ve spent my entire life on the Texas Gulf Coast. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve had more than my fair share of fried fish when I was young, but my dad really likes catfish, and I really do NOT like catfish. We’ve been buying “fresh” tilapia and I like it, whether it’s grilled or pan seared or lightly sauteed, or even broiled. Still, it wasn’t my favorite meal, but I could eat it, and I know that fish is good lean protein that helps with cholesterol issues. But … $8/lb for the cheap stuff! Wowza!

It occurred to me that we live fairly close to a good source for seafood – the Texas coastline. I called my parents, who live much closer to the water than we do, and arranged to go over. My dad took Chris and I to Seabrook, a sleepy little town down old 146 headed toward Galveston. Most people in this area are familiar with Seabrook’s cousin Kemah, a booming touristy area right across the waterway. Seabrook was more or less annihilated in Hurricane Ike back in 2008, but they are back on the map now. I was so happy to see all the seafood places rebuilt down there. My dad directed us to a place at the end of the street (I wish I could remember the name, but at least I know where it is) which carries all sorts of seafood – red snapper, tilapia, shrimp, squid, clams … the list is practically endless. And the prices! If only I could convey my delight at finding tilapia for just $2.49/lb. And red snapper at $2.99/lb (which at the grocery store mentioned above, runs right around $13/lb). And shrimp – any size you could want, in any state (head on, deveined, deveined and peeled, etc) all for less than $6/lb. We bought 2.25 pounds of shrimp, four huge red fish filets, and eight nice tilapia filets – for our family, about six meals – for $25. We brought it all home and that night, we had shrimp and pasta in a garlic butter sauce. Last night, we had tilapia. I cannot tell you the difference in the taste of the tilapia we get at the grocery store and what we bought at Seabrook. The fish from Seabrook was incredible! It was so good and flaky. It was everything I never knew fish could be, since I’ve never really liked fish to begin with. The rest of the fish and shrimp we froze “the right way” and will be eating over the coming two weeks.

We have also decided that we’ll make the drive to Seabrook once every couple of weeks to get fish, and try to eat it two or three times a week, because it’s moved from being the most expensive protein we purchase, the being one of the cheapest. And honestly, the taste is just amazing.

Frankly, I was a bit skeptical about buying tilapia in Seabrook because I’m pretty sure I’ve never caught one in the Gulf (and I do love to fish even if I didn’t like to eat them). But the proof was on my plate last night. Fish is back on the menu, and more often than ever now.

I’ve known people who give up just about everything they find tasty when they make a “lifestyle change” and if they can live like that, I applaud them. I know that I can’t do it. I enjoy the flavors that life offers – cheesecakes, steaks, sodas, etc. But I also am quite happy to eat steamed broccoli, chicken, fish and other foods that are supposed to be better for me. It isn’t that I necessarily disagree that these foods aren’t good for me – it’s that I don’t believe any food is truly bad for us, unless consumed in excess. I suppose that even eating too much broccoli may have some sort of downside.

Earlier this week, I read about Stacey Irvine, who at 17 years old, hasn’t eaten anything but McDonald’s chicken mcnuggets since she was 2 years old. Not being a big fan of most British foods, I can sort of see how something off a fast food menu might have its appeal to a young girl, but at the same time I am repulsed by mcnuggets because they are not very tasty in my opinion. This girl has been eating them for 15 years, which of course means she’s seriously lacking the vitamins needed to keep herself in good health. I don’t think anyone can look at her diet and say she’s eating well. But if you look at her picture, she isn’t overweight; she looks reasonably healthy. I would never ever recommend anyone eat a single nugget, let alone base their entire diet on it, but this girl is eating crap every day and her problem isn’t being overweight. In moderation, and in conjunction with a mostly healthy diet, one could conceivably eat a mcnuggets meal once or twice a month and probably not suffer any long term effects (though why anyone would want to do that is beyond me). The same principle would then apply to virtually any food or restaurant – when it isn’t your main source of nutrition, one can eat virtually anything on occasion and not suffer long term effects, least of all weight gain.

Where most people fail in this scenario is that they give themselves a “free pass” to eat whatever they want once, then again. And again. And again! I’m guilty of it. If I go on a business trip and I have no choice but to eat out, I will have a steak three nights in a week because “I don’t usually do this.” But then I’m also having a dessert every night because “I don’t normally do this” and a couple glasses of wine with dinner because “I don’t normally do this.” In a week, with that mindset, I can easily gain five pounds. And I’m weak; if I do gain that five pounds, I’m much more likely to decide that I can’t lose weight and it’s not meant to be than to admit that I’ve been eating crap all week and it’s my fault. Who wants to admit they made stupid choices?!

The things that have worked for me over the past week:

Not obsessing over whether or not I stay within my calorie limits. If I go over by a bit, I don’t really care. If I go over a lot, I take a look at what I did and what I could have done better. I’m trying to learn from my mistakes.

Measuring everything, either with a kitchen scale, measuring cup or measuring spoon. In fact, it’s worked so well I’m going to buy some measuring cups and spoons for the office.

Preplanning my meals. Knowing in advance what foods I plan to eat so I know about how many calories I will be eating. If it changes (as it did once or twice this week for dinner) I’ll adjust, but I found it incredibly helpful to write down what I intended to eat then checking to be sure I stuck to it after each meal.

Having some low-calorie high impact snacks around. I thought I didn’t care much for peanut butter, and when I tried the off-brand they offered at work, I was right. My husband encouraged me to try something from the grocery store (he loves pb) so I did – I tried Jif Reduced Fat and Peter Pan Honey Roast. I really liked them both, but the Honey Roast was the best. It has only 5 or 10 calories more for the one tablespoon I ate than the Jif, but the taste is oustanding. A regular serving size is two tablespoons, but when I’m pressed for calories, one tablespoon and some crackers or a banana really does help fill the void. I also really enjoyed the Special K Chocolately Pretzel bar this week – it’s 90 calories and totally satisfies my sweet tooth, though I must admit it didn’t do a whole lot for me when I was hungry. Coupled with some fruit, though, or maybe some Weight Watchers String Cheese (the best string cheese on the market, in my opinion), it was pretty good.

What I haven’t given up:

Dr. Pepper – at least, not entirely. I will admit that I was drinking way too much every day. Some days I would drink six cans. I’ve cut back considerably to two or three – three on the two days I had a migraine. I can’t really help it – I crave them when I have one. I would like to cut back to one or two, but for now I’m happy with the way things are.

Good food. My husband has jumped on the bandwagon, and we are looking for ways to maximize flavor without sacrificing calories. Last night, we sauteed three cloves of garlic in half a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil. Once the garlic was soft, we removed it from the heat and added two cups of steamed broccoli, half a cup of steamed carrots and a whole large steamed onion, sliced into big pieces. It was sooooooooooooo good. You cannot imagine! A cup had just about 115 calories, and it went very well with our grilled chicken and rice. I walked away full, satisfied and happy.

Ice cream. OK, so I happen to like the Weight Watchers and Skinny Cow ice creams – who cares?! For 140 calories,  I can have one (giant sized) Skinny Cow vanilla ice cream sandwich or a WW Giant Fudge Bar (mmmmmm) or a WW drumstick. For 200 calories, I can have TWO of the WW English toffee bars, which means one is only 100 calories.

I’m still not really exercising much – in fact, I really only exercised in the form of house cleaning on two days. But still, I lost 4.6 pounds! Yes, I know that much of that might be water weight, but it is STILL nearly five pounds gone. It’s five fewer pounds that I have to drag around with me everywhere I go. I’ll take that!

So, for the coming week, my goals are to make some things over the weekend for lunches and breakfasts for the week (have you tried the Fiber One Muffins? So good, and only 140 cals if you make them with applesauce). Try to move my body more in the form of some sort of exercise. And continue logging my food – I cannot tell you how helpful www.myfitnesspal.com has been for that. There are lots of “free” websites out there that you can use to log your food – I also like www.fitday.com – but I don’t think they are as user friendly or as helpful as MFP.

I may start posting some of my recipes here too … I’ve found that some of my recipes are surprisingly low in calories, and others I’ve tried that are low cal are fabulous. I might just have to share those …

Last night, I had a team dinner to attend. I knew that there was a good possibility that I would eat more than my allotted calories, but I was determined to stem the damage as much as possible. We chose to go the Yard House, a spot that’s popular with the after work crowd, so I took to their website to look at their menu. I was happy to see they also include full nutritional information as well, so I took a look at that too. All I can say is, WOW! You just never realize how much fat and calories a menu item has – and what’s so shocking is that usually the things you expect to be the best for you are actually the worst. Salads are often hotbeds of hidden calories … some of the Yard House entree salads were well above 1000 calories!

I thought about getting an entree and immediately boxing up half of it to bring home, but once at the restaurant, the problem with that idea was that we just didn’t have enough room on the table for anything extra like a box. So instead, I ordered a Roast Beef Dip with a cup of french onion soup. There was a whole lot of calories in there I know I didn’t need, but I still count this as a victory for a couple of reasons. First of all, I didn’t eat any of the appetizers being passed around the table, and trust me, it was very hard to resist. My teammates ordered onion rings, truffle fries, hummus, and bbq wings. Second of all, I didn’t order fries with my dinner; I opted for the soup, and I only ate half of that. I did eat the entire sandwich, at nearly 900 calories, and I wish I’d only eaten half of that too. Live and learn. This journey is all about small steps for me, and I felt like I made a couple of huge strides last night. Even though at the end of the day, I was over my calorie count by nearly 400 for the day, it was still much better than anything I would have done in the past. I did manage to eat quite sensibly for both breakfast and lunch. I realize that every once in a while, I’ll have a meal that isn’t perfect, and last night was one of those meals. But one meal doesn’t have to completely derail me, and I refuse to let this one ruin what has otherwise been a fairly decent week.

One thing I thought about this morning is that I didn’t adjust my starting weight from my last attempt at weight loss, so I started this time three pounds higher than my tracker states. However, when I stepped on the scale this morning, I was down 1.6 pounds from where I was last week. I will call that another victory.

The rest of the week should be fairly straightforward, if I can remember to pack my lunch for the office. I had a horrible headache this morning, so pulling together something to bring from lunch was the last thing on my mind. I had a bagel for breakfast, and I have a banana and some peanut butter for a mid-morning snack. For lunch, I’m not sure what I’ll do, but I’m sure I can find something that will work in the cafeteria.

My goals for the coming week are to get up and move more, something I’m seriously lacking most days. Whether it’s taking a walk in the evening or climbing some stairs at the office, I want to log at least 1.5 total hours of exercise this week. At some point in the future, I plan to get a gym membership going which will improve my exercise motivation considerably.

I have a problem with food. I love it. I enjoy eating out with my husband, or cooking at home for family and friends, and I like eating whatever it is I want to eat. I really haven’t wanted to change the way I look at food because I didn’t want to know that my love affair with it was over. I don’t usually eat a lot of super fatty foods every day – I’m not chowing down on hamburgers and fries every day, but I don’t always make the best choices either. Long ago, I started moving away from fried food, but I can’t seem to shake the sweet tooth I was born with and have nurtured for years. If I could kick, or at least vastly reduce my Dr. Pepper habit, though, I could probably lose a considerable amount of weight. And after three weeks of tracking what I eat, I have come to a realization … I don’t really need to change what it is I’m eating, I just need to adjust my portions. And I need to exercise.

For years, I haven’t understood how anyone could get away with eating only 1400 calories and not be starving. To some people, I suppose 1400 calories might be a lot of food, but I am not one of those people. I have found, by tracking my food intake, that I’m pretty comfortable eating between 2000 – 2200 calories a day. The trick is being able to eat enough to keep me from being ravenous while losing weight. I will never be one of those people who can eat 1200 calories and not end up going stark raving mad one day, eating everything in the kitchen in a fit of hunger that cannot be satisfied. I started doing some research, looking for answers, because it doesn’t seem possible that eating 1200 calories could be healthy for anyone over a long period of time. The answer, it seems, that one should be tracking the “net calories” one consumes. Suddenly a lot of things started to make sense to me, when I found this.

Let me back up just a little bit. I can lose weight, I’ve done it in the past, but I’ve never been able to maintain it for an extended period of time, because I would get discouraged thinking about the next “level down,” i.e., the next time I would have to lower my caloric intake to continue to lose weight, instead of plateauing. Or, I would be so hungry I would binge eat and then feel so bad about it, I would abandon my weight loss efforts completely, telling myself that clearly I’m just meant to be overweight, because who can survive on so few calories? I would eat tons of vegetables, fruits and high fiber foods to feel more full, but most of the time it didn’t work. I would drink a lake’s worth of water, but I wasn’t thirsty, I was HUNGRY (for the record, I think I know the difference between being hungry and being thirsty; I have never bought into the theory that if you feel hungry, drink a glass of water first because you may just be thirsty). I would work out at the gym for an hour, eat my 1600 calories, and never lose any weight at all. But, if I worked out at the gym for an hour and ate 2000 calories, the weight would melt off. I was told that was the wrong way to do it, though, so each time I tried to lose weight, I would try to follow the conventional wisdom of eating a certain number of calories and exercising. For me, it just didn’t work.

What I was doing that worked for me, but seemed “wrong” to most people (including myself) was eating my net calories. It’s very simple really – your body needs a certain number of calories to keep it going when you get out of bed in the morning. This is what you need to sit around the house, doing not a whole lot of everything. Everything else you do – laundry, playing with the kids, grocery shopping, etc – adds to the number of calories your body needs to maintain its current weight. This is called your basal metabolic rate, or BMR. I am using this site to calculate my BMR because it allows you to plug in the level of your activity over a 24 hour period to see how many calories you need to eat to maintain your weight. The important thing to remember is that you have to be honest about your activity level.

Most people agree that for weight loss, you should eat 80% of your total daily estimated expenditure (TDEE). For me, that’s currently about 2200 calories. I’m shooting for about 2000 a day. Now, here’s where people get lost. Say you exercise for 30 minutes and burn 200 calories. If I’m trying to get in 2000 calories a day using net calories, I will need to eat an additional 200 calories to replace the 200 I burned exercising. So, in effect, I’m eating 2200 calories that day, not 2000. But it works out to a net of 2000 calories because I burned 2000 calories exercising. Seems simple right?

Except that it’s not so simple for a society that’s had it banged into their heads that they have need to eat fewer calories and exercise like mad people to lose weight. I have become convinced through watching my friends, doing my research and testing out every weight loss theory under the sun that this is the right way to lose weight and find an eating plan one can stick to for the rest of their lives. I think that what makes plans like Body for Life so popular – and so successful – is that they don’t focus on your caloric intake. Instead they focus on making sure you’re eating enough of the right foods to fuel your body and adding in exercise to burn the “extra” calories you eat. I am convinced that the reason why our recent ancestors didn’t have the problems with weight gain that we did is because they didn’t sit at desks all day. They were out working with their hands (and usually their entire bodies!), which burned a lot of calories. So while their diets may have been full of fried foods and sweets (at least in my family; I didn’t sprout a sweet tooth without decades of family history), they were burning those calories off by working hard. Nowadays, we have to go to a gym to get a tenth of the work out our forefathers got every morning before breakfast!

Now, to test the theory, I plan to spend the next several months tracking everything I eat, as well as the exercise I get, to find out if I’m right. If I am, I should see a pretty decent weight loss in that time. And, I should also finally have an eating plan I can live with for the rest of my life. At no time should I really feel deprived or hungry or otherwise ready to eat the entire kitchen. Wish me luck!

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!

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!

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.

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!