Please Please if you are a girl read this!!!

http://blog.pigtailpals.com/2011/08/waking-up-full-of-awesome/

If you are a guy please read this too...

September 11, 2000

It's been a long time. Eleven years since we've talked, since I've seen you. Do you see me? Do you see Punk? She's wonderful Mom. I hope you know that where ever you are. I wish we had had more time. I hope you can see us now, but only if you wanted to. You'd like the Cowboy. You'd like his little one. I pray you'd still like me too. I miss you Mom. I wish you'd stayed but I hope you are out of pain and at peace and that if you can see us you are happy and proud.
I love you Mom everyday.

Found in a Weight Watchers weekly flyer

Don't say all or nothing, say more or less.

People who reach their goal weight aren't perfect; 

they are persistent.

If you trip down one step, don't throw yourself down the whole fight of stairs.

 

my official Journey blogging starts September 11, 2011

9-11-11

I miss you Mom. 

Out on a Limb or My Renewed Commitment

The journey was created to record my journey, originally my writing journey but now I think it will be my health journey. It’s scary to think of writing on the web. I really don’t know how people do it so easily. Do they know they can write? Do they know someone who cares? Aren’t they afraid to be criticized or made fun off? I know I am.  I wonder if there is a way to block comments. Hmmm

Just kidding. I will only read comments from my trusted few.  Wait what if they don’t comment? Does that mean they don’t like it? What if no one cares? Oh gawd this is so dang hard.

Ok enough of that.  In September of 2009 I entered into a program developed by the Workman’s Compensation Board called MEFirst, Maine Employees Fighting Increasing Risk Starting Today.  The idea is to help state employees get healthier because apparently workman’s comp noticed that a big percentage of claims were state employees.

How it works-You are a part of a Group, mine was 8A, (more on why it’s a was and not an is later) and there is a wellness couch that helps you coordinate all the program has to offer:

A physical trainer, Weight Watchers, facilitation meetings, nurses meetings, yearly assessment tests and probably more I’m not thinking of right now.

I’m not going to try to tell you the intimate details of the last two years because, well it’s easier to do in a nutshell and tell the stories going forward. I hope.

Anywho here goes…

(I’m changing the names to protect the innocent or not-so innocent)

First year:

I hated exercising at the gym =intimidated and physically ill.

I lost 25lbs and gained it back.

I liked the facilitation group and started to realize our group may be an exception to the norm because of our honesty. (more on this another day)

I let two men into my life in a way I never thought possible.

·        Mr. TS a rugby playing physical trainer

·         The Stalker, my wellness coach.

Second year:

The Stalker helped me discover I could run!!! Holy Shit!!

I wasn’t intimidated by the gym or Mr. TS (mostly because I eventually realized that he was doing the program with us as a peer and that he was an excellent writer). I didn’t exactly want to go to the gym but when I was there I wasn’t self conscientious in any way because so many people there were just like me;  i.e. no leotard-clad ladies and huge weight lifting guys. 

And last but beyond not least, two things happened:

1.)    I stopped focusing on nutrition so much and started working harder with Mr. TS which brought me around to wanting good nutrition so I could work out. Wow, didn’t see that coming at all.

2.)    With more working out and even just a little better nutrition I finally actually felt what I was told I would feel… “I Felt Better After I Worked Out!” No matter how I felt before I went to the gym; I went and lo and behold I have left every time glad that I went.

These things are huge to me.

At the end of the second year though I was discouraged because I hadn’t lost significant weight, still suffered from sickness and pain, and still had no real desire to eat right and exercise.  I want to want to so badly but I just don’t yet.

MEFirst is a great program and they are watching us closely so they came up with a new program for people just like me; i.e. no significant change and still struggling. Amazing!!! This program and these people working it are incredibly intuitive. So I applied for the MEFirst on Steroids program, actually called ME4Life. Careful what you wish for because I got in.

Now not only have I amped my commitment to change my lifestyle with the help of this program, I have promised my old Group 8A (0ld group 8A because I have to join a new group obviously) I will blog my journey at least every week starting no later than 9/11/11. I will miss them and they tell me they will miss me. I know they support me and I want to put myself out there for them and for myself.

Just one more thing…September 11, 2011 is 11 years since my mother passed away from cancer at the young age of 58. She spent her whole life putting others first and not taking good care of herself at all.  I turned 47 this year and thought “What if I only live for 11 more years?”

So begins The Journey…

Starting the gardens in So Free ME

I've begun to try my fairy powers in my new gardens...

'Make them grow!' 

is my mantra to the dirt!

kimbalie's kwotes

Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, 
not to oust them.  

~Vincent McNabb

I dream of beautiful buckets...

To dream of a shiny new and clean bucket points to justifiable optimism and is a good omen for possibilities coming to you soon.

First Day of Spring 2011

Springtime is the land awakening.  
The March winds are the morning yawn. 

~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard in Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You

Word of the Day

corniche

KOR-nish, kor-NEESH

MEANING:

noun
A coastal road, especially one cut into the side of a cliff.






 

Word of the Day

 Schwarmerei --shver-muh-RY

MEANING:

noun:
1. Extravagant enthusiasm.
2. Excessive sentimentality.

 

 

 

Fireworks, My Girl and Illy-Friend KiKi, and Punk

What if?

What if I knew right now I would be dead in 10 years?

At my age right now, Heather was going to be dead in 10.5 years. If she had known would she have ever had another cigarette? if she had known would she have had another drink? if she had known would she have not eaten right? if she had known would she have not exercised? if she had known would she have not tried to make the last 10 years count beyondalot? if she had known what would she have done differently?

Did she know?

Winter in the Quote Garden

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you...In spring, summer, and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.  ~Ruth Stout

Full Wolf Moon

 January 

Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.

http://www.farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-names/

What it means

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.  

~Dave Tyson Gentry

Dr. Seuss says:

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.  Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. 

~Theodore Geisel