six weeks erased in six minutes

i never pay any attention to what i say, so i'm not sure if i've ever written about what's going on with our current living situation. if i have, sorry...

we live in a two bedroom/two bath house which is probably around 900 sq ft (i'm being generous) and in a great location in the east atlanta village. in july, we decided it was time to move on and get a grown up house that could actually fit our kids and their stuff and be big enough to have more kids in one day.

we started looking for bigger houses in better school districts, but before too long we realized there was very little intown that we could afford. we looked outside the perimeter, but my heart wasn't in it.

finally we found exactly what we were looking for on the westside in a new development. i say exactly what we were looking for, but really it was just the house we were looking for and still had bad schools. i decided i could live with that and i would figure out how to get around it when the time came.

the house we picked out hadn't been built yet so we had an opportunity to customize it a little bit, which we decided to do by adding a full basement (a dream come true for me - finally a place to put things!). there were two lots that could accomodate a house with a basement, so we started writing up the contract for one of those lots.

in the meantime, i was working with one of their "approved" lenders who informed me that if we sold our current house, we would qualify for a grant that would provide 10% of the downpayment. hot dog!!!! until he said that, we were planning on keeping our house as a rental. we got to work immediately and started getting our house in selling condition.

if you've never tried to get your house in selling condition before, let me just tell you... it's kind of a nightmare. i won't go into too much detail, but it's taken us weeks to get it even halfway ready. had we been willing to pay someone to do all the little fix ups and painting that needed to be done, it would have been done faster, but we opted to save the money in case we ended up needing it. just when we were almost ready to put it on the market, everything fell apart.

yesterday morning i got a call from my realtor that 'oops' the lot we selected actually couldn't support a basement, but there might be one on a more narrow lot that can - we would just have to choose a different floorplan or be willing to lose a couple feet on either side to make the house work. that's if it works out, it may not even be possible to add a basement in the first place, we'll have to wait and see....

moments later, i got a call from the lender saying, 'oops' i forgot to tell you that you guys have too much money to qualify for this grant and when you sell your house you'll have way too much money, but you have to sell your house to even qualify. so... are you saying we should spend all our money and sell the house for no profit? does that really sound like it's worth it??? ummm, no.

so now i'm like, well, shit. do we even still move forward with selling our house? the only reason we were going in that direction was because of this grant that all the sudden, six weeks later this guy tells us we don't really qualify for it afterall. and there's not even a house to buy at the moment, either, since for some reason no one asked the right guy the right questions at any point in the last six weeks.

i feel like we're back at square one, but at the same time i have a strong faith that things happen for a reason. if things don't fall into place with this, then we shouldn't try to force it to work. these roadblocks are a sign that we should slow down and re-evaluate before potentially making a big mistake. it may all still work out - possibly even for the better - but for right now, i'm being cautious and re-thinking everything. i just wish i would have known about all of this six weeks ago....

oh....good point.

so i just needed a little perspective and luckily my friend Rebecca gave it to me (hahahaha, 'gave it to me', hahahahhaha). basically, and i'm paraphrasing, she said "you're expected to lose your baby weight" and i was like, oh. just like that chris rock hbo special about people who say, "i take care of my kids" and he goes, you're SUPPOSED to take care of your kids.... and bragging about not going to jail - you're supposed to stay out of jail, dummy. so once she said that, i stopped hating everyone and decided that i will hate them again if and only if i reach my pre-pregnancy weight and then continue to drop the pounds and they still don't notice.

so they have as long as it takes me to lose 17lb and then it's on.

healthe trim - end of week 1

taking 2 pills a day now w/ no problems. am down 5lb since i started taking them, but that's a bit inflated since i was up 3lb from the week before i started.

look at me, look at me!!

i am a recognition whore. i will pretty much do anything for a pat on the back and constant, sincere compliments about how well i performed a task. this might explain why i still make very little money. early on, my employers must have figured this out about me, did a fist pump and gave me what i most wanted - praise. just when i need it most, someone will tell me how great i am and i'll think, 'well, i am just so loved and wonderful!' and keep plugging away.

the problem with all that is this:

i have been trying to lose my baby weight for months. well, i mean, that math is pretty easy to do - my baby is 5 months old. so far, with each of my pregnancies i have been blessed to have essentially no nausea. that's wonderful, right? yes, it is. except for the fact that when you have no nausea, you have no aversion to food. when you have no aversion to food and you're pregnant, you gain too much weight. both times i have gained 75lb. that is pretty close to 100lb, folks. that's a lot. not according to my doctors, though, who only saw a 1-2lb gain each week, which they thought "looked great, everything's great, you look great" and i was like, 'sweet! pass the corn dogs'.

at this point, i have lost over 50lb and NO ONE (except my mom) is giving me any praise for it. it's downright insulting! when i point it out, people will say, oh yeah, girl, you look good (no i don't - not yet, but i certainly look better, right??? it's over 50lb for the love of god!) but it is always me who calls attention to my shrinking frame. this is unacceptable! notice me, dammit!

i try to give myself pep talks to stay on track, but i gotta admit - just one "you look awesome, have you lost weight?" from someone who hasn't read this blog would give me enough mileage to lose at least five more pounds.

i'm banking on the gym to help with that at this point. people will see me in spin class with my workout clothes on and think, 'good for her! if that fat girl can do it, i can too!' and then in a few weeks when i look good in my workout clothes again they'll think, "look at her... that bitch" . i can't wait to be 'that bitch' again.

day...? something of HT

well, the high of healthe' trim only lasted a day and i am back on coffee and slacking off on water.

day 1 of healthE trim

so, you know this weight loss thing isn't moving fast enough for me so i bought a $70 bottle - yeah, i know - of HealthE Trim ("Get High School Skinny!!!").

today is the first day - this is what you do:

take 1-2 pills in the morning and then drink a ton of water. after 2-3 hours, you can eat. you shoudln't drink caffeine.

this is what i did:

at the last second, decided to go against my impulse and only take one pill. usually, i go for the whole hog thinking, two is better than one, right?!?!

five minutes later, i realized that was the best decision EVER. as i'm drinking my tons of water, i'm thinking 'god bless the poor souls who need to be told to drink a ton of water after taking this' - you basically have to drink water because you feel instantly dehydrated and light headed. i yawned and almost passed out from the head rush. i also cannot imagine adding caffeine to this mix. i will know when it's time to up it to two pills the day i think, 'i want to go to starbucks'. i also almost immediately needed to go to the ladies room... if you know what i'm sayin'.

i am going to take it for three weeks if i can hack it and then if i haven't lost at least 10lb, i'm going to send it back and get my money back (less taxes and s&h).

i have about 20lb to go until i reach my PPW (pre-pregnancy weight) and i'm joining the gym in september and getting a personal trainer there. the Y didn't really work out for us, so i'm joining the one at my work. i got the ok from moe to go during my lunch break 2x a week rather than coming home to let him nap and i can also go on sundays because that's his off day. the only reason i'm waiting for september is because they are having a membership drive and it will be "free" to join. i would hate to pay the initiation fee now knowing that in a couple weeks i wouldn't have to...

i'm having de ja vu (and i have no idea where to put the ' in that) - but if this blog doesn't post on my first try, i will know that i have lived this moment before.

happy birthday to me

i guess you'll want to hear all about my birthday. well, first of all, i turned 33 in '09 and my baby was born on 3/3/09 so i have been really excited for this because somehow i just know that is a good omen. this year is going to be a good one. starting... now.

okay, so yesterday was my actual birthday and i woke up as usual and played with the girls but i left the house a little earlier than normal and went to the Y to workout. once there, i discovered moe had left my ipod on and the battery was dead, so that threw me for a loop, but i still wanted to do something and not let that be an excuse so i walked on the steepest incline available on the treadmill for twenty minutes. i know that is nothing to brag about, but that is honestly all i did.

following that, i went to shower which is when i discovered that the east lake Y does not provide towels. i had to blot dry with my sweaty workout clothes and stand under a wall mounted blower until my hair and body were dry. no biggie. i rolled with it. should have asked that before i went, i suppose. live and learn.

i got dressed and went to work a little later than normal, but i had already called in to let them know so that was fine. two of my friends met me to get starbucks, which took us a good thirty minutes to an hour longer than it reasonably should, but we were chatting so it was fine. or... i thought it was fine until i walked back to my office and discovered i was late for a meeting that i had called. a little embarrassing and unprofessional, but forgivable because it was only by a couple of minutes and it's my birthday and all... (still not good, but whatever).

had the meeting, went back to my office (which had been decorated by my staff the night before and was really cute) and worked on post-meeting business until lunchtime. went home for lunch and over to the pizzeria with the family for a while. got back around 2p or so and worked on a couple of other things.

at 3:30p, my boss came by and i updated the status of a few things and was told i could leave at 4p since it was my birthday. this was awesome and i wasn't going to turn it down, but it did sort of muck up my plans for the evening which were to take the kids to the park next door with some friends and have a picnic right after work. now that i was going home, i really didn't want to go back to work, so now i had to come up with a different plan. if i didn't mention it before, moe had to work so that is why we weren't doing anything together after work.

my friends agreed to go to a kid friendly place near my house and help me with the girls while we ate and chatted. it was really nice and relaxing. had i gone there straight from work, i think i would have been a little stressed, but since i was able to go home and change first and get them ready it was awesome.

we got home at about 7:30p and i put bella to bed right away. andie had a hard time winding down and eventually went to sleep in our bed around 9p (which is a major no no in our house, but i have been allowing a lot lately). since she went to sleep on my head, i did not get any rest until i was sure it was okay to move her and then eventually i nodded off, too.

at 3:30am, moe came home and moved her to her bed and then i was not able to go back to sleep until about 6am.

today was normal except for i went to have lunch with moe while the girls were with my mom playing with their cousins.

i'm just kidding, i took jello shots off a tranny hooker and got home at 4am.