8 days!!

I initially planned to post some pics I took of the fire and working on the puzzle. I realized when I uploaded, that my child is in her undies, so those pics will not be shared. L took these pictures (along with many, many more) over the weekend. 1.) My parents' dog, Nala; 2.) Our Ivan; 3.) Our girl.

We enjoyed a much-needed, very boring weekend. We’ve been on the go so much lately, that we were really happy to have time at home with nothing but chores to keep us busy.

Dej came over on Th & Fr nights again this week. She must be really, really bored with life lately. I’m not complaining, as it’s been nice to have her visit with us so often and so long the last couple of weeks. We both go back to school this week, so I expect she will have much less hang-out time from now until the end of the semester.

We had to run out to Target to pick up some very mundane household things, and I got a scale. We have never had one. I was hoping it would provide a little encouragement to help keep me motivated. I was wrong.

Three weeks of working out and cutting back my food intake has netted me a loss of 14 ounces. I know the weight I started with, because despite my efforts at my last doctor visit to NOT see the ugly number on the scale, my doctor felt the need to read the hideous number off my chart to me. She said it out loud. It was four pounds less than I weighed when I gave birth to Luciana, who was definitely not a small baby! Yay, me—I’ve busted my ass for three weeks to get down to 4 pounds and 14 ounces less than I weighed when I gave birth. At this rate, I may be able to get the damn dress zipped up in time for next year’s Vegantines dinner.

On the positive side, the scale has opened up a new hobby for my husband. He marched down the stairs and proudly proclaimed that he weighed himself right before and right after 'taking his dump', and wanted me to guess how many pounds he dropped. I guessed three pounds, thinking that was on the high side, even for him. I was wrong. It was 6.2 pounds. He was so proud. He drops six pounds in five minutes. I can't drop that in three weeks. He's all mine ladies. Don't be jealous. A few brief minutes later, he and L decided that the were going to get some graph paper and start keeping track. Niiiice. I guess that's one way to keep her interested in the graphing unit of her maths.

The cats have a little cold cycling through the herd. It started with Oliver, who has since recovered. Now Carrie has it. It just causes them to sneeze a ton and have a bit of a runny nose. They are fine other than that. I of course still have to worry and watch them obsessively just in case it turns into something else. The worst of it is, that since Oliver & Carrie are both among the group that spends the entire night, every night, in our bed, I have been awakened several times a night for the last week by sneezing fits.

Last night was great and would have been much better had it not been followed by a Monday. L, M and I all worked together on a dragon puzzle that she got for xmas. The plan was to play a game, but instead of selecting a game, she returned with her new dragon puzzle. We got it about half complete by her bedtime. M had a nice fire going, so we worked on the living room floor. L had enough presence of mind to start it out on the puzzle roll-up mat we recently got for just this reason.

Because we were working on the floor, it served as an open invitation to the cats to parade across the puzzle/working surface repeatedly. I watched them. They had no place to go once they traversed the puzzle area. They seriously kept walking over it just because they could. Ivan was the worst offender. I think he was going for some kind of record to see just how many times he could go back and forth.

I was hoping we would be able to finish it up tonight, but no. We only have about 30 pieces left, but they are in a difficult area (the dragon wings) and we just couldn't put bedtime off any more than we already had. We should be able to get it done before I go to class tomorrow.