A Place for Strawberry

The internet and specifically Pinterest and Instagram are very dangerous places for this strawberry.  I love looking and dreaming and wishing and hoping....oops, I've also been listening to oldies music!

HGTV and all those remodeling shows really get to me too.  As a child, I wanted to be an interior designer, but I am lousy at art and when I looked into I.D. degrees...well, let's just say it is a hobby and not a career.  Poor Hubby would come home from work and the whole house would be turned upside down.  I'm that way; I have to start with a clean slate which usually means pull everything out and start over.

That type of designing happened again. 

Two days ago.  

I had ordered a very basic desk.  I wanted to place it in the living room so I could get away from distractions (mostly the TV, but also cats, dogs, people...you know every one and every thing!) and get some computer/ reading/ writing work done. I didn't want anything large that could hold a bunch of papers and writing paraphernalia (another weakness of mine....oooh, an office supply store!).  I know myself and it would be another cluttered area.  My eldest son is living at home so I find odd jobs for him to do and my new disassembled desk was a perfect odd job.  He put it together and we set it in the living room in front of a window.  I wasn't "feeling" it; you know when you room arrange and think "Oh sh!t, what the h$ll is THAT!"  I didn't exactly have that kind of a thought, but I wasn't satisfied with it.

That afternoon, I had an epiphany (yes, it does happen!) and opened up this puppy.  What a mess!

what's a little sharing amongst friends, eh?

Remember my clean slate mentality?  I pulled all this crap out of the closet and started weeding out things I didn't want to deal with long ago which is why they got dumped in this closet to begin with.  We no longer have a VCR player so we really don't need VHS tapes.  I did keep all the VHSes with personal family stuff on them, though; I'm hoping to convert them to DVDs....yeah, right! LOL

I still have some working to do in the TV room, thanks to cleaning out this closet but now I have....

In my own little corner, in my own little room....

I love it!  I would prefer to have painted it a nice bright color but for now, it is perfect and the best news is I can close the doors and my little "cloffice" will wait and keep clean.

P.S. the kitchen is still clutter-free....now the kitchen table (out of picture view?)....shhhhh.....it is next.  Of course after the TV room-it is still full of the stuff vomited out of my new cloffice.  So I have my work cut out and the holidays are coming up.  Yes, Grainiacs, my life is a mess, but it is getting there.

Happy Wednesday, Grainiacs.  What projects are YOU working on?

The Big Squeeze Ended

Good Morning, Grainiacs!

The BS ended and unfortunately I gained weight.  As per Strawberry mojo, I started out great.  Drank my water, tracked what I ate, even got in some exercise.... and then.....I got sick.  Doggone it; it gets me every time.  It seems our local farmers are burning sugar cane and my head/ body/ nose/ sinuses DO.NOT.LIKE.IT!!!! not one little bit.  Man, sugar is biting me in the butt one way or another!!!!  Although sugar is not my comfort food of choice when I'm sick, ooey, gooey, creamy things are!  We have a church member who makes chicken and homemade noodles.  You read it right;    h.o.m.e.m.a.d.e. noodles.  Come to me, baby!   Now that is some kind of good. 

Yes, officer, there were left-overs.

Yes, officer, I took them.

Yes, officer, the whole pot!

So....although I did gain this past week, I am ever so grateful it wasn't a 10 pound gain!

Yep, that's that.  It is done; it is over; it is time to get back on track.

In other news, I read somewhere (probably on the internet so you know it is true) that women tend to gain if they have a cluttered kitchen.  For the past two days I have soldiered on and cleaned up that puppy.  The rest of the house might be a pig's sty, but my kitchen shall be a clutter-free zone!

Ain't I purty??

My goal is to see this beautiful sight each day.  You might notice that my decorative plates are missing from the photo.  I'm still looking for them since the big electric-turn-your-house-upside-down fiasco last year.  Can you believe one year ago I was packing up the fragile stuff so the workpeople didn't break anything?  One year ago our lives were turned upside down and we were street people again living out of HEB bags and sleeping at the church or in friends' homes.  One year!

I guess I'm feeling melancholy because another year has almost passed and I'm still fighting the weight game.  Will I be feeling this way even when I lose?  Will I ever be happy with myself?  These are the things I ponder Like sands through the hour glass so are the days of our lives.  Talk about The Big Squeeze!!!!

Happy Tuesday, Grainiacs. Time to put the big squeeze on another room in the house!
 

Feeling lazy

Would it be okay to share my WW blog with you today, Grainiacs?  I have the blahs.  Farmers are burning sugar cane and my head is achy and my throat is achy and I am achy.  I wanted to share this recipe with my WW peeps and thought: why not share it with my Grainiac peeps?

Hope your day is going better than mine.  I DID, however, get dinner in the crockpot so....Win!

Here you go....

It's Okay to Point

Have a great Grainiac day.

Strawberry

The Big Squeeze Day 2

Let me back up a day since I didn't really tell you about my sugar detox plan.

Day 1 was to drink half my body weight in H2O.  I was gung ho in the am and by the middle of the afternoon I'll confess: I was water-logged.  Getting all that water down was a challenge!

Also I had to travel about 45 minutes to a meeting.  I know those ladies thought I had a bladder infection or something because I kept getting up to pee.  Drinking a cup of coffee and 48 oz of water will do that to a person.

I went to visit The Momma another 30 minutes away and I was still running to the bathroom over at her house.  

thank you Google images...you can really distract a Strawberry!

The great news is I wasn't hungry AND I got my water in.

Yesterday of my Day 2 Sugar Detox was a      HUGE  success.  Believe it or not, I had another meeting.  Thanks to my successful Day 1 of no sugar, I was able to pass up homemade pound cake (the woman's mother's recipe!).  I told her I would take a slice home and eat it after my sugar detox challenge.  We all got busy after the meeting and I was able to leave without that pound cake in tow.  I know me; I would have scarfed it down before I got out of her driveway!  It is better NOT to even have it in the house.

I did not finish all my waters yesterday but I still have the cup filled with it.  My plan is to finish yesterday's allotment and then start on today's allotment.  Whew!

OH and today is weigh in day so I am not downing 24 oz of water before that "reveal."  As it is, I made myself a cup of joe forgetting that I do not eat or drink before I weigh in.  I have to go find my lucky Mexican dress and head out the door.

Wish me luck!

~Strawberry~

Day 1 of Sugar Detox

From now on I will call it The Big Squeeze!  I'm squeezing out the sugar from my diet.  Did I tell you I have a fatty liver?  

Of course!  Everything about me is fatty; why wouldn't my liver be too??
  

Hubby told me to talk to a church member who also has been diagnosed with a fatty liver; she is more diligent about researching "fatty liver" and what to do about it.  I'll give you the Reader's Digest version: basically stop eating ALL the foods (and coffee) I like!  hmmmm
In other words, what is good to my palate is killing me.  P.S. how do I know?  I had one of those package tests you do at a local church....Life Scan or StRoKe sCaN or something like that!  My friend and I were wondering how many people have had fatty livers and not known about it and have suffered a stroke.

  Well, I'm drinking my H2O along with my coffee!

All in all, good Day One.