April 16, 2008 9:23 A.M. Weight: 158.0 lbs.

This morning at my workout I opted to try the recumbant bike. I was quite apprehensive about this partly because, hey, it's just sitting down and reclining for the most part, how could that be any work? Mostly though, it was because the only people I see USING the recumbant bike are, well, let's just say that they are not spring chickens. Dare I associate myself with that group? Let's forget, for the moment, that it was a 72 year old woman that passed me more than one time in that 8K I was working my hardest to get through. Still, I prefer to think that she was superhuman or possibly a very springy chicken wearing an old person suit and that I am still in my prime of, ahem, youth.

At any rate, I got out there and got on the recumbant bike. I almost chickened out at the last second except the whole reason I wanted to try it is because with these shots (Only 6 left!! Then bring on crabby obnoxious Aunt Flo and more Lupron shots... I think.. if my agency would ever get back to me to tell me what drugs I should take come 'day 1'), my upper butt area has been a little sensitive and using the upright bike tends to put a lot of pressure on that upper part of my butt as I sit on the bike seat and my glutes get squashed and stay that way for the whole ride. When I get off the bike that area aches a bit until I move around and uncompress the muscles and get the blood moving again. In the light of causing more pain to a sensitive area, I sucked it up and got on the dumb old person bike. I set it to level 11 (out of 12) because I'm wicked hot and can take it, only the peddles couldn't move at that setting. I switched it down to 5 and kept it there. 5 was too low as whenever I'd hit an easy part in the hills, the resistance was so low that I was actually shaking the bike. The program had no method of upping the level once you start though so I had to stick it out at 5. If there is ever a next time, I'll have to try 7 maybe.

Once I finished off 21 minutes (it would've been 20, but the last minute was a huge set of hills and I wanted to be super and finish off the big hills) I went over to the rowing machine to put in 10 minutes there. I stopped like a deer in headlights... someone was on MY rowing machine! I started to walk back to the front desk where I was going to write a scathing review of the fact that they only have 1 rowing machine but then I said no. NO. I have 10 more minutes to work out and I'm just going to have to find something else to do. I got on the elliptical just behind the rowing machine and programmed in my 10 minutes. 3 minutes into it, the guy got off the rowing machine but I was already into my program and didn't want to go do 7 minutes on the rowing machine. I told myself over and over I was NOT going to forget to write in a comment card that they need another rower because this was the second time I wanted to use it but someone else was on it.

Do you think I remembered? OF COURSE NOT. Dang. I'll have to try to remember when I go in next time. Maybe if I write it on my forehead I won't forget.

Yesterday was Gavin's first day of state testing in school. Basically, they shut up an ADHD student in a classroom for 30 minute stretches with 5 minute breaks in between and tell him that if he finishes early he can have extra time to play. This is something special they do for Gavin due to the ADHD where most kids don't get to go play 'if they finish early'. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it is not helpful to tell a kid he'll get to play if he finishes early. I mean, Gavin cares not what his score on these tests are. In fact, I highly doubt he even cares about any importance. I know that he is not motivated to have his true intellegence show through the scores, or at least, not as motivated as he'd be to finish early and play. Plus, he had an issue on the playground the other day so he isn't being allowed out to recess for the week and I TOLD them that I predicted problems during the week due to that. Well, yesterday he and this other student were evidentally leaping off chairs in the room (DUH - he's an ADHD student shut up in the room ALL DAY LONG) and he ended up injuring another student. Now they are asking me about consequences. They are all miffed because 'noramlly he'd get a white slip and be in stop and learn.' WELL - we've determined from THREE YEARS that his behaivor is not improved from giving him a white piece of paper and having him go sit in a room with a teacher he loves where he doesn't have to do any classwork. He was missing out on his education and he didn't care. I fail to understand why these child education professionals are so baffeled by something so prevelant as ADHD and I fail to understand why they think that *I* have all the answers. I'm not a child psychologist. As much as I WANT to be the expert on my son and getting him to behaive, I was never given a guide to his head. I know what works at our house but I also know that I'm not giving him state tests and so if I take away privledges it won't affect his scores. It is hard to say if I'm frustrated by just the situation and just not knowing what would be the right thing to do for him or if I'm actually upset with the teachers for throwing their hands up and expecting me to take it all on single handedly. At any rate, I have an e-mail in my inbox that I'll need to answer regarding the issue and I'm putting it off because I just don't know what to say.

Last night I, the domestic goddess that I am, made a vegitable beef stew. I forgot the cressant rolls. I cut carrots, celery, the leanest cut of steak I could find, mushrooms, and onions up while my husband grated red potatoes into a pile that looked very much like cheese. It turned out very good, if I do say so myself. My husband got out ice cream for everyone at the end of the meal. This would've been evil enough but then he pulled out little tubes of mini M&Ms to put on top of the ice cream. I would've committed homocide if I wasn't so busy getting spoons. Asher was thrilled with the M&Ms, but he didn't want them to touch his ice cream. He refused to get anywhere near any ice cream/ M&M contamination area period. You gotta wonder what is going on in their heads. Chocolate, good. Ice cream, good. Weird cold white stuff with strange little colored areas in my ice cream bowl? EWWWW!

April 15, 2008 8:54 A.M. Weight: 157.0 lbs.

That's it. I've lost my very last brain cell. Last night the phone rang and the caller ID said it was my friend Jeanette. I was so excited... Jeanette is calling me on a Monday evening just to chat. How cool is that? LOL! So she asks where I am and I'm starting to think something is up and it turns out I TOTALLY spaced on a girls night out that I had planned. AHHHH! I was so bummed out! That and I felt really guilty standing up my friends. Well - also I wanted to get away from WWIII that had become my home. I swear, I love my kids to death individually, but put them together and it is sibling rivalry times a zillion. Gavin and Jessie spent the ride home argueing about if it was summer or spring. We get home and Gavin goes outside so the little ones follow and Jessie and Asher take turns whacking each other on the head with their shovels and then crying to me about it. Then once dinner is ready there is the customary "I get to sit next to Mommy!" fight that has been so bad for the last 3 months that I've refused to sit down at the table at all. Instead I hold my plate and stand near the table. The two big ones fight so bad about who is sitting next to me that the loser is hyperventilating and drooling on the table about having to sit one chair away from me and Asher decides he must sit IN MY LAP for every meal. Then the meal is done and the fighting is about who gets to turn on the bath water and who gets the 'blue' sippy cup and who gets to have the 'first' freezie. Yes, even the 8 year old seems to think there is something intrinsically different about the freezie that I open first as opposed to the next freezie that I open. So you see, going out to eat with grown ups that all sit down at the table and eat food without throwing any of it at anyone or shoving it across the table if something offensive shows up on their plate and no one wants to get down off their seat to crawl under the table of the other people in the restaurant and eat the food that has fallen to the floor there... that is divine.

Don't get me wrong, my kids are amazing and I absolutely adore them and know how lucky I am to have them. That doesn't prevent me from sometimes wanting to duct tape them into their closets for just a few moments when they are not trying to 1-up each other. So I am very very sorry to my friends that I spaced out our datenight. Very embarrassing.

This morning after hitting the snooze button twice and cursing my exercising ambition from last night when I set the damn thing, I dragged my butt out of bed and headed out to the gym. I was resolved on running more than 3 miles today. I hit my 6.2 MPH at about 2 minutes in and by 10 minutes in I was very tired. DANG! I kept it going to 3 miles and even went one more 'lap' for 3.25 miles at 6.2 MPH and I stopped. I was much more tired today but that is still just an excuse. Oh well, if I keep going up even a little each time eventually I'll be going 4+ miles. (Yes, because I'm an uber-runner.) BTW - my knees have been doing MUCH better since I'm incorporated significant stretches into my routine. The only down side is that I realize I'm about as limber as a 2-by-4. I was doing a hamstring stretch in the gym today and this guy was sitting next to me doing it MUCH better. I would've pushed him over if I didn't think I'd pull something by putting in the effort.

After that is my pre-weigh-in ritual. Remove shoes, shirt, shorts, socks, watch, hair clip and ponytail holder. Walk to scale in sports bra and spandex shorts. Stand like I'm REALLY interested in the pattern on the floor while the person stands at the scale drying off her swimming suit. Why? Because I can't handle getting on the scale with someone else close enough to the scale to read the numbers. And for some reason I'm compelled to not actually LOOK like I'm waiting for her to leave. I don't really get why I care. I mean, I am PROUD of my weight. Heck, I'd even post it on the internet if... oh... wait. See, proud. I'm also such an attention hound that I'm surprised I don't start yelling to gather a crowd, frankly. Everyone, step right up, who wants to make a prediction on today's results? Will it be the 158 I've been coveting or will I hang my head with a 160? Will I finally break out of the 160s to a point where I can be confident it wasn't a fluke? Everyone! What do you think? You, ya you in the orange sports bra with the towel around your waist, what's your guess? How about toothpaste lady that forgot to shave your legs? Naked girl by the sauna door? OK, here we go.. and it is...(dramatic pause)... 156!! OMG!! Where did that number come from??? (Doing a little boogy on the scale.) Oh, well... maybe too much dancing. Everyone's a critique. OK fine, stupid scale, give me a 157. I do a little bow and head back to my locker. But no - I totally bypass all the opportunity for attention. Still - 157 - how cool is that? Besides, I get the feeling you'd have thought I was lying if I tried to pull off the 156 in my blog.

This DOES mean that now I get to move to the next wall in lockers!! That is totally wicked cool. I say, dance on, Ms Robyn! You hit 157!

April 14, 2008 9:01 A.M. Weight: 159.0 lbs.

So, there I was in my bedroom with a bag full of hot corn shoved down my pants.

I had just completed PIO shot #4 - well - my husband had just completed stabbing me in the ass with a 22gage needle and injecting me with 10 ccs of pure poison gaurenteed to make me bloated, cranky, and constipated. After putting all the sharp things into the sharp things container hidden away in our dinning room hutch (what, don't YOU keep medical supplies in your dinning room hutch? I figured it was the one place none of the kids would get at it.) and returning the medicine vial and other paraphanilia to its proper place, I tossed this flannel bag full of corn that my dear friend made for me into the microwave. I nuked it to appropriate hotness and unbuttoned my pants to fit this ~10 pound bag of heated corn into the back of my pants. The very fact that I could button my pants up again after doing that might suggest that I either probably shouldn't be wearing those pants in public or that I should at least not be wearing them all weekend long without even bothering to remove them to sleep. Sorry - yes - I can be THAT lazy. The heat has proven itself to help ease the lump of oil that forms at the injection site into my muscle and I've noticed significantly less pain. So much for ignoring it after the first shot after my friend tried very hard to warn me how much it helps. I figured - Hey, that didn't even hurt and *I* am tough - HA - hot pack my ass. (Get it, hot pack - my ass - not ON my ass! HA!) Little did I know that the pain was not in the shooting but in the walking around and general living with a large lump of oil that has no intention of dispersing on its own. Huh - imagine - sometimes the advice of someone who's been there, done that is actually worth listening to. Live and learn, I guess.

So anyway, I went up to my room to finish reading some blogs on the computer and there I was in my bedroom with a bag of hot corn down my pants. I happened to have to go to the bathroom so I wandered in and as I walked past the mirror I was rewarded with this image of someone with a very large ass and an untucked loose shirt hanging over everything. I almost went into convulsions. I thought for a very brief moment that someone had snuck my old ass onto me without me noticing! (Ya, I know, I've taken too many drugs in the last 30-odd days. You should see my driving skills!! On second though, I'm really hoping NO ONE sees my driving skills as of late - especially not people wearing blue uniforms and owning cars with blinky lights on the top. Do you think the "I'm sorry officer but I haven't pooped properly in 14 days and I thought I might've had the urge coming on so I really needed to get to a bathroom as fast as possible." excuse would get me anything?)

I will tell you one thing - seeing that image of me and knowing that I was STILL able to button up my size 14 (I know - they are my WEEKEND pants!) jeans so I was actually larger than that before losing the 70 pounds - it was surreal. I was so proud and embarrassed all at the same time.

Anyway, the moment was short lived because I actually DID have to go to the bathroom and these days, when I think I might actually be able to be rewarded for my efforts on the toilet I don't mess with waiting around.

I have to admit that I ended up not working out on Friday. I did go in on Sat and while I had resolved to run 5 miles just like the weekend before, I wussed out and only did 3. I did do those 3 at an average of 6.2 MPH so I'm quite proud of that - however I wish that I had stuck it out longer. In the first mile I was feeling AWESOME at 6.2 MPH. I was thinking I could hold that pace all day without even being tired. Ya, maybe if I lived at the north pole during winter and "all day" meant a total of 23.18 minutes. I absolutely got tired. I'm going to have to work on my endurance and ability to keep it going for longer now rather than just continueing to up the speed.

After my run I weighed in at 159.0! AHH, so CLOSE to breaking the 158 mark!! I figured that if I could ever not be walking around with my intestines cramping up due to inhumane digestive conditions thanks to all the progesterone I'd probably be a decent 155 by now so I didn't take the 159 so badly. This morning I was also 159 (not .0, incidentally, damn peanut butter!) but I'm still kinda psyched because my mindset has obviously moved to thinking of 159 as a 'high' number to be beat and not the 'low' number I'm hoping to achieve.

Onto my day. My goals are as follows:

1) Don't say or do anything stupid in front of anyone such that they start to wonder about recreational drugs I might be on. (Oh gosh if ONLY that were the case!)

2) Have plenty of alone time in the restroom.

3) Do NOT turn into a carb zombie at any point in the day but especially after 8PM.

4) Healthy dinner.

April 11, 2008 8:39 A.M. Weight: ???

Good morning! I have no weight to report because my husband had to go into work early so I got to handle daycare drop off. I'm going to be picking them up as well so I'll either have to figure out a way to get in or call it a 'break day'. I'm honestly leaning towards the break day just because I have been working hard many many days in a row BUT - I also feel like I'm on the cusp of actually getting under 159 and I'd hate to mess with that. I guess - my head knows that taking one day off is USUALLY a good thing with weight loss but my gut is telling me to NOT do it. We'll see, I guess. My scale at home this morning did give me 159.

So - my butt is sore. Not from working out. Just the upper left side where Kris gave me the progesterone shot last night. I honestly didn't even feel him giving me the shot (probably due to the cold pack that numbed the area all up.) It also didn't hurt all last night. Just this morning I noticed the area was a bit sore. I guess that's why you alternate sides every day. I'm going to have to figure out giving myself the shot though because he won't always be around for that. The package came yesterday and when I opened it, I noticed that the syringes they sent had needles on them AND they sent additional needles.  Weird.  I opened one of the syringes and HOLY CRAP that was a big needle!!  18gage, 1.5 inches.  The other needles were 22 gage (which is smaller) and still 1.5 inches.  I immediately took off the big one and put on the smaller one! LOL!  Then I called my friend so that she and her husband could walk me and my husband through the first shot.  How lucky am I to have someone that did this before me?? 

April 10, 2008 8:57 A.M. Weight: 159.0 lbs.

Back to 159!! The scale did that "false number" thing to me again this morning where it settles on something for ~5 seconds and then flips. I had 158 at first and almost died. 159 is still good.

We found out yesterday that the transfer date out in Toronto is pushed out. The egg donor had a bad cycle so they are going to start her (and me) over. I'm getting overnighted some progesterone shots that I need to do intramuscularly for 12 days and then I should get my period and THEN we restart. I am only taking 1 Estrace pill now instead of the 3 I was taking. It's all very sad and of course I feel bad for the guys beacuse a failed cycle is never fun. On the less emotional side of things, this also causes potential trouble because 6-7 weeks out from now is the start of birthday/anniversary marathon time for my kids and my mom. She has reservations at this camping ground for her anniversary and for that matter, Kris and I have been invited to a family camping trip that I REALLY want to go to. Plus Ash's birthday is the 22nd so.. do I plan his birthday party anyway and deal with moving it if I have to, or do I plan on having his birthday party later with Jessie near June 2nd? Is that late enough? Last - I'm a little on edge about the whole thing because a transfer at the end of May would put my due date on or near Feb 23rd which is Anily's birthday and I don't know how I feel about that. On one hand, it would feel a bit fate-like because she is the inspiration for the path that brought me to do this for these guys. On the other hand, that is HER time and HER date and I don't like having anyone infringe on it - not to mention that I'll have all the physical pregnancy issues mirroring when they happened with her pregnancy and I'll be very due right in the late winter/early spring weather and I tend to get REALLY anxious right around Anily's birthday.

Well - all that kinda bubbles around my head but mostly I just say that it will all work out however it needs to. For now I have progesterone shots to figure out and then a new cycle to start so new Lupron shots. As my friends were quick to point out, this also means I'll have time to get a few more runs under my belt.

Speaking of runs - I think I was a bit premature in my celebration of uber running with no knee pain. On the bright side, it wasn't the same KIND of knee pain this time. I think I did something to the inside of my right knee when I was either running or rowing because when I was stretching - I just looked it up - the gracilis muscle - was really sore and tight right at my knee. I'm guessing that's the right muscle anyway based on what it felt like. It was not kneecap pain though like what I've had before and I'm pretty sure this will resolve as I rest the area. I just did the elliptical today.

BTW - after the discussion regarding numb feet on the elliptical I was paying attention to this. My feet did not get numb during the 30 minutes I was on it however I was picking my feet up almost off the pad on each up-step so I was going just a bit faster than the machine with each step. I wasn't doing anything special to do that - it was my natural stride while on the machine so maybe finding a machine that allows your feet to leave the pads with each step would help.