SkyWatch Friday 8/22/25

Taken at my sister's house on a hot day. 

Later when I looked at it, I had to zoom in - I promise that is a dragonfly and not any sort of military plane! 

And then this is what I have at my house....

a blooming chrysanthemum!

These bloom in the fall, so I was surprised to see a few open!

Go check out some more photos!

SkyWatch Friday

 

Weigh in Wednesday 8/20/24

Well, good news!  

I was down 2.4 lbs at the workshop last night!

I tracked every single thing I ate over the last week, the good, the bad & the ugly - but I did it!

I also got my "Dime Journal" all set up and have been filling it out.  

I got my very basic pedometer and have been wearing it, except for yesterday (of course) when I forgot to put it on.  Oh, and I learned that I have to reset it every day, since I had a nice reading of 9000+ steps on Saturday - thanks to mowing the lawn - then at breakfast on Sunday, the grandson asked what that was when he saw it clipped on my pocket.  I looked and was at like 9600 steps at 0830!  Whoops!

That's all I got for now!

Oh - I stopped at Tim Horton's this morning and got a light ice capp and I happened to see they have pumpkin spice stuff out!  I'm really not a huge pumpkin spice fan, but I feel like I NEED to get it to celebrate the approaching fall season! 

So that's my donut above. 

Weigh in Wednesday (on Friday!)

I needed something pretty to look at.

Because this is going to be an ugly post!

  

If you chose to judge me - keep your fingers off the keyboard.  

There's nothing you can say to me that I haven't already thought about myself. 

Remember, I speak fluent Sailor with a Trucker accent. 

😉

After not having gotten on a scale or been to a meeting since July 22, I was back at my meeting on Tuesday.  Of course, I was up again.  This is what happens when you don't follow the plan that's clearly written out in front of you!  

I just looked at my app and after losing a total of 67.6 lbs, I've managed to put it all back on plus 12.6 of its friends.  I got down to 202 lbs at one point, but I never made it into Onederland.  

That's discouraging, since I know it's all in my head. 

My whole story is up in the tab above. 

Anyhoo.  I went back thru some old blog posts to see what I was going back when I was successful.  It helped a lot that I had fewer picky eaters in my home.  But that's nothing I can fix right now - unless someone out there in Blogland wants to adopt a 27 year old picky eater and her 2 little picky spawns?  Know of a circus to sell them to?  No?

One thing I was doing for a while, which might actually seem like it'll work again was this thing I called a Dime Journal.  

It was a notebook (duh!) and for each day, I'd write down 10 things I wanted to accomplish.  Once I accomplished all items on the list, I'd have "earned" $1.  Then once I earned a certain amount of hypothetic money, I'd treat myself to something like a massage.  

Here's one I posted back in 2016...

Then I'd post a weekly recap...

Note - "FLY" is to remind me to follow the FlyLady program and do 15 minutes of cleaning/tidying around my house.

Actually - I might just keep the same / similar items on my new list, since these are all good ones.   I used to wear a Fitbit that clipped onto my bra, since I normally wear a regular watch and don't want to swap it for a fancy fitness tracker.  I ordered a basic pedometer, and Amazon says it's out for delivery.   

The 5K steps is going to be tough since right now I have so many aches & pains that the last thing I want to do is go for a walk - oh plus the heat & humidity!  I also have one of those Infinity Hoops at home, but I have no place to do it at, unless I go outside.  In theory, the living room has enough space to use it there, but the grandkids have taken over so I don't even like going in there anymore. 

Ugh.  So my goal is to get everything ready this weekend and will start the Journal officially on Tuesday since that's weigh in day.

Wish me luck! 

Just as a reminder - that's me under the arrow at last week's search & rescue training.

I hate this picture.  

And out of respect for the rest of my team, 

I've never volunteered to be the one carried in the basket. 

It's my birthday month!

Wooo, I need to get caught up!  

Yeah - my birthday is August 29!  

Mine & Sis1's that is.  I was her birthday present when she turned 13.

😂

So the last weekend in July, we made another trip down to Ohio but this time we added an extra day so we could stop in this town called Berlin - very cool place.  It's in the middle of Amish country (the Amish are "simple" people who don't use modern conveniences like electricity or cars) so there is a lot of horse & buggy traffic but there's also a very neat shopping district with lots of antique stores, coffee shops, restaurants & just a lot of stores to check out.  There's also a year-round Christmas store built in a 3 story, round building, which was the main reason we stopped again.  There were tons of people there, too.

cornbread smothered in BBQ pulled pork! 

From Der Dutchman, an Amish restaurant

Mom's birthday had been the week before, so they brought her out this adorable little cake!

Saturday, we got up and explored a little bit before going into Berlin to shop.  We had a postcard on the table in the hotel with a covered bridge on it, so we looked up where one was - there were several in the area.  We chose to go to the "Bridge of Dreams" but ended up underneath of it.  I was expecting something more fanciful than this, but was still neat. 

We also went on a buggy ride driven by a very interesting Amish man who told us a lot of stories about how they live and the area in general.  The pic at the top of the page is Mom giving "Barney" an apple.  She's not very comfortable around horses (even Sis1's horses!) so I'm glad I got a nice pic of her. 

I've mentioned before that I like to explore cemeteries - we randomly stopped at a couple along with way, neat little old ones. I'd also researched a couple to check out Sunday morning when I had some time to myself.  We ended up going to one of them Saturday night that I'd found on FindAGrave, Sis1 is always agreeable to explore so we left Sis2 and Mom in the car while we went to check it out.

There were houses nearby and we were on a church's property but it still felt pretty creepy!  It didn't help that we got there right at dusk, too.

I don't often get the heebie-jeebies at a cemetery but this was one time that I wished the church had been of the type to have a cross out front, since I'd gladly have gone to touch it! 

I'd totally go back. 

Back home in Michigan! 

Of course we stopped at Cracker Barrel and this came home with me....

When we got on these trips, we always joke that whatever you buy, you have to be able to hold it on your lap!  But since I was driving, and I have the biggest car out of the 4 of us - this fit in the back nicely. 

After-the-storm clouds

I was on my way home from Sis1's house last Thursday after search & rescue training and realized I had a headlight out!  However, mine is one of those cars where the headlights turn with the steering wheel and it appears to require taking the front tire off in order to get in to the assembly from the tire well to change the bulb.  (insert skull & crossbones emoji here)

Funny part is - that was Thursday - last night it was back on. 

The grandson checking out ducks at a local park. 

Yesterday we went to the little water park near Sis1's house.  The granddaughter asked if I would go, too.  Ugh - I would have rather stayed home in the peace & quiet but I did end up going.  

Checking out a dead dragonfly.

Screengrab of the slides from Google streetview, since I didn't take any pics.....

It was fun.  The only other time I've been there was back in like 2013 or so.  I went on the slides a couple times, but I'm apparently getting to be an old fuddy-duddy since I started to panic on the twisty slide.  I wasn't expecting complete darkness and thought it was never going to end and the water was cold enough to take your breath away.  And I didn't like going airborne on the straight slide but I still went on it twice.  

It was hot & sunny but the water was very nice and refreshing.  The pool is only 3 feet at the "deep" end, but that's deep enough to just hang out in and the kids have a good time in.  

Here's the sunburnt look I'm sporting today!  

I normally get burnt earlier in the summer but I've been avoiding the sun because it's just too darn hot!

Anyhooo.  Signing off for now! 

         I found this entirely too entertaining!