Just another day at work

Aren't my kids cute? While I am at the computer all day long, I am never alone. I always have all my kids near me.

HCG diet update

As of today, I have lost a total of 16 pounds. I have until Friday for my drops then I stay on the diet for three more days. Then three weeks of maintenance and after that I can gradually re-introduce regular foods into my diet. The last two days have only been about 1/2 pound loss per day and if I stop losing before Friday, I just may end my diet early so that I can have some sort of Easter dinner. I gotta check to see if I can have ham. Love ham.

Job posting

I am looking to hire someone to work with the company that I am with. This job is full time, Monday thru Friday, 8am to 5pm in whatever time zone you live in. You may check out our company at www.sitecheck.net. In a nutshell, we work with insurance companies, mainly the underwriters and hire individuals to perform what are called Site Reviews or Site Inspections for the underwriting on business insurance policies. We need someone to handle multiple jobs making phone calls usning our inspector database and outside sources to assign the inspections, follow up to make sure it is being done and getting the report and photos prepared for quality review. You WILL be on the phone most of the day. It doesn't matter where you live. You have to have a computer and high speed connection and router. We will provide you with the phone to plug into your router for a voip connection. I will be the one to train you as well. Please send your resume to terrie@sitecheck.net if you are interested.

BLONDE and days 5, 6 & 7

LoL! I wondered when someone was going to catch me on that photo of me with blonde hair. Yes, that is me, NO, that is not my hair. I WISH! That's Reese Witherspoon's hair. There is a website that you can go to and give yourself a make over using famous people's hair styles and various make up products. It's kind of an addicting site. I posted about this site a while back. The picture of me on my header is pretty much how I still look. My hair is a little shorter and I have bangs. One day, I will update my header and another day I will take a photo of myself to post on here.

Diet days
Day 5 Lost 0.4 lbs. This was, I am sure a direct result of me not sticking to the diet. I was out and about for much of the day and while at the mall, (and starving by now) I had to eat something so I ordered a plain hamburger patty with a slice of tomatoe. This is something I would normally eat on my diet except the patty at the mall was no where as lean as it should have been.

Day 6: lost 1.3 lbs
Day 7: lost 1.9 lbs

Day 4 & 5

Day 4, lost 3.2 lbs
Day 5, lost 1.5 lbs
To date, I've lost 7.7 lbs and 10.75 inches with 3 inches of that in my hips and 1 in my waist. This is encouraging so I think I will keep it up.

Day 3

They say the first day is the biggest loss day. Today I am down another 1.7 pounds. I don't expect to lose that much in a day very often. It's supposed to be about a pound a day from here on out. Instead of shots, they have now come out with drops you put under your tongue. It's about $80 for a treatment of 20 days, I think. Jenny got this for us and we split an order so we'll see how long it ggoes for. There are websites you can order from but unless you know someone personally that has gone through one of the sites, I don't recommend it because you never know what you are getting. So far, so good.

Day 2

Down 3.1 pounds. Not hungry at all. Of course I see food and think I'd love to have it but I am sticking to this. I did cheat a little though. I put lotion on my hands. They were catching on the fabric I was sewing on this morning and I can't handle that. I checked the ingredients and there were no obvious oils or waxes in there so I put on just a little.

As far as projected weight gain once you are done with this diet, that's not supposed to happen. The protocol says that if you gain more than two pounds after your ending weight from the last treatment, then you eat a specific diet for one day and you should lose those two pounds easily. Of course you have to weigh yourself everyday to know this but the whole purpose of this diet and the HCG chemical is to force your metabolism to work the way it should again. I know a few people that did only one treatment, lost 20 pounds and are back to eating whatever they want and have not gained any back. I know that I do need to eat healthier and watch the sugars and carbs (which is my problem)but I think that this will help. If I stay away from them for the duration of this first treatment, it may be easier to stay away from them altogether.

Jenny, my daughter is on this as well. She's been on it a few days longer than I and has lost 7 pounds on her 7 days so far. She will only need one treatment since she only has 15-20 to lose but she's keeping me on track.

Day 1

It's not really day 1 of my HCG diet but since the first couple days are "binge" days where you eat as much as you can, whatever you want and to allow the drug to absorb into your system, I am counting today as the official 1st day of my diet. For the next three - four weeks, I am restricted to 500 calories a day. I should lose 1 pound of FAT a day as an incentive. I am not allowed to consume or apply any oils to my body which means I had to find a new shampoo and conditioner, both without oils of any kind. I had to switch deodorant to an aerosol and I cannot use lotion. This is the hardest part for me because I have such dry skin anyway. I have to drink about 2 liters of water a day and I unless I learn to like coffee or tea, this is all I am allowed to drink. Again, this is difficult because I hate water and I hate having to get up from my desk to have to go to the bathroom so many times a day. Forget excercising. With the number of trips I have to take upstairs to the bathroom as well as letting the dogs in and out (because they can't seem to coinside their potty breaks with mine), that's excercise enough for me! But, although I was hungry and wanted something to eat before lunch, I wasn't "dying" and was able to go from 5am to 1pm without anything but water. For lunch I ate 1 apple, 1 tomatoe, 1 piece of Melba toast and 3 oz of chicken. That was a whopping 275 calories. I'm going to have to be careful for dinner since I splurged on lunch. I had a hard time finishing my apple (that I saved as dessert) but it's now 4:40pm and I'm hungry.

I told Brent about this diet needing to be done in segments and you know what he said to me? "So this is going to take a couple of years?" Gee honey, thanks for putting a damper on my enthusiasm. In all reality though,I have about 100 pounds to Looks like I may have to go about 6 rounds of this diet. Between rounds 5 and 6, I have to wait 6 months or the HCG is not effective in what it's supposed to do. Wish me luck!

Hoarding?

Although I am a little embarrassed to post about this, I'm going to anyway. NO, I'm not the hoarder but sometimes I wonder if Brent may be. This is Brent's "Library". See the books on the shelves?(all those books, he's never even read one all the way through and many are books that people at work have read and leave for the next guy to pick it up. He picks them up then keeps them...just to have them.) That's why I call it his library. The only problem is, you can't even go in there. It's piled high with stuff he doesn't use and even stuff I have thrown in the trash, only to have him pull it out saying, "Hey, I might use that some day". There's a stereo system in here that has not been used in over 2 years. It will never be used again because we now have a Bose system and "once you hear a Bose, you'll never listen to anything else". I don't know what to do with it. I don't want to bother selling it and Brent won't give it away.

What actually brought me to posting about this room is what I first saw when I walked in here to put away the laptop. Do you know anyone else that saves the used tea light candle tins? What on earth is he saving these for?
So, I'll keep the door shut and when my front room is finished, his library will be the next thing to tackle...then the garage!

On a seperate note, look what Lacy did. That's right, it's the phone book. She was trying to show Luke how she could rip a phone book in half with her bare teeth.

Just a little something to make you smile

Happy IVGLDSW Day!
Today is International Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman's Day: Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, totally worn out and screaming 'WOOO HOOOOO what a ride!'





Inside me lives a skinny woman crying to get out. But I can usually shut her up with cookies.

~ Unknown~

Misc stuff

I guess I'd better post while I have a few minutes and before I forget.

Work is still work and I do not like being a manager. The owner of the company asked me what I thought of being the COO (Chief Operating Officer). Ummm, I said "NO!" to which he replied, "We'll revisit this again in a month". Hopefully, I am a dissappointment and he won't bring it up again.

The swelling in my legs, ankles and feet has not gone completely away. I went for a follow up appointment and the doc said he wanted me to do a sleep study, thinking I might have sleep apnea. I told him I don't have it. He insisted that I do although I never want or feel the need to take a nap in the middle of the day. I always wake up refreshed and never groggy. (Hey, I am up at 5 am. Mornings are my best time). So, reluctantly, I did the sleep study. Thank goodness, you can just rent a little occimeter and sleep with that on your finger for one night. I got a call from the Doctor's office on Tuesday, I DO NOT have sleep apnea. So why do I still have swelling? The doc just doesn't know. The kidneys, heart and liver are all functioning normally. I guess this is just one more thing I can chalk up to my weight!

Which brings me to another thing. My daughter has friends that have done the HCG diet but with HCG drops instead of injections. My daughter is trying to talk me into doing this with her. I read through the plan and it just seems too... I don't know. Every time I lose weight, I gain it all back and more, putting me in a worse situation than before but with where I am now, I am beginning to notice shortness of breath and other little things that are just annoying. Maybe I will try it for a few weeks, just to see if it works at all on me.

TODAY is (or would be) my mom's 89th birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM. I love you and miss you everyday!

Me, Mom and Linda. Mom's 80th birthday, The last birthday she celebrated in this life.

No longer home

Earlier this week, I had to take a "trip" out of my city and travel a whopping 26 miles to Bountiful to do something for my job. I called this a "trip" because the city I live in is all inclusive. Everything you need is within 3 miles of my house. I rarely need to go outside my comfort zone.



Bountiful is the city that I used to live in and since I had to go there anyway, I decided to make a five minute detour and go see my old house. Although I only lived in this house for 4 years before I got married, it was still my "home" after I moved out. My dad designed and built this house. It was the first house in the the area and we lived with dirt roads for about a year, I think. I loved this house and it held so many memories for me.



As I drove up through the neighborhood, I had lots of flashbacks of my teenage years. Learning to drive my VW superbeetle on those hills. Walking to and from school and yes, I could tell my kids I walked uphill both ways, to and from school and it was at least a two mile walk each way too. I remember trying to ride my bike on these hills and finally deciding that walking was much easier and soon gave up bike riding. I remember walking back and forth up and down those hills to my friends houses, several times a day during the summer. I remember my friends, Michele, Chris and CoLene, and how important they were in my life.



Then I arrived at the house. I'll admit it, I got a bit teary eyed. It wasn't because of how the house looked. It didn't look that much different from when I lived there. I think it was because it made me think about my mom and dad. I think about them all the time and miss them dearly. Somehow, seeing the house again reminded me that it just wasn't "home" anymore.

My excuse

I have an excuse for everything. This time, I think it's a valid one. Don't you?

My reason for not cleaning out this shelf in my fabric closet: Paisley has made herself a nice cozy bed out of all the fleece.

My son

On Jan 23rd, I was sitting in the airport in Orlando, waiting for our flight home. I received a text message that said, "Good morning Daddy". I replied back, "Huh?", to which was received, "That was the text I received yesterday morning". I in turn replied, "So,is this an announcement?"

And so it was. My son's girlfriend is expecting. It was totally unexpected as she was on birth control but I guess some things are just meant to be! We are certainly happy for them. I only wish they lived closer. Being in Arizona doesn't make it too easy for me to spoil the baby but I am sure I will manage. I will just require photos weekly.

Congrats to Jeff and Jessica.

No rest for the weary

There's no place like home. But coming home means back to work and work. My first day back, my boss sent me and Jenny and IM. (Jenny is my daughter and works for the same company that I do.) He wanted to meet with the both of us so he came here to my house. We covered the typical issues, concerns and some new changes then he announced that he will be going to 3 days a week instead of 5. He's past retirement age and has finally decided to take it easy so with that, I knew what was coming. He started in with how we now need a manager and as he is speaking, I am motioning with my head and finger over to Jenny. She really deserves the promotion however, he chimed in and said, "Sorry Terrie, it's you". Crap, I hate this. I really don't like or want to be a "manager". Team lead is good enough for me. He even bumped up my wage but to me, it's not the money. I just don't want the responsibility. But, I didn't see that I had a choice so I told him I would do my best. Friday, I had a meeting with my boss, the programmer and the owner of the company. I can't tell you how many times I heard from the owner that the reason that "so&so" from the other company was let go was because he didn't know how to prevent "forest fires" and he didn't know how to effectively monitor the employees by tracking the amount of work each employeed did and making them accountable for their own jobs. This got my stomach turning in knots because I am not a numbers person. I stink at spreadsheets and if I have to manually count each and every order, well, I simply don't have time for that. The numbers game won't happen if it's not automated. He agreed with me there but since automation of reports takes time and takes the programmer away from other items that are at the top of the list, I am afraid that I will have no fighting chance. In any event, we began our changes last Tuesday. I have finally had the chance to look at some of the old orders that are sitting out there and I am baffled as to why. I guess this is what is meant by making each person accountable. Problem is, if I fix the problem simply to get it out of there, the person who should have been responsible will never learn. If I tell the person what to do, it's going to take that much longer to have them resolve the issue and realize what went wrong. I can't win. My only hope is to point out the issue then deal with the problem myself and hope they catch on.

And still no rest for the weary, when I came back from Florida, I had six order for doll clothes waiting to be filled and Brent and I came down with terrible colds. I've been so weak and so tired, I have really struggles with keeping up on the orders. I've been coughing so much and so hard that my sides and ribs hurt. I just want to go lay down...in fact, I think I will do that NOW! Goodnight.