Tag: thanksgiving

Another Diet

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Exercise, Food, HealthLeave a comment

I went to the doctor’s office yesterday for my regular visit and found out how much weight I have gained. Over 20lbs.

Here’s the story for those who aren’t familiar. I was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this year when I weighed 252lbs. I went on a diet and went down to 215lbs.

Our diet wasn’t very inventive but it was good enough for me since it had protein, grains and vegetables. I had cut out all breads from our diets (mine and Chips) and my diet gave me so much energy that I was always cleaning.

One night Darrin said to me that he didn’t want to eat this anymore, you’re working too hard and it makes me feel bad. Well, I had lost 37lbs and by telling me that, he discouraged me. He started asking for pasta and for other things and next thing you know, he’s buying cookies and donuts.

I started gaining weight again and before I knew it I was losing all of my energy and becoming lazy again. Now, I’m 239 according to the doctor’s office. The doctor said 20lbs but that’s according to where it says 218 in my chart.

What happened was, I was 218 then went to the doctors then lost more weight and before my next visit I had already gone back up to 218 because of Darrin not wanting to continue the diet. Then I just kept gaining more and more weight.

So now that he has a job, he can’t tell me what I can make for him for dinner or to not clean and I’m going to tell him flat-out that he needs to just let me do what I’m gonna do to help us lose weight. I can’t keep up with this yo-yo dieting. I have to lose this weight.

I’ve already started cooking vegetables for dinner again so when Darrin comes home from work he has a balanced dinner to eat before he collapses on the couch for the evening. I’m going to get off my M&M’s binge and stop eating sugar and breads altogether again. I can do this, I know I can.

I have a feeling I will be hosting Thanksgiving this year which means I gotta get this house clean lol. In order to do that, I need to eat balanced meals to give me the energy. I just drank a Red Bull to give me the energy to mop the kitchen floor which takes all of about 10 minutes to do lol.

You know your energy levels are at 0 when you can’t even do the simplest chores such as mopping the floor. I seriously don’t know how I cleaned the bathroom and living room last week.

If I am hosting Thanksgiving this year then I have a lot of work to do to get this house up to snuff. I’m sure I can do it all by myself… UGH! I’m gonna need a LOT of Red Bull. I wish I had the money to hire a housekeeper a couple of days before they arrive to make damn sure this house is spic n span.

When Playing Becomes Scaring

On By Michel McDonaldIn PetsLeave a comment

I have a 3lb Chihuahua.  She likes to play.  She LOVES to play.  I was holding her and blew on her neck, you know like when you blow on a baby’s stomach and it makes a farting sound and it makes them giggle.  Well, I can tell when she’s laughing because she starts sneezing and, well, I can tell.  And so I kept doing it and she thought it was funny, she was having fun.  Then I did it on her side and all of a sudden she got real serious and PEED on me.

I don’t know what’s wrong with her.  Whenever I’m playing with her I kiss her and stuff but whenever my face goes anywhere near her side all of a sudden she gives me this look of horror and starts peeing on me.  It’s like she’s scared all of a sudden that she thinks I’m gonna just start chowing down on her.  As if, she only weighs 3lbs, she barely has any meat on her at all.

We’ve had her for a year, don’t you think that by now if we were going to eat her we would’ve eaten her already?  What’s up with that?  I mean it’s not like we’re fattening her up to prepare her for Thanksgiving dinner, I mean, Thanksgiving has already passed.  LOL.  Poor thing.  I really love her, she’s so cute and so funny but… I don’t want to eat her.

Happy Thanksgiving

On By Michel McDonaldIn Food, HolidaysLeave a comment

We just came home from Hometown Buffet.  The best place for 2 people to eat on Thanksgiving when not with family, in my opinion.  They have everything you could want for Thanksgiving and then some.

Light Set for Bike

On By Michel McDonaldIn CyclingLeave a comment

My light set finally came today.  I bought it exactly a week ago on Saturday and it came today which is a Saturday hehe.  That’s ok, I wasn’t too impatient… NOT!

I installed it immediately and almost right away I ran into a huge snag.  The headlight could be installed in 1 of 3 locations.  2 places on the handlebars, the screw on top that you use to adjust the handlebars but that screw doesn’t come out.  You unscrew it and it is connected to the bottom of the pipe to tighten the handlebars so when you adjust it to go up or down it tightens.  Then there is a screw in the middle of the handlebars in the front that you use to adjust the handlebars to tilt them up or down.  That screw comes out but it was too thick to go into the hole for the light bracket.

So my only alternative was the brakes.  As soon as I took the screws off the brakes I messed things up.  The diagram shows that you have to remove the brakes and put the light behind them so it’s all the way in the back which I was able to do no problem.  But when I went to replace the brakes and tightened the nuts the brakes wouldn’t work.  They were locked in place.  I didn’t put it back on right and the way the spring is on there you cannot put something behind it.  It’s just not done.  So I had to take the light off and figure out how to get the brakes back on right which I eventually did.  I got the manual out but couldn’t find it in there.  It then occurred to me to look at the back brakes to see how they are installed lol DUH.  Anyway, I got them back on and put the light in the very front of the brakes.  It’s all good now.

The generator got put in place and so did the back light.  It all works.  Although I can’t really tell in the daytime, I have to ride it when the sun goes down to see how well it all works.  From what I remember when I was a teenager and having this same light system the lights aren’t very bright when you are riding a normal speed which I guess is 10mph.  When you are going down hill the lights turn on bright because you picked up speed.  So it makes sense that when you go faster the lights go brighter.  And of course as soon as you stop the lights turn off.

I’m just glad to have it finally so I was able to check that off my wish list for the bike.

Our Visit in San Diego

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

As you know we went to San Diego on Saturday morning / Friday night at around 2:30am November 16/17 2007 and we came home on Wednesday the 21st the day before Thanksgiving. We wanted to go early because Darrin had appointments on Tuesday and Friday but he canceled the Tuesday one to stay until Wednesday and I wanted to come home on Tuesday because of our cat. I only left her enough food and water to last a few days and when we came home her food dish and water was empty. She has the type of water dish that is like an arrowhead bottle. I don’t know how many ounces of water it holds but it’s not that much. If we were able to stay longer we would’ve but we couldn’t. It’s a shame we weren’t there on Thanksgiving day. But while we were there we went to Sea World, San Diego Zoo and we also went to the San Diego natural history museum and saw the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I am going to work on those videos soon today if I can so I can get them on YouTube for all to enjoy. I took lots of pictures while I will have to scale down for the website. I mentioned in my previous blog about the buttons. What a trip that was. Darrin also encountered his own weird moment too. When he was a kid he had this desk in his bedroom, it was a really huge desk too and so anyway I guess when he left the nest he supposedly took it with him and somewhere along the way it got lost. Darrin mentioned that his mom asked him about it many times before she passed on and he felt so guilty about losing it. Well while we were there Chips brother was showing him around the property and showed him this shed and inside the shed there was a huge desk and this was the desk that Darrin thought he had lost. Apparently his brother had gotten it at some point. So all is well and he doesn’t have to feel guilty anymore.

Box of Buttons

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

When I was 19 years old I asked my mom for a button and she went into her sewing kit and pulled out a little clear box with a pink lid filled with many different types of buttons that she has collected over her lifetime and she handed it to me. I dumped it out onto the table and looked for the button I needed and put it all back and she told me to keep it because you never know when you are going to need a button. So I took it and I had it for many years.

When we lived in Hollywood we had this neighbor named Meg and one day between 1994 and 1999 I don’t remember when, Darrin gave this box to her without my permission. He didn’t realize that this box of buttons, as insignificant as it may seem, meant a lot to me because it was my moms box of buttons. I felt like I couldn’t ask for it back because I don’t ask for a gift back after it was given. So basically, I lost it forever. Meg passed away in 2000 soon after we moved to Bakersfield and when we went to her house it had been ransacked and I never saw the box again.

Today we left Butch and June’s house (we came to visit early before Thanksgiving and came home today) and just before we left I went upstairs to see their tenant’s room that they are renting and as I was going down the stairs after looking at it I noticed this little box sitting on a shelf by the door. I went over to Darrin and asked him if he gave my box of buttons to June and he said no and I said I just saw my box and so I walked over to the door and opened it and grabbed the box and opened it to find it was filled with buttons. Darrin asked June where she got it and she said that she got it from the motel (they own some motels in San Diego as well as all over the United States). What that means to me is that the “friends” of Meg’s who ransacked her house when she died took my box of buttons and one day they were in San Diego and just so happened to have stayed at Butch and June’s motel and accidentally left the box and it ended up in the lost and found and June just so happened to take it home.

The box found me! After all these years it found me. I firmly believe it too. What are the chances that I would ever see this box again? Here is a picture of the box. By the way, before Darrin gave it to Meg I was bored one day and I had this sticky foil paper that you put over a book, it’s book covers in the mid 90’s and it is the type that when you look at the silver part it has colors and they printed it black with the silver flower outlines.  The top piece didn’t stick so I glued it on and the sides didn’t stick so I used clear packing tape and sure enough this has all that on it.  It is in fact my box that Darrin gave to Meg.

Early Thanksgiving

On By Michel McDonaldIn HolidaysLeave a comment

We are going to be in beautiful San Diego this weekend to spend an early Thanksgiving with Chips brother and his family. We have to do it early because Darrin has appointments that he cannot break on Tuesday and Friday so it makes spending Thanksgiving on the actual holiday difficult. I think we are going to be able to go visit Sea World and of course Tijuana. What fun!

The Use of Our Oven

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

We haven’t had the use of a stove since we moved into Opals house after she passed away and so Darrin decided that he wanted to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving instead of going out like we always do so he bought a package of cookies to bake. Well, I turned the oven on to 350° and it works. It’s an electric oven but it seems to work fine. See, we haven’t touched it because it’s an old oven, it hasn’t been turned on in 30 years. But it seems to be ok. Although, perhaps I’m talking too soon… Prepare for an edit to this post haha.