Now With More Moon & Smaller Shorts

Last night as we left Harmony Cafe after yoga & knitting the moon was rising big and orange over Toys R Us so I stopped in the deserted parking lot of Cub Foods to take its picture in a spot where there weren't any wires or light poles in the way.  I had parked (well, stopped dead in the middle; I'm practicing for driving through Yellowstone week after next) and was just about to turn off Beverly when I saw headlights approaching behind me.  I waited for the van to go by but it stopped right alongside.  It was Mitch, one of the knitters, wondering if I'd run out of gas.  No, I said, I want to take a picture of the moon.  He drove on but then doubled back to take his own pictures of the moon but from way farther back trying to get the moon to look like it was sitting on top of Beverly.  Didn't work, and my shots don't look as orange as it looked in real life, but I'm happy with this one especially and I'm happy that I'm working to learn what's behind all those buttons on the back of my snappy red Nikon Coolpix.  I am also happy to report that I unearthed some smaller shorts yesterday and they fit.  FIT!  They're not a lot smaller, only one size, but with the way my weight loss (non)progress has been going this last year it means a lot to me.  That and the realization when I carried in a 40# bag of birdseed from the car on Tuesday that 40# is the amount of weight I've lost over the last few years since we started eating the WW way, and that bag of birdseed was HEAVY.  I will admit that the pounds came off a lot easier (a lot) when we stuck to the old Quick Start exchanges plan, but Points Plus seems like a way I can eat the rest of my life and it also looks like the way I can maintain a weight loss which I have never been able to do in my entire life.  I've probably lost at least two Barbara's worth over the years and put it back on gradually through going back to my old eating habits.  Not anymore, not now that I have Chef Durwood cooking yummy WW-y suppers and tolerating my lunatic ideas, like making scads of 100-calorie snack packs to take on our trip.  I think it'll be so much easier to grab a snack baggie of pretzels or Reduced Fat Cheez-Its (be still my heart) or Chocolate Chex with dried cherries or cranberries than to buy (as in purchase at a gas station/mini-mart along the interstate for too much money) Cheetos or a candy bar to munch on, and it'll keep me closer to the straight and narrow.  I have no illusions that I'm not going to hare off into "bad food" territory on a daily basis but if a little concentrated pretzel and cracker counting and cereal weighing now can help minimize the damage I'm doing it.  *nods confidently*  Today's Photo A Day theme is "where you sat."  I immediately thought about my sewing chair and the hours of fun I have in it.

August 4 -- Joseph H. David, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Otis and Child.  They sat like that every evening before supper, Daniel reading the newspaper and Betsy holding the baby on her lap.  The miracle baby, Betsy thought of her small daughter.  They had been married nearly twenty years before the interruption of her monthly cycle made her think that her barren womb might finally bring forth life.  Daniel had never seemed to care one way or another about children.  He went to his bank every day but Sunday, read the paper when he arrived home, and expected his evening meal at six precisely.  He was not a sportsman or a hunter where having a son to teach might be a good thing.  Betsy ached for a child.  She suffered near crippling jealousy whenever a young wife came to church big with child or carrying a tiny scrap of humanity wrapped in swaddling clothes.  Finally last year the miracle happened and baby Patty was born after a long and hard labor, but she was worth every pang to Betsy.  Daniel paid very little attention to her; she was a girl after all, unable to inherit his bank and property.

Ah, Dan, you moron, don't you know that girls can do just about anything?  Tsk.  Now I'm off to snag my audiobook copy of To Kill a Mockingbird before the Ashwaubenon Library closes and then it's down into the dungeon, better known as my studio (spoken with a nasally, fake-British accent), to sew up that quilt block in the picture and make it's sibling because I'm really excited to see how those fabrics look cut out and pieced together.  Then later I made coffeecakes.  You totally wish you were here for that.  Totally.  (I'd send you some, DD, if I thought it'd survive the trip. Love, Mom)
--Barbara