Weakness and Strength

I am slowly making some progress. I made myself a journal this week - just a three ring binder, with a verse printed out in a pretty font for the front, to remind me. This is what it says:

I give unto men weakness
that they may be humble;
if they humble themselves
before me
and have faith in me
then will I
make weak things
become strong until them.

It's from Ether 12:27. Weakness includes an inclination to over-indulge when eating and to under-indulge in movement. I am seeking His help, and as He promises so often, I am finding what I seek. It's slow progress: I haven't lost any pounds yet. But one of the things I'm keeping track of in this new binder of mine is my measurements, and I lost 1/2 inch on two of them this week. I am grateful for His help!

So, now that I'm measuring myself, and I'm actually taking weekly pictures too, though I don't plan to post those, as they are the most honest (read: unflattering) ones that I've seen in a long time, I'll be checking in with my journal weekly about Thursday. I did it early this week because I was so frustrated with the scale that I needed to see what the tape measure was going to say. But if anyone cares to join me, I'd love company on a Thursday weigh-in/measurement schedule!

Still Going

We were out again tonight with the bike and trailer, riding around. I think I'm going to need to pump up the one tire a bit, it seemed a bit low this afternoon. But other than that, everything is still wonderful. We checked out a new park today, as we wandered around looking to see what there is to see in the range offered by the bike. I can tell that I'm not as strong as I once was, but at the same time it's not terribly hard, so it's working out well. After we got back from the ride we spent a few minutes in the garden before it got too dark to do that too. There's a lot of weeds in there that need to be choked out. I'll probably take some boxes out and put them on my path and then cover them with some mulch to keep it looking less trashy yet still keep the weeds down. My friends that used boxes on their paths last year only had weeds where the boxes slipped apart, so I'm going to try it. It was a good evening. Neither cold nor hot, just very nice. Too early for many bugs. My kind of night.

New Toys

I've been outside all but 1 day this week. We had rain that day, and I also had a nasty headache. But today was something of a red letter day.

Today, I finally got the new bike that I've been wanting to get! We picked it up, and I rode it home. Monkey wanted a turn, but unfortunately, it was lunch time and he clearly needed a nap. So I promised that I would take him out after his nap. At the time, it was hardly a satisfactory solution: he cried. "I'm not sleepy!" And, "It's not my quiet time!" Eventually he woke up from the nap he didn't need, and then we took his stroller outside. Poor Monkey was pretty confused by this. Last fall I used some of my piano money to buy a bike trailer. It came with a stroller adaptation, and we've used it off and on since then. It's a nice stroller. Big wheels. Easy to push. But it's something of a wide load, since it'll fit two kids. So the poor little guy was a bit confused when I said, "Let's go on a bike ride," and got out the stroller. But I talked him into playing along with it, hooked it up, buckled him in, and off we went. At the end of the first block I asked him what he thought. "I like it. It rides good."

Take it Outside

I'm struggling to make the kind of life-style changes that will make loosing weight & keeping it off possible. Recently, I was praying about it and felt prompted to spend more time outside.

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Once upon a time, there was a Mom who had a daughter that liked to read. (That would be me.) Mom, from time to time, would say to the young girl, "You need to go outside to play." Seated on the coziest corner of the couch, with her nose well buried in a fat book, the young girl probably didn't even hear her Mother until she'd said it at least three times. But eventually, if the Mother persisted, she would look up and say, "What?" Sometimes, the Mother was persistent enough that she would actually end up outside. Upon finding herself in the Great Outdoors, the girl commenced to search for a corner as soft as the couch to sit upon. Preferably, a corner without bugs. This was a difficult thing to find, and the girl very seldom found it. Sometimes, she would sit on the cement stairs and try to read comfortably there, but it never seemed quite as appealing as the coziest corner of the couch. In addition, there always seemed to be ants, spiders, and bees on the porch. So she would go back inside to the couch to continue her story, much to the Mother's frustration.

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Yeah. I wasn't much of an outdoorsy type. I'm better now. Discovering gardening did a lot for me. And having flowers just outside my living room window, flowers that attract big fluffy bumbles, has also helped with the whole bug thing. And doing nature study with Monkey is also a lot of fun; I'm learning tons. But I often still feel that old "What am I supposed to DO out here?" feeling that used to bring me back inside so quickly. But it makes sense that getting outside will help with increasing my overall activity level. So Maulbeere and I brainstormed some ideas for Things To Do Outside.

And today is 2 days in a row that I've been outside.