Reporting in from last night's italian dinner.... I ordered napoletonia? pasta (tomato sauce pasta) - 1.5 for the tomato sauce and NORMALLY 5.0 for the pasta - lunch serving - I ATE THE WHOLE BOWL DINNER SIZE. Goodness me! I went over my points by 2.5 yesterday (Had a glass of beer too! Bad McPeg). Today I have been ensuring to have my fruit salad (breakfast), had a lovely bread with raisin sandwich with small amount olive oil marg and going to have a no point mixed veggie soup mid-afternoon before going over to our friends for movie and chinese tonight. WALKED to and back to the store for groceries - I have one of those pull carts on wheels because I LOVE WALKING - especially when it's sunny. So hopefully I recovered a few points round trip. Going out again for a walk to the garden centre and back. Try and recover a couple more points and soak up the sun. It is an actually crisp, cold sunny day in Scotland - our area has complete escaped the UK snow during the last week. I love walking in this weather - sheer delight! Planning to take a bottle of strawberry flavoured water because there will be beer and wine and after last night I need to watch today and tomorrow. I enjoyed myself last night - did not touch any cheese garlic bread that surrounded me, nursed my beer throughout the meal and ate like I have never seen food before (tee hee). Ah but I love a good challenge. So that was my adventure last night and today and I walking and stretching. Can't stay on too long - need ta get moving again. Hope everyone hangs in there. Beverly, you are still doing fine because you keep trying new things and you are not quitting on yourself. What a star you are! Yellowhair I am glad to see you recovering and getting back on track again. Fabulous. I agree with your comments on crockpot cooking. Slow cooking is great but so is pressure cooking if you have less time. MaryAnn - okay so ya had a donut. I will have a few when I visit home or maybe just one because I now know better. You can't deny yourself life's small pleasures but you are well armed with knowledge now to recover and not feel bad for enjoying that donut. I know there will always be donuts but it will taste so much better for me if I can achieve my goal by end summer and have one wearing size 12 pants. Then it will be worth it! Big Mama, I know you have had a tough time but you keep coming back. I have absolutely no idea what it's like for you I can only understand food. I admire you for taking care of yourself and still coming back to talk to us. Don't let go - I am reaching out to you and hanging onto your hand! You can do this. Forget yesterday if you had any bad ones and focus on taking care of yourself today. Take some time today to give yourself some pamper time - a nice walk or soak in the tub, get a nice haircut/curl, buy a new pair of funky socks/shirt or something...or simply turn off the phone, close the door and have some quiet time with a good book. Let's make today count - no matter what we do. Life is precious and so are we! Cheers, gotta stroll! McPeg

Hey Judy! I noticed that too on the Wii the running in place and marching ones really get to my arse! As you get better you graduated to doing it long and longer and it's tough! It seems funny that a video game can be such a good physical workout, but it is! What I have is a Baritone Ukulele. It has 4 of the same strings of a guitar, so it sounds like a guitar, really. I'm just nuts about it. I'm taking a break now to rest my fingertips!! Atta girl, Socks!!! Like Nike says, "Just Do It"!!! It's the truth. You can't think about it at all. The only thing I allow myself to think about is how I used to feel. I feel completely like a new person. I'm amazed that it hasn't taken very long at all. I've only been doing this since the first of the year. Moni, way to go!!! Weight training is so good for you. They say it's even more important than aerobics because it boosts your metabolism. Part of what I'm doing on the Wii is Yoga, which some of it is incredibly hard!!! Here's a pic of my new baby!!!

I have been mopping and mopping the floors. Half for me and half for him :) I have scooted over to the computer to rest for me. Sue

Since it was a "balmy" 22 degrees yesterday, I trudged out to inspect the bird feeders. DH tries to keep the path to the feeder tree open with the snowblower. He tops up the feeders for me when it's really cold. Still the trays were dirty and caked with ice. Some of the ports were clogged in the one feeder. I cleaned everything and then topped off all the feeders. Since the snow has gotten so deep, and the tree branches are hanging low because of the snow weight, I switched out most of the hanging hooks for shorter ones. The caged suet feeder, normally six feet above "ground" was only 18" above the snow. I replaced it's 5' hook with an 18" one. Now the feeders are higher again; I can see everything from my living room window "perch"; and I know all the feeders are clean and free flowing. I brought in two of the squirrel baffles. When they're scraped and cleaned of the "birdie dirdie" I'll swap them out and clean the other two. They don't always "baffle" the squirrels, but they keep the feeders and seed amazingly clean, which means healthier birds. When the weather is this bad I make sure the squirrels can get to some of the goodies, too. I'm in full-winter-mode bird feeding. I have a suet feeder, a peanut feeder, and a mesh-wire black oil sunflower seed (BOSS) feeder on the post close to the house. I have one suet feeder on the tree, and a caged suet feeder hung from the tree. I have a hanging tray feeder, ported tube feeder, and another mesh feeder, all for BOSS, in the tree. I also have one "upside down" thistle feeder for the delight of the American goldfinches and the pine warblers. The birds are happy, happy, happy. Why three suet feeders in a 25' area? Woodpeckers won't "share". By putting out the three feeders I always have several woodpeckers along with the white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches either on the suet, or waiting their turns in the tree. They really aren't eating any more suet than normal, but there are more birds around.