MAKING SOME CHANGES

I am having a hard time trying to figure out why I have to be whacked up side the head a dozen times with a sledge hammer to get the point. My body is in a health crisis and I simply just can not or will not accept it. As I had said in my last post, my numbers were all way off on my blood work that I had done last week. I know that I am going to have to take charge and do something about it or I might be kissing my rear in good-by. I guess the main problem is that I feel pretty good, I go to work every day and I'm 66 years old and I figure things start to deteriorate sooner or later.

I have decided that I am going to give it one more try and see if I can't develop a healthier life style for myself ( and John too, if he will let me). The problem with John is that he thinks you should be able to eat all the butter, eggs, cookies, cakes and pies that you can hold. He thinks it is ridiculous to buy skim or low fat milk, margarine or anything sweetened with splenda. I on the other hand am a diabetic and my triglycerides are out the ceiling and I HAVE TO MAKE SOME CHANGES. I am not trying to blame John, even thought it may sound like it. I am just trying to talk myself through this situation.

Right now I am in my third day of trying to eat better and cut out some fats, cholesterol, sugar and carbs. The first day I had Brand cereal and skim milk for breakfast, a veggie wrap for lunch and baked Tilapia and wild rice for dinner. Pretty much the same thing the second day. I also had a couple of oranges and an apple when I thought I couldn't make any longer.

This morning I fixed some oatmeal and skim milk for breakfast. We went out on one of our rambles today and ended up in Athens Al.. Of course we got hungry and of course we had to stop and get something to eat. We stopped at Jack's and got a salad. John got the crispy fried chicken salad and I got the grilled chicken salad. When John got back to the table the tray was loaded down. The salad was in one of those black with a clear top 32 oz. bowls, with a pack of dressing, a pack of croutons, several packs of crackers and extra honey mustard dressing for John's crispy chicken. Now I don't care how you stretch it that ain't a low cal meal. I ate the grilled chicken and about a third of the lettuce and veggies with some of the salad dressing and the croutons. If a dietitian figured the nutrition value, it would still have been more then I needed. At least it wasn't a cheese burger, fries and drink.

This evening for dinner, and I have a few pictures to document it, I think we ate pretty healthy.

The wrap consisted of:

1 flour tortilla

fresh spinach

red peppers

tomatoes

onion

1 oz turkey

1 teaspoon of lite dressing

I put cheese and extra dressing on John's wrap.

I also made this really tasty soup.

Do you remember those really large butter beans that everyone hated as a kid. Well I always loved them. That's my problem I like everything.

Butter Bean Soup:

1 can large butter beans

1 can chicken broth

1 small onion (chopped)

1 Roma tomato (chopped)

1 handful of fresh spinach

salt and pepper to taste

Cook on medium heat until onions, tomatoes and spinach are tender. This made a very tasty soup and went well with the wrap. It was a nice comfort food for a cold rainy evening.

Now I'm not going to bore everyone with a blow by blow description of everything I eat for the rest of my life, but I will probably occasionally post a follow up as to how I'm doing with this epic battle that I am pursuing and post some recipes that I find particularly interesting.

This is no Caribbean Cruise

Johnny, Emily, Tracy and John Pearson

John Pearson getting to be all grown up.

Emily and Matthew playing games on the computer.

For the last two weeks we have been going non-stop. Not going anywhere in the traveling sense but in the lots of things going on sense. Things are working there way down to Mark and Paige's wedding in June. This will be the last of our five children to get married and hopefully they have all chosen wisely and we want have to worry about weddings again until the grand kids get older. It always makes you feel good inside when you see that your kids are happy and Mark and Paige are very happy.

To give you and idea of all the things that have been going on, I will start with our visit from Matthew. Matthew was on spring break week before last. He had ask if he could come and spend a few days with us. John met Tim, Andrew and Matthew in Corinth MS and as usual had some ice cream treats at the Dairy Queen before making their way back home. I was working so I missed a lot of the rambling around that week. John took Matthew to every thrift store in the area. He bought skates, a lava lamp, boat and I can't even remember all the other things. I just know that his mom and dad probably hated to see him drag all the stuff he bought into the house when we carried him home.

While he was here Emily had her 10Th birthday, so we went over and spent the evening with her and her little friends and had Birthday cake, ice cream and pizza. Then seven days later on the 22 ND Johnny celebrated his 44Th birthday

We carried Matthew back to Memphis on Saturday and spent the evening with Monica, Tim and the boys. Andrew fixed most of the dinner. He made a baked chicken with his special sauce (it was really good) , salad and baked potatoes as big as a football. Mark and Paige came over and had dinner with us.

On Sunday we got up and went to church with Mark and Paige. She goes to the La belle Baptist Church in Southaven MS. It was a very nice service. The shower started at 2 PM and there was a really nice turn out and they got some lovely gifts. Now we are on the countdown to April 10TH, when we will have the shower here in AL. I had planned on having the shower at Out Post 72, but got a call from the owner one day last week, telling me that they had closed the previous Sunday. I had to hustle it up a bit and find another place. Luckily I was able to get the activities room at our church (St Joseph Catholic) church in Florence. The bad part is that I had already mailed invitations to everyone and now I need to start making phone calls and make sure everyone knows about the change of place.

I had gone to the doctor last week to have some blood work done, so I could renew my meds. When I got in from work on Friday, I told John that I was going to lie down and take a short nap. He told me that I needed to call the doctor before I did that. Well I called the doctor and the receptionist gave me the results of my blood test. As usual everything was up. She told me to hold on while she talked to the doctor. She came back and told me I should get to the ER asap. Apparently my triglycerides were 1610. So we headed out to the ER about 3:00 PM. I'm on the phone trying to get a hold of Johnny or Tracy or John Pearson to pick up Emily who usually gets off the bus at 3:30. All I got was the voice mails. Thank goodness the school bus driver decided to bring her straight to our door. She didn't have to walk from the bus stop.

When we got the hospital they hooked me up to all the stuff they do. First off they couldn't get a blood pressure reading. Finally got that, then did the EKG and chest X-Ray. Then they did a C-scan. After 5 hours the doctor came back and tells me that all the test came back normal. In other words your old, too fat and need to exercise more. The story of my life.

That was the beginning of my vacation, so with the other test they're fixing to do, I will probably spend most of the rest of my vacation at the doctors office. Money wise it will be just like going on a Caribbean Cruise.

MATTHEW'S GREAT TITANIC PINEWOOD DERBY ADVENTURE!!

This is the tale of Matthew's Great Titanic Pinewood Derby Adventure. You want believe all the really weird things that happened on this particular scouting event. As you can see from the pictures above that this has got to be one of the neatest Pinewood Derby cars that most of the judges have ever seen. Who would ever think of making a Pinewood racing car that looks like the ship Titanic.

Matthew solicited the help of his neighbor Mr. Lyle, who has a workshop, to cut out pieces for him. Then he and his dad ( I think) assembled this really unique car. Well he entered it in the local Cub Scouts race. It was not the fastest car, so he didn't win for speed, but he won best in show. For this award he got to go to district. This event was held in St Louis. So the family headed to St Louis.

He got registered and all the things you have to do to get signed up for your category. When they got back to the awards ceremony Matthew's car was setting off to the side all by itself. The awards were given and Matthew didn't get anything not even a participants ribbon. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE!!!! Man something's just not right. Matthew says to his Dad, "Let's just get out of here", so they head back to the hotel. That night when they went to the banquet, Tim (Dad) saw the gentleman that was in charge of the event. He told him that he didn't understand why Matthew was the only one in the group not to get some kind of award. The gentleman ask, "Are you talking about Matthew's car?". "We had him down to race the car". So there was a mix up in the registration. So Matthew will get a Special Award and he was recognised at the banquet. All in all he was satisfied with the out come of the district Soapbox competition.

They stayed the whole weekend and since it was Sunday they did some community work instead of going to church. All the Scouts were picking up rubbish around the area and you really want believe this. MATTHEW FOUND A HUNDRED $$$BILL!! It was just lying on the ground and you could tell it had been there for a while. He was so excited and showed it to his dad. He and Dad had a discussion about the money and Dad told him he thought it would be a good idea to give it to church or a charity. This took a little convincing, but Matthew decided he would give it to the St Vincent De Paul Society and dropped it into their collection box at church. In return for his good deed, Tim got him a model of the Titanic ship and they are busy putting the finishing touches on it.

Matthew will be coming to spend a few days with us this week. He is out of school on spring break. I'm sure he and Grandaddy will find a lot of things to get into while he is here. Matthew loves to check out the Thrift Stores and hit every yard sale we can find. Sometimes we just have to talk him out of some of the things he wants to purchase. I guess he is going to be just like Maw maw and Grandaddy. That's OK.

So that is Matthew's Great Titanic Pinewood Derby Adventure. (A really cool kid).

PROCRASTINATING (ON MY MIND)

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It has been one of those rainy, dreary days where you are torn between pulling the covers back up over you head and staying in bed all day or making the most of a not so good day. Since it is the weekend and I hate to waste a perfectly good day off, we opted to get up this morning and go right out into the nasty weather.

John got on the computer and looked up auctions on auctionzip.com. This is a neat little calender of events in and around the area. You just put in your zip code and the number of miles you're willing to drive and it list the auctions in that area. With gas being $3.49 a gallon here, we chose a 15 mile radius. The auction we chose was in a warehouse out in industrial park. It was a very nice facility, we were out of the rain and had clean restrooms and food available. We got there late so most of the good stuff was already gone. This was good, because we weren't tempted to purchase stuff we would regret later. The only thing I did get was a set of dishes. Now I have thirty place settings of this pattern. I think I'm having a (what was I thinking moment). That's alright. If I ever get the whole family together I will be able to use most of the pieces.

After the auction we went over to Keepers of the past to check on our booth. While we were in that part of town we went over to Stephano's and got a pizza. I have mentioned these pizzas before, but I have to again. They make a mega supreme pizza that has everything on it. Canadian bacon, sausage, pepperoni, green olives, black olives, onions peppers and I figure more stuff. These are the best pizzas I have ever eaten. If you are in Sheffield, go to Town Plaza Shopping center. They are located in the corner next to Keepers of the Past Antique mall.

Yummm....

I am having one of those days where I am seeing so much stuff started and hardly anything finished. I started lining some of my rug purses, but just couldn't stay with it long enough to finish. I'll try again tomorrow. I have my rug that is about three fourth of the ways finished and is in the utility room waiting for me to get re motivated. I have the picture scanner sitting on the dresser waiting for me to start scanning our old pictures to a disk. My Rosetta Stone keeps starring me in face here at the computer and the one person I could practice my Spanish words on got fired the other day and the rest of the workers speak Chinese. But I will learn to speak enough Spanish to be able to decipher whether the people I'm standing in line with at Wal-mart are talking about me:)

Last week was very hectic. Denise our manager had to have emergency gallbladder surgery, one of the girls nephews died, another was in the hospital with the flu and another was in Fl. with her daughter for a recycle convention. But it doesn't matter how many people are out the work still has to get done so everyone pulled together and got-er-done. Hopefully next week will be a little smoother. The George Lindsey film festival is coming up, so we will be working on that most of the week. By the way George was in the hospital, so due to his health some of the events had to be canceled.

I was just getting excited about Spring being in the air. The buttercups, forsythia and the Bradford pears are in full bloom. But I'm afraid to say that the cold front that just went through has turned it as cold as a Witch's Tu-Tu in Alaska. I guess we will have to wait just a little longer to proclaim that it is spring in AL.

Matthew if you read this I haven't forgotten your Soap Box Derby pictures. I have to figure how to resize them before I can download them to my blog.