This image is supposed to resemble art journal pages, but I need to add a spiral down the center for it to look authentic.

Art Journals

I am enthused about art journaling and am going to try my hand at some digital art journaling. So this is one of my first attempts. I began doing a little art journaling in a photobook that I never published. It was one where I manipulated the photos of Greyson when he was in Switzerland and England with us in 2010. I found some examples of a photobook like that on Shutterfly and decided to see if I could do the same thing.

I couldn't do the same thing for two reasons. First, I have no natural talent or artistic ability. And second, I don't seem to have the tools; the digital images I would need to design an art journal page to my satisfaction, so I have to "make do." That means using only those images and background papers I have on my computer in my "Scrapbooking" file.

I'm still kind of enthused, though, so we'll see what I come up with for this blog.

 





The above is my second attempt at a digital art journal page. I kind of like this one. It's light and airy than the first one above.

It's Now January 18, 2013

I'm not sure what I'm doing. I haven't been on this site for years.

Peter Mayle Books

I just finished reading Chasing Cezanne by Peter Mayle and I really loved it. Stephanie suggested not reading it, as she said it was more of a novel, a little different from his other books, but I think that's what I liked about it. Not only did he offer dozens of wonderful suggestions for restaurants and hotels in Paris, Provence, and the French Riviera, but he also wrapped them around a pretty compelling mystery about a missing Cezanne called Woman with Melons. Anyway, I took lots of notes about these places he suggested and hopefully will have some information about traveling to Provence in the spring of 2008.

I decided that renting a car in Provence wasn't a good idea, at least certainly not one out of Avignon. It sounds like the TGV will take you to Avignon from Paris in about 4 hours, but then getting out of Avignon to go further south sounded like a real pain. It sounded like the drivers are rude and bad; would make a person nervous to be driving there. Anyway, I loved the book and am ready to start my next one called Anything Considered. I've already finished A Good Year (the movie was better) and Acquired Tastes (not a novel). I also rented the A&E presentation of A Year in Provence. It's rather boring. A couple that are supposed to be Peter Mayle and his wife when they moved to a farmhouse in the countryside in Provence are the "stars." But they get into ridiculous situations with their neighbors and townspeople. I watched the first disc, Summer and Fall, and will be watching the second disc, Winter and Spring, today. It's moderately interesting, but mostly I'm watching to see Provence.

And then about my weight: I'm hanging in there at 127 1/2. I fluctuate between that and 129, which is scary because that's only a hair before I would be 130, and then it all just falls apart, so I have to be vigilant. The problem is that we are able to go several days with eating frozen, light pizzas and soups, drinking coffee by the gallons all day long, but by the 4th day or so, and after we've each lost a couple of pounds, then we go out to eat because we're dying for something really good. We are currently adverse to cooking (at least I am because of the lengthy clean-up), so when I get down to 125 1/2, which I have a couple of times, we go out and eat and then I gain a couple of pounds. And the other problem is that when we go out to eat once, we tend to continue eating out for 2-3 more days. Interestingly, even when we've done this, I still haven't gone above 129.

The other temptation is movie popcorn. We like to go to the movies and go almost once a week. But I absolutely can't resist the popcorn. I always want a big bag with "butter". We both feel it brings on the weight, but I still get it - every time. And then, even though I'm full of popcorn, we go out to eat afterwards. After writing all this, I honestly wonder how I've managed to stay below 130 as I'm not exercising at all. We keep saying we need to get out there and walk and we have had some lower temp days, but they are fluctuating with very high temps too, so it's hard to get into the routine. Heck routine? We haven't walked once this fall yet. Course it's 92 today, so I'm not exercising in that heat!

And I hate to spend money on a gym membership. We had a free, beautiful facility in Henderson, NV when we lived in Sun City, but seldom used it, so I'm sure that the novelty would wear off with a membership and we'd end up spending money for nothing.

A Good Year in Provence - The Provence of Peter Mayle

My blog is supposed to be about my thoughts when I'm walking because I hate walking, or any exercise, and I thought by purposely thinking about things as I walked, and then blogging those thoughts, it might make it more agreeable. It hasn't. Anyway, we are planning a trip to Europe in spring 2008 and I just watched the movie "A Good Year" with Russell Crowe. Although it was panned by the critics, I thought it was a wonderful movie and fell in love with Provence, France. I wrote down all the names of the locations for the movie, and then found this perfect website about all those various locations. I didn't know I could add it to my blog, but did, and here it is. It doesn't fit here under this theme, but it's okay.

As far as the weight loss, I noticed that my last entry was August 5. It's now September 6, one month later, and I now weigh 127 1/2. I'm up a couple of pounds and I'll have to keep an eye on it now. We've begun eating out again and when we do that, I gain weight. So does Bob. The exercise doesn't seem to make much difference when it comes to losing weight. Bob golfs 3-4 times a week and it doesn't help him lose any weight. He's not walking the course, but I've ridden with him and he clocks several miles just walking to and from the cart and bending over to pick up balls and clubs from the ground. When I was walking religiously, I could walk 5 miles a day and never lose weight if I didn't also restrict my eating. It's a very sad thing. Eating is one of the great pleasures of my life and I have never been totally successful in not thinking about it, like I suppose permanently skinny people do. I think about eating all day long. I'm drinking a lot of coffee these days, and chewing fat free gum (which is a joy - NOT) to try to ward off the urge to eat. Sometimes I'm successful, but mostly it's just agony.


A Good Year in Provence - The Provence of Peter Mayle

WEIGHT LOSS

This is the continuing story of my weight loss. Since I've now been officially diagnosed with IBS, at least I know what I'm dealing with, not that I can do a thing about it. So I had chronic diarrhea for almost 3 months to the day - just like when I got hit with it in 1997. It's a devastating ailment and nothing can be done. Oh, they put me on medicine to try to curtail it and cut down on the spastic colon part, which seems to stimulate the movement in the intestines, but nothing really helped. It just ran it's course. Not even eating certain foods seems to make a difference, although I haven't had any dairy, which seems to help with bloating.

THE ONLY GOOD NEWS! I now weigh 125 lbs.! It's astounding really because I've lost it without exercising. Many people would say that's not good, and it probably isn't, but the weight's gone now and I vow that it won't return. Bob has lost weight too and we're both weighing ourselves every single day. It's motivational actually. If we're down, we feel great about it and want to lose more. If we're up, we're motivated to cut down on intake until the weight is gone. It seems to be working. We're drinking a lot of coffee too, though, as it seems to make us less hungry.

I'm excited because I haven't been this weight since about 2000, seven years ago, so it's really amazing. I have been losing little by little, if you read this entire blog, but it has been slow at times, and when we travel, we ultimately put on weight, so we'll have to be careful when we hit the road again. I should get my picture taken so I can post it and see the difference. Unfortunately, sometimes it really doesn't show in photos, so we'll see.

STRESS, HEALTH, AND WEIGHT LOSS

I haven't been walking for months. I have lost a lot of weight, but not in a good way. I get this intestinal condition out of the blue, and this time it hit me when I was in Madison, WI after dinner on April 19, 2007 - diarrhea. This isn't particularly good because when I get this, it becomes chronic and takes months to clear up. It's inconvenient and really curtails my activiities because I have to be near a bathroom after I eat, it can even hit sometimes hours after I eat. And when the urge hits, I have to run immediately, which isn't always possible when I'm not at home. So big time annoyance. It came and went for a while, but then just stayed.

It's now June 10 and I still have it. I've been to the doctor twice and he put me on some medicines, but sometimes the medicine causes my system to go overboard the other way and I end up with extremely painful intestinal cramping and that's worse than the diarrhea because I actually have to stay in bed for days before that goes away.
But the good news is that I've lost 12 lbs., almost 13, but of course I haven't been eating much of anything for weeks - and when I do, I end up with painful gas, diarrhea, bloating and really bad stuff, even with the medicines. I now weigh 134 lbs, down from 147. This is significant because I weighed 152 lbs in May 2006. I lost 19 lbs by September 2006 and weighed 133 lbs, but we went to Florida, New Orelans and a few other places over the next six months, and I gained 14 lbs back by the time Dick and Maryanna left after our trip to Charleston in April 2007 and weighed 147 lbs. So that's the yo-yo history. I know it isn't healthy and I always claim to do something about it, but I've being yo-yo-ing like this for 45 years now.

And I have had other things on my mind. There's been a family issue that has been bothering me for the past couple of years, but it kind of hit the fan last month and it's been such a concern that I'm having a hard time sleeping and thinking of much of anything else. We've enjoyed a family life that has been relatively free of drama and I've always wanted it that way. Once we retired in 2001 I decided we didn't need any more stress in our lives and since our jobs were a thing of the past, the only thing we had to worry about was having enough money to last until we died and minor things that might happen around the house. But, no, we couldn't be lucky enough for that.

Right after we retired, my mother had issues that required us to move her and then care for her until she passed away in 2003. Talk about constant stress - that was it for three years! Then 9/11 and we lost $200,000 in the stock market crash. Then one of our sons and wife got pregnant and the twin girls came 11 weeks early and Lauren weighed only 1.13 lbs and talk about worry - WOW! And just to make things more interesting at the time, we were in Paris, France on a 28-day European trip when they were born. We made an unscheduled stop-over in Chicago to visit them and Lauren especially was so tiny it was heartbreaking to look at her. Justine only weighed 2.9 lbs., so she was almost as fragile as Lauren. So stress? You bet. The babies are pictured here at two years old now with Justine on the left and Lauren on the right.
But then I started staying with our son and his new family to help out and began developing some worries that have never gone away. The whole thing came out in the open a month or so ago, but not in a good way. So I am thinking of nothing else right now and am upset. More stress? Yep, and there goes my thoughts of a stress-free retirement!