No Quit House

Project Leia

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:08:12 -0500

I’ve been failing at motivation for months. Months, guys.

And then a couple of days ago, my daughter and her plan-everything-a-year-in-advance mentality changed all of that.

Her: I want to be the Star Wars princess for Halloween.

Me: Which one?

Her: The 14-year-old one.

Me: Padme? Princess Amidala?

Her: Yeah, Amidala. With the makeup.

Me: I think we can probably do that. Your dad wants to go as Darth Maul anyway.

Her: We should all be Star Wars characters! You can be the princess with the hair, Mommy.

(The princess with the hair, if you were wondering).

8 months to get to a size that won’t embarrass me in a Leia costume. I want that badly enough to work for it.

And no, the slave costume is out of the question.

Oh Hai!

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:59:11 -0500

What a few months it’s been.

I lost my uncle in December, everyone’s been sick for weeks, and I got very busy with work at the same time. The weather hasn’t helped, so I kind of did this number:

I’ve been mostly working, playing Warcraft, and cuddling up with my family.

What I haven’t been doing is losing weight.

I’ve got a new project for motivation, but I have to make that a separate post for all those Facebook people who don’t get Tumblr. ;-)

Speech-to-Text is Out...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:20:09 -0500

I wanted to teach my son how to search by using speech-to-text on my phone. He can’t spell accurately all the time yet and the flat screen keyboard is difficult for him to navigate (me too…I’d be lost without Swype).

So we tested it out, I showed him how to push the microphone button. After a few tries, he was starting to get it!

What he said was: “Kids Bop Leapfrog Explorer.” (And it was crystal clear, I might add).

What the phone heard was (this is exactly what it said): “smiley f****”

It gets bonus points for interpreting “kids bop” that way, but it’s definitely not the right tool for my son!

literallysnokoplasm: i really hate it when im reading a book and i picture the whole setting in my...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:27:02 -0500

literallysnokoplasm:

i really hate it when im reading a book and i picture the whole setting in my head a certain way and then the author mentions something which completely messes up the way i view the room or scene like a door on the left side instead of right or like a window which is only small instead of ceiling to floor or areas and landscapes on the road like cmon now i have to completely renovate the land in my head

How about when you find out that the way you’ve been pronouncing a character’s name is nothing like the way the author does, and you can’t possibly change it in your head now, so it just grates on you every time you hear someone say it out loud.

The Glamorous Life

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:35:18 -0500

In an IM to my husband:

so far today I’ve washed a load of dishes, finished a content page, drank a bottle of water, and clipped a toenail

You know you’re jealous.

No, THIS is Why I'm Fat

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:59:00 -0500

Having a discussion with my daughter in the car about Miss America, how beauty is often mislabeled to a certain kind of body rather than to many, why beauty is fleeting, where our focus should be, etc.

One of the things that came up was health and fitness, how we should strive for our bodies to be healthy and fit, what that actually means, and why our country seems to have completely missed the mark.

(It was a completely awesome conversation. Made my whole week).

In that conversation, we got around to talking about what food is (fuel) and what calories are and how it all works. As an illustration, we told her about how my husband and I used to eat, and HOLY CRAP. When we were done, it’s really no wonder we got as heavy as we did.

Typical Saturday two years ago:

Wake up around 9. Go to McD’s and get sausage biscuits. (430 cals)
At noon, jump in the truck to go shopping. Stop to get lunch at Burger King. Have a Whopper and large french fries. (1130 cals)
Around 2, we’re on the way home. Grab a bag of chips from the gas station when we stop to fill up. (200 cals)
At 4, grab a few cookies from the kitchen while we’re tidying up: (200 cals)
At 6, Totinos pizzas for dinner (700 cals)
At 8:30, it’s alt night RAID TIME! Can’t raid an instance without snacks, that’s ludicrous! During the raid, eat three handfuls of wheat thins, 5 pieces of candy, and 3 more cookies (700 cals)

Total for the day: 3360

One day calorie surplus for my weight at the time: 1217

At that rate, I was gaining a pound every 3 days.

Note to Self

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 02:47:32 -0500

Discovered on my desktop tonight. I wrote it right after my uncle died a few weeks ago, then promptly forgot it. Literally a note to myself reminding me that it’s okay to just feel (or not feel) sometimes:

You’re allowed to be sad.
You’re allowed not to be sad.
You’re allowed to feel like the whole world just crashed down on you.
You’re allowed to feel nothing at all.

It doesn’t matter if he was your best friend, your brother, your father, your husband, your uncle, or your grandfather.
It doesn’t matter if you saw him every day or hadn’t seen him in 10 years.

Your heart doesn’t need to explain to you or to anyone else why you love the way you love, why you care the way you care, or why you grieve the way you grieve.

You have just as much right to your grief as the next person, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

unimpressedcats: What a wonderful basket of frui…

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 02:03:40 -0500

unimpressedcats:

What a wonderful basket of frui…

State of the No Quit House

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:21:08 -0500

It’s been a while since I did an update like this, so here goes:

On weight loss: My husband and I both stalled. We got frustrated. We gave up like wusses. We both gained a bit. The holidays forced us to realize once again what we were giving up, how much we missed being what we had been. So we’re back on track now, and moving in a great direction. Honestly, you forget how good it feels to eat well and exercise often when you stop doing it.

On family: Things are going great right now for the most part. My husband and I figured out a lot of stuff about ourselves in the past year. We’ve developed a plan to pay off all of our debt (except the house) by the end of this year. We’re conquering our housecleaning issues.

My daughter (aka Cakes) is about to turn 8, and she has come out of her shell. She may never be a social butterfly, and that’s fine by me, but I am so glad she has made friends. She’s doing fantastic in school, and hit the 90th percentile in both math and language arts on her last round of testing. She loves math. I have a feeling she’ll be teaching me things in the not-so-distant future.

My son (Megatron or MT) is in school and therapy. We’re careful to build in plenty of play time and zone time and rest time around those things, though. He’s communicating with us on a level he never has before, and it’s been wonderful. He’s smart as a whip, but we already knew that. “Mommy sit on the couch?” How can you not love that? He’s my snuggle bug, and I LOVE it.

On work: I found consistent work—or really, it found me. Either way, it’s a solid job with good people doing something I’m decent at. Best part? I work from home. Writing blogs in my pajamas? Yup.

On Tumblr: I love Tumblr. It started out as a place for me to get weight loss inspiration, but it’s really turned into more of a personal space for me. Most of the people I follow supply me with things that make me smile, think, or laugh out loud every day, and I appreciate it.

By the way, I am not at all offended if you followed me for weight loss and aren’t into the personal stuff and decide to unfollow.

I did create a second Tumblr for gaming-related stuff, since in my world, that is pretty much its own entity. If you play Warcraft or are a gamer, I recently resurrected the gaming Tumblr, and you can find that here.

Keep being cool, Tumblr.

lobbygow: Someone’s going to pass Professor...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:40:00 -0500

lobbygow:

Someone’s going to pass Professor Longbottom’s Herbology test this week.

4nia-freezepop: cynicaldouche: theshewomanboyhatersclub: bobbi...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 08:17:48 -0500

4nia-freezepop:

cynicaldouche:

theshewomanboyhatersclub:

bobbie-mcgee:

Remember blow up furniture? You couldn’t sit in that shit and it always made that farting sound when you tried but you know it made your room look fly as FUCK. My cousin had a giant blow up lime green couch. She also lived in the attic and wore high-heeled sneakers. Ugh she was so cool. I’m still trying to work up to that status.

i was thinking about blow-up furniture today. like, why isn’t it still a thing? it is literally the cheapest way to furnish a room. actual couch? like minimum $300. blow up couch? $40 and it will never get bedbugs because it is made of space plastic.

Omfg they still exist.

I need to not be allowed on google

Judging from the reviews, the reason they’re not currently in style is that they last maybe a week and it’s ridiculously difficult to find where they’re leaking from.

Not to mention that sound. I had a blow up chair, but I never sat in it because the squeaky noise made me want to jump out the window.

4nia-freezepop: noquithouse replied to your post: During my guild hunt Ive had people mention to...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 23:51:12 -0500

4nia-freezepop:

noquithouse replied to your post: During my guild hunt Ive had people mention to me…

If you want me to, I can put out that youre looking for a guild like this on my Twitter. A LOT of my blogger friends are sensitive to language like this, as well; and dont allow it in their guilds.

That’d be wonderful. I’m on Moon Guard, Horde, on a more or less geared hunter with plenty of raid experience.

The two answers I got were Me so Hordie and Avengers of Azeroth on Moon Guard. I’ll keep my eyes out for any more suggestions, though.

My daughter’s spelling test from yesterday. A year ago,...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 23:46:57 -0500

My daughter’s spelling test from yesterday.

A year ago, her 1st grade teacher was urging us to get her into OT for her handwriting.

3 months ago, any writing homework she had was a chore because she tried to rush through it.

She made her very own New Year’s resolution to work on her handwriting, and she has.

The grade is, of course, pretty average for her. ;-)

jamietheignorantamerican: I’ll always be there for you. Because that’s what friends...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 23:06:38 -0500

jamietheignorantamerican:

I’ll always be there for you.

Because that’s what friends are for.

Happy Daddy

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:56:06 -0500

I’m with the kids all the time, so I see a lot of the cool things they do first hand. My daughter makes sure her dad knowseverything she does in great detail, but he doesn’t see much of what our son does.

MT’s been starting to talk to us more through his own words, which is a big departure from all of our communication up to this point. For the most part, his communication is learned phrases and echoing what we say. It hasn’t bothered me much. This is how he talks, we’ve learned to speak his language as much as possible.

Here’s how tonight’s conversation would normally go:

Daddy: Hey bud!

MT: Hey bud!

Daddy: Hey! Did you have a good day?

MT: Have a good day?

Daddy: Yeah? I missed you today, son.

MT: I missed you today, son.

The first part of the conversation went as normal, but then there was a very cool diversion:

Daddy: I missed you today, son.

MT: I missed you today, Daddy.

Pretty sure my husband almost fell over, but he was totally chill. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and said, “Cuddle up with Dadad?” And when I left the room, my son was grinning, tucked up into my husband’s arm talking about Just Dance, and my husband was somewhere way above cloud 9.

tastefullyoffensive: Challenge accepted.[via]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:52:01 -0500

tastefullyoffensive:

Challenge accepted.

[via]

Photo

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:24:29 -0500

Nail Cutting: Update

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:50:57 -0500

A few months ago I asked for help getting my son to let me cut his nails. We tried a lot of different things, but nothing worked, so I talked to his ABA team about it. They worked on just making the nail clippers less frightening. He got comfortable with touching them and holding them, and now I can cut his nails!

He still doesn’t like to get his nails cut. I’m sure it’s uncomfortable and scary for him sometimes. But we talk about it. I promise him I’ll try to never hurt him with the clippers. I tell him it’s okay to be afraid. That sometimes you have to do things you’re afraid of, and that’s what courage is.

We do “clip, clip, take a break.” And he’s cool with that. We watch Team Umi Zoomi between fingers. And at the end I tell him how great his fingernails look and how awesome he is for doing it even though it’s hard. And he smiles and so do I. :-D

The Cuteness, I Can't Stand It

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:03:25 -0500

My son is playing a Diego game on the computer, and the elephant’s name in the game is pronounced exactly like his. Every time Diego says thank you to the elephant, it sounds like he’s saying thank you to Mega.

And to my son, that’s exactly what’s happening, and the smile is melting me. He repeats it and grins every time it happens.

Thanks for being cool, Diego, even if you didn’t mean to.

4nia-freezepop: noquithouse replied to your post: During my guild hunt Ive had people mention to...

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 09:55:56 -0500

4nia-freezepop:

noquithouse replied to your post: During my guild hunt Ive had people mention to me…

If you want me to, I can put out that youre looking for a guild like this on my Twitter. A LOT of my blogger friends are sensitive to language like this, as well; and dont allow it in their guilds.

That’d be wonderful. I’m on Moon Guard, Horde, on a more or less geared hunter with plenty of raid experience.

I asked, and I’ll ask again this evening. Hopefully someone has a home for your hunter!