February

I start February off at 213 pounds. Today, I have on a blouse I bought twenty-five years ago for a party in Monterey. How I managed to keep it through three house moves and countless increases in dress size, I’ll never know. But oh do I look good in it.

In January, my weight jumped all over from 217 to 211 pounds and back to 213. I never seemed to be able to drop consistently like this past summer. I would like to say that it was all about choices in the food but not so. My husband has been very ill during the month January. The stress involved in having someone I love in pain, has caused fluctuations in my weight and as well as my sleeping patterns. I found that there were days that I gained weight without even eating.

Exercise like walking the dog and jumping the trampoline worked to reduce stress and helped in keeping the weight going down. Even if the numbers crept up a little during the week, the clothes I wore remained on the smaller side.

I am still shrinking.

Moral of the story: Life gets hard. Keep to your goals anyway. It’s worth it.

God Bless American Express

I lost two pounds this week. The previous week I lost nothing. The difference? Beca and I went spa-ing.

We've been talking about going with a group of women to Napa or Calistoga. The money didn’t seem to be available for such an extravagance. I'm one of those women. I have a bottle of make-up in the cupboard, touch up my own hair at the temples, and never really spend money on the luxury of massage. Matter of fact, it’s been about fifteen years since my last massage.

So I saved up my American Express points—enough to get Beca and me fifty minute body massages, forty-five minute facials and half hour exfoliating foot-softening treatments in a facility close to home. Oh Baby! The foot rub far exceeded anything that went before. By the end of our sessions, we did not have a stressed muscle between us. We had plenty when we had walked in the door.

In our happy bodies, we wandered around Old Town, had lunch, and of course shopped. A perfect day in my book. Life is so much more bearable when the neck doesn’t ache and the back isn’t hurting. I didn’t know how unhappy my feet were until they received all that attention to make them better.

We vowed to spa every three months. Well, maybe we can do it at least every fifteen years.