Another week

For those who are tracking my progress:
I didn't stay for my meeting tonight. Too much work to do and I have a stomach thing going on. You'd think I'd lose more with the flu, but apparently my body is retaining water to compensate. I only lost 1.6 pounds. But that's ok. Better than nothing. Hopefully next week I'll do better.
I know I stayed on the diet faithfully. So I'm happy.

Mucho worko to do-o.
Gotta go
T

New weigh in

I lost 2.4 lbs this week. Got a 10 lbs lost star sticker. funny thing about incentives. Even something as stupid as having the leader call my name and give me a star sticker gave me a boost of energy and renewed optimism for the upcoming week.
10 lbs. Not bad for three weeks.

Neck deep in deadlines and edits for a different book.

re-read Rachel's Father's Day post today. So powerful. Rachel is amazing. Go read it if you haven't already. rachelhauck.com

Love to Rachel tonight. To Chris, Suz, Susan and A.
Thank God for friends who hang on tight and don't let you fall. I hope I'm that kind of friend for them, the way they are for me. Oh shoot. I just remembered I was supposed to call Suz back at 9. It's 1 am in Missouri and In her neck of the woods. too late to call unless it's an emergency. Well, I guess that answers that question.
Tomorrow, Suz.

Brooding

God woke me up early today. Or rather, my daughter had to work today, so I woke up early to make sure she was up and the Lord wouldn't let me go back to sleep. I laid there for an hour before it occurred to me that there might be a reason I wasn't falling back asleep after only sleeping 4 hours. I began to pray and suddenly knew I was supposed to be at 9:00 prayer. So I hurried up and got there in time (it was 8:30 when I got up).

It was a sober time. I haven't experienced anything quite like it at our church. My pastor was very thoughtful and quiet. Subdued. I think he senses that God is about to take the church to a new level. That's the thing. When you are attending a relevant church where God is moving, there's always that next step to take. God doesn't stop. People get content with where their churches are, but God is always looking for another soul to save, another heart to heal, another of his children who will be crazy enough to believe that God does want to show Himself strong on their behalf.

Diet is going well. I weigh in tomorrow. I'm hoping for another 2 lbs. That'll get me over the 10lb loss mark.

CLAIRE 2 is going well. I'm just impatient to turn it in and take a little time off. I want to give more time in service at church. This year I do two services a month on the worship team. It's probably my best for now, but I feel my frustration with doing so little. I want God to use me. I want to be available. Right now, I recognize that I'm not so available because I work all the time. Hopefully once I take time off I can set a more lenient schedule next fall.
Hopefully. :)

Well, off to create words for the glory of God and the entertainment of the masses.
Love lots
T

another week

Hey all!

Can't believe it's been a whole week since I wrote. I came home from my mom's at 1:30 am Wednesday morning after finishing my book. Spent Wednesday implementing critiques from Chris (the only one I felt i could impose upon to do a full read through and critique on a dime). Did my own editing as well and sent the manuscript in an hour before close of business. In other words, I squeaked by.

OH I lost 2 lbs this week at WW. Thursday I had to get up early (which is NEVER a good thing), get my hair cut at 8:30. I went back to the short spike, it looks best and is easies to maintain. Laid back down because I was feeling really sick, remembered I hadn't prepared for a talk I was giving to a local writer;s group that had graciously requested that I do so. It turned out to be pretty fun, actually. They were interactive and seemed to enjoy my particular brand of humor. Several are writing fiction and I felt i most connected with those--one woman in particular.
I had WW between 5 and 6 and then went to my mom's for a few minutes before going to the writer's group.

Anyway, I was so relieved to lose weight. I had a touchy couple of days where I was too busy to even THINK about cooking and I didn't want to deal with a hungry stomach. Ate the only thing that makes me happy--yep, PIZZA. But I didnt' eat TOO much. Still I soak in water like a sponge, and that probably accounted for a couple of pounds. I'll probably lose more next week. Then I figure it's going to start tapering off to a lb or two a week. But that's okay. :)

Well, I'm spending the weekend chilling. We're going to grill steaks for Rusty tomorrow and play in the Wal-mart pool. I might go find some more pool toys today.
Church should be great. It always is. OH my church has our website up. Check it out.
www.lebanonfamilychurch.org

Been a couple of days since I had a chance to make it over here to blog. Like I really think people care, right? :)

Anyway, I've been working on a deadline. Working hard. The kids have been gone. Today I will leave until Tuesday when my book will hopefully be finished. This is my last Heartsong book. IT's a bittersweet time for me. Exciting that I'm moving to bigger. Whether bigger is better remains to be seen. :) But I do feel God's hand and I want to follow where He leads.
The other day my mom asked me if this was my last Heartsong and I started crying. I'll always be grateful to Tracie Peterson for seeing something in me when she was acquisitions editor for new authors at Heartsong.

I've taken about an hour off each of the last two days to play in the pool with the kids. Last night we were playing in it when Rusty got home, so he joined us (after a 16 hour day at National Guard). We had so much fun playing volleyball and then Monkey in the Middle.

Diet is going very well. Still on program today is my 10th day and no cheating. That's the thing with Weight Watchers points, though. You can eat whatever you want. As long as you count the points and stay on budget.

This week I will be speaking at a local writer's group. Should be fun. :)

Back to work!

Three trains and a Quarter Pounder with Cheese

So, all day I've been looking forward to WW because as we know it's D-day.
Rusty left for work at about 3 pm and I was answering editor emails and suddenly about 3:30 he calls (thank God for cell phones), a belt popped off his car, so he was coming back home. Did he want me to come get him, I asked. No. he thought he could probably make it home.
So abotu 10 minutes later, he called back and needs me to get him. He made it a few miles, things started heating up and he had to pull the car over.
SO I said, okay, but I have my meeting at 5 and I'm not missing getting weighed in after how good I've been all danged week. Can I take a shower first and get dressed.
SILENCE...Well, okay, but I'll be sitting out here in the heat. Alone. And it's a country road.
WUSS.
So I jerked around, mumbling because , of course, if the car breaks down it's always the man's fault and I know he just did it to sabotage my weight loss because he's afraid I'll be too sexy for my shirt.
I pick him up, we drive ten miles to town, go by the auto parts store, We drive home another 7 miles (going a different way....back roads...) It's 4:15. I haven't showered or anything and have to leave at 4:45. Anyway, I made it got to the meeting, stepped on the scale.....BUT more about that later.....

So after the meeting, it's about 6:15, and Rusty needs me to take him to the car so he can put the belt on real quick. Okay, let me just say that when a man says, "I just need to do something real quick to the car," Don't believe him. I sat there for an hour. Finally talked him into calling a tow truck,(once again, may I say..thank God for cell phones). The TOW truck ran behind, so he didn't get there and get the car hooked up until about 8:20...So here we go. On the way home, Still hadn't eaten supper. Starving. we get stopped by a train. Now when you get stopped by a rural train, this is where they change cars, stop so the conductor can go to the john, take a nap...whatever. There were two trains on two tracks. One totally stopped. The other moving at a snails pace. Finally the snaily one went by and we (and by now the six cars behind us who were holding us completely responsible for the train fiasco, because, hey, we were the first car in the line of people waiting), and we looked with expectatio for the second one to take its cue and start moving. But it didn't for an hour. And then two men pulled up on the OTHER side, and we thought Thank you Lord. We thanked too soon. They disconnected a couple of cars, then ANOTHER train came, just as THAT train had moved, but not soon enough for us to go through. Thirty minutes later that train had stopped, and started. And stopped and started. We sat at that doggone train stop for an hour and a half. All the while I'm starving and needing desperately to be writing.

We told the kids all about it when we got home and my 13 year old son said, "Man I bet you were mad." I said, "Dad was." Dad said, "Mom was just glad for a chance to read."
IT'S TRUE. I had a book with me that I'd brought along for when he was going to "real quick" change the belt. I've been on such tight deadlines I've done NO reading. LOL So once it got dark, I switched on the dome light and just lost myself in a book. Every minute or so Rusty was doing that huffy guy thing, where they talk to the inanimate object causing their stress. Finally I said, Is it helping to do that? He said yes, so we left it there.

All the way home I told Rusty, we are NOT paying that tow truck because of that dumb train. So you be firm. He said, You be firm. I said Okay I will. But luckily they charged by the mile and not the hour. LOL

So I have enough points left today for a quarter lber with cheese and a small fry. (didn't use my flex points so I could have really gone all out, but I didn't). I'm going to enjoy that burger though!

So anyway.
Okay, I lost 6.4 lbs and got a bookmark with a star with a 5 in it and it says I lost 5 lbs. I suppose they didn't have one that said, "I lost 6.4 lbs" so I'll take it.
Thanks everyone for caring!!!
Hugs
Tracey

Day Five. Weight Watchers is going well. My stomach has finally caught on to the fact that it's getting less, so it's not grumbling as much. Two days till my first weigh in. I've been faithful, so all I can believe is that I've done my best.

Today the kids played in the pool. All day. I'm a bad mom. My 11 year old is cooked. Ugh, the guilt. Why didn't I get him out of there a LOT sooner? Just too much on my mind. He cried. I cried. Gave him some pain reliever and rubbed aloe vera sunburn stuff on his red little body.
I always forget how badly a person can burn.
I don't think I can tied anything spiritual in to that except. Make sure you know Jesus so you don't go to hell. That will be a lot worse than a bad sunburn. It's 3:21 am. So....that's the best I can do.

I've decided that in order to really get my word count in daily and meet the deadlines, I'll have to work overnight, sleep in the morning hours and hang out wiht the kids in the afternoon and evening. Hey. I love nights. I'm a nocturnal creature ( I think I told you this during my last deadline, or maybe the one before). If it's in the middle of the night and everyone is sleeping, I feel ready to go. Still, I'd hoped to be in bed by 4:30, but I think it'll be 5:30. :) Three guesses why that is.

I need to hide the phone cord so I can't get online when I'm supposed to be working. I mean Who's on anyway? And yes, I'm still on dial up. :)

Good night. I'll post Thursday after I weigh in. If I don't have a loss, I'll probably be at mAzzios Pizza eating away my sorrow. So if I DON'T write, that's why. :)

Breaking out

WW-- Doing well. Points are a great discipline. Looking forward to my meeting Thursday. I am not used to disciplining my flesh so my body is not happy with the new limits. But I know this is something I need. There is joy in knowing that God is on my side helping. His strength is made perfect in my weakness.

Church--Pastors were there today, back from their trip to Somoa, which had no air conditioning and no crime. Pastor Matt wore a Somoan garment called a lava lava. Which was basically a skirt that looked like something my mama would have worn about 15 years ago. But at least the guy's secure in his manhood, enough to wear it for both services, despite the fact that we inevitably have visitors to our services. He's very endearing really. You gotta love this guy. So surrendered to God.THE all-time best pastor that ever lived. My family has grown spiritually by leaps and bounds in the past few years and particularly in the past year.
He was praying yesterday and God gave him a phrase for the church: Breakout in all areas. Such a relevant word for me right now and goes along with John's desire for the church, "Beloved I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health as your soul prospers. Emotional and spitual prosperity, healthy strong bodies (hmmm like maybe losing weight and overcoming obesity related illnesses like high bp). and money prosperity.
I'm breaking out. Losing weight, growing in my walk with God, growing in the relationships that are healthy for me and letting go of some that are not so healthy. This is where God is drawing me. It'll be interesting to look back in a year and see where I am. Did I keep my commitments? Am I breaking out? Staying the course? Walking in obedience?

Family--we took the kids to Applebees for lunch (they have a WW menu with the points figured out. I had steak and shrimp terryaki 7 pts)
Then we went to see Madagascar. Very funny movie. I hate to take time off, but Sundays HAVE to be set aside. It means I work harder on Saturdays (which I did) and Mondays (which I will), but keeping Sunday for God and family has become important for us. We bought one of those big four feet deep pop-up pools from Wal-mart last year, so we got it out of storage and it's filling up now. :)

Well, off to cook dinner. A healthy, WW okay dinner. :) Oh wait, Joel Osteen is on. We'll watch that THEN cook.

The new me

So, I bit the bullet and walked into a WW meeting. I don't know what I had been expecting. Some kind of "Hi My name is Tracey," kind of thing. But it was far from that. The leader was gracious, professional, open about her own struggle with weight. She lost 70 lbs in the 1970s. So she's been in this thing for a lot of years. I found out I have a LOT of weight to lose. Well, I knew it already, but now I have a strategy. Today is going well.
The one thing I have learned about God over the past few years as I've worked toward a writing career, is that when you commit your way to Him, trust that He is working on your behalf even if you don't see it, and are willing to put in the work necessary to accomplish a goal, then He is able to do abundantly above all we ask or think.

I'm finally ready to do what it takes to lose weight the right way. I honestly believe I will stick with this.

Better get back to work. Kids are gone for the weekend. I'm writing like mad to meet a June 15 deadline. THen get back to my second CLAIRE book which is due July 15. Then I'm on Vacation for as long as I need it. :)

Love Jesus, love the world. Love yourself, Jesus does
T

Diet and Life in general

okay, so the low carb thing didn't go over so well. I'm so weak. Actually, a friend emailed and asked me to join WW with her. I think maybe the accountibility and meetings will help. :) Who knows? All I know is that I HAVE to lose weight. Sheesh.

Working on deadlines. I'm grumpy, tired, arms hurt. The dream doesn't come without a fight. And this is a fight you have to do on your own. No one can do it for you. People can support you verbally. But no one can write for me. Well, they probably could. But I don't think they'd do it for free, so I'll just have to do it myself. :)

I'm excited this week. My friend Nancy sold her first book. IN the last three weeks, three of my good friends have sold including Nancy. Jennifer and Lynette too. I'm just so thrilled. It's nice to see friends succeed.

Will is loving summer school. He fell asleep at 6:30 last night and slept straight through til morning.

So, it's been a week since Carrie won American Idol. I wonder how she's dealing with it.
:)