then she appeared

I was thinking about the memoir I read a few months back about the girl who talked all about her own weight loss, all the struggles and the funny bits and so on, but never talked about what she ate. So I thought I'd detail the kind of things I eat. It's not really restrictive. I'm eating around 1800 calories per day. I always eat three meals and a couple of snacks, often several snacks.

I start the day usually with one of two breakfasts: either cereal (multigrain cheerios or fiber one honey clusters) with fresh fruit in and a half cup of milk, or I make some kind of egg scramble with some cheese and sometimes some peppers and onions, sometimes none, and sometimes with a slice of Arnold 12 Grain toast with some butter and jelly. Cereal breakfast is around 250 cals, whereas egg breakfast with toast is about 450. I try to adjust based on that for the rest of the day. I do not fuss with egg whites or whatever.

Lunch I try to stick to 550 cals or less. Often it's a sandwich (220 for the bread if I have actual bread, 60 if it's a pita pocket (with flax!), 90ish for the meat or tuna, maybe 50 if I have cheese, use mustard so nothing there, lettuce and tomato are negligible cals), a pickle spear (1 cal), and a piece of fruit (60 to 100 cals, depending), or occasionally Baked Lay's BBQ (140 cals if I eat the whole single-serving bag, which often I don't). If I haven't brought my lunch, I'll sometimes go to a local supermarket and raid the salad bar. The mall is just next door to my workplace, so I sometimes go to the food court there. It's hard to find a lunch under 550 cals there, however. I stick to D'Angelo's, Au Bon Pain, and the salad place, pretty much. And generally it's more like 650 cals. Sigh!

I save some daytime cals for snacks, too. Usually I bring some fruit or yogurt or nuts, or someone brings something delectable to work. I indulge in the delectable, but try to eat half of a normal serving. Depending how filling lunch was and how late I ate it, sometimes I skip after-lunch snack.

Dinner is varied, and pretty ordinary—a meat/veg/starch kind of thing. Sometimes meat/veg/salad, or meat/veg/veg/fruit. I just often double the veggies and halve the starches. Mom's a fan of pasta, so we have that more than my calories would like, at least once per week. I am mostly pretty careful with portions, and I keep up to date in my app throughout the day I can figure out what's left for the day. If I'm at the grocery store and I'm buying something prepared, I always read the package and usually go with the lower cal option.

If I walk for an hour, it usually earns me about 260 calories back, but I try to only eat half of that back (I fail a lot there, though). Other exercises earn me more calories (that's how I think of it) so it means I can have an extra snack or two if I want to. Basically whatever is left for the day after dinner and exercise I tend to use up in snacks. Snacks vary, but I like grapes (3 cal per grape, so count!) and a couple of "cracker cuts" cheese (110 cal for three), or a yogurt, or five Ritz crackers (80 cal). If I have hundreds of calories left, I might have a slice of multigrain bread with some peanut butter and jelly. I am a total obsessive freak about it. I'll plan my snack from my bedroom, calculating what we have vs. what I have left and decide before I get out of my chair. Else I'd eat the whole kitchen, see? I measure or count out stuff into a bowl or onto a plate, leaving the rest in the pantry or kitchen so I'd have to get up to get more.

There are a few snacks that are hard for me to resist, so I've had to only have them in the house when I feel really strong. Nuts are the worst. I buy a container of nuts and actually divide it up into single-serving Ziploc bags the minute I open it. Sometimes even THAT doesn't help, as I'll somehow rationalize two or even three servings. Better than eating the whole can, but bad! Also anything chocolate. If you combine the two, like those dark chocolate sea salt almonds from Trader Joe's? Fuhgeddaboudit. I can resist ice cream, sorta. I can now just have one spoonful, and that is somehow enough. Fiber One Oats & Chocolate bars were awesome for a while, but suddenly I just need to eat them all if they're here, so now they're on the Restricted list.

I try to drink enough water, also, although I mostly fail at that, and I've cut back on my diet Coke intake. I keep vitamin water zero in my minifridge, partly as pill-taking beverage and partly so I don't drink caffeine late at night. Water isn't appealing later at night for me right now.

There are two danger times for me. One is about a half hour after I exercise. Then I am RAVENOUS (and I dunno if it's physical or mental). And the other is 9:00-10:00pm, for some weird reason. Often those two coincide, so that's better. Then it's only one really dangerous time. But sometimes I walk on my work lunch hour, so that leaves the whole night after dinner wide open for trouble. By that I mean that I stay up pretty late every night, and I finish dinner by no later than 7:30pm (Mom likes to eat fairly early). That gives me at least five hours after dinner that I'm conscious. That's a lot of snacking potential, right there.

Eating out could be a dangerous time, but thankfully I was already in the chain restaurant habit, and with very few exceptions they ALL have detailed caloric info on their websites. So when I know where we're going I do my research. I usually know what I'm going to have before I go in, which makes it stress-free and simple to order. My only real dangerous eating out time is if I go to a non-chain place and have something unusual. Then I just call it a cheat day and move along.

I don't allow myself too many cheat days. They're hard to recover from, really. When I was on vacation on the Cape I ate whatever I wanted, and I snacked way too much. When I got back I kept thinking about snacks for days. If I could just cut out the sweets-craving and think-about-food-all-the-time parts of my brain I'd be a LOT happier. Why don't they do lobotomies for that? I'd sign up.

In reviewing my app numbers, it looks like currently I eat on average the following breakdown:

Carb: 49%
Fat: 34%
Protein: 18%

According to stuff I've read, you should aim for:
45% to 65% of calories eaten should come from carbohydrates
20% to 35% of calories eaten should come from fat
10% to 35% of calories eaten should come from protein

Sparkpeople suggests approximately 50% carbohydrates, 30% fat and 20% protein.

So I'm pretty much on target. I could dump a little fat and increase a little protein. Most of the carbs are reasonable.

So that's what I eat. I have to pull all my data from LoseIt and see if I can figure what I am eating the weeks I don't lose anything. That might be helpful.

So I feel angsty, but I don't have a particularly concrete reason. I have a couple of new things that are contributing to the angst, but one of them is six weeks off, and the other one is dumb. Still, they're affecting me.

I am the trainer at my job. Everyone new in the department goes through me. I also train external people — all the new consultants at the firm get an hour with me. I train on topics, sometimes, also, in classrooms ranging from 2 to 35 people at a time. So when our department managed to snag an external client of our very own who decided that they wanted some training for their own people, of course I'm the resource. The client is a large cosmetics company based in New York, and they want us to hold on-site training in Powerpoint and in using their template (which we've built for them). Fine. Scary, a bit, but fine. Free trip to NY, which is fun.

Except now they've ratcheted things up a bit and it's going to take place over 2 days, with a full day the first day and a half day with "power users" the second day. So that means I need to train for 12 hours. I need to have 12 hours of things to say! That's a LOT of hours, people.

I taught a computer science class for seven years at the college level. The classes I taught, even with lab, were never more than three hours per day. I've led large classroom training sessions at work, but never more than two hours. When I train our internal department people I spend an entire week with them, but I always send them off to do exercises for hours of each day. So ... I've NEVER done this before.

And! We have to basically write the entire curriculum in the next six weeks. I mean, almost nothing that we already use in-house is relevant, because everything we do is customized — we have specific toolbars and macros that we built to make our working lives easier, and almost every training document we have is based off the custom macros.

So! I am about to DROWN and I'm very nervous.

And! I have nothing to wear! New York City! Cosmetics company! I'm sure I can't show up in my jeans. AIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEE! It's like all my personal horrors in one two day event. AWESOME.

The second thing? I read Bob Harper's book "The Skinny Rules" yesterday. He's one of the trainers on The Biggest Loser, and he decided to put down a bunch of rules about how to get skinny. And currently I follow exactly none of them. I mean, a lot of the rules make sense. Drink a large glass of water immediately before every meal. Go to bed hungry — meaning don't eat anything for several hours before bedtime. But then there are hard ones, like no carbs after lunch. He wants women to only eat 1200 calories a day. I have a hard time sticking to 1800 right now. I can't IMAGINE 1200. So I'm feeling like I'm doing it all wrong!

Patrick pointed out that I am losing weight, am off several meds, feel better. That he's trying to sell his book by making me feel bad. That what I've been doing has been working for me for a year, and that, anecdotally, I should have gained back everything I'd lost by now plus 10 pounds. I guess that's all true. I picked the book up because there were recipes and stuff, and I know he's a veggie fanatic and I need veggie help. I need to really be more selective about what I'm taking out of the book, I think.

Anyway, I had a week. It was fine. Worked out Wed (20 min bike, 5 min elliptical, 20 min swimming). Thursday was our summer work outing, which this year was a cruise on Boston Harbor. They had predicted terrible downpours and lightning and stuff, but it was just partly cloudy and hot, so that was pretty nice. I can't remember the last time I'd been on the harbor, so that was nice, too. The food was decent and although only appetizers, pretty plentiful, so I counted it as a "cheat" day and proceeded to eat All The Things. The best part? My coworker Joanne and I scurried away when the karaoke started and hid up on the deck. Because otherwise I might have leaped. I really gotta take up drinking.

Despite feeling perfectly fine on the boat, I woke up on Friday with an inner ear problem that made me dizzy all day. I read that that's pretty common after you've been on a cruise. I had to skip going to weight class that night, because I thought I might fall over with a barbell and that might be bad. Driving was occasionally a challenge, too! Was better by Sunday, and is mostly gone today.

Dinner and a movie (Mary and Max on Netflix) with P Saturday night, Sunday was lunch with P and some light shopping, then today was chores day with a dollop of Y action (25 min bike, 30 min walking, 45 min weights). I was trying hard not to think about the training thing until I go back to work tomorrow, but Mom (sigh) pointed out I'd need something to wear and that threw me into a tizzy, and then it basically ruined the rest of the day for me. CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE in a big way. I did feel better after the gym, however. Beat the angst out of me. Hard to worry about something far away when something close by is heavy and needs picking up and putting down.

So last week I felt pretty good about life, and this week I feel unsettled. I guess that's fine.

Saturday was a pretty slow work day. I wasn't sore from the workout the night before, which surprised me. I was supposed to see P so we could hit a movie, but he got a better offer and blew me off, so I just spent the night home. It was so damned hot out that I had done my exercising at my work's gym (FIVE WHOLE MINUTES on the elliptical this time, and lots of treadmill), so I didn't need to go out for any reason. Was nice!

Sunday I decided to finally deal with the stuff I'd brought back from Suzanne's basement. It's my childhood book collection, along with a lot of games and puzzles and such. I'd been driving around with it in my car for two weeks, and the whole time it was smelling of mildew which was annoying me. I figured that baking in a super hot car for a while would be good for killing any residual mildew, but two weeks was plenty. Patrick was willing to stick the stuff in his attic along with all my other stuff, and I did some quick internet searches on ways to kill off mildew smell in books. One suggestion was to put the books with some dryer sheets and seal them in Ziploc, so I got some of those giant Ziploc bags, repacked everything into them with a bunch of dryer sheets, and sealed them all up. If that doesn't solve it, I guess the stuff will end up trash, but I couldn't make that decision this weekend. I mean, all my childhood!

Anyhow, brought it all over to P's, visited for a few minutes, then took off. Wanted to get my car sanitized. I went to the car wash and vacuumed it, washed the exterior, even cleaned out the glove compartment. Smells good now! That made me happy. Brought mom home some lunch. Headed off to Steve and Val's for dinner and chatting. They made pasta with roasted eggplant, and suddenly I like eggplant. WHO AM I? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME? I went back for seconds on the eggplant. It really goes to show that any veggie is good roasted in the oven with olive oil.

On the way home I stopped at Zinga!, which is a self-serve frozen yogurt place. They have the full nutrition panels for every one of their flavors and toppings. If you're careful and weigh everything, you can get out of there with a low calorie delicious snack. And I was very careful. It's my new favorite place.

Today was grocery shopping and recycling, and that's about it. Lunch, then more Zinga! I took another nap today, too. What's with the napping? I woke up fitfully, and finally made dinner before round two of weightlifting class. Went well. Some interesting exercises, a lot of which use your own body weight as the resistance. A lot of his exercises involve getting down on the floor and lying on our backs and such, and the getting down there and back up is a challenge for me with my knee but I'm managing so far.

I have always liked weight lifting, going back to high school gym class. We had the option to go out and play tennis, play softball, or work in the weight room. I sometimes did tennis, but mostly I did the weight room. I've always been pretty strong (for a GIRL), but as I get older I've noticed I've lost that. No more. I will regain it and then some! I am using Ernestine Shepherd as my inspiration. I'll probably never be that kind of awesome, but hey. She's 75 and runs two hours a day. That's pretty impressive. Check out the image search!

I've finally seen a little scale action the past few days. That's a relief. This has been a long plateau. I was hoping the gym addition would do something to shake things up.

Another weekend. I'm saving my makeup holiday for my Cape trip in a couple weeks, so I only had a two-day weekend unlike most of the rest of you. It was fine. Did a lot of choresy things, watched Eurovision live (including all the voting) at work with my coworkers (hilarious), watched some baseball, visited with my pals Stephen and Val on Sunday, hung out with P and finished up "Revenge" on Saturday, kinda the usual.

Today I dumped off ANOTHER huge bag of clothes (how is this even possible? I have gotten rid of SO MUCH STUFF I don't know how there's always more) at the charity bin, along with an equally huge bag of shoes (dunno why they'd want shoes, but it says CLOTHES and SHOES on the bin so hey, enjoy the Crocs!). And then, idiotically, I filled up all that empty space in my closet. Mom put the idea in my head, mentioning that one clothing store was having a sale on tops. I went to get some lunch at my favorite deli and noticed that another store was closing and having a liquidation sale, so I went to both and basically I ended up coming home with about 10 tops, a few pairs of shorts, some workout clothes, and some underwear, and spent relatively little to get it all. I think now, with the exception of the perfect pair of black jeans (elusive, damn it) I am mostly done with clothes buying for a goodly amount of time—at least until it gets really cold again, or until I drop another two sizes. It's tempting, now that I can buy clothes at all the discount places like TJ Maxx and Marshalls and all the cheap places like KMart, to just buy ALL THE CLOTHES. Because I've not had the ability to do that in several decades. So I am trying to behave. I am still transitioning, so there's no point spending money on my intermediate size, right? But it's very tempting because I like getting compliments, and apparently I am a girl who enjoys wearing cute clothes. Oy.

Speaking of transitioning, I managed to lose two pounds since my whine about losing nothing really, so that's good. Had an excellent week, food-wise. Been able to avoid more carbs lately without missing them. One trick has been very helpful: have re-added cheddar cheese, pre-cut to make it easier to judge calories, to my snack arsenal. I have a handful of grapes or an apple and the cheese and I'm pretty satisfied. Here's hoping that continues. Today I even skipped a side with my sandwich at the deli. Go me! I consider myself just about at the halfway point for what I'd like to lose, now. Another 80 or so pounds and I'll be happy. (Hell, I'm happy now, but might as well keep going!)

Also did a bunch more walking. Took off Friday and Saturday (Friday I was sore, and Saturday I was busy with work and social stuff), but pretty much every other day I've been walking for at least 45 minutes (mostly a full hour). Plan to keep that up until my legs fall off. Which some days feels imminent. Why did I wait until I was old and feeble to attempt to get healthy? I can't even SLEEP without causing myself pain. My hips, my knees, my back, my right shoulder, my right hand index finger's knuckle, all of it hurts pretty much allatime, and I'm annoyed by it. Ibuprofen is my bestie. Stupid old body.

Held the first of three training sessions on Saturday, with the next two Tue and Wed. Got some good feedback, am modifying the training a bit to include it. Hard to cover a huge topic in 1.5 hours and know what to leave in and what to omit, but I'm working on it.

And I think that's everything.

I've been thinking about my physical world lately. I mean my ability to BE physical, and specifically my ability to be more directly in the world.

I was a pretty active kid: bike riding all summer, running around like a wild thing from dawn to dusk, always in motion. I'd also go for long walks with the dog every day. I was in marching band in junior high and high school. When I got a little older and would be hanging out with my friends, sometimes we'd miss the last bus home at night and instead of calling a cab we'd just walk from Cambridge to my home in Watertown. Or we'd start our night by taking the bus into Cambridge and then walking from Cambridge to Boston. When I got to college no one had a car so we'd take public transportation and then walk. Basically until I started to drive in my mid-20s I walked and rode my bike everywhere.

Once I got my license I pretty much stopped all of that. It was a time-saving move. Sure, I'd wander around when I was exploring new places, but mostly I was busy trying to live life—get from one place to another to work jobs, go to classes, whatever. I didn't leave a lot of time for walking around. And I gained weight and eventually got a lot less able to walk around for hours. I also developed the car mindset: you get places by driving somewhere and parking. Maybe by taking public transportation, but only if it gets you really close. When I injured my knee I felt like I would probably never do a lot of walking again. And until recently, I didn't.

It changed one day when I realized that I'd never left my apartment on foot—I'd walk out the door and get into a car. I lived one block from my downtown strip, and I'd never ever walked to there. So I decided to just do it.

And now, ten months later, here I am. I've been walking a couple of miles a day several days a week. I've been exploring my immediate surroundings on foot from work and from home. And here's the big thing I forgot: it feels really good. I shouldn't really be surprised by it all, but I am. I am bored stiff by walking on a treadmill, but give me fresh air and something to look at, and I'm pretty happy.

So there's my big secret! I like to walk.

Been a not-very-busy couple of weeks. Had a long weekend last weekend, so I managed to get a lot of slacking done. Saw "The Artist" last Saturday with Patrick; very fun and lots of laughs. Loved all the movie shout-outs, and the little dog (a la The Thin Man) was adorable. Last Sunday went over to Steve and Val's with Patrick for dinner and Hearts*. Was fun. We don't play often enough for any of us to be great players, but it does come back after a while and gets fun.

*I've been playing a lot of traditional games lately, albeit in mostly non-traditional ways: I play Words with Friends (which is a Scrabble app), Scramble with Friends (a Boggle app), Hearts (both on PC and live), Cribbage (app — I play vs. the computer rather than friends), and a couple of solitaire variations (mostly FreeCell). I don't think I'll ever like MUDs or MMORPGs or anything, but I definitely like short puzzle-y games that I can play on my phone.

Work week was short, which was good. Didn't do much all week, really, except read, watch tv, some light chores. Was good downtime. Friday night P and I saw "Ghost Rider", keeping to my longstanding tradition of seeing really bad movies after seeing really good ones. I enjoyed the hell out of it — nothing beats watching Nicolas Cage twitch and grimace his way through a flick. He's still got too much face, or something (this time I think it is caused directly by his receding hairline), but he's still fun.

Spent this weekend mostly at home. Sunday I ran a couple of errands and watched the Oscars (I could live without seeing Billy Crystal host ever again, I think. His shtick is old, yo. Bring back Chris Rock! Or hell, even James Franco. I'd like to see someone under 100 host, again. Also, I seriously need to see more movies. I only saw a handful of any of the nominated ones — which is true every year. Time to fix that!), and today I did the grocery shopping, saw my doctor, and spent the night surfing the web and reading and playing more games. My doctor was impressed with my overall weight loss (around 68 pounds now since July, which is an average of 8.5 pounds per month, or 1.97 pounds per week. That hasn't been my rate lately, I've slowed a bit, but it's still a nice average!) and advised me to keep doing whatever I'm doing. We'll see when my bloodwork comes back how I'm doing blood-chemistry-wise. My BP was 112/68, which seems pretty good. I've never really had BP issues, though, but it's still good to see.

So glad February is mostly over. I always have a hard time with February. Seems longer than all the other months, and it's so bleak and usually so cold, it just wears on me. Too bad it's a leap year this year, though, but at least it's only two more days til it's over. Yay! I guess now that my work week starts tomorrow I'll have to kick it into high gear and get back into productivity mode. But for the rest of the night tonight I think all I'm going to do is finish my book and go to bed early.

( Speaking of books: )

My weekend consisted of a reasonably productive couple of days. Yesterday I managed to get some cleaning done including washing the kitchen floor, then I watched Hugo (which was oh so good!), and did a bunch of reading. Today was chores-tastic: After showering and loading the car up, I spent the next four hours doing recycling at the city yard, having lunch, getting my hair cut, going bathing suit shopping (and finding one that I didn't loathe, so yay!), returning cans, going to Coinstar with my change cup contents (yay new kindle books now), returning Redbox, grocery shopping, and other quick errands. Came home and put the groceries away, got dinner going, loaded the dishwasher, paid bills, chatted with Patrick.

Earlier part of the week was pretty standard. On my work from home day this week I managed to watch three movies while I worked: The Thing (2011), In Time, and The Whistleblower. They were all better than I thought they'd be, so that was good. The Thing wasn't as good as the original by any stretch, however. There are only two ways monster movies seem to deal with the monster, these days: you either never see any of the monster at all, or you see too much of the monster. This was a too much situation, totally — all thrashy tentacles and gaping maw. Kinda boring, really. Nice that there was a female hero, however, a la Ripley. The Whistleblower was depressing, but gripping. Rachel Weisz was good as always, but since the plot was about human trafficking there wasn't much she could do to perk it up and make it less than grim. And In Time was better than the reviews, although a lot of that was because of Justin Timberlake's personal charisma, and because the plot was interesting. The dialog needed a lot of work, and the female lead could have used a bit more...something. I dunno. It didn't really stay with me, but Justin was better than I expected, so that was a pleasant surprise. Had to see it, what with the Harlan Ellison early controversy. He apparently dropped his lawsuit after seeing it, which sounds to me like a bad review. Anyway, go-to futurey sci-fi actors Cillian Murphy, Vincent Kartheiser and Olivia Wilde gamely made appearances, which upped the pretty quotient of the film by an acceptable amount. (when your entire cast has to look 25 years old or less, probably makes casting a challenge)

On Thursday I decided to take a walk at lunchtime and ended up over at the Museum of Science. There's some fun stuff there: they have a live gekko exhibit, with 30 or so different types of gekkos all in little unique habitats. That was pretty neat. There was also a museum guide carrying around a gekko to let visitors see one up close. Cute! That's one of the changing exhibit halls, from what I could tell. So many others seem to remain encased in amber. I couldn't believe that the main "habitat" exhibit hasn't changed much since I was a kid. I mean, I first saw that moose in probably 1970, when I was six! There's a sign identifying the moose habitat as dating from 1962, so I'm not exaggerating. A lot of the stuff is the same — the shuttle model, the capsule, the dinosaur models, etc. And the math room hasn't changed in at least 35 years, not to my eyes, anyway. But it's all still charming, and sort of comforting. There may be advances in science every day, but our little museum will do its part to stem the tide...

Later was dinner at Patrick's, much chatting, and Revenge. I don't know how many more eps there can be of Revenge, but it's pretty consistently AWESOME, so who cares? I heard that next season will be an entirely different cast and plot, like American Horror Story, so that is good. It also means anyone can be pushed off a cliff at any time. Also good.

Saw a very exciting number on my scale this morning. Let's hope it repeats! It would mean 75 pounds. It would be my first major goal reached, too. Which means a hot fudge sundae at Friendly's.

Kidding.

Sorta.

As part of their motivational machine, LoseIt! sends out relevant badges when you pass milestones. I have gotten various ones like 25 Pound Club, 50 Pound Club, Committed, Dedicated, etc. They all mean different things. They even sent one out on Thanksgiving to people who logged as usual on that day. Yesterday I got one: "Hardcore - You have logged everyday for at least 24 weeks."

Twenty four weeks! Six months. I've been tracking every morsel of food that I've eaten for six months. That seems so unlikely, especially for me. I've always been sort of willfully ignorant about what I've eaten in the past. This new awareness has been quite the revelation, really. I'm averaging 2.4 pounds lost per week. I am eating under 1900 calories most days. I can see plenty of areas for improvement in what I eat, especially when I run the percentages of fat vs. protein vs. carbs. I've been keeping track of all the major caloric breakdowns, like sat fat, cholesterol, sodium, etc. I'm not completely fanatical, but I have the data I need when I want to get there.

Sorry I'm turning this into a weight loss blog! It certainly was never my intention. I will try to blog about other things occasionally! It's just that this seems to keep being what I'm doing, and it's certainly the main positive thing in my life right now.

Since it's been a bitch of a year, I've tasked a few idle brain cells today with thinking about what I'm thankful for right now. I'm finding that my overall gloom is making it hard to come up with a big list, but I'll keep thinking about it. For now:

• iPhone: Seriously, I do everything with it. I track all kinds of things. I use it to entertain myself, educate myself, stay in contact, etc. I have it with me 100% of the time. OK, maybe not in the shower. 99.92% of the time.
  
• LoseIt app: There is no way on this beautiful blue marble that I would have managed to lose 55 pounds (and counting!) in this little time without this app. It's just...simple and fun. And it makes me feel accountability, which I've never felt with a person or group (regarding weight loss). I don't know why it's managed to work where nothing else has, but I'll take it.
  
• Words with Friends: It's been exceedingly helpful to pretty much always have something waiting to distract me and force me to use my brain. And honestly, as each game pops up it feels a little bit like someone is thinking about me throughout the day. It's nice.
  
• Space heater: Sometimes you just feel cold all the way down to your soul. Sit in front of the space heater for a while, bake the cold right out. It's the dumb little things, I swear.
  
• Pie: Well, snacks in general. Even though I've been limiting my intake, I've managed to control my snacking by not denying myself, but indulging carefully and by making wise choices. If I didn't have snacks every day I'd be going up instead of down in weight. Might go against common wisdom, but it's working for me.
  
• Audible: I think too much in the car. Music isn't distracting enough. Audible lets me sink into a narrative other than my own, and I am grateful for it. I've listened to audio books for years, but Audible is so easy and reasonably priced, I have zero complaints. And I've fallen in love with Will Patton.
  
• Nifty scanner: Finally I can deal with my paper backlog. Still working on it, but have made more progress this year than ever before.
  
• Ativan: I had some situational anxiety this summer and was experiencing classic symptoms like racing heart, racing brain, inability to focus, etc. My doctor prescribed me this to be taken as needed, and while I haven't taken it often, when I did, it really really helped. Especially good to let me get a full night's sleep.
  
• My friends: They are seriously long-suffering this year. I don't think I've ever been this pathetic before in my life. I am constantly whining and bitching to them and being a generally needy vaguely crappy friend. Without exception they have all been kind, helpful, and haven't gotten sick of me. Or at least are good at pretending that they haven't gotten sick of me! Which is really what matters.
  
• That 2011 is almost over. I know the calendar changing doesn't actually change anything. But a fresh calendar page can't really hurt. And most of my big problems will self-resolve at the turn of the year. Sure, I'll have new challenges, but at least they will be new ones.
  

Ok, that's all I've got right now. What are you thankful for?