Watch It!

Well, first of all, I know you're on the edge of your seat wondering how the sheets went. And the answer is ... meh. I always love my first night with new sheets, so it was a pleasant experience overall, but I don't think it was some kind of otherwordly experience like the Tribune claimed it would be. Maybe you have to wash the sheets with starch to make them all crispy-like, or air-dry them on a clothesline. Overall, I don't think Illinois is a clothesline state. Obviously you would end up with some kind of weird ice sheets in the wintertime, and even in the summer it is too rainy and humid to successfully use a clothesline.

I will tell you something awesome I learned about striped sheets. The stripes make it way easier to correctly determine the orientation of the bottom fitted sheet. I swear, my first shot at placing a non-striped fitted sheet is always the wrong way. It seems you would get it right 50% of the time, but I think my average is more like 25%. But with the stripes, which you would assume would be vertical (I don't know why, because your bed wants to look thinner?), you know how to put on the fitted sheet.

But enough about that. People's ramblings about the mundane details of their sheets is precisely why blogs have a bad reputation in general.

So, today I went back to Weight Watchers. And if you think walking back in the door of that Weight Watchers meeting is easy, you clearly have never done it. I had to psych myself up for it. It is a very emotional experience. You feel like such a failure, especially when the computer generates a little label for you that indicates exactly how many pounds you have gained since you last darkened the doorstep of Weight Watchers. But thankfully I got a leader who was very friendly, and more understanding than some of the other people at the Homewood, Illinois Weight Watchers location. I stayed for the meeting because that's the right thing to do when you first start out, even though sometimes those meetings make you feel like gouging your eyes out, what with their stupid sayings like, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

Today's meeting topic was how to handle Weight Watchers while on vacation. Bottom line, you have to see your vacation as an opportunity to enjoy scenery, visit new locations, and bond with your family, not as an opportunity to eat a bunch of stuff. "Just because you're on vacation, it doesn't mean you're on vacation from Weight Watchers," the leader said.

Overall I am feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. I have so far to go now, and I have to do it while attempting to cook for two other very picky eaters. But I'm trying to take it one day at a time and focus on all the things in my life that make me happy and aren't food-related.

Like last night. Husband took my car to Racine, and foolishly I had left the stroller in the trunk. So the boy and I embarked on an epic walking journey, or at least a walking journey that was epic by toddler standards. We started out at a park that we had never been to before. Then we moved on to Culver's, where I was very good and only had a Diet Coke. And when the boy announced he was done with his vanilla custard topped with M&Ms, and approximately 85% was left, I didn't take a single bite of it. (Eating a child's leftovers is a major contributor to what I have termed the "post-baby weight.") After that we went to the pool, which was just lovely last night. Not too humid, bright and sunny, with a gentle breeze. This idyllic soak in the pool was only interrupted when another mom reached into the gutter to get her son's toy, and pulled out a dead frog carcass for which rigor mortis had set in. But then we walked home, hand in hand as the sun was setting, and watched the fireflies while we chatted. "I'm having fun, Mommy," he said.

I write this because sometime in the near future it will be a cold winter day, on which at this exact time it will already be pitch-dark, and my driveway will be covered in 6 inches of snow.

Only I will be super-duper thin by then, right?