Serious About Losing Weight

For the past 15 years I have made the same New Year's resolution - Get under 200 pounds by the end of the year. And while I have gone from hovering in the 230-250 range in the first 5 years to stagnating in the 215-225 range for the last 10, I have yet to accomplish my goal.

Well, now I'm 55 years old and have several obesity-related illnesses and quite frankly, I'm tired of being fat. I thought that perhaps if I had to record my weight loss/gain here on my blog, instead of just posting it on my fridge, it might give me the incentive to exercise when I'm just too tired or pass up the fried foods.

So, this morning I weighed in at 213.2 pounds. I will report weekly what I weigh, knowing the entire world can google "jeraine root" and these posts will probably be at the top of the list. Hmmm... I suddenly felt quite a bit of fear. Being identified by a search engine as the fat chick that is trying to lose weight instead of the Ph.D. that has published articles and many career accomplishments is quite humbling.

But as God is my witness I shall go hungry again!

Mom is a WINNER!

Sorry it's taken so long for me to post this photo of Mom. It's been an incredibly busy week for me. Here she is right after winning $480 in the 2012 Birthday Bash at Coushatta!

I'm 55!

I finally made it to the big double nickle. Gina asked what I wanted to do to celebrate my birthday this year and I said I wanted a trip to the casinos. Mom joined us as did our friend Annie. The week before Annie had brought me a cake and took me out to eat & to a movie!

First stop was L'Auberge where Mom & I had a free room offer. Gina & I were on the 16th floor with a beautiful view of Lake Charles and Annie shared Mom's room up on the 17th floor. Had a nice buffet lunch on Saturday, and a birthday breakfast on Sunday. Then Gina & Annie went back home while Mom & I went on to Coushatta.

Everyone who had a birthday in January was eligible to be in a 'cash frenzy' contest from 2-4PM. They called a lucky person's name every 30 minutes to come stand in this glass box and they had $5000 in cash blowing around inside. As much as you could catch and put into a box in just 60 seconds you got to keep.

I was playing roulette when I heard Mom's name called. I literally threw my chips at the croupier and screamed "I need to cash in and find my mom!" I then called her on the phone and it was hilarious trying to find her since she had no idea where she was in the casino. "I'm standing next to a slot machine" was not much help since they have 100,000 slots there! But we finally found one another and I grabbed her arm and ran with her all the way to the glass box. The contestant only had 10 minutes to show up before they'd call out another lucky winner's name. We got there just as they were making the 'last call for Mildred Root' announcement.

Mom did great and grabbed $480! Everyone was cheering her on "Go Granny!" and the emcee said she hoped she was as spry as Mom when she was 86 years old! It was soooo much fun! They should have a photo of Mom up on the Coushatta website soon. I sure wish Gina had been with us with her iPhone to get a video of Mom in that glass box.

Mom & I soon left with her riches to our final destination, Delta Downs casino where we each had a free room offer as well. Mom came home with nearly twice as much as she had taken to gamble with and I came home with not a penny -- but I had a great time.

In addition to all this fun, I got a funny Mr. Rogers birthday card from Denise along with a gift card to amazon. Still haven't figured out what I'll get with that... and an e-mail announcement from Lori that I have some delicious Harry & David pears on the way. If you've never had some of these, you MUST try them. Gina got me a Buzz Lightyear nightlight that complements my bathroom decor wonderfully AND gives me just enough light for those wee hour of the morning trips to the toilet :-)

I also got a wonderful t-shirt from Shari that has a game from The Big Bang Theory on it. Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock. If you don't get it, click here. HILARIOUS! And Mom got me the sweetest birthday card ever and in it was $15 and instructions to get scratchoffs. I did as instructed, but none of them paid off :-(

Today when I returned to work, I was surprised by my coworkers having decorated my door.


Here's a close-up of that Enterprise wishing me a Happy Birthday!



My coworkers, along with the pretty balloons and flowers that decorated the cake table.



And a HUMONGOUS cake and punch that was absolutely delicious. Unfortunately I didn't start taking photos until the whole building had been alerted about free cake in our office...


Such a nice way to be celebrated :-)

Bad Kitty!

Mega Spiral

Kay bought the kittens the lovely Mega Spiral which was seen in the last posting. Since they've been out of Gina's bedroom getting to know the dogs and GG for the last week, they've also discovered how much fun it is to be on the Mega Spiral.


And all of them have tried out GG's stroller as well. Stamp was a bit too heavy for it and now it leans a little bit. But Zip doesn't seem to mind. It's a good place to get some respite from the often way too friendly dogs.



I think that there must be some catnip in that top part of the Mega Spiral. Check it out!

Introducing the Cats & Dogs!

The original plan was to wait until Thanksgiving and bring Stamp out to meet the dogs and then after Christmas introduce Zip & Code. But the last 4 times I've opened Gina's bedroom door, Zip has scurried out to explore the rest of the house. I've had the dogs outside each time Zip has done his escape routine. Today I decided to let the dogs in and see how it went. The kittens are as big as GG now, so I figured there was no reason to keep putting it off.

BTW, Stamp did get neutered last week and weighed in at over 8 pounds! He's a really big boy!

Good news! Tater was just interested in meeting the cats - not eating them. As you can see she was quite excited - just watch that tail go!



Porch Boy wasn't quite sure what to make of the cats. Trip totally ignored them. Tater was the only one that tried to engage them, and as you can see here Code & Stamp weren't too sure that they wanted to be engaged...



Zip was more demonstrative with his displeasure, but there were never any claws exposed and rarely any hissing going on.



Tater did respond appropriately when the hissing happened.



All in all, I am quite pleased that all my little critters got along so well.

Kittens or Cats? You decide!

Took Stamp in for his final round of vaccines and he weighed in at a whopping 6.14 pounds! That's just a pound shy of Porch Boy and Garage Girl - both over 5 years old - while Stamp is supposedly still a baby at just 4 months! Yep, I've got another Montesquieu on my hands here. The vet said he wouldn't be surprised if he made it to 20 pounds when full grown. Yikes!!!

The twins are still much smaller than Stamp, but they've doubled in size since we got them.



I asked about getting Stamp fixed sooner than the recommended 6 months old because he's not only big, he's maturing very quickly. Check out the family jewels on this boy!




And Code is such a flirt with both her brothers...



So Stamp is scheduled for neutering next month. I'll have Zip & Code fixed later.