One is the loneliest number

Oh happy day, my little dog Binnie went from two eyes to one today. She seems fine. I cried like a baby at various times in the day

Binnie is my dog, I picked her out at the city pound on Valentine's Day when she was a scant eight weeks old and I was newly moved to St. Louis. She has defied me at every turn since then, but I do so love her and I feel like I've failed her.

You may recall she had an abrupt retinal detachment last spring of her left eye? And then that same eye got glaucoma, which is like winning the shit lottery twice, because with glaucoma if you don't keep the pressures under control the eye starts to SWELL and it hurts like a mother.

Swell it did. Until it was really just a red, roving mass of stinkeye. The vet recommended we give up the sham and just remove the blind eye and put her out of her discomfort.

I agreed.

Today was the big day. She went in at 7 and came out at 6, minus one red oozy orb.

The most disturbing comments have come from the children.

Griffin: "If my eye gets sick, are you going to do that to me?" No, sweetie, for you we would spring for the glass eye.
Cooper: "Will she wear a patch like a pirate?" Only if she plans on running away to join the navy or something.

The worst indignancy? They sent her home with a big pink bandana around her neck, like she'd won some sort of dog rodeo beauty contest. How rude.

I'm sorry, Binnie.

- H

Dear God: Just give me a heads up, would you?

We're Lutheran. I'm not so much Lutheran as not Lutheran, but my kin is Lutheran and since I'm of them, then I'm Lutheran, too. So, being a good Lutheran who isn't, I insist on going to church on Christmas Eve. Since I'm also the one who isn't, I typically just follow my parents around the globe and wherever they're going for Christmas Eve service, that's where I end up, and then my clingons follow me, and so on and so on.

This year we were at a fairly progressive Lutheran church. The pastor wore fancy jeans.

They sing songs with the karaoke screens that show you the lyrics, and they're usually songs that have been adulterated somehow. Not "Away in a Manger" or anything. No, we had a soloist (this alone I could write about for hours, but I will refrain) sing something about "Where's the Line for Jesus?" It's in the mall somewhere, according to her.

The pastor's pretty good at the talking parts. His messaging is pretty cool. So I was paying close attention when he started talking about Christmas lists and what you've asked for, and he said something like this: "God gives you what you need, not what you ask for." And then he launched into the Prayer of the Confederate Soldier, what with its message of be careful what you wish for and all.

And that's when the cold chill ran down my spine.

Hey, God. I am totally on board with you. I just really really could use a year where there isn't as much trauma as there has been the previous years. I can totally handle some hardship. Just look at the past few years! I've managed to keep my head afloat and my family's heads, too, right? And most of the time, except for large chunks of it, I have even maintained a pretty good attitude about it all. Right? OK, whatever, maybe not, I won't try to lie to you since you're God and all.

I'm just saying, maybe this upcoming year could be the Year of Heather? Kind of like the Year of the Goat, except different? And if you've decided 2011 isn't going to be the Year of Heather, could you at least float some sort of warning sign, like a flare in the night or something, so I can get my disaster preparedness kit ready? Cause you know how much I like to plan for the Worst Case Scenario.

There are a couple topics I'd like to really avoid in 2011 if at all possible. In no particular order, let's just say violence, famine, death, drugs, guns, cancer, cardiac problems, suicide, car accidents, danger, and guns, let's just take those off the table for 2011, kay? I will totally keep up my end of the bargain and do the absolute best I can to live the way you want me to live. I may swear a little more than you'd like, is that crossing a line? And if I shop too much, does that count? Cause I stopped shopping this year, but now I think I'd like to start again although just writing about it kind of makes me feel bad so no, I think I won't be shopping again this year.

Damn, that's going to make the new handbag I just ordered from Nordstrom kind of tricky. Well, I'll figure it out (with your help, I'm sure!), but I just want to say I appreciate all you've done for me and my family so far, and if we could just keep this between ourselves and keep that list of aforementioned items out of the picture, that would be awesome? Thanks.

I love you,

Heather
- H

I believe

- H

On ears and buns

This post will be an update of sorts. If you've been following along, you'll know that my car recently tried to kill me by setting the butt warmer on fire while I was sitting on it.

You'll also perhaps remember the one where I talked about my fears that my oldest son is deaf as a post.

Today, there was a small bit of forward movement on both fronts.

My car, she did indeed catch on fire. The service manager at the dealership said "yeah, it's fried." I said "so it burned up?" and he said "Oh, yeah. Torched. It's just an empty circuit now, though, so it's safe."

Hmmm. Safe. Interesting choice of words, as were "fried" and "torched." I feel so much better. New parts shall be installed in a fortnight, however long that is.

On to the bigger issue at hand, my deaf son. He is, indeed, temporarily deaf. If you were to stick both fingers in your ears, he would hear 20% less than that, according to the doctors who saw him today. His latest ear infection left him with pus behind his eardrum. Not "fluid," per se, but thick pus. Most people's bodies re-absorb fluid behind the eardrum, but sadly my son's is not doing that and hence the hearing loss.

I got to sit with him in the special room where they conduct hearing tests, and there was a point during the test when I had to stop myself from weeping. I could hear the lady from the control booth saying things like "say hotdog," and Cooper would say "popcorn." Or she would give him a command and he'd just stare blankly because he couldn't hear her. I could hear her, and I was in a soundproof room.

The good news is it's not permanent! His nerves that control permanent hearing are fine, it's everything in between that's messed up right now. We have to wait until February to see if the issue resolves itself (doc thinks it won't), and then he can have new tubes and his adenoids out at the same time.

The best part about all of it is I get to continue TALKING REALLY SLOW AND REALLY LOUD WITH HIM, and tapping him on the shoulder before even attempting to tell him anything, or gesturing with hand signals if I'm too far away to tap, for at least another six weeks. Yay!

So there. Thank you for your concern regarding both matters, and hopefully sometime in the spring both my son and my car will be fixed for good.

- H

Let's say thanks.

Since I spared you my annual "Feed the World" Christmas post, I thought I would be remiss if I didn't share this nice site with you, my dearest friends and random ISP addresses from Guam.

Maybe you'll have five free minutes today to send a holiday card to a soldier serving overseas. I was at the mall yesterday and a group of uniformed Marines walked by me. They were kids. Nineteen, twenty years old. They get sent thousands of miles away from home to do their jobs, and I'm thankful that they choose to do it as well as they do.

But you know, they're nineteen. They're probably homesick.

Send one of them a card.

Thanks.

P.S. Annual Feed the World holiday post to still to come.

- H

Grandpa's gonna sue the pants off of Santa. But my pants aren't going to catch on fire.

Am I the only adult in the free world who has actually watched the cartoon movie "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer?" Cause I know I've had a margarita tonight and all, but it was a few hours ago and for some reason the freaky voluptuously sexy cartoon ladies singing "Grandpa's gonna sue the pants off of Santa, that's what Grandpa's gonna do..." just seriously makes me think maybe I drank more than I thought I drank.

You'll all be relieved to know that I did call my local dealership who services my Cheapuinox to schedule an appointment to have my flaming buns warmer fixed lest we all catch on fire while on the road. The lovely girl working the phone was super concerned about the risk of my car burning up with me in it and slotted me right in to their first available appointment, which is next Thursday. Hrmph. We shall be driving around in the Tahoe til then.

Next Thursday's going to be a big day. Right after dropping the flaming piece of crap at the car dealership, my oldest son and I will be headed to the hospital for a hearing test and then an appointment with his ENT doc.

Why? you ask.

Well, I'm sad to report that my child is stone cold deaf. He can hear very little. This happened a few years ago and it got better on its own, but at his age I'm just a little worried that if there is some sort of BIG PROBLEM and we let it go (much like the buns warmer) then we won't be able to catch it in time to fix it.

He had an ear infection a month or so ago. Antibiotics treated the infection, but he's since been left with no hearing. For a week or two I wasn't too concerned, but we're going on six weeks now, and it almost seems like it's getting worse.

"Cooper, let's get your shoes on."
Silence.
"COOPER. Let's get your SHOES ON."
"What?"
"COOPER, LET'S GET YOUR SHOES ON," which is accompanied by waving the shoes around so he knows what I'm talking about. By this point, Ruby knows what I'm talking about and has been known to fetch the flipping shoes and drop them at Cooper's feet as a hint.

It's actually quite disturbing. At first we thought it was selective hearing, right? So we started testing him. If you stand behind him and talk about Santa Clause or candy, he doesn't hear you. If you stand in front of him and talk about Santa Clause and candy, he can't hear that either. He has to be looking right at your face while you RAISE YOUR VOICE LIKE YOU'RE TALKING TO YOUR 80-YEAR-OLD GRANDPA. Or 60-year-old father-in-law, whatever.

He had chronic ear infections as a baby and right around his one year mark he got tubes in his ears. They've since stopped working and turned sideways, or maybe pulled out? I'm unclear on what exactly they're doing, but we do know they are still in his ear canal and they aren't helping a bit. So we're back to the ENT to figure out just exactly what is going on and what we can do to fix it. I hope it's something simple like water on the eardrum? Something that new tubes or removing the defective ones can solve.

Just pray it's not something more serious than that. I don't know sign language.

- H

I think my car is trying to kill me.

I am not overreacting. I really believe my car may be trying to off me. Case in point: how hot does my butt really need to be?

If you live in a climate with extremes of hot and cold, you really must run out and pay however much it costs for a remote starter on your keychain thingy. It's the best invention ever. I drive a company car (Chevy Equinox, thank you very much) and I danced a jig of joy when it came and I saw it has remote start. In the summer I can crank up the air and get it cooled before getting in. In the winter, the engine is already warm before we open the doors. You get the picture.

The second best feature of my otherwise fairly crappy car is the buns warmer. There is nothing more comforting than driving along with your back and buns being warmed from below. Well, there's maybe three more comforting things like afghans, your mom, wine, Facebook, but I digress.

Last week the weather here took a turn for the worse. Our high was in the teens, low near zero. This is brutal cold, the British would call it v. cold. In preparation for getting my brood out to the car in the morning, I cranked up the remote start. Yay for technology!

Ten minutes pass, then we load up. I hop in front, press the buns warmer button, and off we go.

Some few minutes down the road, I started to feel a touch hot. Not warm, but some serious heat, coming from my ass area. I actually had to wiggle a little bit and pressed the button on the buns warmer to reduce the heat a little. Thinking maybe I was just wearing thin pants or have a hot flash, I went about my merry way.

Next day, repeat routine from above. Remote start, load brood, buns warmer on.

As we're meandering down the road, my brain and my son's brain noticed something at the same time.

"Mom, do you smell something burning?"
"Yeah...yes, I do. I wonder what that is?"

But I knew what it was. My buns were warmer than they should be, warmer than they've ever been, and the warmer was about to catch fire. I turned it off.

I really should take the car in to the shop, lest I have to make an emergency stop and hop out of it with my butt on fire in the near future. It's just that, well, the buns warmer still works! And my butt is typically cold. So, there's that. Lo, the inconvenience. I'm trying to weigh my options. Hmmm....

- H

Overheard

9:00 p.m. last night. After I told my oldest son I was sick of his shit behavior, it was time for bed. Go say goodnight to your dad, he's in the office.

Dad: Cooper, do you want me to lay you down tonight?
Cooper: NO, I want mom to do it!
Dad: Well, good luck with that.

- H

24 hours

TUESDAY
8:30 p.m.: I laid down with Griffin, and he promptly fell asleep. Yay for a tired preschooler!

9:45: As I'm crawling into bed, I heard the tell-tale squeaking that turned into full-on cries for Mommy from Grif. I picked him up and he cried and cried, eventually managing to tell me his tummy hurt. He burped a lot. I prepared myself mentally to be puked on and took him downstairs to watch Elmo.

10:20: Elmo's twenty minutes of fame over, Griffin's eyelids very heavy and his tummy treated with Mylanta. No more burps, no pukes, back to bed.

10:30: Griffin crying for mommy again. Lay down with him until he's asleep.

12:30: New crying from Griffin, he wants to sleep in the Big Bed with daddy. I laid him in the middle, and climb back in.

12:35: Cooper comes to my side of the bed. "There's no room, honey, let's go back to your room." I put him to bed in his bed and I climb into Griffin's, which is the trundle. Wondering if I'll get any sleep tonight?

12:45: Cooper crawls down onto the trundle bed with me.

1:45: I wake up with sharp searing pain in my head and neck. Slowly turn my head to relieve the cramp and pain. Briefly consider whether I have a tumor.* I climb up onto Cooper's bed to sleep.

5:00: Hear my husband tromping around, going downstairs and letting the dogs out. Why so early? Want to shoot someone.

5:45: Hear Griffin crying for someone to join him in the Big Bed. I get up and bring him back into his room and his bed.

6:00: Both boys want to get up. Fine, let's start this crapbag day super early after getting no sleep, that's a great idea. Headache not helping any.

7:00: Griffin crying that his tummy hurts. Does he have to poop? No. More Mylanta.

8:00: Off to school.

10:00: Why did I sign myself up to help with the Christmas party in Cooper's room? I am not happy about this. 20 energetic four-year-olds and a craft assignment from the other mom who volunteered = Heather is not a happy camper.

10:15: Cut 12 sets of hands/reindeer antlers out with teeny tiny safety scissors. Hands cramping. Cooper sobbing because of lack of sleep (see above) and because I was there. Behavior would have been much better if I wasn't there.

10:30: While cleaning up the gluey mess, Cooper reaches up and grabs one of my boobs, giving it a good honk. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? No answer.

10:45: Pick glue out of my hair. Go back to work. Note to self: do not volunteer for class party again.

11:00: Headache returns with vengeance. Must. Eat. Food.

4:00: Pick up offspring from school. Bribe them for good behavior with candy. This may serve to backfire on me later.

5:30: Hubs is back to work this week, after three months at home! Go pick up sushi in celebratory mood. Spend next twenty minutes preparing mac-n-cheese and nuggets for offspring that they don't eat, choosing to demolish the sushi platter instead. Choose to add wine to my dinner.

6:00: Finish sewing new work trousers. Cuss the idiots at Simplicity for making sewing patterns that are stupid and make people look dumb. Rip out all major seams, start over on the waistband assembly. Happy to hear the offspring playing quietly under my cutting table. Unhappy to find they've emptied my compressed air can.

7:00: Bathtime. Load them up, sit down on toilet with my needle and hook-and-eye closure to sew on the new pants. Brain telling me something smells fruity and familiar. Look up to find the bathtub filled with bubbles? I didn't add bubblebath? Find that Griffin has squeezed out my entire tube of new expensive shampoo into the tub. Regret not having had more wine.

8:00: Shriek with shock when Griffin spills an entire cup of ice water on my lap. When I ask him why, he said he was bringing it to me. And then he laid it down next to my leg.

9:00: Find myself telling Cooper "I am tired of your shit behavior today" after my whining valve filled up. March him off to bed.

10:00: Seeing spots from fatigue. Fading fast. Concerned I have a brain tumor (see notes from 1:45 a.m.)

Downward dog

I made another stretchy shirt on Saturday. Then I made my husband take my pictures so I could post the pattern review. I am some kind of hot model.


You know what I thought when I saw this picture?


I thought "oh holy crap, I need foot surgery."

Check out this wicked bunion. Bunions are hot.

- H

Scratch that. It's horses and flash mobs.

There may be a slight chance that I might be slightly hormonally imbalanced this week. Maybe. I wouldn't really know because thanks to the modern miracles of science and those lovely people who make the Mirena IUD, I don't have the pesky bothersome visit from my pesky aunt every 28 days anymore. (Sorry, all you male readers out there. I should have warned you, eh?)

This is a wonderful thing, and yet! The heads up that emotions maybe running high would be nice every now and then.

First I found myself sobbing about a race horse that won despite the odds being stacked against her. Then my mom sent me a link to this YouTube video of a flash mob singing the Hallelujah chorus in a mall food court.



Good Lord. You'd have thought I was having one of those moments where I saw the Virgin Mary in a baked potato for the amount of tears I shed! My kids were sitting on my lap, happily punching holes in bills with my hole puncher and trying to staple their fingers together, and my weeping managed to interrupt their activity, which is a small miracle. Cooper asked me if I was ok.

Yes, honey. I'm ok. God was just speaking to me through YouTube again.

- H

Damn you horses, with your inspirational ways that make me cry

I was on a plane home from Atlanta this morning, happily minding my own business when I suddenly starting publicly weeping and sobbing and alternately looking out the window while trying to use my wool coat to sop up the mess that became my face. The last time this happened I was reading a book about a dog on a flight to Bismarck.

Let me tell you something. I do not cry. I'm just not a crier the way some of my friends and my husband can sprout waterworks at a sweet Hallmark card. Not me, so sirree, I'm stoic.

UNLESS.

Unless I'm reading or watching a story about horses. What is it about those two-thousand pound animals that makes me sob like a baby? This particular story was just a short little clip in this week's People magazine about a seventeen-year-old boy who took over his dad's horse training business when his dad was paralyzed in a horrible hay-bale-crushed-him accident. The kid stepped up to the plate to make sure his family didn't lose their ranch.

No tears.

Then he met a filly. Uh-oh. I see it coming. The filly was wild when she got to the ranch. No one thought she had any potential, but the boy did and he worked with her. He taught her how to let a jockey tell her how to run, and he taught her to run like the wind. He signed her up as a long shot in a race and she won! She healed his broken heart, she gave him hope, and her winning the race saved the ranch for a while longer.

And that was that, I was boo-hooing like there was no tomorrow. Damn those horses with their big heads and their big hearts! It gets me every time. I can't watch Seabiscuit or Secretariat. Well, I can. But the tears get in the way of seeing the movie. The Kentucky Derby? I get the chills and get all choked up and yes, by the end there are tears. Last year (or was it the year before?) there were tears for the baby girl horse whose legs broke in the race and she had to be euthanized on the spot. Many many tears for her, for what they're doing to racehorses to get them to run faster.

Well. On that light note. Have a great weekend, everyone! And if you have a horse, give her a little hug for me. And an apple. I hear they really like apples.

- H

The sweetest spot on earth

Is there a place in the world that holds a special spot in your heart? Maybe a place you took vacation when you were a kid, or the place you lived when you fell in love, or went to college.

I have a place that's super special to me. It's a little town, actually. Buried in the heart of this country, in the heart of the state of Nebraska.

It's called Hooper. But not pronounced like Cooper. Pronounced like Huhper.

My parents were both born and raised in Hooper. My dad on a farm where he walked uphill both ways in a blinding snowstorm to a one-room schoolhouse until he went to high school. No joke, except for the part where it was all uphill. My mom was from Town. That's what Hooper's like. When you're there, you're In Town.

My parents got married when my mom graduated from the University of Nebraska, and they piled into their car and drove to Peoria, Illinois for my dad's awesome new job at Caterpillar Tractor Company.

Then their lives took them to Vancouver, Canada, then back to Peoria, then over the pond to Geneva, Switzerland, and so on and so on. When they left Hooper, it was on two-lane highways. The eight-hour drive must have felt like a million to my grandparents.

Then we came along, the three of us. Caterpillar was great about sending us home on home leave, and home was Hooper. So we'd cross the big pond and spend a month in the summers in Hooper, playing barefoot and creating chaos wherever we could. My grandpa hung a rope swing. We biked around town on my grandparents sweet cruiser bikes, swam in the community pool and learned to golf on the par 3 course.

Everything good about being a kid happened in Hooper. There was a five-and-dime store that smelled like a five-and-dime should smell, that had creaky old floors you only see in turn of the century storefronts. There was an ice cream parlor on the other side of the highway, and since few cars ever came down the road you could cross it if you looked both ways. They had awesome ice cream sundaes.

When I was eleven or twelve Hooper hit the big time. The first super awesome rock star restaurant opened on Main Street called The Office. It was the first place I had a taco salad. And curly fries. It was the best, and still is.

We grew up. My grandparents got older. My grandma got ovarian cancer, and they moved from their bungalow on the corner across from the grain elevator to an easy-living apartment on the other side of Main Street that my mom's cousin Ron owned. We lost my grandma, and then my grandpa died of a broken heart. And then, then there were none. Nobody left in Hooper to visit a few times a year.

So you can imagine, right? You can imagine how it must have felt to have my mom send me this article in the New York Times about Hooper.

It felt really nice. Really really nice.

- H

Tip for scouting out psychopaths: watch for facial movement

If you're a regular reader, and I know I have at least one because she tells me so (hi, Mom), you know that I have a distaste for Facebook. Let's just say I hate it. Hate being a really strong word but maybe it's the word that comes closest to how I feel about it. I'll also throw in that I don't trust it, I think it's the devil, and I think it's the devil. In no particular order.

Why? you ask. I don't know. I think Facebook is the devil for a variety of reasons, none of them completely Facebook's fault. Kind of like if you were in a car accident right after a snake happened to slither out of its cage and cross your feet, you might think snakes cause car accidents for the rest of your life but really it was the drunk driver that rear-ended you, right?

I do know that in the last three years or so, almost every wild story that had me shaking my head and saying "why on earth would someone DO something like that" involved Facebook in one way or another.

Then there's the whole friend thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm on Facebook and I even visit it every once in a while (like bi-monthly), and plenty of my friends in real life are Facebook friends. But then there's all those other 'friends.' People I went to school with, people they went to school with, people I can't remember. It's odd.

Now it seems de rigeur for any business to be on Facebook. Need a proctologist? Friend them on Facebook! I'm a fan of Dr. Fanny. What does this get me? I have no idea except that I had to sign some sort of waiver giving someone all access to my entire history and all of my friends and their history and probably my bank account just to be Dr. Fanny's fan. But since I've already had my surgery, I'm not really sure why I need to keep up with Dr. Fanny's information, like what she's eating for lunch.

Then tonight? Tonight my fears were totally realized. The founder of Facebook, the Man Who Will Go Unnamed so that I don't lose my dog in a "freak" antifreeze poisoning incident, was on "60 Minutes" with Leslie Stahl. I've seen him before on the telly. But this time with all the cacophony of my darling children rampaging around me, I didn't so much get to listen to what he was saying as watch him saying whatever it was he was saying.

His face doesn't move. Seriously, people. If there is ever a true measure of a sociopath, it is this. The eyes are the window to your soul. They need to have expression. They need to move! Light up! Squint! Frown! Laugh! Do something, you freak, except sit there and let your lips do all the emoting. I saw no movement from the lips up. I even said to my husband "look, his face doesn't move. It's freaking me out."

He was sitting across from the lovely Leslie Stahl who's emoting the hell out of herself and he's got....nothing. Is there a human in there? Don't you have to be a human to be the CEO of a company with the sole purpose of taking over the world? Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

At some point, Leslie (emoting real human emotions or at least faking them properly) asks The Man "Do you want Facebook to take over the internet?" or maybe she said "Do you want Facebook to take over the world?" and he literally did not answer her. I believe there was silence and then I think he eventually said something like "well if life is social and you want to be with your friends then I would think that your friends would be the most important thing in your life oh look a baby wolf" which to me was "yes."

So. I continue on in my distrust of all things Facebook, confident in the fact that
1) I was right. and
2) That Man is up to No Good. You mark my words. You mark them.

*If Blogger's spell-check doesn't recognize Facebook as a word, do you think that's a ray of hope?

- H

Gay

Have I ever told you all about how I hate my Blackberry sometimes? Like when I'm typing an email and the autocorrect always changes the word yay to gay.

Gay! You got the job!

Gay! I'm so happy for you!

See? It's just not the same.

Check this out for a good laugh. I had to have tissues and my son worried about me, I laughed so hard.

- H

The original Facebook

I know that Zucker-something-or-other kid claims to have invented Facebook and all, but I swear a small child probably had something to do with it.

My son is three. It's a cute age, right? Yeah, it's cute. He says really super sweet things like "Mom, you're my best friend." Which of course makes me give him some Juicy Fruit gum.

Sadly, this tactic also serves to backfire on me frequently.

"Mommy, can I have some gum?"

"No, honey, we're about to eat dinner."

"FINE! YOU ARE NOT MY BEST FRIEND ANYMORE."

Just today alone I've been friended and unfriended at least a dozen times.

Which might be why I laughed until I cried at this post. I can't wait to be unfriended in a letter on my pillow.

- H

Eat or be eaten

When my life starts to eat me up, I start to sew. This is something I've realized about myself over the past few years. It's important to note that when the seas are calm and the weather is warm (this is a metaphor, people) then I don't sew.

Even so, sewing should be a practical and fun diversion from the reality of being ate up, right? So if'n I'm gonna sew, let it be something useful that I might need. I have lots of coats. I even donated lots of coats this year and I still have lots of coats.

I also have many pairs of jeans. Five piles of pairs piled up in my armoire. I believe five piles means plenty. And, I want to sew. So I should choose something I don't have too much of, right?

Uh-huh.

The problem with being ate up is that you're ate up!

So I'm going to make a coat.

And some jeans.

Wish me luck.

Oh! I almost forgot! I lost three pounds my first day and half of torture. Isn't that awesome? Yeah. It didn't make today's forfeiture of all pleasure in my eating any better, but my jeans weren't so tight so that was a plus.

- H