My youngest daughter has informed her dad and I this past weekend that she and her boyfriend are getting married this Thursday at 10 AM at the courthouse by a judge. When she informed me my mouth fell wide open and I nearly dropped the cell phone while driving on the interstate coming home from my mom’s. I had to pull off the next exit and talk with her. Of course being given such a short notice, I had to ask the important question of was she pregnant. She informed me with a big NO! I asked her what the big hurry was, she replied with it was what they wanted and not to put it off. I asked her what happened to the next May of 2009 plans she had just told me about before going to my Mom’s and I had told my relatives about. Now I am going to be embarrassed to tell my relatives that they did a courthouse wedding. My youngest daughter did inform me that they were going to elope and not tell anyone, but changed their minds. I asked my youngest daughter what about her oldest sister being given a 6 day notice to be there for the wedding. Didn’t she think about how that may affect her older sister being left out of her special day. My youngest daughter didn’t have much concern about anyone’s feeling but hers. She also told me I could be there at the courthouse or not depending if I wanted to be supportive of getting married. Since she is over 18, legally I could not stop her. I didn’t want to lose the relationship with my daughter. I am hurt that she didn’t even give her dad a chance to walk her down the aisle. I know personally 5 pastors that would be glad to have married them in a church or outside. I know my youngest always talked about a “BIG” wedding of around $15,000, which she knows her dad and I both can not afford. I explained there are ways to reduce the cost of a wedding and reception. She still was adamant about going to the courthouse. I found out they had already applied at the courthouse for their marriage license while I was gone. She wants a big reception in two months for about 150 people and she wants us to pay for it. What do you readers think, should we pay all or half of the reception cost since she decided to do a quick wedding?

Sorry I haven’t written lately. My Mom is under hospice care 5 days a week. She lives in a different state than I do. My oldest brother called me and told me if I wanted to see my Mom alive I needed to get down there to see her that she had been falling a lot. The sense of urgency in his voice left me no choice but to get packing quick and renting a car. My 20 year old van would not have made the trip. Due to my Mom having congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s Disease, I knew her heart was the worst of the two of the her health problems. My Mom is 86 years old and has outlived her mother and dad and sister and brother-in-law.

The trip went well riding in a 2008 Chrysler PT Cruiser that I rented from the new local Avis. I was so pleased with the car and the service I received. I was even given a discount when I told the President of the local office that I was a member of AAA and AARP. I do enjoy the benefits of being a member of those groups.

Getting to spend time with my Mom is a blessing though it was rough. Mom is a stubborn woman. Her way or no way. She is adamant about not being in a nursing home. My brothers and sister say she can’t have her nest of clutter to live in. I believe is she feels she will lose her sense of freedom or independence if she goes in a nursing home. As a family, we talked to her about assisted living facilities. No way! Mom is a constant worrier. Her hospice nurse informed us the added stress on her heart is adding additional damage and mini TIAs.

I saw my Mom have a bad episode one night. Watching my Mom not being able to speak to tell me what was happening to her and grabbing her chest moments later was very scary. Then her Parkinson’s tremors followed in her hands then her legs. I had to call my oldest brother because I was not sure what to do for her. He told me it was normal for her to experience this. I told her caregiver the next morning what my Mom had experienced and she called Nurse Alice who explained about Mom’s blood pressure bottoming out and Mom passing out or feeling faint to turn her oxygen tank on and use the nose tubes, then put a nitroglycerin patch on her if she was having chest pressure or pain. Over all I felt I kept myself calm through all of this event. It took approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes before Mom came out of the episode. My sister had called during the episode and I explained that Mom could not come to the phone right then. I needed to go and check on Mom. My sister called several relatives and got them all nervous and panicky. I started getting phone call early the next morning. I was quite upset with my sister and when she called the next morning I let her know I was upset and why did she not be patient for me to call her back as I had promised I would and not call relatives and upset them. I warned her about upsetting Mom anymore.

I did try to help my Mom have her last wishes of going over to her hometown she was born in. She wanted to put flowers on her Mom, Dad, sister and brother-in-law’s graves, so I took her and we put flowers on the graves. She wanted to go see some property that she and my dad had bought when I was a child. Unfortunately, due to the time of the year and high water, we could not access the road to get to it near the main lake. There were other things she wanted and I tried to accommodate her wishes.

One of the main things I learned during this trip was that my Mom needed to let go of things from the past, both materialistic and past hurts. For her being bitter and negative was very taxing on my energy; physically, mentally and spiritually, My Mom still has not stop being bitter about my dad. They divorced over 30 years ago and he has been dead for 17 years. It is my wish as well as several family members that she stop being bitter and negative and be happy and enjoy her time she has left. To enjoy seeing her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. I pray this for her.

Each day I try to spend some time scheduling what I need to do for the next day to try to stay on track for losing this weight. I do find it difficult to stay on track with interruptions that seem to be coming at me this week. No they are not excuses. A church friend needed a babysitter. Daughter calling 3 times a day and then asking me to come over. Aunt calling and saying she was depressed and needed company. We are trying to do some repairs around the house. Not eating one of the required 6 small meals each day and sometimes not feeling very good because of not eating that meal for a short period of time, because of my diabetes. My body is feeling the changes.

To schedule for each day what to eat for the next day for food preparation. Also scheduling time and certain consistent days to do my walking and my body sculpting exercises.

I need to be more consistent with the plan to insure I follow how it is to work for my body type. Overall, I do feel better and can feel more energy which is helping my diabetes. Only once had a super low blood sugar of 64 which was my fault for not eating. I have less aches or pains except in my lower back.  I am being very careful with my lower back when I exercise due to my stenosis.

Being on a diet, I have wondered when I should weigh myself. I started weighing myself the first thing in the morning at the beginning of the week. Being consistent of the time of the day that you weigh is important. I found that if I weighed myself at night, I weighed a lot more than in the morning. I like showing a lesser weight on my new digital bathroom scale each morning.

Seeing my progress each morning inspires me to stick with my diet each day. Monitoring my blood sugar four times a day is making me more aware of how this diet is helping me keep more balanced throughout the day with my diabetes.

I have finally committed to start losing some weight that I desperately need to lose to help my health. My A1C is over 10. I surpassed the 200 pound mark. My body was starting to rebel with aches and pains. Struggling to do simple chores and exercises has been no easy task. I have watched an infomercial on TV for over a year. I finally made the phone call after doing some research on the product and on the Internet about it. I asked the customer service agent some important questions about me being diabetic. She read to me about eating 6 small meals a day.

I received my box last Saturday by FedEx loaded with a types of information, exercise band, CDs, DVDs and recipes. I also ordered the Fat Burning supplement. I watched DVDs on how to setup my program book that is designed for my body type. Each day, I worked on solving what type of foods was I going to eat at each of the meal throughout the day. The big obstacle was I needed help with deciding what actual food for the type I was allowed during what time of the day. A family member has been a big help with my menu planning for each day. I am not allowed to have red meat, but only chicken, turkey or certain fish on this plan so his help is needed so much on how I can prepare my meats without growing tired of the same old way, since he is a chef. He even bought me a straight back chair to do my exercises. He even watched the exercise DVD and helped critique my movements for each exercise I had to do for the different days. It sure felt good to have the support from him and I tell him how much I appreciate it each day.

So far, I have lost 4.2 pounds in less than a week. I have a very slow metabolism and it will take a few more days to get it to going faster as I continue to follow the plan faithfully and work the different muscles groups with the easy exercises.

I know by sticking to this diet, my diabetes will get better. I am testing my blood sugar more often and feeling better each day. My energy level is increasing too. Will keep you posted more on my progress of my diet.

I am so proud for making a huge accomplishment and milestone of 6 months since I stopped smoking. It is so incredible how much better I can breathe, feel and how much better food taste. One of the reasons I gained so much weight. (See my next post about my starting a new lifestyle eating and exercise program.)

At least once a month, a new accomplishment around the house is happening. After all the years of smoking I and other family members have done in my house, it is a constant cleaning, washing down walls, painting, washing windows and laundering draperies in each room till each one is clean and fresh. Now that the weather has not been raining very much for the past 3 weeks, I have had my windows open to air out my house. There is still a smell after the windows have been closed for a few days. We just have to be persistent in cleaning all the rooms thoroughly of the tar and nicotine.

I am pleased at the progress I have made with the goals I have made in the last 6 months. The old me just didn’t want to give up smoking for all those 42 years. The new me is so pleased I finally made the right decision about quitting and staying committed. Going forward in my life to make more right decisions towards my health and my life in general. Better late than never at my age. I’m glad I am going forward!

We have been working slowly through the summer at fixing and repairing things around the house. This week it has been the kitchen. Our ceiling tiles needed some attention. Some needed painting and some needed replacing. Two electrical switches needed replacing. Now we have discovered that the ballasts are bad on both of the florescent lights in the ceiling. Having to fix and repair can get costly, but neglecting to do that in a timely manner can cost you even more.

I have wanted a new Price Pfister kitchen faucet for some time. I love the high arched one that has a pull out sprayer from the faucet. It looks so elegant. I know this will make my kitchen look prettier. If I could talk a family member into installing it and a new double stainless steel sink at the same time that would be great.

A few days ago, I tried to get my blog’s WordPress upgrade done plus some upgrades to plugins. Well, after a lot of frustration and another friend who blogs trying to help me. We discovered that the newest version of WordPress has a major flaw. After installation, WordPress admin will not allow you to sign in. This is a pain in the tush!

I went to the WordPress Support Forum and found that since the release of 2.6, there were pages and pages of complaints. I would have thought that WordPress would have released a message warning people to not do the upgrade till they fixed their problems.

I am grateful that my friend had made a backup copy of the previous version 2.5.1. We were able to reinstall the previous version otherwise I would not be able to write on my blog. So if you see another blog that has an error code and their blog is not appearing, the problem is more than likely version 2.6 was installed and no back up made and has “locked” the blogger out.

One blogger on the forum suggested uninstalling WordPress and installing 2.6. I have a problem with doing that, it is too risky removing the entire WordPress. Could possibly lose archived post, plugins, etc. Too much time and work would be lost if you mess up.

So for now, I will wait and watch the forum to see if WordPress Support post when the issue is resolved. Then I will do the upgrade.

I asked my youngest daughter how her acne treatment was coming along. She told me that her face is starting to clear up. Though she did express she has concerns about scarring from picking at her face. I told her about using two Q-tips and not her finger nails. Germs under the fingernails can get pushed into the open pimple and cause infection under her facial skin. Also to not push on her face till blood is showing or clear liquid. I am glad she is finally asking me questions about caring for her face. She has always told me I have beautiful skin. I don’t have scars on my face from my teenage years of pimples, because my Mom told me how not to scar my face and cleanse it properly and use moisturizer. My Mom sure has saved me a lot of money over the years in doctor’s bills with the helpful hints on taking care of different health cares. Thanks Mom!

When we were driving to the hardware store yesterday, I was looking out the window at all the commercial real estate property for sale. I have thought of different types of brick and mortar businesses that would be great on those properties. Our city counsel has been promoting our city and county for new businesses and industries to come to our area. With the economy like it is, it would be nice to see more companies move their businesses here or open a new one. This sure would help our citizens get more employment and better paying jobs. My family members work very hard for the low pay they receive and they have been at their same jobs for many years. One of my family members has been at the same job for over 9 years and has only gone up in increases a total of $2.75 an hour on his pay. I really would like to see him get promoted or get a better job if new businesses or industries would come to our area.