nlbarber

I got overwhelmed by Things, mostly work-related (which deserves its own post--another thing I'm behind on), and quit posting here. Also quit reading most email, and newsgroups, and Livejournal friends as well. Well, Things were over, mostly, last week, but this week got filled with combinations of "post-stress brain fade-out" (wanna just re-read favorite romance books and similar activities requiring little mental effort) and spring fever. Sometime soon I'm going to have to make real progress on my taxes...

So, Spring. It's here, by both the calendar and the Atlanta weather. Forsythia is already leafing out after blooming, the daffodils are about gone, and the dogwoods will pop out in white and pink soon. I've been puttering in the garden with some of the spring cleanup--taking the old flower heads off the hydrangeas, removing the deadwood from same, cutting back the old stems from the lemon balm and the pineapple sage, transplanting some phlox to a better location, and weed weed weed everywhere. I worked for hours on Friday trying to remove more of the greenbriar under the big azaleas in the back yard--I'd like to get all I'm going to do before the azalea blooms and attracts the bees. I think I got 5 shoots dug out. There's 2 big clusters of 8-10 shoots each left, plus isolated shoots coming up right next to the azalea trunk--those will just have to be snipped and poisoned. Once I get past the greenbriar, there are several big blackberry canes that need to be pulled up as well.

Today I turned over the bed where I've let the nieces and nephew plant stuff, and we planted 3 tomato plants (two cherry tomatoes, and a roma). And we started zucchini, cantaloupe, and sunflowers in peat pots, and then turned over the flower bed at their house and scattered zinnia seeds there. I still need to plant the hosta and the herbs I bought at HomeDepot yesterday, and create a long curving area in the front where I want to try strewing impatiens seeds to see if I can get a swath of color across the yard. Next weekend, maybe.

Note that none of the kids eat tomatoes or zucchini. Cantaloupe, yes, but with our sporadic gardening I'm not promising that we'll get any melons. But it's spring, and we had fun digging and planting, so who cares?

Way behind on updating the WW tracking, too...

Week 14 saw me down 1.6 pounds, and then on week 15 (which was in the worst of the scramble to finish the work project) I was down a rather unbelievable 3.4 pounds, getting me to a total of 25.6 pounds down. You get a little refrigerator magnet for the 25 pound milestone--I almost refused it on the grounds that the weigh-in was an anomaly.

Perhaps I should have, because last week I bounced back up 2.6 pounds, reducing the net loss to 23. Back on track this week, though: I was down 2.2 pounds today, so I'm back to a more-than-25-pound loss.

I also set a goal weight last week, picking the top weight allowed for my height (something my meeting leader seemed to expect). I'd really like to get at least 5 pounds under that, but setting my official goal at the maximum allowable gives me a larger safety cushion where I can fluctuate without losing WW lifetime status. Lifetime member status reduces what you have to pay for attending meetings, I think.