My ma asked in the comments to this post for advice on losing weight, since I’m doing something right. Ma, I don’t know what will work for you, and it will be different for everyone, but here’s what’s doing it for me:

1) I read Rachel Lucas’s post on smoking (I can’t find it on her site now, so it may be down?) and her post about her trip to Auschwitz, and those two posts really hit me hard. They helped me get my mind in the right place, set priorities. I made this a priority.

2) I prayed really hard. I still pray about it. It’s on my prayer list.

3) I decided I’m not only tired of being fat, I’m tired of talking about being tired of being fat.

4) I retired and gave myself a lot more time in the day, so now I don’t have the “I don’t have time” excuse, even though I could have made time before.

5) We got EA Sports Active for the Wii. Great workout program. Including the journal that it has me keeping, it takes about 45 minutes, 5 days a week. You work out two days, then have a rest day, then 2, then rest. We’re doing the 30 Day Challenge, both of us, and when we finish that, I’ll either start the challenge again on high intensity (right now I do medium intensity), or Frank and I will work out together on the preset workouts every day. The Wii is now $200, and I think EA Sports Active is $60-ish.

5) I started drinking a ton of water. Like 10 glasses a day. Minimum 8. This was always hard for me before. But once I decided to quit complaining and just do something about it, then it just became part of my day. Must. Have. Water.

6) I started doing the 5-6 small meals a day thing. For two reasons. First, Sizzle (sister) had mentioned that Brizzle (brother) is doing that and has dropped a lot of weight, and since we’ve got those common genes, I figure what worked for him will probably work for me. Second, the EA Sports Active has me journal every day about what I eat, what I drink, how much sleep I get, how many servings of veggies I have, what other activities I do outside of the EA Sports workout program, and it tells me while I’m journaling that 5-6 small meals a day is much better than 3 meals (or 2, as I was doing). The best thing about doing small meals: I don’t get hungry. I start eating around 10 in the morning (I should start at 8 when I get up, but I don’t start until 10). I give myself a small meal, and when I’m done, I don’t eat more. (This has also helped me with #5, because every time I eat, I drink at least one tall glass [2 8-oz glasses] of water.) And I don’t feel like I’m missing out, because I get to eat again in 2.5-3 hours. And since I don’t get hungry, I don’t overeat. I don’t get full. I just eat a small amount when it’s time and then eat again when it’s time again.

7) I make a pot of vegetable soup at the beginning of every week. This helps if you love vegetables as much as I do. I add different spices each time, different vegetables. I eat this for several of my small meals. But I need to add in a handful of nuts or something when I do this, because the small meals are supposed to include carbs, fat, and protein.

8) Frank started working out too with the EA Sports. So we do it on the same days and he’s really good about making sure we both do it. It helps when you have someone else involved.

So that’s what I’m doing that’s working for me. I also walk Rowdi for 30 to 50 minutes every day, but when I was doing that alone, it wasn’t doing it. I’ve lost 6.1 pounds and counting. My goal is 40.

153.9. I don’t have time for a full update right now, but I needed to post that weight. It’s my lowest in a very long time. Work it, girl.

The tools I have can’t help me if I don’t use them.

My friend Tarina (Somethingina, as Frank calls her) came in from Texas last weekend, and we had a good, if short, visit. She arrived Thursday night, two days after returning from a week in Paris. A little palate cleansing before going back to work, if you will. After a quick tour of the house, she hit the sack pretty much right away on Thursday, jet-lagged as she was.

Friday morning I made bacon and eggs–with Falls Brand bacon, which we feed all of our guests, because yum. Then Tarina and I headed to Shoshone Falls, just east of Twin Falls. It’s a two hour drive, and we had six or seven hours before we had to be back to pick Frank up and head to Horseshoe Bend to catch the Thunder Mountain Railroad at seven p.m. We were in no rush, as we had plenty of time, so we had lunch at Chili’s in Twin Falls, and when we left there, we checked the clock. We had about an hour and a half to enjoy the falls.

Now.

When we’d exited the highway, there was a big brown tourist sign that said Shoshone Falls 8 (miles). And we’d gone about three when we’d stopped at Chili’s. So we got back on the main drag and kept going, watching out for more of the brown tourist signs. There was a big intersection with forks heading off in several directions, and I chose to turn left. I immediately decided that was a wrong turn and turned back around so I would have been going straight had I not turned. Okay, fine. But we started to get away from town, and I just had a feeling that we were still going in the wrong direction. So we stopped to ask for directions to Shoshone Falls.

Do not stop in Twin Falls and ask for directions.

So we walked into this grocery store, and there was a guy getting a DVD from the Red Box. I asked him for directions to the falls, and he gave us vague directions and basically told us to go in the exact opposite direction of where we needed to go. I was okay with following his directions for a little while, as he had put us on a road that would take us east of town, and I remembered that the falls were three miles east. But then we passed the three-mile point. Tarina pulled a map out of the map pocket and tried to figure out where we were, but the map of Twin Falls did not go as far out as we had. When the road turned south, I decided to call shenanigans on this guy’s fabulous instructions and turned around.

On the way back to Twin, we saw a sign–Twin Falls 12. Seriously, twelve miles? So we noted the odometer, and nine miles later we were looking for any sign of Falls Lane or Boulevard or whatever it’s called, because that’s the street we’d been hunting for. No sign. Then we were back in town. We headed back north, and I pulled over at a Walgreens. I was going to ask for better directions this time, but I went ahead and checked our map of Twin Falls. I was now completely oriented and could see where we needed to go, which was basically the exact opposite of where our beneficent directions-giver had told us to go.

So we continued to go north, counting down the number of minutes we would have for looking at the falls, because we really needed to be gone by four o’clock to make it back for our train trip. We finally found Falls Lane (ahem, barely south of Chili’s) and headed east, and oh, by the way, it was now rush hour, and school was letting out, so we had school zones and all that.

We finally got to Shoshone Falls at three-fifty-three, which gave us a grand seven minutes to check out the falls. Oh, and I’d forgotten my camera. Tarina had hers, but I don’t have copies of her pictures yet, so all I can tell you is that everyone says that it’s prettiest in the spring, but we were both wowed by what it looks like in the fall. Absolutely stunning. There was a rainbow where one of the falls splashed into the river and everything, and I’ve never seen water as green as the river is there. I’m serious, the river at the bottom of Shoshone Falls is as green as the Caribbean is blue.

When we got out of the car at the falls, there was a couple standing next to their car, and the guy asked us, “Are you getting married today?”

I cocked my head. “Um, no. Not to each other.” After we walked off, we passed what was obviously a setup for a wedding, and we finally got why he was asking.

We stayed about fifteen minutes at the falls and then decided we needed to boogie out of there. We’d seen everything, so it’s really all the time we needed, but it would have been nice to have that hour and a half of cushion.

We raced home, trying to pick Frank up at six-twenty so we could be to Horseshoe Bend by seven. We got there at six-thirty, and when Frank jumped into the car, which was already racing out of the driveway (okay, not really, but close), we started telling him the story of our day.

After we told him the part about finally getting to the falls, he said, “The GPS wasn’t working?”

Blink.

I’d totally forgotten we had that.

To be concluded…

Okay, so I haven’t updated in a couple of weeks, busy and all that. But I just weighed in and decided I don’t want to wait until Monday to post!

If you want to join in, here’s the deal. I’ll post every week (or, um, week and a half, two weeks) (who knows which day?), and you can join in in the comments, or send me a link to your post on your blog, and I’ll link back to it. Here’s what we’re posting:

Positives:
Something healthy you’ve done for yourself this week, food-wise
How many days you exercised this week, and you can detail what you did for exercise if you wish
Any bonus healthy things you did for yourself
How much you lost this week (If you gained, you can include that in the negatives section, unless your goal is to gain weight)

Neutral:
Current weight (if you wish to share it)
Goal weight (if you wish to share it)
Number of pounds you’d like to lose or gain

Negatives:
How much you gained this week.
Something bad you did to your body this week. Only list one thing, let’s not focus on the negatives.

Something you want to improve for next week (besides weight):

Okay, here’s mine for this week.

Positives:
*Monday I started eating 5-6 small meals every day instead of 2 or 3 big ones. I love it. I get to eat all the time, and I never actually feel hungry. I just look at the clock and decide it’s time to eat. I’m going to stick with this, at least for a while. I also made a big pot of fat-free vegetable soup Monday morning, and it’s helped tremendously, just having it on hand for when it’s time to eat and I need something fast.
*We got the EA Sports Active “game” for Wii. We started doing it last Friday, and we’re both doing the 30-day challenge. I’ve done my workout every day (except last Saturday and this Wednesday–rest days), and it’s a killer workout. That’s in addition to walking the dog every day. Oh, and I hiked 8 miles in the rain forest Monday before last… I’ve been good on the physical activity.
*Bonus healthy: Have been drinking at least 8 glasses of water everyday.
*Lost 1.9 pounds!! (That’s since the last WCWIO update.)

Neutral:
*Current weight: 154.8. I’m so happy to be in the lower half of the 150s. That means I’m getting close to the 140s. Sweet!
*Goal weight: 120
*I would like to lose 34.8 pounds and look like I did in my t-shirt babe pictures.

Negatives:
*I found Toro Habanero Doritos (formerly known as Fiery Habanero) during our trip to Washington, and I bought two bags and ate every bit. (They weren’t full-sized bags.) I’m sticking this in the negatives, but it was 100% worth it.

Something I want to improve for next week:
I want to replace one meal a day with juice. I haven’t juiced in a couple of weeks.

Part 1.
Part 2: Rickrolled.

I was still getting over the realization that what I thought was a root canal was actually two cavity fillings when the dentist asked me if I had experience with rubber dams. I resisted the urge to snap that it was too personal a question and instead went with the truthful “What’s that?” See, the rubber dam doesn’t look as dangerous and menacing as it is–it looks a little harmless, even. Just a little green piece of rubber. But it’s really a piece of Satan himself, cut into a cute little square and stuck in your mouth. I was still chomping on the bite plate, so he just gently placed this miniature demon across my mouth, wrapped a little piece of it around my tooth, and tightened it. So the tooth was sealed off from moisture, and my mouth was sealed off from breathing. Nothing anxiety-inducing about that at all. I grabbed the nitrous mask, just to ensure myself that it was still there, and I still had access to oxygen, drunken oxygen or not. I calmed down a little and waited for him to start.

The doc cranked the music back up and got to work. He drilled, I tensed. He stopped drilling, I tried to pay attention to the music. Rick Astley came on, I tried to pay attention to the drill. He drilled again, I filled myself with visions of chocolate and Jackson Rathbone (separately). After several long minutes of his drilling and my self-distracting, he stopped drilling. I concentrated on filling my brain with sweet, sweet nitrous.

Then he got out these long, pin-thin spikes that looked a little like stick pins with big plastic anchors on the ends. Mother of Thor, what was he planning to do with those. My eyes got big, and he asked if I was okay. “Ot ih at?!” “These are little files that go down in the tooth and clean out the pulp.” “Oh-ay.” What else was I gonna say? Unless I wanted to drunken-swagger to my desk downstairs with an open tooth, I was kind of at the guy’s mercy. Rascal Flatts came on, and I grabbed hold of their little ditty and clung to it as my lifeline. Then they ended, and I got Rick Astley again. I listened to him, trying with all my might to forget that the jerks and pulls around my general lower jaw area were the doctor pushing metal sticks inside my tooth.

He kept filing inside the tooth. And kept on. And on. After a good half hour (at least), he told me it normally didn’t take so long, but I had a pulp stone that just didn’t want to give. I looked that up later, and ew. He worked on the pulp stone forever and ever. And ever. I nearly cried in relief when he told me he was through the stone. Thank God. And then he kept digging, because you know, there was still pulp below where the stone had been. At one point, he called for the special stick-files, gold-plated or something. And long. He told me he’d never had to get those files out, that he’d never done a root canal with such a deep root.

And then… I felt him digging. Not just that general tug-tug-tug on my jaw and tooth that is the norm, thanks to the glory of lidocaine. No, I felt actual pain in my tooth.

My eyes must have become saucers, because the doc asked if I was okay. “I elt at,” I said calmly. Or at least I thought it was calmly–what do I know? I was drunk on nitrous. “Oh, okay,” he responded, as calmly. But I saw it in his eyes. The significant “oh crap” look he gave his assistant. She handed him the injector-contraption, you know the one–it looks like it might have come from Mars or some other non-Earth planet. So he numbed me again and waited a few minutes and then resumed the dig. Thankfully, I felt nothing from that point forward.

Until… Well, if you’ve ever held your mouth open for two hours, you know that eventually it starts to really hurt. Not so much the jaw, but every muscle in your head, neck, and shoulder just clenches and tenses, and you get tired. Really tired. And everything starts to hurt, and suddenly you have a massive tension headache and are praying for Bridget, your wonderful massage therapist, to come fix you. And when she doesn’t come, you kind of start to panic.

Which is exactly what I did. I panicked the panic of a woman who knows she’ll never get to close her mouth again, and she’ll always be in horrific pain. And when my panic mechanism kicked in, so did my detachment mechanism. I removed my brain from the rest of me and just drifted. Hazy.

I probably looked stoned, and the doc noticed. “Are you okay?” he asked in a tone that was surprisingly not patronizing–something I’d only rarely experienced with doctors. I nodded. He waited. “Are you sure?” I waited. Then I slowly shook my head. He stopped working. I thanked God for his compassion.

He sat there for a minute, just looking at me, and I could tell his eyes were on my face, but I couldn’t meet them. The waterworks started, and I just dripped silently for a few moments. And then, since I’m a girl, I started sobbing, and I didn’t stop for a few minutes.

And then the dentist did pretty much the worst thing he could have done in my panicpalooza: he took away my nitrous. He said it so nicely, too. “I’m going to pump in some oxygen, clear your head of the nitrous for a few minutes.” I nodded, detached. “O-ay.” Still sobbing.

He waited a few minutes before he started back up again. And then everything got worse, because I was sobbing and lying completely horizontal, and now I had mucus gathering in the back of my throat, on account of the sobbing. So I couldn’t close my mouth, it was a great effort to swallow, and I had mucus sitting on the back of my throat. Which made the panic increase exponentially because I felt like I was suffocating, choking on my own snot.

And he never gave back the nitrous. Pretty much the worst thing he could have done for me at that point.

When he was all done (finally!) he asked if I thought that maybe I just got overwhelmed from the nitrous. I vehemently disagreed with his presupposition and told him (around the bite plate that was still in my mouth) that I had a horrific tension headache from keeping my mouth open for two hours. I resisted the urge to punch him for effect.

So after two hours, the root canal, which was supposed to last a half hour, was finally over. The doc told me that it was the most difficult one-tooth canal he’s ever done. Well, I should hope so.

I’ll tell y’all–by the end of the appointment, I had decided to never, ever complain about the speculum-and-steel-mascara-brush treatment I get at the gynecologist’s office, because compared to a root canal, a pap is cake. And I’ve decided that my official stance on all those friends who told me root canals were no big deal is that they are dead to me.

We’ve been here almost two months now, and it occurs to me that y’all haven’t even seen it! So I’ll take you on a little tour. I took all of these pics the day we closed and got keys, which is also the day before the movers brought all our stuff over from the rent house. I’ll also point out all the updates we’ll be doing (a little at a time so we can afford it). It’s a thirty-year-old house, and we think the extension and the wood laminate floors and the carpet are the only updates that were ever made.

This is the entryway. While I do feel a little old and wise with clouded eyes these days, I am not yet ready for the granny light. So that’ll be going away. Also, I want to either paint or replace the closet door (actually every door in the house) and paint the walls (actually, every wall in the house). But check out the peep hole. That is something I will be keeping in its as-is state. It’s like they always knew a really short person would live here, and it is perfectly SarahK-height.

Off the entryway, we have the ridiculously large dining room. It’s a great size, actually. Fits all the dining furniture my in-laws gave us and has a spot for the piano as well. I like the light fixture in here okay, but I’m going to move it elsewhere (either the guest room or the entryway) and put a chandelier over the table. Also, do you see the light switches and baseboards? They’re beige, and I hate that, so those will be going white soon, and the walls will be going NOT white. You can’t see the miniblinds, but they’re your basic metal, and they’re mauve. Mauve. At least we have a granny theme going, right?

Here’s the view from the kitchen, looking back toward the entryway.

The diningroom flows into the kitchen, which is workable for now. Which is to say that we’ll save for several years and then remodel the whole thing to get me my dream kitchen. There’s plenty of space in the dining room, so I can take over some of that to expand a little, or the little reading nook (which you can see at the other end of the kitchen) can become part of the kitchen. Lots of options. But for now, I have enough cabinet space, though I’d really love to have more counter space. The light fixture overhead is okay and has to be a hundred times better than the fluorescent lights they apparently replaced. The light over the sink is embossed with roses, so. Well. I’m not crazy about the ceramic stovetop–the one at our rent house was great, but this one scratches easily and isn’t easy to clean. The sink is insanely shallow, and I’m of two minds about that–on the one hand, I can’t let dishes stay in the sink, or I’m putting them on the counter after about three dishes, and on the other hand, I can’t wash anything without splashing water all over the floor and behind the sink. I would like new cabinet facing, or maybe just to paint what’s there.

Here you can see the small wall better.

I didn’t realize until I was baking something in the oven that the oven is pretty runty. I might later decide to replace the microwave with a second oven and put a microwave above the stove or something. We just got the deposits from our rent house back, so we’ll be getting a new refrigerator with that money. It kinda sucks, though, because I measured everything, and we’re going to have to get a counterdepth fridge, and those have less space and cost several hundreds more. But we will get to put the one that came with the house in the garage, and I can’t tell y’all how excited I am about having two fridges. TWO! After the apartment-sized fridge of the rent house, it’ll be like upgrading from the little Fisher Price house to the Barbie dream house. I can have an entire fridge devoted to pickles!

I love the brick behind the sink, and I think the thing hanging over it is a window from a very old door. Love that too.

And I’m sure y’all noticed this atrocity:

That’s right, peepies. The last remaining cottages-hearts-baskets-roses wallpaper is pasted to my kitchen walls. Maroon, mauve, beige, and country blue, mmm baby. I don’t know if I can get rid of something so current.

Next I’ll show you the livingroom, reading nook, and gameroom.

To my friend Elle. Life in Idaho is more fun with you here. (hint hint)

Two years ago, I brought *NSYNC the glory they deserved and had them named Best Thing Ever: America. (Man, I just re-read my gloatation speech from back then, and I wish I were still that funny these days.)

Anyway, there was no BTE: America tournament last year, so that would make me the repeating champion of Best Thing Ever: America, as I (and The Princess Bride, aka The Royal Slattern) have just won yet again. My best gloatation speech this year was actually earlier in the tournament after The Royal Slattern beat Mr. Holland’s Opus. I wasn’t sure that I would make it past More Horrible Slatterns (aka Sunset Boulevard), so I had to make it count, you know?

I’d like to thank my loser competition and also Headmistress Slattern Tracey for putting on the show, and also for the DVD of Frogs that I now anxiously await.

Recovering. Here’s the list of what we did:

Watched the Boise State Broncos beat the Oregon Ducks. Messy yet extremely satisfying.
Whitewater rafted the Main Payette. Water was low, this stretch of the river sucks, won’t do it again.
Drove to the Gorge for the Dave Matthews Band concert.
Camped with hippies who really like to set off fireworks at 4 a.m.
Drove to Olympic National Park via Seattle, Port Angeles, and Forks.
Arrived in the Hoh Rainforest during a downpour around 11 p.m.
Camped in the rainforest 2 nights on the banks of the Hoh River.
Hiked in the rainforest.
Shopping and sightseeing in Forks and La Push.
Drove home, got home at 6 a.m.
Slept 3 hours, got up and took my sister to the airport.
Now I get to unpack.

More later.

I really AM trying to post every day, though you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at ye olde blog. My sister’s coming to town tomorrow night (Wednesday), and we have a busy schedule planned. So in addition to trying to get the guest room ready, I’m also trying to get everything prepared for when she’s here.

Thursday we’re going to the BSU/Oregon game, in which the Broncos are going to beat the Ducks, just so you know. Friday we’re taking them rafting, then making sushi and eating around our fire pit. I hope it’s not too hot for that. Saturday we’re driving to Washington, a whirlwind few days in which we will see Dave Matthews Band at the Gorge, go to Forks, Port Angeles, and La Push, and hike in Olympic National Park.

I’m not sure when we’ll have wifi access, but if we do, we’ll update. And we’ll have our cell phones for tweeting, so make sure you’re following us on Twitter!

Either way, we don’t leave until the weekend, so I’m sure I’ll be updating over the next few days w/ stories about my crazy sister and probably pictures. So stick around.