Tag Archives: choices

October 29, 2013 · 4:08 pm

Reasons For Homeschooling . . .

I came across this really good article “Comparing Homeschooling vs Public Schooling: Ten Reasons For Homeschooling (A Public School Teacher Tells All)“. I think it’s well worth reading, so I wanted to share it with you.

Some of MY reasons for homeschooling are:

It is the absolute best choice for my kids. That is more important than making the best choice for ME.

My kids are not being indoctrinated with a secular worldview.

My kids have a variety of special needs, so homeschooling allows us to work at their own paces, and in the ways they each learn best.

My kids do NOT need the sort of “socialization” found in schools, whether public or private.

We are not tied to a formal schedule. We can take off days for other things as we wish to do so, and we can work school in around life, as opposed to the other way around.

I’m sure if I sat here and thought about it, I could list a whole bunch of other reasons, but these are just the ones that came to mind right now.

Whether you homeschool, or your kids are in public or private school, I hope your choice is being made solely based upon what is best for YOUR children, not based on what other people may think of your decision. It’s not their decision, it is yours. Make it count.

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August 26, 2013 · 10:49 am

Changes . . . and a benefit to help a Sheriff’s Deputy!

Recently, I needed to put together a two page scrapbook layout as a sample of one of our new Close To My Heart paper packets and Workshops on the go Scrapbooking Kits, which made me really realize just how far I have come from the beginning of my bariatric journey. I chose to use the Workshops on the Go Sarita Scrapbooking Kit, because I really like both the papers and the theme. I felt the theme, although shown in the idea book as a romantic layout, also perfectly fit the changes I have gone through over the past two and a half years, and since I’ve done very little scrapbooking about myself (because I so hated pictures of me), it would be fitting to use this layout to showcase what I have done, for me and for my health.

The left side of the two page layout shows pictures of me from January, 2011, the day before my bariatric surgery.

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And this one, which is the right side of the two page layout, shows pictures of me from Christmas 2011, and May of 2012, which is when I was honored at the Centurian Awards Ceremony held at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit MI, and received my Centurian pin, given to those who have lost at least 100 pounds and/or reached a healthy BMI. I had done both! 🙂

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If you click on the pictures, you can see them bigger than they are on the blog post.

I am so pleased with the difference this has made in my health, and in my physical abilities. With four special needs children, I NEEDED to get healthier, and I have. I am no longer taking two different versions of insulin, whereas before surgery I was on a short acting insulin shot before every meal and a long acting insulin shot before bed each night. I no longer take blood pressure medication or cholesterol medication. I am no longer restricted to shopping in plus size clothing stores, having gone from a size women’s 28 down to a Misses size 12 – 14, depending upon the style and manufacturer. I have lost 157 pounds, and I intend to never, ever go back to what I was when I weighed in at 320 pounds!

Now, after years of avoiding putting pictures of myself into the scrapbooks I love to make, I want to make one documenting my own journey from before weight loss to now. Close To My Heart is going to help me do that, with the beautiful, quality products available, which are extremely easy to use for anyone. Trust me, if *I* can stamp and not mess it up, so can you, and the CTMH scrapbooking and card making products are so beautiful, I know you’ll love using them as much as I do!

While you can, of course, use the Workshops On The Go Kits exactly as they are pictured in the idea book, as you can see by what I did, they are certainly adaptable to whatever theme you want to make them into.

I would love it if you would consider me for your paper-crafting wants needs. You can go directly to my CTMH website and shop to your heart’s content! There will often be a gathering listed on the site. If you click on the link by “join one of Lori’s gatherings”, you can join that gathering to shop. Even if there is no current gathering, you can still shop directly from the site and your products will be shipped directly to you!

There is currently a gathering listed as “New Idea Book Open House”, which will be closing as of this Friday, August 30, 2013. If you’re interested in purchasing from Close To My Heart, this would be the perfect gathering for you to join, because not only will you receive the yummy August Stamp of the Month Set “A Chocolate Affair” absolutely free with your $50.00 order, this gathering is actually a benefit for Deputy Shannon Key, a Deputy with the Bernalillo County NM Sheriff’s Department, who is a deacon in our church. You can read more about his ongoing battle with brain cancer here, in a series of articles and news stories.

If you order from the current gathering (New Idea Book Open House” on my Close To My Heart Site and get your order in by this Friday afternoon (August 30, 2013), then you will also be eligible for my prize drawing. With every $25.00 (pre-shipping/tax) on your order, you will have one entry in a drawing for your choice of a set of hand-crafted by me note cards (value $25.00), a retired paper packet (value $19.95) or a retired stamp set (value varies). The winner will be drawn by one of Deputy Key’s children, and will be able to choose which prize they prefer. If you book your own online gathering with me, and date it within the next month, I will give you an additional entry and set you up with E-Zinvite, so that you can invite all of your guests via email, and you can also make it an even on your Facebook page. Your party will have its own link on my site, your guests will receive their product shipped directly to them, and you’ll receive generous hostess rewards. What a win/win for you!

I hope to hear from you very soon, and I hope many of you will want to help Deputy Key by making an order on the current gathering “New Idea Book Open House”. All of my commission from this gathering is being donated to the Deputy Shannon Key Fund to help with the many costs associated with the treatment he must undergo, and to help his family during this time. Please consider this a worthy cause, and help out by ordering from this gathering. You’ll be helping someone who is very humble and deserving of your aid, and also making yourself more able to beautifully document the “changes” in your OWN life! 🙂

As always, I would love to have you join me on all of my “journeys through life” by following my blog. To receive a notice each time there is a new post, just go to the “sign me up” button at the top right of this page, click on it and enter your email. Hope to have you join me on “my journeys”!

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March 25, 2013 · 1:36 pm

My Thoughts on the Steubenville, OH Rape case . . .

As a rape survivor myself, when I was an 18-year-old girl, it still, some 37 years later, brings tears to my eyes, and a gut wrenching pain to hear of cases like this:

http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2013/03/23/opinion/its-unbelievable-no-one-stepped-in-for-rape-victim.html

In my case, I was not a 16-year-old girl who was passed out drunk, or drugged. I was an 18-year-old virgin who was raped by a young man I had gone out on a date with. Some things match, though. He was popular. By the time my case went to court, my family had received many phone calls from people in his family asking what it would take to “just make this thing go away”. The prosecuting attorney pushed me to allow a plea bargain, saying that my little brothers had to go to the same school with this guys younger siblings and their friends, and life would be made difficult for them. I finally agreed, but then, his attorney decided to continue the trial and force me to cross-examination. It was one of the most traumatic times of my life.

When he began cross-examination, I was asked by the defense attorney while I was on the stand, why I had allowed him to take me out, if I had no intention of going to bed with him. I said, under oath, that my mother had not raised a prostitute, and that taking a girl out is not payment for sex. I was asked if anyone in my family had known I was going out with a guy who was black (both of my parents, and my little brothers, were at home when he picked me up, so yes, they did).

The defense attorney tried in every possible way to shake my testimony, and failed. He was, in fact, overheard saying to his client that if he had to rape someone he shouldn’t have chosen someone who could hold her own on the stand. After that, he came back and said they were taking the plea deal, which turned out to be legal at that time. I don’t know if it would be now.

The biggest difference in these two cases is that in the Steubenville, OH case, the rapists were star athletes, the girl was either drunk or drugged, she was unconscious, and there were tons of witnesses, who took video and still pictures of the entire crime, who posted these images to the internet, tweeted them, and did further unspeakable things to humiliate this girl.

In my case, I was an 18-year-old virgin, who fought back, and was had finger print bruises around my neck for weeks afterword from being choked.

In the Steubenville case, a girl went to a party with the “popular” kids.

In neither case was rape in any way excusable.

No, she should not have been drinking, or at a drunken party. But you know what? that is NO excuse for what was done to her! Staying out of a situation like that, dressing in a way as to be completely unnoticed as a female, etc . . . does NOT protect you from being raped. I was not dressed immodestly at all, when it happened to me.

Rape is NOT a crime of passion, or of lust. It is a crime of violence. It is a crime of power. It is a crime of control over another person.

No matter what choices this girl made, to go to a party, to drink, or whatever, these boys had no right whatsoever to do what they did to her, and it is SHAMEFUL that of all the other young people there, not even one tried to help her, tried to stop these boys. That an entire school system, and apparently at least half a town, would be so afraid of going against the popular star athletes to do what is right, speaks volumes.

Parents, please do not JUST teach your girls to stay away from situations where they can be raped. They can be raped in ANY situation, including going from a store to their car, or having their home broken into while they are there. Provocative dress does not make a girl or a woman “responsible” for a crime of violence being perpetrated upon her. If that’s all it took, old ladies and little children would never be raped. I would never have been raped. Being drunk doesn’t make her responsible, either, in fact, under the law when one is drunk or drugged, one cannot legally give consent to anything.

Yes, I still think we need to teach daughters to be careful, and to be wary. We still need to teach them not to advertise their bodies. Not to keep boys or men from attacking them, but because it’s right for them to not advertise their bodies to anyone to whom they are not married.

However, we also, at least as much, if not more so, need to teach our sons to RESPECT girls, for then they will respect women. We need to teach them that they too, would best be served by waiting for intimacy until they are married. That they need to respect THEMSELVES enough not to think a girl is “easy” just because she may wear something a bit tight, or a bit short. We need to teach them what is biblically right, that they are to PROTECT women, not take advantage of them (which, by the way, includes taking advantage of the fact that a girl is being deliberately provocative, which yes, of course, is sometimes the case). We need to teach them that REAL men do not take advantage of women, or girls. Real men are not afraid to stand up and say NO! when their peers are victimizing someone like this. REAL men risk losing the popular crowd, but REAL men are the men we should want our sons to be, and should want our daughters to end up with. A boy who would do what these boys did, and get away with it (as many do), will be a man who abuses his wife and children, if he ever has them.

The responsible parties here are these “star athletes”, along with the coach and the town that raised them on such a pedestal that no matter what they did, or who they hurt, it became better to punish the VICTIM, instead of expecting them to face up to their own choices. And yes, what they did was a CHOICE. It was also a CHOICE for the coach, the school system, the other “kids”, and a good part of the town, to demonize the victim of their attack, and to defend the criminals. This trial did not ruin the criminals’ lives, the very choices they made ruined their lives. And I believe that any and all people who took videos and pictures and posted them to the internet, should be on trial as well, along with each and every person who threatened the survivor of this vicious, violent attack.

I pray this girl gets help, and that one day, like me, she will come to see that she is a SURVIVOR . . . but society needs to understand, we all need to understand, what was done to her will NEVER leave her. It has been 37 years for me, and I still have fears that hit me, which are directly attributable to what was done to me . . .

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March 9, 2013 · 11:01 pm

Finally Found My New Mexico Hair Stylist!!!

So I have been desperate enough to go to an assembly line, “get ’em in, get ’em out” place (which shall go un-named, but has the initials F & S . . . ) for cut, color and eyebrow wax ever since we’ve been here, because, well, I couldn’t just not get my cut, color and wax done on at least a semi-regular basis . . . But I have NOT been happy with the results at all.

I REALLY miss my stylist, C.J. Greer, the owner of Urban Chic Salon back in Michigan, and Whitney Ouellette, who did my hair whenever C.J. was booked . . .

This is what I’ve been looking like, after the assembly line, chain place.

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Today, I went to a wonderful place called Neilmarie Salon, and one of their stylists, Jody Muniz, worked on my hair. She took the time to consult with me about colors, about cut, about my hair texture, etc . . . She did NOT try to rush me through. She told me right from the start, “I don’t let a client leave until they are happy”. THAT made me feel happy, right there! 🙂

The atmosphere there is very comfortable, very colorful and artistic. There are a number of art pieces for sale that were created by the owner. The place is even decorated in similar colors to Urban Chic!

So, Jody and I conferred about my colors for this appointment (I like to play, so every time I go my hair color WILL be somewhat different, LOL!), she went and mixed the colors, and came back with colors and a pile of foils. After a few moments, I was in definite “Beam me up, Scotty!” mode, LOL!

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25 minutes on a timer to process the color, then she removed the foils and washed the excess dye out. Then, she created a really, really cute cut for me!

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Just so you know, that is NOT pink in my hair. Between the lighting in the salon, and my camera, it may look that way in the pictures, but it isn’t. Jody used one of the chocolate shades, a mahogany (it’s the mahogany that looks pink in the pictures, but it’s actually a nice red tone), and a coppery shade, weaving those colors and the color that was already there, to give me TONS of color play. She showed me how to style it like this with just my blow dryer, fingers, and some stuff called Working Spray (which I bought), and she also put a really nice solution on it before styling, it made my hair feel so soft! It was called Moroccanoil,
and I will definitely be going back to buy some in a couple of weeks when it goes on sale. 🙂

I am VERY happy with the result, and have already made my next appointment toward the end of April! 🙂

I shall miss you greatly, C.J. and Whitney, but sadly, 1700 miles is just too far for me to go for regular hair care. Thankfully, I’ve found someone here who cares as much about how my hair looks as you always did!

*added on April 13, 2013*

I went back and bought the Moroccanoil Treatment, and the Moroccanoil Hydrating Cream when they had their product sale a couple of weeks ago, and have been very pleased with how easy they are to use. I will be stopping back in probably at the end of this month, and purchasing the Moroccanoil styling product for curly hair, which Jody used during my appointment today, along with the other products. I LOVE this place, and am SO happy with Jody as my stylist! I know my hair is in good hands, just like it was back in Michigan! 🙂

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March 8, 2013 · 10:56 pm

What a Difference a Year Makes . . .

Today, my husband Mike posted the following on his Facebook status:

“One year ago today, my life (and the lives of my family) drastically changed. It’s the day we found out the office in which I worked would be closing.

We had good options and more than 90 days notice. We could take a severance package based on seniority, interview for a different position within the company, or “move your desk” and keep the same job in a different location.

The first thing I did after the “all hands” meeting where we received the announcement was to call my wife…I did NOT want her to find out first by watching the TV news.

Once I got home, I got on the computer and researched the web site we were given to investigate our options. Lori got on her computer and looked for home school friendly states. We compared notes, prayed, researched and prayed some more…and we decided on Albuquerque.

That was a year ago. We’ve had trials and challenges, victories and defeats. We miss our old friends and old church…but we’re making new friends and love our new church! The center I work in now has a much better morale and is more relaxed then my old one. At this point, I’d have to call this whole adventure a blessing!”

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He’s right, too! For me, it’s been a scary journey, but one well worth all the researching, planning, packing, having the moving sale, etc . . . it was scary when Mike left for Albuquerque at the end of June, knowing the kids and I wouldn’t be leaving for another month. It was really hard to be on my own for that month, without him to help me get us ready and moved. It was scary knowing I had to trust him to choose a place for us to live, too! (but he did pretty well!) 🙂 And it was REALLY scary when the kids and I set out on our cross-country drive, knowing we were about to begin a brand new life, 1700 miles away, at the end of the longest distance I have ever driven without help! But you know, we did it! I had awesome friends back home in Pt. Huron, MI, who helped me get a moving sale set up (thank you, Phyllis Blount and Kim Milton!), and my awesome friend Phyllis who came and stayed with me from early morning all day each day of the moving sale, who kept my kids for me when I needed to do things without them, who took them each day to VBS at our wonderful church back home (this was the first year I couldn’t do it).

There were wonderful ladies at our church (Sparlingville Baptist Church who brought meals for my children and me during the last four days we were there.

There was a very sweet lady at church who asked if I would sing “one more special” before we left, so I sang the special during our final service, Sunday night, July 30, 2012. At the end of the service, I was just floored when Pastor Milton called the boys and me up to the platform and gave us this beautiful plaque:

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Which is proudly displayed in our new home . . .

Yes, it has been a whole new journey for me, for us. It is hard to be so far away from everything and everyone we’ve known and loved. But, we are living someplace where I’ve been wearing sandals all winter! God has placed us in exactly the right church for us (Mesa Baptist Church). We are making friends, and we have an awesome church family here, too! Just as when I had surgery back in Michigan, and our church family helped so much, with meals and such, when Mike had his back surgery this past December, our new church family rallied ’round, and we had meals, and someone to stay with our kids for the day (thank you, Charles & Charlie Wright!). Then, when less than six weeks later, he wound up back in the hospital for surgery on his back AGAIN, with less than 24 hours notice our church family was here for us again. We had two ladies here the next day with practically no notice (thank you, Ann Wright & Rose Yates!), to stay with our kids so I could be at the hospital with Mike. They took them to church that night (it was a Wednesday) and I met them there for service and took the boys home. And, again, ladies from church provided meals for us. As did three different people from our Thursday Home school Park Day group.

We enjoy Albuquerque, New Mexico, more than I thought we would. I’m even getting used to the big-ness of it, in comparison to Port Huron, Michigan. I’m getting used to the traffic, and getting used to spending much more time in the car, as everything is further apart than it was in the Port Huron area (hey, Pt. Huron is about seven square miles in area, and Albuquerque is 187 square mile in area! It’s quite a change to get used to, lol!)

Tonight, we went somewhere for supper that we’ve never been before, Chik-Fil-A, where for the first time in over two years, I was in a restaurant where they had something other than water for me to drink! I don’t do carbonated anything anymore, and no sugar drinks. This place has an awesome fresh squeezed diet lemonade. GOOD, GOOD, GOOD!

Since moving here, I even have worked up the courage to do something I’ve wanted to do for some time, I applied for, and was accepted as a member of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine Schoolhouse Review Crew. I’ve wanted to get back into writing, and it is helping me to be more disciplined about getting on here more regularly and writing these posts! I have hopes of writing professionally one day . . .

I have made some good friends at our new church, and have been able to be a help via email to the mom of one of them, who back in October had weight loss surgery herself.

I hope my family is as much of a blessing to our new church family as they have been, and continue to be, to us.

I hope we live here in the Albuquerque area for a long, long time . . . I’ve grown to love it here, it feels like home now, and our church feels like home, too. 🙂

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September 18, 2012 · 3:25 pm

Celebrating Womanhood, & what being a woman has meant to me…

When my friend Amanda let me know about this blog hop, at first I just thought it would be something I’d want to read, but I’ve come to realize that perhaps I might have something to contribute to the conversation as well… 

When I was young, I decided I was going to be a famous author. I used to write stories all the time, and I majored in journalism when I went to college. I lost my idealism for journalism though, when I realized that professional journalists are not objective at all, the way we were being taught that they were supposed to be.   I still occasionally wrote stories, but never really went any further than that with creative writing.

I worked for General Motors for several years, first at Buick, in Flint, MI, then a transfer to Pontiac Motors, in Pontiac, MI, until I became ill and began having black outs with no warning, that not one doctor over several years was ever able to diagnose. By the time it was dignosed as a serious thyroid problem, necessitating major surgery, the assembly plant I worked in had been closed during a time of severe downsizing, and I no longer had a job at General Motors.

In the meantime, I had gotten married, at age 32. So, now I was no longer having blackouts, was healthier, etc., and I knew that what I wanted most of all was to be a full time wife, homemaker, and mother. The problem was that we just could not conceive a child. We did realize eventually that the most important thing for us was that we become parents, not necessarily that we conceive, and I give birth, and so our adoption journey began… we quickly discovered that private, newborn infant adoption was not going to be for us. It’s quite costly, at least it was then, and it just didn’t feel right, either, to us. We found out we could adopt a waiting child in foster care, but I knew I couldn’t be a foster parent. I couldn’t handle having to give the kids back over and over while waiting for a child to be available for adoption. Later, though, we found out that we didn’t have to be foster parents in order to adopt, and our first son came to us when he was just under the age of two. He has special needs, fetal alcohol syndrome, mild mental retardation, and is on the autism spectrum. And he is a joy to our lives (most of the time!) 🙂 After his kindergarten year in public school, my life took another turn, and I became a homeschooling mom, something I never thought I would do, ever. I began with straight Abeka, a curriculum for homeschool in a box, with teacher manuals to tell me day by day what to do, which worked well for the first couple of years. After that, we drifted into more relaxed homeschooling, with me putting it together from many different sources, rather than a curriculum in a box. We still use things from many different sources, but we are very relaxed about it, halfway between relaxed homeschooling and unschooling, and my kids are learning so much more now than they did before! 

When my stepson finished kindergarten, he came to stay with us for the summer, and he’s still here at age 15! He loves the way he is able to be educated, learning according to his own passions, not according to what a specific curriculum says he must learn at a specific age. So do his brothers. His older brother, our first child, is now age 19, and still learning, so much more than he would have if he’d been left in a school. His younger brothers, our 11 year old twins who were adopted at age 8, have also learned so much more than they were learning in school while they were still in foster care. Homeschooling has turned out to be one of my best life choices.

My life, like everyone’s life, has been a series of journeys, and choices. I made the choice, with my husband, that I’d be a full time homemaker, then later added being a full time at home mom, then a full time homeschooling mom. I’ve had times when it was not an easy road by any means, for a number of reasons, but honestly, I wouldn’t be anything else. it’s the best feeling in the world to know that I am the person who taught my kids how to read, how to write, how to do so many things. 🙂 

And maybe, just maybe, one day I’ll try writing again, and maybe I WILL be a famous author! Or, maybe I’ll just write, no matter what comes of it, no matter if nobody ever reads it except for me…

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April 29, 2010 · 9:55 pm

Another day in Detroit…

I was just too tired to do this last night when we got home, instead, I put my feet up and fell asleep! So, here’s what we did yesterday.

We got up WAY earlier than usual, the alarm was set for 5:30 am.  Mike (my husband) got up to have the first shower, then got all the kids up and downstairs for breakfast, and to get dressed in the clothes I’d had them put downstairs Tuesday night before bed. When they headed downstairs, I was able to go get my shower and get dressed, then downstairs to check my blood (159, best morning reading in a LONG time) and have my breakfast.

We left the house at about 7:40 to go drop the kids off with wonderful friends who have been helping with child care when I have appointments, and got to their house just on time for the kids to help collect the morning eggs from their chickens!  Then, we got going to Detroit for my first appointment for the day, the initial consult with my surgeon, Dr. Carlin. Commuter rush traffic is SOOOO fun!

My appointment with Dr. Carlin (this was the appointment that I was required to bring my husband to) was for 10:30, I actually signed in a little before 10:00, I think, and actually was able to have my appointment begin a little early as a result. I had to go with a nurse to be weight, blood pressure checked, height checked, and answer questions. Then I was taken to an exam room and saw Dr. Carlin’s P.A., who asked many questions, measured me, checked to make sure I’d brought and handed in to the nurse my lab reports, my letter of intent, and my 11 page questionnaire.

I Finally saw Dr. Carlin after that. We talked about the surgery and the hospital stay, and he gave me my weight loss goal that must be met before the surgery, which is 15 – 20 pounds.  The reason for this is that it will shrink the liver, making it easier to do laproscopic surgery, as opposed to open.

After Dr. Carlin, Wanda (the nurse who is the coordinator for the bariatric progam at HFH) came and took us to her office for scheduling.

Wanda & Me

The surgeons have very busy schedules this time of year. My medical clearance appointment will be June 1, and my appointment to schedule surgery is August 13, unless there’s a cancellation before then. This will be a four hour appointment, because I have to be seen by three or four different people.

Once we were done with this appointment, we went to the hospital cafeteria for lunch, then on to my other appointment, the mandatory class with the exercise people.  We had a one hour presentation, then on to exercise machines. I was able to do 15 minutes on treadmill set to 1 mile per hour, I did a quarter of a mile. The treadmill is very hard on my back.

Then I did 15 minutes on a recumbant bike, which is more of a workout than I would have guessed! I did two miles in that 15 minutes. 

After that, the specialist spoke with me about what I should do to build up strength and ability to exercise.  To begin, I’ll walk the length of my block, because that way if I get out of breath or hurt, I can stop at my porch to sit long enough to drink some water. I’ll do that until I can walk long enough without a break that I won’t need to have something close by for a sit down.  I want to get to where I can go down the street and walk the track at the high school. I’m also going to dust off the wii fit and get back to using it, especially when the weather doesn’t permit outdoor exercise.

When we left there, it was time for commuter rush traffic again, so we decided to go have dinner before coming home. We went to Big Boy, knowing I’d be working hard on changes starting today, and I had things I probably won’t have again, some for a long time, some forever. I had chicken parmesan with salad bar, and an ice cream sundae for dessert. No pop, I quit pop already. I had water.

Then we got on the freeway in time for just the tail end of the rush traffic, went back to Port Huron, and went and got our kids, picking them up about a quarter to nine. I was in bed by 11:30, which is early for me, because I’m generally up until at least 1:00 or 2:00 am.

Today, I had a breakfast hotpocket and some strawberries for breakfast, a cracker, ham & cheese lunchable for lunch (Thursday is the day my kids have their home-school gym & swim program at the YMCA, I do a lunchable or the asian chicken salad from Wendy’s), 2 slices of swiss cheese for snack,  a small piece of boneless pork chop roasted with garlic and rosemary seasoning and a serving of mashed potatoes with margarine for supper. I will probably have a small amount of deli sliced ham and cheese for a snack later.

While dinner was cooking, I went out and walked. I walked the length of my block 6 times.  I need to find out how long it actually is so that I know how far I actually walk.

I washed the dishes, folded some laundry to be put away, and did my piano practice.

I’ve decided that since I’m going on a journey to a healthy me, I may as well take care of all the things my doctors have been nagging me about, so a couple weeks ago I had my mammogram, which came back normal, then this past Monday I went to the gynocologist for my yearly (it’s been two years sice the last one, and I’m supposed to see her every six months because of having had cancer), and set up my appointment for the “you’re over 50” colonoscopy, which will be on May 11. So, I am truly working on a healthier me.

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