Almost here

Christmas is almost here, yet again! And we are basically ready. I had my week of writing and sending cards, that's done. I had my week of shopping, that's done. And this week was my week of baking cookies. It started out well and then became a bit of a slog, even though I like baking cookies. I think I am getting old. By Friday, when I made the sugar cookies, I didn't think I would survive the process (fortunately Rocket Boy helped). And then on Saturday, making the candy cane cookies, I thought my arms would fall off. So old and weak! But my arms didn't fall off and I also made the fudge.

It all got done. And we have one more day before Christmas Eve. I still need to buy some ingredients for our Christmas Eve/Christmas Day dinner (we have the same thing for both dinners, leftovers the 2nd day). A couple of things need to be wrapped. Oh, and I still need to set up my dollhouse. But it's so minor. I feel very relaxed. We might go over to a friend's house tomorrow to decorate cookies that she's baked, as a holiday activity.

Yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, I decided that I wanted to have a ham for Christmas dinner. We used to always get a ham, and then we got tired of it, probably because we don't eat anything like that the rest of the year. So I don't know why I suddenly wanted a ham again this year. Maybe because I'm supposed to be eating a lot of protein and it's so hard to get enough from cottage cheese. Maybe because a ham, even a very small one, means dinner is taken care of for at least three nights. I know we'll get tired of it and everyone will say "no more ham!" and then we won't have it for a few years. And that's fine. But we're going to have it this year.

Anyway, since we always eat out on Saturdays, Rocket Boy suggested that we go pick up the ham and then eat out somewhere near there, killing two birds with one stone. We used to always eat at the Chili's that's in the same strip mall, but Teen B has gone off Chili's, so we looked for other choices. Hey, there's a Black-eyed Pea right near there. I didn't know that chain even still existed, at least in Colorado. But apparently it does. So we decided to go there. First we went to the Honeybaked Ham store. It closes at 7 and we got there at 6, in case we had to stand in a long line. But I guess four days before Christmas is too early (or is the chain in bad shape?). There was almost no one in the store. We got a little ham, and some rolls, and a blueberry coffeecake for Christmas morning. And then we went to the Black-eyed Pea.

I hadn't been in a Black-eyed Pea in many years, probably since before the twins were born. So I'd kind of forgotten how it works. When the waiter asked if we'd like to start with some rolls, I misheard him and ordered a fried pickle appetizer (Teen B loves fried pickles). After the waiter left, looking a little puzzled, my family told me what he'd actually said. "I'm sorry!" I said, putting my head on the table in shame. Deafness is embarrassing. Then another waiter brought the people next to us some rolls. "See, Mom, we could have had that," the twins pointed out. Fortunately, when our waiter came back with our drinks, Rocket Boy asked him if we could have some rolls too. So we had rolls and fried pickles and tons of other food, besides. I ordered the vegetable plate, which means you get to pick five of the sides listed in the "vegetable garden" portion of the menu. One of my choices was a Caesar salad. They brought that first -- a huge salad, plenty big enough to be my dinner. But I still had four more things coming. Teen A ordered a stuffed potato AND green chili mac & cheese. The waiter misunderstood him, probably because most people don't order two entrees. But after Teen A finished his massive stuffed potato, we asked the waiter if he could also have the green chili mac & cheese, and pretty soon it arrived too. Huge quantities of food. RB had brought a large to-go container and we filled that up, but we still needed the waiter to bring another container for the rest of our leftovers. 

I ate too much of my food in the restaurant, more than I should have, and by the time I got home, I wasn't feeling great. Rocket Boy and I tried to watch the special features on our latest Christmas movie ("Rare Exports"), but I kept falling asleep. Finally I decided to feed the cats and go to bed. But when I got up, my stomach heaved. Oh no. 

To make a long story short, I didn't throw up, but I was sure I was going to. I could feel this massive amount of food in my stomach and my stomach rejecting it. Also, I couldn't stay awake. Finally I told RB I was going to bed and I would probably wake up in the night and throw up. But I didn't. I woke up about 9 hours later feeling great. Sometimes you get lucky.

This is probably a good place for the Mounjaro report.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 230.4
• Weight this morning (after 26+ weeks on Mounjaro): 230.0
  

Third week in a row with a tiny weight loss. I thought I was going to do better this week, because I exercised more than usual. I took three good walks, and on another day I did a stretch video. So, four days out of seven, on a week when I had all those cookies to bake. It's true that if I hadn't eaten so much at the Black-eyed Pea I probably would have been a little lighter this morning. But it's OK. Honestly, if I could lose .4 lb every week, I'd be thrilled. We'll see how this week goes, but I am going to continue trying to exercise as many days as possible and see if that helps.

Since I finished making the cookies yesterday, we decided that today would be a good day to take Rocket Boy's brother his cookies. Rocket Boy also wanted to go for a hike, and I said that sounded good. He also wanted to go out for lunch, and I really didn't want to do that, after last night, but he loves to eat out, so I agreed. I skipped breakfast, just had Starbucks with the kids, and we drove to the First Watch restaurant in Longmont and had a late lunch (said kids did NOT want to go with us). Then we went to Ralph's apartment. It was as awful as always. The low-income apartment complex is quite pleasant, but his apartment... He was wearing a long-sleeved white t-shirt and boxer shorts, looking ancient and weird, listening to what he calls Krishna music, and the air was full of incense. Mysteriously, there were seven pairs of shoes on the floor (I counted), along with piles of boxes holding who knows what. We gave him the plate of cookies and a King Soopers gift card. He thanked us and gave RB a Krishna calendar. RB didn't seem to want to leave. I was coughing from the incense and started saying, "Well, we should be going," but RB didn't pick up on it. I think it was the Christmas spirit, that feeling of loneliness and sadness and memories of childhood. This is his brother, after all, all that's left of his family of origin.

But we did finally leave, and we drove to Sandstone Ranch, an open space park on the east side of Longmont where neither of us had ever been. There was a feature about it in the paper this morning and I thought it would be fun to explore. It was fun. We took the loop trail, including the overlook offshoot, and it was just under a mile. There were several other people there -- I was glad the place does get used, since it's very nice. The trail goes through a natural area (no dogs allowed), but ends up at the old mansion that the guy who moved here in the 1860s built out of sandstone. So a neat combination of nature and human history.

Rocket Boy is having a hard time adjusting to the twins being teenagers. He wants them to be little boys, always happy to go on trips with him to explore new places. I feel bad for him. I realized that the last couple of years, almost every time we've seen him we've been going on a trip to Arizona or Yellowstone or whatever. And so of course the boys have been willing to do things with us, because we're on a trip. But in regular life, they prefer to do their own thing. They don't want to go out and about with their boring parents. This breaks Rocket Boy's heart. 

I've reminded him a few times that I warned him about this. "I told you that you needed to come back sooner!" But the pleasure of "I told you so" gets old. Mostly I sympathize! I wish they were still little boys too. Just last night, when I was feeling sick, I was reminiscing about when they were toddlers. When I felt myself needing to vomit, I would quickly put my hair in a ponytail. The twins saw me doing that a few times and then when they felt sick they asked me to put their (much too short) hair in ponytails too, like they thought that was a requirement for vomiting. Funny little boys.

What I think RB and I need to do now is remember how to enjoy each other. Not feel bad when the boys don't want to come along. We met in 2000. The boys were born in 2008. So, for seven and a half years, we had fun together. I think we can learn to do that again! We'll have to -- or we'll be miserable. Teen A at least is going to move on as soon as he can. Teen B might stick around a little longer, but eventually he'll go too. RB and I have the rest of our lives to spend with each other. We need to get used to that. Going on a hike together was a good start. We had fun, and at the end of it, Rocket Boy acknowledged that he had enjoyed it and that sometimes it was nice to do things without the twins.

I can't remember much else about the week -- it's just a blur of cookies. The boys took their finals, with some successes and some failures. Teen B ended up with 3 As and 3 Bs, which is fine. He blew his math and history finals, but still ended up with Bs in both classes. Teen A ended up with 4 Bs and 2 Cs, which isn't great, but it's what he deserved, based on effort. If he wanted better grades, I think he could achieve them. It drives RB crazy. I tell him to let it go, it's their life.

Almost forgot about the stress of the Continuing Resolution debacle. For a while there, after EM started meddling, it really looked like Congress wasn't going to pass a CR, and we would have a shutdown. We've gone through this many times before, first while I was a government employee, here in Boulder, and then while Rocket Boy was (at China Lake and in St. Louis). But this was the first time we'd gone through it with one of us working as a government contractor. Employees always come out of shutdowns in good shape -- you get some time off and then you get all your back pay. Contractors, well, that's a different story. Depending on what his contracting firm wanted to do, Rocket Boy could have been laid off. He could have needed to file for unemployment. He almost certainly would not have gotten any back pay, ever, even if he was able to go back to work at the end of the shutdown. So all of a sudden we were looking at a big loss of income. At Christmastime, right after I just gave away a lot of money to charity. My hatred of the Muskmelon grew by leaps and bounds.

But then they managed to pass the CR. And on we go. It was a taste of what's ahead. We must be ready for anything.

Oh, I know one other thing that happened this past week. A flock of magpies came to visit! On Friday afternoon, Sillers was looking out the front window, seemed very interested. And then we heard what sounded like a tiny knock at the door. Rocket Boy went to the door and opened it, but there was no one there, just a magpie on the lawn. "Did the magpie knock?" I asked. RB didn't know. He had a medical appointment, so he left to drive to Superior, but I kept looking out the window. "There's another magpie," I said to Teen B, who was not interested. "And another! And another! There are EIGHT MAGPIES on our front lawn! I couldn't resist, I opened the door. The magpies flew up into the tree and then across the street. But for a brief span of time, there were eight magpies on our front lawn.

Later, when RB returned, I told him about the magpie invasion. "They were pecking the ground all around the tomato plant pot," I said. "I don't know why. No bird has ever been interested in that area before." "It must have been the rotten food I threw out there," RB said. This is a thing he does, that annoys me. When there's something icky that needs to be disposed of, and it seems too liquidy for the compost bin, RB throws it on the lawn. "I WALK on that lawn," I tell him. "I don't want to step in that goop." But this time, his behavior led to EIGHT MAGPIES coming to our lawn, and one perhaps even knocking on the door. I decided to forgive him, this time and maybe every other time.

Magpies on the lawn. Could Christmas get any better?