Week 392 Update

This week I didn't have my computer set up in time to get the Weight Commander graphs, but you can see from my daily weigh-ins, it was a pretty flat week on the scale, bouncing back and forth around 195.0 pounds. Most of the week I had my cereal for breakfast, a peanut butter sandwich for lunch and cooked up a little something for dinner. I spent most of the week with Mom, and she eats a completely different schedule than I do. She eats two meals a day, one around 10 AM and the other in the afternoon sometime. To add to the confusion, she is starting to forget to eat one of her meals these days and so we have to watch her to make sure that she has her meals.

Moving boxes up the stairs and then going up and down the stairs many times a day is really good for the exercise side of my life and I am enjoying that. (Well, maybe not the boxes so much, but the stairs generally.

As I ended my entry last week, I was driving away leaving Dotti waving from the open garage door. I hated to have to do that, after all the times we have had say goodbye in the past, but there was nothing to be done. We don't like to leave Mom alone any longer than we have to. So, off I went. While I was gone, Tammy and Dotti did an incredible job of boxing everything up and by the time I came home Thursday night, they were finished!

The building project, which will make it feasible for us to move down to Mom's is not moving too quickly yet. Before anything too serious can be started, we need the permits and then an inspection, before we can pour the concrete foundation. In the meantime, a trench has been dug around where the foundation will be placed, and some boards have been positioned as the starting place for the concrete forms to be placed later. The deer seem to like that spot, as you can tell from this picture. There is one deer standing in the area where our storage section will be, while a second one is nosing up towards the corner of the building where my desk will be sitting.

Next to the "pup tent" that covers the saw horses and some tools, there stands a metal pedestal that used to support a huge satellite dish. The dish was removed earlier this year, since it was no longer being used, and wasn't all that attractive as a decoration. The one good thing about the pedestal is that the dish had to be powered around to position it to find different satellites, and so there is AC power to the pedestal. This means that new conduit will not have to be run across the lawn from the house. The "high voltage" which will be 240 VAC will go inside that conduit, with new wires being pulled through the existing conduit, and the "low voltage" or the telephone and Internet wires, will be run in a cable that is buried but not in conduit. The conduit already in place will make life much easier for the electrician, and therefore our pocketbook.

Here's my wonderful Mom! She is very much like Dotti in her bubbly personality, and everyone we talk to in the area is just in love with her. She talks to everyone, and just like Dotti, will stand in line and chat away with perfect strangers with perfect ease. I don't think she quite expected this picture to be taken, because she hasn't gotten use to me and my cameras. I am always taking pictures.

Getting my temporary office set up, catching up on email again and doing some other projects were mixed in with driving Mom around, including to her "Prayer Meeting" at the church 7 miles down the road. (The church is actually located on the campus of the high school where I went for all 4 years. I graduated in 1970, and my folks moved up to property right across the street from the boarding high school in early 1972, when my father retired at age 45 on a medical retirement. Dad died in January of 1973, and Mom moved down to the area she is living at now, because her job was at the Forest Service there. She never moved away from the area after that.)

Originally I had planned to return home on Friday early, so I could make sure all was ready for picking up and loading the truck on Saturday. Well, I got in a hurry a bit, missing Dotti, and Mom was doing okay, so I left on Thursday afternoon and got home Thursday night.

The garage was filled with boxes and Dotti here is getting into our freezer in the garage, while working around the piles of stuff. I went high with the camera to get a clear shot of my lovely wife.

I had taken Frostbyte with me down to Mom's to keep me company, to keep him out of Dotti and Tammy's way, and to let Mom enjoy him, since they have become very good friends already. I brought him back with me and here is Dotti getting reacquainted with him.

I included this picture for two reasons. The first is that it includes a shot of the most beautiful woman in the world showing her dazzling smile! The second is that you can see the pile of boxes that Tammy and her created while I was away. The picture of Dotti at the freezer above was taken at the corner of the garage all the way to the back wall of this picture, and to the far left. You can see why I held the camera high to take that one. (Don't those penguins look cute?)

We moved into this house at the end of September of 2002. I was a year and a half into my weight loss journey. My first update from the "new house" was on the 28th of September, 2002 (Week 72), and the description of the actual move was on Dotti's birthday, the October 5th, 2002 (Week 73). We really loved living here, and if things hadn't have gone as they have with Mom, we would have lived here a good many more years I am sure.

One thing that I had not noticed at all was the way the tree in our front yard had changed over the years! It is now twice as tall and quite a bit wider and fuller. Seeing it every day allowed us to acclimate to the slow changes, and until I saw these pictures, I had no idea the tree had changed that much while we lived there. We had the same white van in 2002 that we have now, but our second car was the little Toyota that we had purchased in Massachusetts around 1990, and that we drove across country in 1995 with our son LeRoy and Princess, our cat, sharing the back seat.

In reading the write up I did on the move, I was reminded that Dotti's younger brother Rip helped us with the move in 2002 as well! He is a great guy and a true friend when we need him. He was even considering coming down with us to help on the other end, but Mom assured us that we have plenty of volunteers from her church to help us unload. Also, a couple of the local teen agers are available for hire. So, we won't be bringing him down for this truckload. We will be doing another run in December, to get the stuff from our storage shed, and a few big items for my study, and we might coax Rip down to see our new place, and to lend us a hand with the truck.

It was great seeing Jim arrive on Friday! He also brought more of our family with him as Jamie and our little grandson Hunter made the drive with him. The help that Jim and Tammy brought to us for this move was very much needed and we were so thankful that they could make the trip down and volunteer their time. [ Thank you both from the bottom of my heart! You are simply incredible friends, and meeting you was one of the two most profoundly serendipitous events of my life—with meeting Dotti being the other. If I could have chosen and brother and sister of my own, you would have been my choice! ]

Giving Jamie a big hug and picking my little Hunter up for a big hug was simply wonderful! Hunter had already gone through some big changes since last time we saw him. First off he looked more like a growing boy and less like a toddler. His face is taking on sharper features and he is a very handsome lad. But even more surprising was the way he was speaking! He speaks in complete sentences and is easy to understand. Wow!

Now the guys were here, the "bestest friends" decide to run for the hills. Seriously, they had some errands to run and it was really great seeing the two of them smiling and having a good time together!

When Tammy arrived, we took her to Red Robin to celebrate her upcoming (25th?) birthday, and since we would not be up in Spokane to celebrate Hunter's birthday this year, we took him to Red Robin as well. Jamie is helping him look up to where his balloon had escaped to.

Hunter is really growing up, and looking more and more like a school aged kid, even though he is still only 3. He is completely fascinated with anything to do with Spiderman, and has an action figure in his hands here. (I thought that picture behind him was worthy of note as well. The contrast between the size of the little boy and the huge elephant made that a great picture, especially with the boy's being out trying to give the elephant a hug.)

In front of Red Robin is a bicycle rack that is painted red and is shaped like a bicycle as well. Jamie put Hunter on the "bike" and I had to snap a picture of that.

Next we headed for home, and there were some presents waiting for our little hunter when we got there. Here is Grammy Dotti sharing Hunter's excitement with his gifts.

Hunter is looking right back at Grammy Dotti, with some of his books and other goodies beside him. He came and sat in Grampy Al's lap and had me read all his books to him. Yep, that's my grandson! By the way, isn't he incredibly cute?

Grandpa Jim is also looking on with enjoyment as Hunter is having a ball awaiting his next present. After raising all those girls, Jim is loving having a boy in the house! He will have Hunter out turning wrenches on his truck before you know it, and Hunter already loves cars! He is all boy.

Tammy was sitting in our living room with stuff piled up around her, enjoying her little Hunter's excitement too! A grandson is one of those things that each of can have for himself and still leave plenty for the other grandparents. Watching Tammy with Hunter is pure joy. She loves him so much and he returns that in kind. There is a lot of love in that household!

Finally, here is our lovely Jamie. What a great mother she is! She has flown down to spend time with us a couple of times, and she is a pure joy to have around. We are looking forward to when she and our Hunter can come down to see our new place.

This morning we rent the truck, and then load it up and get it ready to roll for Sunday. Rip should be arriving soon! 7 years, 187 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6'3" 239.5/196.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:24.50/WK-392

Starting weight: 239.5       Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds