Mar
1
March 1, 2007
Yes, I’m talking about cleaning again. And not even in a useful, motivating sort of way like Swistle’s been doing (I love the picture of her twins on that entry. Furiously bleating toddlers are so hilarious when they don’t belong to me), although I do have one handy homemaking tip for you: spraying a bit of perfume onto a lamp’s lightbulb really does make a room smell nice.
Oh, and if your garbage disposal starts to stink, ramming a cut-up lime or lemon into its grind-hole then running it for a minute or so usually does the trick. Using wadded-up newspaper works much better to clean glass or a mirror than paper toweling (no smears, no lint residue). Also, washing your face with honey is supposedly great for your skin.
There! Now I’m practically Hints from fucking Heloise over here. Although I cannot for the life of me figure out why you’re supposed to wash out your coffee machine with vinegar.
ANYWAY. So we met with the housecleaner, who did a walkthrough of our house and talked with us about what we’d like them to focus on. The bad news is, she’s expensive, $90 a visit for a biweekly service. Each visit includes two cleaners working for about 1.5 hours, doing floors (vacuuming and mopping), dusting, counters, showers, toilets, tubs, etc.
I don’t know, it sounds pretty awesome to me. JB is grouchy about the cost and that’s exactly why we’ve canceled housecleaning in the past, so either 1) we both decide it’s worth the investment, 2) we decide it’s too expensive and we figure out something else (a cheaper service, or less-frequent visits), or 3) I decide it’s worth it and every time JB bitches I hand him a bottle of 409 and tell him to go ahead and get cracking.
We’ll see. Our first visit is scheduled for Monday.
In other news that is even more thrilling, except for the part where it’s not, I signed up for Weight Watchers Dot Com, which I’ve been diligently using for, let’s see, about 24 hours now. The website reminded me that I’d registered once before in 2004, when I’d listed my weight as 146, which was sort of encouraging in a way. I mean, at least I haven’t porked up very much since then. Silver lining, silver lining!
I’d forgotten about the obsessive little thrill of entering foods in the online tracker tool, watching things get converted to points and occasionally recoiling in horror. I like the system, really, because it forces me to consider both nutrition/calories and portion size and get realistic about what I’m eating. For instance, the KettleMania “Kinda Sweet, Kinda Salty” popcorn I love with all of my heart and soul and would eat every single night around 10 PM if only I had a constant supply in the house? Has, like, eleventy jillion grams of fat per serving. That’s . . . um, I don’t have a converter handy, but that’s basically a whole shitload of points. I think if I recorded it in my points tracker it would crash the website, immediately after displaying a blinking message: “WHAT ARE YOU, RETARDED?”.
I’m doing the “Flex Plan”, which gives me 20 points per day to expend on the various things I put in my mouth (what?), and I’m hoping I can stay with it long enough to see some real progress. Full disclosure: I’m also hoping (in a fearful, second-guessing kind of way, of course) our attempts at pregnancy this month were successful, so I’m kind of at cross-purposes here, but until the stick tells me otherwise the focus is on belly reduction.
Too bad I don’t have a good close for this yawnworthy entry, maybe something about strippers. How about Dog, instead?
Feb
27
February 27, 2007
Pardon the post title, we’ve been making our way through Season 3 of Arrested Development lately and I have this need to randomly blurt quotes from the show. Musty old clap-trap, ha ha ha ha HAAAAA.
Thanks in part to your encouraging comments I called and made an appointment for the owner of a cleaning service to come by and “evaluate” our house tomorrow. I imagine I will clean up a bit before she arrives, because that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Cleaning before the person comes by to see how much cleaning they’ll need to do? Anyway, she seemed very pleasant and professional on the phone and her business got very high marks on Angie’s List, so hopefully it will all work out nicely. Unless, of course, she enters our house and immediately screams, “My god, you people are animals! ANIMALS!”, then takes off running, her sensible heels clattering along the driveway and a wisp of dog hair blown along in her wake.
:::
Here’s a short iMovie video of some random Riley clips we’ve taken over the last couple weeks (pardon the cross-post if you already saw this elsewhere). I cannot believe how big he’s getting. I mean, this was just, like, four months ago!
(Music: “Helicopters”, M. Ward.)
:::
Hey, remember that diet I was on? Well, that whole thing sort of went to hell. There was birthday cake and some damn-the-diet restaurant outings and a whole weekend of we’re-on-vacation excuses and, ugh.
I realize that while it’s sometimes interesting or inspirational to hear about someone’s diet success, it’s beyond boring to hear about their failure, but I felt duty-bound to confess my lack of progress on this front (plus, this isn’t exactly the Bob Loblaw Law Blog, ha ha HAAAAAA!). Just in case anyone mistakenly thought I had dropped those extra fifteen pounds. Because: no. They are still there, the fifteen pounds. In fact, they may have invited some friends over, which, frankly, I thought was quite rude.
Dimpled asses: cute on toddlers, not so much on 33-year-old women.
So! What next. It seems I need something more structured than a general vague promise to eat better. I’m leaning towards Weight Watchers, since I like their sane eating plans and their obsessive little online tools, but do any of you have any recommendations for (non-crazy, ie forget juice fasting and the like) diet plans that worked for you?
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