And we're back...

I was hoping that after our fishing trip last week I'd have a bunch of pictures to share of all the fish that were caught. To do that though, we would have had to catch fish. We fished for 15 hours and the only things caught were a few tiny brim that we used for bait and two turtles. Needless to say, we had two very disappointed 11 year olds on our hands. This is the only picture I took. I thought they looked so cute and tiny sitting there!

Oh yeah, I took this selfie:

I was smart and sprayed down with some 100 SPF sunscreen. No burn for mama this time. I learned my lesson on July 4th.

The 4 youngest are back in school. Nick seems to love it. He really loves riding the bus.

The weirdest thing happened last Sunday night. I was playing a game on my phone and all of a sudden I get a pop up saying that I needed to be connected to the internet to play that game. When I closed out of the game I noticed that it said searching instead of having a signal thingy. We live in the sticks so sometimes I don't have a wonderful signal and I can usually restart my phone and everything is ok. Not this time. Still the searching thing. It was almost bedtime so I figured that by morning whatever was going on with my phone with be resolved. Monday afternoon there's still no signal so I use my phone and call my carrier. We try a few things and nothing works so the tech guy tells me to go somewhere with wifi and gives me a list of things to try. That didn't work. Everyday, I'm on the phone with tech support. Twice I was hung up on by supervisors. Finally, on Thursday I get an agent with new ideas and he really did try to help me. He even apologized for his co-workers. Since my phone was no longer under their warranty, he told me to go to an Apple store for a replacement because my phone was still under their warranty. I was elated because many tears and four letter words came out of my face through the week.

So Friday we drive to the mall and go to the Apple store. There was a girl working there who was very noticeably checking out Mark. Who wouldn't? He's a very sexy man. But I thought that I was gonna have to do this:  

No one to me that you have to have an appointment at the Apple store but the above mentioned female employee informed me of this. An appointment was made for the next day (yesterday) and many more tears and four letter words were shed on I 385 on the way home.

We went back for the appointment (and on the way I did inform Mark that I may have to lick him) and the same girl magically fixed my phone. She did get dangerously close to Mark but we did leave there without me having to mark my territory.

It's not that I'm that addicted to my phone but my firstborn could give birth to her firstborn any day now. 

So it's 3:35 am and I'm still awake. Just thought I'd give a rundown on the week from hell.

Oh and I made these curtains this week.

Hot Flashes & Coffee

For about a week now I've had so little sleep that I could count the hours of sleep I've had on one hand. All of my usual remedies like Benadryl, Tylenol PM, two beers, etc just aren't working. As I laid there for hours tonight, trying so hard to fall asleep it dawned on me why sleep has been hard to come by lately: hot flashes! And according to my period tracker app, Aunt Flo is 14 days late. Maybe menopause has decided to come be a part of my life?

Sleep was very important to me especially this/last night because I was gonna wake up at 4:30 am to start getting ready for Mark & I to take Alex & Justin fishing at our favorite pay lake. We wanna be there when they open at 6 am. So at about 3:15 I gave up, turned off my alarm and turned on the coffee maker.

Now, yeah, I could have just slept a little while and leave later for our day of fishing but in a bedroom on the other side of the living room are two excited 11 year olds who would "just die" if they couldn't leave at the ass crack of dawn to put some worms and chicken livers in the water and let's face it - I'm as excited as they are.

Tonight when those hormonal infernos started heating up, I felt like I was suffocating so that started an asthma attack and it's been so long since I've had one it took a second to realize what was happening. Well, thank goodness for that nasty bout of bronchitis last fall because I still had an inhaler in my purse that hadn't expired.

To be honest, I already knew I wasn't going to sleep well, if at all, because just before bedtime, I had to call Mark in from doing guy stuff outside to kill a spider in the hallway. Now, I'm no sissy because I will kill small spiders as long as there not above my head but this was no small spider. I'm not kidding when I say that it's body alone was bigger than my big toe. And I think the damn thing wanted to die because it just sat there on the floor from the time I saw it until Mark came in and squished it. It just sat there. Or stood. Or whatever it is that those creeps do.

Now, how weird is it that I have a writing spider tattoo? 

So if you've read this blog for a while you know that my weight loss conquest has been going on for a while. I'm happy to report that I've lost 150 lbs and I can finally tell that I've lost weight. The funny thing about being the fat girl for most of my adult life, I have had a really tough time seeing anything but that 375 pound person in the mirror. 

The coolest thing happened Thursday. I was getting ready for the day and I pulled out a shirt that Mark's mom had got me. I had never worn it before. I looked in the tag to see what size it was. It was a cute top and when I saw that the size said L with no X's in front of it I was sure I'd have to save it for later. But I put it on. And it fit. Not snugly, not just barely, it fit like it was made just for me. I cried! Tears of joy. Here's me wearing it:

I told you it was a cute top! I haven't worn anything that didn't have at least one X in the size since before I got pregnant with my daughter 22 years ago.

I did this without pills, shakes or any other voodoo magic. Just good hard work. If you're on your own conquest, I just want to tell you to not give up. It's so worth it.

Ok, so I've got two cups of coffee flowing through me and I've got lots to do before I wake the men folk up so I'm gonna do it.

Happy Saturday!