Day 130: The End of an Amazing Weekend

 

Today is day 130 of Nutrisystem 2.0 and since I went to bed so late last night (this morning!), I did not want to get up today. After Abby's 2nd visit I had to push myself out of bed and get her fed. When she come upstairs you know she is hungry !

Breakfast was 150 calorie pancakes with sugar free syrup. I never got around to having my yogurt or morning snack. Lunch was a 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt. Afternoon snack was 80 calorie cottage cheese & 90 calorie oatmeal cookies. Dinner was my leftover pasta & shrimp. Evening snack was 3 chocolate chip cookies. Calories are really unknown but definitely over 1200.

I spent a couple hours this morning shredding paper ! My goal was to finish the job today ! I was also determined to finish up the lawn today so I went out shortly after noon and finished off the main part of the yard. Once that was done I brought the mower back inside and put the battery to charge and then headed to the grocery store. I have never been one to return food items but the potato salad I bought at Wegman's last week was just awful and cost me $5, so I returned it today. I bought a small container of macaroni salad to see if that's any good. Today being Mother's Day, they were pretty busy but there was no line at customer service ! I got the few items I needed, along with a few extras. For years we've always spent Mother's Day together as a family and it was usually a cook out with hamburgers & hotdogs or steak. Since my mom is gone and my brother and younger sister are departing on a cruise with their spouses very early tomorrow, my older sister opted not to have a get together. I was invited on the cruise and opted not to go. No regrets ! Anyhow, the point of all this is I bought a package of hotdogs and some rolls. I didn't have the hotdogs today because I had leftover pasta & shrimp, but I plan to have them tomorrow. I also bought a 5 pack of chocolate chip cookies as a treat. I walked around Wegman's bakery looking for a "treat" and I also scanned the frozen dessert aisle before deciding on the cookies. I first picked up a piece of the strawberry shortcake but that is $5.50 and a whole bunch of calories (450 I think). Whenever I buy that I end up eating the entire piece in one sitting, so I put it back. I then looked at small heart shaped frosted brownies and cakes. I knew I would overeat if I bought either one. I thought about ice cream but again, I can't control myself. I chose the cookies because they were reasonably priced ($3 for 4 cookies) and I feel like I will have more success with moderation. Can I make them last 4 days ? Nope - ate 3 of them already. Sigh. After Wegman's I made a short stop at Walmart because I wanted a push broom and a new rake. I got both, along with some cat litter (a brand with a more reasonable $18.76 price) and another 30 pound bag of dry cat food for the strays. The push broom is a really nice one and it was on clearance for $17. I plan to use it to sweep grass off the sidewalk after I mow and to keep the garage floor and other areas around my house a bit neater. I got back home shortly after 2, put everything away, fed Abby and had my lunch. As tempting as the box of paper and shredder were, I forced myself to go back outside shortly after 3 to finish off the lawn. I can't wait for the trimmer to get here so I'll be able to keep the weeds under control AND have a spare battery ready to go whenever I mow. That way I won't have to stop for an hour while it charges. I'd be more interested in an electric car if you could swap out the batteries this way !

I was done with the lawn before 4 pm and the battery was still going strong ! I did the area between the sidewalk and street, the little patch of grass between my house and sidewalk and then the side yard on either side of the driveway. I also cleaned up some areas I missed on the other side of the house. I was out there over 40 minutes. Since I cut it on a lower setting I'm hoping it's easier to mow next time. The weather forecast is calling for rain on Friday and Saturday, so that is not good ! I relaxed for a little bit and rehydrated, then fired up the shredder again. I had a huge box of papers to shred and surprisingly enough, I got it all done ! It took me until nearly 10 pm but it is done ! I had to take several breaks to feed cats and also allow the shredder to cool down because it overheats and shuts itself down. It felt so good to get rid of all this stuff. Purging all this paper also purged a lot of bad memories and made me appreciate where I am now. Seeing credit card statement go by with huge balances, $29 late fees, checking overdrafts, collection letters .. 1997 to 2014 were some of the worst years of my life. I even came across the bill for my unworn wedding dress. I ordered it from Penney's catalog and paid $450 for it. I came across vet records for Abby and realized she was born in 2008 and is now 15 ! Minnie came along in 2009, so she is 14. I came across cremation certificates for my dogs and cats. I threw all that away too. I pretty much threw away about 99% of the stuff I've had sitting in those boxes for years and it feels good.

Getting all this paper shredded was step 1 in getting the garage in shape. There is still a lot of junk out there that needs to go. Once the garage is set I'm going to go back through the paperwork I filed a few weeks ago and see how much of that can be tossed. The goal is not to have more than 3 years worth of records for anything other than my mortgage. I think I mentioned this before, but even though my mother was not a pack rat or hoarder she had more "stuff" than I expected. She also had tons of paper that was not needed. This is why I am getting rid of the stuff now. We have an annual event at work where they want you to clean out files & emails and I am going to start doing the same with my personal records and files ! I had documents dating back to 1986. Did I really need to hold on to the leases for the apartment I haven't lived in since 1997 ? My Bell Atlantic bills ? My NYNEX bills ? My NewChannels bills ? My Post Standard bills ? My "Nobody Beats The Wiz" bills ? These are all companies that no longer exist and I haven't done business with them in years. I also had statements from credit cards that were closed years ago - Home Depot, Best Buy, Lane Bryant, Casual Male, Universal Card & the ESPN card. I had tons of carbon copies from checks I wrote over the years. I had to shred them because many had my name, address, all account info and my signature on them. I had the original receipts for furniture I bought in 1997 and 2002 and no longer have. I also had loan documents for cars that are long gone. Years and years of auto and home insurance policies. It is just ridiculous that I kept all this junk and moved a lot of it 4 times ! I went from North Syracuse, to Liverpool, to Baldwinsville, to Syracuse and then to Mexico and some of these documents lived with me in all of these places ! I'll never have this mountain of paper again simply because almost everything is paperless now ! One thing I need to do is put something together with all of my accounts so that if something happens to me whoever has to settle my estate will have an easier time. I am going to keep chipping away at the garage until that job is done. My gigantic trash bin is going to be full every week for a while ! It's already full now, so nothing I threw away this weekend will fit in it. I'll load it up next week. I do have some cardboard I can break down and put out, so I'm going to try and get that done tomorrow since trash day is Tuesday. Trash came early last week so I plan to put my bin out tomorrow night. I can't afford to miss it again !

Here's something I have noticed this weekend - when I am busy I do not think about food or eating.  The problem with that is that when I finally stop I realize how hungry I am and then all I want to do is eat ! Hence the reason 3 chocolate chips cookies have disappeared ! 

It's after 1o and I need to take myself off to bed. I had a nice shower so I'm relaxed and ready for sleep. This has been the best weekend in a long, long time. I feel so good about all that I accomplished and it was so nice to spend time with my sister yesterday. I also got to chat with one of my nieces for a while. I got a lot done this weekend but the house is a bit of mess so I plan to do a little bit each day this week to whip it back into shape. A lot of the mess is related to the paper shredding so that will be an easy clean up.

I shed a lot of bad memories this weekend with all that paper. Anything and everything related to Alex is gone, other than legal documents such as his birth certificate and passport. I shredded years of medical bills related to his care. It's funny - I glanced at some of the credit card statements to see what I was using them for and there were so many purchases that I could not identify. So many business names were completely unfamiliar. There were also plenty of nostalgic places like Caldor, Hills, Ames, K-Mart, Fashion Bug. All stores that are long gone. So along with the bad memories there was some nostalgia. On that note, I'm heading for bed !