Day 185: Day 8 of Vacation !

 

Today is day 185 of Nutrisystem 2.0 and today I am committed to working harder to stick to the Nutrisystem plan. I'm learning that I can't expect perfection and I need to give in to cravings now and then. The key is not to make that an every day occurrence. I am still struggling with this. One thing I've decided to do is to stop detailing what I eat each day. It doesn't seem to help me make better decisions and it's often a source of shame and disappointment. 

The guy that was doing the site survey for my new garage door showed up around 7:45 am. Since I got up just after 6 I had time to kill and spent some time cleaning a bit more in the garage while I waited. I cleared off about half of the workbench, in the event my siding guy wants to store anything inside while he is doing the work. I also swept up the floor around my car. The door I chose will fit fine although I will have to pay a little more to have steel hangers installed, as the existing door rails are attached to wood. I guess it has to be steel these days ! Home Depot will call me to let me know the cost. At this point I'll just have to pay it. I also need to have some trim around the existing door removed & trimmed, so I need to make sure I let my siding guy know. That really shouldn't cost me anything extra as he planned to trim the opening, but we'll see ! I'm so excited for the siding work to start and for the basement access and garage door to be replaced. The house is just going to look amazing !

After he left I decided to search one more time to ensure I really don't have a copy of my marriage certificate. I looked through all the paperwork I have and found nothing other than more junk to throw away or shred ! After the fire there were some black trash bags left in the garage and I assumed they were trash left by the workers, so I had the project manager take them all away. Now I know it's likely those bags contained some of my personal items. I should have looked through them, but the project manager should have looked through them too. Nothing I can do about it now, 5 years later ! Most of it was probably old stuff I don't need. I can't imagine why I didn't have my marriage certificate in my fireproof box. I've looked through it twice and it's not there. I filled out the form to get a certified copy and then it was time to get my wireless printer working, since I have to mail it in. Surprisingly enough, I managed to get that done in less than 30 minutes ! My printer has been offline for several months as I couldn't get it to connect to the wifi and gave up. I finally tried the "simplest" method in the user guide and it worked ! All I had to do was push the WPS button on the back of my router, push the wifi button on the printer and then the WPS button again. The instructions didn't include the 2nd push on the WPS button, so I don't know if that was needed .. but it worked ! That is one item crossed off my vacation "to do" list ! I wrote down the steps I took so that if it ever happens again I'll know what to do !

Once the printer was working I moved on to washing the dishes I had set to soak hours before. With that done I sat down for a lunch break and contemplated mowing the lawn. By 3 pm the largest part of the yard, along with the front, was done. The battery on the mower lasted through that whole task and was still going when I stopped. My first couple of mows were really thick and long grass so I think that is why the mower died so quickly in the beginning. After a break to hydrate and have my afternoon snack I headed out to get the driveway side of the yard done. Once I was done mowing I got the grass seed out and seeded the spot I filled in and covered it with hay. Just as I finished the job my hose blew out, so I headed to Walmart to buy a new one. They didn't have the cheap stretchy hose that I had, so I ended up spending $27 for a lightweight 50 foot coiled hose. Hopefully it will last a few years. My old hose was probably 3 years old and it was cheap, so what can you expect ? I needed the hose in order to keep the grass seed watered and I'd like to wash my car tomorrow, otherwise I'd have waited until I found the exact hose I wanted.

I was hungry as I headed to Walmart and thoughts of McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell and the nearby ice cream stand swirled around in my head while I was out. I went into Walmart craving a giant Twix bar - and would you believe they had none at the checkouts ? I could have bought a bag or package of the "fun size", but that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted the giant bars I used to pick up at Turning Stone. I ended up buying a box of 6 Twix ice cream bars along with 6 Great Value chocolate toffee bars. Yep - 6. I can't explain my logic. I just had to have them. I also bought some celery .. lol .. so I can get back on the salad train tomorrow or Monday. I bought a pizza at Walmart too and had half of that for dinner. I'll finish that tomorrow. I had one of the ice cream bars after dinner and wow, it was delicious. I could seriously sit and eat the whole box !

I am tired this evening. I went to bed late, got to sleep very late and had to be up at 6 am today. Mowing the lawn is good exercise but it wore me right out. I also spent time cleaning in the garage and washing dishes. I also went on a failed quest to find my marriage certificate, sorted a bunch more paperwork and fixed the printer. I planted grass, spread hay and hooked up the hose to water it. Then there was the trip to Walmart. You can't say I sat on my a$$ all day ! I just added another enjoyable day to my vacation, in spite of the hose blowout ! About 8:30 I went upstairs and took a nice warm shower. I knew if I waited until bedtime I'd be too tired and wouldn't do it. 

In the course of sorting through more paper I found 6 old issues of Woman's World magazine. I used to buy it all the time and I am thinking about subscribing. It's only $60 for 50 issues. How do they make any money charging you $1.20 an issue ? They don't have a ton of advertising but it must be enough to sustain the magazine.