PROVIDA SUPPORT COMMUNITY

Terrie, sounds dreadful - and draining. Don't let yourself get weak, or you'll be no good to anyone, remember. And good on you for the smoothies, that's a start for keeping your own routines up. All my best wishes for your Dad. ________________________________________________________________________________________ We have hit our really hot weather now, too. We actually turned on our A/C this morning, after a fitful sweaty night of no one being able to sleep it was so hot. Sounds obvious enough, doesn't it? But Canadians say they're sorry constantly, thank ABMs, and avoid turning on the A/C - forever if possible. There is a city workers strike here, now in it's 4th day, which means the usual cooling stations are closed, so I feel very sorry for the people who need that kind of service. All the city pools are closed, the daycares, the garbage isn't being picked up (except in my neighbourhood, where they hire privately! Way to choose a street, Janey!) and it's the general talk of the entire city. ________________________________________________________________________________________ Reney! So glad you're back, and that you had a good time. You black eyed Suzie, you. Your friend looks just like a Vancouver talk show celebrity - uncanny! Her name completely escapes me, but I haven't had my coffee yet. Anyway, love the story of the chalk message! That would have been the high point of the vacation for me! But everything you said, the friend, the car, the dance, sounds just wonderful. I'll cross my fingers for you that this it the end of your pain. ________________________________________________________________________________________ So, another day of one-meal-at-a-time. Water will certainly be no trouble in this heat. Let's get POPing girls, we can do this! ________________________________________________________________________________________ And hello to Sparkyjs65 , Steam2954 , JDWAA , lorileigh and bluesqueen this morning. Have wonderful days, all!

What a rough night Terrie. I can't imagine the stress of it all. Way to go on making your smoothies! And for figuring out some ways to stay active, even if it is with a chihuahua!

Janey, how annoying for you all to have that strike going on. I'm ready to get the water flowing!

Today I have to help OD get packed for her trip to Empire Girls State. And take her to give blood. Should be a good day. Planning to make chicken and pineapple kabobs for dinner.

I slept super late today because I took the kids to a double feature at the drive in last night. We got home after 2am! Transformers 2 was pretty good, lots of action, and Star Trek was good again, but since it was my 3rd time seeing it, I let myself snooze through it. OD is obsessed though and watched the whole thing for the 4th time now. I'll bet she uses movie references in her candidacy speech if she runs for office this week. ( The conference she is attending is all about state politics and they will hold elections and have an inauguration etc)

Anyway, I need a shower and stuff, so I better go.

TTFN!!!!!!!!!!!

Good Friday Morning, Threadies! ________________________________________________________________________________________ I am so behind this morning already, but I can never resist checking in first thing everyday. How is everyone today? Today is sunny but not so ridiculously hot, I hope. I woke up hungry, usually a sign that I ate before bed - but honestly, I didn't! I took a big glass of ice water and we crawled in to bed last night to watch the whole Michael Jackson thing. Bizarre. I mean, you could barely watch anything else! I was trying to find out more about Farrah, but I only got about 5 minutes on her out of the radio. I know I sound harsh, but I think Michael is out of his misery and I don't feel sorry for him anymore. I felt sorry for him while he was alive and he became more and more strange. It must have been agony to be him, and it didn't look like it was getting any better soon. ________________________________________________________________________________________ But onwards team! We have a battle of the bulge to win here, and it's the weekend again... trouble time! I am going to try extra hard to be POP with company. We have a lot of impromptu company around here, and it's always difficult. But I did it once this week, and it made me feel really good and really proud of myself, so I want to look back at my weekend on Sunday night and know that it was a perfect weekend. ________________________________________________________________________________________ I made a semi-serious effort to find my scale yesterday, but no luck. It doesn't make any sense to me - even those few places where I was fairly confident it had to be but were really awkward to get to? Not there either. Now I think the world is conspiring to keep me off the scale, and for now, I give up. ________________________________________________________________________________________ I bought 3 hopefully 4 skirts on eBay over the last couple of days - saving myself the trips to the mall to find the skirts that I know are really only in Bangkok. Here's one of them - the last auction ends soon, and then hopefully I'll be fully outfitted for the summer. Two of them are too small for me, so I'm banking on my 6W being a success! ________________________________________________________________________________________ Terrie, Reney, we seem to have a full "gallery" today! Have wonderful days all, including MELODY525 , Steam2954 , mello33, MyBestSelf , Granny1946 , PACUSEC and Kirsten!

Hi Girls,

I kind of avoided the whole MJ thing last night. Like you, Janey, I felt a little sorry for him sometimes. Not really sympathetic, I guess, I was never a real fan. Anyway, I didn't even 'know' Farrah very well either. I was young when she was really famous and I don't ever even remember watching Charlie's Angels. We watched everything else, so I'm suprised. I guess I'll miss Ed McMahon most of these three.

Anyway- yes, let's POP through this weekend and make some progress! I'd like to fit into my size 12 summer clothes before the summer is over! That would open up a bunch of options for my Fall wardrobe, too! I will do some chicken tenders, some fish, and maybe something with ground turkey. The juicy turkey burgers in the cookbook are good. Hmmmmmmm.

So I have a ton of stuff to do today. My dad's b-day, a 'Math' dinner for OD at Applebee's, MD has a grad party, shopping and packing and cake baking OH MY!

Good luck on that last auction, Janey. The skirt you posted looks so cool and breezy! And BTW, I am almost always alone when I get on the thread, cool to know others are peeking in from time to time.

Yeah, I was never a real fan either, but I think I might have been if it wasn't for his bizarro personal life. I was right there, fascinated with Thriller when it was first aired, and although I never owned the album, I probably knew all the words. Even then, I remember telling people that I thought he had wrecked his looks with that nose job, but that was just the tip of the iceberg, wasn't it? But I'm a sucker for personal lives, or what you hear of them. For instance, I always thought Mel Gibson was pretty cute, but once I found out he was married for 20 years and had a hundred kids, then I thought he was absolutely dreamy! After he dumped his wife last year, he totally lost his shine again. ________________________________________________________________________________________ What can you say about Farrah? I was impressed by her because she was willing to take her makeup off and wear bruises and look older in great parts. After all, her world was built on her looks, you wouldn't really be able to blame her for riding that train, but she didn't. The Burning Bed and Extremities were both great, I thought, and then there was another one where she was Robert Duvall's wife - she was good there, too. ________________________________________________________________________________________ I didn't POP too well today, but only because I got nothing to eat for way too long. I was waiting for a delivery at the site, and it was 7 hours late, and all I got was a coffee when one of the trades made a run to the coffee shop. So, I could have done worse, like icked or something, but instead I swept the plaster dust up for a few hours, and I'm considering that to be my workout for the day. It was so hot upstairs I lost a few pounds just in sweat. Rather than try to make up for lost time, I'm just going to have a normal POP dinner and maybe the snack later on and pick up whatever water is comfortable to drink. ________________________________________________________________________________________ Reney, I hope all your stuff works out for you today - I don't envy you a list that long in this heat!! Have you got the humidity, too? Ours is enough to add about 10˚ to the temperature - nasty! ________________________________________________________________________________________ Tomorrow is another day! TTFN!

Good Morning Threadies! And Good Morning Gallery: PACUSEC , bluesqueen , mmefrenchy , Tob , jules250 , shazzaus , mello33 , LorieD - quite a crowd in here this morning! ________________________________________________________________________________________ It's Saturday, tomorrow is the end of week 3. I don't feel very different this week, like I didn't make much progress. I suppose I had more non POP events than maybe I thought I had. "When she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid" Still, I am holding to my pledge to complete this weekend without any cheats, and I look forward to that holier-than-thou feeling of my new self talking to my old self. ________________________________________________________________________________________ I won the auction yesterday, so now I have 4 beautiful new skirts to look forward to, as well. The one I showed you, plus green, orangey-peach and pinky-plum. It's a relief to not have to shop for that sundress after all, and to not pay retail. Those skirts fall right to the floor, and I paid less than $20 for 3 of them. ________________________________________________________________________________________ Plenty to do today - the tiles that were delivered yesterday were not in boxes, and many were chipped or actually broken. DH is very angry with the tile company, so I'm going to try to stay between them. Not my idea of fun! So, I'm off to find my spine so that I can get all confrontational for the first time in my life. Wish me luck, and TTFN!

Reney, YS got into a fender bender last night in my jeep!! So that's DH 2 weeks ago (front bumper), OS last week (back right) and now YS (back left). And people are looking at me like I'm a crazy driver! (BTW, I'm at 32 years without an accident!) ________________________________________________________________________________________ OMG, it's almost 11:00 at night, I can't watch any more Michael Jackson tributes, and I'm going to go insane if I don't eat something soon. DH is snoring loudly. YS is downstairs with a summer cold, maybe swine flu, (KIDDING!), DD and OS are out on dates. My computer is not streaming old episodes of Supernatural properly. Why aren't I tired?? I worked like a mad thing all day long! Where is this energy coming from? I walked the dog already - she's even put herself to bed in her crate! Somebody out there TALK TO ME for heaven's sake!!! If I wasn't worried about YS getting some rest, I'd vacuum. Wow, to live alone right now would be righteous! Although I'd eat my way through the snack cupboard, to be sure. School's been out for a few weeks now, so there's only some fruit cups left in there, but I'd go for it if I was sure I wouldn't get caught. Well, there's always me to catch me, I have to remember that, right? And in the morning I can be proud of me that I didn't go for the fruit cups. I guess we'll never know until tomorrow morning. Did I tell you I won all the skirts I was after? The shipping was $40, but that still meant the average price per skirt was $30. Not too bad. Especially if they are decent. Oh, Reney, why do you have a life of your own on Saturday nights?

Good Monday Morning, Threadies! ________________________________________________________________________________________ Day one of week four today. I guess that means I should have lost 15 pounds by now. Not blinking likely!! LOL!! Although who knows? Without the scale, I'm blind. But I don't think my clothes are 15 pounds looser, or that anyone has noticed anything about my appearance. But who cares? I'm POP and I'm feeling really good. ________________________________________________________________________________________ My goal for this week is to write things down. Terrie and Reney, you've always been such good journalers, and I always go out and buy a new little pink book and a pen that fits into it somehow and get all excited about getting started, and then i end up using it as a coaster and forget it again. So this time it's the one little (actually, major) change that I can make to help me in the absence of my dearly departed bathroom scale. ________________________________________________________________________________________ Happy to see jules250 , o2baslimlady , and DustyRose99 here this morning... three names I'm not familiar seeing up there in the gallery. I never know what other people get from this thread, do you? I mean, we haven't managed to keep the weight off, so what is it that makes non-posters want to read it? Truly ponderous, man, truly ponderous. But they (you) make me feel like a part of something, even when I'm blogging, so thanks for being there.

Hey Janey,

Sorry you were 'alone' for the weekend. I managed to get through it alright, no big stresses or anything. This morning I slept in ultra late and then the kids were on the computer most of the rest of the day. Our neighbor had us over for a while to swim this afternoon. The kids had a great time, I felt awful in my bathing suit.

So how are the tiles going to work out? Will they replace the chipped and broken ones?

I can NOT believe your poor Jeep has been in another accident! I'm so sorry. But it is amusing ºÜº

So I'm about to go weigh in with my friend. Let's see if I was able to maintain my loss while on vacation and all. My last weight was 202.8, I think it will be a bit higher tnight. I'll let you know.

I guess that's it for now, TTFN.

Morning Threadies! Reney - you're a brave soul to don a bathing suit in the first place. I wish I had that kind of courage. I don't even try to get jeans on, for pity's sake!

And the thing with my jeep is kind of funny, I know. A little hard to believe. But now DH is starting to think about buying it at the end of the lease, because the mileage is so high that the penalties wouldn't be worth turning it in. That and everything that's been done to it. So that's the end of my new cars every 4 years! I don't mind not letting Stella wreck another interior, though... it's nearly impossible to get her hair out of the carpets and she scratches the leather and the plastic.

So I feel like a bag of dirt today. Company came over and I gave in surprisingly quickly to the temptations. Even after writing it down all day! But I wrote down all the bad stuff before I went to bed - confession must be good for sleeping. ;)

I can't wait to get over to the house today - they started our limestone yesterday! YAY! Real live floors! And so pretty, too... I'm just thrilled with the choice we made there. The other place took back the 17 broken tiles, thank goodness, because they were the only dealer of that particular tile, and gave up new ones. AND gave us a gift of "granite polish" to boot, as an apology.

I'm POPping again so far today, not that it's hard to do for the first 2 hours of the day! But I'm going to have to try my very best to stay on track today. Yesterday scared me, how freely and thoughtlessly I turned to the dark side, Luke. I didn't think I was capable of such debauchery at that point in time.

So, PACUSEC , Granny1946 , dekor8r , wtbh, JDWAA , gip1971, nice to have you around this morning. I recognize a couple of the names today. Hope you're all having a great surf today, dudes. Reney, have an awesome day - BTW, is the pain all gone? I sure hope so! And Terrie, Rosa, Vera, miss you all terribly, but TTFN.

 

So I just switched from Safari to Firefox, on the advice of a PM from a forum good samaritan.  I don't have to use lines anymore to separate the paragraphs, thumbs up, and I get all the smileys back again and font mods, thumbs up and thumbs up.  But I can't see the ghosts in the gallery anymore - thumbs down.  What to do, what to do?

HAPPY CANADA DAY!

The city has ground to a halt with the strike, the garbage is beginning to really pile up, and now they are using 19 public parks and skating rinks to hold it all.  Another side effect is that there are no city run Canada Day festivities this year. Usually there are some pretty terrific fireworks displays all across the lakeshore. We weren't going to participate ourselves, but the kids are old enough to get themselves down there.  Instead, DH, his brother and a friend are all trying to get the priming done on the house, so I'll be popping in there taking them coffee and sandwiches and later on I'll make them dinner.  I anticipate an easy POPping day for myself.

DH turns on CNN every chance he gets, so we're drenched with Michael Jackson stories, and I have to say I'm developing a soft spot for him.  I'm thinking that people like Brooke Shields and Bruce Springsteen and Dionne Warwick and countless others wouldn't have had spent so much time with him if he wasn't pretty terrific.  Is that naive?  I don't know, but Yuri Geller was saying that Michael used to put the masks on because it drove the crowds crazy - he liked to hear what they had to say later in the tabs. Like any celebrity, just over the top. The references to what a brute his father was, how he used to call Michael ugly and "big nose".  That stuff will mess anyone up. But it's the concert footage that's getting to me the most, reminding me about his incredible talents, both physical and musical.

 Anyway, threadies and  wtbh , walkdown, dekor8r , IBelieveInMe2 , cimisman , Jademoon , hollylewis , Losing in S.Barbara, nice to see you all here this morning... I suppose it's a holiday for me only?  Your turns in a couple of days.

TTFN!

I wasn't going to post today.  I've been having such a wretched time with this lately, but I see  mrich , Karen816 , o2baslimlady , MELODY525 , DustyRose99 , teachkids all floating up there in the gallery and I got my strength back.

It's been tough!  10 days of people coming over to the house, DH expecting them all to be entertained in good fashion.  Alcohol and fatty snacks.  And they STAY!!! - OMG they stay for hours and hours and hours, and often they are strangers to me.... people who worked on the house and then finish and bring their wives over to celebrate with DH (and get paid!!).  I get so tired, and so bored, and so hungry that I don't know who I am anymore.  Long after the crudités are gone, I am starting to digest my innards, and without fail I fall into the ick trap.  Top that with daily rain and I'm not taking my walks either.

So while I was counting my days off into my 4th week, I believe I have regained the total of whatever my losses were, so I have to call this Day One, Week One again.  The eyes, the skin, the puffiness, the waistline, the tight clothes.... all back again.

Just goes to show you how incredibly fragile the losses really are in the beginning.  I can gain 10 pounds overnight, no matter how much I've lost, so I better make sure I have a lot more than 10 pounds lost before I get weak again.

What to do about my current predicament, though?  Water.  Drink water, for it shall save me.  It kills the hunger, the cravings and takes care of most of the other symptoms of poor diet that are re-annoying me. Then I will be able to resist my own fare when company is over.  Pretty simple, isn't it?

Yeah, if only.

But it has to be done!  I'm THIS close to waking up Fat n' Fifty!  And hopefully, easy on, easy off again... 

Seriously folks, I don't feel well, and just 10 days ago I felt like Hercules, well... Hercules before the blinding and the torture and the house falling on him.  

If anyone wants to pipe up and say "You Can Do It!" I'd appreciate it!  But I'm resigned to this being a blog until Terrie, Reney, Rosa and Vera come back.

 

Dear Janey, I hear your cry of dispair about your effort to stay on the diet.  You are not alone as I too, can't control that part of my life.  How can I resist the lovely fruit my husband brings home along with wipped cream! I also bought the Montel Williams HealthMaster he pushes on TV.  and I love it.  Every morning I make a drink with 3 oranges, 2 banans, 1 mango, 1 carrot, 1 stalk celery and a handful of spinach 4 cups of water and you have a drink good for your health.  That is all I have for breakfast.  Not all at once, some left for eveing,  my DH get's half of it.  Not OP just can't look at another egg white in the morning.

What a shock MJ death, I never was much interested in his music but better what a lot of other groups are doing. Give me Dean Martin, Doris Day and all the other oldies.  All the same a great talet died too soon.

We had a bit of rain and cool day, now back to 100F+.  My friend moved back to Germany and the weather there is cooler and more rain.  I would not mind live there again but not in the winter.  And I would never leave my family, one son is in S. California the other here in Texas.  We had a good visit with them last month and so you know the reason we live here.

You and Reney are the  most faithful posting and I should do better getting lazy and besides my DH is using the computer to look up flights to Europe and car rentals we hope to go this year and visit family.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. 

Vera

 

Hi Janey and Vera,

It's the 4th of July and I slept in -- 'til 11am!!! I don't know when I've done that! But I did stay up pretty late the last few days. I guess I should have made up my 'sleep deficit' huh?

We have no plans for the day except to grill some food for dinner. It isn't looking all that POP, but I could make it so if I get motivated. Lately I rock back and forth between feeling like I could live with this weight to screaming inside that I HAVE TO LOSE THIS WEIGHT!!!!! I don't  know how to get consistent inside my own head. I am going to have to get serious about exercise and water.

Janey, I am sorry you feel so bad. It is amazing how much better we feel when we eat right, but then why do we screw it up so easily? I hope these celebration parties fizzle out quickly. It is insanely difficult to stay POP in those conditions.

It has been cool and rainy here the past couple of days. I hope we get some warmer weather soon. It is currently 64ºF and windy. And we are only expecting a high of 71. At least we don't have to run the air conditioner.

Have a good weekend!

Reney!  You DO exist, you really DO!  And Vera - well, that just about takes the cake!

I feel MUCH better!  I made it through the Birthday BBQ Pool Party on plan.  I drank ice water, they served a surprising number of on plan foods, and then it got so cold last night that I drank black coffee until it was over.  And I found a sundress when I really wasn't looking for one, so BONUS!  Although by 10pm I wished it was a blanket or a parka.  I can't believe how cold it is - in July of all things!  Is this global warming?  Because if it is, we live in Bizarro Superman's Backwards World, and I should be able to eat to lose weight, too! 

There are a couple of things that I have to keep in mind to be successful here.  It goes without saying that we feel like a million bucks when we're working the plan properly.  And when we're not, it's that wonderful combination of guilt and anger and physical malaise that you'd think in a perfect world would be enough to keep you on track, right?  But it's not enough.  So I need a mantra:  Water, Wait.  Water, Wait.  Water, wait.

I've been obsessing about other people's ability to wait through cravings or temptations.  Whether it's food issues or drug addictions or smoking, I am suspicious that something successful people have in common is the spine to just wait it out.  This is not what comes natural to me.  My issues stem from binge eating, perhaps even, dare I say it out loud? - binge eating disorder!  But even in the books I have on that topic, I remember reading about waiting.  One recommends carrying around a pocket timer or a stop watch, and setting it for 20 minutes after one has identified an urge as having hit.  If you still want to (blank), then you can, but usually the urge has passed after 20 minutes.  I tossed it off at the time, even though the topic has come back constantly over the last 20 years.  There are so many tricks that people have come up with.  Angie Dickinson brushes her teeth when cravings hit.  Jane Fonda meditates.  I need to find my distraction (apparently one distraction works better), so that's my goal for this coming week.  Trying my mantra, Water and Wait.  And figuring out how to do the Wait part.

Thanks for being in the gallery today, mrich , nunda , suereatta , judychesapeake , jules250 , MELODY525 & lorileigh.

I'm so glad I can still "see" you there now that I'm using Firefox.  It gives me a real boost to know I'm not alone.  I can't see my toolbox in Firefox, though, so it's still a win-some, lose-some situation.  If any ever PM's me, you'll have to post me about it, because I have to go back to Safari to retrieve messages.

Hiya Threadies!

Happy Monday. I hope you had a good weekend. Sounds like you did Janey. It's been very cool here too. I  wish it would warm up but with the thunderstorms and rain they are predicting, we will stay cool for at least 3 more days. Right now Friday looks promising. Sunny and 85º.

I had a good weekend, though it was not POP. I am trying again today. The food journal, too. Plus OD and I are going to do an exercise video this morning. We bought the core rythms dvd's that are on tv because they looked like so much fun Now we just have to start using them or it's going to be a huge waste of money.

DH had practically the whole weekend off and today is his scheduled day off. I am getting worried about the paycheck again. I think money is what stresses me the most, Janey. I'm not used to things being so 'tight'. At least his most recent pay was close to what I'm used too. That was nice.

Well, we are still not on a regular sleep schedule. I'll try again for that, too. Even YD has been up to all hours with me since school let out. I have to get serious about a schedule now. Just for our health and so I don't sleep 'til 10 every day ºÜº

Well, the laundry is calling, so I better go. Water and Wait!

Hey Reney!  What a nice thing - to log on and find someone else's post to read!

Wildandwooley, brattyangel and kandee, susan3650, MELODY525, and Ineedavacation, thanks for stopping by - a couple of names I haven't seen before.

It was a good weekend, although chaotic.  I did a lot of running around, looking for things that I probably should have planned ahead for.  DH's sandals seem to be with my bathroom scale - just regular old brown 2-strap Birkenstock knock-offs that you can even buy in some dollar stores, but I went through 2 full malls before finding something close but no cigar.  That constituted my exercise for Saturday.  Friday I found a sundress in two colours.  The green fit, but I wanted the brown, so I drove from store to store looking for the brown one, wasting much of my day and getting frustrated.  I bought the green in the end.  That was my exercise for Friday.  Yesterday Stella and I tried to take a long walk down to Java Joes at the local plaza, but she flaked on me half way there.  I gues it was kind of hot for such a bushy dog.  But anyway, it was just she and I for most of yesterday, and I was really bored.  So I decided to repot some of my indoor plants.  I went to the garden centre and nearly fainted when I saw the price of the pots and the marbles.  So there I went again, on another forage of all the dollar stores I could find, looking for punch bowls and marbles.  I had some success there, but all in all the 3 days took a tankful of gas and I really don't have much to show for it.

I am popping so far again today.  It feels good to be back in the saddle, but I fear TOM is knocking on the door.  That always throws me for a loop.  It shouldn't, but it does.

I wish I could say something about managing financial stress, Reney, but I got nuthin.  I did our household accounts for the first 15 years, when we were really struggling, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and then DH took over once we were more comfortable, and I have to admit it's nice to pretend I know nothing about it anymore.  Are you thinking about maybe going back to work?

So, YS's GF wants to become a cake and pastry chef and has been accepted to the college program next year.  In preparation, she has found a part time job in a bakery around here.  And she is practising, practising, practising!!!  She sends home the ooiest, gooiest, most evil looking stuff I've ever seen.  Give me strength!  I don't have a sweet tooth, but you'd have to be all but dead to resist this stuff.  I put it on the counter with a warning about when it would be chucked out.  Hopefully someone will try it before it's garburated.  And she's got lots of ideas for what to bring to the cottage this weekend.  Oh, My!!

How wonderful for the GF, but why has your son allowed this evil plot to invade your world? Send the awful stuff home to her parents!

Well, I was able to meet up and weigh in with my friend last night. I was pleased to lose .8lbs. Not a huge loss, but since it was TOM for me, I'll take it and I'll be happy about it. I am doing fine so far today, actually I haven't eaten yet I intend to be good all day and all week!

Taking the kids to the free movies this morning. After that just planning for the campout with the girls from church tomorrow night. Have a good day-- and I'm sorry so brief today.

TTFN!

It seems like there is enough for everyone, and too much for anyone!  But I've resisted it, and now one of them has attracted fruit flies, so the box is swarming, and no one is going to touch it now.  So it's hammer time for the sticky buns.

And congrats on the .8 loss, Reney! That's really saying something after a holiday.

Free movies?  Like music to my ears!!  Where do you see free movies?  Is this a common event in your town?

Harry Potter comes out next week and I can hardly wait!!  Just love HP...  Now to find someone who wants to see a matinee with their old mum - to keep me from being the creepy lady alone in the dark in the theatre.  YS is perhaps an option... so long as I pay for everything!!

We are going to the cottage this weekend, just me, YS, his GF and the dog.  My mother is up there waiting for us.  It's usually a great time to see a movie, but unfortunately it's 3 days early for HP.  I've never been there with so few people before, I hope I can think of enough activities to keep them amused.  Usually there are a dozen or more of us, and people are always coming up with stuff to do.  I rely on my sister and her husband, serious hippy folk, to suggest hiking each time, obviously just a trap for ticks and mosquito bites, bramble scratches.... just a world of hurt!!  But my kids enthusiastically go with them.  They're the ones who always go swimming in April and October, at Midnight and during windstorms, and the kids are hot on their heels then, too.  They're the ones who set the bonfires and tell the stories - Ah, man, I'm starting to see that they are the fun ones in the bunch and I'm not going to survive without them.  Hmmmm.

I'm the one who goes to the movies, dyes my hair, buys weird colours of nailpolish and tries them out on others.  Last year YS was building tree forts in the bush, this year it's girls.  I can see I'm going to have to get seriously creative between breakfast and 9pm. Oh, and my mother is no doubt anxiously awaiting my cooking.  She always takes the weekend off and leaves it to me when I'm there.  Which means she's going to be shocked at my OP menus.  More creativity required there, I suppose.  I'm going to be exhausted after this!

Well, cheers to another POP day, all.  Lorileigh, mrich and marg_29, thanks for dropping by.