The Reason for the Season

A very merry and blessed Christmas to all!

My mom “made” the Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus when I was a little girl, and displayed it with that same spun glass!

Merry Christmas to All!

The decorating continued! I put a little tree in my bedroom!

The bathroom got in on the act:

I made a table runner for my little table. That snow globe is a special gift from a friend.

My BF made this Christmas tree quilt for me years ago. Each Christmas I add a few “decorations” to it–single earrings or pins I will never wear. It is full of fun treasures that I would otherwise never enjoy.

And to all a good night!

Countdown to Christmas, Part 2

The bookshelf got decorated:

The top of my desk got decorated:

The top of Noah’s crate became the Santa display!

A few decorations found their way into the studio:

Even the kitchen got a few decorations:

 

Countdown to Christmas

The tree:

Some of my favorite ornaments:

The first ornament that was my “very own.” I wrote my name on her butt so my sister couldn’t claim it as hers 🙂

As long as there is a bed nearby, the dogs agree that it is going to be a merry Christmas!

Thinking about Food

A few posts back I mentioned that I was slightly disturbed by HOW MUCH I think about food. Some of the commenters said that they also thought about food a lot, and recently, a couple of other bloggers have mentioned the same thing. One blogger’s therapist called it an eating disorder. That bothered me, so I started thinking about that.

And here’s what I came up with.

First, back to Dr. Sharma’s talks. When Dr. Sharma talked about obesity being a chronic disease, he pointed out that treating it (maintaining weight loss) requires abnormal behavior, just like a diabetic who sticks themselves to check their blood sugar each day–that is abnormal behavior. To maintain a large weight loss, most people have to track their food, make careful food choices, etc. That is abnormal behavior. But it is what is required to control this chronic disease. So right there, you can see how that would lead you to think more about food.

The second thing that came up was this. Several people that are about my age and height have said that 1400 calories seems to be the amount they can eat to maintain their weight loss. I know that’s true for me. That’s not normal either. I input a 60 year old, 5 foot 1 inch, 155 pound active woman into the USDA’s calculator. They said I could eat 2200 calories a day to maintain that weight. IN MY DREAMS. So us weight loss maintainers get to eat about two-thirds of what the “normal folk” eat on a regular basis. That said, if you make good choices, you can eat very well, and be very satisfied at 1400 calories. BUT IT REQUIRES YOU TO THINK ABOUT FOOD A LOT.

So that’s what I’m thinking about this morning.

P.S. If you are waiting for the code so you can watch my episode of The Quilt Show, I am too! The Quilt Show is having some technical difficulties. I will get the code to you as soon as I hear from them!

Weekend Fun

Just in case you have NOTHING TO DO on this busy holiday weekend, or in case you are too tired to do anything else and need some (relatively) mindless entertainment, I thought I’d share a link to a jigsaw puzzle that The Quilt Show made out of one of my quilts. They let you choose the degree of difficulty you want to solve. I chose 100 pieces, non-rotating. It really was fun to do, and it was fun for me to see that quilt again–I had forgotten all about  it!

And if you’re too tired to do that, well, just do the Monk. Pull up a cozy blanket and hunker down.

So This is What 60 Is

This was a different kind of birthday week. It was, what shall I call it? Satisfying :))  Ha, I still crack myself up. One of the things I didn’t mention in that last post was that I also seem to be satisfied with what I already have. I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to get for my birthday. What a refreshing feeling. Of course I still wanted to eat All! the! things! But I managed to eat reasonably for the most part 🙂

Here’s a few things that happened this week.

One of the things that was the most important to me this birthday week was that I put an emphasis on exercise. And I wanted to get in the pool. To at least give it a try, swimming in colder weather. So on my actual birthday, I had a nice lunch with a friend, got a new haircut, found a Christmas tree, and then went to the gym, where I worked up a sweat on the exercise bike and the weights machines, and then GOT IN THE POOL! Yay me. I decided I didn’t want to get my hair wet, so I walked 20 laps, and then I got in the spa, which was a real treat.

The Christmas spirit caught up with me and I brought in all my tubs and went through them a little at a time. With more room in my house, it was easy to find places to put all my stuff. It is fun to look at my treasures, many of which I had completely forgotten.

The doggies enjoying the Christmas decorations

 

On Monday, I finally had my appointment with the ortho doc about my knee. I really like this doctor. He did remember me–it was almost exactly two years ago that I first saw him–and he did think that my range of motion had improved since he first saw me. That made me really proud that I had tried to follow his advice, and that two years later, the physical therapy exercises that I had learned are still a regular part of my exercise routine. I can really tell the difference when I slack off on them. So… even though my ROM was improved, my knee is worse. He is putting in the application to the insurance company so that I can get the gel shots in my knee. Honestly, I can hardly wait. And, he wrote a referral to the orthopedic surgeons “just so they can get acquainted with me.”

On Tuesday, I had to go and have a root canal. It started with a small crack in a tooth. Dentist recommended a crown. So I went in for that. Do you know that they have to file down your perfectly good tooth so that the crown will fit? Yeah, so between the crack and the filing, the nerve/root started acting up.

All this added up to me thinking about things wearing out and getting old. But then I thought about the alternative–my grandparents didn’t have teeth, and both of my parents had partials by the time they were my age. So I guess this is better.

Also on Monday, my episode on The Quilt Show went live. That was very exciting! In the weeks leading up to it, I worked a LOT on creating a website. It was so different from doing a blog, and that’s what made it harder for me, I think. But once I found instructions, and followed them, and then got brave and clicked around a bit more, I finally got the gist of it. So now I have a real website for my art quilts. In case any of you are interested, you can click here. One nice thing about it is that for the first time I have most of my quilts organized into galleries so that you can view any of them. If you want to see my episode of The Quilt Show, I will be able to give you a code on Monday the 15th so that you can see it for free.

We’re supposed to be having a big storm blow in tomorrow. So I was out in the garden cleaning up a little today. And I saw this camellia blooming away. Something like this makes me so happy, because this plant was really suffering in the container I had it in, and even when we planted it in the ground, it didn’t look like it was very happy. Its taken over a year, but now it is flourishing. And so fun to have a plant that wants to bloom when everything else is ending. This bush always reminds me of the saying “memory is the ability to gather roses in winter.”

Satisfaction

I’ve been thinking for a whole year what my theme for SIXTY should be. I can’t remember what started this quest, but I think it was a discussion on the blog. And I finally came up with the word Satisfaction.

When I turned fifty, a funny thing happened. I got this whole “you’re not the boss of me” attitude. As in, I’m this old, I really don’t have to do what you say if it doesn’t make sense. I noticed that some of my friends and even my mild-mannered brother had this happen when they turned 50. So I wondered if anything would happen when I turned 60.

And Satisfaction seems to be it. I’ve mentioned a couple of times on here how it bothers me more to see the wrinkles on my face than almost anything else. So I decided a couple of months ago that I was going to make a point of looking at myself in the mirror a little more often, and learn to be content with the face that I now have. Because what is the alternative? Nope not going that direction!

I wrote a little bit yesterday about being satisfied with my physical size and appearance.

I am more content with the life of being an artist that I have chosen.

And I am more content with my spiritual life.

I’m not sure how much sense this makes to anyone else, but for me Satisfaction signifies a life of peace moving forward into the next decade. Care to join me?

The face of sixty (at the end of a long day, sans makeup, but with soft lighting 🙂 )