Sheep Guarding Llama

I went in to the office this morning and came home at lunch.  While I was at home Dominica was working on some planning for this weekend.

Dominica realized today that she needs to be in Houston on Friday to help prepare for Luciana’s birthday party which is going to be on Saturday.  That doesn’t work well as I have already stayed home from work this week and I have tons of work that needs my attention.  I have a number of work conflicts too, so going to Houston early really is not a good option for me.  The best case scenario would be that we would have to get up and leave super early on Friday morning and that is not a good option for anyone.

So we decided, very last minute, that Dominica and the girls might as well head on down to Houston today rather than waiting another day or two as our schedule is so busy that I will barely see the kids between now and when they would need to be leaving anyway – so better for them to get time with the cousins down in Houston than to be at home while I am at work.

So I returned to work and Dominica got the girls packed up and they were on the road between three and four this evening.

Today, strangely, is tax day in the US.  Normally it is April 15th but that was a Sunday and yesterday was some obscure government holiday that no one has ever heard of before but the IRS was closed so we got an extension until today.  I actually got all of my tax stuff in to the accountant last week but they are swamped and hoping to get to it without needing to file an extension.  Fingers crossed.

There were a lot of tax questions to be answered today so luckily I was home all day and was able to scan and send documentation as it was needed throughout the day.  We got everything in, paperwork done and we signed and submitted electronically.  No extensions needed for the Miller family this year.  It is amazing, I cannot remember the last time that we had our taxes in on time.  We still have no received our money from our 2010 filing (which was only a few weeks ago.)  Because this one is filed electronically and has direct deposit there is actually a chance that we will receive the 2011 refund ahead of the 2010 refund!

I was pretty busy all day just trying to keep up with work and get caught up on bills and stuff.  With the upcoming vacation we are feeling pretty overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done both physically, work related and financially.

This evening we did dinner at Brookhaven.  It is kids’ night.  Dinner was excellent tonight, Jalapeno BBQ salmon, corn on the cob (which I am now allowed to eat again) and salads.  Very tasty and quite a departure from the norm.

After dinner Liesl played in the inflatable bouncy gym a little before we went back home.  The country club as that set up for the summer.  They got it for Easter and decided to keep it.  Helps a lot with keeping the kids under control.

We came back to the house so that I could attend my class tonight but at the last minute it was cancelled because the professor was attempting to buy a house.  Dominica had just remarked that she was upset that I had class tonight because she wanted to take the family out for a walk because the weather was perfect.  I told her that class was cancelled so that we should go straight away, and we did.

We went for a long walk tonight, just over five miles.  We explored some new areas and walked to a yogurt place that apparently just went out of business so walked a little further and went to a Marble Slab Creamery which also had sugar free, fat free frozen yogurt.  I got mine with blueberries and vanilla yogurt.  Dominica did the same but with birthday cake yogurt.  And Liesl, being Liesl, got cotton candy ice cream.

Dominica got a lot of exercise today because earlier in the day she had gone out for a job and did about two miles.  So altogether today she has done seven or eight miles!  She was exhausted by the time that we got home.  I carried Ciana on my back the entire way and pushed Liesl in the stroller almost the entire way.

I had to get up at three in the morning to check my email.  I was able to reschedule the meeting to a later time so that I was able to sleep in until six.  I ended up being awake for nearly an hour but it was better than it was going to be and I didn’t actually have to get out of bed that whole time.

I got up and six, showered, and did my morning call.  Then got ready to head to my Medifast appointment.  Today is the moment of truth.  I fasted yesterday trying to get ready for today.  All evening yesterday and all morning this morning I was weighing in pretty much on the hour trying to get a feel for my progress.  Last night I was at my lowest ever with only one pound to go.  This morning I am inching my way closer.

My final weigh in, before leaving the house to go to my appointment, put me at one pound under my goal weight.  That, I hope, gives me enough breathing room to weigh in well at the clinic.  Historically my weigh ins at home are exactly the same as my weigh ins in the clinic.  That means that my scale at home is off by roughly three pounds because at home I weigh in naked (I know, too much information) and at the clinic I am normally in jeans and a light shirt.

I got to the Medifast office and weighed in straight away.  To my amazement I weight in a full three pounds under my goal weight!  That’s it, I’m officially done with the weight loss portion of the program.  I can’t believe it.  After a year of struggling to get down to this weight I am finally there.  Not only did I break my own, initial, weight loss goal but I have set a new record for the clinic as well breaking their previous weight loss record by ten pounds.  I’ve lost ~90 pounds now.

So I am having a good day today!

This evening we ate at home.  Dominica has decided that she is going to go strictly back on to Medifast.  Her experiment in going off of it did not go well and she found herself unable to regulate her food intake and in just forty-eight hours saw that she needed the regimen of the program.  So a lean dinner tonight of veggie burgers with low fat cheese, veggie bacon strips and green beans.  And later on, of course, some sugar free, fat free frozen yogurt with berries.

We tried watching That 80s Show tonight hoping that it would be kind of like That 70s Show.  But it is not.  It was done so poorly that it actually feels much older – kind of like a show made in the 80s would – and the writing and acting is really bad.  It feels painful, like people are just popping in, reading lines and popping out again.  It feels labored and awkward.  No wonder they only managed to make thirteen episodes.  It is a neat idea – those of us from the 80s have many fond memories of the time period and That 70s Show was a huge success.  But mostly it was good because the characters were believable and endearing.  You cared about their story.  It wasn’t just a collection of period references.

I slept in until eight this morning.  That was three hours of sleep.  Not a whole heck of a lot.

Today is my fasting day.  Tomorrow is my weekly weigh in at Medifast.  I weighed in first thing this morning and I was at my record low.  Not a new record, just equal to my record.  But that is an entire day ahead of my weigh in and this is my chance to really get the weight down and get a good weigh in.  So no food today.  My last meal was early yesterday afternoon so it will be a full day and a half without food.  I will have no water once I got to bed tonight.  Hopefully that gives me time to process what I have drunk before the Medifast appointment tomorrow morning.

As of first thing this morning I have one and a half pounds to go to reach my original Medifast goal.  That should be very doable for a fasting day.  I will be drinking water like crazy all day to desalinate.

Today Liesl decided to come into my office and point to her wrist and tell me that she needed a clock.  She handed me a marker.  So I drew a watch onto her wrist.  She thought that that was awesome.  She would come into the room, look at her wrist and say “Look at the time, I have to get going!”

I had to work all day as I am the on call for the office this weekend.  The on call really seems to be a twenty-four hour weekend.  It is rather exhausting.

Dominica decided the other day that she is giving up on the Medifast plan until we are back from Europe.  She has been craving food horribly and really struggling for months to stay on diet.  Her being half on, half off of the diet makes it nearly impossible for me to stay on it.

It was pretty much an all work day, even though it is Sunday.  I have to be up at three in the morning to deal with some stuff in the UK so not much sleep coming for me tonight after getting not very much last night.

I woke up on my own very early this morning, around five.  I lay in bed for a while contemplating whether to get up or to attempt to fall back asleep.  Oreo wasn’t snuggling with me this morning so getting up was more of an option than usual.  I tried going back to sleep for a while but the weight of all of the tasks waiting for me was weighing on me.  I tried playing Triple Town but only got five minutes of it or so before Oreo got up and had an accident on the floor.  So, at around five thirty, I was out of bed and cleaning the floor and taking Oreo out for a walk.

No point in going back to bed after that.  So I logged in to begin working, wrote some updates, did some SpiceWorks posts, updated some tickets, cleaned up the kitchen, did some general cleaning around the house, put Oreo’s food away that Dominica had cooked yesterday but that we had forgotten to put away last night, etc.

Dominica and the girls got up around eight thirty so I had about three hours to myself to be productive alone.

This afternoon Liesl came up to us and said something that we thought was “Mr. Lumley!”  We were very confused.  She was wearing a toy on her head as a hat and kept coming up to each of us stating “Mr. Lumley!”

Finally I figured out that she was pretending to deliver mail and was saying “Special Delivery.”  She was pretending to keep mail in her hat and was taking it off and handing it to us.  She has such a vivid imagination that sometimes we have real problems following what she is saying because she responds to questions from inside of her fantasy context but when we are trying to figure out the context, that can be nearly impossible to do.  Once we repeated “special delivery” to her she said “Yes, Special Deliver!  I’m the post officer.”  We were dying.  “Post Officer” is a perfectly logical name for the mailman but heaven only knows where she came up with it!

Last night she did something similar telling us all about this yellow cat that she used to have that ran away and that she doesn’t have any longer.  We were so confused as we have never had a cat.  Today it finally occurred to me that she was referring to the pretend cat that she used to pretend to be.  At times she would not answer to her name but only to “kitty.”  She would meow and in her mind, she was a cat.  She no longer pretends to be a cat, but is a dog more recently, so I guess she sees it as the cat having left.

I am the on call for the office this weekend so I was tied to my desk for most of the day.  I swear that there is more work to do as the on call than there is to do when you are in the office.

For dinner Dominica cooked a lean Medifast style meal of shiritake noodles and mushrooms in a cream sauce.  We re-watched the new travel video that we got yesterday about Belgium and The Netherlands.  Liesl watched with us with interest and mentioned that several of the places that she saw were places that she would like to get to go.  That works out pretty well since we plan to be going many of those places in just one month!  It is hard to believe that we are two days fewer than a month until we fly off to England!

I was working in the office pretty late this evening when I found that my friend John the storage engineer from Houston was in town.  We were both posting on SpiceWorks at the same time when he mentioned that he was down in Preston Hollow, practically down the street.  So I ran, showered and headed out to pick him up.

John and I headed out to Sfuzzi to hang out for the evening.  We ended up hanging out very late then going back to his friends’ place in Preston Hollow where they were having a party.  It was nearly five when I straggled home.