BLT4ever

Well, I thought I had fixed the problem with the spam filter, but apparently I did not.  This wasn’t a problem with my first two posts on this new account, so I’m hoping that the problem was only related to my last post.  It is my hope that the dreaded spam filter will not come back, so please do try and post me a comment and let’s see what happens lol.

I did my weekly weigh in a little earlier then normal since I recently joined the Fitness Fanatics team and weigh in was this morning.  I like what I weighed so am changing my ticker now instead of tomorrow.  hehe  I highly doubt tomorrow will be any different, anyway.

I am now down to 222 and have gone 1 lb. past my mini goal of 223!  WOOHOOO!!!  How sweet is that?  lol

My next mini goal is going to be set to 198, which is kind of scary for me because I’ve not been able to get past 218 lbs. since I started losing weight in January 07′.  I’ve gotten down to 218 lbs. three times, the last time being right before I got so sick in May and had to have my gallbladder removed.  Barring some stupid thing like that happening to me again, I AM going to get past 218!  I now see it as a mental block and I AM going to beat it!  It’s going to take awhile though, of course.  I am going to enjoy at least a few days of seeing my current mini goal on my ticker being grayed out before I set the new mini goal to 198.  But, I’m still going to be working my butt off to get the weight off.  I just enjoy seeing that mini goal above my actual weight hehe.  I am going to do whatever it takes to get to that 198 by November 15th.  That gives me about eleven weeks, if I’m doing the math in my head correctly lol.

I’ve been kinda lazy this weekend, and not really eating as good as I should be.  Not eating really bad, mind you…just not as I should.  But I am okay with that.  I’m even going to let my laziness continue on through all of Sunday.  Monday it’s back to the grindstone as per usual.

Man, do I ever love that picture and the saying!

I hope that you all are having an AWESOME Labor Day weekend!!!

lol Just my luck, eh?  Seems every time I think I’m good to go on here something happens that makes me realize I’m not quite.  Came on tonight to send my weigh in for the Fitness Fanatics team and see that I’ve a message there from one of my all time favorite buddies, Jo, titled I am so frustrated.  I open it up to find this message inside:  This is the fourth time I comment on your blog and it sends it to a blog administrator—I have been reading and commenting, but the commenting part, to no avail!! Argh!!  lol And I think to myself (as I bang my head on the keyboard), OMG!!!  More Buddyslim problems!!!

Yeah, I’ve got another message in to Dr. Marc, asking him for advice.  We’re getting to know each other quite well these days.

Just kidding of course, but you’d think we’d be best buds after my latest catastrophe’s lol.

That’s me and Buddyslim going at it there lol.

Anyone have any idea why some people who are trying to leave me a comment are getting this message and how I can stop it?  She’s on my buddy list, so it can’t be that only people who are can comment…but I don’t think the site does that anyway.  There are no comments in the “my blog” section that I need to go approve, which by the way, I’ve no idea why it does that for some people and not for others.  I don’t have a clue if this has happened to anyone other than Jo.  I’m totally clueless on this one.  Just like with all of my other Buddyslim issues.

Today was one of the happiest days of my life.  For a really simple reason too.  I got a most beautiful email from the love of my life this morning.  Yeah, that’s all it takes.  Every now and then he just pulls out all the stops, you know?  Anyway, I miss him something fierce.  He’s been gone for 7 months now, we’ve got 6 left to go.  Wish it wasn’t so long.

Couldn’t decide which one was my favorite.

 UPDATEUPDATEUPDATEUPDATEUPDATE!!!!!!  lol I found how to turn the stinking thing off!!!  So, now anyone can post and the dreaded filter should never rear it’s ugly head again.

Now that all my Buddyslim issues have been resolved lol.  Originally, as you know, it was due to me trying to change my name in the areas where it said Luvtlee because I wanted things to consistently say Catrina lol.  Well, that was a mistake because that is how I accidentally deleted my account and come to find out, you can’t go name changing like that anyway.  Not for blogs.  It had been so long since I originally signed up that I had forgotten about that little message that says you cannot change your URL once created.  If only I had remembered, cuz’ that would’ve saved me hours of heartache lol.  Anyway, second time around somehow the forums got messed up and I couldn’t access them no matter what I tried.  Whenever I would try to post there I’d get a message saying authentication failed.  So, I’d have the email resent and I’d try again..did this at least seven or eight times lol.  All to no avail.  Emailed Dr. Marc and he said the only way to fix that problem is to clear the cache, wait four hours, and create a totally new account.  *sigh*  So there I was yet again creating a new account lol.  I thank all my buddies for their patience in putting up me with me, my triplets (lol), and all my buddy requests in the mean time!  If you’re a buddy of mine and haven’t gotten my newest and latest request, would you please send me one?  Of if you’ve not been on my buddy list before, I’d love to have you now.  The more the merrier, right? 

TOM wasn’t due until Sunday but he got here yesterday morning, bright and early.  Which actually for once makes me a happy camper because I very recently joined the Fitness Fanatics weight loss team and I always, always have my weight screwed up when it’s right around the time TOM arrives.  Since he arrived a little early though, he shouldn’t affect my weigh in at all.  Woohoo!!!  Not only that, but as some of you may know, I am scale obsessed.  Although I only count my weigh in every Sunday morning as my “official” weigh in I do weigh myself twice a day.  I have learned that the numbers fluctuating are nothing to get upset about, and I don’t get obsessed about the number.  I just feel that it helps keep me on track if I’m always monitoring my weight.  Yeah, twice a day is obsessive lol and I am obsessed about the scale but I take the fluctuations into account, you know?  Anyway, it’s been weird this time around with TOM here, I’ve not put on weight as I usually do.  I’ve not even maintained but instead, the weight is coming off.  Granted, it’s coming off a little slower than normal.  But coming off never happens when TOM is around.  So, I’m thankful!

This cracks me up to no end, and I just had to share:

As a few of you know, I had account issues again today trying to get the forums to work.  I was told the only way to fix the problem was by creating a new account.  So, here I am (AGAIN lol).  But this time, everything is in working order.  Forums, blogs and everything!  I was really starting to stress for a little bit there because this site and all my buddies have come to mean so much to me.

I am going to spend the next couple of hours setting everything back up and finding all my buddies again.  Sorry for all the hassles of having to re-add me yet again!  This time it’s for good, as I had Dr. Marc’s help in getting everything sorted right.

Love you guys!!!

Thanks to my buddy Chris (thanks Chris!!), I was able to go and save old blogs by copy and pasting them into new ones and changing the date stamp on them.  I didn’t save every single one of them from the way past, just my most favorite of them.  But the most current ones from July through August I went ahead and saved.  I was also able to input all of my old weigh ins because I still had them all on my fitday program.   Everything is just about back to the way it was.  I think I was able to send out buddy requests to all my current buddies.  I know there were quite a few on there that haven’t signed on in at least several months that I wasn’t able to find on the buddies list because it only went back to early July.  Hopefully those old buddies will notice my change and send me a new request lol.  Oh, and I know there were a couple of buddies who only had an apple as their picture and I didn’t send any apple pics a request only because it was so much easier looking at the photos of people to remember who was who, know what I mean?  So, if there were any apple’s out there that were on my buddy list before, would you please send me an invite?

Otherwise, the only thing I was not able to do was save all of the comments on all of the blogs.   I previously had right around 1100 of the little thumbs up to indicate all the comments on my blogs.  Now I have 21.  Hehe it’s all good, if that’s all I lost then I am richly blessed.  I don’t have to see all my old comments to remember all the support, encouragement and love that has been given to me here at the site.  So it’s now as if my little blunder from the other night never happened.

Thinking about going to the drive in this weekend to see “The Clone Wars” playing with “The Dark Knight”.  The boys really want to see “The Clone Wars”, and my older two have already seen “The Dark Knight” and said it was good.  I don’t know yet if we’re going to go because money is really tight right now.  I’ve got sooooo many expenses coming up over the next couple of months (2 gi’s @ $125 each, black belt testing fees @$150, Blizzcon spending money @ approx. $300, two birthdays in October @ approx. $500 total…not to mention getting ready for Christmas too).  I’m supposed to be saving up loads of money while my husband is in Iraq so that we can start planning for his retirement when he comes home.  It’s not going too bad, but it’s not going as good as it should be so I really need to tighten down the money spending on frivolous things.  It’s hard with this one though, because my 7 year old asked me so nicely.  lol  He’s got such a huge soft spot on my heart, I want to do everything for him.  He does have his green belt test coming up on the 5th…that would be a good way to celebrate, provided of course those two movies are still playing together at the drive in.  “The Clone Wars” being the most important to see for my two youngest…maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be playing with something else good if it’s switched by then.  Or, maybe I can just take the two youngest to a matinee elsewhere to see just that one.  Hmmm…gonna have to give it some thought.

Have a GREAT day you guys!!!

I’m a dummy apparently lol.  Last night I was pretty darn tired but was trying to finish up a few things before heading to bed.  One of those things was I thought I’d try and change things around so that wherever it showed my name it would show Catrina, and not Luvtlee.  Don’t ask me why, I don’t even know lol.  I just wanted my name to look the same wherever I was at here on the site.

Clicked on account, thought I’d find something in there.  Saw a button that said “close account” and I thought to myself, “hmmm…..they make it awfully easy to cancel your account here…never saw a “close account” button like that.  Hmmm…wonder what happens when you click on it.  So, I clicked on it.  As stupid as that sounds, that isn’t the stupid part lol because all that does is bring you to a page that says are you sure you want to cancel your account, if you do so everything will be lost for good.  Then there are two buttons, one to cancel and one to not cancel.  Here’s where the stupid part came in…I clicked on the one to cancel and was immediately horrified, realizing my mistake.  I’d like to make it dramatic here, as if I had this long drawn out noooooooooooooooo escaping my lips.  But, I what can you do, right?  Made a stupid mistake and I knew there was no changing it.  So, here I am again.

The thing that sucks about it is all of my past blogs are gone, all of my buddies are gone, all of my lovely booster notes are gone…everything is just gone.  I’d cry about it, but to be honest I just don’t have the energy for it lol.  Saving that for my workouts.  So, I am off now to try and get all my buddies back.  If you sent me a message within the past ten hours, can you resend it here to this blog since I can no longer access my old one?

Oh, and you wanna know the irony of the whole thing?  Since my old account was associated with my email, Buddyslim wouldn’t let me sign up again using it, even though the account had been cancelled.  So I had to use the only other email account I’ve ever had…wanna guess the name?  lol This is funny….now, brace yourselves….Luvtlee@msn.com.  Yeah….I started this whole thing by trying to get rid of how it says Luvtlee on some of the areas at the site because I dunno, it isn’t that I don’t like that old nickname of mine, I just wanted some kind of consistency with my name or something.

We’ve been on a new series at church titled “Disciple” and it is about how to be a true Disciple of Christ.  Did you know that Jesus loved being amongst the sinners?  They were who He came for, after all.  We have been learning about spiritually arrogant people who turn people away because they don’t follow the same dogma as they do.  They will put others down and condemn them because they are essentially lepers.  When a leper would come into town, people would yell, “Unclean, unclean”, and run from that leper.  Spiritually arrogant people will do the same thing when they see someone who they consider to be sinning.  I’ve always done the best I can, granted, I am not perfect and I make mistakes all the time.  But I do the best I can to welcome anyone into my walk with Jesus regardless of their looks, their job, their station in life…whatever.  I try to look at people the way that Jesus would have me look at them.  I will not disassociate with someone because I find out that they do things that many religious dogma would say were sins.  I have faced this adversity myself, and it angers me.  Spiritually arrogant people will try and make you feel as if you are inferior to them, that they somehow have a grasp on Jesus that you could never hope to have.  It drives me mad…I am torn on this subject because I am not sure how Jesus would have me react.  Be quiet and not say anything that might offend or set the person off? Give em’ a big old hug as they condemn me and say innuendos that refer to my spiritual walk with God as being less than theirs?Anyway, long story not quite so long…I thought I’d try and write a poem about it.  Please don’t think it necessary to tell me you like it if you don’t.  :oP

Spiritually arrogant

You see the bright colors in my hair and you judge me.

You see the tatoos on my skin and you judge me.

You see the fat under my skin and you judge me.

You have no idea what it is like to walk in my shoes and you judge me.

I don’t abide by the rules that your religion sets for you and you judge me.

You have no idea the relationship I have with the Lord and you judge me.

You say that because mine is different than yours that mine is no good.

Spiritually arrogant, you condemn my ways because they are not your ways.

Did no one ever tell you it’s not about religion and doctrine?  It’s about a relationship?

Did you know smoking is not a sin?  It won’t get you into hell, it’ll just make you smell like you’d been there.

Did you know that Jesus knows how many hairs I have on my head and doesn’t care if they’re brown, black, red, blue or green?

Did you know that when Jesus came to save us, he made all things new and the old law of the Pharisees was no more?

I know that in spite of your judgment and condemnation, he loves you anyway.

Just as he loves me, anyway.

Okay, I know that this has nothing to do with weight loss.  But it has been weighing heavily on my mind and I feel purged of a great burden after writing this.

My weigh in this week was another great one!  Lost 4 lbs. this last week!!!  Can I get a wooooooot!!!!?  I sure wish I could keep up this 4 lbs a week thing until I reach my ultimate goal.  But, I don’t live in lala land lol.  I know that at any time now my weight loss is going to slow down…it’s just the way it goes.  TOM is due any day now so I am a little surprised that my loss was so great, but I imagine that I just haven’t started putting on the usual water weight gain that comes along with TOM.  I’m betting that next weeks weigh in isn’t going to be all that great because of it.  I am now 1 lb. away from my next mini goal!!!  That is so damn exciting!  I sincerely believe that even if TOM wreaks havoc with me this week, I will be at the very least meeting my mini goal if not surpassing it a tad.

Anyway, I am off for now as the kids and I are going to get some swimming in.  It is soooo hot today!  Right around 110-112.  Perfect swimming weather!  I will come on later and do some catching up with reading blogs.  I hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend!

Oh yes…I ate them…and I thoroughly enjoyed em’ too!  And you know what?  I feel no guilt about it either.  I didn’t go overboard with them and I knew all day what was going to be coming that night, so I knew to plan accordingly and kept my calorie intake on the low side to prepare.  The all nighter was great fun…they always are lol.  I weighed myself this morning, as I do every morning (I only officially “weigh in” once a week though) and was pleasantly surprised.  I’m not going to say how much I am down yet because my official weigh in day isn’t until Sunday and anything can happen by then.  I know enough at this point in the game to know that my daily weigh in’s flucuate up and down too much to rely on them.  But, I was able to get away with eating that junk food.

My seven year old crashed at 2 am, and I followed suit not that much longer at around 3 am.  Carried my son upstairs so he could sleep with me and leave room for the rest of them downstairs.  They all were done in by 4 am.  Not exactly an “all nighter” but close enough hehe.  We have managed to go until 7-8 am before.  Then everyone sleeps in until 10-12 ish.  It’s good times, it really makes for great bonding for us all.  We went swimming around midnight and then got in some Halo 3, Rockband, World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero and there was even some epic Lego building going on!  It just occurred to me that I should’ve taken some pictures!  Dang.  Wish I would’ve though about that.  We’ve never documented an all nighter with photos!  Going to have to make sure I do the next time around.

My daughter is currently cooking up some pancakes, scrambled eggs & bacon for everybody now.  She likes to do this for our breakfast, which of course is really a lunch, after our all nighters.  She’s a good girl.  She’s turning 18 in October and I’ve got to think of something special to do for her.  We’re going to go to Dave & Buster’s to celebrate in a fun, kid like way by eating pizza and playing arcade games.  But, I’m not sure what to do/give to her to make it a special birthday.  Any ideas?

We did our final weigh in at the dojo for our “Biggest Loser” contest last night.  I had a 17 lb loss for the four weeks, and won it for the ladies.  Sensei Ric had a 16 lb loss and won it for the men.  He’s crazy because he couldn’t be more fit but he knows how to manipulate his body so well that the loss was nothing to him, it’s actually been incorporated into his workout plan.  That weight he lost is now going to be put back on as he bulks himself out again.  This guy is seriously fit, used to be a body builder and personal trainer.  Anyway, the two of us were way ahead of everyone else as far as pounds lost.  Of course for me, it was a no brainer because at my size, if you get truly determined and stick to the plan no matter what, it’ll come off like that.

We had our meeting yesterday with our Educational Facilitator and got our new textbooks and assignments for the first semester (I home school my two oldest, they’re in 11th and 12th grades).  The first day of school is Monday!

These two facts combined with the fact that there are no classes at the dojo tomorrow are enabling us to do an all nighter tonight!  Me and all the kids like to do this from time to time.  We eat junk food and play video games all through the night.  Our all nighters are legendary around here hehe.  It makes for good bonding time, and we just love it.  Each of the kids is inviting one friend over, too.  It’ll be great times…but pray for me that I don’t over eat on the junk food so that I can still have a good weigh in on Sunday!!!