Mommy? Ack!

Last night was our first obedience class for the dogs, although I think it’s more like dominance class for the humans. We didn’t bring the dogs with us last night as the class was lecture - all about how to properly train a dog and understanding that dogs aren’t humans.

I think Doug and I both had a lot of “AHA!” moments throughout the hour. We learned not to repeat commands over and over again because that can train your dog to wait until you command multiple times. We learned not to respond when Talus shoves his head under our hands demanding attention. Instead, we were told to make him earn it by giving him a command and then rewarding him with the attention he demanded only after he does what we want him to do. It turns the tables and makes it your idea instead of their idea.

We also learned that many dog trainers do not like Cesar Millan. I guess it has to do with his method of physical and psychological domination rather than reward-based training. I just did a search on Google and found some pretty passionate anti-Cesar articles. I would never have known there was such animosity. I must say his approach makes for good television, though.

Anyhow, this week’s homework is to teach the dogs, “Look.” Talus already has it down. I think his name is his “look” command. Talia is not so easy. Much of the time she has no idea what I’m trying to get her to do. It’s going to take some serious practice to get her on the same page as me.

I’m really excited, though. I think we’ll make progress over the next six weeks.

Today I weighed in after my first full week on Jenny Craig. I don’t think I’ve had a day where I didn’t cheat just a little bit. There was cake at Mindi’s baby shower. We had the drinks and nibbles at Cirque. I had a bit of spring roll and a lime fruit bar another day. Even with all those little cheats, I lost almost 3 lbs. Not bad for my first week.

This week, I don’t have anything tempting planned, so I’m looking forward to doing even better. If I lost 2 lbs this week, I’d be happy.

I will say one thing, though. I am so hungry! I am so used to eating lots of calories due to pregnancy and breastfeeding. It’s an adjustment to drop to 1500 calories! My body says, “Are you sure you don’t want more?” Thankfully, I have six meals per day, so it’s not long until the next mealtime. I’ll be happy when I adjust a bit more to this new amount of food.

This morning, I woke up at 5:30 am to make sure to get in my workout before I went into work. I’ve committed to getting up early so I can use my treadmill every day. Plus, I’m trying to get home earlier because we’ve adjusted our Carla schedule a wee bit. If I want to avoid a potentially stressed out Doug, I need to be home at a decent hour.

After my workout, I packed up my food for the day and hit the road. As I was driving into work, I suddenly remembered something. For weeks, my manager has been saying he wanted me to go to this training on May 12 & 13. It’s a free training from one of our vendors to learn their proprietary software. Today? The 12th!

So I thought to myself, “Surely this training can’t take all day on both days! I’ll just go into work and find out what the schedule is.” Glancing at my schedule once I was in the office, I realized that, sure enough, the training was all day for both days. Ugh!

I was in training all day long. It kind of sucked. The guy teaching the class is really nice, and obviously quite knowledgeable in his subject. However, much of what he taught us today was basic SQL - aka my daily job. I was so freaking bored! Tomorrow should be better as we’ll be getting more into the proprietary side of the software. Still, it’s hard to give up two full days for something I have a feeling I could’ve learned in about 4 hours or so. Maybe tomorrow will prove to make the whole thing worth it.

What a way to start the day. Oh, and I dumped a tall latte in the elevator after getting only one drink from it. Boo!

And now I present River Theatre:

Oh, and I’ve started Jenny Craig as of today. I need a kick start to my weight loss, and I know this can work if I invest myself fully. Today, I weighed in at 212.8 lbs (ugh). Let’s see where I am next week. My short term goal is below 200 lbs before Candie’s wedding which is July 26th. If I lost 1.5 lbs per week, I’d be at 197 by then. Seems like a reasonable place to start. My ultimate goal is 155. Apparently, I’d still be classified as overweight at 155. Weird, eh? We shall see, though. I think I look pretty damn good at 155, so I’m going to ignore what my BMI says.

I admit, though, that I’m a little embarrassed to be on Jenny Craig. It feels like I’m wearing a badge that says, “I’m fat and can’t lose weight on my own.” I guess in a way that’s exactly what I’m doing. There’s no shame in trying to change your life, right? I still wish I didn’t feel embarrassed. I especially don’t want someone to ask me about it. I don’t know why. It just feels like something so personal that I’m not able to keep that way because I eat food at work.

Wish me luck and perseverance.

Two dogs. Two cats. One toddler. Two adults. Our house is a bustling place right now. In light of that, here’s a quick update.

Dogs - Talus and Talia are settling in well, although Talia is not housebroken. That’s causing some tension, but we’re working to resolve it. I’ve signed us up for obedience classes starting next Wednesday. I also got some advice on how best to housebreak Talia, so we’ll see how it goes.

Cats - We’ve rehomed Ariel because she can’t seem to help but pee on carpet despite our best efforts to train her otherwise. Doug’s brother, Mike, has hardwood floors and thinks Ariel is awesome (she is), so he’s brought her into his home. I have a feeling she’ll do very well there, although I will miss her quite a bit. Ookla and Camille are still not sure about this dog thing. We’re letting them mingle (when supervised) and have only had a couple of standoffs. It’s good so far.

Toddler - River absolutely loves Talus and Talia. I have videos of her playing with them and giggling. I’ll try to get them uploaded soon. We are so lucky that these dogs are patient. River pets them, grabs them, pushes them, head bonks them and even steals things right out of their mouths. She loves to give Talia kisses, too. Oh, and this morning, River was sitting in her highchair humming to herself. It’s the first time I’ve heard her hum on purpose and continuously. It was pretty darn cool.

Adults - Doug and I now have tickets to 5th Avenue for their 2008-2009 season. There are some great shows that I’m looking forward to seeing. Plus, if Doug bails on me at all, I’m enlisting Carla as my backup date. She is the second wife after all. I also started taking singing lessons from Carla. I’m going to try out for either a local choral group or perhaps the chorus of a show late this year. Seems like fun!

That was a longer update than I had planned, but there you have it. All is well. Now, if I could just decide what spa treatment to get while I’m in Vegas next month. Mani/Pedi? Facial? Massage? Hmm.

B walked by my office this morning and stopped to ask me what was up. I couldn’t put it into words, so I showed her. I found this site linked from another site I read. The photographs are stunning and beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on the internet that has moved me quite like this set of photos did. Something about the visual impact of life and death made me feel like crying, but not in a sad way. Maybe that seems odd, but I felt moved to tears by the beauty of it not the sadness of it.

I was shutting down my desktop PC that sits in the guest room - we have house guests arriving in an hour or two. As I was closing down applications and windows, I came across my “Pics” folder with photos from the past several years. There was a folder called Alimomali or something silly like that. I started to look through it and realized they were pictures from 2003. I looked amazing back then. I don’t think I realized it at the time.

On the one hand, it’s depressing to be fat again. On the other, the pictures of my past could also represent my future if I work at it. I’m trying to appreciate the hard work it took for me to get down to 150 last time. It took me a couple of years of exercising regularly and eating responsibly. I don’t know why I’ve had so much harder of a time this time staying on track. This week, though, I’ve been doing pretty good. I gained 5-6 lbs in Costa Rica and I’ve already lost 3 of them. I also used my treadmill the other morning. I just need to make it a daily habit. I was going to do yoga this morning, but I was preempted by a haircut.

I think I’ll print one of those pictures out and put it on my bathroom mirror as a reminder of what I can achieve when I put my mind to it. Maybe I won’t be there by the end of the summer, but I bet I could do it by the end of the year! I just need to suck it up and work as hard at it as I did last time. It would be worth it to look that good again.

Last night, we stopped by Shawn and Christine’s place to say hi and chat. While there, Christine showed me her new Kindle. I am suitably impressed! I thought it would look too electronic to be a viable alternative to books, but they really did a good job. The text on the screen looks like it’s printed on a page. Plus, the shape of it is akin to a slim paperback.

Another cool perk is the ability to look up words on the fly. Rather than dragging out your dictionary (or your laptop to load up an online dictionary), you can click a button and it looks up key words within the line of text. That is such a nifty idea!

So I want one. I’m trying to justify one right now, but I can’t. I have piles of unread books, and a new bookshelf being built. However, I think there will be a Kindle in my future. Just not right now. I shall have to lust for now.

I haven’t tried this before, so let’s see if it works. The first video is of River walking on Sunday. We tended to walk with her offering a “sphere of protection” so she wouldn’t fall on the slate floor. The second video is of River walking today. Once she got started, her stability quickly improved. In Costa Rica, she was so wobbly she looked drunk. Here at home, she’s a speed demon!