Day 13 of the liquid diet

OK, there are 187 million different types of drinks in this world, but once you take away the alcohol, caffeine and carbonation, I swear you are down to about 10. However, I am definitely getting a lot more vitamins than I was before.

Yesterday I was completely unable to write, so I grabbed my friend Kristen and off we went to check out so areas of Dallas that I've been writing about. We went to the Bishop's Art District (Jim Lake), Winnetka Heights (Stemmons) and Wynnewood (Angus Wynne).

Came back home and worked diligently, although I still don't have enough for Wynne. Gotta keep working on that. Of course I'm fighting a pretty strong HGTV addiction at the same time! sigh.

Gotta make it

I'm sitting here working on the Angus Wynne copy going through my notes. There is a cartoon that his son described to me that seems very appropriate for me at the moment too.

I've been working on this book, it seems like forever, and I've pretty much been giving the end of the year as my deadline. I'm going past that, but I also know I have a little wiggle room as far as finishing the book, but getting it to press by the first of March.

Ok, so there's this rabbit running along as fast as he can with a fox right on his tail, teeth showing and tongue hanging out.

They pass a guy sitting on a fence, and he calls out to the rabbit--

"Hey, rabbit, you think you gonna make it?"

The rabbit calls back - "Make it? Man, I GOTTA make it!"

Think of me as the rabbit . . .

The liquid diet

Day 10. At first one might not think this is bad. There are lots of fun liquids out there. But alas, this is the no fun liquids diet. No caffeine - shoot me now, no soft drinks of any kind. No hot chocolate, yum. No alcohol sigh.

Actually, this week my liquids include soups that are brothy. Oh goody. I've added mushroom soup and cream of corn. Next week another layer of thickness, if you will. Yogurts, puddings etc. That is good.

All in all the specialized funky diet lasts for six weeks. . . Good news, it is impossible to not lose weight, bad news . . . well, I think you can figure it out.

An interesting note is that I am drinking all of these protein drinks and shakes. I'm almost positive that I am getting more protein now than I usually do.

Although many consider Christmas to be a bad time to start such a diet, I have to tell you that it is working out very well. I'm trapping myself at home anyway to work on the book, so my only distractors are food commercials on TV and I just flip the channel on those!

Back to work . . .

Bad dog, and I don't mean mine

First, Dave and Darlene have been out of town. that has been lovely. I realized at one point that their being out of town meant that I could let Sabrina and Buddy run amok. At any rate, I heard the barker dogs at about 10pm the other night . . . hmm I thought in my sleep odd. Sabrina gets up at about midnight and goes outside. I hear her bark. Rotten dog I think, good thing D & D aren't home. Got up in the morning and realized, oops, I think they got home last night. (okay, so this story is my dog bad dog, but their dogs barked at ten and woke me, so I owed them one.

However, for the last two nights I have heard a dog barking incessently barking during the night. Made me think of Mom and Dad with their tale of woe regarding the neighbor dog. Well, last night it woke me at about 3. By 4 I was losing my ever loving mind. So, I got up and headed out the door determined to at least know who the culprit was. Turns out it is a big furry dog that lives behind Emily. I went down the alley, and he was squeezed between the fence and a storage shed. Poor thing. But if he barks again tonight, he's getting a doggie treat with benadryl!

Alone, alone, alone

I am supposed to be alone because I need to be totally focused on writing. But the problem with being alone for too long is that one gets a bit edgy. I be writing, but not as much as I should be. I have a pinch in my shoulder, (I think from yesterday's fall) and I'm losing my focus. Auugghhhhh.

MaryBeth is coming to visit tomorrow. My goal is to have another bio written before she gets here.

Alright enough procrastinating with the blog. Back to work.

Today's adventures

Well, I realized I still had a couple of gifts to get, so I decided to go out into the madness. I tripped over a curb and flew about four feet. Scraped up my knee and my hand : (

Then I was driving along Swiss on my way home when I saw Emily. I waved, drove my car over a curb and then proceeded on. I should not be allowed to drive.

Emily and I tried to go to church at the 5:00 service, but it turns out that all of the Chreasters (you know, the Christmas and Easter attendees) had beaten us there. There were no seats whatsoever. So, we headed home to celebrate in front of the TV.

Wow! Two weeks since my last post

Good heavens. Well, yearbook wise, we've had some ups and downs. We were supposed to get 120 pages of proofs by December 10th so that we could get them fixed and returned. As it turns out, they arrived and there were font defaults on EVERY page. aauugghh. So, we tried to send a disk of the fonts. Nope, corrupt. Tried to email it. Nope corrupt. In the meantime, Topeka, Kansas (where the plant is) was having ice storms. By the time we got the proofs, Friday . . . there was no way we were going to get them out, so they are actually waiting for our return from break.

In the meantime, we did get all of our people pages out, so that is good. Shawn, the bain of my existence may he rot in hell, did send the disk of photos to the plant. I am waiting for the final approval from the plant, then I'll send a letter to all of the senior parents.

Back at the ranch, I have been working like the very devil on the real estate book. I'm making progress, so keep praying for me. Lots of stuff to do still, but every day I get closer.

My goal this week is to just keep working 'till it's done.

Well, I don't want to be the only one to enjoy the fun of Sabrina and Buddy acting like mad fools. Aren't they precious? But trust me, they would never bark outside. Well, mostly never. ; )

Saturday in t he Hood

It was a heck of a day. I got up, dropped off some photos, picked up some photos, got a new battery for the phone, ran home and started working on the book. Kevin came over and we worked for about six hours on the book. He's going to come back tomorrow and help me out. Hoorah for Kevin.

I held the dogs off from walking for ages this afternoon, so by the time I was ready they were spastic. So I let them out the back door, and they yapped like idiots for a few minutes. As I am standing there waiting for them to calm down, I hear the door next door open and a voice hollar out, "Be quiet. You be quiet." Is he kidding? Seriously, what idiot thinks sticking his head out and yelling actually works? And if you know it doesn't work, then why stick your head out? Weirdo.

Tonight was Dr. Duke's Christmas party. It was my one and only social obligation of the season. It is always a good party. I got to see Dr. Katz who taught me a couple of classes when I was at UTD and Peggy a professor at quad C and I saw Erica a Spanish teacher at HP. Good times. Then back home to start laundry. (Always grounded in reality, that's me).

I love my new curtains by the way. I realize the tv room is a mess, but don't the curtains look fabulous? And the room really is warmer. Please note the lovely tv hanging on the wall. I don't know why the pictures place sideways some times, but also notice the adorable dog on the floor looking for love, and then eyeballing me through the front window. He is very funny. When I go out front, he sits and watches me quite carefully.

Crazy Mothers

So my kids are doing all of this blogging for their journal writing and story writing. We are in the short story unit. So, I make all of these journal questions to go with the short stories they are reading, The Cask of Amontillado, Lamb to the Slaughter, The Sniper and the like. Turns out our stories have a bit of a dark edge.

I know this because yesterday morning I get this diatribe from a crazy mother that she felt a need to copy the principal and the asst principal on. She explained why the journal questions were so horrible and she didnt' want her child responding to it etc. OK, no problem. When she responded to me and was all rosy and nice did she copy the principal and assistant? Noooooo

On the up side, I got a message from another mom within 24 hours saying how great I am and she appreciates what I'm doing etc.

7 days later . . .

I can tell you at this point I feel like I have been busier than hell all week. I'm not sure if I can keep everything in order.

Shawn Northcutt the photographer from hell: Well, after a bunch of back and forth, the boys told me to basically agree to pay shawn what he wanted, but to just get rid of him. Shawn sent a courier over to the high school with the disk of images. One of the guys wasn't included in the disk, so I told the courier I wasn't going to give him the invoice ok's by the boys yet. Shawn sent an email saying he was going to cancel his reimbursement check until it was resolved. What a putz. I sent a note back telling him to just send me another disk with the rest of the images. What a novel idea. He is supposed to have all of the senior images sent to the plant by tomorrow. Honestly, if the plant doesn't get them I am going postal on his butt.

New Photographers: Tread gave me the name of a guy, Mike, who has great photos on his web site, hooray, and then I got another name from Helen, the pr person for the district. So, I have two photographers.

Sunday I thought I had hired a scheduler. I didn't hear from him until Tuesday evening. Turns out his appendix ruptured Sunday. Some people will do anything to get out of work. Poor guy. At any rate, he is healing at home and I am trying to call people like a wild thing. I've actually made contact of some sort with everyone, and scheduled three appts.

I'm trying to reach all of these people and get photos or schedule appts. I'd like to add part of the problem is that my phone went dead today. On the phone too much. Grrrr.

The dogs are getting the short end of the stick at the moment. I keep getting home late, and they aren't getting quality time or walks.

The girls have been working madly on the yearbook. They are really on top of it. Our plan is to get proofs by this coming Monday, finish those and send out another 30 spreads or so before Christmas.