Ayn's Multiple World

Wrapping up the Last of Vacation Thoughts

Good morning or at least almost good morning. It’s already 11 am. Rich is still here, but he’s on his way to his mother’s. She’s had a real hard time over the last couple of days. Bud took away her alcohol, because she had too much. She thought he threw it over the outdoor railing, so she woke up after he’d gone to bed and was outside looking for it for about an hour, before she found her way to a neighbors who helped her get back to the house. She slept most of the next day. It was a very dangerous thing to do. The whole family is very worried for her.

Rich has been in close contact. He talked to her again last night and she wanted him to come out and to bring smokes and alcohol. Rich wasn’t going to do that. I will feel more relieved when he goes out there today though. I think she really needs some help. I’m not sold that Rich is going to be the one to do it, but at least he’ll give Bud some relief and the two of them together stand the best chance.

I think for now though he’s stalling. He didn’t get up until I woke him at 8 am. He and I both were on the couch watching his Sunday news show and he was nice enough to read the stuff I’d put down on his blog about the car. It was different yesterday, but I’ll get to that in a moment. After that he’s had on a couple of fishy shows. He and I just finished a scrambled egg breakfast. It was good. It had some ham and cheese and salsa in it.

That sort of sets us up for the first point of doing our weights more seriously.

Because of the way my program on the iPod works, our weights and goals and calories are being added together. We got some static on that, but it’s the way it’s going to be because it’s easiest for me to do calories on our portable devise. He suggested that I use one for me and then the computer for him, but that’s no good and doesn’t stress working together on our weight.

Together we weigh 550 lbs and we want to lose 200 lbs, so that means we have collectively have to get down to 350 lbs. Pretty good? Collectively we can only have 2687 calories a day. That is 1500 for Rich and 1187 for me. This means that he’s got 56% of the calories and I’ve got 44% of the calories, but when we figured out the stuff both of us ate this morning, I’d already eaten 60% of the calories and he’d only eaten 40%. One on one, he’s good at 24% of his daily allotment, but we’re already up to 45%. Wow. This is going to be a tough thing. I don’t know if he will, but we told him he should call us immediately if he ate or is going to eat something. We’ll figure out a standard sandwich, which he should be eating most days, but he’s got to tell me if he’s had extra. Ok, ok … that’s enough of our weight situation. We’re trying, right?

Hmm, one more statistic – I’ve got 120 pounds to lose and he’s got 80 pounds to lose so that means that I should be doing 60% of the weight loss and he should be doing 40%. Does it come out this clearly? He gets 56% of the food so he can lose 40% of our weight, and then I get 44% of the food and I have to lose 60% of the weight. It seems pretty good, and then once more and we need to remember the magic calorie intake for the day is 2687. Both of us gotta be under that.

Good, we just talked to Rich for about 2 minutes. He said that I have to remember the activity levels. And I told him we were both slugs, until I got back to the gym and he started doing basketball games again. HMPF!

He doesn’t look close to out of the door yet. He’s still in his jammas. It’s going to be an ok day, right? Just we’re still worrying about the mother.

Rich and I had a bad day yesterday … it started around 1 pm when he left for the game. He didn’t want to consider any other car even though I’d done the numbers.

He called home from the card game at one point to tell me he’d be later because he was winning, and we both clarified that I was still frustrated with him, but it wasn’t because he was out, it’s because I thought he was close-minded in not listening to what I had to add. I knew that the choice to buy the car was all his, but I wanted him to consider the Hybrid do to reasons mentioned yesterday.

When the mother stuff got added too, there was some more grumpiness. We’re not talking about enough to keep us apart. He ended up finishing the show we’d been watching – West Side Story, and then we watched a couple more movies together. I was trying to be good, but still felt put-out. He thought that I should come in and rub his back, so we did that and at some point not too far down the road, my frustration finally melted. We went to bed there with our arms tucked over him. We woke up about 5 am, had those silly rice cakes with peanut butter on them, and then we went back to bed until almost 7:30 am. That’s been pretty much of the day so far and last night. We really hate it when the nights go as they had last night. I felt really loved with him this morning, but the time wasted, I’m not going to get back.

That actually is part of the problem. I have to face that today is the last day of our break. I am having a real hard time with that. We were going to go out yesterday, but we wanted to go look at the Highlander, and he was upset because we were being pushy. So we said fine, we’ll stay home all day. Then he said today we’d go out to the museum, but given a choice of that or his mother’s I know he really has to do that TOP PRIORITY!

I think you are then going to get me for quite a bit of time then. I don’t know where we are going with the day though. Just know that I want to be here writing.

Maybe later in the day, we’ll then go back to our editing. We have two chapters done on the 2nd book.

Yup, yup his shows getting over and he’s going to take his shower. He’s now making sure his shows are saved proper.

Ok, good, good. He’s now gone. It’s 12:45 pm. He got some ham for us for lunch.

He had his on a sandwich. I’m going to try not to go too often to be checking out the numbers, but I hope I gained some ground there in that he had bread and jardinière and we didn’t HA! We’ll get back to our goals. I’m thinking though we’re going to have to cut down on our fudgsicles … that’s going to be hard. And, we put away the juice and got out some water. That has to be done too, right?

The other thing we did was to look at Rich’s fishy notes. It’s a good thing I think because it will teach me about fishing and it will help Rich. He added some general interest links – 5, and he added some information on looking at rods and reels. I think he likes when I add this to his blog, because he’s coming to me now and saying – here add this. And, of course we’re going to try and make it look pretty.

I want it to get so that when he sits down at the computer, he will go to his blog and check out links or recalculate something that he has to do. I think he’s got a lot in his mind and it needs to be put somewhere organized. I think he’s going to have fun with this whole thing. One thing we know for sure – Rich REALLY likes to think about fishy-stuff.

We’ve also captured the TV back. We’re listing to the foreign guy Fareed Zakaria talk to people about the Muslin/Jewish war. I’m still not too real deeply involved in this argument but, we’re trying to keep our foot in the water. They seem to hate each other and I just think things can be better. I don’t agree with killing in either this war or the one Bush started, because I think that both side there are mothers AND their kids dying. I really hate that part.

Ok, and then are we caught up? Hmm, just took a page and a half. Let’s figure out where to go from here. If I were really sane, I would be working on the bills.

But, I’m not sure how strong all that is. I did collect the bills and brought them to my table, so I figure that is getting somewhere. I really have no excuse now.

It would seem that it would be a lot better to figure out bills now before the 13 day vacation is over. Wasn’t that the excuse before? We just didn’t have enough time.

WooHOO!! We’re back. It’s pretty late in the day though. It is 4:15 pm. We just finished picking up the house. We also took our shower, but I might have stated that before. The BIG deal is that we got done with our bills. WOOHOOOOO!!!

We used the bank to write an account for all our bills and we went from $2500-something in the account down to $25. Well, actually there is $27, but we didn’t want to brag. I feel very, very good. I think the hardest part was that there appears now to be 11 medical bills we are paying on. Wow! That’s just in case you were wondering where our money went to. The bills included money going out to pay January rent, the car, the two student loans, and a whole lot of everything.

Everyone that asked got some, though we’re a far way from being over.

One of the things we did was to record bills as automatic – which were the monthly bills. And, on each of those accounts, we put down approximately how many months we had to pay on the bill - that made me feel very good that there would be end dates to making those payments. The most worrisome doctor bills was 23 months, but there might be one other that I paid a couple of weeks ago when someone called. I probably should have added the auto-payments, but we didn’t get that done. We also kind of shifted the bills to being paid at the beginning of the month. I think that will work, but we’re still going to need spending money before the next beginning of the month. The thing is we can’t be spending like we have been – like there was money. God only knows though how I pulled off the Christmas trick with cash.

There were no gifts put on credit card. As near as we can figure There was the $425 paid out in cash to 9 people, $45 given to Rich’s magazine, $40 to the two sisters, $325 to the books, and $100 for Christmas dinner that means we spent just under $1000, but we gave gifts to let’s see Maury, Thom, Joe, Alexis, Lauren, Cari, Alex, Ami, Isa, Rich, Dr. Marvin, Dr. Woollcott, Dr. Luttmers, Sr. Theresa, Sr. Florence, and Rich’s Mom – so that’s 16 people $935/15 = $58 average. Is that good? I think so the doctors and sisters were more like $40 and the family members got money, books, AND dinner so I think I stacked it pretty good, especially since the three boys were stacked toward $100 each.

I am actually VERY proud of myself to have paid for Christmas and everyone got good and even WE got a book! Sister had given the $100, my mother the $200, Rich gave some shirts, $100, socks and taken out to dinner and the zoo, and Joe gave a picture, Maury’s Mom gave gloves, oh yeah plus we got a little-stuffed Rich!

Oh Lordy are we being anal retentive. I think though that we can officially call last year over and figure that it’s about time we get back to work. I keep going over and over the numbers in my head because there’s a feeling of not having given back enough, or in having missed someone. I think the person who gets the worst deal is my mother. We don’t traditionally give her gifts. To be fair, we’d gotten a $300 ticket to come up to see her for 5 days. She turned down that gift, but it was stated that we might be able to do it later. We’ve talked and are feeling some cooperation with Rich in that I told him this year I would like to visit my mother and John and Connie Sue. We told him that it should work well for him, because he can bring his boat to either MN or WI and both John and Mark are fishy people.

posted by Ann Marie @ 1/05/2009 05:25:00 AM Comments: 0