Thanks for all the birthday wishes guys!! I really appreciate it. 
So yesterday was awesome. Massage, manicure, pedicure, lunch at a tea room, shopping…what more could a girly-girl want?? I spent the whole day by myself doing the things that I wanted to do. It was bliss! A few years ago, it would not have occured to me to spend my day alone, but yesterday I didn’t really want anyone with me. I think what made this birthday so much fun is that for the probably the first time ever in my life, I wasn’t depending on someone else to make it a special day. I didn’t expect anything from anybody, so really there were no expectations of how I thought the day should go. And whaddya know, it was one of the best days I’ve ever had! I even went to the little tea room and had lunch alone (my spa day ran late, and Shawn had already had lunch by the time I was finished) but it was lovely anyway. I loved every minute of it!
Oh, and I stopped by Goodwill and picked up two very cute, very still-had-the-store-tags-on-them new summer dresses. They need to be altered and taken in a bit, but they are easy fixes that I can do myself this weekend. I can’t wait for warmer weather so I can show them off! I also bought myself (not at Goodwill, just various random stores) new flip flops, a stainless steele water bottle, and a toe ring. I know!! A toe ring!! I have always wanted one, and plus I needed something to draw attention to my lovely newly pedicured toes, so when I saw the rack of toe rings, I found one I liked and I bought it for a whole $5. It is sterling silver, so I don’t have to worry about it turning my toe green. It’s the little things in life that please me so!
I had a piece of cake, of course, but I didn’t go nuts with it or anything. Had my peice and I was done. Back to the no-sweets thing again today. I also didn’t get any formal exercise in yesteday, but with all the shopping I did, I think that counts right? So back to the workout challenge again today. I’m tired, but I’ll muster up the energy to get it done. Somehow. Between dinner, laundry, my iChange conference call, and more laundry, I’ll fit it in.
How’s the iChange thing going, you ask? Hey thanks for asking! I’ll tell you – my group is…how do I put this? Frankly it’s floundering. I had one group member and she hasn’t been on the site in about 6 days, so I’m afraid I have lost her. I think the other group leaders are having a hard time as well. We are going to talk tonight about some different things we can do, but I feel like the wind has been let out of my sails. Just FYI, anyone can join iChange for free and use the trackers – you don’t have to sign up for one of the groups. If you are the type that likes to do things on your own, you can totally do that too, or you can join my group (the funnest option, I think), or you can join one of the experts’ groups. There are a lot of ways to use the site, if you feel so inclined. Just thought I’d throw that out there in case you were wondering.
As far as my success with iChange, I had a little melt down and decided that I absolutely hate counting calories. I can’t see the forest for the trees when I’m counting things (calories, points, etc), and I get really obsessive about food. It brings out The Crazy, and it took me a long time to shut her down… I don’t want her making a reapperance. So I decided that I”m just going to focus on eating the best food I possibly can, not too much, but just enough and use the trackers without the calorie info. I breathed a sigh of relief and two days later, I lost 2 pounds. My head really can get in the way of my weight loss if I let it. I’ve been doing this whole weight loss thing long enough to know what works and what doesn’t. So all that, plus my no-sweets challenge, and my work out challenge hopefully will blast me through the 155 wall that I’ve been sitting at for awhile. 154 will be a sweet victory!
Speaking of sweets, Diane wrote about SugarStacks in her post today. It’s a website that uses sugar cubes to visually represent the amount of sugar in everyday foods. Very interesting, and very relevant for me. Oh, and there’s a blog too, cause we all love a blog, don’t we?! Go check it out!
Have a good day! 
