This morning I started to count calories, something I’ve never ever ever done (and said I’d never do) in my life. It’s apparently a year of firsts, as I’ve also begun on a treadmill. Turns out I like it better than walking outside in terms of getting exercise (as opposed to fresh air or something to do), because it’s a level, springy surface that has about zero chance of hurting my knee. In fact, the more treadmill I do, the less my knee hurts.

In any case, I was talking about calories. I was at a website that gave what calorie count you’d need to maintain your current weight. Right now it’s 2000. I put in my target(ish) weight and it said to maintain that weight, I’d need to have a net calorie count (ie intake minus exercise) of 1800. So I’m aiming for about that much per day (but I won’t cry if I go over).

Now, there’s no way in hell I’ll be counting every single thing I eat, but I do need to get a handle on portion control, so today I counted everything. Well, everything except vegetables, because I’ll be damned if I count veggies in a number that might make me want to try and eat less. I’ll aim for 1800 a day with a pile of veggies and fruits on top, and if I find that’s not working, I’ll figure out what to cut out of that 1800. Besides, some veggies are negative calories - they burn more calories in self-digestion than they were in the first place.

So I figure I had about 400-500 calories at breakfast (bread + peanut butter + hot chocolate). I’m unsure what to do there, I totally love my toast and pb, but it seems high - but at the same time, I need energy for the day and if I have something else (like cereal or a smoothie) I’m starving by 10:30. Hmm.

For lunch, I had a completely delicious wrap: sundried tomato tortilla, low-fat peppercorn ranch dressing, three leaves of romaine, three thin slices of smoked meat, plus red onion, red and yellow pepper and a handful of sugar snap peas. To DIE for, let me tell you. I’ve been eating the same thing for three days and it just doesn’t get old. Minus veggies, the wrap was about 300 calories (tortilla + meat + ranch), and very fulfilling.

I drink 100% juice, and this week I’m sick so I’m drinking way lots more. Juice is surprisingly full of calories, but it’s helping me be healthy so I don’t care - however, I’ve probably had 200-300 calories from juice today.

For supper I really wanted nachos, but I also needed to make sure I didn’t over-do it. I had about 1100 calories in the day if you count the juice, so I wanted to make supper about a 500 cal deal. I counted the chips as I laid them on the plate (10 multigrain and 20 low-sodium rounds, which was slightly fewer than I normally use = 385 calories!); measured the cheese (1/3 cup = 110 cal) - I debated putting more cheese on and just counting it, but decided to try the smaller amount to see if I liked it; and then I covered it in red onions and red/yellow peppers and nuked it for a few minutes.

Of course you can’t have nachos without salsa and sour cream! Hello! Salsa is 25 cals for 1/4 cup, and fat-free sour cream is 25 cals for 2 tbsp. I didn’t measure but I figure it was another 100 calories for the condiments. Grand total approximately 600 calories, AND it was totally delicious. We’ll see if I’m hungry later! If I am, I think I’m allowed to have a cookie!

I don’t want to be one of those numbers-junkies, but I think I’ll do this for a bit to get a handle on my portion size. I really need to measure and then see and then eat to get a real grasp of how much food I actually need - which is clearly less than I’m currently eating.

Also! My bento-style laptop lunchbox will help! It’s on order (along with a couple of resuable grocery bags which fold up to be this small) and I’m pretty excited to get it. I’m also trolling through the thousands of images on the Flickr Laptop Lunches Pool to get ideas. Some of it doesn’t appeal to me, some of it’s in the “duh” territory, but there are huge amounts of “what a great idea!”s as well. Yay the internets!

I just got me a fantastic deal on an IBM Thinkpad r40. $400 for a laptop, dude! And it’s smoking fast for such a tiny, older machine. I’m typing this from my bedroom. Whee!

It’s really going to be for my studio, so that when I take photos of my jewellery I can look at and edit them - and even update my site shop immediately - instead of taking everything apart and running downstairs and then realizing that I need to take them again and coming back upstairs… this will just be much easier. I’ve got it networked so that I don’t even need to use this hard drive, I can simply put the photos directly in the folder I always put them in, on my desktop downstairs.

Exciting!

It’s black, and I kind of want to get some vinyl decals for it in my “70s circle gayle bird designs” style. Of course, I’ve wanted to get something vinyl for my car for a year now and haven’t done that yet, either. But my car vinyls I want to be all white, and in a pattern I haven’t figured out yet.

The Marconi craft show is next week.. “the big one”, as they call it. I’m a little excited. I think it’s going to go very, very well. This laptop was my pre-present

Anyway. I’m still half awake, and I haven’t plugged this in yet and I really need to head downstairs for breakfast. I really just wanted to post here because I can.

I’m off to the doctor to see the results of the x-rays they took of my knee two weeks ago. I’m not in the excruciating pain I was in for about three weeks, but whenever anybody asks me how my knee is, I say, “weak and frightened.” 

It’s been 13 years since I twisted my knee in a non-accident. It’s time it was fixed.  

Dear Everybody I Love,

The heat wave that’s been plaguing the continent has finally noticed the northeast coast. It’s been 30 degrees and not raining for two whole days in a row! I’m off to swim shortly but I felt like updating.

Life has never been this good, and I only expect it to keep getting better. Work is great (well, you know, for something called “work”); I’ve got time and freedom to innovate products and schemes to make my life and many others’ more productive, plus I’m being truly appreciated for what I do there. It feels good.

Laird and I are still in the stupidly happy phase, grossing out small children and adults alike with our giddy pleasure in each other’s company. We have dozens of dumb in-jokes that make us laugh for hours and which never stop being funny.

I still miss Shauna more than I can write about. It keeps me from calling her sometimes, it hurts too much to talk to her and not be able to hang out. I know that’s stupid and it’s making it worse but I can’t help it.

I’ve also taken it upon myself to seriously learn some real Tarot reading. I’ve dabbled, but my Reflections deck is so gorgeous I just want to be inside it, and this weekend I came across a Tarot Journalling book I’d bought at Little Mysteries last time I was in Halifax. Coincidentally, I also completely cleaned, gutted and organized my studio on the weekend (hence finding books I’d forgotten about!) so I had a lovely clean workspace on which to lay out my cards and really dig into the book. I’ve begun by writing anything that strikes my fancy into a 8.5×5.5 Moleskine notebook I had lying around. The idea in the beginning, for me, is to learn what the cards mean - like, really learn them.

For instance, I had no idea that the numbers actually meant something. I mean, I knew that the individual cards had meaning but I didn’t understand that the meaning came from the numbers plus the suit symbols - the numbers weren’t just a way of organizing the cards at all. And they make sense. A two is all about duality; the 10s are the finish of one cycle and the start of a new one; a three is about losing balance and a four is about regaining it. Making sense is soooo the key to me remembering things.

I’m also using this opportunity to create a more visual journal, something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. I’ve got my trusty little coloured pencils and I’m drawing symbols and such around the words I write.. hopefully to get much more elaborate and creative as I go. I haven’t drawn anything in ages!

I’m having quite a bit of fun. And now it’s time to buy some BBQ hotdogs and head to the pool!

Love to all

Gayle

I saw/listened to most of this concert last night, and the website tells me the CDs are not for sale.

Aargh.

Laird had a couple of pimples on the back of his neck that he was complaining about, so I offered my Avon Overnight Blemish Treatment. He scoffed at it for not being manly enough, so I trounced out of the room, got a Sharpie, and holding it very still with difficulty (due to the giggles), I did this to it:

Once he stopped laughing, he then agreed to use it. Seeing as it’s 100% acid and all.

I have my own computer back. It’s only got 40G of space and no secondary drive whatsoever, and I honestly at this point have no idea what kind of any specs it has anymore; but it works and it’s here, and I realized I could finally dump my photo cards! Clearly, since life and data are fleeting, I then immediately backed them up onto CD. I decided I needed another wee CD binder for my backups and headed to the dollar store, where I found to my delight these colourful retro-design cases! Instead of one, I bought all three and formulated a plan for organization and labelling which makes me far too happy:

Oh, and Bunny is from an online pattern and some very soft fleecy material, that I made a long while ago. Anyway, while I was dumping out cards, I came across a plethora of interesting images that I thought I’d share!

First, I discovered some wonderful frost patterns on our back steps the other morning. I’ve never seen such things on wood!

Next! I have been feeling beautiful lately, mostly because I have a man who tells me that I am and I can see it in his eyes; so much so that when I look in the mirror, even I see it, which has never happened to me before. Anyway, I was trying on a shirt and thought, DAMN, I look good, so I took a picture to prove it :D.

My younger brother Al and I went on a little photo-taking expedition this winter, trying to prove whose camera was cooler. His zoom capabilities make me ill, but my focus worked quicker. I got these two shots of the sunset over the harbour and a nest of windmills, which some people bitched about but which I think have a real beauty to them. It was SO COLD that day, I’m shivering just thinking about it.

And finally, a picture of my corner of our media room, after buying and setting up my new TV and cleaning the whole room over the holidays. It’s not nearly this neat for more than ten minutes at a time, and it’s in a state of sad disrepair at the moment. But tv! Pretty!

clearly, i busted my site’s design.

probably you don’t hate it as much as i do; humour me and hang in there while I try to fix it.

i possibly never want to see another computer ever again.

I went to see Kathy again last night. It was a calmer, more relaxed evening - well, in that I had no huge epiphanies. Mostly, anyway.

We discussed my week, which was mostly gleeful and happy. I had spent the night before with Laird hanging out at dollarama and value village, having way too much fun looking at stuff; and then he hung out while I dyed my hair (red again), and he listened while I played guitar, and it was really great. She asked about my pain issues, and I said my knee and hand were OK, but my neck was killing me while I figured out the combination to my new pillows. I laid down on her comfy comfy table and was having a hard time getting enough air into my lungs for some reason. But she did a little Reiki work on my knee, and then I picked the cards for the IET.

Remember how last time I picked cards and I got guilt, heart, and powerlessness? This time I didn’t look at the cards when picking them (the last time I chose based on the faces on the back), and instead, I got - guilt, heart, and powerlessness. Seriously. She had me pick another one and it was threat - especially to the back of the neck - and to work on it required the throat and lungs, and it usually affects creative people.

Seriously.

So the guilt out of my head was very light and she figures it’s clear. I still can’t think of a single thing I’d be guilty for because I don’t do guilt - but probably I just repress it all. I waited for the heart work with some trepidation, but it was very easy and simple; she said it was like a shadow of the last time.. and I was thinking of how much it hurt last time to hear those words ‘betrayal” and “trust” and “fear of having love taken away” and “rejection”… and this time I heard the words, and I thought of Kevin and even of George which is wayyyy in the past, and I brought up specific scenes of memory where I had been betrayed and rejected, and I consciously thought of letting it go, letting it all go… and then I realized: IT DIDN’T HURT ANYMORE. I got this biiiiiiiiiiiiig grin on my face and I just about cried; I couldn’t say it out loud, but feeling it was really lovely.

The powerlessness I feel is strongly connected to my jewellery as a business; I feel empowered now and had three separate brilliant ideas since last night. (In related news, Laird is helping me marketing-wise.)  I had forgotten what the powerlessness and stress were replaced with the last time, but it was Ease (and power), and she talked about opening the door and letting in soul mates of every kind so they can take me by the hand and help me do what is right for me.

Then she gave me a hand massage AND a foot massage. Heavenly! She wrote out the Healing Codes for my knee, and made me pick two power statements I have to say out loud. I forget the first one and it seems she didn’t write it down, but the second one was “I can step out to accomplish things and life will support me.”

And then we discussed some jewellery options. I’m going to prototype some chakra bracelets for about $20 in her shop, and we’re going to split the proceeds down the middle; I’m doing wholesale prices but with consignment rules, because I want us both to profit and I want the line I develop here to be indicative of both of us - sort of “our” jewellery, wherein she picks the stones and the meanings and I create the pieces.

When I got home, my cousin came over to redeem her holiday gift certificate from her mom (my aunt), and she got an amber-coloured glass ring, and a stick pearl and amber pendant. Then we sat and talked and while nobody noticed, I sneakily made a set of amber earrings to match and gave them to her Fun times!

Now I have to shower and eat and go to work and I don’t wanna. Wah!

Huh. This was really interesting but the end totally confused me. I think it was connected to the dark tower/gunslinger series, which I started reading but lost one of the books and never found the others.

Engaging, though.

672 pages.