This week was a LOT. It was Week 1 of Sugar Detox, it was the week before our big golf outing, I went to Brooklyn on a school night, and I started doing Camera Club at work Every Day (and twice on Thursday!). It was just a LOT. By the time Friday got here, I was toast and just needed a quiet weekend at home. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Monday

Day 1 of Sugar Detox. I was partially prepared*. Ha. Story of my life. I had gotten to the market over the weekend but had not prepared everything I’d planned to. So the first day I just did not have enough food! I was never planning to portion control or follow the Bright Line food plan yet I found myself with Not Enough Food during the workday. Lesson #1. Bring More Food. I’ll give a detailed re-cap at the end of the 2 weeks.

And while I’m not doing this TO lose weight specifically, I’m an obsessive scale-stepper-onner, so this is Day One.

I think I mentioned somewhere recently that I have lost some weight since I first went to Dr. Annoying back in April or May. That day I was at 312. I’d always told myself the highest I would let myself go was 300. But there I was. So I just started being more mindful of my carb intake (less pasta, less bread) and portion size. I was not dieting by any stretch of the imagination, but overall, I was eating a little less and less of the things I know put weight on me. Also, he’d told me that the welbutrin may cause either weight loss or weight gain (ha, very helpful). So before starting the sugar detox I was already down 18 pounds from my high five-ish months ago. I could feel it ever so slightly in the fit of waistbands.

Tuesday

I’ve been doing Camera Club with two adult clients with autism for the past two months, but now it was time to start up with some of the others. So Camera Club is every day and we meet either at their building or at a farm they go to a couple days a week. We do a little lesson on holding the camera straight and steady with both hands, seeing their subject in the display, and pressing the shutter slowly while keeping the camera still. Then we go for a little walk outside and find things to shoot. A couple of the groups will go on to learn elements of photography and composition, but for others, fine motor skills are a challenge so the real work will just be in handling the camera.

Anyway, it’s nice to get a little outdoor time in the middle of the workday…though this week was tough with so many golf things going on. It was tough to keep up with it all.

Straight from work, I met up with two friends and we headed into Brooklyn for a watercolor class. The best part was it was held on a rooftop right between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. We all did our own take on the scene, with the teacher just guiding us a bit on how to paint.

Wednesday

I was exhausted. The no-sugar (or flour!) thing is going alright but I’m a little tired. I got home after work and just crashed. There were only two blog posts last week. I just couldn’t do it all.

Thursday

Starting to feel a little stressed because for every golf task I complete, two more pop up in its wake. And I met with two camera club groups today, two separate times, two separate locations. I’m enjoying it but this week, it’s a lot. Maybe this is Trial by Fire and next week will feel like cake in comparison without golf prep and sugar withdrawal.

Anyway, one of the more advanced guys has always wanted to visit a nearby closed-down psychiatric hospital, so that’s where we went. We stayed near the main paths (they’ve actually created nice walking/biking paths throughout the grounds) but we could still walk up close to some buildings and peep in windows. It made his day and that made me feel good.

Friday

D-Day. Had to get all the golf stuff wrapped up today. There’s a LOT that goes into event prep. For golf, there’s a journal, there are signs, donation cards, registration, foursomes need to be created, volunteers coordinated, prizes need to be wrapped, it’s just a lot. We’re down one person on our development team, so. It was a lot.

Got over to the farm for camera club and got to see the sky.

Came home that afternoon and crashed. Read til I lost light then watched a movie.

Saturday

Made a list. Checked it twice. Did none of it. Ha.

* It’s always so hard when you need to get a lot of stuff done, but you also need some downtime. Downtime usually wins out with me. Which is why I am rarely fully prepared for anything. Oh well. Let’s just say that’s part of my charm.

Sunday

Sunday is the day when I wish I had gotten more stuff done on Saturday so I could just relax.

I stepped on the scale on Day 7 of Sugar Detox…

On the last day of Week 1, I will say…it was not so bad. I whined and carried on way more than was necessary. It possibly helped being such a busy week, I had less downtime to think about all the things I couldn’t have. But I never felt any big bad sugar withdrawals, other than feeling tired, but that could have been attributable to several things (as I mentioned in a post last week).

There are several of us on a “sugar detoxer” mailing list and that’s definitely been a help – sharing tips and recipes and having a place to vent and ask questions. If anyone else wants in for Week 2, let me know!

Today was all about being productive. Getting several blog posts written for the week ahead. Giving some thought to what food I can take with me to the golf outing tomorrow. It’s an all-day affair and I’ll be out on the course all afternoon taking pictures, then doing the same at cocktail hour and the dinner presentation. It’s officially over at 8pm but then we have to pack everything up…and it’s about an hour from home. So it’s a long exhausting day, and while there will obviously be food, I’ll be working, not dining…and there won’t necessarily be many sugar/flour free options.

What I Read

I’m finding it interesting that weeks seem to be either all good books or all bad books. This week was bad. Last week was all good. The week before was bad.

Caveat: I should really change “bad books” to “books I don’t like.” A BAD book I won’t even continue reading. These were not BAD. They were readable…and many other people loved them. I was just not one of them.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman. Okay. In truth, it was an endearing story of a girl who has just lost her best friend: her grandmother. Grandmother was quite a character and lived life on her own damn terms and people either loved her or were perpetually pissed off at her.

The killer for me, personally, was the fairy tale elements and secret language. Young Girl and Grandmother had all these stories about imaginary lands and characters (that yes, mostly tied in with actual events and people) and there was a fantastical element of larger than life characters: a “wuss” (or wusser, now I can’t recall) a GIANT HAIRY BEAST…or perhaps a chocolate lab, I couldn’t be sure…and THE MONSTER who was actually a broken-hearted war veteran suffering from PTSD. Anyway…I kept wanting to stop reading. There were too many Tales from the Land of Almost Awake (gag) inserts for me.

BUT…when reading Backman’s A Man Called Ove, I also wanted to quit reading in the beginning (I tend to dislike books before I like them. They all have to win me over in some way), but it turned out to be so lovely and I was so pleased that I had continued. So I kept giving this one the benefit of the doubt. And I was enjoying the characters and I did want to see how it all turned out, so about 2/3 of the way in I just stopped reading the fairy tale parts! Yes, I’m a child, but it made the book tolerable for me. And really they were not essential to the story.  But I did power through and I did enjoy the wrap-up and he is a lovely writer, so. Many people loved the book. Fairy tales and wildly made-up stories are just not my jam.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. And speaking of jam (in a couple minutes you’ll see what I did there), this was another book that’s fine, blah blah blah, but it annoyed me. It was way too descripty. And foody. It was all “the scent of the sun-ripened peach was redolent of the old south” or “the wine was smooth and rich like the rivers of Provence.” I just made those up, don’t look for them in the book, ha. I don’t like over-the-top descriptions. Or extravagant similies (UGH). Don’t DESCRIBE things to me, just tell me the story. Let my own mind imagine the scene as it will. So every time (which was often) a new food would be presented in the class or story it would be all dramatic and sensuous and complex and BARF. Not My Jam (get it now?).

Also, it was one of those stories that’s really just a lot of little unrelated stories with the one commonality of The Cooking Class. I don’t like reading short stories. They’re too short! There’s not enough. And then you go right into another one about totally different people and events. Nope. Not for me. So this was that for me. Not exactly, but close enough.

Listen, many reviews were gushing and appreciative of her writing. Many people loved it. It was not a BAD book. It’s just not for me.

What I Watched

Fortunately, I had better luck this week with movies. AND I’m very excited that over the next two weeks most of my tv shows start up again…so I don’t have to rely on movies for my total relaxation entertainment. Because movies are really struggling to please me. Why are there so many BAD movies?!? Anyway, I really enjoyed these:

Happy Thank You More Please

I’m always surprised when a movie pops up that I’ve never even heard of, that has people in it I like, and I enjoy  the movie…and it’s OLD. This movie is from 2010. How, for NINE YEARS, have I never heard of a movie with Josh Radnor, Zoe Kazan and Tony Hale? That I LIKED?? How has Netflix not served this up to me as “Movies We Think You’ll Like Based on What You’ve Watched”?? For Nine Years? HOW, NETFLIX? HOW?

Netflix’s failings aside, this was charming and likable. For starters, I adore Josh Radnor (Ted, in How I Met Your Mother). Basic premise: While loosely about a group of 30-something friends who are not quite sure of their place in the world (HOW ORIGINAL), the main storyline is about Sam (JR) who steps in when he sees a young boy get separated from his foster family on the subway. Let touching storyline begin. It’s not the stuff of Academy Awards, but I laughed, I cried, I rooted. I was pleased.

The Painted Veil

If this sounds familiar it’s because last week I read the book of the same name by Somerset Maugham…and I was reminded that I had seen part of the movie. So this week I made a point of actually watching the movie from start to finish…and it turns out I already had seen it from start to finish, but the movie so deviates from the book that I thought I had not.

Anyway, I really loved the movie. Usually I prefer the book to the movie, but in this case, the movie shows and wraps things up in a much nicer way, I cared for the characters more, and scenery and clothing were so lovely to look at. So if you’re only going to do one or the other…my vote is on the movie.

Alrighty then. Another week down. Another about to begin. It’s 8:30 and I’m going to bed…

Goodnight, yall!