Hey Sunny...just doin an early morning drive-by to wish you a good week-end!

Wow, I missed so many posts over the weekend!

Blancita, thanks and I think you're right. If I stay in that "fat burning zone" I feel like I'm doing absolutely nothing. I have to go so slowwwwwly. Thanks for checkin in on me. You're such a sweetie!

Steve & Mal, Thanks you two. I probably spend most of my time between RPE 5 & 6. Is that good? It seems to be working so far. I feel pretty good when I get done with cardio.

Val, I went to Whole Foods this weekend with the boyfriend's mom... I'll rant more about that later. Some people really don't care about stuff like that and put it down.

Natalie! I'm glad you're starting to shed what you gained back. I know the heat can be awful and not make you want to go outside. I don't miss living in the south because it got so hot! (But the food was sooooo yummy!)

Cym, thanks for dropping by! I'm really far behind on everyone's journal since I haven't kept up so well over the weekend. I have a lot of reading to do! I need to take Val's approach and have people post in my journal when something major is going on so I can make sure I get to everyone's journal over the weekend. Hahahaha... So much to read!

Update: I'm back up to 185 and I'll be posting a long rant later.

- Sunny

Hi Sunny, missed you!
185, that sucks, I'm sure it's water weight or something, no worries, though!

With me, don't bother reading, it's too long: in a nutshell: I moved to a new place, sans BF, we're still together, I'm going to be 25 on Saturday, and Size 9 feet are A-OK to have for a woman! Looking forward to your rant, and whatever you do, don't let people who disregard healthy/organic food get you down, you're doing yourself and the EARTH a favor, OK?!?!?!

Oh yeah, and I gots me a ticker....those last "vanity pounds," LOL

So here goes the rant..

This past Sunday was my boyfriend's mother's birthday. She lives alone and doesn't have much family, so we invited her over to celebrate her birthday here. In the past, we've invited her over about once every other month so she could visit and get out a bit, since she doesn't leave her condo much. The problem is.. when she comes over she brings more junk food than my household has ever seen. You name it, and she's probably toting it over. Chips, soda, candy, cake (even when its no one's birthday), large sticks of butter (incase we run out??) pancake syrup (I have no idea why...) and tea butter cookies. Yea.. thats just the short list.

Before she came over this time, I had my boyfriend make it clear to her that we don't eat junk food anymore and that we'd pick up a cake or make one here for her, but no more junk food. (We really aren't eating that crap.) Guess who turned up with chips, dip, candy, cookies and more syrup?? So I smiled about it and tried putting it all out of view. Well... She really liked all that junk being on the end of the kitchen counter that you have to walk past to get anywhere in my house. Nice, huh?

While normally you could talk to a person and say, "Hey, ya know.. your son and I have made a huge effort to lose weight and eat healthy foods. We'd really appreciate it if we didn't have chocolates and cookies staring us in the face every time we passed the kitchen," you can't say that to her. She won't listen. She gives me a funny look and says "No, my son really likes to eat this stuff."

Day #1: Saturday - She arrives with junk food galore, including another bottle of pancake syrup. I still don't know why we need so much pancake syrup considering we generally make fruit pancakes and use no syrup! I think we have three bottles now.

After she gets settled in, we head off to Ikea to do a little shopping. What I have to say first is that this woman claims to LOVE shopping and LOVE Ikea. She says there's so many things to get ideas from. Well, Ikea time was spent having a 50yr old woman as us if we could leave once every 5-10 minutes. So finally we cut our interior design excursion short, got the furniture we came for, and headed home.

When we got back, she went inside immediately and made a plate full of chips covered in melted cheese. Then she tried getting us to eat it. My boyfriend told her not to eat much because we were going to have lunch, but when she couldn't get us to eat the cheese oozing chips, she ate the whole plate herself. After bringing in the stuff we bought, we talked about where to go for lunch. Ready for this? Someone didn't want us to go out and get lunch because she already ate. Yep. She went on and on about it and said we should just eat here at home and hang out and wait for her to be hungry again.

We decided we were going to eat out anyway. The boyfriend wanted a burger and I wasn't about to go to the store to pick up all the makings so he could have 1 burger. She was pissed... but went along.

Next stop was a wonderful outdoor arts & crafts show with over 200 regionally known artists and amazing furniture and pottery craftsmen. It was an amazing show with live music, dancers, stilt-walkers, etc. Lots of fun to be had there. Well, a certain person who claims to LOVE the arts and always want to go to museums or sculpture parks decided that she wouldn't stop and look at any artist, but instead walk down the rows at a brisk pace so she could "see everything and be done with it." Yea... nice, eh? Apparently my boyfriend got hounded for the next 25 minutes to call my cellphone so they could find me and leave. We spent just under an hour at the show and I saw maybe 1/5 of it.

Whole Foods was up the street from where we were, so we went that way to pick up a few essentials for the week and some beer. God, yes... We'd be needing some beer. We get inside and the first thing mother-dear wants to do is head off to the bakery. So we point her in the direction (she's never been to a whole foods prior to that) and off she goes while we hit up the bulk bins and beer. When she gets back she exclaims that all she could find was "some gluten free crap" and that there wasn't ANYTHING good in the bakery. Wow. Then she starts ranting about how over-priced the beer is and can we stop to get her a case of Coors Lite. I guess she didn't want to try any new beers. At that point, I remembered I had forgotten to get some couscous at the bulk bins, so I ran off to get that and left my boyfriend and his mother heading the the direction of chips, crackers, etc. (I found out later that she went down that aisle and decided that none of it could be good because it was labeled organic.)

An odd comment was made when we walked down by the bread to pick up some HFCS-free bread. When I looked at a loaf of local-baked cinnamon bread, she said "Oh that looks good! We can cut that up in slices and have it with coffee for breakfast! Oh, but you're on one of those diets where you don't eat carbs, aren't you." I was lost... since 1. I had never told her I was dieting or trying to lose weight. Neither had the boyfriend. and 2. Low carb? Where did she come up with that?? Apparently she ignored the cereal I've been eating, as well as the mashed potatoes I had with my chicken for lunch, followed by the first soda I've had in a long while. And if I were on a low carb diet, why would I be buying Amber Ales?

After that, we came back to our place and did a whole lot of nothing. I buried myself in large stacks of work that I brought home and the boyfriend spent two hours going through photographs we had taken so his mom could pick out pictures she wanted. I was doing alright until I walked away from my work for a bit and when I was coming back, mother-dear was clearing up my bottle of Perrier and my half bottle of still-cold beer. I had to stop her and ask what she was doing. She said she figured I was done with it. I hate when people assume things and don't ask.. and why is she cleaning up after me in MY HOUSE?! So I took my Perrier and set it on the table (I never saw it again...) and took my beer and went to bed with it. Lol... Yea, I took my beer to bed.

That was the end of Saturday... One more day to go and I think I'll put that in a separate post.

- Sunny

Well, she DID carry your BF for 9 months........but that would drive me absolutely INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

INSANE. INSANE. I couldn't take that, I'd bring the whole SIX PACK TO BED!!!

Oh Sunny I'm so sorry

Water weight. Don't fret, ok?

Lol yea I shoulda brought my Perrier to bed too, since she dumped it out. I don't go to other people's houses and start dumping out their bottles of fizzy water, or rearranging their pantries, or cleaning their kitchen (It wasn't even messy! She wiped the same counter down 4 times. )

I feel like when she comes over, I have to hide the cleaners to make sure she doesn't kill us with fumes. Apparently she doesn't like the Biokleen line of cleaners.. lol.

This woman is a "Healthy Habit Sabateur"!! She should be banned.......unfortunately that is unethical. Too bad what she's doing isn't technically unethical!!

She certainly won't be coming over again... Just wait till I post about Sunday.. lol.

*rubbing hands together* I hope this is good!!!

Day #2 - Sunday: The Birthday "PART 1"

Sunday morning started out slowly for us. I don't think my boyfriend was looking forward to getting up and I know I certainly wasn't. We took our time getting showered, dressed, etc. and he headed downstairs to talk to his mother while I stayed upstairs to clean kitty litter boxes, groom the cats, and do some general picking up.

As it turns out, mother-dear decided that my boyfriends jeans were too... ratty? I'm not sure how that started. Anyhow, his jeans look just fine. They're not stained, no holes, not really worn except for 1 pair out of 8, etc. We did patch his favorite pair which he finally wore a hole in. Honestly, who wants to give up a soft pair of jeans that they love? No one. She insisted for a good 25 minutes that he looks terrible in his jeans (I think he looks fine) and that she needs to take him to go pick up new ones (but she wants him to pay for them). I really don't understand where she gets off telling him he looks so terrible when she can't even dress herself with any sort of dignity. Seriously..

I stayed upstairs for as much of that as I could, keeping myself busy, during which the two of them had come to an agreement on what we'd be doing for the day. I was supposed to be going back to the art show to finish looking around and picking up information for work (sort of an optional event), but instead I decided to spend a little quality time with the two of them. It was, after all, someone's birthday and wouldn't it be rude of me to not participate?

What I have to interject here is that at this point we had spent over a day suggesting places to go and things to do in the Seattle area and everything we suggested got shot down with "No.. that doesn't sound fun," or "No I don't want to go there," so on and so forth. In total, I remember almost 20 suggestions being shot down. The only idea mother-dear had was to go to a 3rd rate casino to the north and then to an outlet mall nearby, just after she explicitly told us she didn't want to go shopping. 45 minute drive plus traffic to go to a casino for an hour and come back? I don't think so... On top of that, if she didn't want to go shopping, why did she want to go play dress-up with her son? He's 25 yrs old for gods sake.. He dresses himself very nicely without her help.

<Intermission and coffee break. I'll continue the rant when I get back.>

Oh Sunny, sounds like you were trying to do a "good deed" and just got crapped on....I hate when that happens!

On the other hand, don't shoot me, but it really sounds like she's just a lonely, sad woman in ultra need of a little catering to and spoiling to make her feel special and needed.....chances are she's really afraid of losing her son - to new thoughts, new ways of living/thinking...Mother's are so weird...I mean she probably made him pancakes and syrup when he was a toddler or something and he loved it and that's what she remembers so she's unconciously trying to duplicate that "making him happy" every time she buys the friggin sryup.

Sometimes I don't think mothers look at us and see "fully functional adult human being capable of making informed choices"...they just see "the baby I gave birth to doing things I don't understand"....and the fight is on!...we have to pull away - they have to hang on...

I totally understand the nightmare this week-end visit had to be for you...but I can't help but be a little sad for your bf's mommy dearest as well.

cym may be right.......but I'm sorryer for you! LOL! INSANE, I tell you!!!

Day #2 - Sunday: The Birthday "Part 2"

It was still morning and my head was already hurting. I have trouble keeping a firm grip on my tongue when people are excessively rude. I think I behaved myself very well while the boyfriend's mom was over. She said a lot of really nasty things and I just let it slide. She belittled her son, and we both let it slide. I know it pissed him off.

Since they had decided where to go, I had to pick up the pace and get ready. I hadn't eaten and the boyfriend's mom didn't want to wait the extra five minutes it would take for me to crack an egg over a pan and put it between two pieces of bread. Thank god, I remembered to hard-boil some eggs just two days before. Hard boiled egg and banana for breakfast in the back seat of my car. Yum.

The decision was to go down to the locks and watch the boats get ferried from Lake Union into the Puget sound. Its a lot of fun if you've never seen them in action. Its also the time of year where salmon begin to ramp up for the mating season. Since the locks are a major passage way for salmon up here, there's tons of educational stuff as well as salmon ladders and windows to see underwater. The locks are surrounded by a park called the Golden Gardens, which is a beautiful and well-groomed park full of amazing blooms and beautiful colors. We happened to show up on the Fuschia Flower Festival day and there was even wonderful live music. Its the perfect place to take photographs of flowers, friends, boats, fish, etc. (Perfect considering the day before, Mom-dear made a huge fuss over wanting to go places to take pictures, but when we suggested half a dozen places to do that, she turned them all down. Just so you know, she doesn't know how to use her camera.)

We weren't there for more than thirty-five minutes before someone was bored and ready to go. She also claimed she was too cold, even though we told her to bring her sweater because we'd be by the water and it would be chilly. She had simply told us she didn't need it.

Since we were already in Ballard (north of Seattle), we figured we'd hit up the Ballard Seafood Fest since mother-dear really wanted to go to it. Ballard is an old Nordic town and its a major celebration of Norse heritage. Lots of fishermen with good stories to tell, tons of food, music, wood carvings, etc. Should be pretty fun, eh? On the way back to the car from Golden Gardens, my boyfriend decided he wanted to try the clam chowder at a little place we parked next to. He'd been wanting to try it for over a year and we just hadn't had right weather for hot chowder. The response to that was, "What, that tourist trap? I'd never eat there!" It was dripping with insult. And yep, she really said that. Just so all of you know... no tourists that I've seen make it as far north as Ballard. Just elderly people and schools of children at the locks.

We went there anyway... and she wouldn't even come inside with us. So we ate outside and the chowder was delicious. We both got something small so we could still try foods at the seafood fest, which was about 15 blocks from where we were.

By the time we got back to the car, my boyfriend's mom had decided she wanted to go to a place called Archie McPhee's, a gag-gift shop on the way. We're always up for good laughs so it sounded like a good idea. The festival was only one block from there and we were sure to have lots of fun. I was so wrong... Once we got out of Archie McPhee's, mother-dear didn't want to go to the seafood fest. She said it was, I think, because we had already eaten. Yep, I think she was pissed because we tried that clam chowder and she didn't want us to. Even if that wasn't the case.... If she knew anything about her son, what he had eaten was barely a snack.

Mother-dear wanted to go home at that point, by way of Costco to pick up the pictures they had ordered online the night before. On the way there, my fuel light came on in my car. She insisted that we fuel up at Costco while we were there. I explained to her that 1. My car has had bad experiences with interphase fuels before and 2. that particular Costco didn't have a gas station. Ya know what she did? She ignored me and told her son to fuel up at Costco. Nice eh? Its my F*$@'ing car and she should have been happy enough that I was toting her ass around and spending $40 on gas alone so she could decide she didn't want to go places as soon as we got there.

When we got back and settled in, my boyfriend and I started making some salads for dinner. His mother said "Wow, you two really do eat healthy stuff now, don't you," and it wasn't said nicely.. it sounded very snide. We offered to make her one and she declined. (The salads by the way, were spectacular). We had all decided to watch something on TV while we ate dinner and then we'd figure out what to do after that. Well, while my boyfriend and I tried watching The Office, mother-dear was making comments about people, the way they dressed, what they said, all kinds of things. It was non-stop talking. (She had also been talking over her son all weekend and ignoring things he said to her.) At some point I asked if I could have the remote so I could turn the volume up. Point for me!

Shortly after, she got up and pointed at my boyfriends beer like "Gimmie, I'll clean it up for you." That pissed him off since it was still half of a freshly cold beer and he was still drinking it. So he told her to back off and she got really pissy. She told him he had a serious attitude problem. I nearly choked on my salad when she said that. We had spent all weekend living with her bullshit and smiling. We were nice about everything until that point.

So she left and went to the kitchen, where she dumped my couscous into a little container and threw it into the fridge. Well, while normally I might have thanked her, I was kinda pissed. I was waiting for the couscous to dry a little so it was less sticky on my salad. I needed it to cool down before it was sealed off and thrown in the fridge. (My couscous is now very sticky).

At this point, I think my boyfriend had had enough. He went into the kitchen and asked her what the hell had been going on and why her attitude was so piss-poor. She shot back that it wasn't her attitude but his and that all she had tried doing was having a fun weekend and he shot down all of her ideas. Amazing... simply amazing. Its like she was projecting on him what she had been doing all weekend. As the "firm discussion" went on, she was getting nastier and nastier by the second. At some point she went to the fridge and grabbed a beer. So, naturally my boyfriend told her that he didn't think she should be drinking while she was like this. Thats where she got REALLY nasty and started making comments like "Its my f%$king birthday and you don't give a damn about me," blah blah, so on and so forth. She hadn't even given us a single CHANCE to do anything fun with her. Every time we got somewhere she just walked off or wouldn't spend time with us.

I grabbed my cats and went upstairs with my coffee and stayed out of the way while she went around and slammed things, yelled, etc. She got so bad that my boyfriend had to ask her to leave. She was yelling all sorts of nasty things at him and half of it didn't make any sense except that she was projecting what she was doing to other people. Apparently she was so pissed that she even took the gardening tools she had given me, claiming she needed to rip out a bush in her yard. (None of those tools would help a person do that).

Nice eh?

And thus ends my weekend, with my boyfriends mother speeding out of my driveway, pissed as can be over her own pissy-ness and managing to ruin her own birthday. Nothing we offered or could do made her happy or satisfied over the weekend. The only idea we turned down was the 3rd rate casino since she said she didn't need to be spending money.

She won't be coming over again. I won't allow it and my boyfriend agrees.

- Sunny