Weekly Weigh-in and Book 19

Friday weigh-in (2 weeks, actually): Down .8 pounds. To goal: 29.2 pounds.

Not great, but I did manage to negate the 4-pound midweek gain!

Also, I finished Book 19: The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd last night. I thought it was a little creepy, frankly. It's the story of a woman who, in an apparent mid-life crisis, leaves her husband and college-aged daughter to care for her crazy mother, and falls in love with a monk. Their love, of course, doesn't work out, and she returns home to her family. This wasn't my favorite (obviously, as I'm giving away the spoilers). Her other book was so much better. On the whole, I give it a blah.

18. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

This is a very hard memoir. It's hard to read because it is infuriating. It's the story of Jeannette Walls, now a journalist in New York, as she grew up in the most dysfunctional family. She and her siblings were basically left to fend for themselves while their parents chose to live without jobs, a home, food, basically transients transversing the country. It's such an intriguing read, to see what she came through and how she ended up. There were times I had to put it down and just be mad for a while, but I really found it - well, enjoyable isn't the right word, but maybe fascinating, and I felt so much sympathy for her and her siblings. Very good read.

17. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

The premise of this book is very interesting. It's a story about a perfect family of four, two parents and two children. The youngest child is discovered to have leukemia at age 2. She needs a bone marrow donor, and no one in the family is a perfect match. So the parents have a third child - a "designer" baby girl, the embryo specially chosen to be a perfect genetic match for their older daughter. At first the baby donates her cord blood to her older sister, which sends the older sister into a remission. Then as the years go by, the leukemia comes back, and the younger sister again donates - blood, bone marrow, until she feels like she can't give anymore. The book chronicles her difficult decision to stop donating to her sister, and her legal journey to become medically emancipated. I thought it was a super read.

Friday Weigh-In - GOAL!

2.6 pounds lost this week. Finally reached the goal! Actually a little bit over the goal, and that combined with a few pounds lost prior to setting the goal adds up to a loss of 25 pounds even.

I now weigh the same as when I got married - no more baby pounds! But I have to say, that weight is redistributed in a not-so-nice way. This doesn't really bother me; post-baby body will never be pre-baby body again, unless I fall into some vortex where I can afford plastic surgery. It feels good to see that weight on the scale though, that's for sure.

New goal: Lose 30 pounds. This will put me at my high school weight.

Friday Weigh-in (2 Weeks)

Down 3.6 pounds for the past 2 weeks.

Lost to date: 18.4 pounds.

To reach goal: 1.6 pounds.