When last we left the great RESIN-ING of 2011 I had admitted to making a full on crap-ton of resin pieces. And what does one DO with those resin bits? Why, she sits in her special chair in her TV den and hand drills holes into way too many of them and attaches bails she hella bought at Walmart, that's what one does with this shizzle:
I have a slight problem, I am willing to concede that point slightly.
I figured some of these pieces would look good wrapped in filigree… And they do….
Wrapping them in filigree seems to work better when the shapes are circular rather than oval, but that's okay, I was just experimenting.
I stopped by TAP Plastics on the way home from work on Monday and picked up a new mold that I tried out – more on those pieces later when ADVENTURES WITH RESIN returns after these messages (or rather, the Bead Soup Blog Party! Tune in tomorrow for results!)
I think if I hadn't been, ahem, having a monthly hormone fluctuation, I may have done even better. I certainly feel less bloated. TMI? Too bad.
I like the new PointsPlus system and it really seems to work for me. Will I continue having my weekly ginormous Starbucks white chocolate mocha? At 8 points per drink, I'm thinking unlikely but you never know. What's nice about the PointsPlus is that you have a daily allotment (mine's 37, which will decrease as I lose weight), plus a weekly extra 49 points that you can distribute over your week if you, say, go out drinking one night, or really want to have McDonald's one day. I find that the fast food and prepared food are too dear at this point, so out of the diet they have gone. Alas, my kingdom for a cheeseburger(s).
What's different about PointsPlus from the previous points incarnation is that most fruits and vegetables are zero points. As I recall from before, fruits used to cost points… which means I wouldn't eat them. But I've been eating more fruits this past week and have come to enjoy having an apple at lunch! Who knew. Not I.
You might be asking yourself, why now, Melissa? And why Weight Watchers? Well, the why now has a lot to do with the hot pink bridesmaids dress I am going to have to wear next year (sigh) and Weight Watchers because I'm familiar with the program and because a bunch of people I know are doing it right now, so right away there is a built in support system.
But mostly it's the bridesmaids dress.
And I'm tired of being the fat friend.
I don't really have any mental issues with my body aside from my belly, which is a result of six months of Taco Bell and eating my emotions after my grandfather died. I'm a little fixated on the belly too because it has a large scar on it from my surgery years ago and I've never really been able to flatten it out because of that (but have I ever REALLY tried??)
I love fashion so it's sad to me that more options are available for smaller women when so many of us are actually fatter than ideal. Years ago my mom said that if I lost weight she would put $500 towards a new wardrobe, and maybe I'm finally ready to take her up on it. (Does she remember she said that? Haha, TOO BAD)
But anyway, I'm only a week into this, and a lot of it has to do with Making Better Choices and Not Eating Taco Bell All The Time. Thank God we don't have Taco Cabana here, because then I would have a problem.
I'm finding that I wasn't eating all that differently (calorically or otherwise) but that adding in the fruits and vegetables, portion control and making a concerted effort to actually eat breakfast has been helping. I'm also cooking a little more and even made oven fries (baked wedged potatoes) for the first time in my life. Yes folks, I made it 31 years without ever cooking a potato! (I would totally eat them but only at other people's houses. I don't know why I never cooked them, I just wasn't interested).
There is also a nice paved path by work so I'll try to get out for a bit of a walk during my lunch hour like I did today. Mostly I just needed to get out of the office for a bit since they have been power washing the building for DAYS I couldn't stand it in there anymore so I went for a walk.
But anyway, so that's kind of why I've been quiet here and on Twitter for the last week, I have been busy being awesome and getting my life on track a little.
If I don't update about more resin adventures tomorrow or Friday, my next post will be revealing what I made for the Bead Soup Blog Party on Saturday! Can't wait to show it off and see what other people made!
By the time I realized what was going on that Tuesday morning, the towers had already fallen.
I had moved to Texas only three weeks before, moving into a small apartment on campus with girls who would soon become some of my best friends. Due to the influx of student move-ins by 9/11 I still didn't have my phone hooked up. I was very literally on my own for the first time in my life, living 2,000 miles away from my family and friends. For me, 9/11 was a defining moment in my life for a lot of reasons.
My schedule that semester was daily Latin class at 8 a.m., followed by various other classes, including a political science class at 9:30 CST. I was in Latin when the towers were hit so I didn't have any idea what was going on. I headed over to my political science class which was held in a large lecture hall facing a screen that was hooked up to a computer. The screen was replaying, over and over, a smoky scene with something in the air flying through the smoke.
I remember sitting down in my seat, watching the screen, wondering to myself (having NO IDEA what had happened, and having NO CONCEPT that it COULD happen) what that bird was doing.
I kid you not.
I thought the 2nd plane hitting the south tower was a bird.
The angle of that particular video was strange, and grainy, so I didn't understand what I was seeing. Remember, this was 2001, web videos weren't all over the place like they are now. I barely used email back then and was blogging at Diaryland.
People trickled into class and the professor said, "In light of what has happened at the World Trade Center…" I don't remember what else he said because suddenly I realized what I was looking at and it was like a weight of fear had fallen on me. The professor explained what had happened and then dismissed us.
Outside underneath the overhang of the liberal arts building, someone had set up a TV that was showing CNN or something. A big group of us stood around the TV gaping at the screen.
Since I had two hours before my next class, I hightailed it back to the apartment where we all sat on the couch staring at the TV watching the live coverage. The four of us grew to respect the unflagging persistance of reporters like Peter Jennings for staying there and reporting on what was going on without breaks or anything. We watched the coverage almost non stop for the rest of the week as recovery began. We watched as the body count and missing persons count was up in the high tens of thousands and were stunned as it lowered and lowered – who could have survived that?? To this day, I am stunned that the loss of life was not significantly higher.
I remember calling home on my roommate Cindy's phone that evening. My phone wasn't hooked up for another week after that.
Later that month, realizing that life was too short, I changed my major to art.
My entire adulthood has been spent under the spectre of 9/11. I really feel like I lost a lot of innocence that day, realizing that evil really is out in the world. "These things just don't happen here!" Yes, they do. We're constantly reminded of them whether it's on the news telling us about yet another suicide bomber or as we get scanned in an airport. We shouldn't forget that this evil is out there, but we shouldn't let it define us either.
God bless America, and bless those who lost their lives: the first responders to the attacks, the firemen, police officers, Port Authority officers, the people at the Pentagon, the people on the highjacked flights, especially the people on Flight 93 who were the first people to fight back. And of course, bless all those who must live without their loved ones who died that day.
Here's something I just found today: On September 12, 2001, our national anthem was played during the changing of the Buckingham Palace Guard.
