I have not written in my journal for 10 days and I have been informed that this fact has not gone unnoticed. So here I am again. 8) I have lost a bit more weight. down 61.6 pounds in total now. was at 62 pds off, but gained .4 of a pound when I was testing all my different batches of jams that I made the other day. 😆 By the way, all the jams turned out lovely. Strawberry, lo sugar strawberry, another strawberry, a strawberry rhubarb, and a rhubarb ginger. Now I am waiting for my red currants to be ready, and the raspberries. I like making jam. It smells wonderful while it is cooking and there is a certain satisfaction in making it for my family to have all year, AND this is the big AND part, I KNOW exactly what is in it. NO CHEMICALS ❗ I also bought a breadmaker. Might try my hand at that today or tomorrow. This particular breadmaker has numerous recipies in it, including some that are gluten free. It also said that if you require gluten free recipies to call them and they would send the rest of their recipies out to you. I like this susy homemaker stuff. 🙄 I started lifting weights yesterday. It is about the only thing that I can do while this knee is messed up. It has been better and had been mostly pain free for a couple of days, and than on friday I went to see the physio again and drove home. When I got home and went to get out of the car, the knee must have twisted again and it popped and I was in excrutiating pain agian yelling and cursing. This time the pain did not go away for almost 30 min which has never hung on like that before and then wallah, it was miraculously gone ❗ ❓ go figure. have to see the physio again on monday evening, will talk to her than. it has not messed up hardly at all since friday night. but on friday night, it kept getting stuck/locked and was just killing me with pain repeatedly all that evening. she is wondering if she is going to have to refer me to the surgeon. will talk to her about that on monday. Sold the old gym, right in the middle of my first workout with the new gym. cool huh? New gym is a Nautilus Power System. The bench that comes with it is not attached, but rather separate and on wheels on one part so you can fold it up and wheel it away. That is good because it a really heavy and sturdy. It also has a 7 ft Olympic bar, remember how I said that dropped it in the store??, and a curl bar, and 250 pds of Olympic weights, lat bar and a small tricep bar. I can do just about every part of my body on this set up except my low back and my hamstrings. Well the low back I can do on my mat and with the exercise ball. And when we went into Workout World in Aberdeen this week and bought a set of Olympic dumbbells, the body builder there told us how to work the hamstrings with the new dumbbells that we got. She has always been a great help to us when we have bought things there in the past. She has only seen me a couple of times ever, and the last time had to have been sometime late last fall or winter; but she noticed almost immediatley that I had lost weight. I like that when a person that you have only seen a couple of times knows that you have lost weight. felt nice and that is only with about 25% of my weight gone so far. 😆 I can not believe how weak I am after a few months of forced in activity and no lifting rules. The strength and muscles that I had before the surgery are now GONE ❗ 🙁 I will have to start all over. I am already a little sore in my pecks and biceps. That is only about 17 hours after working them. hmmm…the third day is always your worst pain wise, I will probably not be able to lift my glasses to put them on my nose tomorrow morning. 😯 I know that it will get better but the initial workout always seems to cause pain. I used to start where I had left off even if I had not been lifiting for a while. I did not even attempt to do that this time, but had I wanted to I wouldn’t not have been ABLE to. I had so much upper body weakness right now, and I was NEVER strong there to begin with. The lower body stays relatively strong considering that I never work it specifically, but it does have to work to carry around this heavy load all the time and that never stopped even right after the surgery. I was going to work out on friday, but I got into making jam. So I had my workout clothes on and wore them to the phsyio but with a pair of sweats over them, intending to lift weights when I got home. I got a lot of funny looks in Peterhead that day. I am not sure if it was because I was wearing a body building sweatshirt that had a decal of a muscle bound guy lifting a weight laden barbell and the words “Gold’s Gym” in big white letters on it, or if they thought I was fat or too fat to work out, or what it was. I noticed that I was walking with a bit more confidence, partially due to the fact that I COULD walk with my knee, but also because I had on my weight lifting outfit and just FELT stronger wearing it. HA, must have all been in my mind because I found out yesterday just how NOT strong I was and I was wearing the same outfit. 😆 Needless to say, I was walking with an attitude. I was waiting for someone to say something nasty, but they just all looked at me funny like. It was all mostly men that I noticed between the ages of about 40-60. don’t know what their malfunction was. People can still be so nasty even though I have undergone major surgery, lost 25% of desired weight in just three months, they are still mean and rude. I can’t get over the totally crude nature of these people. I seem to always get hasseled in Peterhead, Inveruire and sometimes in Aberdeen. On Thursday I had to take Charlie to the airport to go offshore and I did my usual of going to the movies and watching a couple of moives while sending my husband sexy text messages while he was in the airport. I decided to sit in the middle of a row. I always sit at the end in the aisle seat. there is more room there. I think that it is because of how the cup holders are, but anyways I tried it and I fit 😀 ❗ That was so cool. I was flying high. I than decided to brave the normal ladies toliet. Didn’t even have to rearrange the toilet and the waste bin, was able to go and again I fit ❗ 😆 On friday, I was so excited because I had gotten up that morning and had lost more weight to have the total of 62 pounds off. My physio had noticed that I had lost more weight and had commented on it that she thought I looked thinner than when I had last saw her which was only a few days before. than I stopped at the store on the way home and had a child of about 5 yrs or so say in a loud voice when she passed me about looking at that ladies’ bum. I turned and looked and of course her sister who was several years older was standing there and they were both boring holes in me with their eyes. Their mother did not say or do anything, she just ignored the whole thing. It wasn’t as if she did not hear them, everyone in that aisle heard them. rude chit! 👿 and when I looked at them neither girl even look away, but rather stared with shocked looks on their face. So I put my hands on my hips and stood there and stared back at them with a nasty look on my face. they did not look away, so I stared more. Than they turned around the corner with their mom. I, of course, tried to discreetly pull my loose baggy sweats around slightly on each side to view each bum cheek on the whim that maybe they were not commenting on how fat they thought I was but rather that I might have sat in something and had it smeared all over my bum. No joy, they must have meant my size. there was nothing wrong with my sweats. I wasn’t like I had sat in jam or anything like that, that was yesterday not Friday. 😮 so I was flying high and than shot down all in the space of an hour or less. I felt awful. 🙁 I understand that kids say whatever they think and don’t understand, but I also know that one of the girls was quite a bit older and should have known better. But than how can I expect either girl to know what was proper and right when their mother stood there and let that happen and did absolutely NOTHING about it. like I said stupid chit! I can’t wait until I am skinny and I get stared at because I am lifting weights and have some muscle and form to me and walk around with the capability of kicking all their stupid butts into the sea ❗ 😈 Success is the best revenge!