the gallon challenge

As I am sure most of you already know my kids play sports.  Not the kind where you run around on a field and get hot, sweaty and bitten by bugs.  Smart sports.  Where minimal clothing is required and there is a pool instead of a field.  This makes it fan-tab-u-lous for the mom who sits, paces and watches for untold hours.  The suns glare off the pool gives a nice healthy sunglass tan and a permanent flip-flop tan starting in March.

Since the only high school sports I have been exposed to are swim and water polo I am assuming football and baseball players have dumb rituals as well........maybe someone can fill me in.

Anyway to get back to the title of this post - the gallon challenge - last season the girls water polo team challenged each other to drink a gallon of milk and keep it down.  I do have to say my darling daughter was a smart cookie and declined to play this particular game and instead took pictures of her friends and teammates as they downed all that milk in an unreasonable amount of time.  Bloated tummies ensued, nauseous looking faces, and of course lots and lots of vomit.  Fortunately I do not have any of those pictures to share.  My darling daughter did not drink milk for days.......I could possibly never again drink milk just thinking of this.

Then there is her brother.  He isn't as smart a cookie and he crumbled.  His swim team participated in what they call the kool-aid challenge.  This is where each kid (read dumb boy) gets their own bottle of different colored koolaid that they guzzle between swim sprints.  Of course this induces lots of - you guessed it - vomit.  But they are creative - they made art out of it.

try to stomach it here

Which finally brings me to my gallon challenge. 

For a while now I have needed to lose weight.  A lot of weight.  A daunting number of pounds that slowly accumulated over the years as in how did I get here, more then even after my babies were born kind of weight loss.

Honestly?  a 7.1 gallon weight loss was needed.  Motivation had been lacking then I reached the point of no return and finally got down to business!  I dusted off the eliptical machine, made friends with Jillian Michaels and voila!

2.1 gallons down - 5 to go!

sorry to dissapoint, but there will be no video. 

so you wanna be a rock star?

I can so relate. Not to the standing infront of a crowd singing into a microphone part, which I have absolutely zero desire to experience, but everything else.

Oh, to have small children again. Nah, I think I'll just wait to be a grandma.......

laugh out loud here

the misadventures of multi-tasking....

Like most moms I am pretty busy.

Usually I am running kids to school, swim practice, polo practice, library, friends, beach, church meetings......plus all my errands.

the list goes on and on.

So I multi-task. I start lots of things, finish lots of things. Usually with predictable results.

Not so today.

Today my list looked like this (and pretty much in this order):

make the bed

pour shock chemicals into pool

start pool filter

spray roses

check garden

fill bird feeders

start washer

empty dryer

put away clothes

search iTunes for new music

work out

give snakes water

waste time on the computer

do dishes

eat lunch

make lists

feed pets

sorta clean the house

turn on fans

sew a little

organize sewing stuff

grab a book, towel & water bottle to lay by the pool

that was when I noticed a problem.



Some 4, maybe 6 hours after I started the pool filter.



As soon as I opened the patio door I could hear it - a different pool filter noise that didn't sound encouraging. When I rounded the corner of the house - half the pool had drained! One of the hoses had worked its way off the filter. Of course it was the lower hose, so that's how far the water drained.

Could it have drained before I dumped in $20 of chemicals?
Could it have drained into our yard to elimiate the need to water for the rest of the year?
no and no again.



A mere two days since receiving our nasty warning from the water company -

reduce, reduce, reduce water consumption at least 10%, and a 36% rate increase!



Will this keep me from multi-tasking?



Of course not - I'd never get anything done any other way.



But I will most likely be checking up on that pool filter to make sure it isn't misbehaving!


it took almost three hours of the hose running full blast to fill 'er back up.

second lesson learned...

I am still sewing.

I have more fabric.

It is too hot to do anything outside.

I cut yet another skirt out of my FAVORITE fabric so far. This old fashioned, granny paisley.

Love, Love, Love!!!

Did I mention I LOVE this fabric?

Makes me think of sitting on the front porch swing (who has one of those anymore? I think I need one!) on a hot muggy afternoon where there are lots of fluffy white clouds and you just know it's going to rain, sipping a sweating glass of homemade lemonade with mint leaves floating around.

Anyway, I got sidetracked.....

There wasn't enough of this fabric that I absolutely am in love with to make my skirt. So I had to get super creative. I ended up making the waist band half the width (heigth) it is supposed to be.....

now wouldn't you know I like it better this way than on all the other skirts I have finished???

lessons learned

So I have had a little extra free time lately. Actually a lot of extra time with kids out of school and Matthew driving (another topic for another day).

So I have been sewing.

I had a lot of fabric (I love fabric) in my sewing box that I hadn't done anything with in years. Just fold, move, re-fold, move again. There were some patterns in there too. So I got busy.

I cut and sewed 4 (yes, four!) skirts. The problem was I did all of them start to finish and only after they were all done did I decide they were too big. I know so sad, but better than too small!

So to fix them I had to completely tear them appart - did I mention I used the smallest possible stitch? ugh! I manages to rip one appart and get it back together....the other three are still sitting and I have moved on.

Today I decide to try again, with new fabric. I cut down the pattern two sizes, because that seemed about right.....

after much sucking in of the stomach and wiggling, I got it on,

then I had to take it off over my head!

oh well, I have more fabric and this time I just sewed one. with a little more modification the next skirt should be perfect!