A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

The Diary of a (Semi) Successful Dieter

Oh my - so I talked to a pharmacist the other day about - you guessed it - diet pills! She said, very confidently, that SHE personally would not recommend or ingest any of the typical pills that are sold at Rite Aid, Target, or CVS, etc.
The only pill approved by the FDA for weight-loss is Alli. So, for all of those doubters or folks that are afraid of bad experiences with Alli... putting unknown, unapproved substances in your body just seems way worse, doesn't it?

What's sad - we ALL know how to lose weight. This is NOT rocket science. Just expend more calories than you consume and wah-lah! The weight will melt off of you. Conversely, if you indulge in pizza with extra cheese, desserts containing refined sugar (bad!), and high-calorie pasta dishes, you will GAIN weight. It is a fact. Again - not rocket science.

Drink water, avoid sugar and salt, limit your dairy, and choose vegetables or a salad instead of a potato on the side. How simple. Run if you want to, or walk if you don't like to run. Just get off your butt for more than 30 minutes only three times a week, and you will see a difference in less than one month. Add fiber to your diet and you will really speed things up. Stick to chicken and fish as a main dish and you are going to wake up one day and REALLY like what the scale says. That is your reward. Not chocolate. Slimmer thighs. A flat stomach. A body that is becoming toned.

Picture a thinner you the next time you reach for that doughnut -- the skinny you is inside screaming "let me out;" and grab some water and a bran muffin instead. Taste isn't everything. It's nice. It is. But the compliments you will start to receive will me much, much more rewarding.

Lastly -- I'm not a rocket scientist or brain surgeon, I just know how to lose weight with little effort which bring huge results. Try it. What have you got to lose? EXCEPT UNWANTED POUNDS!!!

For Those Who are Feeling a bit Down today (or anyday)... Even When it is Rainy & Cold Outside... You MUST Believe!

Prayer to Saint Jude
Most holy apostle, Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally, as the patron of hopeless cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone. Make use I implore you, of that particular privilege given to you, to bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need that I may receive the consolation and help of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, particularly – (here make your request) and that I may praise God with you and all the elect forever. I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.  Amen.

Novena to Saint Jude
To Saint Jude, Holy Saint Jude, Apostle and Martyr, great in virtue and rich in miracles, near kinsman of Jesus Christ, faithful intercessor of all who invoke your special patronage in time of need. To you I have recourse from the depths of my heart and humbly beg to whom God has given such great power to come to my assistance. Help me in my present and urgent petition, in return I promise to make your name known and cause you to be invoked. Saint Jude, pray for us and all who invoke your aid.  Amen

Say 3 Our Fathers, 3 Hail Marys and 3 Glory Be to the Father. Say this novena nine times in a row for nine days.

It Is 5:17AM and that is a record!

My husband will be waking up in less than TWO hours, and I am still awake. I'm sick. Literally. I have OCD to the MAX. I promise... once I find a job that I will never decide to get the creative bug in the wee a.m. hours ever again. You see, now I have to go sleep on the couch until he wakes up (or pretend to do so), because it's just not fair to wake up a man who works so hard to independently support this family. Although... I could use a bunch of his hugs right about now!

Oh well, I will have to settle for a soft sofa and the internal pride earned only because I know that I am constantly on the job search... Is no job better than a bad job? Uhhh no! Bad jobs destroy your self-esteem. Not having a job makes it so you can have high self-esteem even despite your constant hunger pangs. And why is that word spelled with a "g?" That doesn't even make sense. Okay this blog entry is the worst by far. I will have to add pictures of my growing baby tomorrow to make up for this absolute non-sense. Sorry. It is 5:26 a.m.

Have You Ever Seen the Movie Billy Madison?

Have You Ever Seen the Movie Billy Madison? If you have, you might be familiar with a very small insignificant part -- less than thirty seconds -- well, it may seem that way at the time. But, let me assure you, small parts are easy to miss but they are actually usually the best. Okay! So what am I getting at here??? Well, you see, Billy has a friend, we will call him "chubby cheeks" for lack of a real/better name. Once Billy graduates from grade school and moves onto to high school, he is hit by the realization that high school in the mid-90s is not at all like high school was in the mid-80s, and he realizes what a loser he has become. This scene makes him reflect on all of the so-called losers that perhaps he made fun of while he was the cool kid in high school. So, he calls one famous actor just to apologize for treating him terribly, some ten or fifteen years prior, when they went to high school together. Span to a scene where Steve Buscemi is shown crossing Billy's name off of a list of people he intends to kill. (We all know it, then he lays back and very messily applies bright red lipstick. For some reason that no one but Adam Sandler probably understands.) Ok... so... I still have not made my point... Span back to our friend little "chubby cheeks," and he is asking Billy about how "cool" high school must be, and he proclaims that he cannot wait to get there. Enjoy the attached video!

Now I find myself a bit like chubby cheeks. And I'm not talking about his weight. Poor little chubby cheeks has these wild grandiose visions of high school. But in reality, high school wasn't so great -- at least not for Billy the second time around. So now, amidst this blog, I find myself at a crossroads. You see, I would not give up the year I spent raising Alivia for one million dollars or all the tea in China. And I'm serious. I really would not. Some things are more important than money, or tea :) We have laughed and played, and that little angel has given me some of the best days that I have ever experienced in my 33 years of life. But!!!!! Who the heck knew that getting back into the workforce would be so -- well, difficult?

I used to be "polished." I used to be "articulate." I used to have a vocabulary like a dictionary; full of words that embarrassed my co-workers and CEOs (never on purpose, of course) and a thesaurus right next to it in my brain. I knew definitions, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and homonyms. I was pretty amazing. But, like chubby cheeks, I wanted very badly to go to high school. And I did. And now, I write a blog about my beautiful one-year-old and I've stopped and started writing my Women's Fiction Novel so many times that I cannot remember where I left off. And sometimes I might be standing somewhere, anywhere -- like in Church -- and I will start thinking, Dear God: "It's not me, Margaret. It's me, Carrie Ernest. What is wrong with me? Will I be okay? Will I ever find a job?" You see -- He already knows the answers. He has already seen tomorrow and Thursday and Friday. And all of 2012.

And so this concludes the only blog where I will allow myself to have a pity party. Talent and writing are like riding a bike. You may struggle at first - that wheel might not be perfectly straight. But you will get there. And so will I.

Until then, this prayer and I are going to become best friends:

Dear Lord Jesus Christ,

You wanted all who are weary to come to You for support. Lord, I am worn out by my inability to find wage-earning work. Day after day, my worry and fear grow as the rejections of my applications mount. I am able and willing to work but I cannot find a worthwhile job. Please help me to obtain one soon so that I can support myself and my family in a decent way.
However, if it is Your will that I wait longer, enable me to worry less and to be able to take advantage of the time available to get closer to You. Let me realize that there are other ways to bring about Your kingdom on earth besides salaried work. Help me to make use of them for the time being so that I may continue to grow as a person for Your greater glory. Amen.

No For Real This Time... WHY is it 4:30AM?

There is a UK Band entitled "Insomnia," and I was going to link their video to this page. But it's basically just the words "I can't get no sleep," set to very annoying trance-style music that I probably would have liked much better ten years ago -- at 4:30AM.


In 2011, however, I like my pillow...


(See, you try to be creative and weird bands have to come out from the depths of the unknown to haunt you and, without-a-doubt, keep you awake!) It is a good damn thing that I have 17 NEW Law & Order: SVU episodes recorded on our DVR. Ahh. And I put milk in the microwave over two hours ago. I hate the taste of warm milk, but it does help me sleep. Now it is as cold as ice again.


Most people have heard of tryptophan in relation to Thanksgiving—this essential amino acid (a building block of proteins) is responsible for that inevitable nap after a big turkey dinner. Consuming foods that contain tryptophan has long been linked to sleepiness, and it turns out there are traces of the chemical in milk as well as turkey. In the body, tryptophan is converted to the sleep-inducing hormones serotonin and melatonin. But the amount of tryptophan in any food—including both milk and turkey—is not large enough to boost hormone levels so high that they would induce sleep.
Don’t fret, though—if you have been relying on a luscious lactose nightcap for a good snooze, you don’t have to downgrade from gallons to quarts so fast. There might not be a strong biochemical link between warm milk and sleep, but there may be a psychological one.

Sylvia Plath - Insomniac

The night is only a sort of carbon paper, Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars Letting in the light, peephole after peephole -- A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things. Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions. Over and over the old, granular movie Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams, Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful, A garden of buggy rose that made him cry. His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks. Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars. He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue -- How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening! Those sugary planets whose influence won for him A life baptized in no-life for a while, And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby. Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods. Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

I just count the sheep and go to sleep!!!


Nighty-night!

Oh my! She has grown!!!

Well, it isn't really that dramatic! (Yet, I still feel the need to use an exclamation point...) Alivia Marie Ernest went to her THIRD Gymboree Class today and it was quite interesting - she doesn't like to - wait - she refuses to  - participate in the "circle time." She slides, crawls through tunnels, plays with toys, and makes her own fun. I'm always within a "hugs" reach, of course (the rule they made up to make sure the parents participate, i.e., watch their own child) while the poor Gymboree teacher (with the back of her head totally screaming out SEX HAIR -- Sorry Grandma Sue, but it is the truth!), sings the songs that can best be described by my dear anonymous friend as "lame." Alivia herself thinks the songs are so horrific that she manages to keep occupied with any area of the room that will keep her furthest away from the bubbles ("that go pop pop pop!") or the high chair ("Bring on the jelly, bring on the bread, somebody get that baby fed.")  I mean for real! Climbing and sliding and socializing is fun stuff when you are 15 months, but singing about high chairs??? Alivia's high chair song would go something like this:

I don't want to be in this high chair,
If I scream they will let me get down.
They are such suckers for my screaming!
And now I am back on the ground.

Mommy picks up my chicken
Daddy picks up my beans
I'm in my toy box with Hippo
But why am I hearing their screams?

Now that my dinner is over
I will climb back up into my high chair
I love to sit here and SCREAM
While those losers just pull out their hair

High chair...bye bye my friend! I'll see you tomorrow at the same time for dinner again!

Back to the Gymboree story - well, we both got tired running up and down the slide ten times, only Alivia has been in bed since 11PM (yes it says eleven P.M.) and I'm foolishly writing a blog at 4:17AM.

Good bye all of my friends! We will see you next time!!!