So I Can Sew

My mother was a seamstress.  She made all of my school dresses until I was in junior high.  She sewed clothes for my dolls.  She made pajamas for my brothers and clothes for herself.  Her sewing machine was always set up and had a project sitting on it.  Seeing my mom sew was a fixture of my childhood.  I had no interest in learning to sew.  She would often ask me if I wanted to sew and my answer was always no.  I am pretty confident that that was a disappointment to my mom.  But I wanted to establish a difference between my mom and I and one way for me to do that was to refuse sewing lessions.  I did take a Home Ec. class in the seventh grade.  Sewing was part of the class.  I made a skirt.  It was hideous and I never wore it.  When my husband and I were married, my mother-in-law asked if I would be interested in a sewing machine as a wedding gift.  I told her that I didn't sew and wasn't planning to learn.  She bought us a sewing machine for a wedding present.  I was...curious.  For many years, we used the machine as a door stop to keep the door leading from the house to the garage open when I was doing laundry.  I loaned that machine to an acquaintance and never got it back.  I was not distraught.  When my mother-in-law recently passed away, my father-in-law asked if any of his daughters wanted her sewing machine.  Since they all have their own, they said no.  He asked me if I wanted it.  My sister-in-law said that if I wanted her to, she would teach me to use it.  So at 53 years of age, I am learning to sew.  I hope my mom is watching. 

Countdown - Day 110

I really am taking my time with my weight loss.  I do have the goal of losing 25 pounds; there's no doubt about that.  But the bigger picture is that I am changing the way I eat and the way I think about food.  I know that food is a comfort at times and I am trying to find better ways of dealing with stress.  One way is the work I am doing in my backyard.  The work is both physical and therapeutic.  Food is also a way to combat boredom.  When I start to eat for no apparent reason, i.e. I am really not hungry, I pull out my Kindle and read instead, or I get Willie to play HallBall with me.  I know that there are many foods that I enjoy to eat that are no good for me, like chocolate or ice cream.  I have found that as I eliminate these things from my diet, I crave them less often and when I do decide to indulge, I only need a small amount and I am satisfied.  So why is it taking this long to lose the remaining eight pounds?  I'm not sure.  I know that I'm not stressing over it.  It'll happen.  We did go on our seven-day cruise and I gained three pounds while we were gone.  And I lost those three pounds within a couple of days of returning home.  So I'll keep looking at my diet everyday to see if there are other changes that can be made.  For now, my weight loss is 17 pounds.