Me, them, a diet update, mom's foul language

When my mom calls me on my busiest day at work and asks, "Are you busy?", it doesn't matter if I'm interviewing the President of the United States of America, or if I'm designing my weekly paper: "No, mom, I'm not busy. What's up?"

And then when she says, "Holy freaking sh*t," so many things are happening to me and in no particular order. My heart starts racing, I get a teeny bit nauseous, I don't want to go home (weird), I think things like, "Is Zeb dead?" (that's actually my first thought), and "who's arguing with whom?"

When she begins the next sentence with, "So I was at this prayer meeting," I take a deep sigh of relief and settle in for some gossip.

Here are a couple pictures from the last week. Piper joined us at baseball practice, but we forgot how cold a 14-ounce dog can get when it's a little windy. She slept in my jacket the whole time and when she popped her head out an hour later, everyone was shocked.

Skye is really sweet, and even though I've threatened her within an inch of her life on multiple occasions, she loves me. She did get kicked the other night by one of our horses who decided that after two weeks of being hounded by her, he'd had enough...again. I heard the solid (but gentle) correction, and Skye's subsequent yelping through the yard. After the first five or six time she's been taught this lesson, I'm no longer concerned. Instead I yelled, "I hope it burns and I hope it teaches you I mean what I say."

Because that's effective dog training.

She does this thing where when I have all the doors in the house open and I'm puttering in the kitchen, she just wants to come in and lay near me. But it's usually at a time when I'm barring all dogs from being in the house so I have the following conversation:

Her feet cross the thresh-hold.
"Outside."
Her eyes go downcast and she takes a couple more steps into the dining room.
"Skye, outside!"
She throws a meek glance my way and cowers a little closer.
"You know what I'm telling you. Now, outside. No dogs in the house right now."
She's got her ears back now, her eyes are sad, she's still cowering and getting closer.
"I said outside."
Ears still back, eyes sadder, and still scooting towards the direction of her favorite spot in the kitchen where she can lay and see where I'm at.
"Okay, as long as you lay there, that's fine."

My dog training is awesome.

I had a realization yesterday about my diet, and then it was solidified today when I read my friend's blog. I need to do what's right for me and my body.

Duh.

But I think I got caught up a little bit in the numbers on the scale instead of remembering that the numbers don't really matter. It's about how I feel in my new (skinny) skin. There's a perfect number I'm supposed to weigh, according to a BMI calculator, and for a second I got really consumed in achieving that number.

The fact of the matter is: I might not reach that number, and I might not want to reach that number.

I need to celebrate the 48 pounds I've lost to date, and the fact that I can feel my now-pronounced collar bone, and that when I cross my arms, my hands are still surprised that the poky elbows I'm touching are actually mine.