Since I knew there was a Weight Watcher Center in the area, I stopped in to get weighed. As previously posted, I felt I’d gained back about 10 pounds of the weight lost last year. So when I got on the scale, I began to pray, “Please, God, don’t let it be more than 10 pounds.”

Would you believe, I only gained 2 pounds! Talk about answered prayer.

After that good news, it was off to Babies R’ Us to pick up a pre-ordered item. I was checking out with pink wrapping paper when all of a sudden I had one of those senior moments and could not recall if I was shopping for a girl or a boy. I made a call and verified it’s pink paper. During that telephone call, I was shocked and saddened to learn that the woman originally referred to in this blog as “the Nice Manager Mistress” and later as “the Manager Mistress” had passed away – lung cancer. I moved to the doll house on Wednesday, MM passed away on Thursday.

I’d gotten over the hurt I felt when we last parted, and had actually called and had a short conversation with her about six months ago because I was missing her. Nothing was said at that time about her being ill. Since then, calls and emails to MM had gone unanswered and it had been on my mind last two weeks as to what could be the reason she’d not responded.

In fact, she was on my mind earlier today. On the way to Babies R’ Us, I’d stopped for gas at the station I knew MM to get her gas. It occurred that since she lived in the neighborhood that I might run into her so, as the gas was pumping, I began to look around.

Now I know why she’d not responded to my calls, emails and why I did not see her at the gas station.

So sad. She didn’t even get to enjoy her retirement.

Walking up to the market doors, what did I see but an obstacle — the Girl Scouts!

Dammit!

I tried my hardest to just say “no”, to ignore the girls and pass ‘em by.

I actually did make it into the market but, on the way out, my cart just kinda took a left turn and there I was in front of Do-Si-Dos, Dulce de Leches, Lemon Cremes, Samoas, Tagalongs, Thin Mints and Trefoils.

The good news is, though I succumbed, I did exercise restraint in that instead of several dozen – generally one or more of each, I only bought one box of the Shortbread Trefoils.

The cookies are tucked away in the cupboard … out of sight out of mind. But if that doesn’t get them out of mind, I found that four trefoils count as 3 points, so I can actually factor them in. Problem is, I’m not likely to stop at four, so best not to even get started until I’m deeper into the weight loss program and can better restrain myself.

After screwing around off and on since Halloween, and flaking off completely these last few months, I am finally mentally and emotionally ready to tackle Weight Watchers again, get back to where I was and then go on with a goal to lose an additional 40 pounds by year’s end.

Last year’s goal was 1 pound a week for 52 weeks. I made it to Week 48 and lost 38 pounds before it all fell apart. I have no confirmation — nor do I want confirmation, but I’m feeling like I’ve gained about 10 pounds back. There being roughly 44 weeks remaining in 2012, I should be able to drop that 10 and meet the 40 pound goal losing 1 to 1-1/2  pounds a week.

Slow but steady. And you know what they say about slow and steady … Winning.

So Day 1 Week 1 here we go.

The restoration of what use to be the West Elm building looks to be almost complete.

“Fried Balogna Sandwich” is one of the more popular items on Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar’s menu at $8.99. There were six of us kids when I was growing up; consequently, we were dirt poor and ate a lot of fried balogna sandwiches. A loaf of bread cost 21 cents and we would tell the butcher to give us a dollar’s worth of balogna, which ended up being a couple pounds. So, for $1.21, us kids had balogna sandwiches coming out of our ears. Now, what essentially was poor people’s food is a hot item at $8.99 per sandwich.

That’s crazy, but I’m still gonna head for Toby’s place and get myself a fried balogna sandwich as soon as the doors open.

I didn’t have the pedometer on me, so I don’t know if the Victoria Gardens walk was anywhere near the miles I use to log in before I ended up in solitary. That period of inactivity really took its toll on the body, plus I’m still stiff and sore from the move. It’s going to take a while to get back to where I was insofar as walking and Weight Watchers, but the restoration of me will get done. God’s Principle of Restoration assures me of that: (Joel 2:25) “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten …”

The more I thought about it last night, the more it just didn’t feel right to inconvenience myself with calling and chasing down that cable guy for a wireless router. The installation is HIS job, not mine, so the correct course is for the cable guy to call ME when he has his hands on a wireless router, at which time I would make myself available for a switch.

In the meantime, I’m finding it not all that big a deal that I have to stay connected to the non-wireless router. I just move the router as far as the cord allows across the room, connect the laptop to the outlet behind the couch, and I can comfortable sit on the couch and compute away. I just have to be careful not to trip on cords when I get up and walk across the room.

I’d be very surprised if cable guy followed-up at some later date and completed this order, so I guess this is how it’s going to be. I haven’t gotten an evaluation call but, if and when I do, I will be giving him a “less than zero.”

And speaking of being surprised … I logged on last night to the cable company’s chat line to see if it was remotely possible cable guy had been truthful with me about the lack of wireless routers. I connected with an Agent Nina and color me surprised when Agent Nina said, “Yes. It could be that the local office ran out of wireless routers.”

Agent Nina went on to say, “I would suggest that you go to the local office after 5 days to make sure there is a wireless router available. They will be able to set up and switch your equipment.”

Let me see if I have this correct … I placed an order for transfer of service, cable guy shows up to service the order without the correct equipment, I can either chase cable guy to get the right equipment, or I can physically go to the office to see if one is in stock, then set up a switch.

Yep … that’s the options. Whichever way I look at it, the onus is on me … the customer.

Whatever happened to customer frigging service?

At any rate, it’s water under the bridge because I’ve already adjusted to the set-up as is. But trust me, if I had made a trip to the local office, as suggested by Agent Nina, it would have been to return the cable company’s equipment. They seem not to remember they are not the only game in town.

It was sunny and warm when movers Shawn and Prince loaded up the van in Long Beach yesterday … and yes, this is the same Shawn that moved me from the Inland Empire a year ago.

I specifically requested Shawn – and not simply cause he’s cute, but because he came up with the time-saving window trick. Anyway, Shawn remembered me and gave me a big old bear hug. The guys then loaded the truck and headed for the I.E. where we were met by a huge rain storm – which, though annoyed at the time, I am now choosing to think of as a symbolic washing away of the old.

At any rate, this washing away made it impossible for the guys to unload without tracking in mud and water, so we postponed to today. The guys did unload the mattress, so I’d have something to sleep on. And Shawn, thoughtful sweetie that he is, dug through the van and brought up pillows and a quilt, so I was set insofar as sleeping arrangements.

I made a trip to the local drug store for bubble bath, a bath towel, a face towel and Epson salt so I could soak my poor tired body after dinner. I thought of a tee shirt or a man’s undershirt as sleepwear. The drug store had none of either; thus, waking up this morning in that birthday suit.

Dinner, by the way, was at my favorite place – Soup Plantation, courtesy of my friend R and her son C. So except for the purifying rain, my first evening back in the I.E. was pretty terrific.

I greeted Shawn and Prince this morning in the same clothes I wore yesterday, but fortunately I had transported perfume and the make-up kit in the car with me, so I looked fresh as a daisy and was raring to go.

By the way, breakfast this morning was day old reheated Starbucks coffee and a blueberry and lemon muffin smuggled out of Soup Plantation last night.

Furniture now all in, cable and internet connected – well, partially connected. The cable guy walked through the door and asked if I’d brought the Long Beach equipment with me. I thought that to be a strange question, but let it go and said, “No. They had me turn that in.”

When I later asked the cable guy if I use the same input I used before to play DVD’s on the Sony player, cable guy stunned me when he said that reconnecting equipment not belonging to the company was beyond the scope of the installation.

I don’t think so, and I didn’t let that one go. After some discussion as to how I’ve experienced installation with other cable people and how I almost went to another provider before I chose to simply have my existing provider transfer service, cable guy finally agreed to take a look, but cautioned me not to tell the company when they call for his evaluation that he’d performed an “extra” service for me.

Holy smokes! I’m not even going to take the call about his evaluation because, if I do, he’d be less than zero and, though dissatisfied with his service, I really don’t want to cause him any grief.

Lastly, cable guy informed me he’d connected me to a non-wireless router, which means that the laptop has to stay connected.

Now this is when I began to think that the problem with cable guy is that he thought that because I’m Black and have braids that I am stupid because he said his company is out of wireless routers. Inasmuch as his company is not some fly-by-night outfit, but is in fact one of the Big 3, I find that impossible to believe. Also impossible to believe is that he wants me to chase him down for a wireless. He gave me his number and told me to call him tomorrow to see if he has a wireless and let him know I’d be home that day so he can drop by to switch out.

I didn’t see why I, the customer, should have to call and hang around and chase him down, so I said, “Why don’t we just set up an appointment?”

He said, “If you set up an appointment, the company will charge you.”

I said, “How can they charge me for an extra visit if the installation is not completed on this visit?”

He said, “Exactly.”

WHAT?!

This is really weird, but I’m going to take a chance and call him tomorrow. If he’s not able to set things right, then I’m going to contact customer service, rat him out and ask them to send someone competent and sane to finish the installation.

So as I was saying, furniture all in, cable and internet partially connected and everything so well organized in plastic containers, I need not push myself to unpack right away ….

I’m going to take life slow for a while. Just relax, give myself time to heal from the trauma of the last year, and pray to never be required to move again — other than that final move to the graveyard.

The Shaman called the end pretty much to the day. When I went to the Shaman on August 17, 2011, with the thought that, “Living with the poodle is somewhat of a nightmare. Does the nightmare ever end? … Will she one day make a life for herself and become independent?” The Shaman caught those thoughts and responded, “So I am to do it within this context. I’m going to have to tell you how long this is going to be. I am guessing about six or seven months.”

Here we are precisely six months later and four days short of the 17th, with the poodle moving today and my move taking place two days later.

The Shaman did not suggest I abandon the poodle — as her mother did, in fact he advised, “Withdraw intellectually and emotionally from what is essentially a futile situation. But that doesn’t mean leaving. You can’t deal with her with all of her problems, but you can at least be there when she absolutely needs you.” And God knows I have tried, but the more I put myself in the position of “being there” for the poodle, the more she resented me and the more intolerable she made the situation with her disrespect and uncooperativeness. So this is the end of the road between she and I – not that the Shaman got the leaving part wrong, it’s more like he sees what’s ahead at that particular point in consciousness. If something later changes – as it did, her attitude got worse, then the end result will change. To put it another way, “The stars foretell, but do not compel.”

The Shaman did see that for the poodle, “The end result is independence,” and for myself, “New Beginnings and A Happy House.” So in a way I guess leaving is not changing the end results because the poodle now has her own place, I’m beginning again and the doll house looks to be a happy place for me.

At any rate, since the movers are coming 7:30 Wednesday morning, tomorrow is crunch time. I have to finalize the packing, cleaning, and return equipment to the cable company. Cable and internet at the doll house doesn’t get connected until Thursday, so this is my last post until then.

See you on the flip side.

There was a mixture of tons of the poodle’s dirty clothes, towels, bedding, open moving containers with clean clothing contents strewn about, and other miscellaneous items — all of which I chose not to go to the trouble of setting a right for several reasons. One, if I clean it up, the poodle would just become irate. Two, the poodle says she’s moving into her apartment on Monday. So since I only have to live with it until then, I turned around and retreated back to solitary — leaving everything as is, and ended up sleeping soundly and straight through until the sound of music woke me up.

I got out of bed and headed to the front room to turn down the volume on the television’s music channel only to be stopped in my tracks by what I saw. As bad as the front room looked when I last saw it late Friday night, it was far worse Saturday morning. In fact, it looked like something bad had happened while I was asleep. I saw the jacket the poodle had left the apartment in the night before tossed in the fray. I saw the poodle’s purse on the floor, there was the television on and turned up way too loud for that time of morning, but no poodle.

I didn’t see blood, but since the room looked ransacked and as though something very bad had happened, I cautiously began to check the kitchen and the bathroom and the closets for the body.

Finding nothing and no one, I turned the television off and surmised that what must have happened was that the poodle came in from her usual late night out, changed clothes, went out again, but was in such a hurry to hit the streets that she just tore through containers to find something clean to wear (I stopped doing her laundry four weeks ago, and as she hasn’t bothered to do her own laundry, she’s constantly digging to find something clean to wear), making more of a mess in the process than she’d originally made, and headed back out without the consideration of turning the television off. I turned it off and got back in bed.

As the poodle has been in a rush to hit the streets before and, in the process, left the front door unlocked, I got back up and went to check the door. But honestly, there was not a clear path to the door and I decided checking wasn’t worth having to step on and over the mess. I went back to bed again.

Unable to fall back into a deep sleep, I heard the poodle come in about an hour later. When I left solitary to fix breakfast, around 8:00, the poodle was fast asleep on her daybed. The room still looked ransacked and smelled like a bar — it reeked of alcohol. Don’t know if the odor was coming from the clothes she’d worn out or from her pores. Didn’t really care because only four days to go.

Whew!

I was at the doll house signing the very last of the mountain of paperwork. Everything is now all set for Wednesday’s move, at which time I am scheduled for the final walk through and the handing over of the keys simultaneous with the movers bringing stuff in.

Kinda hectic way of doing things — keys not turned over to me until actually moving in and walk through while movers present, but I did say this move has been terribly complicated. Complicated but worth the trouble.

At any rate, after the signing, it was 1 o’clock and I was starving, so I drove to the Thai Palace to pick up lunch to bring back with me to Long Beach … only there was construction and orange cones blocking the entrance. I had to drive about a quarter of a mile down University, then turn around and approach the entrance from another direction. I was so busy trying to follow the cones that I neglected to notice the red light at the intersection of University and Kendall. I kept up my normal speed and made a right turn at the intersection without stopping.

Fortunately for me, traffic in all directions was as confused as I and there were no pedestrians in the crosswalk, no cars in the intersection and, best of all, no cop to give me a ticket.

After picking up the pre-ordered Pad Kee Mau (pan fried noodles with chicken, chili, sweet basil, broccoli and bean sprouts), and headed to the freeway for the two hour drive back to Long Beach, who did I spy giving another driver a ticket? Yep … the cop. No wonder he didn’t catch me. He was otherwise occupied.

My lucky day. Plus they gave me so much Pad Kee Mau that I’ve got enough for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow.

I’ve not been near a scale for a while, but I’m fairly certain that, what with eating so much of the wrong things and not counting and measuring points, I’ve regained a bit of the weight I did manage to lose. I do not plan on regaining all the weight back, so my first item of business once installed in the doll house is to get back into daily walks and checking in at the nearest Weight Watcher location.

Inasmuch as the doll house apartment is upstairs, I’ll eventually have to join a gym because one thing I know about living in a senior citizen complex is that old people love to complain. They have nothing else to do, so they sit, they watch and they complain about every little thing. Not wanting to annoy my downstairs neighbor with stomping and bumping, the step equipment is gone, the hula hoop is gone, the boxing bag is gone. The elliptical has been claimed by M — the same woman who wants the refrigerator – oddly enough, the leasing agent person at the doll house.

When I was unable to get the doll house to trade out the refrigerator in the apartment for my bringing in my own, I’d mentioned to M, “It’s barely a year old and I hate to lose it but, okay, I’ll donate to the Salvation Army.” M quickly interjected, “Give it to me. I’ll store it in my garage.” Don’t ask me how I know, but it flashed through my mind and I just automatically knew she has a son and that her son is in some kind of business of selling and she collects items to give to her son to sell. Knowing this to be the case, I asked M if she was interested in the elliptical. She jumped at the chance to take it as well.

M is sorta kinda taking advantage of tenants having to downsize, and inasmuch as she is the leasing agent, it’s a bit shady, but not illegal. Since it’s saving my having to worry about scheduling a Salvation Army pickup, I’m happy to release the items to her.

I can’t use my Zumba cd’s – for the same stomping and old people complaining reason, so I’ll be looking for a gym with Zumba classes.

So it looks like six more days of poor exercise and poor eating habits, and then it’s getting my butt back in gear and working towards getting into the best shape of my life. In the interim, I’m having a last hurrah – squeezing in Thai, Mexican, Ice Cream and Chocolate Cake.