the farm update

September 1, 2007

High Button Shoe

the weight loss

..today could only be described as the perfect day of what I consider the fall season. In this area, fall is often the whole gambit of weather situations, so a day of today is one to be appreciated and savored, like a steaming cup of coffee on the porch watching the turkeys or your herbs grow.

My past several hours have been spent sitting on the front porch of the farmhouse in my old wicker chair, with the southern sun on my back, as I work taking apart old quilts, a chore I have contemplated on for days, but haven't found time for. A necessary task, to be sure, as I haven't got room to store these old quilts, and they are severely past any monetary value...but their value to me is great.

I have collected quilts for many years. Too many years, too many quilts. I have an eclectic taste in quilts, and often you may wonder why I would buy specific quilts. Often I buy an old battered quilt because of the colors, or the fabrics themselves, more often than not for the hand stitching of the far past when the quilt maker took pride in the skill and talent of their stitching. I often see a beauty to them that others may not see. I am particularly drawn to well used, perhaps even ragged ones as they have such a story to tell. I never fail to look at an old quilt without wondering about its maker. Old quilts were made mostly with a purpose. And with fabrics at hand. The old wool ones always intrigue me. They, of course, don't hold up to time completely, as moths and crickets eat away at them. A few years ago, I realized I must stop buying so many types, and limited myself to only white and red ones. In the old house, you saw many of these on display on quilt hangers and draped across chairs and cupboards. Here in the farmhouse, I haven't found places for them yet and they are stored in the old Alabama grain bin in the living room I use as my coffee table.

As we are poor for storage, after filling up all available floor spaces in the barns, many of the quilts are stored for now in totes and hopefully I can keep the rodents and crickets from taking a toll on them. The six old wool quilts stacked up for todays work, would not bring any significant money in purchase, if indeed any at all. They are and always were a utility quilt, made from wools, with the maker using easily designed patterns.

Their value to me, was what was inside. The old cottons. To get the cotton, I must peel away the layers of the quilt. Sitting quietly with no noise, save the many birds enjoying this fall day, as well as I am,

I begin to take off layers. Oddly old wool quilts were mostly tied, rather than hand stitched layers together, with yarn. I have pondered for years wondering why they chose the color yarn to tie the quilts, as most often it is not a color favorable to the quilt colors themselves. Perhaps it is all they had. Perhaps in their world of dark houses, dark clothes and wools to work with, the bright orange or lime green yarn brought some color and smiles to their hearts. To me, the smiles of my heart are the insides of the quilts. They tell volumes of the life of the quilt. Inside, sometimes are other quilts. They merely added onto the original and encased it with fabrics on front and back and added another border.

Today, as I peeled away the layers, carefully cutting the gaudy yarns with scissors, to my anticipated delight I found the cottons. From long ago, you cannot buy cotton in this particular form. It must come from a quilt. It will make several primitive sheep covers for me this fall and winter. To get the look I want, I must have this particular cotton. In the process of peeling away the layers, I found old gauzes, I will use for my old ages crow I will be making from Kentucky Primitives ( a MOST talented designer), and old faded thin from age fabrics I will be putting on paper mache boxes soon.

But the real revelation to me, sitting their quietly working, was the layers of life.

And that brings me to my weight loss I have promised for weeks to reveal to you. It is no big secret. Other than the fact that I have been so busy and while not secret it seems complicated. Complicated because you don't know me. Some of you do of course, and many of you probably know me better than people who have known me from childhood, because you read my writings and they are written from my heart and soul. People in this small town who went to school with me, know me from the outside and what I want to project, like the surface of these old quilts. There are many layers to me.

First, to date I have lost 73 pounds since March.

I have never defined myself by weight or age. Age has never mattered to me. Although I do confess to moisturizer and coloring my mousey brown/grey (oh so ugly) hair to ash blonde. My vanity, along with my contact lens. I turned 60 this year. Not a sad day, but rather I knew I had this new life ahead of me. A different direction for my business as doors had closed to me. I have never accepted change well, and always went kicking and screaming in the other direction trying to hold on to the comfort of what I knew and did well. Life often has other plans. AND control fed people tend to have weight problems. ( Diet therapy 101)

A few years of stress added to my weight gain. Until one day I looked at myself with a clarity I had been ignoring and realized I MUST do something. Not always so overweight, but still carrying too much weight, I had managed to balloon myself into a state where my knees hurt, acid reflux was present, and while you laughed at my ankle dimples, as did I, the ones on my thighs weren't so laughable. As I have dieted for 30 years, you lose 10 pounds and gain 15 back. And I did. Several times. Many times, I was told, they never "saw" my weight, only me. I have thought this same thing myself of friends who were overweight but instead I saw their inner beauty, like the layer of these quilts. Or I had "such a pretty face", and that pacified me. But like the alcoholic who finally reaches bottom, I reached bottom. In this year of so many changes for us, new business direction, move to this old farmhouse I LOVE, with the original hardwood floors that are uneven from many decades, that absolutely KILLED my knees, the kids moving back to share the farm with us which brings me such joy that we all live on this farm that means so very much to all of us....I decided to try once more to lose weight. Skeptical, with reason, as I have done this many times, and ultimately failed, I saw those irritating ads for NutriSystem with the "smoking hot grandmas" and the "trophy wife". Honestly if Ronnie called me a trophy wife, I would bonk him with my baseball bat reserved for my plotted death of Fritz, the resident barn snake!

At any rate, I didn't mention it to many people and started. I did tell you that I was 'off' chocolate and red licorice. But I have done that before, and always went back to my comfort foods. This time I did not.

This 'diet' which is good food, is expensive. $10 per day. I did not cheat. I did not have cravings that had plagued me so bad in the past. You don't take drugs with it, so you aren't wired. You drink WATER! like I have never drank before. It is a key to weight loss. I know, you heard that before. So did I, but I would prefer a cup of coffee to water. I now drink water. And limit my coffee to 2 cups usually a day, and as it is caffeinated, I must double that coffee amount in water, to balance it out. You get dessert!! And it can be chocolate. CHOCOLATE! So far they haven't offered any red licorice, but I suppose I can't have everything! And the weight came off, and continued to. After 4 months and 55 pounds gone, I started following a similar plan, which is store bought food, in the same theory of the NS foods. It is the carbs, the right carbs that satisfy you but don't reek havoc with your weight. It is the low glycemic eating. A meat eater, I still eat meat. Just not like before. I went to fat free salad dressings, milk and coffee mate, a practice I never would have thought I could do. I do. And will continue to do. It is healthy eating. With veggies and salads added, along with your own dairy. I froze my account now to January 2 when I will resume it eating their foods. I may not need it by then. Eating my own food goes slower, but I still lost 9 pounds each in the last 2 months of eating my own food.

All I know is it worked for me! If telling you, will help even ONE of you lose your weight, I am pleased. I know where you are at. I am peeling away the layers of me like the quilts, both physically and with the physical loss, the mental and emotional loss of being overweight. There is SO much more to us, than that outside that shows. We have inner beauties that are often hidden by emotional weight and baggage.

For those of you who know me personally, you will see the physical difference as it is dramatic now. For those of you who don't know me face to face, you have known me thru my writings. That is who I truly am. What you read. There is just many physical layers less of me now. If I knew you all better, I would share the humourous physical body changes. I have written some of you of them, and we laugh about these changes. But alas, I don't know all of you, so don't readily share them. Probably the knee high panty hose and the sagging bust laying on the casket bottom under my arms was bad enough! Believe me, there is much more!!

It is www.nutrasystem.com There are ads that give you 1 or 2 weeks free food in addition to the month you buy, a great savings. Email me if you don't have access to those and I can give you the code number. And they offer a $30 credit to you if you have some dealie from me with your email address, and we both get $30 off food. I do most of my stuff by email, but you can phone them too. The forum board of NS is invaluable. If you do do this, be sure to click on the daily dose on the website of theirs as when you get 50 clicks on the sunflower you get $10 off your food order. One last thing. Do NOT order the tuna salad, chicken salad, or the tuna casserole. They are just plain NASTY!

Thank you for your interest in my weight loss. I am extremely grateful I did this. My life physically is better for it. It is another journey for me, along with the farmhouse journey. This is definitely MY year.

As this is already lengthy enough I will write of the paint technique in another email, and will send you the writing of Esther. She was too important not to be remembered.

in fond regard,

Tilda, much thinner

but still me