Wanda's Book World

Happy New Year!  I have two wonderful brothers.  Wayne loves me silently and is an anchor force in my life and Steve loves me loudly and acts as my conscience particularly when it comes to this blog.  As he says, he would read it regularly if I wrote it regularly and if I am only going to write about diet success and not about diet failure, how is that going to be useful?   So here we are.  (Those were not his exact words but that is how I heard them.)  Every morning is a new commitment to have the life I want and my top commitment is to stop using forthcomingness and over-the-top extroversion in place of emotional honesty. 

I promised myself in front of everyone that I would lose 45 lbs. in 45 weeks.  Well, I have lost 25 weeks.  This morning I weighed 197 lbs.  I am only 8 lbs. down from my starting weight on July 1, 2006.  But today is the day that I will eat well and move more.  We got Dance Dance Revolution for Christmas and it is so fun! 

I also want props for something I have not shared.  I quit smoking on October 23rd.  Many of you may not even know that I am a smoker.  And many of you may know that I have quite smoking some 250 times.  But I must share that I have had about 250 reasons/justifications/excuses to smoke over the last 70 days and haven’t, so I am feeling more confident than ever that this will stick.  Though, ironically, as I type this and tell everyone I feel less confident as my fingers move across the keyboard sillently searching for a cigarette and not even telling each other.  What is that about, I’d like to know!!

Oprah is having a contest to win a spa vacation with her and Gayle for a week in March.  I think every woman should enter.  You can only enter once and here are the rules:  Send a 3.5 x 5 postcard with your full name, address, date of birth, daytime phone #, and, in 50 words or less, why you need a spa vacation to Miraval Spa Vacation Contest, O, The Oprah Magazine, PO Box 1708, Sandusky, OH 44871-1708.  All entries must be postmarked by Feb. 12.

Have been reading some great books.  Loved The Deception of the Emerald Ring, Life’s a Beach, A Cabinet of Wonders, SPQ’s First Big Ass Novel and Nineteen Minutes, the new Judy Picoult.  Just want to put in a word for Picoult’s novels.  I imagine that they sell on their own but if not you are missing a huge handsell opp because this is an author to get hooked on…After I read the new one I went to the library and checked out all they had and just finished Perfect Match this morning.  They are great! 

And I’d like to finish off with a quote from Nineteen Minutes that has stuck with me and is an ode to my Emotional Honest Effort (EME) – “…and letting his mind sew a seam across the hem of his life, he did not remember the proven successes – only the potential failures.”

With Love & Compassion for You AND Me,

Wanda