Lil's Week In Review ~ August 31, 2014

Ciao, amici!

Benvenuti, visitatori. (Listen to translation here.)

Sperando che si stanno avendo un fine settimana molto piacevole, sicuro e suono. (Listen to translation here.)

Translation: Welcome, visitors. Hoping you are having a very nice, safe & sound weekend.

Man, I love the Italian language... so beautiful.

Now, back to American English. Bonus: tremendous amounts of grammatical and punctuation errors.  I. Know.

This week in review...

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

1. The new and improved YouTube Channel - THIS IS FIFTY WITH LIL has been created.  Yay, me! I haven't uploaded any videos yet, but don't let that stop you from subscribing, liking, commenting or just sending well wishes. You'll find a brief description of what to expect here; I hope you check in often.
2. In the area of wellness, I've re-established healthy breakfast habits, improved my sleep pattern, and lost a couple of inches. I'm pretty happy about that last item.
3. Prepared home cooked dinners everyday last week.

It's not much, it just feels like it is.

MOVIE

~ With The Carilo Family 55 Must Watch Movies: Summer 2014 over now, it's Mom's Choice. Yay, me again!  It took some doing, but someone - who shall not be named... no, not Voldemort. Ha! - finally caved and purchased an in demand (by me) movie through Vudu to stream digitally on our living room television.  Oh, which movie was it? Only THE MOVIE of the Summer! Okay, after, Guardians of the Galaxy, duh. All right then, this week's movie... wait for it...

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS.

Stop reading this now and watch it. I'll wait here................... Right?!?

FAVORITES

~ Summer Soundtracks! The Fault in Our Stars and Guardians of the Galaxy. Enough said, go listen to them.  again, I'll wait.

TFIOS & GOTG
That's right, we still buy CDs.  You're welcome, cd mfg. companies & recording studios.

~ Something fun was catching up with a friend that I met over twenty years ago while temping at a job at the local probation office.  She was so much fun to work with, just she and I in a tiny office, tapping away on keys of ancient, even for those days, IBM Selectric typewriters.  We'd listen to the "cool jams" of the day, went to lunch together, and chatted about everything from family to dating to fashion and make up.  You know, "girl" stuff.

BLOG UPDATE:

~ It's a wrap.  BlogHer NaBloPoMo August 2014 Creating Memories theme has come to a close.  I'm not sure if I'll be following blog prompts for the month of September.  I'm thinking of putting a literary spin on daily entries.  Come back every now and then next month to see what's happening on the ol' A How-To Guide

AUGUST 2014 BLOG ACTIVITY:

~ Most viewed post:  The Last Time Ever*
~ Least viewed post:  Remember Forgot to mention on this post that I also failed my Italian lessons.  I'll try again next month.

WELCOME READERS!

~ This month's A How-To Guide visits from around the globe:

United States

Canada

Italy

United Kingdom
Germany
Poland
France
Ireland
Russia
Denmark

India

Malaysia

Ukraine

Japan

China

Australia

Hungary

Yay, world!

HAPPINESS...

a giant box of Kleenex, a sad/happy/gut wrenching movie, and a good cry.

Until tomorrow ~ Lil

***

This post is written for Day 31 ~ ~ Creating Memories with August 2014 NaBloPoMo

13,449

June 23rd ~ What A Day!

That's all... what a day.  I liked the idea of making a few changes here and there as Summer 2011 began.  You know, incorporating tiny little changes - hardly noticeable - and see what happens.  Making a couple of major changes a few weeks ago have seemed to get off to a nice and steady start:  Attending week-day church services each morning specifically to create an "I can" attitude and eating healthier because I don't like feeling horribly ill and not being able to do anything about it, like go to emergency room.  On Tuesday, it hit me... the idea that time had come for change.  Real change.  First thing, add music back into my life.  So being first day of Summer, I took a quick mental inventory of favorite summertime tunes.  Smooth by Santana stood out; listened to it several times throughout the day.  Love that song.  I even had my son dig out the one Santana cd I own to have in the car to listen to on my Wednesday morning drive to church.  Next day, I rock n' rolled to church with  music blaring, replaying Game of Love; singing loud and proud.  I felt great.


Now, with my recent weight issue (not to mention breathing, moving, sleeping) I thought I could do better than 1/2 hour evening walks, so I decided to re-visit South Beach to help alleviate concern that I may be well into living with full-blown diabetes.  Back in the day when we had health insurance coverage and proper managed medical care, Autumn (our previous health care provider) told me to do South Beach because I was "this close" to being pre-diabetic.  I stopped to buy the meal plan book on my way back home from the doctor office visit, followed the plan, lost 30lbs and felt like a million bucks after a month.  So Tuesday, I thought what the hell, let's do it!  And, I'm off to a great start.  Weight-scale reads nicely already.  It also helps that funds are available to purchase decent dinner items to prepare.


I was totally appreciating the little spring in my step which developed as a result of these minor changes, but... I forgot... it all catches up with me if I "over-do it."  What constitutes "over-doing it" - nearly anything.  Being sensitive to light, daybreak this morning awoke me at the most undesirable hour:  5:43!  I was awake, but could barely move.  Good thing I was able to fall back to sleep; too deep into sleep, because I missed my alarm to get up in time for church.  So I missed mass for the first time in two and a half weeks - pain and stiffness throughout my body told me it was just not meant to be today.  Good thing though, I was able to go out for a dog food run with my girl and boy and shop for tonight's dinner later in the day.  We listened to my favorite Bridget Jones Diary 1&2 soundtrack tunes and they let me sing at the top of my lungs.  It was good.


Hoping I remember to tone things down a bit tomorrow, so that I don't further tailspin health-wise just because I'm trying to have fun again.  Must keep things in check if change is to be positive... and on-going.  Oh, and the other change I like:  wearing dresses... okay, one dress - the only one that fits... but that'll change too.  Later.