Niki posted this on her blog a way long time ago and I put off doing my own because I had so few songs on my iPod at the time. But over the last couple of months, I’ve put all our old stuff on it, as well as purchasing a few new albums. I love iTunes.

I just deleted a boatload of music, all classical. I loooove classical music but I never listen to it on my iPod and when I put my music on shuffle, I don’t like having classical thrown in it. I can go from Dido to Frank Zappa but going from Green Day to Shostakovich just doesn’t work for me. And that is really funny timing - just as I finished that last sentence, a classical song came on that I missed yesterday! The only one left on my iPod and it’d figure it’d come up just now.

Onto the facts:

Songs 1010 -2.7 days - 3.97GBs

First title #34 (Dave Matthews Band, Under the Table & Dreaming)
Last title Yours (Blues Traveler, Straight on til Morning)

Shortest time Near You Always (Jewel, Pieces of You - 0:10)
Longest time Crystal Flame (Blues Traveler, Independence Day - 15:15)

First Artist Adam Sandler
Last Artist Wallflowers

Top most played song Inaudible Memories (Jack Johnson, Brushfire Fairytales)

Find “Sex”, how many songs show up? 3

Sexy Plexi, Jack Johnson, Brushfire Fairytales
Sexual Harrassment in the Workplace, Frank Zappa, Strictly Commercial
Sex and Candy, Marcy Playgrond, Marcy Playground
Find “Death”, how many songs show up? 0

Find “Love”, How Many Songs show up? 26

Be Here to Love Me, Norah Jones, Feels Like Home
Perfect Love…Gone Wrong, Sting, Brand New Day
Like Someone in Love, Björk, Debut
Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, Queen, Greatest Hits Vol. 2
For My Lover, Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman
Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Queen, Greatest Hits Vol. 2
Bye Bye Love, Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water
Somebody to Love, Queen, Greatest Hits Vol. 2
Love in Vain, Eric Clapton, Me & Mr. Jones
To Your Love, Fiona Apple, When the Pawn…
Love Ridden, Fiona Apple, When the Pawn…
Future Lovers, Madonna, Confessions on a Dancefloor
I Love New York, Madonna, Confessions on a Dancefloor
Forbidden Love, Madonna, Confessions on a Dancefloor
Lover Lay Down, Dave Matthews Band, Under the Table & Dreaming
I Can’t Make You Love Me, Bonnie Raitt
My Lover’s Gone, Dido, No Angel
Love Song, Enya
What’s Love Got to do With it, Tina Turner, All The Best
Teenage Love on the Phone, Adam Sandler, They’re All Gonna Laugh at You
Not About Love, Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
Dirty Love, Frank Zappa, Strictly Commercial
Love Me Tomorrow, Chicago, The Heart of Chicago
No Tell Lover, Chicago, The Heart of Chicago
I Don’t Wanna Live Without Your Love, Chicago, The Heart of Chicago
Tell Me You Love Me, Frank Zappa, Strictly Commercial

Thanks, Niki, for the inspiration to have a little fun with my iPod!

Isak’s friend’s dad came over to help me fix my computer. We made blueberry muffins to thank him. My entire house was saturated with the scent of warm blueberries. It made me want one SO badly. It was a different kind of craving, where I could differentiate between it being a physical craving and a mental craving, but it was still a very strong craving that was hard to pass up. Easier than before, but still hard. I’ve had similar cravings when faced with cake/ brownies/ cookies/ candy. They’re mental, but they’re still there.I struggle very badly with my relationship with food. I love food, and I could eat all day and all night. I am definitely a binger, and I have ALWAYS had a really hard - impossible - time saying “no” to something offered to me. It has certainly gotten better since SBD, but it’s still there.I feel like I’m ready to move forward to Phase 2 a few days early but I’m afraid to move on because of the cravings issues.  How will I overcome that issue?  The mental issue? 

One of the things I love in a cookbook is pretty pictures, and I find that often it’s hard to find a cookbook with any pictures in it, much less pretty pictures. B The kids bought me a cookbook for Christmas that I adore; it’s a Spanish cookbook and it is loaded with the most beautiful color pictures.

Today I bought a new cookbook - a South Beach Quick & Easy Cookbook. I couldn’t pass it up. It is filled with recipes, obviously all SBD frendl. And it’s filled with gorgeous pictures. It made me very hungry.

Tonight we’re having Shrimp & Celery salad, which is soooo yummy (I couldn’t pass up a sneak taste):

1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2T fresh lime juice (I didn’t measure, I just added the juice of a whole lime)
1T grated lime zest
1 1/2t curry powder I only added 1t
1/4t salt
1 1/2 pounds shrimp
4 large celery stalks, thinly sliced
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced
(I added a quarter of a small onion, minced as well as 1/4t dried cilantro)

Whisk together sour cream, mayonnaise, lime juice, lime zest, curry powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add shrimp, celery and cucumber; toss gently to coat. Makes four 1½ cup servings.

330 calories, 17g fat, 4.5g saturated fat, 37g protein, 6g carbohydrates, 2g dietary fiber, 670mg sodium.

The cravings are mostly gone and are now completely psychological.  Like if there is something in front of me that I want, I can understand that I don’t need it and just want to eat it.  Those kinds of cravings are a lot easier to deal with than the physical urge to eat. 

Yesterday was my now regular 2 hard boiled eggs and can of V8.  I don’t like eggs much at all, and hard boiled seems to be the only way I can really stomach them.  (Today I made scrambled eggs with turkey bacon and salsa and it’s not very good…makes me want to throw up!)  My snack was a cheese stick, and for lunch, I went to the galley because they always have a salad bar whereas if I go home, there’s really nothing to choose from.  I had a salmon steak and a salad with oil & vinegar dressing.  Dinner was a pot roast with cauliflower in the crock pot.  It was yummy. 

My fullness when eating now isn’t quite the same satisfying fullness I had when I ate carbs, but it is good in a different way.  I don’t feel stuffed, ever.  But I just stop being hungry.  And then I’m not hungry after that.  I had a ricotta creme for dessert, and that was it.

Strict adherence to this diet is what will make it successful and I know that, but sometimes it is hard to get my 2 cups of veggies in with lunch & dinner.  And a couple of times I’ve missed a snack, and you HAVE to snack on the diet.  I read an article on about.com (I’d link it except I can’t find it) from a woman who did it and had only marginal success.  She posted her daily eating habits and it was full of little things here and there that should have been done differently - no veggies with breakfast, skipping snacks, little cheats here and there.  It could just be that she didn’t react as well to the diet as most others do, but I’m betting it’s more because of the failure to follow it strictly.

So I’m finishing my first week.  Tomorrow starts my second week.  I’m going to go to the commissary and buy lots of veggies and for next week, I’m going to pre-pack things to take with me so I’m not at a loss for a snack, and I’m going to write out a meal plan for the whole week so there’s no scrambling to figure out something to eat.  Still, I’m down 11 pounds and even if my loss slows down I figure I’ll still lose another 2-3 pounds putting me at about 13 pounds - only 5 pounds from my immediate goal.  And then the next week when I start Phase 2 and start getting carbs back in me, I’ll be able to work out again and hopefully the weight will come off steadily.

As we’ve been unpacking, I’ve been excited to see a few things. Many things I could do without and didn’t miss (which makes me want to have a rummage sale), but there have been gems that we’ve found as we’ve unpacked:

My down blanket, of course!
My red shoes
Wine glasses (I love our wine glasses)
Crock pot!
Towels (we’ve had only 3 big towels for the last 3 months)
My red sheets for the bed…so soft and comfortable
The stereo - the iPod has saved us, but now I can take my iPod to work!
Kids’ scissors and glue
All my scrapbooking stuff
Pictures and paintings to hang on the walls
Our SWING! (we have an outdoor swing, one of those freestanding porch swings…I can’t wait to get it set up.)

Of course, there’s been a lot of stuff for the kids that I’m happy to have, like all of their toys and clothes and books and bikes, and we have all of our clothes again, but for the most part, we have just too much STUFF. I doubt we’ll have a rummage sale because we don’t have all that much big stuff, but I’ve heard they have a big rummage sale at the drive-in theater on base and it’d be great to be able to sell some stuff there.

I can’t wait to go home tonight and unpack some more!

The movers came yesterday at 8:00am and we went to sleep last night at 10:30 - the whole entire day was spent unpacking.  The kitchen is close to being done.  The living room is a disaster area.  Isak’s room is mostly done with the exception of going through his dresser for too-small clothes.  Anja’s room is mostly done, as well. 

Our bedroom is probably the worst room in the house.  We had a huge walk-in closet AND a bathroom in our old master bedroom.  Now we have one tiny bathroom (with no drawers! or cupboards!) and our master bedroom that doesn’t have a very large closet.  Our plan is to assemble a bunch of wire boxes and line the top and bottom of the closet and use it as additional drawer space. 

I was delighted when I saw them bring out our bed and mattresses.  I’ve missed them.  We’ve been sleeping on a very low mattress that wasn’t all that comfortable.  I’ve been looking forward to getting our mattresses.  Even more than our mattresses, I couldn’t wait to get our down blanket. 

We went through every box in the bedroom.  I was so excited when I got to the last box and felt it on the bottom!  Except, when I pulled it out, it turned out to be one of the kids’ downy baby blankets and two pillows.  No blanket.  Every box in the bedroom had been scoured, and when we couldn’t find it, B went out to the storage shed and looked through all the boxes in there even though we were pretty sure it wouldn’t be there.  And we were right.

While B was out in the shed, I’d made the bed.  Exhausted, I climbed onto the top and sprawled out.  But my blanket wasn’t there, and we finally gave up, convinced it’d been lost.  I was close to tears - over a damn down blanket! 

And then B asked if I’d looked in his father’s old sea chest.  Of course I hadn’t, because it’s rather small and our blanket is quite big and wouldn’t fit.  But he took all the stuff off the chest and opened it and rays of golden light poured out and the gods sang down upon us, and there was the blanket of all blankets, the love of my life, my down blanket.

And then I went to sleep.