August Journal

August 27, 1998--still 225
It has been an interesting couple of days in North Carolina. Hurricane Bonnie has been pointed right at us for a week and finally came onshore on Wednesday morning. Here in Central North Carolina we didn't really experience any fallout, but I plan to use it as an excuse anyway. My parents live in Wilmington near the coast, and I was so worried about them I headed right for the comfort food. (Yeah, that's the ticket!)

School started last week, and we are having all sorts of trouble getting things worked out for Zack. He was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and with an unspecified learning disability in visual processing almost a year ago, and we have yet to get him the services the school system is legally required to provide. We paid for testing last year, we paid for a tutor while we waited for the school to do something. Now we are moving in reverse: The school lost a confidential document out of his file and they maintain they will have to redo testing to be sure he qualifies. In the meantime, he failed two courses last year and he is well on track for a similar performance this year. (This is a child with an IQ of 145, but there are no services for students who are both gifted and learning disabled.) The straw that broke the camel's back is that he was selected for an honors theatre class but not placed into it because of a scheduling conflict. His father and I believe the scheduling conflict could easily be resolved, but school officials have drawn a line in the sand and they will not make any accommodations to place him in the class. We are so frustrated because we think being in this class could get him excited and enthusiastic about school. Right now it is a struggle everyday to get him up because he hates school so much. We are seriously contemplating taking some sort of legal action, not about the scheduling problem, which I'm sure they could justify (although I'm equally sure that they would have made it work for certain students), but about the services we requested unofficially a year ago and officially six months ago. I'm afraid my son is just treading water until he turns 16 and can drop out.

On a more positive note, I'm doing well with my water. I think I've met my goal of 64 oz 5 of 7 days. That's probably why at least I'm staying even!

August 20, 1998--225
From the fact that it's taken me 17 days to drop a half pound, you might deduce that things aren't going too well. For me, August is the time of family reunions, birthdays, and back-to-school celebrations. It is hard to make much progress. Also, I've had trouble getting into Geocities to update my journal. I'm not sure what was going on.

Anyway, I have been thinking about either rejoining (for the umpteen-millionth time) Weight Watchers or joining the Y. I don't think I can afford to do both (and actually I may not be able to afford to do either). It just seems like I need something to help me succeed. I know I can count calories myself, but I'm just not doing very well at it. And I know I can exercise without belonging to a gym, but I'm not doing very well at that either.

I think I'll try to limp through the rest of August, when things should be settled down a bit at work and my son should be settled down a bit at school, before I try to make a decision. There are 10 days left this month. My goal for those 10 days is to drink my water. I am going to focus on just one thing and see what happens.

August 3, 1998--225.5
I've been doing very well since I got back from Summer Conference last week, although I did have a small lapse yesterday -- and of course my name came up for Random Testing on the Healthy List, so I had to report it. I haven't got back in the habit of drinking all my water since I got back on track, but otherwise things are going very well. My feet are hurting again, probably because I wore Barbie shoes all during the conference in a vain attempt to look professional. All it did was damage my feet. I'm afraid I'm going to have to lose some before I can get too serious about exercising because my feet hurt so much.

Email: rwelfare@mindspring.com

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