I’ve been sitting here for the better part of a half hour trying to decide how to start this last post. It’s very hard to say goodbye to something you’ve cared for and nurtured for years, especially something that has brought such wonderful people into my life I never would have known had I not started this site in the first place.

Before you start hyperventilating and fanning yourselves, I want to reassure you I’m not retiring from blogging altogether. I am simply boarding the place up and moving on. I started this site six and a half years ago when I was pregnant and that little girl who was yet to be born is now reading books and getting her own food from the Chinese buffet, thank you very much. How the hell did THAT happen, I ask you?

That being said, since I decided to stop writing about Autumn, there’s been very little to bring me back to the blog I named after her. I also got so very busy at work doing, um, the job they pay me to do that I found very little time to sneak in the occasional blog post. Also, the business of blogging has changed so much since I first started writing online and a random lady in Michigan with nothing to offer but her wit and charm has to fight very hard to be heard amongst the brand ambassadors and social media gurus populating the web these days.

It seems “regular gal” is not what some consider a marketable attribute. Oh well.

So here’s what’s going to happen: I can’t deny this blog has been on life support for many months, unfortunately I did not sign the DNR until after the domain had been renewed for another year. So Autumn At Oak Hollow will live on for at least another 51 weeks.  Those of you who self-host a blog know what a pain in the ass it is to keep it secure and updated (“Wordpress 3.4.5.6.7.1.1.1 update? Are you effing kidding me? I just updated last week!”), so at some point within the next few weeks I will be moving the entire site over to a WordPress-hosted site and point my domain there.

The move is completely self-serving because a) I’m lazy and don’t want to maintain the site anymore b) I’m a pack rat who can’t get rid of anything and c) I can’t remember anything and the blog is a fantastic point of reference for the past six years of my life. Some things I’ll never forget, but if I ever want to recall the exact month Molly buried the bagels in the couch, I only need to search for it on my blog.

Speaking of which, we had to put Molly down a couple of weeks ago. I know! I thought that dog would outlive us all, but she unfortunately developed a bad case of pancreatitis that she was unable to come back from. Nathan and I were in the room with her until the end. I was surprised at how much I cried over that dog considering the amount of grief she’d caused us over the years, but cry I did and mourned her over a very large pancake breakfast at Cracker Barrel afterwards.

Now I did mention I wasn’t quitting blogging altogether, but I have yet to hang my shingle anywhere else. I have two blogs in the works, one that will sit where this one used to at heathernoah.com (don’t look-there’s nothing there yet) and another unnamed site I hope to develop with a friend of mine.

Your guess is as good as mine as to when these sites will actually be rolled out. I’ve been talking about developing a new blog for well over a year now.  My guess is they will happen sometime after we paint the kitchen and sometime before we get new carpet for Autumn’s room. Everything in my life seems to revolve around home improvement projects these days.

Anyway, if you are at all interested in following me on to the next chapter, I will be posting the links to the new sites on my Facebook page when they’re ready to go.

Thank you all so much for reading my personal, passionate, sarcastic and silly posts throughout the years. I enjoyed writing them for you.

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

Wow. So WordPress is telling me I have lots and lots of updates to perform if I’m going to bring this place back up to code. And hey, did you all know it’s 2012?

Tonight I got the itch to sit down and write (I actually had to think about which spelling to use there-wright, rite, right-blah-blah) because I’ve had a very good day and want to share what’s been going on these last couple of months.

First, the bad news. I gained a whopping 13 pounds between Halloween and New Year’s. I’m not freaking out about it because I’m still kicking ass at the gym. I did, however, learn that peanut butter Snickers bars are the product of Satan and that next Halloween the house will be dark and I’ll be holed up in the basement watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu while Nathan takes some gussied-up version of our daughter out around the neighborhood. It all went downhill starting on Halloween and I won’t be making that mistake again this year.

But October was a very good month for me in that I once again started the Couch to 5K program and finished without stopping or needing to repeat a week. BOO YA! I seriously never thought I’d be able to do it. Once in awhile I’d look at what was coming up and would be like, “What? Eight minutes straight of running? Are you shitting me?” I’m happy to say I’m now running 5k three times a week and had the best run so far today. My body is getting stronger, my thighs especially and I’m starting to feel like that Bond girl who squeezed men to death with her vicious scissor hold in Goldeneye. Xenia Onatopp. That’s me.

I spent some time with a personal trainer while I was out and about ignoring the blog and now incorporate two days of strength training into my weekly routine. Getting the strength training in is a challenge because I really do love the cardio and if I thought my body could take it I’d be on that treadmill five days a week.

Wait. What? Who just said that? Because that couldn’t have been me.

Yes, I like to run, which is a good thing because I also like to eat and I’ve made a decision to just be happy where I am right now. I’m 13 pounds heavier than I was three months ago, but I am still 97 pounds lighter than I was three years ago. I’d like to take those thirteen pounds back off and a few more of their friends, but I’ve decided that I have to find happiness with the body I have now. I’m probably as fit as someone my size can be and I think that’s amazing. What I’ve accomplished since slipping on that damned patch of ice in my driveway four years ago is pretty freaking awesome if you ask me.

That’s really all I have right now. I just popped in to brag and let my scant few readers know I’m still alive and kicking. Besides it’s getting late and I’ve got to get to the gym in the morning.

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

Today after my workout I stopped at the grocery store to pick up one thing only to leave having spent about $40.

While I was at the grocery store spending my $40, I spotted a woman with a tiny cart and a scanner strapped to her wrist. It really was a slick device, reminiscent of a futuristic accessory one might see on Dr. Who or Torchwood. She was scanning a bag of potato chips with the wrist scanner and and jotting notes in her notebook.

I imagine she was some sort of independent representative or supplier taking inventory of stock because the next time I saw her she was scanning a 2-liter bottle of soda.

I found myself envying her a little.

Sometimes I wish I had a job in which I was a little more independent. I’d love to shuffle around the store scanning crap with a futuristic Captain Jack Harkness doodad strapped to my wrist.  I’d love being able to set my own pace and essentially have a list of crap to scan and make notes in my little notebook.

I’m sure there’s more to her job and I’m sure she has to deal with administrative and bureaucratic bullshit just as much as anyone else.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she would hear about the job I have and wish for the great pay, security and benefits it offers.  Maybe being on her feet is starting to wear on her and she’d love a job in which she gets to sit all day.

Then there’s my hairdresser, the lovely Nancy who thankfully has not retired. Nancy now works solely out of her cute little home salon and when she clocks out for the day she just has to walk the ten or twenty feet from the salon to her house proper. I was there until 10 pm last Wednesday trying to make myself not look almost 40 and Nancy told me she sometimes will work up to 11:00 because it’s just so convenient to do so.

I envied Nancy, too, especially since I know she loves what she does.

Even though these two ladies have completely different professions, there’s something about each of them that spoke to me and made me wish I wasn’t parked in front of a desk all day. When thoughts like that start creeping into my head, I have to remind myself that I’ve thus far not been completely happy in any one of the jobs I’ve held and would probably not be happy in theirs.

And so…at nearly 40 years old, I’m still searching for what I want to be when I grow up.

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

A couple of weeks ago I emailed my friend Julie through Facebook and was all, “Hey, did you know November is National Novel Writing Month? Let’s jump into the crazy and write ourselves some novels!”

Or something like that.

I’ve been on this planet for, oh, nearly 40 years now and it seems every year I forget how much of a shit storm of stress November is. It seems most of the adults in my family and Nathan’s family thought February and March were excellent months to get down and do the nasty, the end result being that 88% of our family has birthdays between November 16 and December 17. And of course there are a couple of other high-stress holidays packed in there as well.

Let’s also add that Autumn has been talking of nothing but a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party for months. I didn’t want to do a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. Nathan didn’t want to do a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. We’ve had something far classier planned as a birthday surprise ever since we heard The Wizard of Oz would be opening at The Civic Theater the weekend after Autumn’s birthday.

But the girl just would not shut up about Chuck E. Cheese, so Nathan and I decided that we’d invite our friends to join us there to celebrate Autumn’s birthday, opting to buy everyone pizza rather than book a formal party.

However…there was a miscommunication between husband and wife and the husband went all rouge and attempted to alter the social calendar without first checking with the wife, which made the wife lose her shit and stress the hell out even more.

Translation: we are now booking a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party.

And that brings us to the cake dilemma. As you may know, or not since I seemed to have forgotten this year actually had an October in it, I just concluded eight weeks of cake decorating classes. For eight weeks my life was all about cake and frosting because I wanted to make Autumn an excellent cake that would not cripple my hand from piping hundreds of little stars (see exhibit E from 2007).

But now we’re doing this Chuck E. Cheese birthday party after Autumn’s birthday, which has me stressing about whether she’s going to want a cake on her actual birthday. First world problem, I know, and if I had more than one child I’d probably drop a Twinkie on a plate, cover it with Reddi Whip and call it good. However, both of my grandmothers are still alive and hoping to celebrate with their great-granddaughter. Having warned them away from Chuck E. Cheese, I sort of implied there would be a celebration at my house on Autumn’s birthday.

Thankfully I do not have to work that day, but my GOD I have a kid in kindergarten who’s also expecting treats for 26 classmates minus the one kid with food issues.

So you can imagine how I felt when I saw November 1^st approacheth on the calendar and decided to completely shut down. Halloween night, while Nathan was out trick-or-treating with Autumn, I logged onto Hulu, watched back-to-back episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ate back-to-back bars of Peanut Butter Snickers, which I discovered I may love more than Reeses peanut butter cups. I actually love them too much and had to ignore the last few groups of trick-or-treaters because I ran out of candy.

That being said, with the exception of a five page office orientation document I drafted for work last week, these words are the most I’ve written since my last blog post in September.

Julie has dutifully emailed me progress reports on her writing and I have dutifully replied with flaky responses about how busy I am (who’s not, right?). She has kicked out over seven thousand words to my zero words and I’m so very proud of her because this whole writing thing is very hard when you’re not whining about how life has you by the balls.

So here’s what I decided about the whole birthday thing. As 88% of my family knows, a birthday in the vicinity of either Thanksgiving or Christmas means your birthday celebration can be readily postponed until Thanksgiving or Christmas. The great-grandmas can wait until Thanksgiving, pumpkin and/or apple pie can stand in as a birthday confection and I’m only going to worry about busting out one fabulous cake and 26 treats minus the one I don’t have to make for the kid with food issues.

Happy November, everyone!

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

A couple of things…

First of all, tomorrow I celebrate my 10^th anniversary with the university. Since tomorrow is Saturday, I will be celebrating by not working.

I honestly never thought I’d get to the point where I could boast about being in any job for ten years let alone the one I have, but I’ve achieved the peaceful sort of contentedness that comes with thinking I know it all.  It’s also pretty cool to finally have secured the promise of whatever modest pension the university will provide when I decide to become a complete freeloader.

It’s not easy being a working mom, and today I was reminded of how much I do miss by not being able to help out regularly at Autumn’s school. I got to read a story to the class today and afterwards we had a brief Q & A session during which nearly every child asked me a question. They were of the “what’s your favorite…” variety and I blew them away with my knowledge of the Transformers universe (FYI, Bumblebee seems to be a favorite with kindergarteners).

My football knowledge, however, was an epic fail. Sorry, kids, Autumn’s mom does not know the names of any football players who have not appeared in a TV commercial, sitcom or romantic comedy.

And second of all, a few weeks ago I had the brilliant idea of taking a Wilton cake decorating class at my local Michael’s store. The thing with cake decorating classes is that there’s cake involved. And frosting. Like LOTS of frosting.  And you can imagine a woman who has spent the last two years on Weight Watchers may have issues with cake and frosting.

Still, I did have fun with the class and had the pleasure of giving my final cake to a friend who will be celebrating her birthday on the same day I will be celebrating my 10^th anniversary at work by not working.

As the cake says, Happy Birthday, Julie! Can’t wait to celebrate with you tonight!

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

Today was the first day of kindergarten and it couldn’t have been more different than last year’s first day of kindergarten.

Last year was fraught with waffle drama and the omen of a lost skirt. This year she’s wearing another skirt but was not in the mood for breakfast at all and of course I was all “YOU MUST EAT” and put an extra snack in her Littlest Pet Shop lunch box.

This year Nathan was the one who stayed with her until the bell rang.

But mom wasn’t left out and got a shot in with the kindergartner as well.

I’m not feeling the love for those pants. They’re actually a couple of sizes larger than what I wear now and the last time I wore them I had four dollars in coins in one pocket, the weight of which nearly made the pants slide off my right hip.

But I’m liking that denim jacket which I purchased for $3.99 at Goodwill. Score!

Anyway, back to the kindergartner. I have no doubt she’s going to get into some mischief this year. Ideally I’d like to make it through the week before getting a call from the school, but after meeting her teacher I have all the confidence in the world my child is now with someone who will appreciate and nurture her individuality and help harness her dramatic tendencies.

I’m also pretty confident in saying that skirt is coming home tonight. This year’s first day of kindergarten is much colder than last year’s.

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

Today I received a call on my cell from Nancy, the lady who cuts my hair and Autumn’s hair. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you may recall Nancy as the person who cut Autum’s hair for the very first time three years ago. If not, you can re-live the experience over here.

At the end of my last appointment I scheduled a cut for both Autumn and myself for tonight. However, it’s kindergarten parent night tonight and we couldn’t possibly fit in two haircuts and kindergarten parent night, so I dutifully canceled my appointment, pushed Autumn’s appointment back a half hour later and rescheduled mine for next week.

But get this…Nancy is RETIRING.

That’s why she called today. She saw me in the book for next Wednesday and wanted to see if we could come in a little earlier because tonight is her last night ever at the salon.

Damn you, kindergarten parent night!

I swear I almost cried. Nancy’s been cutting my hair forever. She styled it the day I married Nathan and was my regular stylist well before that. She’s been limiting her availability since having kids, so I knew this day would eventually come.  Still, I was so not prepared for that day to be today.

Being a selfless mom-type person, I let Autumn have the appointment. The very last appointment with the woman who has cut my hair for over 15 years.

Then I thought about it. This isn’t Sophie’s Choice, after all. I’m not standing before a Nazi guard and being forced to choose which of my children to send to the gas chamber. It’s a haircut for crying out loud and my fifteen-plus years trumps my daughter’s three by a long shot.

I called the salon back and asked if another stylist might have time open while we’ll be there tonight. It turns out someone does have a slot open and I’m hoping Autumn will be just as enthralled with her as she was with Nancy during that first cut three years ago.

If not, I guess I’ll be getting acquainted with a new stylist sooner rather than later.

Crappity crap crap CRAP!

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

Last night I dreamed of Subway sandwiches.

They were delivered on a platter and people swarmed to the sandwiches, taking their favorites away on paper plates. I approached the platter and reached for the last turkey on wheat at the same time Harrison Ford reached for the last turkey on wheat.

It turns out Harrison Ford has turned into a crotchety bastard in his old age and he gave me a “Don’t fuck with my sandwich” look so I backed off because you do not fuck with Harrison Ford’s sandwich.

I took whatever meager leavings remained on the platter, which I promptly dropped on the floor. I had nothing to eat. Harrison Ford, on the other hand, happily walked away with the last turkey on wheat and didn’t look back.

And that’s how the first and only day of the 17-day diet cleanse ended. With Han Solo stealing my favorite sandwich.

I am back to my regular plan today. Yesterday started off strong with a bottle of kefir and an egg white omelet. I brought a salad, grapes and a yogurt with me to work and didn’t even feel the need to dig into the grapes until 11:00.

Then round about noon the fatigue set in. This was highly unusual for me. I never get that tired that early in the day, but I’d had an intense spinning workout in the morning, one in which I really pushed myself, and I don’t think I gave my body what it needed to refuel.  At noon I had my salad, at 3:00 I had the yogurt and at some point I found myself uncapping the bottle of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi I’d left in the fridge.  By the end of the day I was an exhausted, cranky mess who had been bitterly hoarding vanilla Tootsie rolls from the work candy dishes all day with the hope I might be able to eventually eat them.

Had I not already decided to eat my minimum points, I would have ended the day with a 12 point deficit. I used up those points by eating almonds, peanut butter and cherries (not all at once) but that still did not remedy the feeling that I’d been completely hollowed out by hunger. Nathan and I had no emotional reserves to withstand Autumn’s monkey business and became very short with her. Of course it didn’t help that she’s exactly the kind of child who will test out the fire door at Costco even after she’s been told exactly what will happen if she opens it, but by the end of the night we were spent and went to bed early.

This morning was no better and we had a hard time mustering the energy to get out of bed. Nathan has soldiered on to Day 2 but I have happily embraced my carbs again in the form of an English muffin for breakfast and leftover pizza for lunch. I can’t tell you how much difference there is between yesterday and today. Instead of saying, “Hey…you!” when someone greets me, I’m able to remember names and concentrate on work. My stomach is not grumbling and I have, in fact, treated myself to a couple of vanilla Tootsies today.

This is the me I like. The me who loves to eat and be active and who has enough energy reserved to consider doing more in bed than just falling asleep holding my Kindle.  Last night any thoughts of intimacy were pushed out of my mind by the overwhelming desire for a damn sandwich.  I still don’t know how Harrison Ford fits into all of this, but if he shows up in any more dreams I’ll have a thing or two to say to him about how being a celebrity entails demonstrating just a little bit of generosity.

I guess I’m back to square one as far as figuring out how to break out of this plateau. I’m going to try staying away from diet sodas as much as possible and have a plan in place on how mix things up with my weekly and activity points.  The bottom line is I’m not (read: never EVER again) going to sacrifice feeling great in order to force the scale to move.

I just have to have faith that it will eventually move as long as I continue taking good care of myself.

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

Last week Nathan and made the decision to try out the 17-Day Diet.  You may call me a hypocrite since I poo-pooed said diet a few months ago, but gosh darn it SOMETHING has to break me out of this plateau and I’m at the point where some behavior modification is needed to get things moving again.

At first I was going to follow the diet to the letter and suffer right along with my husband, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized the diet most likely would not allow me to do two things:

1. Maintain my current level of physical activity.
2. Remain a pleasant person.

Those things are very important to me. I love working out and really pushing myself. I love my spin class, I love the elliptical and I’m even starting to love the burn in my thighs the day after my attempts to jog on the treadmill. While the 17-Day Diet does endorse exercise, the caloric intake most likely would not be able to sustain me through my regular workouts.  I’m sorry, but I’m not about to sacrifice my hard-earned cardiovascular fitness level for the sake of a fad diet.

Then there’s Nathan, who not only consumed two Big Macs during a lunch date at McDonald’s this past week but likes the 17-Day Diet plan because it looks to be one in which he can quickly lose weight without having to exercise much.

Slacker.

As for the mood thing, I spent the worst of my depression being a difficult, insufferable person at work and at home and can pretty much guarantee I won’t be Miss Mary Sunshine if you start limiting both my food and my exercise. That’s not to say I don’t need to make changes and some of the principles of the diet, while gimmicky, might help me break the bad habits I still haven’t been able to shake these past two years, such as:

1. Drinking too many diet sodas
2. Not drinking enough water
3. Eating too many carbs
4. Dining out too much
5. Eating too many processed foods

The soda thing will be hard, especially when I think of the diet Wild Cherry Pepsi I left in the fridge at work on Friday. I heart my diet sodas so much, occasionally drinking up to two 20 oz bottles in a day, but I know they’re bad for me so I’m going to give them up for the duration and switch to the 17-Day Diet staple of green tea and water.

Yay.

As for the rest, you can’t argue with eating clean, unprocessed foods such as lean meats and green, leafy vegetables, all of which we’ll be cooking and consuming at home.  The whole fruit abstinence after 2pm is a bunch of bollocks if you ask me and I can already see that as being one of the more flexible tenants of this diet.

The long and the short of it is that I’ve decided to follow this diet along with Nathan while still eating my minimum daily points, logging everything into my tracker and maintaining my current level of activity. I think I may be able to make this work if I view this as a cleanse rather than a diet.  I’ll probably miss the carbs as much as I miss my soda, but something has to change.  It’s only three months to the start of the holiday season and I need a little momentum to keep me going. The past two years have seen me lose weight between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and while my goal during that time has always been to maintain my weight, I’d hate to break that losing streak.

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.

There’s a pregnant woman in my SPIN class. She’s obviously in her last trimester and if I had to guess I would say she’s about 7-8 months along.

I can’t tell you how much I admire women who are not only able stay active throughout their pregnancies but are more than willing to do so. Six years ago I took the news I was pregnant as license to give Weight Watchers the ol’ heave ho.  I sustained my life and Autumn’s on a diet of pizza and ice cream and was very happy to have a valid reason to stop going to meetings. After all, Weight Watchers would not have let me continue anyway once it became apparent I was expecting.  My separation from them (once again) was blissfully guilt-free this time.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d had enough foresight to take better care of myself throughout my pregnancy. When I got pregnant I weighed right around 270. The day I gave birth I clocked in around 325. During my first prenatal appointment my OB cautioned me to not gain much weight but said little as the numbers on the scale crept higher and higher.

At the time I didn’t want a preachy OB getting on my case about being fat and I did ultimately have a stress-free pregnancy in spite of my size, but looking back I now realize I maintained an unhealthy, apathetic attitude about my weight right up to the end. Of course I hated seeing the scale go back up over 300 again, but I kept telling myself there was nothing I could do about it. I was having a baybeee, so of course I had to gain some weight.

I was really nervous about getting pregnant again after having Autumn. The thought of having another child and putting on even more weight finally gave me that healthy dose of fear that had been absent during all those months when it would have made a difference. I can’t get pregnant right now, I thought. I just can’t.

Then Autumn, Nathan and I fell into a pleasant rhythm and I started asking questions like, “Do you think maybe we could do this again?” Nathan said maybe but that I’d have to lose some weight first. I didn’t want to hear it and did nothing about it, but he was right and we finally decided to put the issue to bed once and for all just before Autumn turned a year old. Nathan had a vasectomy.

For the most part I’ve been happy to have tied that knot in the works. Another pregnancy has occasionally popped up in my dreams, sometimes manifesting as a warm feeling of rightness, as though all the cogs in the machinery of my life have gotten themselves back into working order. Other times the pregnancy is a setback, an interruption, a dark cloud of wrongness robbing me of any hard-won equilibrium.

The truth is, since Nathan’s vasectomy, I hadn’t felt the slightest bit emotionally or physically capable of handling another pregnancy until now.

Of course the kicker is I turn 40 in three months. And then there’s still the whole vasectomy thing.

I’m not saying I want another child.  That ship has sailed, but when I look at that pregnant woman in my SPIN class I know there’d be nothing short of bed rest or severe gestational issues keeping me from staying active and eating well this time around.

It is unfortunate that it took five years after a vasectomy and three months before my 40^th birthday to get here, but I guess I’d rather be here and know I could handle it than stay where I was with a fear that creating another life would physically and emotionally ruin me.

That is progress, even it means we’ll always be a family of three.

©2012 Autumn At Oak Hollow. All Rights Reserved.