This was an interesting editorial. For those of us who never embraced feminism, it is nice to feel a little bit vindicated.

Update on sickness . . . I was prescribed an antibiotic over the phone. My guess is that my doctor telediagnosed me with strep throat. After 2 days on the ab, I am feeling much better. Still a bit tired, but my throat feels just a little sore and scratchy instead of like a boa constrictor was choking me. Our oldest boy went to the doctor today. He just couldn’t shake the fever. Diagnosis–sinus infection. We should be up to full speed by next week. It has been a long week of isolation. We went to Denny’s for lunch after the oldest’s dr’s appointment today just to relieve a bit of the cabin fever.

We also dropped by the used book shop I mentioned in an earlier blog. I talked with the owner some more, and I now know her name. It is Kelly.

Here it is about a month since I decided to blog about my attempt to lose weight. I haven’t managed to incorporate regular exercise into my life, yet. I also have struggled all this month with losing and gaining the same 2 – 4 pounds. At my weigh-in Monday, I had gained 2.5 pounds. That’s not the kind of thing I am striving for. The good news is that for the month, I am still 2 pounds down. Not the 10 I was hoping for, but at least it is down instead of up! I walked yesterday morning with grand ambitions of walking the rest of the week. Then at about 11:45 am, I was hit with chills, then a fever, and a sore throat that just kills. I caught it from my children. I have periods during the day when my temp is around 100 and I can function. Then it spikes again, and I crash. So the exercise plan has once again been put on hold. Hopefully early next week will be a good time to get going and I will be over this flu or whatever it is. I really want to make this work, and I am at a pivotal point in the WOE I am using. In other words, I am getting bored with it, so cheating is much more tempting. Being sick makes it easier to justify cheating too. So if you think of it, pray for me to get over these hurdles.

I went to my TOPS meeting tonight, and I lost 2 1/2 pounds. So I am down by a 1/2 pound from a few weeks ago, before my last week’s gain. My total loss is now 20 1/2 pounds. This isn’t as good as I would like, but it is much better than going up again. I am pretty much back on track with the WOE now, too. More exercise must enter the equation. I work it in–somehow. (Someone might suggest I exercise instead of blog 🙂

Books–I had an opportunity last week to go to a used book shop that I enjoy visiting in the small town south of us. About 6 months ago, it was sold to a new owner. She has really cleaned things up, and overall, it is a more pleasant shop to frequent. When the new owner took over, I found it easy to chat with her. I came home after meeting her the first time and told Mark I thought I needed to start praying for this woman and visiting the store regularly. I visited weekly for about a month. Since then, I have been there only once a month or so. On my visit last week, she told me that she wasn’t a Christian. This was in the context of discussing books we like and why. She also told me she was “spiritual” and that she believed there were many paths to God. I had the opportunity to tell her that I believed there is only one way to God through Jesus. She was not offended. She even told me she looked forward to seeing me again. All of this was said, but I still don’t know her name. If you read this, please take a minute and pray that God will bring more people into the life of the owner of “The Book Shop on the Corner” in Chickasha, Ok, to talk with her about Jesus.

I should add that I made a couple of great finds on that shopping trip. I found two reading primers to use for practice with Calvin this summer as he learns to read. I also found a copy of Leaving Cold Sassy. I was thrilled with this, as I have wanted to read it since I finished Cold Sassy Tree last summer. If you haven’t read Cold Sassy, you should. Just leave it that. The great thing about this little book shop, by the way, is that no book is more than $2.

I went to weigh in last night. It was bad news–up 1 3/4 pounds. Since I had been faithful to my way of eating and my rings were tight, I attribute it to water retention. I used the bathroom 3 times during the course of the meeting, so I weighed afterward just out of curiosity, and I had lost 1/2 pound. So it is not as bad as it might be. However, I have allowed some stress in my life to successfully tempt me into emotional eating today. I was baking cookies for the teacher appreciation lunch at my son’s school, and I gave in and tried them. I also tried some store-bought cherry pie that was in our fridge because it had been given to us as a leftover from the fellowship meal on Sunday. I thought I would be sick, but I wasn’t. However, I do feel more fatigued now. I have been on this WOE since the end of January, and I have consistently passed up desserts and resisted tasting them while making them for various other people or functions. So I am not at the point of saying they can’t be in my house. I am at the point of saying, “I cheated. It’s done. Now back to the program.” Hopefully, faithfully returning to the program and adding some exercise this week will get me back on track without too much of a setback.

Onto book updates . . . Finished chapter 4 of The Holiness of God. It is good. I think I will get through the rest of it fairly quickly. I also finished another chapter of Bringing Up Boys by James Dobson. It is really a good book. I started it months ago, and I had to put it down because of manuscripts I had to edit. Then I just didn’t get back to it. But it is really excellent, and I hope to finish it soon too. Perhaps I will take the time to be more coherent in my evaluations of these books in the future, but time doesn’t permit that now.

I haven’t weighed in yet this week, so I don’t have any news on the weight loss effort. The exercising has come to a stand still this past week. There’s a lot going on in our church that is affecting my motivation, plus I had several extra school responsibilities and a 6-year-old birthday party to plan last week. Whine whine whine. I will do better this week. I’ll let you know how the weigh in goes after tonight.

Books. I finished Wheel of Fortune last week while I waited for my children to finish gymnastics lessons. It was an excellent book. I will write more thoughts later, but I must say that as I finished the book, I could see the characters for Howatch’s future books (Starbridge Series) developing in her mind. I am still not much further in The Holiness of God. Now that the novel is done, I may get further. However, I have an editing job to do this week, so it may fall by the way once again.

Regarding reformed books, I appreciated the suggestions of some of you for books to use in discussion with my newly reformed friends. I think I have settled on working through the Shorter Catechism with them and studying the proof texts. My sister-in-law mentioned a couple of books she used in a high school study on TULIP. That may be the next thing we tackle. I think these friends want to get beyond the popularized stuff like Sproul. But I will still read them for a reference point.

A nearly 3-year-old girl just climbed on my lap, so I need to close.