Well, so far, so good. I've been home for the summer now for a few days, and I'm happy to report that nothing has gotten out of control yet. Basically because I've had too much to do. On Monday I was out of the house for most of the day. I got sucked into a pyramid scheme. Let me explain what happened. During the school year, we had a nutrition and health fair at our school, and a lady came who does at-home spa treatments. I was interested in some of the products she had, for my mom (chemo is destroying her skin), and so I signed up to have the lady come to my house to demo some of the stuff. Normally, they do a party. You know, one person is the hostess, everyone gets to try all the stuff and get pampered, and at the end people can buy stuff. Kind of like a candle party, but fun. Anyway, I didn't invite anyone else over, partly because I feel bad about forcing others to sit through those carefully disguised sales pitches, and partially because I'm sometimes antisocial. But by not having anyone else over, it made me feel guilty, because this woman doesn't make any money unless people buy stuff. So I bought stuff. It seemed like a good deal, a lot of their products (skin care, cosmetics, microderm abrasion, lotions) for $99. The catch was, only half of the products get sent to you right away. To get the rest, the more expensive items, you have to sit through a day of their consultant training. They are hoping to get you to sell the products too. Everyone makes some profit from the people beneath them. So ultimately it's a big pyramid scheme. Now, the products actually are pretty good, but I'm not enough of a cosmetics or skin care freak to worry about it. I usually just wash my face with soap and water, and use a little Oil of Olay now that I'm over thirty. As far as make up goes, I've never been particularly girly, so I've never worn much. So this selling of items really isn't my thing. I'm not into the lifestyle that much, I'm not very social, and I hate selling things (I was terrible at selling Girl Scout cookies as a kid, even when my mom was the cookie chairperson for our troop). So I'll probably just end up buying the products for myself and other people as gifts (I do get a 25% discount as a consultant, whoo hoo) and call it good. But the upshot of the whole thing is that I was out of the house all day on Monday at this consultant training, and therefore couldn't get myself into trouble. Worked out a little Monday night, but not much. I actually had to stop working out because I got lightheaded (I think it's a side effect of my new blood pressure medication, thank you Mom and Dad for the genetic gift). But yesterday I had nowhere to go. I started by going to the gym and swimming 1 1/2 miles. Then I lifted weights for an hour, and I finished by gerbiling on the elliptical machine for half an hour. I managed to avoid going crazy with food all day, and then we went and played boatball (sort of water polo/soccer in kayaks on a lake) for two hours. Needless to say, when I weighed myself last night, I hit my second best weigh-in ever, at 181.2 (terrible body fat percentage though--also a gift from the blood pressure med because it has a diuretic effect and dehydrates me). So I'm going to try to keep it up. After posting this, I'm headed to the gym to swim and gerbil again. I'll save the lifting for tonight so I can use my husband as a spotting partner. If I can do this today and tomorrow, then I should be home free for the rest of the week, because we're going out of town to go kayaking for three days. I always lose weight when we boat, because there's nothing to eat and no time to eat it. If all goes well, I should be able to crack 180 for the first time in at least three years. That would be awesome. I'll let you know how it goes...