How about a swap? I'll even do it for free! Or maybe my left arm could just go on vacation for a few days.

I got both a flu shot and donated blood today. I'm feeling quite healthy and civic-minded, but boy is my left arm sore! I guess I should be grateful that both were done in the same arm. I wouldn't be a happy camper if both of my arms were hurting.

Since I started donating blood for the Red Cross, I've had one bad experience after another. I always seemed to get the crabbiest person, and they seemed like they didn't care enough to make sure they did their best to keep everything as painless as possible. Add to that the ancient equipment they had, and it added up to something I really didn't want to continue. I've never seemed to have the greatest luck getting a person who wasn't crabby, but it was 10 times worse with the Red Cross.

Well, today must have been my lucky day. I had two different very pleasant people helping me, and it was pretty painless, too! They had also gotten new padded cots for us to sit on, and they even had something to prop my head up because I'm so short and the incline is too much for me. The best part was that it only took me 30 minutes, total! That is absolutely unheard of. The last appointment I had with them took almost two hours! I was just excited when I was done that it had gone so well. Oh, and when I found out that I burned almost 650 calories just by donating a pint of blood? Well, that was the icing on the cake.

I realize that I've been a bit lax in updating my weigh-in status. While I was dealing with the unknown lactose intolerance, it was so disheartening to keep going up and down the same 2 pounds that I really, really didn't want to post about that. Thank goodness that is all taken care of!

As of this morning, my mid-week weigh-in, I am currently down 17.2 pounds. Yeah for me! I am really looking forward to hitting that 20 pound mark. It's a nice self-confidence and motivation factor to be able to say that you've lost 20 pounds. I'm hoping that in a week or two I'll be able to do that.

I went shopping in my closet last night when I was supposed to be trying to sleep. That's what I get for watching a show about people who believe in ghosts. Ugh. Anyways, I went through my tote full of my winter tops and tried on all of the school-worthy ones. I now have two piles, ones that fit right now, and ones that will fit with another 5-10 pounds gone. I was excited to wear one of my previous favorite fall/winter sweaters to school today, and it was a size Large! Wahoo! I'm hoping that I'll very quickly be out of all of my XL tops and into my L ones. Some of my fancy cardigans will take a bit longer to be wearable though. My chest just doesn't seem to be shrinking like the rest of me. I'm truly hoping and praying that it doesn't turn out like the past two times I've lost a decent amount of weight. The rest of me shrunk, and my chest went up a cup size, each time! I'm willing to give at least half of them away to a good home; I'd kill to be just a C cup.

Think about the most disgusting thing you have ever eaten in your entire life. Go on, I'll give you a few moments to remember...

Whatever it was, it cannot be compared to the absolute horrificness of soy yogurt. Apparently horrificness isn't a word according to spellcheck, but it honestly is the only way I can describe the vanilla flavored soy yogurt I attempted to eat this morning for breakfast. I usually dump in cereal and eat it mixed with my yogurt, but this morning I figured that I should at least try the yogurt before I do that so that I don't waste my cereal if I don't like it. I think that the smell should have told me something. I can't describe that either, acidic, and rotten, perhaps? I just barely dipped the spoon in the yogurt and put a little on my tongue. I thought I was going to throw up then and there. It tasted like sweetened Miracle Whip. Why would anyone eat that? My second thought was that my mom could replace her Miracle Whip combo in pasta salad with this stuff, and no one would be the wiser.

Long story short, don't eat soy yogurt unless your life absolutely depends on it. And even then I'm not sure I could.

Have you ever noticed that every Target store smells the same? How do they do that? Do they have some special "Target" air freshener?

I spent the afternoon shopping at Target and Cub because my cupboards and fridge were pretty bare. I like to shop for two weeks of groceries at a time because I hate having to make the 60 mile round-trip to Cub any more often then that! I know that I could shop at the small grocery stores (all two of them!) in my town, and I will grudgingly stop there if I've happened to misjudge the amount of a necessity, but I want more than just off brands of only the most commonly found supermarket items. For example, today I bought some rice milk and soy yogurt. I never would have been able to get those at my small grocery store. And, no, I'm not one of those holier-than-thou, can't-eat-regular-food, my-life-is-so-much-more-organically/locavoreally-fulfilled-than-the-average-peon. I just happen to have figured out that I'm lactose intolerant, and I don't want to spend my afternoons teaching and feeling absolutely miserable. And it only took the first 6 weeks of school and the helpfulness of my friend, the science teacher, to help me figure out what was going on. So now it's no more cow's milk or yogurt for me. Cheese is okay, though, phew! And did you know how many food items have milk or milk products like whey in them? So not cool.

Oh, and what was the dastardly milk product that lead to my downfall? Sugar free, fat free pudding- my lunch dessert. It sounds so innocent, so yummy, and now it's going to be made with rice milk. Keep your fingers crossed!