Long day.  Started with the firewood - good workout tho.  I unloaded at least half of that trailer.  I didn't have to, payment included unloading but I figured I need the exercise.  Then finding recipes, then to Kroger's.  Amazingly busy.  I guess we're close to Thanksgiving?  Not that close tho.  Just a little less than two weeks from now. Never-the-less, the store wasn't only packed with customers, it was packed with employees of all levels including the store manager going around asking everyone if they found everything.

I found 2 ladies and asked them about mushroom powder.  I know, never heard of it, right?  I hadn't either.  There's a lot of ingredients they use to keep carbs low in these recipes that I have never heard of before, or have heard of but never tried. Some of it? I'll never try again, either, lol.  I wanted to make sure I got everything on that list. I was there a while. This keto diet is rather pricey as well as time consuming.  Lots of meat, lots of expensive ingredients.  Tho, in  many cases, once you buy the more pricey ingredients, you have enough to last a while.  But meat isn't particularly cheap. 

Got home from that, unloaded everything, carried it all. I was getting no help from the other adults - they got off the diet and did a binge drinking night. They were stone-faced drunk last night. I mean, falling on the floor, puking in the sink drunk.  And were regretting it today.  I did - no such thing lol.  So anyway, I got all this stuff in here - there's enough to cook for the entire week - but no way I was going to make all of that today.  I had to figure out what to eat for the next 2 days. So, I cooked the whole chicken, that turned out delicious.  It wasn't what was for dinner tonight, but I did, of course, have to try it.  I decided to make 2 lunches and 2 dinners, and have Atkins drinks for breakfast. High fat, low carbs. 

So, baked that, made jalapeno poppers to go with dinner and then got out old stuff that needed to get eaten for lunches.  I'm definitely not into throwing any of this stuff out.  So, 2 days worth of eating is accomplished. If I go into a third day, I'm just going to have to get food somewhere and strip it of the carb stuff - bread usually - and just eat the meat and hopefully some veggies at least.  Taking lots of string cheese tho.  Maybe I should take a bar of cream cheese. That has enough fat to last an entire day's worth. I'll figure it out.  The only way I want detention pay on this trip is if it's at least 10 hours after they take 10 hours off.  It really would be better right now if I didn't get detention on this trip and hopefully get at least a 1 day trip after this one to get on the next paycheck. 

I have money saved for the trip tho.  I'm not paying for hotels, airfare is already paid, I'll be taking a few Uber trips and the rest in mom's pickup.  I'm not worried but there is also Christmas coming up and I don't want to dig into business/land savings for that. 

As for diet, I switched to my old size 34's and now they are starting to get loose. That's no joke. I still have a gut going but apparently it's shrinking.  I just look at myself in the mirror and really don't see it, but the scale and my pant size tell a different story. My face also pulling back in instead of that "fat" look.  That was annoying me. Something I always told myself, if I ever get the fat face going, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get my thin looking face back.  Getting there. 

Tonight's dinner wasn't exactly a keto meal.  Deer steaks. When talking keto, fatter is better. Deer meat is extremely lean. Probably high 90 percent range.  But James cooked it - first put it in apple juice and let it sit overnight and all day.  Then Montreal Steak seasoning. It was oh so wonderful.  The jalapeno poppers filled cream cheese and cheddar cheese made up for the lack of fat in the steaks - hopefully.  I may be eating a fat filled diet, but it's still small on the calories. Never anything over 1,500 and usually more like 1,000.

I just don't have the energy like I do when eating carbs.  I won't be doing this diet forever.  I'll probably be switching back and forth.  Low calorie carb diet shouldn't really make me gain a lot of weight. They key, I think, is irrelevant of what diet or non diet I might be doing, to limit to a bare minimum if not eliminate it forever, eating at truck stops and junk food restaurants.  You know the names of those places, I don't need to put up a list. 

But, I'm going to try and get down to my goal weight before going off of this thing.  A couple more months maybe? Hard to tell really.  I just feel good that I've been moving all day long with some still to go - laundry almost done.  It all burns calories. I'm really hoping it won't be too terribly much longer before I get down to 200 and then....below.  If I ever make it back down to the 180's - a weight I haven't been at in many years now -  I will be elated.  But if I can only make to the 190's I'll still be happy. 

Well, the day is winding down.  I don't have the first load in the morning thank God.  It's the second load, meaning an extra hour and a half of sleep before having to get up versus the 3:30 am rise.  I was lucky that there is another Mapleton run going out and that is always the first run by the plant's request.  I could have taken it but I didn't want to be out 3 days.   This Brownsville run doesn't pay quite as much but it's 85% guaranteed to be a 2 day run 

Okay. The only other thing. Possibly TMI. My butt hurts bad.  They cauterized it after they cut the giant mole off.  I could smell my burning flesh, I knew I'd be paying for it and - yeah. Sitting down is a literal pain in the ass, lmao. 

Well another day off.  I guess.  I don't need tomorrow off tho, this paycheck totally sucked and I need to get back on track.  The Illinois run was worth a chunk of change yes, but I need another one at least and a short run to make it a good paycheck.  The fact that this truck breaking down was none of my doings is what is fueling my current feeling about finding a new job on top of everything else. But, during that time I was not feeling well at all on this Keto diet so it kind of, sort of equalizes it.

Speaking of diets, I lost no more weight today.  Which is fine, because the mirror is actually starting to show a change.  In other words, I can actually see change, which I really hadn't until this morning.  My belly is definitely shrinking.  And I slipped into size 34's this morning.  I tried that last week but I still staying in 35's, but now I'm back in 34's cause 35's just aren't staying on me.  34's are just a tad tight when sitting down, but other than that they fit fine.

My firewood didn't show up yesterday, it was pouring rain and the guy asked if he could bring it sometime today.  Knowing that, I put a couple of huge logs over that fire last night hoping there would still be some good coals this morning to get another fire going. I have no small wood now, it's all just big logs. There are twigs laying all over the property from the trees, I've been cleaning those up quite a lot lately.  Anyway, there was quite a bit of smoking coming out of what was left of the 2 giant logs last night, flipping them over there was bright red coals.

And walaah.  And hour and a half later, it finally fired up the hot coals and even soaking wet wood is quickly dried out and burning.  It's cool outside today and predicted to get down to 31 degrees tonight. I got my greenhouse up but there is no sun shining so that isn't really going to help anything.  I'll have to bring the plants inside tonight if I want them to survive.

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Saturday. Finally got my cord of wood delivered.  Was completely out excepting a few very large logs that are impossible to start a fire with without anything smaller to get it going.  It was still smoldering this morning from yesterday and yesterday from the day before. I was able to keep it going by the nice hot coals that were still going and today was no different.  But now I have a large amount of nicely chopped wood - unlike the last load from the other source who not only brought me a lot of uncut logs, most of it was also unseasoned.  This wood appears to be seasoned, they claim it is, I'll be finding out soon enough.

I'm at 209 pounds on the diet.  I was there a few days ago, then up to 211 and now back down to 209. It isn't really any big deal to me, I won't get unhappy unless I go for quite a while without losing anything.  I got some good exercise today unloading that cord of wood at least.  The thing is, on my daily weight gain throughout the day as is normal, it's not going up near as high.  Maybe 215 to 216 at the most.  So that's coming down as well which is a very good sign.

I'm off to Brownsville tomorrow so I'm going to make some food today to take with me.  2 days worth if there is no detention pay, I'll probably take enough to last 3 days just in case.

I'm still stuck in the other guy's truck who is on an extended home stay apparently.  I have no idea whether they took my truck in yet.  I didn't ask yesterday when I was talking to my manager.  Work is slowing down for whatever reasons that I didn't ask about either.  There were only 2 loads going out today which is quite unusual. Should be at least 5.  And those 2 loads were going to Cheniere and she wanted to have a trainer go down with 2 new people to teach them how to unload.  How quaint.  Would have been nice if they'd done that with me.

I rather hate going out on Sundays, the only good thing about it is going through Houston should be a breeze, no slow downs at all.  I'm hoping I get another run after this one coming up that is short so I can get it on next paycheck.

Well whatever.  I've got to get my recipes together and figure out what we're eating this week. It was sort of dumped on me to deal with, but I'm still motivated so I'll do it and get it over with. Probably a lot of cooking today, not exactly how I want to spend my Saturday.  But it's that or go out on the road with nothing but keto snacks and that won't work for me at all.  I'd be starving and then I'd have to go to fast food, order a burger, strip it of everything and eat the meat patty.  Or chicken, take off the skin and eat that only . I'm sure the day will come where I'm forced to do that tho.  Restaurants serving fajitas would work as well.