Friday - 8:30 am

I wasn't actually going to get out of bed this early. Not that this is early by any stretch of the imagination, but there were two things that forced me up. First, the dog.  He's got to go! Lol.  I fed him a couple of cups of food and then put him out, where he went straight to the chain link fence and started fence-fighting one of the neighbor's dogs.  

Ridiculous.  I put an end to that, the noise level was unbelievable.  

Then, I got out the pork shoulder roast, put it in the crock pot and then added a bunch of stuff to it per the recipe I am using.  It's a good thing I took snap shots of the recipe last night on my computer screen, it looked intriguing. Like, this combination of ingredients is probably going to taste super good when it's finished!  The reason it's a good thing is because the computer decided it would wipe itself clean of all history once again and nothing came back up.

I have it set to bring back everything that was on it the last time it was on.  But, once it clears itself? That all disappears. 

I'm not unhappy that I got up at this time of day, I feel pretty good, having a cuppa, got the roast done.  It supposedly has to cook 10-11 hours on low or 5-6 hours on high. I typically like to do these types of roast on low setting.  

Keto. Well, I've been doing it for a while now and have seen little results. Well, that is until this morning, when I got on the scale and was almost shocked to see the weight had dropped almost 5 pounds.  I was on a plateau for a long time, to the point I was thinking of giving up on it and trying something else. But when I have those thoughts, I also think: I've had so much success with this diet when I do it the right way. Why am I not seeing results now?  Probably just too much cheating.  There are days when the folks want to order something delivered or go get it where there is nothing on the menu that is Keto friendly.

I either have to eat whatever it is - you don't really have to twist my arm to eat Domino's pizza - or find something in the fridge to make on the quick. Lately, however, I've been saying no to any such luxuries for I really want to dump this fat. I know it takes a while to lose fat, especially when you've just eaten whatever you wanted to for a long time.  

Anyway, I got off and on the scale several times.  I really didn't believe what I was seeing, but it kept showing the same weight every time.  I even moved the scale to a different place on the floor, for some reason, I can get false results if it's situated - wherever.  Same thing.  Okay!  I'll take it! It really motivates me to stay on it once you see some results such as this.  Will it be that low tomorrow? Maybe not, but it shouldn't go up too much higher. It's just the way this diet works, I don't know why, I just stick with it. I desperately want to break the 200 pound barrier and get into the 190's. I'm still 15 pounds away from that.  Yes, I gained a lot of weight and fat on the last round of the "let's eat whatever we want whenever we want to!" game.

Behind door number 1! Domino's Pizza! Loaded with your favorite toppings, you get to gorge yourself on the heavenly tastes that are produced by a delicious pizza!

Behind door number 2? Well, you know, I tried all 3 doors, so there is that.  Potatoes! ALL kinds of potatoes!

And door number 3?  PASTA!!!!!!  

Let me just say here, even if I am not in ketosis - I don't know for I haven't checked in  quite a while - the fact that you stop eating sugary foods such as cookies, ice cream, candy, anything loaded with sugar - is enough to make you lose weight regardless. No potatoes chips, no or very little greasy food, lots of salads.  I consume bags of premade salads so fast that I find myself having to go the grocery story a lot to get more. You can't just load up on that stuff, it goes bad lol.  

I think why I'm feeling better right now is that I am on the cusp of hopefully getting some decent pay.  The manager didn't say I would be getting a little more, he said I would be getting a lot more going with the pay-per-load method.  You see and as I have discussed before, when I was told the pay, I thought the lady was talking about what I would be making per week, which is what most companies tell you.  She was a bit deceptive with that, she didn't specify it was per paycheck or the fact that paychecks are every 15 days.  Remember, I was on the fence in Oregon about sticking it out with them. If I were to have found that out while there and going through one of those "gee, I really want to get the heck out of here" moments, I think I would have left.  

I remember one night, with all the noise from that damnable laundromat on the floor beneath me going on late in the night and not being able to sleep, I was laying there thinking: I'm going to leave right now.  Screw this company, screw these people. Sleep deprivation will put you in a seriously foul mood, I can attest to that. It's a rather hellish condition where, at least in my case, you are sleeping 2 to 3 hours a night, some nights not at all and then getting up very early - 2, 3, 4 am type of stuff - spending all day in a truck attempting to stay awake and learn while you're doing it.  Not to mention the drivers you are with want to chit-chat. You don't feel like chatting because you are so tired, but you don't want to be rude, either.  I did learn a lot with those drivers, no doubting that, but the fact of the matter is, this entire time, it hasn't paid off. 

If I had been making what I thought I was going to make, I would be more than fine right now. The property tax would be paid, I would be saving money towards another septic system and I would be targeting one of the credit cards to pay it down. Or, I would do some of that and not pay myself out of the business fund and let that build up.  Which is what I really want to do for then I don't have to pay taxes on it.  I can just buy another septic system, it's a business expense, none of that money came into my personal funds, no taxation on it.  

So what now? Well, I'm just sitting here in a quiet house - I mad that dog shut his mouth, even outside in the back yard his voice carries - drinking coffee, happy that I got up relatively early, at least I'd call it early for a day off, and thinking about what I'm going to do today.

Well, if you read this journal, you know what I'm going to do: mow lawns.  I seem to have misplaced my bluetooth ear buds somewhere, I had them yesterday here at the house but now? I can't find them. I am wondering if the youngest child found them and decided to do something with them.  That's typically what happens with things that disappear without a trace and no explanation of how they disappeared. You go to his bed and you find stuff stuffed down beside the mattress and the wall.  That kid got himself into serious trouble yesterday, the likes of which the principal is requiring them to go in for a meeting today.

Not going to go into the specifics, but just to say it's pretty bad.  He's only 6 years old so there is a little wiggle room, but the action was completely unacceptable. He knows better, that can be stated as a definitive truth.  

Well lookit there! I have a memory from Facebook a year ago where I had parked myself on the scale and it shows 214.6 pounds.  That was a milestone then, I had lost probably 20 or so pounds.  I'm just above that.  This time, I intend on at least giving it a Herculean try to get down below the 200 mark.  I remember the first time I started keto and I got all the way down to I think 193 pounds.  What a great feeling that was!  I need to do that again.  Dump these size 35's and get into 34's  or even 33's.  Pants, that is and waist size.  

I'm not really in a big hurry to go do more work, if you can't tell.  I have  plenty of time and if I don't finish today? There is always tomorrow. Don't worry, I definitely intend on spending several hours over there mowing today, no one has complained but complaining sort of stopped after I threw that drunk old man out.  Some people were aghast that I had the "balls" to do that.  The guy was a threat to my business, I'll put it that way. Going around acting like he was the property manager, getting into the lady's faces and giving them hell and calling them foul, vile and reprehensible names, when I found that out, that's when I said enough.  There's just no way I could get justify his continued presence at my place. That and using the N word.  

I most assuredly hate that word.  Every person that has black skin, in his eyes, are the n word.  That's what got him a black eye from the other tenant, I later found out.  The man started using racial slurs and the other guy got up and started to leave.  Wait a minute, where are you going? Mark said (Mark, the old dude).  The other guy just shrugged and said I've heard enough. Mark went off again and that's when the dude gave him a whopper of a black eye.  Did he deserve it? Well, violence isn't really the answer to anything for the most part, but they were both drunk.  

I have distanced myself from people staying there now.  I greet people, I wave at them, I get into conversations here and there, but I am not hanging out with anyone there.  Just think it opens the door to what happened over time with Mark, who called me his "friend". I didn't really like him that much, his speech even without the n word was atrocious. It got to the point I hated even going over to the park, for I knew as soon as he saw me, he would be coming straight up, calling me an a-hole (his apparent word of affection for anyone he likes, call them an a-hole repeatedly, over and over).  

Peace has been restored and if any of those people that used to hang out with him didn't like me getting rid of him, they haven't said anything to me about it.  As they shouldn't, for I won't hold back on my assessment of that man.  

My facebook local selling group got up to 1.9k members and then it stopped, lol.  I was hoping to keep it going to at least 20k.  The more people, the more stuff being sold.  However, I very much tend to it, I ban the bots and the people with strange names that are obviously attempting to scam people. Especially the air duct cleaning people. You ban them and the next day there is another one, and another and another.  They keep coming out with new scams all the time, you really have to watch closely every single thing put up in a group like that, those scammers/thieves aren't even in the US.  They want your personal info by pm'ing them and then they can do various things with that info. 

I guess I should shut up now and think about getting going.  Water, a thermos of coffee and get out of here.  I don't much care to mow the lawns but not because it's work, but because the rocks in the ground.  You dig down a little bit into the soil and it's just rock under there.  Go down deep enough and it's clay, but the rocks are the issue and I don't know what I could do about it besides getting rid of the grass and installing a decorative landscaping rock instead.  People don't like that, tho, they like grass.  So, I have to put the mower on mulching mode - were it can't shoot out anything out of the opening on the side.  It doesn't completely eliminate rocks from being thrown around but it does it well enough.  

I will not mow near vehicles.  

Anyway, time to get this day started!