It is going to be a white, white Christmas.

For people who have never lived in one of the northern states, it is hard to imagine what this is like. And unless you’ve lived in MICHIGAN, you don’t get the full effect. Surrounded by huge bodies of water, we get dumped on. It is what we affectionately call “lake effect snow”. And we get a lot of it.

We’ve been hit by two winter storms in the past week. We have well over a foot of snow. Plows can’t get through fast enough. It’s too cold for salt to do anything to the roads. People are being plowed into their parking spots. Police are asking that people stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary. I didn't go to church on Sunday, because they all closed! I was even up and ready to go, but couldn't find one open in the area.

I LOVE this. I can’t ever imagine living somewhere without these 4 very distinct seasons. Sure, it gets annoying. I don’t like spending half an hour digging my car out in the morning, or chipping the ice off my windshield with a CD case because I snapped my show brush in half. But it’s gorgeous; and it creates this very “homey” feeling. And it’s about to get homier, because another big one is on the way for tomorrow, and also on Christmas Eve. Christmas day will have a break, but then another one is coming next weekend. Many of the surrounding counties even have BLIZZARD warnings!

Why all of this boring back story stuff? Because I am amazed by the kindness of people. I was raised to think the worst of people, I think. When I get a flat tire, I never even consider the possibility that someone will stop and help. And when I get stuck in the snow at the entrance to Olive Garden, I don’t think that a nice man with a huge SUV is going to plow on through and throw his J-Crew-clad self under the hood of my car into the nasty dirty road snow to clip a tow cable onto my bumper. But it happens!
And I never expect a chubby, friendly looking teenage girl to pull her little escort over and help me push my car out of the driveway of Arby’s when I’ve sunk into at least 3 feet of snow. I don’t expect a mini-van to pull up and spill out two tiny Mexican girls yelling only Spanish, who come up behind the car and give it that final shove that sends us rolling into the turn lane, out of the Wendy’s parking lot. But it happens; because people are much better than I tend to think. Go, good Samaritans!

I see a pattern here; I believe God is punishing me for eating so much junk this weekend. Every time we went to get junk food, we got stuck. And God threw some nice people our way, as if to say “Yeah, seriously, you need to learn your lesson. But just to drive my point home, I’ll show that even though you suck at dieting this weekend, I’m gonna take care of you. Because you need to love me more than your curly fries”.

Am I serious? No… well, maybe a little. I fell flat on my face this weekend. Fell off the wagon. And got ran over by it. And it was FUN. But not so fun when I saw the scale this morning, and I’m back up to 216.5 lbs. Here is just a snippet of the junk I ate this weekend:
Olive Garden: Minestrone soup, breakstick salad
La Cantina: Chips and cheese, bean dip, chicken tacos
Arby’s: Roast beef with cheddar and bacon, curly fries
Wendy’s: 1 snackwrap and small fry
Plus… Chinese food, chocolate bar, 2 Starbucks Peppermint Hot Chocolates.

Seeing that, I’m actually a little amazed that I only gained 2 lbs. I don’t know what happened; Husband and I were wanting munchies. We had a decent weekend, and since we were “snowed in”, watching movies all weekend, naturally we had to go OUT for junk food, to bring BACK. Yeah, not logical. Anyways, I fell. And I’m scraping my snowy self back up off the ground, and I’m going to keep going; because I love feeling healthier, prettier, better. And I’m not going to let some FOOD stop me from that!