Ack, ack, and double ack.

A few years ago I lost enough weight for people to notice, for me to feel better and, and as a result, I looked a bit more like my mother, who was very good looking. I kept the weight off for more than a little while and then in the past months, I have put it all back on.

So I have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN – or eat myself into a ball with my head and limbs being little nubs. Even as a “near ball”, which might or might not be akin to near beer, I couldn’t be a first class roller. My little nubs would keep me on an erratic course.

Believe me, I am not thrilled about this. It puts me in the position of 1) just doing a Nancy Reagan “Just say NO” or 2) manipulating my mind into little motivational tricks to keep my mouth closed.

Perhaps this is punishment for watching “600 lb. Life” and criticizing enablers only to enable myself to scarf down pinwheel sandwiches and cheese balls with cheddar pretzels. I have this great talent for knowing when the pinwheel sandwiches are going to be marked at half price . . . and I have paid the price.

It’s not like this happened overnight; I saw the trend and thought Oh, I’ll get this in line. Well, that was a big, fat lie to myself. Gee, look how easily the adjective fat pops up in my expressions.

This is sort of like taking a semester length course and then reading all the material the night before the final. Oh, you tell yourself if fate will let you get a “B” at least, you will always keep up with coursework. And you turn around and do it over and over again. It is a big, fat character flaw. And I am on my way to becoming a Fatty McFatFat.

When I had my new furnace installed in October, we were still having warm days, but the evenings were quite cool and the temperature inside my brick house stayed fairly consistent. I had set the touch screen thermostat on Heating Mode with an upper cut-off and it worked well.

Then we had a some very warm days a couple of weeks ago and when I walked through the dining room, I saw the temperature inside was 77 degrees; I thought I was getting a bit warm and the room seemed close. I’ve written about the segment where we found out the Cooling Mode was connected incorrectly and so no matter what amount of fiddling I did with the thermostat, the outside unit would not come on. It was fixed, for free, and I decided to go to the Auto Mode. And, I need remedial thermostat training.

Actually, I don’t think I ever understood the ins and outs of this thermostat; there had not been a quiz. It appears there are periods of the day and you set what temperature you want during those time periods. I tried it and, frankly, it got fairly cold one night.

I started fooling around with the thermostat again – and “fooling around” is the most accurate way to describe what I was doing – and made things worse. It seems you can add as many periods as you want, and name them if you so desire. (Awake, Sleep, Away, Home, Work, etc.) Finally, I found out it was possible to delete periods as well. This was fortunate because somehow I had filled up the thermostat window with lots of periods, each wanting to have a temperature designated.

What I want to do is set temperature that triggers the heating mode and, if necessary, the cooling mode. I may have to consult YouTube. It will probably work out, assuming I do not let my AmeliaJake-ness take over and make a bunch of time periods that I can name, such as George, LaTisha, Harvey, Annabelle, Jack. I know that’s not right, but it is so tempting.