I'm running out of adjectives

Astounded: astonished, blown away, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, surprised, shocked, gobsmacked (my personal favorite)

It's Monday, I ate catered food all weekend at a convention and I expected a tiny loss, if anything, for this week's weigh-in. I ate lightly Friday and didn't work out, ate very little Saturday (because there was very little available to eat that fit the plan) and did work out, and was pretty close to normal yesterday – slightly under the calorie target with a five-mile walk when I got home. Still, I didn't prepare the food, which was definitely oversalted (everyone remarked on it) and I just didn't feel as though I was

4.5 pounds lighter

than last Monday.

I didn't believe the scale the first time I stepped on it, so I did my two-out-of-three thing, and it recorded the same number the second try.

That's a total of 33 pounds since December 26. Twenty-six of those pounds have been since I began the paleo plan on April 6. I'm losing nearly half a pound A DAY since I stopped eating grains, legumes, dairy and sugar. I had previously lost half a pound a week.

I wore a beautiful skirt with a light cotton knit twinset for Saturday's banquet – blue, of course, since it was the National Federation of Democratic Women convention. Everything was too big. The long-sleeved cardigan did a fair job of hiding how big the tee beneath it was. The skirt slipped around my waist easily. I think I'll alter the skirt and find a new top to wear with it.

I never liked that twinset anyway. Heh.

I ate some cheese over the weekend – a slice of Havarti on a grilled portobello sandwich (sans bread) and some goat cheese on a salad. My gut definitely rebelled, which makes me wary of trying Greek yogurt.

I really, really, really miss Greek yogurt.

Conventions = swag, of course, and among the swag now in my trashcan are a couple of cookies and some mints. The custom-wrapped chocolate bars are in the freezer, probably to be tossed at a later date. Each attendee received a large canvas messenger bag and at each meeting and meal we received stuff to put in it: several lapel pins and a cup and and a red/white/blue lei and a can cozy (which I didn't bring home because I don't drink from cans) and a keychain and a fanny pack and my favorite:

Time to redecorate my car … heh.

Of course, there's much more work to be done before 2016. And most of the women from my county group are understandably burned out on campaigning. Most people I know want to give politics a rest.

But if you bleed blue, and if you care about what's happening to workers' rights, the environment, education, the poor, children and especially women in states where the GOP has taken over state legislatures, well … we cannot rest.

We simply can't.