That's how much my ass weighs. In all fairness, my gut and thighs help contribute a little as well...but holy christ. I've been battling my weight for what feels like forever. And at first it was just minor skirmishes...I'd notice that my pants were tight and I'd watch what I ate for a couple weeks. Then it got more intense: I'd notice that my gut was PISSED at being restrained by my pants & would attempt escape in the form of a muffin top, so I'd freaking QUIT EATING and run to the gym for the weeks that it took to get back into my size 4s.
Then I had my breakdown and went on anti-depressants and went up to a size 6. I bought new clothes instead of freaking out and deciding that I HAD to stay at 104 lbs and embraced my 115. And I grew boobs, so I was ok with that. Plus, being on the anti-suicide cocktail might have mitigated my "give a shit" a little bit. I kept going to the gym because it was an excuse to get out of my house & away from my boyfriend, I kept going on walks because it was an excuse to get out of my house & away from my boyfriend...
Then I met Brad. And Brad is an athlete. And Brad enjoys food. And Brad is a drinker. He can chow down on steak & baked potato with tons of butter & sour cream and chocolate cake because he's got this amazing metabolism and then he jumps on his bike and pedals a few hundred miles a week. Jerk. I, however, did not have metabolism or a training regimen on my side. So I shot up from 115 to 120 before I even moved in with him. Then I was at 130 seemingly before I could blink.
So I joined a gym. And I was going a couple times a week, and then the fucking gym closed. (It was one of those little indie gyms...I've never been a fan of the giant soulless mega-gyms) I looked around for ANYWHERE else that I felt I could go, and decided eff it, I'll just walk. Well. Our neighborhood has no sidewalks, has busted-ass streets (thank you very MUCH South Carolina), and in the summer it's 12000 degrees and in the winter it rains all the time. So I bought some workout DVDs. I tried riding a bike with Brad, but...well...that just didn't work.
Meanwhile, on our day off together, we would go to brunch, go to dinner, guzzle a pitcher of mimosas, a bottle of wine, etc. The weight was going nowhere. And truth be told, I didn't look "bad" at 130, I was just kind of...loose...and my stomach was not making me feel pretty. So I did sit-ups, I did pilates, stuff like that, and while I stayed in front of the weight GAIN, I couldn't seem to lose any weight.
Then one day I hopped on the scale and in spite of discovering Yoga, in spite of hardly ever eating fast food, in spite of going on a mostly natural foods "diet" (we were trying to get pregnant at the time & I had chronic anovulation problems and when I DID randomly ovulate, I had PCOS, and my doctor told me that if I dropped 10 lbs, at least the PCOS might self-correct...and that eating ANY processed foods wasn't doing anybody any favors here...) that bitchwhore of a scale said 142lbs.
So I lost my goddamn mind. I quit eating all meat except for fish. I started going to Yoga 4-5 times a week. I did a 3-day juice fast. I quit drinking soda. The only alcohol I drank was wine & only on Brad's day off and only with dinner. After almost 2 years of attempting a pregnancy, we had decided to accept that it wasn't going to work, and we quit "trying" and that alleviated stress on me, which helped me not hoark down Zebra Cakes with a gusto (because Zebra Cakes and Taco Bell are my comfort foods, somehow...)
So when next I stepped on a scale, I was down to 134. Which I was ok with, but I still wanted to get back down to closer to 120. (By the way, I'm somewhere between 5'2" and 5'3")
I could fit into a size 8, which I wasn't REALLY ok with, but I could live with it, knowing that if I kept on plugging, I could get it down to a 6 again. I even held onto my clothes KNOWING that I'd one day be able to put them on again without having to get out the pliers to zip up...
Then I got pregnant with Dylan. Either the weight loss helped my PCOS, or the lack of stress hormone helped (anybody that's dealt with even the fringes of infertility knows that there are few things in this world more stressful than TRYING to get pregnant. It's awful, even without hormone treatments and major medical intervention) and my hub decided he liked my size 8 ass, I guess...but in any case, I got knocked up.
Anyway, my weight gain wasn't too out of control with Dylan. I was "allowed" to gain 25-30 lbs, and I got gestational diabetes, which made me REALLY watch my food in the 3rd trimester, and so when it was all said and done, the day I delivered I weighed 168 lbs.
I had pretty bad PPD for the first 2-3 months, then I was sort of ok. But Brad was working, going to school and building a mountain bike trail and he was gone literally at least 16 hours a day 4 days a week. Then on Sunday (his one day off without school) he'd be so freaked out that he would "have" to go ride his bike to "stay sane." Which left me at home, alone, with a baby ALL THE FUCKING TIME. And so here came the depression.
I couldn't get my weight below 146 no matter what I did...which admittedly wasn't much. I didn't feel like I COULD do much. Brad and I would try to work out a schedule...and then it would fall through, or he'd have an afternoon that I could go swim or or go do Yoga or whatever, and I'd realize that I hadn't hung out with him for literally WEEKS, and would choose to stay around him instead of going...because really, going to a 45 minute yoga practice one day every 3 weeks isn't really HELPING matters any, now is it??? And what would we do when together......WE'D FUCKING EAT. We would go out to dinner, or make dinner and drink a bottle of wine.
My friend sent me her P90s DVDs. I started trying them out. Slowly at first, because...well...that shit hurts! I quit eating red meat, I quit soda again, I occasionally walked Dylan around the block in a sling or in his stroller, whenever it wasn't 7000 degrees or raining. I kept trying to do Yoga at home, but my center of gravity had so shifted from being pregnant that I couldn't do it without falling over...AND I had the only infant on the PLANET that refused to nap. I could put him down for a nap and 15 minutes later he was awake and freaking out for attention.
And I'm neurotic anyway, so add neurosis to "first mother syndrome" and you end up with a total inability to "tune out" cries for attention. So it's super difficult to exercise with a squalling child in the room. And once he got mobile, he'd get all up in my way...the day I kicked him while doing my kickboxing routine was the day I quit doing kickboxing.
So I wasn't getting any smaller. So I decided to do the P90x for real. I started phasing out other meats and cheeses, quit drinking, and started doing the DVDs every day. I'd settle Dylan in his bouncer and let him bounce for as long as he could stand it, and I'd work out to at least 30 minutes of the DVDs that way.
I'd gotten down to 145 when I got pregnant with Liam.
Let me add that I'd only had 3 periods since giving birth to Dylan. I was breastfeeding. We were using other birth control. It took two freaking years to get Dylan, and all it took was a celebratory spinach quesadilla & pitcher of margaritas in light of the fact that I'd finished my BA with a 3.25 GPA and ARE YOU KIDDING ME I was pregnant again.
And this time, as you can probably tell by reading my first few entries, I did not take it well. I was sick as a dog this time around, I was petrified, I had some pretty major complications, and I had RAGING prenatal depression. I was 182 lbs the day I delivered Liam.
And so here I am. I tried to do P90x again, and I'd gotten through a week of it and I got sick. I'm still breastfeeding 100% of the time, so I don't feel like I can quit meat again anytime soon. Brad still works all the time, and is still riding his bike (admittedly not as much as he did a year ago, but still...) and even with help from my uncle, at my height of trying to work the fat off my ass, I was going swimming once a week and getting to exercise at home maybe one or two other days.
Then I joined the Myplate site which I've talked about before.
Then it seems like I spent FOREVER on the road for the last month...going up to Amyme's, going to Florence, and so I'd eat "road food" which is...duh...fast food.
So the point is that I'm fucking DONE. I'm done with being this weight. And as much as I whine about it to Brad or Amyme or my uncle or whomever else, I'm still not DOING anything about it consistently enough for it to matter (obviously.)
This weekend Brad and I went to Atlanta. We went to get some more of Dad's stuff, and Brad had a race in Columbia on the way. I ate a pack of crackers at the race, then we went with Brad's daughter to Panera for lunch. I had a half sandwich and a bowl of soup. Those were the last halfway healthy decisions that I made for the next 2 days. We ate Mexican food upon arrival at mom's. We ate Chick fil A for lunch the next day. We went to a Braves game (which they won) and drank crap-ass stadium beer and ate a hotdog that was as long as my fucking LEG and covered with cheese and chili. On the way back home, we ate at Arbys. By the time we got home, we were both dying. We felt like total shit.
So I made a giant salad for dinner. Leafy greens have never tasted so damn good.
So this morning, just for shits and giggles, I stepped on the scale. And it blinked at me for a minute and it said "156." And I cried. Literally.
I can't keep doing this. I have obese family members. I have been fighting my ass for 10 years now. I'm not going to fight it any more. I'm going to WIN this fucking war. I had gestational diabetes for BOTH of my pregnancies, which means that if I stay on this path, I'll probably get REAL diabetes before too long. I'm not having it. I don't want to be my kids' fat mom. I don't want to be that fat girl that has to huff and puff to make it to Turner Field in time for the game to start. I don't want my knees to hurt all the time. I was looking at photos that I took from my Mom's house, and I (admittedly) was way too skinny for most of my life...I weighed 82 lbs at 5'2" when I left my abusive asshole dead-ex. Those photos are painful to look at. I was TOO skinny there. The photos of me when I was still living in Florence after my dad died, I'd started to flesh out, but I still looked like a stick at 97 lbs. I know that after 2 kids, the odds of me getting back down to 104 and a size 4 ass are slim to none, so I'm being realistic here. I want to get back to between 120-130. so that's around 30 pounds that I need to lose.
And now that I've said it out loud (or whatever it's called when you blog about something) maybe I'll stick with it. Maybe I'll shame MYSELF into doing this the right way.
I don't know when I'll find time to do more than token exercises. Having 2 kids so young is a total pain in my ass sometimes. I know that I'll have days that I just don't fucking FEEL like baking chicken, and I'll have intense cravings for Dr. Pepper. I know these things. But I've got to try and quit making excuses for why shit just "isn't working out."
Thus begins my journey.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Paranoid Android
I told myself that I wouldn't get all political and ranty on here...other than ranting about mild things like my family or the lines at Wal Mart or something nice and innocuous like that. But here's the thing. I just signed onto Facebook and within 2 minutes, I saw no less than 4 posts from my friends insinuating that the Boston Marathon bombing was some giant conspiracy. After I quit slamming my face against the floor, I started thinking about this. Then I had to go take a shower because that's how I roll when I get all enraged. The flash of coherent brilliance that I had in the shower went down the drain with the shampoo suds, but I still have the ideas swirling around my head...so I'm trying to capture them & get them onto the computer before I get too mad to type. So forgive the run-on sentences and "we'll get back to my point in a minute" segues.
This is what I came up with:
Humanity has always had an...affinity...for conspiracy theories. And I guess it would be all conspiracy theory friendly of me to be all THERE ARE SO MANY MORE OF THESE OUT THERE NOW THAN THERE EVER HAVE BEEN BEFORE! Because, in all honesty, that was my gut reaction. But, much like conspiracy theories, my gut reaction was just fucking wrong...as gut reactions usually are when pitted against historical data.
These go back for forever. There was the "Jews poisoned wells and gave us all the plague" theories. There were the "Jews eat our children" theories, the Knights Templar conspiracies and the whole "witches are magical" theories of the Middle Ages.
I mean, the obvious more recent ones are the moon landing, JFK's assassination, the idiot Holocaust deniers, the 9/11 conspiracy people, the Death Panel people, the Newtown shooting, and now the Boston Marathon bombing. Then there are the just bat-shit nuts ones like the Roswell alien cover-up, the "the Masons are running everything" one, the AIDS in vending machines one, the Obama is a Muslim/Kenyan/Communist/Fascist whatever one, and everything that your Grandma forwards to you, among others.
It's easy to see how these things get started; there's the natural human inclination to see patterns where there aren't actually patterns. Take Monsanto, for instance. I have a BURNING hatred for those people and their policies. It would be oh so easy for me to be all "they're giving us and cute little goats cancer ON PURPOSE" but in reality, the truth is probably much closer to "they just want to make as much money as they can and just flat don't give a shit about who they hurt while doing it" than it is to "they're MURDERING US ALL BECAUSE...UM....BECAUSE...." and that's where the argument breaks down for pretty much all of the conspiracy theories.
The first real problem I see with the majority of these is what I like to call the "why the fuck would this be real" factor. Why the fuck with the US government (or whomever) fake a moon landing, fake a terrorist attack, fake a school shooting? To what end? If the answer to this question sounds paranoid and bat-shit nuts, then you're probably just fucking wrong about the conspiracy.
The next problem I see is that all of these conspiracies would take hundreds if not thousands (and millions, in the Holocaust theory) of fellow conspirators to pull off. Here's the deal. If I tell Amyme to please for the love of GOD don't tell anybody that I have a trap door in my uterus that opens into a parallel dimension and it only opens on every other Wednesday for 48 seconds, then NO SHIT she's going to immediately hang up the phone and call either Tammy or Charity or her HUSBAND or somebody and tell them. Who will then go "well...isn't that something?" and turn around and tell someone else, and before you know it, people are lining up in my yard to see my interdimentional uterus portal. All because Amyme couldn't keep a secret. Gee...THANKS, AMYME!
It's a fact that the majority of criminals get busted because they're idiots. They leave fingerprints, or DNA or witnesses or a note explaining their intent...or if they DO manage to "get away" with a crime, they then brag about how wicked smart they are by ripping off that bank or punching that guy in the face or whatever, and they end up...um...getting caught because they OPENED THEIR MOUTHS. And this is just for people that like mug somebody or stab someone or steal my Tampons. Now imagine, if you will, someone rolling up on you and being all "Me and Bob were thinking about planning and executing this plan...we're going to rent some Muslims and get them to fly some planes into the WTC, killing a few thousand civilians and then we're going to make sure to cover our tracks so that we can in turn go to war so that...um.....well....just because me and Bob thought it would be exciting." What would YOU do in this situation? Sane people would immediately be all "you and Bob are psychopaths, please leave my office." Other psychopaths might be all "...go on...?" But I think the majority of people lean more towards sane and wouldn't stand for that shit. But imagine I guess that your friend is a big guy or has a gun or something and MAKES you do it. Fine. Now you're part of a conspiracy. What then? Again, if you're coerced into doing something like this, you're FOREVER a security risk. Would you not stash information somewhere, start a blog, write a book, tell your husband/wife/dog/stranger at the nail salon, have a deathbed confession? So all of these people unwillingly involved would have to be watched FOREVER. and who would watch them? "Hey Jimmy, I need you to keep an eye on Bill to make sure that he doesn't...uh...publish anything...or talk to anybody...or...um....yeah...but we can't tell you WHY or WHAT you're guarding against, ok?" That makes even LESS sense, or on the other hand, you'd have to tell the guarders what they're guarding against, and then BOOM there are even MORE people involved in the conspiracy.
Ridiculous.
The last part is mostly for the government-is-evil conspiracies. Well beyond "why the fuck would they do this" is the idea that your government is DIABOLICAL ENOUGH & SMART ENOUGH TO DO THIS SHIT. Seriously. These are the people that tell their office that they're "hiking the Appalachian Trail" and then park their car at the airport and catch a flight to Argentina to cheat on their wife. These are the people that think Rape Sperm is real. These are the people that think it's a GREAT idea to fuck an intern, get man-jam all over her dress and then be all "I'm sorry, Monica who....?" Our elected officials are stupid. How can people that think that the same fucking moron that thinks that my body "secrets a certain secretion" when raped is capable of carrying out a VAST conspiracy that is...y'know...brilliant? And before you say that they're just acting like morons so we'll let our guard down, well....NOBODY is that good an actor.
This last one...the one that had me shouting at my computer earlier is about the Boston bombing. This Alex Jones douchebag...I'm not even going to paraphrase this asshole. Here: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/false-flag-alex-jones-boston-marathon-bombing-family-231742713.html
Are you done throwing up into your own lap now? "Off duty" NAVY SEALS were involved in BOMBING AMERICAN CIVILIANS...so that the TSA could feel you up at your next Baseball game. No shit. This is this asshat's logic. And there were people posting this bullshit on FB and going "he has a point." No people. No he doesn't have a fucking point. He's a hack, or he's insane, or he's just a giant douchebag that wants to see how many people will watch his little youtube news channel. Whatever he is, he does NOT have a point.
A few days ago, 2 women and 1 little boy got blown the fuck up while watching people jog down the street at one of the most famous marathons in the world. It's a goddamn tragedy. We need to find whoever did it and set them on fire. End of story. A few months ago, a sick fuck wandered into an elementary school and shot 20 little kids. It was not a "hoax" so that "Obama can take your guns." It was a goddamn tragedy. The UN is not coming for your guns either, by the way. NOBODY WANTS YOUR FUCKING GUNS UNLESS YOU'RE NUTS AND/OR A CRIMINAL. Obama was born in Hawaii, there are no Death Panels, 11 million people died in the Holocaust, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and Jews did not poison the fucking wells.
I don't think that we should take everything we see on CNN or FNC seriously. I think blindly believing every line of horseshit we're fed is ridiculous. But to go to the opposite extreme and just assume that there's a giant cover-up behind EVERYTHING and that EVERYBODY IS OUT TO GET YOU ALL THE TIME is just as ridiculous.
Carl Sagan said "It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out." I think that's a good rule of thumb.
This is what I came up with:
Humanity has always had an...affinity...for conspiracy theories. And I guess it would be all conspiracy theory friendly of me to be all THERE ARE SO MANY MORE OF THESE OUT THERE NOW THAN THERE EVER HAVE BEEN BEFORE! Because, in all honesty, that was my gut reaction. But, much like conspiracy theories, my gut reaction was just fucking wrong...as gut reactions usually are when pitted against historical data.
These go back for forever. There was the "Jews poisoned wells and gave us all the plague" theories. There were the "Jews eat our children" theories, the Knights Templar conspiracies and the whole "witches are magical" theories of the Middle Ages.
I mean, the obvious more recent ones are the moon landing, JFK's assassination, the idiot Holocaust deniers, the 9/11 conspiracy people, the Death Panel people, the Newtown shooting, and now the Boston Marathon bombing. Then there are the just bat-shit nuts ones like the Roswell alien cover-up, the "the Masons are running everything" one, the AIDS in vending machines one, the Obama is a Muslim/Kenyan/Communist/Fascist whatever one, and everything that your Grandma forwards to you, among others.
It's easy to see how these things get started; there's the natural human inclination to see patterns where there aren't actually patterns. Take Monsanto, for instance. I have a BURNING hatred for those people and their policies. It would be oh so easy for me to be all "they're giving us and cute little goats cancer ON PURPOSE" but in reality, the truth is probably much closer to "they just want to make as much money as they can and just flat don't give a shit about who they hurt while doing it" than it is to "they're MURDERING US ALL BECAUSE...UM....BECAUSE...." and that's where the argument breaks down for pretty much all of the conspiracy theories.
The first real problem I see with the majority of these is what I like to call the "why the fuck would this be real" factor. Why the fuck with the US government (or whomever) fake a moon landing, fake a terrorist attack, fake a school shooting? To what end? If the answer to this question sounds paranoid and bat-shit nuts, then you're probably just fucking wrong about the conspiracy.
The next problem I see is that all of these conspiracies would take hundreds if not thousands (and millions, in the Holocaust theory) of fellow conspirators to pull off. Here's the deal. If I tell Amyme to please for the love of GOD don't tell anybody that I have a trap door in my uterus that opens into a parallel dimension and it only opens on every other Wednesday for 48 seconds, then NO SHIT she's going to immediately hang up the phone and call either Tammy or Charity or her HUSBAND or somebody and tell them. Who will then go "well...isn't that something?" and turn around and tell someone else, and before you know it, people are lining up in my yard to see my interdimentional uterus portal. All because Amyme couldn't keep a secret. Gee...THANKS, AMYME!
It's a fact that the majority of criminals get busted because they're idiots. They leave fingerprints, or DNA or witnesses or a note explaining their intent...or if they DO manage to "get away" with a crime, they then brag about how wicked smart they are by ripping off that bank or punching that guy in the face or whatever, and they end up...um...getting caught because they OPENED THEIR MOUTHS. And this is just for people that like mug somebody or stab someone or steal my Tampons. Now imagine, if you will, someone rolling up on you and being all "Me and Bob were thinking about planning and executing this plan...we're going to rent some Muslims and get them to fly some planes into the WTC, killing a few thousand civilians and then we're going to make sure to cover our tracks so that we can in turn go to war so that...um.....well....just because me and Bob thought it would be exciting." What would YOU do in this situation? Sane people would immediately be all "you and Bob are psychopaths, please leave my office." Other psychopaths might be all "...go on...?" But I think the majority of people lean more towards sane and wouldn't stand for that shit. But imagine I guess that your friend is a big guy or has a gun or something and MAKES you do it. Fine. Now you're part of a conspiracy. What then? Again, if you're coerced into doing something like this, you're FOREVER a security risk. Would you not stash information somewhere, start a blog, write a book, tell your husband/wife/dog/stranger at the nail salon, have a deathbed confession? So all of these people unwillingly involved would have to be watched FOREVER. and who would watch them? "Hey Jimmy, I need you to keep an eye on Bill to make sure that he doesn't...uh...publish anything...or talk to anybody...or...um....yeah...but we can't tell you WHY or WHAT you're guarding against, ok?" That makes even LESS sense, or on the other hand, you'd have to tell the guarders what they're guarding against, and then BOOM there are even MORE people involved in the conspiracy.
Ridiculous.
The last part is mostly for the government-is-evil conspiracies. Well beyond "why the fuck would they do this" is the idea that your government is DIABOLICAL ENOUGH & SMART ENOUGH TO DO THIS SHIT. Seriously. These are the people that tell their office that they're "hiking the Appalachian Trail" and then park their car at the airport and catch a flight to Argentina to cheat on their wife. These are the people that think Rape Sperm is real. These are the people that think it's a GREAT idea to fuck an intern, get man-jam all over her dress and then be all "I'm sorry, Monica who....?" Our elected officials are stupid. How can people that think that the same fucking moron that thinks that my body "secrets a certain secretion" when raped is capable of carrying out a VAST conspiracy that is...y'know...brilliant? And before you say that they're just acting like morons so we'll let our guard down, well....NOBODY is that good an actor.
This last one...the one that had me shouting at my computer earlier is about the Boston bombing. This Alex Jones douchebag...I'm not even going to paraphrase this asshole. Here: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/false-flag-alex-jones-boston-marathon-bombing-family-231742713.html
Are you done throwing up into your own lap now? "Off duty" NAVY SEALS were involved in BOMBING AMERICAN CIVILIANS...so that the TSA could feel you up at your next Baseball game. No shit. This is this asshat's logic. And there were people posting this bullshit on FB and going "he has a point." No people. No he doesn't have a fucking point. He's a hack, or he's insane, or he's just a giant douchebag that wants to see how many people will watch his little youtube news channel. Whatever he is, he does NOT have a point.
A few days ago, 2 women and 1 little boy got blown the fuck up while watching people jog down the street at one of the most famous marathons in the world. It's a goddamn tragedy. We need to find whoever did it and set them on fire. End of story. A few months ago, a sick fuck wandered into an elementary school and shot 20 little kids. It was not a "hoax" so that "Obama can take your guns." It was a goddamn tragedy. The UN is not coming for your guns either, by the way. NOBODY WANTS YOUR FUCKING GUNS UNLESS YOU'RE NUTS AND/OR A CRIMINAL. Obama was born in Hawaii, there are no Death Panels, 11 million people died in the Holocaust, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and Jews did not poison the fucking wells.
I don't think that we should take everything we see on CNN or FNC seriously. I think blindly believing every line of horseshit we're fed is ridiculous. But to go to the opposite extreme and just assume that there's a giant cover-up behind EVERYTHING and that EVERYBODY IS OUT TO GET YOU ALL THE TIME is just as ridiculous.
Carl Sagan said "It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out." I think that's a good rule of thumb.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Dreaming is Free
Sometimes I'll have a dream that's so strange or vivid or overarchingly NORMAL that it'll throw me for a loop for a few days.
I've always had really vivid dreams, and usually they're pretty strange as far as dreams go...I can remember dreams that I had when we lived in Arizona, which means that I was 3 or 4 at the time. The only period of my life when I didn't have crazy dreams was when I was heavily medicated -- I guess a cocktail of anti-depressants, xanax and sleeping pills made for a kind of sleep amnesia. It took me a few weeks to notice that I couldn't remember my dreams anymore, and once I realized it, I missed them. After a few months, I started getting pissed off that I couldn't remember. Once I went off the crazy pill mix, it took maybe 2 months to start remembering my dreams again all the time.
I also had a dip in dreaming activity for a month or so after each kiddie was born. The frustrating part of those periods is that I'd dream...I'd know that I'd been dreaming, I just couldn't remember...unlike when I was on the crazy pills, when I'd go to sleep and wake up 10 seconds later to find that 9 hours had passed and that I'd sleep-cooked an eggplant lasagna. Strange times.
Last night I had this crazy dream that involved missing a train, Brad leaving me behind at some weird big house to "catch up" after I'd finished packing my stuff, his stuff, and Kevin's stuff (a friend of ours from Florence who wasn't even in the damn dream...just a suitcase full of his stuff!!) Needless to say, I missed the train and I tried to talk this girl Michelle (a friend of Brad's from Florence that I've only met one time) into driving me (in a Jeep...with no top...at night...in the rain...) to the next station to try to catch the train there.
It didn't work. We kept getting delayed...in loading the Jeep, in a traffic jam, at the station itself...but I never felt frantic in this dream. It was like mild irritation, and I was annoyed as hell at Brad for taking off without waiting for me.
Sometimes I dream that I'm smoking. Which is pretty odd, as I've never smoked in my life. I've actually been working on writing down my serial dreams. I rarely have what I'd consider typical serial dreams; the ones where my dreams turn into a soap opera, and there's a progression. But what I DO have is the same damn places, buildings, images that appear over and over in my dreams. The dream itself will be different, but the landscape is all recycled. It's disconcerting.
I'm rambling right now because it's 230am, I'm exhausted and stressed to my personal limit. So...I guess I'll stop for tonight.
Sweet dreams! <3
I've always had really vivid dreams, and usually they're pretty strange as far as dreams go...I can remember dreams that I had when we lived in Arizona, which means that I was 3 or 4 at the time. The only period of my life when I didn't have crazy dreams was when I was heavily medicated -- I guess a cocktail of anti-depressants, xanax and sleeping pills made for a kind of sleep amnesia. It took me a few weeks to notice that I couldn't remember my dreams anymore, and once I realized it, I missed them. After a few months, I started getting pissed off that I couldn't remember. Once I went off the crazy pill mix, it took maybe 2 months to start remembering my dreams again all the time.
I also had a dip in dreaming activity for a month or so after each kiddie was born. The frustrating part of those periods is that I'd dream...I'd know that I'd been dreaming, I just couldn't remember...unlike when I was on the crazy pills, when I'd go to sleep and wake up 10 seconds later to find that 9 hours had passed and that I'd sleep-cooked an eggplant lasagna. Strange times.
Last night I had this crazy dream that involved missing a train, Brad leaving me behind at some weird big house to "catch up" after I'd finished packing my stuff, his stuff, and Kevin's stuff (a friend of ours from Florence who wasn't even in the damn dream...just a suitcase full of his stuff!!) Needless to say, I missed the train and I tried to talk this girl Michelle (a friend of Brad's from Florence that I've only met one time) into driving me (in a Jeep...with no top...at night...in the rain...) to the next station to try to catch the train there.
It didn't work. We kept getting delayed...in loading the Jeep, in a traffic jam, at the station itself...but I never felt frantic in this dream. It was like mild irritation, and I was annoyed as hell at Brad for taking off without waiting for me.
Sometimes I dream that I'm smoking. Which is pretty odd, as I've never smoked in my life. I've actually been working on writing down my serial dreams. I rarely have what I'd consider typical serial dreams; the ones where my dreams turn into a soap opera, and there's a progression. But what I DO have is the same damn places, buildings, images that appear over and over in my dreams. The dream itself will be different, but the landscape is all recycled. It's disconcerting.
I'm rambling right now because it's 230am, I'm exhausted and stressed to my personal limit. So...I guess I'll stop for tonight.
Sweet dreams! <3
Monday, April 15, 2013
Murder thoughts
I hate laundry. Like...it's a problem. I had an apartment in Charlotte that had a washer & dryer in the bedroom & I would live out of my dryer until all the clothes were gone. I used the washer as a laundry basket. Maybe it's because I did time in a Dry Cleaners, but it could be because I'm an utterly lazy piece of shit. Either way.
So I'm a "grown up" and have a "family" and I'm a SAHM or whatever, so I force myself to do laundry. Tons of fucking laundry. Anybody that has kids knows that a toddler can go through a minimum of 2 entire wardrobe changes in a day, and an infant can hock up all over 5 different outfits by lunch. But what isn't mentioned is that my husband can also go through fucking 3 costume changes a day. Every fucking day. And he does this weird...thing...with his pants so that when he takes them off, one freaking leg is ALWAYS inside out. And he leaves his belts on the pants and he NEVER empties his pockets.
We came to an agreement years ago that any money that I find in the dryer is mine to keep. I think of it as a paycheck sometimes for doing his ridiculous amount of clothes. Plus, he's a cyclist, so he has SPECIAL clothes that have to be washed in a SPECIAL way. Asshole.
Anyway, so he went on this...rampage...today, cleaning. And by "cleaning" I mean that he just made new piles of shit all over the house. There's a mountain of clothes in the hallway. There's bookbags all over the kitchen floor and bike parts just EVERYWHERE. But the part(s) that make me want to set his face on fire are the aforementioned pile of laundry in the hallway and the fact that he did some laundry and then DUMPED THAT SHIT OUT RIGHT ON THE SPARE ROOM BED. He did this while I was taking my once-a-month-get-out-of-the-house-solo-before-I-murder-people day. He thinks he was "helping." But what he did was dump THREE fucking loads of laundry into a giant T-shirt, Jeans & Spandex mountain in the center of the spare bed.
And the best part? Did he do any of MY clothes? Did he do any of the KIDS' clothes? Fuck no. He actually dumped the laundry baskets out (which is hilarious in itself since he REFUSES to put his clothes in the basket...) and sorted HIS clothes out and only did his. No shit.
So yeah.
:)
So I'm a "grown up" and have a "family" and I'm a SAHM or whatever, so I force myself to do laundry. Tons of fucking laundry. Anybody that has kids knows that a toddler can go through a minimum of 2 entire wardrobe changes in a day, and an infant can hock up all over 5 different outfits by lunch. But what isn't mentioned is that my husband can also go through fucking 3 costume changes a day. Every fucking day. And he does this weird...thing...with his pants so that when he takes them off, one freaking leg is ALWAYS inside out. And he leaves his belts on the pants and he NEVER empties his pockets.
We came to an agreement years ago that any money that I find in the dryer is mine to keep. I think of it as a paycheck sometimes for doing his ridiculous amount of clothes. Plus, he's a cyclist, so he has SPECIAL clothes that have to be washed in a SPECIAL way. Asshole.
Anyway, so he went on this...rampage...today, cleaning. And by "cleaning" I mean that he just made new piles of shit all over the house. There's a mountain of clothes in the hallway. There's bookbags all over the kitchen floor and bike parts just EVERYWHERE. But the part(s) that make me want to set his face on fire are the aforementioned pile of laundry in the hallway and the fact that he did some laundry and then DUMPED THAT SHIT OUT RIGHT ON THE SPARE ROOM BED. He did this while I was taking my once-a-month-get-out-of-the-house-solo-before-I-murder-people day. He thinks he was "helping." But what he did was dump THREE fucking loads of laundry into a giant T-shirt, Jeans & Spandex mountain in the center of the spare bed.
And the best part? Did he do any of MY clothes? Did he do any of the KIDS' clothes? Fuck no. He actually dumped the laundry baskets out (which is hilarious in itself since he REFUSES to put his clothes in the basket...) and sorted HIS clothes out and only did his. No shit.
So yeah.
:)
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
More negativity! Awesome!
I've been sick more in the last year than I've been in the last 5 years put together. I can't imagine why, either...I mean...2 pregnancies back to back CAN'T POSSIBLY be bad for your health, right??? and the constant stress that I live in...that can't possibly take a toll on my body, could it? Siiigh.
I went to Atlanta with my BFF to visit my mother & to retrieve some of my (dead) dad's things from mom's house...and while we were there, the bestie came down with a wicked stomach virus. So I played the good friend and held her hair while she projectile vomited all over everything -- up to and including mom's girlfriend's rug, blanket & extension cord! -- and fetched her gatorade & vitamin water & alka seltzer...and then drove her Mini full of children and dead dad's belongings from Atlanta to Columbia in dead silence (so she could sleep like a head-wound victim in the passenger seat) and starving TO DEATH because i know that the smell of food in a confined space would make her hurl into her own glove box. And what do I get from this? Why...the same goddamn stomach virus!! AWESOME! Now then...while little miss pukey pants had me (and my mother) taking care of her...what did I get? My oh so sympathetic husband says "you'll be ok" while he rode his bicycle off into the sunset (or to his job, rather...jerk) and...yeah...so I got to battle the stomach virus of the fucking century while juggling 2 children that couldn't understand why mommie just laid on the couch sweating and moaning when she wasn't hurling children across the room in order to run down the hall to the bathroom. SUCKED.
So that was last month.
Then a few days ago (Thursday, to be exact...) I got all allergy-gross. Snot, itchy eyes, sore throat, the works. Well APPARENTLY my snot was an inviting place for a virus to come hang out, because from the allergy, I got a BITCH of a head cold. It got so bad that I actually went to the doctor, convinced that I had Strep. I didn't...but I kind of wish I did, because at least when you have Strep, you can get some antibiotics and feel better in a reasonable amount of time. Instead, I get Flonase and fucking Ibuprofin. Yay.
All of this is following the laryngitis I got after leaving the hospital with Liam, and the weird food poisoning/possible stomach bug that I got in the 2nd trimester. This has not been fun. And I'm generally a healthy person...like seriously, I just don't get sick. Until this year. Balls.
So I've been MIA, I've been a bad mother, I've been a bad wife, and I haven't played with my dog. Overall, I've just been a shitty person lately, I guess.
But Brad's birthday was Tuesday, and as I am not gainfully employed outside of the home, I told him flat-out that I wasn't going to even pretend to buy him anything, but since it's his 40th birthday (and seriously...when did we get so old?!?! When I met him, he was 21!!) I told him that I'd cook him whatever he wanted. He decided that he wanted Sauerbraten. Of course. So I marinated it for about 2 1/2 days and cooked it along with some Oat Bread, asparagus with brown butter & balsamic sauce, and beet risotto (because he totally LOVES that stuff!) and he was appreciative! I then totally copped out and made him a Devil's Food cake out of a box. Slacker, I know! Then I got a mini get-together for him with a few of his friends which I've never done before...and he had a blast. Then my birthday was Friday, but since we'd blown our wad on HIS birthday, we spent my day shoveling dirt in our garden that we're constructing, then went to dinner while my amazing uncle watched our kids. Then I got sick again.
So yeah. It's been an interesting week. I haven't really done anything. The house is a disaster, the kids are neurotic because I haven't done anything with them, the dog is a train wreck because I've been neglecting her, and my husband is overworked and stressed out. Ahhhh yes...being an adult is a fucking blast.
So that's my update for now. I'll write more when I'm not so bitter!
I went to Atlanta with my BFF to visit my mother & to retrieve some of my (dead) dad's things from mom's house...and while we were there, the bestie came down with a wicked stomach virus. So I played the good friend and held her hair while she projectile vomited all over everything -- up to and including mom's girlfriend's rug, blanket & extension cord! -- and fetched her gatorade & vitamin water & alka seltzer...and then drove her Mini full of children and dead dad's belongings from Atlanta to Columbia in dead silence (so she could sleep like a head-wound victim in the passenger seat) and starving TO DEATH because i know that the smell of food in a confined space would make her hurl into her own glove box. And what do I get from this? Why...the same goddamn stomach virus!! AWESOME! Now then...while little miss pukey pants had me (and my mother) taking care of her...what did I get? My oh so sympathetic husband says "you'll be ok" while he rode his bicycle off into the sunset (or to his job, rather...jerk) and...yeah...so I got to battle the stomach virus of the fucking century while juggling 2 children that couldn't understand why mommie just laid on the couch sweating and moaning when she wasn't hurling children across the room in order to run down the hall to the bathroom. SUCKED.
So that was last month.
Then a few days ago (Thursday, to be exact...) I got all allergy-gross. Snot, itchy eyes, sore throat, the works. Well APPARENTLY my snot was an inviting place for a virus to come hang out, because from the allergy, I got a BITCH of a head cold. It got so bad that I actually went to the doctor, convinced that I had Strep. I didn't...but I kind of wish I did, because at least when you have Strep, you can get some antibiotics and feel better in a reasonable amount of time. Instead, I get Flonase and fucking Ibuprofin. Yay.
All of this is following the laryngitis I got after leaving the hospital with Liam, and the weird food poisoning/possible stomach bug that I got in the 2nd trimester. This has not been fun. And I'm generally a healthy person...like seriously, I just don't get sick. Until this year. Balls.
So I've been MIA, I've been a bad mother, I've been a bad wife, and I haven't played with my dog. Overall, I've just been a shitty person lately, I guess.
But Brad's birthday was Tuesday, and as I am not gainfully employed outside of the home, I told him flat-out that I wasn't going to even pretend to buy him anything, but since it's his 40th birthday (and seriously...when did we get so old?!?! When I met him, he was 21!!) I told him that I'd cook him whatever he wanted. He decided that he wanted Sauerbraten. Of course. So I marinated it for about 2 1/2 days and cooked it along with some Oat Bread, asparagus with brown butter & balsamic sauce, and beet risotto (because he totally LOVES that stuff!) and he was appreciative! I then totally copped out and made him a Devil's Food cake out of a box. Slacker, I know! Then I got a mini get-together for him with a few of his friends which I've never done before...and he had a blast. Then my birthday was Friday, but since we'd blown our wad on HIS birthday, we spent my day shoveling dirt in our garden that we're constructing, then went to dinner while my amazing uncle watched our kids. Then I got sick again.
So yeah. It's been an interesting week. I haven't really done anything. The house is a disaster, the kids are neurotic because I haven't done anything with them, the dog is a train wreck because I've been neglecting her, and my husband is overworked and stressed out. Ahhhh yes...being an adult is a fucking blast.
So that's my update for now. I'll write more when I'm not so bitter!
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Ooohhh Florence
I don't really have anything to say tonight, but I'm feeling lonely and don't really have anybody to talk to, so I'll let my fingers talk to my laptop, I guess.
Brad and I (and the boys) went to Florence yesterday to a dinner with Carolyn's parents, sister, husband, kids and a few of her friends...it was really kind of awesome...as awesome as anything like that can go, anyway. Everybody was really upbeat, and people broke out the 20+ year old photographs and told stories. Carolyn & Jody's 2 youngest kids got to hold Liam, and a girl that beat the everlasting shit out of me in the 10th grade friended me on facebook. Then we went out to a bar (owned by one of my hub's old friends) with Liz (one of my hub's ex girlfriends) and we really had fun. I think it's the first time in a LOOOOOOOOOOOONG time (ok, maybe forever) that I've had fun in Florence.
Right now I'm back home, I just drank a beer and I'm feeling....I don't know...edgy. Being out and around people (once I got over the initial horror about being out and around people) was lovely. I'd forgotten how to talk in complete sentences to people that talk back. And my kid...siiiiiiiiiiiiigh....there were a few other kids there, one was only a month older than Dylan, and a 3 or 4 year old, and a 4 or 5 year old...they were all running around playing with each other, and my child kind of stood there watching them play and smiling. It made my heart ache. I really really REALLY don't want my kid to be as socially awkward as I was/am. I was never around other kids until I was 3, and I never really felt comfortable around people. Ever. I don't want my kid to be awkward. I want him to be able to interact with people his own age. But I don't know how to fix this. I want to put him into some sort of social thing but we can't afford any of them. I don't have any local friends with kids my kid's age. I don't know how to keep him from being like me...34 and talking to an anonymous blog at 11pm.
He did eventually play with Carla's little boy, but there was a good 20 minutes where I watched him and just wanted to cry. I went to my friend Anne's house last week and Dylan was watching her son (who's a tween) and his friends ramble about in the kitchen...watching from the outside looking in, which is what I've always done. God it hurt to watch.
In not so morbid news, my BFF has started her own blog, and always one to out-do me, she's way too fancy for gmail blogging and has set up her own site for real...smarty pants. She asked me to write up one of my recipes for her site, and so I did. She still hasn't POSTED the damn thing yet, but she's a slow-poke sometimes with things like that. But anyway, she has some crazy intricate recipes on her site, so if you're feeling kitchen-ly masochistic, check her out: http://stuffandbother.com/blog/
And my food porn for the last few days: I cooked a chicken in the crock pot, and made caramelized turnips to go with it (and leftover risotto). I also made crock pot fajitas, and made my own tortillas with which to eat said fajitas.
Yum.
Oh, and berry empanadas for dessert (served with ice cream and a splash of the berry filling as topping)
Brad and I (and the boys) went to Florence yesterday to a dinner with Carolyn's parents, sister, husband, kids and a few of her friends...it was really kind of awesome...as awesome as anything like that can go, anyway. Everybody was really upbeat, and people broke out the 20+ year old photographs and told stories. Carolyn & Jody's 2 youngest kids got to hold Liam, and a girl that beat the everlasting shit out of me in the 10th grade friended me on facebook. Then we went out to a bar (owned by one of my hub's old friends) with Liz (one of my hub's ex girlfriends) and we really had fun. I think it's the first time in a LOOOOOOOOOOOONG time (ok, maybe forever) that I've had fun in Florence.
Right now I'm back home, I just drank a beer and I'm feeling....I don't know...edgy. Being out and around people (once I got over the initial horror about being out and around people) was lovely. I'd forgotten how to talk in complete sentences to people that talk back. And my kid...siiiiiiiiiiiiigh....there were a few other kids there, one was only a month older than Dylan, and a 3 or 4 year old, and a 4 or 5 year old...they were all running around playing with each other, and my child kind of stood there watching them play and smiling. It made my heart ache. I really really REALLY don't want my kid to be as socially awkward as I was/am. I was never around other kids until I was 3, and I never really felt comfortable around people. Ever. I don't want my kid to be awkward. I want him to be able to interact with people his own age. But I don't know how to fix this. I want to put him into some sort of social thing but we can't afford any of them. I don't have any local friends with kids my kid's age. I don't know how to keep him from being like me...34 and talking to an anonymous blog at 11pm.
He did eventually play with Carla's little boy, but there was a good 20 minutes where I watched him and just wanted to cry. I went to my friend Anne's house last week and Dylan was watching her son (who's a tween) and his friends ramble about in the kitchen...watching from the outside looking in, which is what I've always done. God it hurt to watch.
In not so morbid news, my BFF has started her own blog, and always one to out-do me, she's way too fancy for gmail blogging and has set up her own site for real...smarty pants. She asked me to write up one of my recipes for her site, and so I did. She still hasn't POSTED the damn thing yet, but she's a slow-poke sometimes with things like that. But anyway, she has some crazy intricate recipes on her site, so if you're feeling kitchen-ly masochistic, check her out: http://stuffandbother.com/blog/
And my food porn for the last few days: I cooked a chicken in the crock pot, and made caramelized turnips to go with it (and leftover risotto). I also made crock pot fajitas, and made my own tortillas with which to eat said fajitas.
Yum.
Oh, and berry empanadas for dessert (served with ice cream and a splash of the berry filling as topping)
Monday, February 18, 2013
And the potty training has begun!!!
I made lasagna on Valentine's day. I decided that even though Brad had to work and I knew he wouldn't get home until after midnight, and we're not exactly fans of Valentine's day, I figured what the hell...?
Also, my uncle recently relocated down here, and this was his first Valentine's day solo, so I figured that I'd cook a lasagna for him as well. And so I did.
Remember how I said we're all poor and stuff? Yeah. Ricotta is expensive. So is Italian cheese mix. So I rooted around my pantry & fridge and decided that I could TOTALLY do this without anything but the Parmesan that I had on hand. I'm also not eating red meat, and I think ground turkey is disgusting, so I substituted chicken thighs, which I had in the freezer.
So I made a meat sauce with thighs, sausage, canned tomatoes, carrots, onions and garlic. Yeah. That part was amazing. I'm also stepping slowly out of the PPD fog, so I decided that with this excess energy that I had, I was going to make my own pasta noodles too. So I did. MMMMMMMMM...if you've never made your own pasta, I HIGHLY suggest it over the dried shit from the store. Home made comes out creamy and soft and...just...good. (And it doesn't have preservatives and other weird stuff like that in it!) In lieu of the ricotta/mozerella/parm mixture that I have always made in the past, I made a bechamel sauce and instead of nutmeg, I used garam marsala (for a kind of sicilian flavor...I freaking LOVE pasta with garam marsala!)
It ended up really really REALLY good...and not as heavy. For once, after eating lasagna, I didn't feel like I had a brick sitting on my intestine.
That was my Valentine's day. Brad came home with a bottle of wine and a mini orchid and I cooked him a ton of yummy food. Win-win.
I've decided to go on a "diet." Sort of. I already don't eat very much, honestly. I'll eat one *meal* a day, and then snack or eat small meals the rest of the day. Every once in a while (when I can rally myself to leave the house, so you KNOW it isn't frequent) I'll eat fast food. Blech. That's not very often. So I joined choosemyplate.gov
You can set up a profile, and you enter in all of the food you eat, it tells you your goals and where you are on your goals...for example, right now, I'm at 83% of my suggested vegetable intake, and 18% of my protein. I told it I was a breastfeeding woman and it informed me that I SHOULD be eating about 2200 calories a day. I told it that I wanted to lose weight and it recalculated me down to 2000 calories a day. This is pure insanity, because for the week that I've been doing it, I haven't gotten about 1500 calories until yesterday, and that was after eating a steak and drinking 2 glasses of wine. I haven't come CLOSE to 2000 calories in god only knows how long. And yet I'm not losing weight. This is super frustrating to me.
I exercise when I can (which until last Tuesday was every day for at least20-30 minutes of bodyweight exercises and/or kickboxing and/or pilates) on Tuesday I pulled a muscle in my leg kicking the shit out of air. Yay me.
Protip: when you're kickboxing, pay attention to form. Don't just flail about because you're tired and frustrated and want to get your 30 minutes in regardless of the fact that your evil child is shrieking at you because he woke up from his nap 45 minutes early....Yeah. Oops.
So today is the first day that I've been able to walk on my right leg without limping and wincing, so I'll start working out again tomorrow, I guess. Bah. Meanwhile, I'm watching what I've been eating, and I've decided that the BEST way to do this is to go on a whole foods diet. No more processed anything. This is a lot harder than it sounds. But I've done pretty well since Saturday.
Saturday I cooked a beet risotto, Italian-style sweet & sour pork, and sauteed beet greens. It was super fantastic. For breakfast yesterday I ate a bowl of oatmeal, for lunch when Brad let me run away from the boys for a couple of hours, I ate a taco salad from Barberitos (they actually use REAL ingredients...so it was basically just spinach leaves, olives, cheese, guacamole and pico. For dinner we had mashed potatoes, steak and a big salad. For breakfast this morning I made apple pancakes, scrambled eggs with spinach and for lunch leftover salad. For dinner tonight I'm making a whole roasted chicken.
This is do-able.
At the same time, however, I've decided to start seriously potty-training Dylan. He's 20 months old and he knows the words...he occasionally grabs his crotch when he pees and he HATES being in a dirty diaper. So all day today he's been pants-less. He's peed on the floor like 3 times and while he'll chill out and sit on his potty chair, he hasn't actually GONE in it yet. He just got up from his nap, so as soon as he's done with lunch, the diaper comes off again. This is going to be interesting. Thank god we have hardwood floors and not carpet. Yuk.
So that's all for now, I guess...
Attached are my lasagna pictures and my pork & risotto pictures. Enjoy!
Also, my uncle recently relocated down here, and this was his first Valentine's day solo, so I figured that I'd cook a lasagna for him as well. And so I did.
Remember how I said we're all poor and stuff? Yeah. Ricotta is expensive. So is Italian cheese mix. So I rooted around my pantry & fridge and decided that I could TOTALLY do this without anything but the Parmesan that I had on hand. I'm also not eating red meat, and I think ground turkey is disgusting, so I substituted chicken thighs, which I had in the freezer.
So I made a meat sauce with thighs, sausage, canned tomatoes, carrots, onions and garlic. Yeah. That part was amazing. I'm also stepping slowly out of the PPD fog, so I decided that with this excess energy that I had, I was going to make my own pasta noodles too. So I did. MMMMMMMMM...if you've never made your own pasta, I HIGHLY suggest it over the dried shit from the store. Home made comes out creamy and soft and...just...good. (And it doesn't have preservatives and other weird stuff like that in it!) In lieu of the ricotta/mozerella/parm mixture that I have always made in the past, I made a bechamel sauce and instead of nutmeg, I used garam marsala (for a kind of sicilian flavor...I freaking LOVE pasta with garam marsala!)
It ended up really really REALLY good...and not as heavy. For once, after eating lasagna, I didn't feel like I had a brick sitting on my intestine.
That was my Valentine's day. Brad came home with a bottle of wine and a mini orchid and I cooked him a ton of yummy food. Win-win.
I've decided to go on a "diet." Sort of. I already don't eat very much, honestly. I'll eat one *meal* a day, and then snack or eat small meals the rest of the day. Every once in a while (when I can rally myself to leave the house, so you KNOW it isn't frequent) I'll eat fast food. Blech. That's not very often. So I joined choosemyplate.gov
You can set up a profile, and you enter in all of the food you eat, it tells you your goals and where you are on your goals...for example, right now, I'm at 83% of my suggested vegetable intake, and 18% of my protein. I told it I was a breastfeeding woman and it informed me that I SHOULD be eating about 2200 calories a day. I told it that I wanted to lose weight and it recalculated me down to 2000 calories a day. This is pure insanity, because for the week that I've been doing it, I haven't gotten about 1500 calories until yesterday, and that was after eating a steak and drinking 2 glasses of wine. I haven't come CLOSE to 2000 calories in god only knows how long. And yet I'm not losing weight. This is super frustrating to me.
I exercise when I can (which until last Tuesday was every day for at least20-30 minutes of bodyweight exercises and/or kickboxing and/or pilates) on Tuesday I pulled a muscle in my leg kicking the shit out of air. Yay me.
Protip: when you're kickboxing, pay attention to form. Don't just flail about because you're tired and frustrated and want to get your 30 minutes in regardless of the fact that your evil child is shrieking at you because he woke up from his nap 45 minutes early....Yeah. Oops.
So today is the first day that I've been able to walk on my right leg without limping and wincing, so I'll start working out again tomorrow, I guess. Bah. Meanwhile, I'm watching what I've been eating, and I've decided that the BEST way to do this is to go on a whole foods diet. No more processed anything. This is a lot harder than it sounds. But I've done pretty well since Saturday.
Saturday I cooked a beet risotto, Italian-style sweet & sour pork, and sauteed beet greens. It was super fantastic. For breakfast yesterday I ate a bowl of oatmeal, for lunch when Brad let me run away from the boys for a couple of hours, I ate a taco salad from Barberitos (they actually use REAL ingredients...so it was basically just spinach leaves, olives, cheese, guacamole and pico. For dinner we had mashed potatoes, steak and a big salad. For breakfast this morning I made apple pancakes, scrambled eggs with spinach and for lunch leftover salad. For dinner tonight I'm making a whole roasted chicken.
This is do-able.
At the same time, however, I've decided to start seriously potty-training Dylan. He's 20 months old and he knows the words...he occasionally grabs his crotch when he pees and he HATES being in a dirty diaper. So all day today he's been pants-less. He's peed on the floor like 3 times and while he'll chill out and sit on his potty chair, he hasn't actually GONE in it yet. He just got up from his nap, so as soon as he's done with lunch, the diaper comes off again. This is going to be interesting. Thank god we have hardwood floors and not carpet. Yuk.
So that's all for now, I guess...
Attached are my lasagna pictures and my pork & risotto pictures. Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)