Scale Sunday: Week 9

Here we are again. I'm still plodding along in my trench, wishing for something to blow it up. What is this? Why the violence, you ask? Probably because I'm still not at peace with this healthy diet business. I'm just going to come out with some brutal honesty here: I've detoured again from the healthy side of the battle and have been blazing a new trail along the boundary waters of Pseudo-Healthy Diet Land, where numbers and measurements reign as dictators. Why is this foreign country so enticing? Because...vanity. It's a hard one to shake.

The Five Stages of Dieting:

1. Awareness. This stage can last a very long time, but is recognizable by a person's vocal lamentations of their health/size/appearance. All you chicas don't know it but ya'lls brains are already in diet camp. 
2. Action. The second stage is marked by zealous purging of all that is unhealthy in addition to manic exercise. Little Debbie meets the dumpster, and the fridge drawer with the veggie icons on it is appropriately filled with kale and broccoli instead of Reddi Wip, Cheez Whiz, and the Betty Crocker frosting with a spoon left in it. A heating pad, Icy Hot, and ginger tea are your best friends during this stage as every inch of your body protests your newfound obsession. Dabbling in popular diets is also characteristic of this stage.
3. Anger. Ah, Stage 3. You cause the death of millions of diets worldwide. This is the fight or flight stage. You've made visible progress but it's soooo slooooww and it's been sooo looong since you've dipped fries in a milkshake (or if you're like me, sweet and sour sauce). It doesn't matter that you can see the finish line. It's all an illusion anyway, right? Your angry, calorie-deprived brain cells start clamoring out reasons why it's okay to indulge. There's nothing like others enjoying comfort food around you to fan the fires of angry rebellion scorching your soul. You can recognize Stage 3-ers by the murderous glint in their eyes as they sit in their corners maliciously crunching on kale chips or stabbing each bite of spinach salad as if it might get up and walk away unless they kill it first. 
4. Acceptance. If you were strong enough to make it through Stage 3, you are rewarded with the comparable peace of Stage 4. Your beaten down lower appetites meekly accept the new regime with little grumbling during this stage. You find new ways to make food healthy and delicious that don't involve bacon and whipped cream. You feel good. Habits are steering this train.
5. Maintenance. This is oddly enough the hardest stage to be in. It's also known as Life. You've made it to the finish line--only, you've been lied to. It's not really a finish line, but a line in the sand that marks the scary beige land of keeping on. If you allow yourself to become buddies with Complacency in Stage 5 you will wake from a fog some months later to find yourself smack dab back in Stage 1.  

I'm currently at Stage 3. Thus the TNT.

The wall I hit a week or two ago remains, I'm just creeping along beside it. I spent some time studying this wall, trying to figure out what led to the wall, and why it appeared so suddenly. One explanation kept surfacing: fatigue.

I've discovered I'm really good at following the rules I've laid down for myself in my mind. Blame it on OCD or the quirks of my mind, but it takes a defining point and a clear shift of goals for these rules to change. It explains why I needed to initiate another "leg of this health journey" to motivate myself and justify a change of rules. I can easily admit that cutting back on my Sunday splurges would probably save me a lot of work playing catch up the next week. Oh, but the rules say Sunday I can splurge! All day long! By Sunday all the treats and cravings I've postponed all week have accumulated quite a list. So that's what I'm struggling with currently. I need to set a Sunday calorie limit for myself that will account for a couple treats but not exceed 2000 calories. My daily caloric limit is 1200 calories, but most often I end the day around 1000-1100.

This week marks a few goals attained. I've officially lost 61 pounds since January 1, 2018. I am now just 2 pounds heavier than when I was married, and a mere 7 pounds from the goal I set for myself August 30th. It would seem so much more attainable if it didn't feel as though I had concrete blocks attached to my feet.

Scale Sunday: Week 8

I feel very blah lately. It's the season where there's so much to do every day that my food choices have been pushed to the back burner. My energy has been pretty much sapped by everything else. So, while I have not been binging or cheating, I have not made a spectacular effort at making healthy choices and getting my leafy greens in. I've gone to ground, so to speak.

We buy groceries every two weeks unless there's some staple that we run out of. So by the second week most of the fresh produce has been eaten and we switch gears to more of the frozen veggies. This week, well...blah. I have no right to be picky, but frozen vegetables are not my thing. (I have a pang of conscience when I think of what poor kids in third world countries would think of that. How very spoiled we are!) The only thing that has kept me on track is my ability to tell myself no, even when I'm really hungry. So if I couldn't find something to eat that was on my "safe food list" and didn't turn my stomach, I ate nothing. All week when I peeked in the fridge all I could see were hashbrowns and minute steak with gravy and pizza and taco meat and bags and bags of French toast and sausage links and sausage patties...and one lone head of lettuce and some limp broccoli. Blah. I pretty much lived off of eggs, almonds, and carrots.

Me as a child, shoveling cake in my mouth. Not much has changed in the last 33 years!

Even my brother was dismayed at my lack of self control. 😂

I laid in bed last night and my muscles hurt like they haven't hurt in years. Granted, I spent an hour and a half walking the grocery store aisles and then went up and down stairs multiple times putting clothes away. But I'm convinced it was mostly because I haven't been meeting my nutritional needs. It pains me to admit I need need to start taking supplements. I have an avid aversion to pills. 

I'm not sure what good my blabbering will do any of you, other than commiseration if you're in the same place, and don't do what Julie's doing.

Silver Linings

After the storm comes the rainbow. Lovely flowers and warmth follow the deathly cold starkness of winter. Being sick and tired awakens in us thankfulness for our health when we're well again. So often in life we can almost hear God telling us, "That was difficult, but I will reward you for your faithfulness." Even Job had his losses restored to him.

After last week this week feels like a silver lining. Compared to "normal" weeks it really wasn't spectacular, but it was really really good compared to last! After posting last Saturday panic started overwhelming me, realizing that there was just one Sunday between us and the next work week. The things I had not accomplished all week towered over me, threatening to bury me, and was made more menacing by all the things coming up I needed to get done.

Wednesday we had a meeting with our area's education agency to have one of the boys evaluated for dyslexia and possible processing disorders. I had to collect (which also meant catch up with!) all his grades and assemble his curriculum to bring along. This was all very nerve-racking because we work independently of the public school and I always struggle with worries that we're "not doing good enough" (though when we had Aidan tested last summer he proved to be ahead of the national average for his grade level).

October is also our prep-month for the All Saints' Day party; games had to be devised and decided on and costumes had to be made and assembled. It is time consuming, but one of the most anticipated parties of the year for us. Since most of the Halloween stuff found in stores has very little to do with saints, our costumes take quite a bit more work and imagination. And I hadn't started any of it.

None of my fall decor was put up either. Now, for "normal" people, this would not be a big deal. For me, seeing the spring wreath still hanging over the mantle shelf becomes a thorn under my skin this time of year. We also host Thanksgiving every year for my husband's family so it has become my ritual this time of year to deep clean/touch up scuffed walls/clear clutter that formed over the summer and decorate each area for fall as it's cleaned.

Though I was hoping for a beautiful long fall to finish up preparations for the seasonal changes, Mother Nature decided to switch gears abruptly instead. This left me scrambling for winter coats, hats, and gloves, and lamenting my sloppy shoving-of-warm-things into the front porch bench last spring. I needed time to reevaluate our cold-weather gear and purge what was no longer needed and organize the rest.

In addition to these time-sensitive jobs, I still had the piles (I wish I was exaggerating) of laundry, dishes, and books everywhere that needed attention. Piles of shorts needed to be moved to totes to make room for long-sleeves and sweaters. Piles of craft materials needed to be used or put away.

After evaluating all these things, including the rising panic in my heart, I came to a quick, easy, conclusion: we had to take the next week off of school. I called it our "fake winter break", obviously because of the weather. As soon as I made the decision a weight was lifted from my shoulders. The thing about homeschooling is that home has to happen alongside the schooling. When one falls behind the other has to pause to catch up. I smothered the inner struggle to follow the schedule because I know, deep down, the schedule I come up with in the summer is only my best guess at where we should be.

Monday I got the porch cleaned and scrubbed and reorganized all the cold weather things. Sandals and roller blades were stashed away and the baskets were filled with hats and gloves. Addie had great fun rolling over the piles I made.

Tuesday I succeeded in getting all grades and curriculum completed, assembled, and packed into a backpack for our meeting Wednesday. Bonus: I also got the kitchen completely cleaned up, dishes put away, and laundry washed and folded. Gavin helped with dishes, Aidan with laundry. Liam cleaned upstairs. We had a lovely evening with friends who accompanied us on a nature hike and treated us to brownies and lemonade after.

Wednesday my Mom came to stay with the littles so we could head to the AEA appointment. It went well, but there will be a series of meetings and assessments before we have any kind of diagnosis. Mom and Aidan tackled more laundry (there's always more laundry) while we were gone. On the way back from the appointment I made a last minute decision to stop at a thrift store. You guys, I found the perfect sized mirror to replace the one that had shattered last week...for SIX DOLLARS! I had reached the conclusion that we were just going to have to bite the bullet and order a new one online when we had the money, and boy were they expensive. I was elated, despite it's mauvey tones and need for some TLC.

Thursday most of the kids came down with colds, which comes with this time of year. I got the mirror painted and hung up to save it from tragedy. Now I just need to finish patching and painting the wall and hang the rail to cap the tile.

Throughout the week I got most of the costumes assembled, and the tote of fall decor is sitting here waiting for me. I haven't had to cook all week because my husband's workplace has been on shutdown and they've had three meals a day catered to them. As new food comes in the leftovers are free for the employees to take home. As hard as this week is with incredibly long hours, I'm so very thankful for the break it has given me from the kitchen.

 Sneak peeks of this year's costumes!

And now on to the grocery store and the last of this week's to dos!

Scale Sunday: Week 7

Monday morning: Hey you. There are two more brownie cookies stashed in the cupboard that no once knows about. AND NO-ONE EVER HAS TO KNOW....

Me: Shut up self.

A little later: So...I don't mean to nag, but those candies that boy managed to sneak in the cart and through checkout without you seeing? Yeah...they're still hiding in that desk drawer. They're tiny...minuscule, really. They're like...NOTHING compared to a brownie cookie. Go ahead and have one. You deserve it.

Me: Leave me alone! *30 minutes later, cramming a brownie cookie in my mouth.

After that I started handing out candies to my little people so they couldn't whisper at me from the desk drawer. "That's a lovely A you wrote right there, have a Kit Kat. Oh, 12+5=18? No, not quite, but close enough. Have a Kit Kat. Having a bad day? Here, have some Kit Kats."

This week's craziness multiplied itself from there so that I didn't have much time to worry about missed treats. I honestly was lucky to get a meal in twice a day. I'd like to say the habits I've rebuilt over the last seven weeks have played a big role in my ability to *mostly* stick to good food, as hungry as I was. I did stay strong the last time I got groceries and denied myself Greek yogurt...my one last treat. It's easy to pretend it's healthy, but in reality it's loaded with sugar. And then I broke down mid-week when I ran to get milk after a pharmacy stop, and bought some pumpkin spice and coffee & cream Chobani. The argument for mental health finally won over. Everything tastes a million times better when you're hungry, but I'm convinced that coffee & cream yogurt is the next best thing to a slice of tiramisu.

That's about it this week, guys. My exercise was hauling around a hurting baby, pacing back and forth across the house a million times, squatting to pick someone up, being mom.

Weight lost since January 1:
57 pounds

When It Rains

*Warning: this post may contain graphic images that may be upsetting to sensitive readers.

When someone says they've had "one of those weeks", there are usually sighs of commiseration and nods of understanding. It's common knowledge that during "those weeks" anything that could go wrong does. I've had one of those weeks.

There were the regular annoyances of life, as usual. These things become a pretty normal weekly routine when you have kids. Someone spills milk about once a day. Someone drops a plate or a bowl (always full of food) a couple times a week. Toes get stubbed. A book or toy gets ruined beyond salvaging. Someone has an accident right next to the toilet. One little boy yells from his room that he puked all over himself, and you find out thankfully (thankfully?) it was due to his finger in his throat rather than an epidemic gearing up to sweep through the house. Things don't get done because there are too many other things needing to be done. This week took it one step further.

When Addie woke up from her Sunday afternoon nap with a temp of 103.2, my first thought was that she had picked up a virus. The week before we had been to the clinic twice, and it seems like every time we walk through those doors somebody gets something. By Monday she was listless, sleeping most the day in between tossing her hot, feverish, little body around, so I decided to take her in. By the time we got to the clinic her temp had reached 103.8. They tested her for the flu which mercifully came back negative, and diagnosed her with double ear infection instead. This is only her second time with ear infection, and again she gave us no clue that her ears were the problem until we saw the doctor.

There are informational cards up in the clinic that tell you antibiotics won't work for most ear infections, many types of bronchitis, viral infections, etc., etc., etc. It always plants a seed of anxiety in my heart that visiting the doctor may prove to be futile. Even at that, antibiotics are consistently prescribed for many of those things, often unnecessarily. When you're a parent clinging to the last fragile remnants of your sanity, starved for sleep and desperate for help to get your baby well again, it's pretty easy to jump on whatever " this should work" train the doctor suggests. I'm all for letting your body work to heal itself when it can, and I held out for as long as I could for Addie's fever to do it's work. This week it was enough to break my heart. And yet, I'm struggling with guilt over giving her antibiotics.

After we started amoxicillin Addie seemed worse, with the exception of the fever. I have only once before seen her so miserable. She began pulling her ears like she wanted to rip them off. She spent hours screaming and crying unless I carried her around. She only slept if I held her. The house descended into a mess of things I couldn't finish. I did what I could to help her ears heal. I made a fresh batch of garlic infused olive oil and dropped it in her ears. I massaged her ear canal behind her ear lobe and along her jaw line to help drain whatever fluid may have been there, and it seemed to give her some relief.

Wednesday night I woke to hear Addie wheezing, so I propped her up to help her breathe. Thursday morning she woke with a rash spreading over her face, chest, and back: an allergic reaction to the antibiotics. I ran her back to the doctor and they switched her to a different family of antibiotics. Within hours she was a brand new girl. When her appetite came back I happily let her dig in to her favorite meal--face first.

A sick baby is more than enough to create a tough week, but that wasn't even close to it for us. Wednesday, in the middle of the afternoon, I paced and rocked my screaming child and tried to find a quiet place in my mind to forget about the pervading nausea that was overwhelming me. A migraine had developed and was threatening to split my head in two. The kitchen door flew open and Aidan ran in crying that we had a serious problem: a piece of the quartz he was smashing with a hammer (what?! whyyyy?!) flew into his hand and "I CAN SEE MY BONE! IT'S NOT BLEEDING! WHY IS IT NOT BLEEDING? AM I GOING TO HAVE TO BE SEWN SHUT?!!!" 

My heart in my throat, I assessed the situation, and sure enough, you could see bone. The rock had sliced open his knuckle. I immediately sent a picture to my husband, who was at work. Trying to stay as calm as possible, telling him it was going to be just fine, I walked Aidan to the bathroom to clean him up. The poor guy was numb from shock and said he couldn't even feel it. I had him put his head down while I disinfected the wound and bandaged it, making sure to pull the skin tightly together. As soon as I had cleaned it the blood started flowing. When Eli came home he looked at it, and we had a pros/cons session about whether or not he needed stitches. We decided to keep an eye on it, and if the skin didn't stay together we would run him in. The way my week was going if I stepped foot in the ER I probably would have contracted Ebola or something. I taped a popsicle-stick splint to his finger and wrapped his hand...his right hand...and gave him a pass on handwriting for the week.

Aidan's gash, one day later versus three days later.

Friday afternoon my Mom came to pick Gavin up for the weekend. After they left, Liam and Ian wanted to play outside with no big brother to keep an eye on them. I hesitated, but decided that Liam was a pretty careful kid. Of all the boys he's least likely to do something dangerous, and he's pretty conscientious about telling Ian when something shouldn't be done. With warnings to stay away from the creek and the street, I bundled them up and sent them out. After peeking out the window every few minutes to see what they were doing, I went back to work on my pile of laundry.

After a while I started having an uneasy feeling. I went to each window in turn on every side of the house, trying to spy one of the boys, but seeing neither. A sense of urgency started tugging at me, so slipped sandals on and headed out to see what they were up to. As I rounded the side of the garage I saw Ian running up from the "back 40", the far end of our yard along the creek. He was yelling, "Mama! Help! Liam's stuck in a tree!"

Ah boy. So that's why I couldn't see him. This was not a first for us, as earlier this summer we had to get a ladder out to rescue Gavin from an impossibly high branch in the swing tree. I scanned the trees along the creek but still couldn't see Liam...what in the world? As I got closer to the tree line I could hear whimpering, and then I saw him: hanging upside down by his ankle from a tree. I started running, sandals flew off, Oh Jesus, hold my boy up till I get there! Please let him not be impaled by a stick!

I was about ten feet away when I saw his ankle turned backwards, the wrong way. My heart stopped. There was no way his leg was in one piece. It was a mercy that he was stuck just a bit higher than my head, and I was able to lift his little 63 pound body up and dislodge his ankle. I cradled him in my arms and ran for the house, trying not to move or jiggle his leg. My legs started giving out by the time I made it to the driveway. As the adrenaline wore off I turned into a shaking mess of jellied muscle.

I kept telling Ian to run to the house to get Dad, but the little shadow refused to leave my side. It felt like forever before I made it into the house and collapsed in the kitchen with Liam. Pulling up the leg of his jeans, I started shakily trying to explain to Eli where and how I had found him. I could see some light scrapes on his shin, and his toes were pointing straight forward. He could wiggle his toes. After a few minutes he could stand and walked off. I crawled in a dark corner and bawled and shook and bawled some more. Needless to say, my nerves are pretty much shot.

My socks after the adrenaline-fueled dash across the yard. They will never be the same again.

His angel must have been holding him up in the tree. I don't know how his leg did not break, twisted how it was. Looking back, all of our angels must have been working extra hard for us this week. As bad as it's been, all of these situations could have ended so MUCH WORSE! Addie could have had influenza or gone into full-blown anaphylaxis. That chip of quartz could have taken out an eye. Liam could have broke his leg. And yet, here we all are, alive, still in whole pieces. Thank you, Jesus.

This was a fitting end to the week: the mirror that I had salvaged and saved specifically for the bathroom makeover for the last two years, shattered. It happened when we finally made it to the finish line, to the point where all we needed to do was paint it and hang it. Weeks like this are great at reminding us how transitory things are.

Scale Sunday: Week 6

I'm really starting to feel the changes my reformed diet is working in my body. I no longer feel like I'm "lumbering" around. I can haul piles of laundry up and down stairs without running out of breath. Stooping to pick something (or someone) up no longer sends pains shooting through my knees. My clothes are more comfortable, and I'm moving into sizes in my closet that have hung there unworn for three years. I went through clothes I kept from last winter "just in case" and gave away a large bag of them that no longer fit. I'm done holding onto things that give me an excuse to be in a place I desperately don't want to be.

This cold, damp weather was working it's way into my joints. I'll give you guys a break from droning on about the lectin-free diet, but this week I really tried to stick to low-lectin foods (inasmuch as I could) to see if I noticed a difference. My knees did not ache all week. Not only that, I have not plateaued for the past two weeks. I'm hoping it's because I replaced some of the carbs I would have eaten with healthy fats instead.

These were my Friday, meatless, low-lectin (and gluten-free) meals. They're not normal Friday fare for me (I usually have a fried egg and a salad or bunch of raw carrots) but I had just made a grocery run and was trying out some ideas I'd had.

Above was lunch: a large portobello mushroom cap stuffed with cream cheese, onion, garlic, and spinach and topped with mozzarella, and sauteed brussels sprouts and green onions with walnuts and cilantro. Despite looking like a labor-intensive meal, it took about 20 minutes to prepare. It was definitely comfort food and I didn't feel deprived at all afterward!

Below was supper: baked wild-caught cod with lemon, garlic, and dill, and broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and carrot salad with Parmesan pesto dressing. I have never been a fan of fish, or raw broccoli or cauliflower, but sometimes becoming a better person means swallowing a bitter pill and I know there are many people who would have been so thankful to have a meal like this. Bonus: I squeezed the leftover lemon into my water, which was a treat I don't often get!

Today after Mass I picked up a pumpkin spice latte as a treat for myself, and our "splurge" meal was Pizza Hut (they had a great online deal!) After drinking the latte I decided I actually prefer my plain coffee with cream. I can't believe I just typed those words. I'm also probably going to have a nasty headache tomorrow to pay for these indulgences. I seem to have found a trigger for my migraines as they only come on the day after eating bad.

I taught her everything she knows about eating pizza!

55 pounds lost since January 1st.

From Mini Blinds to DIY Roman Shades: A Saga

When it came time to decide on window treatments for the kitchen windows, I had a vision in my mind; something not quite like curtains, but involving the texture and warmth of fabric. I started hunting for something that evoked the French country look that was the central theme for my kitchen ever since I had a kitchen. I thought Roman shades would work nicely, in a fresh country blue/white pattern. Finding blue and white striped Roman shades, however, proved to be quite difficult! And when I finally found the perfect shades in the right size....

*Sigh* That price. There was no way we could afford $200+ per kitchen window. Urrrgh, Pottery Barn! 

I had seen a tutorial on Pinterest how to make your own Roman shades out of mini blinds. For a long time I resisted the idea of another DIY project. I don't have the time! I'd rather be doing something else... But I could not get the thought out of my mind. How hard could it really be? But these shades seemed doomed from the very beginning, because I could not find the article anywhere. I decided to wing it. I can't resist a challenge. 

I went to Wal-Mart and bought a set of cheap, vinyl mini blinds, totaling $3.98. They failed me in the fabric department though, so I trolled the internet until I found the right fabric. A shop on Etsy had blue-striped grain sack fabric that fit the bill. A bit pricey compared to what I usually spend on fabric, but it wasn't $200, I reminded myself!  

When it came I got to work. I measured the window and cut out a length of fabric accordingly, with an extra 2 inches of length on the top and bottom, and an extra inch on each side. I then ironed the fabric and hemmed up each side.

After hanging the mini blinds, I decided to hot glue the fabric to the headrail of the blinds. This is where the winging it began, guys. I soon realized if these things were going to be functional I needed the pull cord of the blinds to be on the front side of the fabric. Unfortunately it was too late to take the fabric down and sew a button-hole for the cord, it was already glued up there real good. (My Dad always half joked when I was living at home that he would've been farther ahead to buy stock in 3M for all the tape and glue I used.)

So, I cut a hole, and had an epiphany. More glue! Instead of sewing the raw edges of the hole I hot-glued them, which also made the opening sturdier and protected the fabric from the sliding cord. Are you guys riveted in your seats now?

I should have foreseen the problem with my plan in the beginning, but I didn't, and so I began gluing--hot gluing--the fabric to the thin vinyl slats of the blinds. As you may have imagined, the vinyl warped, drooped, and buckled. Standing atop a ladder with hot glue oozing everywhere I had to quickly change gears and figure out Plan B. I decided to snap all the vinyl slats off and sew the fabric to the string system that controlled the slats. It was a guessing game where to sew to make the right sized folds when the blinds were raised.

I did a lot of "testing the folds" in between sewing to see if it would lay right when drawn.

After the sewing was finished, I removed the plastic cord pull and replaced it with a round wooden bead from my bead jar to complete the look. It was time for the final pull, and the moment of truth: 

I called it a success!

DIY SPECS: 

• A little less than 2 yards of grain sack fabric (rounded up to account for shipping): $26.00
• Vinyl mini blinds (rounded up): $4.00
• A little bit of hot glue and thread: 

TOTAL: $30.00
For a savings of at least $179.