Diet Day 3

DAY 3:

9:30AM I had an early start today so I was able to get the baby to daycare and run to the post office before work. Not really hungry but ate a Cinnamon Raisin bar for breakfast. I don’t really like raisins but it wasn’t bad. Still tasted like there should be more sugar.

11:45PM I did stop at the store to buy veggies this morning. Between the carrots, grape tomatoes and broccoli I decide that when I go to the store for real I need some kind of dressing. My broccoli normally has a nice amount of ranch on it to make it palatable. This does not have ranch. It was only saved by the carrot or tomato chaser I was using. It was very filling and I got 3 servings of veggies out of the way fast!

12:00PM Go to the store on my lunch break (the one that doesn’t really exist this time of year but I made it happen anyway). Spent $100 on a quarter of a cart of veggies and other healthy alternatives. Get a little disgusted but try to stay positive. Losing the weight and gaining some energy will be worth it someday.

1:30PM I have been so busy I haven’t thought about eating. The chocolate peanut butter bar was pretty delicious. I have missed one of my shakes so I will have to make that up somewhere. Or forget it all together because that's just what I feel is going to happen.

3:30PM finally have the shake that I was due this morning. Still pretty gross. I didn’t care if it filled me up. I was in catch up mode.Work to do. 

6:00PM My mother has cooked another delicious meal for my children. Curly fries and fried cheeseburgers. I glare at them all as I eat my turkey sausage and bacon rigatoni that sounds much better than it tastes. I steal only 4 fries from the baby so I am pretty sure I am improving daily. And those fries were like heaven on earth.

7:00PM get home and rush the children into bed. Breathe for about 30 seconds before deciding yet again, I need  snack. I picked up imitation lobster meat at the store. Don’t knock it until you try it, it was pretty good. Stopped myself from scarfing the entire package. Only ate my 3oz allowed and then found another delicious babybel to finish it off.

9:00PM Go to bed before the hunger comes again. 

Diet Day 2

DAY 2:

9:15AM Eat a surprisingly delicious chocolate chip granola bar. It was like really good. I was happy. Drink a bottle of water. Pee. (I’m sure you get the general gist of the water intake. Lots of water=lots of peeing. I’ll stop adding this little tidbit).

11:00AM make chocolate shake with Ice I somehow remembered. I still forget the veggie filler because the store is hard work with children and I was trying not to have a panic attack at the state of my house yesterday.

12:30PM Eat a trail mix bar that was pretty good but did not really feel like lunch. It felt like snacking. I wish I had bought veggies. Tomorrow there will be vegetables or I will die.

2:00PM Make second shake that is starting to grow on me because I am losing any brain power I had due to lack of food. Silently pray my mother purchased delicious carrots for me to snack on while watching them eat something delicious.

5:30PM When I arrived at my mother’s to pick up the children a delicious smell smacks me in the face. She has made homemade orange chicken and tater tots. Who does that to a woman on a diet? My children are eating this in front of me. My dinner just doesn’t hold enough appeal and I cave. I only ate a few pieces but they were probably a good 200 calories a piece so I know that all my hard work for today and yesterday are now ruined. I don’t care that chicken was bomb.

6:30PM Arrive home with the children and get them ready for the evening. Start dishes, do laundry and ignore any requests from my body for food. Eventually cave and eat a babybel cheese round. Those things are really delicious and I feel like they will be pretty much my go to snack when I need some damn salt. Vow to get groceries tomorrow come hell or high water.

9:00PM Get in bed exhausted and kinda hungry. I'm feeling more energetic. Like maybe I'll get to sleep at a decent hour and get up early to work out... but then again, maybe I won't. 

Diet Day 1

I decided that during tax season this year I would try one of those already prepared food diets. I thought, hey I could shed a few pounds and it sounds like the least amount of work and thinking so I took the plunge. Plus, it was so expensive that I will be forced to follow through with it for at least a month. I'm going to log my days on my blog to further motivate me.

Day 1:

9:15AM Scarf down blueberry muffin that I can tell has 0 sugar in it. It was kind of like a soft blueberry scented carb without the good stuff. Drink a bottle of water. Pee.

11:00AM Time for the delicious shake that promises to help with digestive health and fill me up. You need ice for this drink and since today is Monday I barely made it out of bed and in the office 15 minutes late. I have only the year old ice in the tiny mini fridge at the office. It will have to do. I make the shake and it is like chalky chocolate milk. It is not delicious but it is filling. Drink half of a bottle of Water. Pee.

12:30PM I choose Cheese Tortellini for lunch. The container is the size of a paper clip holder. I am trying to remind myself that yes, this is the healthy serving size, and no the makers of this program are not trying to taunt me. This was actually pretty good. Drink a bottle of water. Pee.

2:00PM Time for a different delicious chocolate shake with fiber and protein to make me fill full… Also tastes like chalky milk but in a different way. It is filling for about 10 minutes then I am ravenous. I can eat veggies until my heart is content but I did not bring veggies because I was late and it’s Monday. Drink half of a bottle of Water. Pee.

5:00PM Go get the children from my mother and smell the delicious roast dinner that I cannot have. I do however find some cooked carrots in the mix and I munch on those while my Italian flatbread pizza is warming in the microwave. I was so smart I put a paper towel over it so it wouldn’t get messy in the microwave. When it is finished cooking the cheese has melted to the paper towel and I try, in vain, to scrape some of the precious goo onto my cardboard looking pizza. I scarf the pizza because I was starving and try to convince my children that they do actually like roast. This effort failed so I loaded the children into Dom (short for Dom perignon, my champagne colored mini van’s name). Drink some more water. Pee.

6:00PM We go home to find the kitchen semi restored to normal. I work hard to move everything back to where it should be, and open the fridge to cook an egg for The Baby because he is now starving form refusing the roast. Inside said fridge is the cold boneless buffalo wings from dinner on Friday. I love cold boneless wings. I devour them while I cook the egg because, hey, the cardboard pizza wasn’t enough for day 1. Drink more water. Long for alcohol. Pee a few more times.

9:00PM Go to bed full of water and slightly hungry but not willing to move just to ruin all the hard work from day one. (wake up in the middle of the damn night to pee!)

I live in crazy town

2016 marks the year of me making crazy decisions, apparently. My life ends beginning January 1^st and through April 15^th (or 18^th this year thanks idiots in Washington, D.C.) it’s almost like I don’t exist. I work 7 days a week, every week for 3 ½ months. I don’t take on any crazy home improvement projects, I hire a housekeeper to do normal cleaning tasks, and I barely hang on to friendships (actually my friends are completely seasoned to perfection and know that I won’t be seeing the light of day for months so they embrace the radio silence knowing that it will be short lived).

This year I lost my damn mind. Lineman and I got a nice little chunk of money from my parents for Christmas. We decided we better spend it on something worthwhile before we blew it on stupid stuff. So we began the process of making the big decision… what kind of floors should we upgrade to. We’re deep thinkers. We decided on hardwood in the kitchen, new living room carpet and a tile entryway to bring our house out of its former foreclosure special era (we bought it 5 years ago and are just changing these things out because that is how cool we are). We called a hardwood guy, that we knew and gave us a screamin’ deal, we called a tile guy, who I am related to and he gave us a deal, and we called a carpet guy, who I know and gave us a good deal. Notice the deal hunting we did? One person/bid per item and we took the plunge. Who does that you ask? We do. Was it smart? No it was not.

We decided to demo out the hideous vinyl kitchen flooring and underlayment ourselves because it saved us a bundle. Last Tuesday and Wednesday Lineman kicked ass and ripped up the big pieces of flooring. Wednesday night we both crawled on the floor pulling a stupid amount of staples out of the subfloor so the floors could be installed on Thursday. Side note: it is well worth it to pay someone else to do the demo, I was woken many times during the night by my throbbing and painful hands. Hardwood started getting laid down on Thursday and was mostly done last night (Sunday). On Saturday the tile guy came by to do the 4*6 entryway. We also had Thing 2’s birthday part on Saturday and though it was at a pizza parlor, because I may be crazy but not THAT crazy, we still had to go by the house to get a few things for our stay at a hotel to keep us off the floors and away from the majority of the floor sealant smell. When we arrived both the tile guy and the hardwood guy were in the house with their respective spouses helping them. This is fine save for the fact that I only have about 5 feet of space in my living room right now and it was all being used. Then my mom and dad dropped in to check everything out and we were all frozen in place because there was quite literally nowhere to go.

I am living my nightmare. My refrigerator and stove are sitting in the living room in front of the window, my dining room table is sitting in my living room in front of my chair, there is a dolly in my living room plus all the regular furniture. The shit is a mess not to mention the amount of extra hardwood sitting, you guessed it, in my living room. This full panic attack was staved off until last night, after 6 days of clutter, because Lineman was home and we were going to get to re-inhabit the kitchen last night. Lineman had to fly out yesterday afternoon so when I got home to a stinky house with hardwood floors that were still tacky I almost lost it. I somehow managed to stay in the house last night, which by the way was a HUGE mistake. I woke up this morning with a massive migraine from the damn fumes and I about had to call in sick to the job that does not account for sick days during tax season. I threw up, took a bath (where I slept for a good 30 minutes) and then exposed myself to fresh air. The fresh air was the best thing that has ever happened to me. I managed to drag myself into the office by 9:30 and called it a win. I am currently hoping my mother and father in law are getting my house back to normal so when I get home I don’t lose it… again.

Next Wednesday my carpet will be installed and then we will be done. Lineman is coming home Saturday to stay for a week because Thing 2 has to have his tonsils and adenoids removed. I’m happy he will be here to help move everything out of the living room and back once the new carpet is installed. I realize just how crazy we are when I think of all the things we planned without having a real plan. I’m in tax season for gods sake. This is the LAST TIME I go crazy with projects right before tax season. I might have a real mental breakdown requiring a rubber room if I do this to myself again.

Oh yeah and I started a new diet. Lord help my father and sister-in-law for they do not know what is in store for them at the office this week. I’m hoping time starts to fly by so we can be past the crazy and into the normal.

Holiday Horror Show

I’m not really sure when I started hating the holidays with a vengeance. I know it got worse after I became a parent. There are so many things we do to make the magic of the season come alive for our children. We kill ourselves trying to make them believe that there really is magic in the world. This year I’ve somehow either got the hang of things or decided I can only do what I can do and that will have to be enough.

Thing 1 is 10 and still believes in Santa. I know that this phase is going to be over soon so I have tried extra hard to give him one more year of magic. First there is the elf. His name is Mark and he is a little jerk. I have to move that thing EVERY NIGHT. And I’m not going to lie so far I’ve forgotten twice. The thing is, he’s really high up on a plant shelf and after the kids go to bed I have to wait for at least an hour to make sure they don’t come creeping out of their rooms for more water, or a scary dream, or they just don’t want to go to bed mom. Because if they come out and I’m standing on a stool to move the damn elf I’m going to be SO busted. The problem is I’m freaking exhausted. I love my children and I’d do anything for them but my chair is really comfy and as I have waited the requisite hour I have fallen asleep too many times. Most of the time I wake up at 3, hide the damn elf, and shuffle off to my comfy bed. Twice I’ve just forgotten. The first time I had to tell Thing 1 that the elf just really liked that spot. He gave me a questioning look so I knew I had to be more vigilant. So the elf stayed on that shelf doing other things for a few days. Just to drive home the point that he really liked it there. This morning I was woken up by Thing 1 as I was still asleep in my chair in the living room. The elf had not moved again and I saw the magic glow in his eyes dim. Now I think I have concocted a story about why Mark didn’t move. I’m going to feed my child an outright lie, because that is what we do as parents trying to keep the magic alive, and say Santa called me because Mark didn’t come home last night. I’m going to explain that Mark’s last report said that Thing 1 was being naughty by staying up past bedtime watching YouTube videos on his tablet he snuck out of the living room unbeknownst to his mother. Then I’m going to tell him that Santa and I think Mark fell asleep before he could leave because he was watching to make sure Tommy didn’t sneak the tablet again. This should work. I think it’s believable but what do I know? I just want to see the magic light shine brightly in his eyes again.

Then there is Santa. He’s a good guy but he screws me out of the cool gift every year. I started a tradition of him only wrapping his gifts in Santa themed wrapping paper. Was that a stupid move? Yes. Have I continued to make that move? Yes. So now I have special wrapping paper stashed at my office so my snoopy children don’t go looking for proof Santa isn’t real. It’s exhausting. Thing 2 no longer believes and his mother confirmed for him that Santa wasn’t real. This happened last year and I WAS PISSED. First, there are tactful ways of saying they might be right, but second he was not following the cardinal rule of keeping it to himself. When Thing 1 asked if Santa was real my response was “sometimes it’s not about how real something is, it’s about the magic it lets you see” then I asked his thoughts. Shockingly he told me he thought Santa, The Easter Bunny, and Tooth fairy were real. All the other characters were made up. In other words, he believes in the ones that bring him cool stuff. I say, fair enough. I created these monsters so I shall continue to make them kick ass in his mind. Thing 2 doesn’t believe but I made it very clear to him that if you don’t believe in Santa he doesn’t bring you presents. After that I got a lot of very enthusiastic belief out of Thing 2. I am not above threats and if he ruins his brother’s belief’s I’m going to follow through on the no gift policy. He’ll still get gifts from us but nothing in his stocking. It will be really sad for him but he has to learn that part of knowing the truth about Santa is keeping it to himself and letting others still feel the magic.

I am also the Gift Buyer in Chief. Meaning my husband and I discuss the gifts but most often I have the task of actually making the gifts appear, wrapped under the tree. This can be exhausting especially when all my children ask for are video games, which I’ve vowed never to purchase again, and other electronic stuff that I’m not going to get them. Then we have to go “off book” and find things they will like without crushing their Christmas dreams. I will say that we are very honest with our children about the “no video game” policy. They know we aren’t going to buy them the games but they also have grandparents and other parents that might be willing. That’s fine with me as long as they don’t have the expectation. This year they wanted the Spy Gear LCD Walkie Talkies. My mother tried to find them for under $98 and was unsuccessful. She got them something else so I casually put them on my Amazon Wish list. I knew I wasn’t willing to pay $98 for walkie talkies but I thought I’d keep it on the back burner. Eventually the Amazon gods were with me and the price dropped to a still outrageous but within our budget price of $65 and I snagged them. So now I’m down to Legos for the stockings and Christmas Eve Pajamas and we are good to go.

Normally I’m a ball of nerves this time of year that presents in the form of fits of tears over something minuscule but this year I feel oddly calm. I’m smiling at people at the grocery stores and trying not to get overly stressed about things I cannot change. I’m happy that we are still part of the magic that is Christmas. I’m happy that my husband will be home for an astonishing 11 days. I’m happy my children are going to have their Christmas wishes come true and I’m happy to be alive. We are in the final countdown, just 8 days until the culmination of excitement. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. 

Why I freed my nipple

I loved breast feeding my children. I know that a lot of women love it but what I don’t understand is the arguments for and against certain types of breastfeeding. “Free the nipple” or “cover that sexualized part of the body while letting a squirming child clamp on to a very sensitive area” are just strange arguments to me. Personally, do what you gotta do mama. I just tried to make it through each feeding with a happy full baby belly at the end. Isn’t that the only real point to feeding babies?

I personally tried to use a nursing cover with my second child. It made my husband more comfortable and until we got really good at nursing it made me more comfortable too. I was just like every other mom trying to feed their child. I have a story of my struggle and I think it might help some understand why each woman’s choice is hers alone and passing judgement only makes you part of the problem.

When my youngest son was about 6 weeks old he started having some trouble. It appeared to be colic but turned out to be acid reflux. He cried pretty much any time he was awake for about 2 weeks. I was so tired and my nerves were shot. Not only was I healing from a Cesarean section but I was figuring out how to mother a baby again, my older children were 8 and 9 at this point so it was like riding a bike with a bent wheel because this crying gig was something I’d never had to deal with before. After several doctor’s visits and switching to a new doctor we started acid reflux medication hoping to god that it worked (which it did! Yay us!). A few days into the medication my husband and I thought it was a great time to take our children to the hot air “night glow” event.

It was probably about 80 degrees as we set off on a journey to see the glowing balloons. We had to walk about 1.5 miles and because the baby was dealing with tummy issues he was having none of that stroller crap. He wanted to be held, by me, like right NOW! I was sweating like a pig and trying to keep up when the baby decided he was hungry. I was prepared for this because at 6 weeks he was only hungry about every 5 seconds. I had my cute nursing cover in place with a baby latched on as I walked with my family to the event. As we got closer to the crowd my son’s anxiety began to ramp up. He wasn’t used to crowds of thousands of people (gee I wonder why) so all he wanted to do was nurse, for 2 hours straight. I was a living breathing pacifier.

I hate being hot. I keep my house at a balmy 68 degrees in the summer to make sure I don’t kill my family out of crazy heat induced rage. I was not only wearing pants and a t-shirt, but I also had basically a jacket over me to cover the baby and my boob so as not to make those around me uncomfortable. But the hotter I got the less of a fuck I gave. I was becoming a crazy heat induced ball of rage and I was losing my shit. So I looked at my husband and mustered every ounce of calm as I explained that the cover was coming off and he was going to have to be ok with that. He could see that I was hot and bitchy and it wasn’t helping the baby attached to my boob so he was smart enough to hold the cover for me before I tore it to shreds. There I was in a crowd of thousands with my boob, complete with baby nipple cover, exposed for the world to see and I didn’t care one bit. In fact, if someone had told me to put my boob away I probably would have decked them because I was finally feeling air movement and the ball of rage was evaporating.

I was free. I was not trying to stage a nurse in and make other people uncomfortable I was just trying not to die of heat stroke. My husband watched for pervs which was his one and only reason he preferred me to use a cover but like I said, all I was worried about was fresh air. By this time the glowing balloons were out for the evening and we were headed home. I walked down a main street in town with a baby latched on to my nipple for dear life and no one said a word. I’m sure some people were uncomfortable but I didn’t care. We were doing the best we could and that was all that mattered. After that day I decided I wasn’t going to subject myself to that experience again. I hung up my covers and never used them again because that was what worked for me.

The moral of the story is this: each mother has her own limits and no one should judge her for those. I tried using a cover until I just couldn’t take it anymore. Some women are fine without a cover from day one and others prefer the cover at all times. Why not come together as humans and try to support mothers and their choices without passing judgement. We are all just trying to raise small humans to be good big humans someday.  If you want to judge, please do it silently, because nursing mothers are riding a wave of hormones that make them unpredictable and I could see a jury acquitting a nursing mother of homicide.. just saying.

The last time he said I love you

As I sit in my office brooding about a mistake I made my thoughts suddenly drifted to Thing 1. He is the oldest and we've had a lot to work through over the years. School is hard for him, be it because he has to focus or because there are no video games, so he struggles everyday with going to school. We have the same fight every morning where he begs and pleads and tells me how dumb school is. Then I eventually get him and The Baby into the car to take him to school. I drop him off at school since the bus is no longer cool. And for the last 5 years when I take him, I tell him I love him before he gets out of the car. This used to be met with an "I love you too" before he walked away into the land of future adults. I knew with every passing day it might be the last time I heard him utter those words on school property.

Monday was a rush to get to school on time and look like a real responsible adult. On Monday, when I said I loved him and he just got out of the car and went into the school. The slightly pathetic person in me reasoned that he must not have heard me.  On Tuesday, the same thing happened and the voice in my head that gave me so much comfort the day before was not as loud. Today I realized the day had come and gone for "I love you's" in public. I am so happy watching Thing 1 turn into a very strong and wonderful young man, but now that the "I love you's" are no longer free flowing I begin to miss that little boy.

When I used to pick him up from daycare he would launch himself into my arms and hug me so tightly. Some of the staff would just watch in utter amazement that a mother and son could be so happy to see each other after a very short 8 hour day. Someone even commented on us being their favorite child/parent duo because it never got old to see him launch his tiny body with all his might into my arms. It was the very best part of my day to see how happy he was to see me. And just as those days came and went (mostly without me stopping to realize they were gone) here I am struggling with the reality of him growing up even more.

He still loves me, this is something I know and even the pathetic side of me knows, but he has reached a point in his life that he doesn't display that love to the world. He doesn't count the minutes until he sees me again. He doesn't think of his mom as the same hero I must have been in his younger years. Maybe it's part of becoming a big brother. He has to let go so I can have open arms for The Baby to fling himself into. Or maybe he's just old enough that public opinions are too highly regarded (I thought I had until middle school, not 4th grade). Maybe, maybe, maybe... I am so happy I have the memories of the independent boy who didn't care if his friends heard him tell me he loved me, but I'm also happy for his steps into the land of true independence. He grows everyday and though I got my last public declaration of love from him, I know deep down he still feels the same. So I will continue to tell him I love him and when those words aren't returned I will be ok. Because he does love me, he just doesn't love me out loud anymore. He loves me from the inside where his friends can't see and tease him.