clickmom

blech

Introducing my next therapy session: My eating quickly became a disaster over the weekend. There was too much stress and too much temptation and eventually I checked out of my sane mind and dove into the food. First I cracked open the floodgates with the sugary cranberry sauce on thanksgiving day. When I woke up the next day it was as if my addiction had become a ferocious starving lion while I slept. I went downstairs, surveying the left over pies, cookies, ice cream, sweet potato and marshmallow, more cranberry sauce, anything sweet. By the end of the second day I was delicately lifting the chocolate mousse pie filling out of it's crust and stealing the husband's ice cream, by last night I was scarfing down everything I saw with the same predictable results. Stomach pain, bloating, gas, the stuff you don't mention at dinner, and also, joint pain, post nasal drip, and a swelling of my throat which was more than slightly alarming, I considered popping a benadryl.

Did I eat these foods and find them to be the most overwhelmingly delicious foods my mouth had ever tasted? Not in the least. Did these bad for me foods calm me down? Nope. Did these foods offer me anything beyond worry about the day when my allergic reaction becomes deadly? Negative. Or maybe the day when my intestines call it quits over the gluten and I get sicker beyond my current imagination?

I gotta get over the food thing.

I never got out of bed for the sunrise this morning. I could tell from my window that it was going to be another gray one. When I did get up I went straight into cleaning mode so that we could get out of utopia before the "wintry mix" that was predicted to hit both utopia and stepford bewtween 1 and 2PM. My goal was to head out around 10:30 which would normally get me home around 1, just in time for the Giants game and also, nice and cozy before the "wintry mix" reared it's ugly head.

That plan was going fine as we pulled out of utopia a mere 22 minutes behind schedule at 10:52 this morning. Except as we pulled out the snow/ice/rain had already begun to fall. We drove through hail for the first hour or so before it turned to mostly rain and then we hit a wall of traffic. The final hour of our trip was a parking lot of cars. It took us over 3 hours to make that last leg and all in all it took just 12 minutes shy of 5 hours to get home.

Most people were pretty calm about the whole traffic ordeal for the first 45 minutes of parking lot or so but then some folks started playing dirty, they would sail down the exit lanes and then try to get back into the parking lot line. When they tried to pry into the line in front of me I would give them the finger as I stayed inches from the vehicle in front of me. I let no cheaters in. Unfortunately the little red crap mobile in front of me was overly friendly and let anyone poke their way back into line in front of him. It was everything I could do not to get out of my car and punch the dude in his wasted face.

Between the 17 dishwasher loads I loaded and unloaded in the past 4 days and the excessive time in the drivers seat suppressing my tendency towards road rage, it's no wonder my back is killing me.

I need a hot shower and a good nights sleep. Also, I think I am in need of a liver cleanse or something. I feel like crap.

sunrise shot

The last thing I want to do tomorrow is go home.

I'm going home tomorrow.

Now that summer is over I just never get enough time here in utopia to feel satisfied. Seven months until next summer. Wah wah.

I gave the sunrise shot another try this morning and it was different from the first two mornings. It wasn't a fluffy high lighted reflective cloud spectacular or an overcast murky cheerless somber-fest. This morning dawned with out a cloud in the sky. It isn't my fist choice, but it was preferable to the overcast option. Here is what I got to day looking east:

And once that eastern sky brightened enough to fade to ordinary blue I walked over to see what was going on looking west and I got this one:

You can see where the lake is beginning to freeze. I hear it never freezes before thanksgiving, and that concerns me, well that and the menacing fact that all the squirrels around our house are so fat they look ready to combust and I fear that they know something with their intuitive animal instincts that we people don't know and what those little furry woodland creatures know is that this is going to be some kind of super cold super harsh winter. Now I could cry again.

B+ morning

I came down stairs in utopia this morning and the den tv was all aglow. Grandma follows me around!

All I want to accomplish while we are here is for the weather to cooperate enough so that I can go home with some awesome twilight photos. So far I have been here, in utopia, for two sunrises and two sunsets. The first sunrise was a B+, I missed the sunset on Thanksgiving because I was al caught up in all my last second food preparation. This morning I crawled out of bed at the crack of pre-dawn and stood outside for an hour willing the thick cloud cover to thin and let some color through. A few times I saw a hint of a thin filmy wisp of coral colored fluff but it would fade right away each time it glimpsed out at me. By the end of the hour, the sky was an unforgettable dull medium gray and I was so cold my down jacket felt chilled on the inside. Then I ran outside tonight to see if I could catch some sunset vision, but again, the sky just gave me yet another fade to nothingness. I have two more chances at each end of the day to catch something magical. My fingers are crossed.

In the mean time, here is one of my shots from the B+ morning:

1,364

Wow, I have quite a lot of posts under my belt. This is number 1.364. Who knew I have so much to say? Maybe I should throw a party for post 1,500. Though I'm not sure how to throw a party via internet. Suggestions are welcome.

I survived tonight, damage: minimal. I didn't pig out on do anything that will find me kicking myself in the morning over, and for that I am thankful. Hahahaha, get it? I am one of those corny people who would usually like to go around the table and say what it is I am thankful for, but tonight I couldn't bring myself to do that public display of gratitude because I didn't want to open up that can of worms with my dad here with us. Really, I am thankful dad hasn't died by now too. And that might not go over so well with dad who isn't talking about his situation and the tenuous state of his health.

I'm so tired right now I can barely focus on the screen, and I only have 14 minutes to get this in, so I am going to hang it up right now.

Wait! I want to tell you that I did manage to shoot some sunrise photos today and am hoping to get both the rise and the set tomorrow and the next day. I wish I had shot more over the summer, when I was here but still too numb to feel any creativity.

no pie

It's Wednesday!! I'm gonna get right down to business here, the weekly fattie contest weigh in. I lost 2 1/2 pound from last week, which makes my total weight loss 16 3/4 pounds. (I think) I'm far from winning because there are a few people in the contest who have already lost in the 24+ pound range, and that is before this week's weigh in, the results of which have yet to be posted. The one thing that makes me smile each week is one particular participant. He/she is weighing in every week (we all have code numbers so you can't tell how the others are doing unless they tell you themselves) even though he/she has been steadily gaining weight. At last week's weigh in the mystery gainer is up 6 pounds. And there but for the grace of a low carb regimen go I.

We are spending our first grandma and mom-less thanksgiving in utopia. I'm glad for the change of venue because being home would make the loss more apparent, and also because I'd plain old rather be here than anywhere else.

Getting here put my patience and easy going nature to the test. There was traffic like I think I may have only ever seen once before on the way here. It took me twice as long to get here as usual. Pretty much I was doing some sort of inner frustration induced convulsion for most the ride. Not helping much was the new trend that all the kids up until now have always kind of silently tolerated my lite muzac and my freaky ability to sing out loud every lite song ever written, but lately, ever since I admitted to liking the classic rock station, Matt insists on either listening to classic rock or the comedy station. My problem is that singing (okay, a latte helps too) is what keeps me calm, wake and alert while driving, also, I am pretty much bored with the comedy already and it seems that saturday afternoons are the only time I like the play list on the classic rock station.

I heard that olympic athletes visualize their performances before they happen. I'm trying very hard to visualize me eating a normal amount of food tomorrow and not even caring about the stuff I can't eat. I got my own turkey breast because I'm not sure what the husband's brother is putting in and on his turkey, and I got my own sweet potato that I can bake and eat plain without marshmallows and all the sugar and butter and I am in charge of the green beans, which I intend to make without butter. The one thanksgiving item I am still deliberating on is the cranberry sauce. You see internet, I reeeaaaly like cranberry sauce, and I make it from scratch, with wine and oranges, and it is incredibly delicious, like ambrosia delicious. So I might indulge with the cranberry sauce.

But I'm with out a doubt not eating pie or doing anything crazy for me like that because I'm allergic to it all anyway, and I am not in such a bad mental state kind of way that all the stomach pain and discomfort of eating what I am allergic to doesn't matter to me.

veggies are kosher

I am my usual cranky pissy "no one helps me around here" pre-holiday/vacation/anything which requires more effort than usual stressed out witch of myself today. I can't even stand being with me when I get like this. At least I'm not my own kid!

I shopped today and somehow, even though I asked for tons of help with the meal for the first time this year I still managed to spend a fortune. The cashiers were fighting over me because they have a contest to see who can ring up the most money in these pre-turkey roasting days. (Or in the case of the clickmom family gathering, a deep fried turkey and a grilled turkey ala my BIL)

Here is my dilemma of the day: Since the @#$%^&* fridge is still not working due to the fact that everything in it freezes every night when I am not around to frequently open the door and keep the temp above 20 degrees, is it okay that I left all of the vegetables in my truck for the night, figuring that tonight's low is expected to be 30 degrees and that the 30 temperature is actually closer to what the fridge should be. I did put the dairy stuff in the fridge (on the hopefully less frigid than the inner shelf door) just to be on the "don't food poison your guests" side, but figured that veggies have more flexibility, is that kosher?

murphy's law: in my face

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, which has become somewhat typical for me since the husband (who had previously been trained to face away from my head as he snored and gasped for air all freaking night long) decided that the one side he was really comfortable on is the side that enables him to blow puffs of air on my face through the night every time he reinitiates breathing, which according to the sleep clinic he went to (twice) is approximately 20 times an hour.

Sleep apnea, you torture me!

Then I tried to wake up the kids and I had to run back upstairs and wake Matt up three times. When he falls back to sleep I just want to kill him since I let him sleep just about as late as possible in the first place. He was late for school. Not my fault.

Evan spent 40 minutes in the bathroom ... um ... sitting. He gets that from his dad. He was late for school too. Not my fault.

Then the GE fridge guy, who I am expecting between 8 and noon, calls on the phone and it's a new guy and not the creepily tattooed guy that usually comes. (Yes, the fridge is still not working!) And the new guy says he spoke to the tattooed guy and that tattoo noticed a piece was stuck last week week when he was here and merely pretending to fix the fridge and he'll have to order a new part for the fridge and not come to my house between 8 and 12 today and fix it. Instead I will have to wait possibly 10 days for the part to come in the mail and then he'll come by and fix it. I said "Are you kidding me? The guy knew it was broken a week ago and he didn't order the part? What are you part of the GE Clown Posse?" Yes, I called the man who might hold the key to fresh and not frozen produce in my fridge a clown.

Then I tried to clean but I am cleaned out from my cleaning frenzy of the weekend.

I decided to mat and frame my photos for the group show I am in next month. Except the LOSER (he is a whole other post, believe me) that printed the photos for me printed them the wrong size. And I almost panicked, but then I remembered that I had some right sized ones lying around from when I showed them to the photo group that one time. I dug those up and started to frame them. It was awkward since I had already mounted them to foam core for that class, but I figured out an awkward way to do it. I just hope that if someone buys one, they leave it framed and don't try to change the frame.

I needed four photos to submit, and I had purchased four frames. One of the frames had developed a chip in the edge of the glass. A piece of glass broke off and scratched the inside of the glass against where the picture would be. I used it anyway. I did pick out the shot for which I hoped it would show the least.

I went to the gym. I did a half assed effort at everything I do. I took a shower. I got out of the shower at 2 o'clock. My cell phone rang. It was the other class mom for Josh's class. She asked me if I was coming to the class party, which had started at 1:30, as in the party I was in charge of the class craft for. I said "OMG I just got out of the shower!" she said "Are you home?" I said "No!" She said "Can I get into your house to get the craft?" and luckily my house cleaner was minutes away and the mom ran to my house, got the craft and made it back in time for the kids to get crafty.

The other mom, since I had said I wasn't home, told everyone I was in utopia. She thought it was weird that I was in utopia and Josh was in school. Luckily Josh doesn't freak out easily.

I bought two crafts. Kind of to make up for the sucky Halloween craft I got that was so hard a couple of the more delicate kids cried. (I'm so sorry Josh!) One of today's crafts was a pilgrim hat and one craft was a turkey bookmark. Except the pilgrim hat wasn't a craft at all, it was already put together. Apparently, I thoroughly suck at the craft. Next time I am sending in the juice boxes.

In the mean time I had brought (to the gym) a shirt with me that I had accidentally dryer dried instead of hang drying, and it is one of those wrap shirts, and it shrunk enough that the horizontal seam that is under the wrap part was , post dryer, right across my boobs (pretty much nipple line if you must know), instead of under them, and I had to walk around for the rest of the day tugging my boob seam underneath my boobage. Nice. I'm too sexy for my shirt, obviously.

Did I mention the crying jags? Dad flew in today and somehow all my worrying of the past 5 months just kind of collectively surfaced and I kept bursting into tears in all sorts of times I'd rather not do something like that, like on the elliptical, as an example.

Have I ever told you that I am one of those people who can sing the lyrics to way too many songs of my youth? I was crooning away to "Wedding Bell Blues" when I noticed a pedestrian looking at me. I forgot that the back window was down for the devil. Now they all know I am a dork.

refreshing

I spent a good chunk of yesterday and today trying to dig out from own personal fresh kills landfill over here. (See yesterday's post and link for completely accurate photo of my own very special kind of messiness.) I just hate cleaning, and now I am in the very awkward position of trying to figure out what to do with the 97 pairs of white boys socks we seem to have accumulated because I was totally convinced the socks had disappeared or had been buried by the devil in the backyard and it seems. pause for dramatic thoroughly guilty revelation, um.. well ... all those socks, well, ha ha funny thing about those socks, that I have replaced about 4 times, you see they were all under the gargantuan towering pile of clean but not sorted or folded laundry that I frivolously toss the clean clothes on top of each time I do a load. ha ha.

First order of business was sorting through the guest bed multi-story accumulation of garment. After folding and folding and sorting and piling I finally finished up everything except the daunting array of socks. They are still sitting there in a semi-sorted pile. Then I had to do ridiculous stuff like clean out the linen just to fit more stuff in it. Seriously. I threw away a crib sheet that grandma had given to me BEFORE Matt was born. It was still in it's original packaging from when grandma bought it when I was born.

Then I had to go through the drawers and take stuff that mom left. I kept a red blazer. Ask me the last time I wore a red blazer. Ask me the last time I wore a blazer. Ask me even the last time I wore red. I don't know why I am keeping the blazer. It looked good on me, but I didn't look like me in the blazer since I don't wear such clothes, but I thought how mice it might look with a white (which I do not own any of) shirt underneath. I'll get rid of it eventually, I am thinking of enacting the three year rule (it is three right?) in my closet. I will get rid of anything I haven't worn in three or more years. Except that one pair of pants I wore right before I got preggers with Josh because I was smokin hot (laughing my head off here!) in those pants and maybe one day I will weigh that much for a bit while I am on my way back down to pre-pre-pre-pregnancy weight.

Then I had to do stuff like go through dresser drawers that had not been opened in 6 years or so. (I have an extra one in my bedroom- don't ask) I threw away onesies. Yes, Josh will be 8 in a couple of months. There were also itty bitty little new born socks that never fit my personal sasquatch offspring. This is no exaggeration. My kids were born with size 7 feet. I kid you not. Matt is currently sporting a fred flintstone flat bottomed size 15EEE and you don't grow a pair of those flippers unless you start in the womb. Seriously!

I also had to do stuff like clean out one of the two bookshelves crammed into Josh's bedroom. (As in the bookshelf that blocks the closet from opening, tee hee) I hate getting rid of books, I do plan on donating them, (and all the clothes too- I'm not really throwing them away) but the books all have this special place in my book loving heart. sigh. I am going to let myself keep a few special ones. I can't help it! Books do something for me!

So, all in all I do kind of feel like I wasted the weekend away, cleaning all the time, but when I walk in my own room (done this morning from 7-10) and don't feel like it is caving in on me, it is a kind of nice refreshing feeling.

#5

I've been pacing the floor like a caged tiger, and if I was on a reality show where they edit your days down to the ten minutes you don't want to remember about 8 1/2 of those minutes showcasing me would show me opening the nearly empty (because it's still broke!) fridge and staring longingly at a lot of nothingness willing some thing tasty to appear because OMG I feel like I could eat and eat and eat until the end of civilization as we know it and never even come up for air. The other minute and a half would show me discreetly a flipping the bird to just about everyone who dares to speak to me.

I've been doing and feeling this for about three days now and I know the one single reason why I am feeling this way and naturally it has nothing to do with babesia, with it's false promises (high hopes) of "loss of appetite" (LIARS!), and the reason is ANXIETY. Yup people I am an anxiety sufferer and with the turkey slaughtering holiday just around the corner I am feeling me some HIGH ANXIETY. I wish I was into prescription meds, because this is a feeling I would totally like to (pill pop) medicate myself away from. Breathe!

If there were any justice in this world I would become one of those people who cannot bear to eat when stressed and do other thigns instead like clean and organize, but NO, fate has dealt me a bad hand, and when I feel like this I want to eat and I clean less than usual, which is also why all of a sudden I realized my home resembles fresh kills landfill, and that's not a joke because unfortunately there is no big machine thingie here to scrape all the chaos away and hide it under a layer of green green toxic laden grass.

Things I have to do that I don't want to do:

1. Clean out the room (of all traces of mom) where dad and mom lived last summer/fall because dad is coming up on Monday.
2. Clean out my own bedroom because I just know there is furniture under all those piles of clothes.
3. Clean out Josh's and Evan's bedrooms for the same reason. (Already did Matt's)
4. The family room and kitchen could use a fair share of unearthing too.
5. Add up and deposit 6 months worth of teeny tiny paychecks into my useless low interest earning money market account before the paper's book keeper calls me, like she does every 6 months when she realizes I have been letting my itsy bitsy not worth the postage they spent to send it checks pile up again.
5. Have a much bigger Thanksgiving than the one I imagined with just my family, lil sis's, pal and dad.

Really I think that #5 is what is getting to me. I un-genuinely invited my SIL and she is coming (DOH!) and I fear she might be verbally abusive to her kids and I am not sure if I can bite my lip like I always do right now. Seriously, if she says anything I'm gonna say something in defense of the kids, and it's going to be something like "Seriously, how fucked up are you? Did you really just say what I think you said? I'm calling the authorities!"

Wouldn't that go over big? Can you imagine all the hugs all around after I drop that one on her? It'd be a total love fest, I'm sure. We could pose for a big family portrait right after that one.

MY BABY

Mat knew he was going to go up first, so we did discuss what he might say or do and the plan was that he was going to tel the story of signing up for the talent show and then play the beginning of Tip Toe Through the Tulips just to fake out the audience. But when he finally got up there he was too nervous.

I love the part right after the first verse when Josh whispers to me "He's good!" (Josh is Matt's second biggest fan) and also when someone from the audience whistles their approval and Matt says says "Thank you" right in the middle of his song and everyone thinks he is done but then he tells everyone he's not done yet because they have all started to clap and then Matt gets right back into it. He was nervous and it took him a minute to sing in his real voice, but once he did you can hear the difference, you can hear him relax, and that's when he got really good.

After we saw/heard all the other acts, the student judges needed to conference to choose the winners, and the boy who was MCing the talent show called out over the murmur of the crowd "Is Matt still here? Can Matt come up and play something else for us? Matt gets my vote, I can say I liked him best because I'm not a judge." And all the little cartoon bluebirds in my mommy heart began to sing and synchronize fly around at the same time. Matt did get up and play another song he's been practicing. The crowd was pleased again.

When they called Matt up for the first place prize he was so sweetly genuinely shocked. They gave him the mike and I for an instant kicked myself because I hadn't prepared him for that, but he thanked everyone, said a humble thing or two, and congratulated everyone on a job well done. He was great.