Disclaimer: My keyboard is still broken so please excuse anything that should be capitalized and isn’t it only responds to the shift keys when it wants to.
It’s March, late March, and it’s Spring. This is what’s going on in my world.
I am working on a few goals this year;
1. getting a garden going for real this time,
2. becoming a “Fuck Yeah!” friend,
3. getting more movement into my days, (as I sit here blogging like a slug…)
4. eating more veg,
5. becoming more competent at my job, and
6. Decluttering!
There is some progress in all areas, however slight. The beds are in as of last Fall and I hope to get planting (with guidance) soonish. I am saying “Fuck Yeah!” as much as seems safe to friends asking if I want to do stuff. I am on my feet more for sure even if my phone isn’t showing the steps. It, like my little laptop, has issues and it dies a lot. I am eating slightly more veg and focusing on just making sure it happens every day. Tougher than I thought it would be. At work I am taking on some new responsibility, nothing huge, just helping cover while my boss is out on maternity leave. I am practicing to get better at commcat, trouble-shooting when there are issues with computers and printers, planning for Summer Reading as best I can. I also keep signing up for webinars but I have been missing most of them. I am just so burnt out on zoom and all that. I have a few coming up that I plan to actually attend and I intend to view the recordings of the ones I’ve missed. Decluttering is still stupid and complicated because my usual drop off places are still not taking things. meh. I do have some stuff ready to go and I will do more when it makes sense to.
One of my niece’s just got married! ^_^ YAY! So nice to have something to celebrate. She and her new husband looked gorgeous and I was so glad that we could at least be there remotely. My eldest daughter is taking a couple of online classes and doing well. My middlest is getting a little money in with a kind of online gig type thing and took over dish washing and it really helping me out. My youngest is in the final stretch of his senior year and is doing well, sticking with it, getting ready to ease into the future. My husband is still working remotely but is finally scheduled for his first vaccine. (YAY!) We will be celebrating 24 years together later this week. WOW.
Gaming is still the main source of entertainment around here, I think we are in and/or running about… 6-7 games. I am using Pathfinder 2e to run my husband in a one-on-one game. We used to run one-on-one a LOT when we lived far from anyone and had a young child. I’ve missed it like crazy and apparently he has too. ^_^ So I am still struggling with constructing encounters that won’t kill him. LOL. Even with all the charts and whatnot encounters are so brutal. I think I have been thinking about it wrong, like my math is somehow backward or twisted. I’ll get it sorted out. One-on-one is not a thing Pathfinder is super designed for so I am pretty much making my own “adventure path.” It’s fun and challenging and I am enjoying all the prep work. I have part one pretty well finished and have started part two. I’m not sure how many parts it will have. I was thinking two, taking the PC from level one to… 8? 9? 10? But I might keep it going. Have the main quest die down for a while, let him “Witcher” it up monster hunting all over Golarion and then bring the main quest back later. I don’t know, we’ll see how he likes the main quest as he hasn’t even started on it yet. He’s travelling to investigate a rumored event and I’ll have to see if he likes it or if it’s too weird for him. I can do grim and gritty just fine but it’s always leavened with chaos and whimsy which he doesn’t always “get.” If he doesn’t like it I know some people who will so I’ll just save it and rework it for them later and cook something else up for him. I love him so much.
Diet changes are always tough. Giving up things I love to eat or nearly giving them up is not on my list of favorite things. Cutting way bock on salt and sugar is a real kick in the teeth. I crave loads of sweet things so I tried making my own granola bars… spoiler alert: the recipes I found all had sugar in them… so I’ll need to work on finding some without added sugar. I like an oat base, which is typical of granola bars, so yay! But with my allergies I need to avoid a lot of nuts, some dried fruits etc. So things I can use:
honey or maple syrup
peanuts
sunflower seeds
dried cranberries
dried apricots
coconut
dried blueberries
peanut butter
dried cherries
A lot of recipes call for chocolate or white chocolate, some have pretzels or other odd additions I want to steer clear of. My first attempt does have some mini chocolate chips included because I am making these in a weird time where we have no credit cards because we had to cancel them because someone stole the numbers and wired themselves a bunch of money. So we have what we have until we get new ones. Sadly we are probably going to have to wait a while because that jackass who took over the postal system is so busy destroying it. Ah well, we’ve got food.
My Doctor says I have a fatty liver and we’ll need to do an ultrasound after the pandemic is more under control. I don’t think this explains my joint pain but I know all the tests ruled out a whole bunch of things so there’s that. So, this diagnosis means lifestyle changes like diet and exercise. I’m to lose between 15-20 LBs. and eat whole grains, fruits, veg, all the stuff they always tell you to eat, and I need to limit dairy, meats, fats, salt, sugar and alcohol… all the stuff they always tell you to limit. No real surprises. Funny how the same diet is good for so many things isn’t it? Not really, I feel foolish because I had a fairly excellent diet years ago and my burgeoning food allergies caused me to more or less give up. It seems I should have stuck with it even though it was getting harder to maintain. Oh well, this is where I am, this is what I have, so I’ll go from here.
Under this new lifestyle I also need to drink more water which, happily, I enjoy. I had fruit and tea and iced mint tea for breakfast this morning so off to a good start there. We’ll see how I do the rest of the day. Olive oil is supposed to be good in moderation and I can have avocados which I like. I’m allergic to almost all nuts and I hate olives so those are out. A Mediterranean diet is recommended but I’m allergic to tomatoes, lemons, nuts… and a host of other things that make healthy eating difficult. Obviously I’ll have to work on this, figure things out, limiting dairy and fried foods is going to suck.
Maybe I need to make a list of foods I especially like that are “allowed” in my new diet so I can focus on that instead of all the things I’m losing and need to curtail. Good foods I love:
Avocados
Mushrooms
Raspberries
Homemade granola
Sunflower seeds
Kale
Chickpeas
Potatoes
Limes
Sesame seeds
Summer squash pasta sauce
Onions
Garlic
Kidney Beans
Blueberries
Mint tea
Rice
Okra
Butternut squash
Apples
Pears
Nectarines
Red peppers
Beets
Broccoli
Zucchini
Scallions
Garlic scapes
Asparagus
So, pleny there to work with, and I am allowed some dairy, though I imagine my holiday indulgences will be way off book. I’m glad fast food is a no-no. I can be really bad about that at times. My weird indulgence in fast food seems sort of cyclical, I’ve gone through phases with it, I either have it frequently or not at all, so not at all it is. Not frying food at home will be weird, I’m pretty sure Sauteeing is frying and I do a lot of that especially my beloved onions & garlic. I suppose I’ll get it sorted out. I need some new recipes for certain and that’s going to be a bit tricky. Mediterranean cookbooks are out as they lean heavily towards many of my allergies. I think adapting to this new diet might be helped by growing some of the foods I can have and enjoy. I guess it’s time to invest in some raised beds and to learn how to vanquish my black thumb.
Yep, I just plain eat too much for how active I am… or am not. Up the activity level, lower the calories, I should be able to do that. We’ll see, no luck so far. My husband has lost 7 pounds already. No success in this are for me, BUT my progress on today’s to-do list is already impressive at 9am.
laid a fire in the wood stove
fed the cats
put away clean dishes
drove kids to school
got sick hubby breakfast in bed
filled the wood box
started a load of wash
cleaned the cat boxes
knit 2 stripes on the Hufflepuff scarf
put away the rakes and clippers
brought the snow shovels up from the shed
located and ordered firewood
remembered to get chicken out to thaw for tomorrow (yay)
Seems like a long list when I write it out like that but it’s just part of all I need to do today. I’m going to lay that out and see what it looks like…
take trash and recycling to transfer station
drop off check at farm stand
plan and execute dinner
clean fridge
wash dishes
fold and put away yesterday’s laundry
hang today’s laundry to dry
sweep kitchen and dining rooms
clean downstairs bath
pick up kids, probably separately (ugh)
get cash for the wood delivery
finish sewing felted mittens and fleece liners
knit 2 more stripes (I need to finish all 4 house scarves for mid-Dec.)
Try to figure out how to fix my friend’s coat
read at least 2 chapters of my book (probably at bedtime)
clean and declutter a bit in our bedroom
finish planning Thanksgiving feast
start planning Yule feast
look into craft projects for Yule and order supplies if needed
That ought to be enough for one day. I do want to try to have some kind of family activity tonight if we can, though it looks like I’ll be pretty tired by the time dinner is done and hubby is sick. hmm. Maybe we could have a movie night at home on Saturday or a game night. I feel like all I do is write I.O.U.s to my kids for stuff like that. We did have a Mutants and Masterminds game on Sunday but that was pretty much my husband’s doing. He’s a really good dad. ^_^
Now that I have figured out how to enter what I eat into the food diary it is clear why my weight stays pretty stagnant. I eat too many calories for my activity level. Way too many calories, and beer isn’t helping either. LOL. Who could have guessed? But the new information is how far over the line I am, which isn’t all that much, so it should be fixable. I can also become more active and being able to eat brownies is a pretty good motivation for me.
So, here, now, today, I weigh 165 lbs. That’s about 30-35 more than I probably should be. So, little calorie and step counting app. let’s see what you can do for me.
I have to be at my place of work every day this week. I’m working tonight, tomorrow night, have a 1 hour staff meeting Wednesday morning, a 2 hour training Thursday, work Friday night and all day Saturday. I know, I’m lucky, I work part time not full time, but I’m still responsible for getting the kids to and from school every day, making sure dinner is on the table even when I’m not here to eat it, and doing most of the housework. The logistics of this week are nuts. I think I also have my handyperson coming to start working on the shed.
I won’t be here for dinner 4 nights out of 5 this week so I had to scramble to make plans for 4 dinners I can make ahead and implore the gods my kids will remember to put in the oven. Tonight will be vagabond packets, tomorrow I told my husband they can make sandwiches as I got the nice sandwich rolls, deli meat etc, Thursday will be seafood casserole, Friday Lasagna and I’ll be here to cook Wednesday and hopefully my husband will BBQ on Saturday since I’ll be coming through the door right at dinner time. Sometimes I really feel like having to cook for everyone all the time is some kind of tyranny imposed on me. I like cooking, it’s just trying to come up with meals, especially ones that have to be in a slow-cooker or can just be popped in the oven by someone else, is such a thankless task. I’ve had so many slow-cooker cookbooks, and searched for so many recipes online for casseroles, for slow-cooker recipes, etc. and there are millions of recipes out there but a lot of them are awful or variations on each other.
I keep the above list in my Bullet Journal and use it every week to try to plan our dinners. Some of the ideas refer to specific recipes and some are sort of just a theme. Soup and salad could be any of several homemade soups I like to make and any sort of salad, for instance, or tacos and rice could be any kind of meat, veg, cheese, & tortillas, chips, guac. etc. My method is simple, I look at my schedule and see how many dinners I will not be home for and then I pick that many meals I can more-or-less make ahead, fill in the gaps with whatever meals I want to make for the other nights and then make a shopping list based on whatever I’ll need that isn’t on hand already. What I’ll actually purchase is based on the list but gets adjusted to take advantage of any great sales I find at the grocery store. I might have planned to make turkey burritos but if ground beef is cheaper that week, or ground pork etc, I adjust.
I spend $70-$140 week on groceries for 5 of us depending on a few factors. (that figure includes pet food, paper goods, food wrap, and toiletries) I do not consider the amount I spend to be very low, it is less than most people I know spend and I know where I can make changes to spend less when I need to. If you are spending more than you’d like to and want to trim your food budget there is a good chance that you can. There are a few things I do that help me save significantly on food that you can try out or adapt to your needs.
#1. I think the most important thing I do to keep food expenses under control is maintaining a well-stocked pantry. My pantry consists of a decent sized double cupboard in the kitchen and a set of cupboards in my laundry room, I’m not sure what the cubic footage is but I’ll check soon and report back if anyone is interested. (drop a comment to let me know if you feel like it.) My pantry contains many things:
Baking Supplies: flour, sugar, baking powder & baking soda, brown sugar, molasses, honey, chocolate chips, vanilla, etc etc. (I keep lots of flour sealed up in the freezer too to prevent bugs when storing longer term)
Canned goods: Vegetables, tuna, all kinds of beans including baked beans and refried beans, as well as the plain kinds, pre-made soups and pasta in sauce, (for casseroles and power outages etc)
Boxes of pasta. I have a LOT of pasta. Upwards of 40 lbs. most or the time. Plus 10-20 boxes of mac & cheese and 50+ ramen noodle packets.
Jars of pasta sauce. I usually have 20-30 on hand.
Condiments and salad dressings. I keep 5+ ketchup, mustard, mayo, pickles, hot sauce, siracha, green salsa, red salsa, soy sauce, shelf-stable dressings, etc, etc.
Quick sides like instant potato packets, or packets of broccoli-cheese pasta that I can whip up easy for myself if I feel unwell or use with other ingredients to make an easy side casserole to go with dinner if I’m strapped for time, unwell, or suddenly have more folks at my table.
Tea and coffee. I have an entire shelf taken up with various teas, most cheap, some a little special. I like to have something that might appeal to anyone who stops by. I have coffee for my daughter and for guests it’s plain because I know nothing about coffee.
Cereals both hot and cold. I keep oats for cooking and various oatmeals for my daughter who likes it. I keep 1-4 boxes of cold cereal on hand mostly slightly healthier seeming stuff, no bright colors, no marshmallows, etc.
Peanut butter and jams/jellies. I keep around 3-12 jars of PB around at all times for sandwiches, snacking, and sauces. I keep a few jars of jam/jelly around in various flavors for sandwiches, baking, etc.
A mad assortment of spices bought in bulk, given to me by people moving, harvested, dried & jarred by me, or grabbed relatively cheaply at Trader Joe’s.
All that stuff up above? I buy a LOT of whenever it’s on an excellent sale. I almost never find myself forced to pay 4+ dollars for mayo because whenever it hits $2-$3 I stock up. I get my ketchup for $2/bottle at Trader Joe’s because that is very cheap for ketchup without high fructose corn syrup. Pasta I grab at $1 or less per pound, Pasta sauce when it hits $1/quart, etc.
#2 Making use of my freezer. Right behind the pantry in importance is my freezer, or freezers. I have the typical top-of-the-fridge and a medium chest freezer. I keep various types of foods in my freezer to save money.
Meat. I stock up when anything is super cheap and repackage bulk packs into portions that match the amounts I typically cook with. Ground beef, chicken, kielbasa, bacon, etc.
Frozen veggies. Mostly broccoli and sliced bell peppers, sometimes cauliflower and other things. I stock up when these hit $1/10 oz package and use when fresh is unavailable/too expensive.
Butter. I buy butter for $3/lb or less. (Only making exceptions at the holidays if I have managed to run out.) I keep 5-10 lbs on hand if I can.
Flour. I keep most of my flour, sealed up in layered bags, in the freezer. Flour can get moths in the cupboard and I hate to waste it. I buy when it’s super cheap and use it for AGES. I keep 20+ lbs around and buy when it’s .20-.40 cents/lb.
Rice. It can get buggy just like flour so the rice lives in the freezer. I keep 30+lbs on hand and buy it when it’s on sale. Prices vary wildly depending on the type of rice.
#3 Farmshare. You may or may not have this option in your area. We are part of a CSA: Community Supported Agriculture, where we pay a local farmer a certain amount in the spring and then stop by the farm weekly to get a share of the produce. Currently our farm share costs $650 and we get 8-9 items per week, June – November. (PLUS “field items.”) To give you an idea of what you might get here is this week’s share: (which I chose from among the available options) 2 lbs potatoes, 4 heads of lettuce, 4 lbs red peppers, 6 leeks, 2 acorn squash, 2 lbs onions, several hot peppers, approx. 5 lbs tomatillos, fresh flowers, fresh herbs: cilantro, thyme, oregano, basil. … I think that’s it for this week. Our farmshare only goes for 6 out of 12 months but it keeps us in winter squash, garlic and a few other things through to spring.
#4, (and lastly for now as I need to pre-make dinner and get myself ready for work) Meal Planning. I do what I outlined above. Check my schedule, pick our dinners, make a list based on what isn’t already in the house, and make adjustments based on killer sale prices. I used to use the weekly flyers from the grocery stores to plan meals around sales but have found my current method to be slightly more effective/less stressful. Meal planning saves us money in more than 1 way. First it takes advantage of the pantry & freezer & second it almost always keeps us from resorting to ordering pizza or grabbing meals out. If there is a plan in place, barring accidents, emergencies or migraines, I fit it into my schedule and it is pretty stress free.
That’s pretty much it. If you start keeping a pantry or stocking your freezer just ROTATE the food, meaning: put the NEW stuff in the back/bottom and pull the Older stuff to the front. Use your pantry don’t just leave it sit. Take the older stuff at the front to prepare your meals and add the new stuff to the back as you go and you should do alright.
My 17 year old is depressed and anxious. He’s also very introverted and doesn’t feel motivated to hang out with people so we have to push him to do that. He has fun when he does, usually. His therapist has been giving him assignments over the past year, to hang out with peers, to introduce himself to people, to reach out more in general, to get involved in activities with others. Recently, my husband has started giving him assignments too. He told our son to pick a girl he finds attractive (at this art activity he was in) and walk up to her before he left and just say “I really like what you did, it’s cool.” and smile. He did it! (I freaking saw him do it because I was running the activity)
He does try to do all the things we and the therapist suggest to him. He and his dad have been running in the mornings for a few weeks and eating better too. He used to drink a ton of juice and juice, beyond a small glass or 2 per day is rubbish for you. It’s basically all sugar. I took juice away a while ago and the kid lost 12 pounds in a few weeks. I’ve been trying to get him to drink water all along, it being the actual liquid our bodies crave, but he hasn’t been into it at all. Since our weekend away at the Cape, besides decluttering I’ve been washing up the dishes right after meals and also keeping a full pitcher of water in the fridge. Suddenly the kid is drinking water all the time. I can’t believe it, he hated water, now he loves it because it’s cold from the fridge. He’s also eating fruit, especially grapes, he and my husband agree that grapes are AWESOME right after their morning run.
Oh, and he also wants to get into Tae Kwan Do now. The only exercise I’ve ever been able to get him to do was swimming! A whole combination of things has come together and all these long wanted changes are suddenly happening. He’s been in therapy and on meds for a year, we’re eating family meals together much more consistently, there is cold water in the fridge at all times, and he started running with his dad. He is becoming a happier, healthier kid. Some changes are dramatic and some are subtle but they are happening. He and my husband are both losing weight. Oh, for anyone who’s wondering, they are using something called “Couch to 5K” it’s an app you can get for your phone that tells you what to do each day and builds you up to being able to run 5K. I’ve been walking using the new Harry Potter game as motivation because I am on my feet at home and at work much more than they are and I don’t like running. (Plus, Harry Potter ^_^ )
Do any other Gen-Xers out there find parenting to be this insane guessing game? I’ve always looked back on my own upbringing and found almost nothing but a negative example from my Boomer parent’s F***-ups. They were a lesson in what NOT to do but I still struggled with what TO do. Yeah, I chose not to punish my kids by hitting them, I chose not to dole out art supplies with an eye dropper, I chose not to force them to subscribe to any particular religion or anything, lots of mistakes of my parents I was able to side step… but not doing things isn’t really much to go on. I read to my kids like crazy, I made loads of art with them, I reasoned with them rather than using punishment, (at least 90% of the time) and I fed them, clothed them, housed them, loved the stuffing out of them. We always had plenty of pets, usually a sane amount like 4 or less but occasionally more, and had the kids help care for them. We didn’t demand high grades, middling were ok, we didn’t send them to a lot of activities… and that’s one thing I would go back and change. I think that was a mistake. We should have had them in activities and lessons more, at least to try way more things out. It’s too late now, maybe we can still do a little of that for our youngest but it’s too late for the older 2.
Why does that make me feel like such a failure? Parenting has been a very seat-of-our-pants affair and our parents were no help at all. We’ve done the best we could, taken our best guesses, but I feel awful for what I didn’t do that I now think might have helped. Even if you read books by so-called experts on parenting they all contradict each other and the general advice changes every few years. What the heck are we supposed to do with all that? So, here I am, trying to help my kids where they are now, basically having to hope that loving them so much all these years will have been enough so that they can still get to the point of Adult Functioning… even if it’s LATE. And still hoping all this won’t kill my beautiful, wonderful marriage to the best guy I’ve ever met.
I’m trying to build myself up to be more hopeful but I live in Bummerville.
Gen-Xer Remix 