I wish I were Kelly Ripa.

Wait, is that what I'm doing wrong?

Okay, not really completely her, but I got your attention, right? (although I wouldn't mind meeting Mr. Consuelos...)
I have got to be the most boring person on the planet. You know why? Because if I had TiVo or some other fancy thing that VCR's used to be able to do, the only shows I would record would be Live with Kelly and Michael and The Price is Right. And Jeopardy if my stupid antenna would ever pick it up. Okay, so maybe I'm old. Or old and boring.

I got to actually watch Kelly and Michael yesterday morning since we got the day off. (and that's how I choose to spend it..hmm...) and Kelly said, "I don't believe in depriving yourself of anything, just everything in moderation." To that, the audience politely applauded. Yay, you weigh 74 pounds and you eat whatever you want! Yay!
Baloney.
I'm not saying Kelly isn't telling the truth, and clearly that's how people got along for oodles of years. I don't remember Jesus discussing with the disciples whether Atkins, South Beach, or Jenny Craig was the best path. They ate what they had, and of it what they wanted, and walked everywhere they went and got enough sleep, and all that other stuff.  I am saying that Kelly has got to work out like crazy too to have arms like she does.

But my main issue is the key part about eating whatever you want. That does NOT include quantity, unfortunately. I want an apple doughnut from the apple farm. It's okay to have A doughnut from the apple farm. It is not okay to have what I really want which is a DOZEN doughnuts from the apple farm.
So it turns out quantity is my main issue. I'm still trying. Like tonight I made our weekly breakfast for supper. I WANTED six biscuits. I only had 2. I think. I may have eaten half of Brynn's when I was cleaning up. It's hard to be sure.
Like I said, I'm trying.

***Note: My ADHD is running rampant tonight. It was really super hard for me to stay on topic. I just thought some of you might enjoy hearing that andIcouldn'tholditinanylonger.  Phew.....***

Putting Wind in a Box

I've identified and admitted a behavior of mine. I have had it forever, but not always realized it was what I was doing.
Obsessing over things I can control when much of my world is OUT of my control.



For example, for the last couple of weeks I have been scouring some combination of Pinterest, Amazon, and Mommy-blogs to plan how I would pack my kids' lunch when they started "school." I wouldn't be with them during the day, and my situation is unfortunately not as ideal as it once was, but DOGGONEIT I CAN PACK A LUNCH! I'm going to post my own Pins to show just how awesome they are. (Reality check: 4/5 days one or both of them is getting some pre-packaged something.)

Ok, seriously. Name one person who has time for this and one kid who would appreciate it for what it's worth.

Just today I was sassy-fying my room more than I have in my seven years of teaching. I usually hate doing bulletin boards, but I maxed out with all kinds of fancy duct tape, layers of borders, and still haven't gotten to my cutesy-but-functional Teachers Pay Teachers content decorations yet.


My dear aunt asked what in the world was wrong with me. Then, "Oooh. I know what you're doing. You can control this environment."
She's right. I can choose, monitor, and dictate everything in that tiny classroom (at least until the students come, ha!) while I feel right now I'm white knuckling my way through everything else.
I crave stability and security, just like everyone else. I know my God is bigger than all the powers of the Earth combined (and Captain Planet), and I'm not saying He's not enough, but like a quip I heard long ago, sometimes I need someone with skin.
 Being a woman is hard. Being a mother is hard. Being a human is hard. There are so many forces out of our control every day. We have to be strong enough to fight them or strong enough to walk away. Either way, it ain't easy.

Ecclesiastes 8:8 MSG
"No one can control the wind or lock it in a box. No one has any say-so regarding the day of death. No one can stop a battle in its tracks..."

Just "Eh"

This whole "being honest" thing is hard. Because I want to tell you right now that I have done an awesome job eating healthy and making the best choices since my last post since in the last one I wasn't doing that great.
Well, I've been making mediocre choices most days, could have done worse, definitely could have done better. The words "lackluster" and "blase" come to mind. For example, today I had a good breakfast, measured my coffee creamer, the works. Then, hey, I wasn't going to just throw away the half of Max's frozen waffle he didn't eat. That couldn't count much, right? Then I went to an awesome 6-year-old's birthday party, which involved me getting in the pool, though nothing I did (or ever do) could be considered swimming. I only had two slices of pizza and I shared my delicious Spiderman cake with Max and Brynn. (Which meant Brynn ate all the icing off the top and Max ate most of the ice cream.) So again, I could have done worse.

For supper, I made everyone else pancakes (my favorite whole wheat recipe that uses honey instead of sugar and only 2 tablespoons of oil) and I had an egg and a piece of toast instead because it's easier to count points-wise. But then, hey, I wasn't just going to throw away the chocolate chip pancake I had already cut up for Brynn that she decided that she didn't want. (Obviously my daughter did not inherit my inability to recognize being full. Learned behavior, much??)

Not a problem in my house!

I am proud of myself because in spite of the terrible heat today and a borderline migraine part of the day, I was determined to go for a run tonight. I got the babies in bed and was giving the temperature as much time as possible to drop before I went. There were some dark clouds in the sky, but I thought they were far enough away, so I threw on my digs and went out the door.
  Thunder.
Dadblast it, I'm running.
Dark. Wind. Thunder.
Sigh. I made it halfway down the road I run the length of and decided I had better turn around. Thunder does make for good inspiration to run at a bit more brisk of a pace. I literally had been back inside my house for a minute and a half and the sky fell out.

Thank you, God, for waiting! I said.
Once upon a time, I would have used any and all of those factors not to go exercise. Granted, it was only 17 minutes, but that was 17 more minutes than I could have.
So yeah, at this rate I'm not going to be losing as much as fast as I could if I made perfect decisions every hour of every day (and just threw away what my kids don't eat). But you know what I'm kind of deciding? This is life. Is it better to be "perfect" for a good solid week or two then go stark-raving-eatitifitain'tnaileddown CRAZY until I can't take the guilt anymore than start over OR do the best you can at every given moment that you can?

                                               
Surely, eventually, some more of this "fat suit" I feel like I'm in will melt away at this rate. I really believe once the initial stress of starting school back settles as much as it does, the structure will help my decisions improve too since I won't have TIME to eat or ACCESS to anything except what I bring from home.
So, here's to blase being better than berserk any day.

"Compliments"

Everybody has figured out by now that words can--and more often do--hurt people much more than physical abuse ever could. That's usually what bullying is, and day to day getting your feelings hurt.
That being said, as an adult, I've never had anyone tell me I was fat or say something directly hurtful concerning my looks, at least not that I can think of right off. Well, this isn't counting the numerous people that said something to the effect of "You're huge!" when I was pregnant, which somehow is apparently acceptable??? Anyway, that's another blog another day.

However, I can think of at least a handful of things that people told me after I had LOST weight that were particularly scarring.

At a get-together a lady seeing me get small portions, "Well, gosh, you could eat more than that."
 This one may not read as particularly hurtful, but if you saw her face, you would have felt the tone. Also, as one who does not generally enjoy bring attention to herself except when given a particular role to do so, this made me way more conspicuous than I would have liked. I wonder if this remark is one reason I have a very very hard time making good choices at public eating "events." I don't want anyone to look at my plate and know I'm dieting, because then they might feel the need to talk about it.

Someone I don't even remember who, "You sure are showing off your new body, aren't you?" 
If any of you have lost a considerable amount of weight before, you'll know why this was disturbing. You don't know HOW to dress when you have a "new body." When you've been dressing in clothes that just cover and hide, questions like How tight? How loose? are very difficult to answer. So for someone to suggest I was being inappropriate was embarrassing to me. I've always dressed on the modest side, and just because I was thinner didn't change that--I thought. So then I really didn't know how to dress.

After seeing a friend after a while, "Lacy, you used to have such a pretty figure! Now you're just.....nothing."
This one doesn't require an explanation.

I'm not blaming these things for making me gain weight back (plus some) again, but it certainly didn't do a thing for my self-esteem.  Why do we know it's not okay to remark (at least to people's faces) about them being overweight, sloppy, an overeater, but the same doesn't apply if you are thin and eating healthy?
Jealousy is a big guess at least when it involves women. I know to make myself feel better I've said (to myself) things like, "Well, she's just too thin." or "She can't be happy. She's just hungry."

It should be a rule that unless your comment looks something like this template :

you should just keep your comment to yourself. Because you may think that your statement about how thin someone has gotten will make them feel good, but it probably won't. It has been 10 or 11 years since I heard those lines, and I still fear what I might hear as I lose weight again. Hopefully I'm stronger, more mature, and less sensitive now, but it certainly has taught me to be even more careful with my words.

Recovering.

As usual, I doubt there are any guys left in my blogging audience, but just be warned if there are, I am trying to be really honest on here. It may take me a day to admit it, but here it is. I had a terrible eating night yesterday. Brynn took about 2 hours, 4 bathroom trips, 3 meltdowns, 1 dose of medicine, and a thousand hugs and kisses to get to sleep last night. So my running time was down the toilet. So was my composure. I lost it once she had been quiet for a few minutes. I mean curled up in Erick's lap in the fetal position lost it. (Hormones probably had something to do with it to, but that doesn't make it less real.)
So what did I do to recover? I self-medicated. With frozen Greek yogurt and pita crackers. (Apparently was really into the Greek theme.) The stupid thing was the crackers weren't even very good. They needed some hummus. Or peanut butter. Or something. Then, as if that weren't enough, I had a couple of cookies that for some sabotaging reason I made a couple of days ago. Did that make me feel better? Well, it made me feel nothing. Which was exactly what I wanted. I didn't want to feel anything anymore for a little while.
But this morning I felt GUILTY. I mean I didn't even sleep well last night, and I think that's why. As I covered in an earlier entry, why isn't this enough reason to keep from binging the next time? I DON'T KNOW. It makes me so ashamed! It's embarrassing to lose control like that.
So my steps I've taken today to recover and get back on track:

• Pray for forgiveness for my gluttony. 
• Forgive myself and try to move on. (I'm still working on this one.)
• Get up and go for a run. (I do believe this is the first time in my LIFE I've started exercising before 7 a.m.)
• Have a good breakfast and plan what I'll eat the rest of today.

I  made the mistake of getting on the scale this morning and it did not say what I wanted it to. (After last night, duh.) But I've got to let that go. (And maybe smash my scale and forget about it.)
 That's all I can do. I can't change last night. I can control today.

Breathe in, breathe out....

This post isn't about running.
It isn't about being in labor.
It's about living. Day to day. Why is it so hard sometimes to remember to breathe? I just read an interesting article that says all people with anxiety have shallow breathing, which actually leads to having too much air in your body, even though it feels like not enough. This is what leads to hyperventilating when you're super stressed or scared. That's not really related to my topic, just made me go "hmm."
Today has been one of those obnoxious days when I have been too preoccupied with worry to enjoy what is going on around me. I'm assuming I'm not the only teacher that understands this--getting paid all at once at the beginning of the summer ends up being reeeeally tough once August is about to roll around. To be blunt, it feels really sucky to work pretty much a whole month before we finally get a paycheck again. I really stink at budgeting. I am too ADD to keep bills organized and tracked well especially when there isn't a lot of income to work with. Somehow I can get it to work on paper but in real life something doesn't jive. Erick shows up faithfully to my "budget meetings" but his eyes glaze over if anyone says more than two numbers in a sentence.

SO, my ruminating today has been on how are we going to make it until August 25? How are we going to pay for two kids in daycare? What can we sell? How are we going to buy Christmas presents for everyone? How much savings can we take out and still be "safe"? What would Dave Ramsey do?

None of these questions were actually answered during the 14 hours I've been mulling them over. However, this did pop up in my Bible app today.

^{Matthew 6
25} “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[e]?
²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Breathe in.......breathe out......breathe in.......breathe out........

EsCApaaayy...Hey, isn't that spelled just like Escape? --Dory

3:37 a.m. Brynn calls me in her room. Asks me to tell her a story. Can't think of ANYTHING to say. She tells me about a bad dream about the evil purple minions from Despicable Me 2 being in her room. I give her imaginary jelly gun. (If you've seen the movie you understand.) Go back to bed.
 
5:02 a.m. Max wakes up rip roaring ready to go. Suck snot out of his nose. Give him a bottle. Put him back to bed. 

6:08 a.m. Read Royal Baby gossip whilst saying to myself go back to bed dum-dum. Go back to bed.

7:19 a.m. Moooommmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.....

7:20 a.m.-8:16 p.m. Feed, change diaper, suck snot, repeat. 

Ok, first of all, in amongst this we did make some pretty awesome pompom superheroes, pretended to go to the beach, played ball, and did some more laundry with my spaceship machines. There truly is no better job than being a mother, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Really.
But today was long, tough, and at times smelly. (How many more teeth could Max have?! This kid is the worst teether in the history of babies!)



On days like this, my history would show that there is no freakin' way I would have exercised. After all I earned a night off, right? But guess what I started thinking about around 6:30 p.mm? I can't wait to run.

It is my escape! While I'm running is the only time my brain isn't constantly scanning, evaluating, ruminating, planning, fixing, etc. All I can think of is breathe...breathe....breathe. (I'm getting better at shutting up those demons. I think since I called them out they're a little less persistent.)

I know there will be days I don't feel so excited to get my feet hitting the pavement out the door. My couch is reeeeeally comfortable. But it is so exciting to be excited about this. I'm running for longer stretches at a time. I took my dog, Fiona with me tonight. It was a little disconcerting to look down as I'm huffing and puffing and see that she's comfortably trotting (or maybe just walking) beside me. Oh well, she has 4 legs and I only have two.

After all day of being Mommy though, in all honesty, it's really nice just to be Lacy for a mile or so. That in turn, makes me a better Mommy.