Monthly Archives: March 2013

Food Issues…Again

Hi, my name is Jenny and I have food issues.
Hi, my name is Jenny and I have food issues.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, or more likely beating a bag of M&Ms,  but I have food issues.  This weekend, being Easter, only highlighted these issues, and with this past week being a combo pre-holiday, Aunt Flo week, all bets were off.

For those you also obsessed with vampire shows, I often compare myself in vampire folklore terms.   Take Vampire Diaries, where they have this nifty thing that if you are a vampire and life gets too unbearable, you have a “humanity switch.”  This switch can be flipped and will let said vampire turn off their emotions and just live without feeling anything.  Very good for upping the drama factor and making good girls and boys look cool doing bad things and excusing it later type thing.

Hmm. Damon. Just because.
Hmm. Damon. Just because.

My “switch” that I oftentimes turn off pertains to food.  It’s what I would term my “self-control” switch.  The one that tells me, Hey Jen, why don’t you stop at the first row of Oreo’s, that’s plenty dontcha think?  Or maybe, Hey girl, how about we not eat our weight in candy today mkay?  The inside voice that shuts down my inner voice that can justify eating anything as long as no one sees me doing it.  Like a tree in the woods, if no one sees me wreck that plate of cookies, did it really just happen?

I battle to keep this switch on every single day, and sometimes, the fight just goes out of me.  I stress eat.  I tired eat.  I bored eat.  I eat because if someone doesn’t eat those ice cream sandwiches currently in my fridge, no one will.  I am always thinking about food.  I know it’s unhealthy, but therapy is freakin expensive, and I currently can’t afford to pay someone to listen to me whine about food, which in turn, will only make me hungry.

I feel like food is a drug I can’t quit.  Besides I can’t quit, we humans technically need it to survive, and besides, it would completely put me in a whole other psychological mess category, and I’ve tried not eating, it doesn’t work.  Usually a half hour in, I’m like, I’M DYING, MY STOMACH IS STARTING TO EAT MY LIVER, GET ME SOME FOOD, and I end up eating half the McDonald’s menu, which by the way McD’s thanks for the calorie count buzzkill on the menus now.  I prefer ignorance; I know your restaurant is not good for me, please stop preaching it when I am trying to get my Double-cheese on.   (Quiet KQ, I am not eating your ridiculous apples.  What’s the point? You took away the caramel months ago, which almost caused complete anarchy in my backseat by the way, a little warning would have been nice.)

I will jump back on the wagon tomorrow.  I will once again try to be good, but another stumbling block I face is even when I am super good, drink water like a camel, love me some fruits and veggies, and eat smaller quantities, I lose approximately 1 pound.  I was awesomely good for the entire months of February and March (with the exception of last week, doesn’t count, see above Shark Week and Easter combo). I ate well, worked out three to four times a week, I didn’t eat at night, and I actually choked down my 8 glasses of water every day.  I only lost 4 freakin pounds.  Now, in this time, I did feel pretty darn great, my muffin top got smaller, I did have more energy and other things, but it’s HARD when you just don’t see the results on the scale or start to get Madonna arms after like 10 whole pushups.

Another problem is I LOVE food.  Not good food mind you.  Crap food.  I love Little Debbie’s, Chef Boy R Dee, anything chocolate, and anything pre-packaged and convenient.   I hate thinking ahead and planning.  I hate vegetables.  I am the person that buys like $30 of fresh fruits and veggies at the store on Saturday and am throwing them away untouched on Friday to make way for the next cycle.   If I can’t grab it, rip the top off the container and shove it down my gullet, I am not eating it.  Nachos are awesome to me, but only on special days, because those are a lot of work.  Probably not wondering anymore why my cholesterol is 265 are you?

This post is a cry for help.  I need motivation.  I need something.  I have only one idea left.  Basically I need people in all areas of my life shaming me into not eating badly.  I need people judging me at get togethers.  I need people at work to call me names when I am gorging on donuts and M&Ms.  I need to know I am being watched, or else I won’t quit.  Nighttime is the hardest, but I guess I’m on my own there.  But if I can make it the rest of the day, I might just have enough willpower to finish the day strong.

I have to do something.  I am killing myself.  I am teaching my kids awful food habits.  I want to put dinners on the table every night, not just mac and cheese and nuggets.  I need to get my butt in gear and grow up.  I am 33 years old and it is time to get organized.  I bet there’s something on Pinterest for that, and most likely, I pinned it months ago, and then went back to funny memes without reading it.  So, I issue my inner circle a challenge:  watch me, comment on my eating, shame me, it’s the only way I will stop, or at least get started down the right path.  I will warn you though, in approximately 28 days, if I come at you looking for chocolate, you best move out of my way, because this week can make me violent.

Happy Easter everyone!

 

UPDATE 4/1/13:  Just called the doctor’s office to get my updated cholesterol bloodwork results and I am down from 265 to 216 just with the dieting and exercising I am doing!  There’s a little motivation to not jump off the wagon!  I may be fat, but by God, I am making myself healthier! Yay!  No meds yet for me.

Messin Around

One quick, funny, slightly mortifying story, and then this PMSy, tired mother is going to bed.

Like I’ve mentioned, Mark has been doing this new job for over a month now and we are getting a rhythm down, a routine established to help give some structure for our kids and for our weekends.  Therefore, weekends include a “quiet time,” which because they are 4 and 6, is rapidly becoming non-essential, and us parents are the ones who need some quiet time mid-afternoon on Saturdays and Sundays, not our dear offspring.

And it’s worth reiterating, we don’t see each other at all during the week, hence we relish our alone time.  So, we put them in their rooms, shut the doors and tell them to play quietly until we come to tell them it’s ok to wake up.   Most of the time, this works and due to their rooms being the only electronic-free rooms in our house, they usually fall asleep out of “boredom” surrounded by actual toys.  Well, we were going to find out they don’t always go to sleep.

I think we both intended to lay in our bed, do some snuggle bunnying and then grab a quick snooze in the quiet moments.  Well, thanks to ending a really good, really smutty book series earlier that morning (He fixes pancakes, I read.  Totally fair.) and the fact that my husband is a guy and I’ve never not seen any guy horny, let alone this one whom I’ve agreed to love, cherish and snog til death due us part –  snuggling led to some very heavy petting.  All under the covers, but a little ardent with maybe a dirty limerick or two being exchanged in the heat of the moment.   Well, apparently we got a little too consumed and did not hear our son’s door open, nor did we hear the footsteps pad up the hallway.  So into it we were (yes with the door open), we were not interrupted until we heard, “When you guys are done fooling around, can naptime be over?”  We look up to see our son standing calmly in the doorway asking a very prudent question.

Gasp.  Shrivel. Panic.

“Uh, in a little bit buddy. Mkay?”

Ga!  Forget college.  We have a therapy fund already started, but really then maybe not, he really didn’t seem all that bothered – but then he could be repressing the whole thing and will be waking up in cold sweats at 16 wondering why rhyming anatomy words creep him out.

True story.  OK – maybe our dirty talk doesn’t rhyme, but go with me on this one.

PS – Check me out on Goodreads, where you can find all the books I allude to.  <—-

Sundays

I love my kids.  I love my husband.  With all my heart.  HOWEVER, at this moment, I want them to all GO AWAY.

First, I just Febrezed my husband’s shorts and the couch he was polluting with his ass.  While he was laying on said couch in said shorts.   I say, I am getting the odor at its source.  He complains it’s cold.  Whiner.

Second, my 6YO’s meds are off.  We are in the process of finding the right dosage level, and I am supposed to be patient while we are doing this.  Patience is not one of my strong suits.   I am pretty sure the pharmacist at Rite Aid is a sick sadist and gave us placebo sugar pills instead of ADHD medication, because this kid is off the charts lately.  He hasn’t held still or stopped making noise since he woke up this morning.  It’s like the Energizer Bunny on steroids.  As a disclaimer, I have been anti-medicating kids since Day 1 and fought for YEARS to put him on a controlled substance for his ADHD and sensory issues.  We went everywhere, tried everything, and tested tested tested.  The only saving grace has been this medicine.  At first, it was like a miracle.  He was still my boy, personality, appetite and energy intact, it was just less insane.  I am not calling him crazy, but sometimes his mind would go so fast and his body would totally spaz, it was hard to watch him get lost in his own body.  This medicine seemed to help him keep up with himself.  But now, whether he has grown a tolerance for it or because he is growing like a weed, it has started to lose its effectiveness.  He’s become the scapegoat in school again – the one all the other kids blame when things go bad.  95% of the time, he is actually the culprit, but the other 5% of the time, he gets blamed because it’s easy to believe he was the instigator.

The thing I love about my boy is he’s a lover.  He wants to entertain, to be loved, to make people laugh.  Gosh, not sure where he’d get that from eh?  He’s just a bit more boisterous than I ever was.  With his meds off again, we seem to be back to square one and seem to have lost all the momentum we have gained.  The inner struggle Mark and I go through is endless.  Is he truly not in control of himself or is this a 6YO testing his boundaries?  Do we punish?  Do we seek other treatment?  Do we blame the disorder or make him take responsiblity for his own actions?  We try to maintain a balance of being responsible for his own actions and treating his behavioral problems.

Like I said, my patience level is not at its peak at the moment.  At this point, at 7:30 on a Sunday night,  I am all for pumping him full of Valium just so I can think clearly for two seconds without having to answer why the lights blur when he squints his eyes, how to find home on Google maps, all while dodging Nerf darts that him, his dad and sister are currently battling each other with.  But that’s wrong, I know this.

Next, my daughter is in a stage that has geniusly been termed the Fucking Fours.  Ahh, the age of 4.  Still adorable, getting smarter by the second, but yet still incapable of finding her hat and coat, which is always in the same place – on the floor where she left it.   The most dramatic person I’ve ever met.  Today, I put my arms on her shoulders and gently (seriously) moved her aside as I walked by her in the hallway.  She proceeded to execute the most dramatic fake fall I have ever seen.  Academy Awards (ahem Oscars, sorry rebranded, forgot) have been won for less acting.  As she looks dramatically over her fallen shoulder up from the ground at me, she exclaims MOM!  Why did you push me?  SOB!  Good Lord child.

I should write a book just on the insane stuff that comes out of her mouth.  I am truly terrified and can honestly not look her preschool teachers in the eye for fear of what she has told them about her homelife.   Today, she told my husband to quit being a pain in the ass, which to be fair, he is, but I wish she wouldn’t pick up everything I yell at him in the car.  I thought you were watching that movie??  I didn’t spend 30K on a car so you could LISTEN to our front seat conversations!   Next car, a limo with a dividing window, or maybe a police squad car, which would at least prevent the projectiles from coming my way, but wouldn’t quite mute the sound, unless we got that plastic divider thing you see in some COPS episodes.  OK, I am giving this waaay too much thought.  Then, she also tells us we have to kiss her like we’re married, which is her tilting her head to one side and shaking her head back and forth, so as to get continuous movement while kissing.  Nice huh?  What kind of princess porn am I letting her watch?  Where is she getting this stuff?

Also, her most favorite daily accomplishment?  The one she yells to me with unabashed pride at the end of school, in restaurants or at Grandma’s house?  MOM!  I didn’t poop my pants today!  G!  That is so exciting!  I am glad I have set the bar so high for my youngest!!!  I don’t need her to start reading, know her colors, I just need her not to poop in her pants.  Mensa here we come.

And finally, my traveling husband.  We are a month into this new job and five days before my period, therefore,  I am ready for him to go back to where he’s working.  I let him drive this morning and since I am sorely out of practice with being a passenger, I could not help the backseat driving that comes ripping from my mouth.  But to be fair to ME, he does pull too far forward in a driveway and does appear to be hanging out in the street, he DID almost hit that guy in the Costco parking lot because he was so concerned with saving my bottle of wine rolling around in the backseat, and he really didn’t see that car coming from his right (which, I was closer to, therefore, was simply helping him out).  This resulted in an angry chinese fire drill in a very busy Costco parking lot, when he REFUSED to drive with me any longer and told me I am driving.  Really Mark?  Aren’t we overreacting just a tad?  Now I know where G gets her dramatic side from.  Yeesh.

Then he takes us to dinner at Olive Garden.  OK OK, I admit I have super simple taste, but I LOVE me some Olive Garden.  He then FORCES me to get dessert.  Bastard.  Problem is, he wants to share.  JENNY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD!!!    We get the chocolate cake, which has four layers of awesomeness, and where does he start?   The back!  The best freakin part!  He’s totally cheating!  He is stealing the essence of the dessert while I am dutifully starting at the tip and working my way up to the delicious finale.  GOD!

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Needless to say, I need a break.  But, it’s Sunday, I have papers to sign, lunches to pack, a husband who needs to catch a 6 AM flight, and a week to prepare for Easter, so no rest for the weary.  Although, I guess I could watch just one episode of Parks And Recreation before I start right?

We Have a Reader

0978081099313_300X300Hey all! I have been tired and off my game lately, sorry I haven’t been posting often. My goal is twice a week, but I have been lucky lately to get one done. Plus, I am a little bummed in that with all my talk about Toledo Area Parent, it’s been almost a month and not one word in response to what I sent them. So, sorry if I got anyone’s hopes up. It’s my first rejection as a writer, but I am hopeful I will get more chances elsewhere.  I am just proud I put myself out there.  The rejection will help me when I finally finish that Great American Novel I am intending to write.  😉

Anyways, I think I can officially state that my 6 year old is a full fledged reader. The best part is, I think he’s going to be just like his mother and read voraciously. He got his first Kindle book (because Dad left his home. I do not share! Hey, I need something to do while How’s It’s Made is on, please don’t make me actually learn about how erasers are made again ). I bought him Diary of a Wimpy Kid and he’s almost done. I asked if he had told his teacher about it, and he told me, no he hadn’t because he was afraid she’d be upset because there were swear words in it. What??? I thought this was safe reading??? Well, apparently the word “stupid” is used a lot. OK – I can deal with stupid, as long as he realizes only the not nice characters use mean words like that.  It helps build character I say.  As long as he isn’t learning the fine essence of the F-bomb, I can deal.

So anyways, when this came up, I asked him what it was really about. He was telling me the gist of it, and I asked if there is a love story in it, because he knows that if there isn’t a love story, Mom ain’t reading it. He grimaced and said, No Mom! I said there’s got to be a love story, what’s the point? He rolled his eyes and said, “Why do you only read books where they suck each others….” at which point I slapped my hand over his mouth, terrified of what he knew about what the people in my books sucked. I really try to keep these things under lock and key, but he reads EVERYTHING (including nutrition labels), so maybe he found an extremely juicy part when he was using my Kindle for Where’s My Water?

He took my hand off his mouth, and finished (with me cringing in anticipation)…”blood.” Sucking blood. OHH, much better. See – he knows I am obsessed with Twilight, Vampire Diaries, Chicagoland Vampires books, and basically anything vampires. He thinks all I read about is bloodthirsty boyfriends, which is not entirely wrong. It’s just that I have some other books where the people suck, umm, other things.

And with that, I will now be locking my Kindle up, or at least making sure my smut novels are closed before I hand it over. No need to explain to my kids the birds and the bees this early.  That, and why birds and bees can be so very very dirty.

Next up…Food Issues.  Not having so much luck with this whole losing weight adventure.  Am I the only person who LIVES (read:  exists) to eat?

Time Change

This bastard.
This bastard.

Let’s just put it out there.  If you have kids, DAYLIGHT SAVINGS SUCKS.  It makes me swear.  It makes me yell.   It makes me put my kids to bed at 6:50 in the evening.  It messes with them and they in turn mess with me.

When I was childless, I LOVED the Daylight Savings.  Ohhh, the days are longer, more sun, happy happy joy joy.   One of the few pieces of legislation I supported that Dubya passed during his reign was when he made Daylight Savings longer.   Awesome!   Yay farmers!  Thanks for needing the light!  (See? I knew there was a reason to be one.)

Now, I dread it and for good reason.  First, I have to explain why we are leaving the house when it is still pitch black outside.  It feels like we are sneaking out in the middle of the night to start our day.  They freak out when I turn all the lights in the house off and shut the door behind us and we are temporarily blinded – guided only by the lights of the pre-started mom mobile.  Then after a long day, I get to explain why it is still light out when I am putting them to bed, thus making me, not the farmers or the government, the bad guy.  As usual.

Tonight was a prime example of how I hate time change.  You cannot MESS with my kids’ schedules.  They lose their freakin minds.  I have two awful weeks every year while my kids adjust.  Spring forward is the worst.  And once again, I am by myself to witness the devastation.  One day, and it will be during a time change week, I swear my kids’ heads are going to swivel all the way around.  Green vomit.  Glassy eyes of evil.  The whole shebang.  They cannot handle this.

There also seems to be a growing trend in my house that the sound of my voice is not at a decibel level that my kids can hear.  Apparently, only dogs and squirrels can hear my requests, demands, pleas and screams to pick up their plates/clothes/coats/bookbags, put their PJs on, wash their hands and so on.  Even questions as simple as what they’d like to drink for dinner and how was their day fall on deaf ears.

Today was the final straw.  A zen-like calm came over me.  I made up my mind and I stuck to it.  One too many, I HATE HOMEWORK AND I HATE YOUs.  The camel’s back was broken when the high pitched shrieking whine and hysterical tears came from the living room because she couldn’t find her Barbie’s shoe.  The bell was tolled after I put dinner on the table and they looked at it and whined, but we don’t like this!   It’s ravioli for the love of God.  It’s not like I am making them eat foie gras or duck l’orange for Pete’s sake.    They seemed to tag team with each other.  An unspoken bond made that one would be quiet while the other went in for the kill.

I had had it.  I put them in bed.  My six and four year old in bed for the night at 6:50 p.m.  1 hour and 10 minutes before actual bedtime, 50 minutes after we had gotten home for the day.  No stories.  No movies.  Light and sunny day still going on outside.

There was no yelling.  Just an eerie calm emanated from my body.  I didn’t raise my voice or stamp my feet.  There was no manhandling.  Just a calm, “Get into bed, this night is over.”  I was at my limit, but not fearful of losing it, I just knew I had had enough.  Time to assert who’s on the top of this food chain.

I am so proud of myself.  It’s not easy when they are whining, pleading, begging, bargaining for one more chance and how very sorry they are for what they said before and that they didn’t mean it.  They’ve learned and won’t ever do it again.  I stayed strong during red blotchy faces and hitching breath.  I won.  I fought a battle of wills with a four and a six year old and I won.

If you don’t have kids, you might think me weak for being so proud of winning one argument and sticking to my guns.  You might think, my kids will listen the first time, every time.  HA!  I thought that too, and I was very very naive.  These buggers are the most stubborn, tenacious beasts you will ever come across.  They will fight until you are in the fetal position hiding in your closet.  They know no fear.  They take no prisoners.  Until you have them and they are your responsibility alone, you cannot fathom how hard this job is.  How they suck every ounce of energy from your body, leaving you a flabby pile of mush at the end of each day.  I’m in the trenches.  I am writing my war story as we speak.  I will have battle scars, but this will make me stronger, a better parent, a wiser person.

I win.  Today.  Kids – 843 Mom – 1  I’ll take what I can get.

Bath Night

Sunday nights are bath night.  As I sit and let my daughter play with Ariel and her pal, hotter sexier Barbie mermaid, I brace myself for the upcoming fight.  The fight to wash her hair.  The shampooing she says she never needs even though her bangs have syrup in them and the top of her part has glue on it as a result of scratching her head during “craft time.”  I use this term loosely, as craft time is usually just cutting magazines into itty bitty pieces and gluing them on “paper.”  And by “paper,” I mean the back of the kitchen chair.

G - An oldie but goodie.
G – Before hair washing was an issue.
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Will – One of my most favorite photos of him.

I let her play a bit, give her a 2 minute warning and then I get down to business.  That’s when the screaming and shrieking begin.  Like I am trying to drown her on purpose.  MOM!  DON’T GET IT IN MY EARS.  OWWW!  YOU GOT WATER IN MY EYES!  Me, being the classic abuser, blame the victim.  Quit thrashing around like a cat stuck in a plastic bag then!!  The girl has more evasive maneuvers than the Air Force.   I feel like I am water-boarding my child every time I try to clean her up a little.  Dick Cheney would be proud.  She gets so hysterical and screechy, it’s a wonder the neighbors don’t call to make sure I’m not ripping her limbs off.

Sometimes I wonder what a Child Protective Service Agency would think if they heard only snippets of my child rearing skills.  Like what if Will told his teacher the conversation we had a few months ago.  It was during a particularly rough patch with Molluscum, a viral skin condition that gave him tiny itchy bumps that look like little zits all over his body.  After some advice from a mom who’d been there, we tried a homeopathic treatment called ZymaDerm, which is simply a topical you put on the bumps twice a day.  (Worked like a charm by the way, and for the bargain price of $26 for a teeny tiny bottle! And no, I don’t know which all natural ingredients are in it.  I choose to believe it was manufactured solely from fairy dust and angel kisses.)  Well my boy was a bit skittish about this topical, which to him looked like pure acid meant to burn them off instead of slowly and not painfully shrink them to nothing.  So, in order to ease his fears the first few times around, I would blow gently on the area where I applied the stuff.  You know, to neutralize the flesh-eating acid I was putting on him.  Now, some of these bumps were near (not on) his groin area, so yes, I blew there too.  Can you see where this is going?  One night, as we were beginning our ritual, he says to me very nonchalantly, “Mommy, I like when you blow on my pee pee. It tickles.”    “Uh….OK, thanks, I think?  Saaaay, how about you NOT say that to anyone else please?”  What the freak?  How do you explain to a kid why another adult would not want to know this particular comfort technique his awesome mom is using?  You don’t.  You just pray they never say a word and if they do, hope to God his teacher would call ME before calling Child Services.

Likewise, the problem my sister is facing at the moment with her 9 month old son.  Apparently, some doctors prefer to not circumcise boys the way they used to.   Some prefer to leave a bit more scarf to the kerchief if you know what I’m saying.  She was a bit worried that something was wrong down there, and being raised around 99% females, we are bit uneducated in this area.  Sure, we’ve seen ‘em, but not enough by any means to qualify either of us as experts.  And personally, I’ve never seen one with its hoodie still up.  I missed that when Will was born, being they did it before I got feeling back in my legs, which is a long story about lazy doctors and an epidural being left in for 24 hours after he came out.  Not a fun first birth experience, but a story for another day, and six years later, I’m still not sure how I’d make that story funny.

Anyways, how does one go about finding out what normal looks like?  Google?  How do you Google normal baby penises without alerting the authorities there’s a pervert in our midst?  What would you search to get scientific results instead of horrible images you could never erase from your brain?  Circumcision mistakes?  Nope.  Healthy baby penises (or is it peni?)?  I don’t think so.  Baby girth?  Who knows, no matter what you search, it’s not going to be pretty, and what if someone checks your hard drive down the road?  We’ve all seen SVU, it happens.  Lord help me if they check mine at work, because I swear I was looking for Dick’s Sporting Goods, nothing else.  I just didn’t realize you had to type in the actual full name of the store.

I just worry constantly about being misunderstood.  Adults think crazy things, and they should, there are some crazy horrible people out there.  It’s just that I’m not one of them.  Most of the time.  I’ll admit that first nice spring day when I open all the windows I completely forget I have to keep my yelling to a minimum.  Who knows what the neighbors think when they hear me yell, “Will wipe your own butt!!  I’m trying to get the nail polish off your sister’s lips!!!” 

Please don’t rat me out.  Most of this I can explain.  It just won’t be much fun and will still make me look like an inept parent.  A loving, nurturing, but utterly inept, parent.