I decided it’s time to refocus this blog, it was just a
clusterf*** of thoughts I was having at different times. I’ve decided (in manifesto
to myself that I may or may not publish in the future) that it’s time to get my
sh-stuff together. Hopefully this blog with be a reflection of that happening.
We shall see…
This week have two goals, cut out soda and organize the
kitchen so I can use it to make the foods that I know that I need to make in
order to get myself healthy and happy again.
I need to not call it soda, I’m from the Midwest and we call
it pop, so really I need to stop drinking pop this week, for many reasons. I
think that the reason I drink so much in the first place is because it’s a sort
of comfort food. It sort of gave me my first feelings of freedom. My parents
wouldn’t let us drink a lot of pop because it was expensive and therefore only
allowed it for themselves. I remember drinking a lot of tap water and not much
else because I didn’t really like milk and I’m pretty sure that they didn’t
have juice in the house. Maybe the powdered lemonade or dollar gallons of
punch, but not much else.
So, on the occasion that my parents kept their word and gave
me an allowance (I did plenty of chores, maybe not in a timely manner, but more
than enough to earn the bi-weekly two dollars that I rarely received), I would
often get a glass bottle of pop from the gas station along with the cheap
candies that usually never cost more than a quarter (I personally love thinking
about how we regularly got candy cigarettes, and how so many people these days
would just abhor the idea that we loved acting like we were smoking). There’s
something ingrained in my mind about the freedom of being able to afford pop on
my own and how more satisfying it was to drink it because it tasted like
something I had earned. Looking back on it I may have just loved the change
from ice cold metallic tap water, nevertheless I think that I continue to get
that feeling every time I buy a pop. Especially since I most often seem to
revert back to drinking it when I’m having a stressful evening or I just happen
to very freaking tired.
Every time I drink it there’s a part of me that remembers
the carefree weekends my sister and I spent drinking two litters of Pepsi and
eating gigantic bowls full of peanut butter M&Ms. We would stay up until
three or four in the morning drawing, talking about and watching anime from the
caffeine and sugar highs. I think those feelings were what allowed us to work
at Wal-Mart overnights without any problems. Deep down we knew remembered those
nights and it allowed us to make it through all those droll nights at Wal-Mart,
stocking the same shelves over and over like hamsters on wheels, regardless of
how obnoxious our latest overnight manager was and how much we knew we hated
the job.
That may even be what allows me to keep my sanity working
overnights without her now. Every time I open a bottle of pop something in me
remembers those nights, and every super sugary sip reinforces those memories.
Well, it’s time to stop that. I think that I’m going to get
a rubber band and put it on my wrist. Then every time I think about getting a
pop or a ridiculously sugary food throughout my work night (or even outside of
my work night) I give it a snap and start associating that with the old “sugar
high” as opposed to the freedom and carefree nights of my youth.
I’m sure that there are other ways (hopefully more positive)
but how am I really going to reward myself. Certainly not with any kind of
food, I really need to retrain my mind not to be rewarded with food, nor do I
want to use money, mostly because I won’t keep that promise. I’ll just buy junk
I don’t need or put it in a jar that I will somehow fish the money out of
later, regardless of how it’s sealed.
In the meantime, rubber band pain it is.
The second thing on my list is getting the kitchen organized.
This is for two reasons, I need to know what junk I have in my kitchen and need
to get rid of, and I need to get my useful gadgets down where I can use them.
Since I started working my husband has slowly taken over the
kitchen, this means easy to prepare, preservative packed garbage food. I know
how to make cakes and frosting from scratch, yet there are cake mixes and
containers of frosting in the pantry. There are canned foods, boxed foods, and
stuff I would never consider “stocking up” on because I could easily make them
myself, I certainly don’t need a shortcut to make them because I typically can’t
stand the taste of these shortcuts.
So, I’ll go through it and see if there’s a way that I can
weed out the gross stuff that’s going to shorten our lives and continue to make
us sick, and start phasing in the stuff that’s going to start getting us
healthy.
Then I need to get my gadgets off of the high shelves and on
the shelves that we just bought for the porch. I would rather freeze my toes
off on the porch in winter than worry about breaking my neck trying to get my
rice cooker from the top of the kitchen cupboards. Among those gadgets are my
steamer, bread maker and slow cooker, all things that I would be more willing
to use if I didn’t have to worry about putting them back after I was done.
It will be awesome to start making myself fresh baked bread
again.
No comments:
Post a Comment