Oh Snap...or Rather Snap Ouch

Today is day five of this weeks goals and I have not consumed any soda; dammit, I mean pop. But I haven't gotten very far with the kitchen. I did get a lot of healthy things to eat, although I haven't been as successful about making my lunches and taking them to work as I want to be. But I can forgive myself for that and the lapses in healthy eating I may have had because my goal this week wasn't to completely overhaul my diet and start eating clean and healthy. And the lapses are justification for it. Previously I would think in a dramatic, bawling, over the top way that I had failed and use that failure as a reason to fall back into horrible eating habits, which in part would consist of consuming the vast amount of empty calories in pop. Instead I've stepped back, assessed what I've done right, been content in comparison to what I ate last week, gave the rubber band on my wrist a snap for considering giving into the temptation of drinking pop and gone about my merry way.

So, my rubber band trick is working. I'll walk past the pop machine and if I find myself strongly desiring one, snap. On my first night back at work it was the worst. I did well with the pop machine, but on my lunch I had to fuel up my vehicle and on the way to the gas station I habitually though I should pick up some pop while I was there. It resulted in a snap of the rubber band. I've also been using it to avoid the many boxes of girl scout cookies remaining the back of the van. Every time I think about cracking open a box of those I get a snap, which has been more often than pop. Nothing against girl scout cookies, they're awesome, but when I open a box I tend to eat all of the cookies it contained. There's a minimum of 900 calories in those boxes. I need those less than I need pop.

I'm not an advocate for negative reinforcement, but I do know if it works for me I should use it. And I don't think that it's the wincing from a potential snap that keeps me from persisting in bad habits. Honestly the snap hurts less than the rubber band snagging the little arm hairs on my wrist. To me the rubber band is a reminder of what I'm doing, and I see it as often as I look at my watch (which is far more often than it should be, but that's a whole other blog).

And so I can say oh snap when I walk past the pop machine like it's an a$$hole trying to get my attention, and snap ouch when I'm tempted but know better.

Starting to Organize the Insanity

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.

Is It Really Worth It

I've been driving myself a little more crazy lately wondering if how hard I work is really worth it. I'm not just patting myself on the back or boasting when I say that I work hard, because I do, and anyone I work with will say the same. The problem is that I don't get a whole lot of feedback from the people who matter regarding the work that I do. Sure my manager can thank me, but I don't hear anything from anyone higher up than her, and it wouldn't be too difficult to send me an email thanking me for my hard work. Although I did hear from my manager that the big boss is talking about giving me a chance at a job with more responsibility.

Which has me wondering if it would be worth it. I took my current promotion for two reasons, the first was that I wasn't getting paid what I was worth. It's hard to work as hard as I was and know that I wasn't getting paid anything remotely close to what I should be. To make me sound a little less arrogant would be to say that I was making the same amount of money as people who were a lot less productive than me. The other was that I knew it would be good to have supervisor experience on my resume, even if I got just six months of experience that would be far more than I previously had, and when a majority of the jobs that I had previously been interested in required at least six months of supervisor experience that told me a lot.

My husband graduates from college in May and hopefully he will find a position that pays well so I can possibly go back to a job I enjoy. As it stand all I can do is hope that all of what I'm currently dealing with is worth it, and that perhaps I'll be able to find a job that would utilize my talents without my having the fear that one day they will use the words assistant manager.

I don't think that it would be very professional to laugh hysterically at my bosses.

The Majority of Us May Be Zombies

Think about it for a minute, how often do we view news stories that are actually relevant to us. Why the hell do I know who Kim Kardashian is, or any of the Kardashians for that matter. I've never watched their show, and don't have any desire to watch it. Yet, I know who they are, I know that Kim named her latest offspring Saint, I even had a discussion with one of my co-workers about this. It could be argued that I know this because of Kanye, but I don't even listen to the radio anymore, much less his music, hell, I didn't even know who he was until his MTV/Taylor Swift stunt and the Jay Leno interview that followed.

I have no desire to vote for Donald Trump, I can't stand looking at him and hearing his voice, but I know who he is and what his latest controversial comment is. I also know that I would loathe the idea of him being president but because so many people are zombies they are going to vote for him because he's the one who is getting thrust upon us by the media.

That seems to be how we decide what we are or are not going to do these days. Whatever the media (including social media) feeds us, we decide that is what is most important in our lives. The majority of the public isn't going to look at the pros and cons of what having a man like Donald Trump is going to do to us, they just know that he isn't going to do any worse than the other people who are in office right now supposedly not getting anything done. I say supposedly because they may very well be getting a lot done, it's impossible to know because the news and social media are too busy writing stories about the Kardashians and Trump and that's what we're reading, whether we like it or not.

I wish I could say that this is my declaration to step away from Facebook and Twitter, or even away from any form of technology, but I'm just not willing to do that.

And therefore I have to admit I too am a zombie, I don't like it, and I'm not suggesting anyone go off the grid in order to avoid being a zombie, I just kind of hope that somehow being aware of it will help me delve deeper and find out information that is significant and makes me a little less than a zombie.

It Really Is About Boobs This Time

It's been a long time since I posted anything, which is mostly because I've been excruciatingly busy. I've got two jobs and have been working between 50 and 60 hours most weeks. It's tough, but it's what I've got to do right now. I'd like to think that it keeps me from going beyond the demure part of my insanity, but I may be going past that because of all the hours I work.

As for the boobs title, that's what I'm dealing with, and it seems that's all I've been posing about. Unfortunately the mammary glands seem to been the bane of my existence right now. Within the last few weeks I've had a bilateral MRI, two mammograms, an ultrasound, stereotactic (core) biopsy, and cellulitis on the side where I had my lumpectomy. It's to the point where my health care providers are encouraging mastectomy. That's not something that I want to hear at 33 (almost 34) years old. I always thought if I was going to get a boob job it wasn't going to be because they were being cut off first, but at this point that's what it may be.

There's a whole laundry list of reasons while I should and shouldn't do it, but really the reasons to get it done far outnumber the reasons not to get it done.

I have some time to think about it. Right now the cellulitis has the doctors baffled, I have to get over this problem with them before I can move on to the next.

Facing My Mortality

I've had a pretty rough year. And while there are many things that I could address, but much of it feels insignificant compared to the two brushes with my mortality.

At the end of July I found out I had breast cancer and had to go through the treatment process, while I was fortunate it was only early stages and didn't have to go through chemo it was still startling blow to my reality that at some point my body could betray me as it had already begun to do so. If I had not chosen to have the biopsy to remove the lump and just continued to get mammograms and ultrasounds every six months there is the strong possibility that it could have been a lot worse than it was.

Then there was the car accident, I was on my way to a job interview when the GPS took me down a back road on an icy day. The back wheels hit ice, I thought I'd be in a snow bank and nothing more, but I hit a driveway that sent the car rolling three times and it landed upside down. I had to roll the window up to open it and pull myself out. I walked away with cuts on my hands and body strains that have me in physical therapy.

The car was totaled, my mother-in-law saw it and couldn't believe that I had walked away from it.

It didn't help my depression at all, but it has set me forth to take care of many things that I've kind of been putting off. I took a job I didn't necessarily want to take, but it is time to get moving forward, and if I have to take a few steps back in order for that to happen so be it.

I'm fortunate to be alive and mostly healthy, it's time to live and be fully healthy.

Boobs...Sorry, I'm Just Looking for the Attention

And throwing around a word like boobs tends to do it.

When I started this blog at the beginning of the year I thought that a lot of it would be about how I changed my lifestyle, and in all honesty my life has changed, though I can't really say the lifestyle has much.

I had ideas about where I was going and what I was going to do and now I weigh more than I did and my eating habits are equally atrociousness, I don't spend as much time with my spouse and children as I wanted to and I haven't met any of the goals that I planned. And while I could blame my boobs for these problems, that's not really the case at all. More of it is what's been going on in my head than what's been going on in my body, although technically the chemical chaos in my brain could be considered what's going on in my body but I'm not going to argue the technicalities with myself.

The fact is before I started to think about getting any of that stuff done I had to deal with what I call my demure insanity, commonly known as depression. There are varied opinions of depression and how to deal with it, but I know it's a shy and quiet sort of insanity that few people other than the person dealing with it can notice or take care of, if other people could then suicide rates would be lower and we wouldn't be mourning the loss of Robin Williams.

I've struggled with depression since my teenage years, I have enough insight to know when I need help and this year I decided to take the steps to get help. I've gotten on medication and am in much needed counseling. I especially needed this after the cancer scare. This time I have every intention of getting my life in order and learning how to get myself on the path at I need to be on, a path that will not only benefit me, but the ones around me who have to suffer with demure insanity being a sickness, rather than the demure lady who throws out crazy, witty and fun quips like I want to be, and have been in the past.

Ahh, Insurance

Insurance companies fascinate me, and not in a positive way, or a creepy fetish way if anyone thinks that's where I was going. I just think that the way they think is fascinating.

Yesterday was my birthday, and happy birthday to me I got to have a mammogram and ultrasound on the breast that doesn't have breast cancer. I am aware that they found a few questionable spots that the doctor wants to get a better look at. They weren't as large and obvious as the one that I had removed so the doctor ordered an MRI (happy birthday, you get an MRI!).

So I got a call from the nurse telling me that it wasn't going to be approved this week but she was working with the insurance company to get the MRI approved. Which makes me think, um, insurance company, don't you think that it would be better to get all of this out of the way now so that we don't have to worry about it getting worse and more expensive in the future. You are already aware of the fact that I have breast cancer, why wouldn't you go, yeah, lets get a look at it, and if possible remove it to make sure that we don't have to worry about the expenses in the future.

But then, maybe they're hopping it will just get worse and I'll die, then it's the life insurance policy that has to pay as opposed to the health insurance. Now, I'm know it wouldn't be as quick or drastic as that, but still, arguing that an individual with a history of breast cancer shouldn't get a breast MRI is a little silly to me.

Accursed Mammary Glands

I have to say that I've never been that fond of having boobs. They're big flabs on the front of my chest that make it hard to fit into small spaces and exercise without a really good bra. They've served their purpose in feeding my two children and I am grateful for that but now I don't really have anything good to say about the damn things.

Now I understand that there are plenty of small chested women who scoff at me for saying that, they might even swear at me for it, but I'm more than justified in disliking my breasts these days. In mid July I had a mass removed from my right breast, a mass we all believed to be benign. The two weeks after the open biopsy I thought nothing about it, then I went back to see the surgeon and found out I had breast cancer.

It wasn't aggressive cancer and I don't have to have chemotherapy, but I do have to deal with doctor appointments, several long weeks of radiation and five years of estrogen pills. All stress I certainly don't want or need in my life.

To make matters worse I never could have seen it coming, there is no history of breast cancer in my family and I am only 32 years old. Well, I'll be 33 next week, but I was still diagnosed when I was 32. I'm an unusual case, which I am usually proud to say, but could have done without saying this time.

Raising Nerds...Who Aren't Quite Nerds

My mother called me on Thursday to make sure I was going to make it to my father's sixtieth birthday party, although really it was more a small get-together than a party. It was interesting because when she called I was studying math, my husband was studying for school, my oldest daughter was studying her math, and the only one not studying was my two-year old because she's two, although I suppose exploring and tearing up her sister's room could be thought of as studying.

When I got off the phone I looked at my husband and said, wow, we're a bunch of nerds, aren't we. I said it with a smile, because I love being a nerd. I love it even more now that being a nerd has gotten to a whole lot more acceptable.

It happened again when we were headed to my father's party on Saturday, my husband and I began discussing the formula for figuring out how fast another car might be going depending on how many seconds it would take them to go one mile. Math is not my greatest skill, but he was very good with it when he was younger, and honestly does need the work refreshing his memory since he has started back in college. We didn't figure it out, although I worked on it diligently for a while at my parent's house and most of the way home, which is a two hour trip one way. He got frustrated because he was driving and was sure that if he sat down he'd figure it out in just a few minute. He probably would have if I hadn't told him I was going to start looking online for it.

I'm not sure if he realizes it, but discussions like that are good to have in front of our daughters. It teaches them that math may be useful outside of school one day, and can make for interesting discussions between two people. I think he still has it in his head that it's not entirely okay to be a nerd, but I've told many people that I am doing a fantastic job of raising an odd child who loves both sports and nerdy things like The Hobbit.

I know my oldest is going to be one of the weird kids, and I've repeatedly told her that's fantastic. There are many very successful people who were the weird kids. I was one of the weird kids and I turned out just fine.

At least, I think I did o_O

Facing One of My Greatest High School Terrors... Geometry

I'm fortunate not to be one of those moms who is obsessed with their child's success. I want my children to be successful, but I'm not going to ruin the fun of her childhood because of it. But I like to think that I do a little more than some of the mothers in my family as far as trying to make certain that my kids are successful.

Which brings me to the obnoxious amount of information that children unlearn because of summer vacation. While my child is learning about how to get dirty and ruin her clothing I want to make certain that she goes back to school with as much, if not a little more, book knowledge. We discovered khanacademy.com. It's fantastic and I recommend it for anyone who wants to learn without having to pay for classes. Their math section is particularly impressive as it goes from kindergarten math to calculus.

I have my daughter working on the early math sections while I work on math a little every day. She gets a little bored with it, but I think that has more to do with wanting to play games and enjoy her summer vacation more than the reason I stopped wanting to do math.

Which is because somewhere along the way number began to intimidate me. I don't know what it is, but just thinking about them half the time is enough to repulse me. I am getting over the problem with the help of Khan Academy. The core standards that parents across the country are calling the devil's handiwork because they can't help their children with their math homework are what have helped me understand and build a better relationship with numbers.

Although I am still being terrorized by my nemesis, Geometry. It was the one class I truly struggled with in high school. Most other math was fairly easy to me, but geometry assaulted me to the point of giving up and needing to drop the class. I retook it but still struggled with it. It terrorized me into taking only the minimal amount of college math and being completely stoked when I was done (even though that was fairly easy for me too, the first week the professor of my college math course recommended I switch to statistics, I responed with a vehement no). The worst part is, I'm only doing 4th grade Geometry and fighting with it already.

But I will face this terror. I have begun to study its weaknesses from all angles and victory will be mine one day.

I shall smite thee, Geometry, just give me a little time.

Speaking of Zombies...

I rather dread today. I have a two hour trip to my parent's house to celebrate my nephew's first birthday, then two hours back. I love my family dearly, but . . . well, I'm sure many of you have had that same 'but' from time to time. Mine has lasted for about eight years now, shortly after they all realized that they were going to have to accept the stranger that is my now husband into the family. I think that they were hoping that I would fall for one of the guys my sister, dad and I worked with, or someone who my mom introduced me to. My parents were hoping he would be Catholic, I think they should be happy he was even christian, most of the guys that have been interested in me were atheist.

As I think about the trip and how much I don't want to take it, I can't help but think that it would be the perfect time for a zombie apocalypse to hit. It would be a great excuse not to go, I mean, excuses can't get much better than 'all my survival gear is at the house, loading it into the car would be like feeding myself to the zombies'. We could live in the basement for a while, we have plenty of food down there to survive and plenty of ways to keep barricaded in.

Anyone who knows me know just how seriously I don't want to go by wishing for a zombie apocalypse. I HATE zombies. They are my least favorite supernatural creature. I have a BA in communications so I keep up on pop culture as much as I can, but I cannot make myself watch the Walking Dead despite how curious I am about it. I am making baby steps towards watching it, but I have other stuff to watch first. I even want to see Warm Bodies, but can't do it. I was proud of myself for watching Zombieland, but that movie is just freaking hilarious and I love the cast.

So, I guess since I love my family I will make the trek to see them...but still some kind of apocalypse would be nice.

Stress Zombies Gnawing at My Brain

That sounds like it should be the name of a song. Stress zombies gnawing on my brain, la di da.

But I digress.

Getting to a healthy weight is one of the biggest things that is going to lead to my happiness, for those wondering why I keep talking about my weight. I'm not morbidly obese, but I am considered obese. So when I post about things like exercise and dieting, that's why I'm posting. I just wanted to explain that before I got started today.

Yesterday could have been a bad day for me. I woke up later than I wanted after taking medicine for a cold I was catching (I should know better than to do that). Then I spent the rest of the day worried about when I would get my workout in. It was only the second day of my revolution and I didn't want to fail so early in the game. It became a little stress zombie, painfully chewing at my brain.

It's hard to do a long workout when there's a little one in the house, especially since she's a little Houdini. She just turned two at the end of December and has been climbing everything including baby gates and cribs since she was 18 months. In order to give myself piece of mind, and keep her from breaking any bones, I had to switch her to a toddler bed because every morning she would wake up, climb over the rail and drop to the floor. Now she knows how to open doors, turn on the stove and get past the "child proof" everything.

So I waited it out, the zombie gnawing even more with lost chance. Then, when my eight year old got out of school the little one finally decided to take a nap. I asked the older one to clean her room, which is across the hall from the little one's room, and keep listen for the little one should she wake up. I successfully got my workout in without, and even managed not to stress eat.

I think the most valuable lesson I learned was not to let the stress zombie gnaw at my brain so much, to be patient and I should be able to find the time. And honestly I'm better for it, I didn't wake up early today either (it's my first week of harder workouts so it's tiring me out), but the zombie isn't getting to me as much today.

Revolution Starting Point 1: Happiness

So it begins today. I’m still hammering out the details of my revolution, but I do know that the first of it is happiness.

Happiness is something that much like my weight loss is something that I struggle with. In fact, I’m positive that my unhappiness is directly linked to my being overweight. I’ll have pockets of it here and there, but it never lasts.

The longest stretch of happiness I can remember was for about two years, four months of that was when I first met my now husband the rest of it was when I was basically a non-traditional college student at age 21 (it doesn’t seem like it, but it is non-traditional). I had big plans for my future because I was kicking butt and taking names in college, owned a house that my sister said she would buy from me, and was completely comfortable and happy with who I was (well, for the most part, I had about ten pounds of tummy I wanted to get rid of which I laugh about now). It was the only period in my life since I was eleven that I hadn’t needed anti-depressants.

Then I got pregnant. I bawled when I found out, I don’t think that he understood exactly why I was distraught. He might understand better now, but I honestly doubt it. So, depression and pregnancy set in. I took to eating and gained way too much weight. I asked about it and the doctors shrugged it off, then the month that I hadn’t gained any weight they treated me like I had committed a crime.

I had my daughter and between work, school and raising her I had no time to worry about losing weight. I put everyone and everything ahead of myself, and have continued to do that since.

So, over eight years have passed. I managed to graduate from college but since I’ve had to move where his job took us it meant living in small towns nowhere near places that would have jobs in my field. I ended up settling for a job as a pharmacy clerk, which turned into pharmacy technician. In 2011 I got hired at a major university hospital and thought that it was the last place that I would ever work only to find out shortly after getting hired that I was pregnant. When I was 35 weeks pregnant they fired me for failure to meet expectations during my probationary period, without ever having ever talked to me about my performance or given me any written warnings. To make matters worse, after I had the baby and began looking for jobs I found out that when potential employers contacted my former supervisor that she would not recommend they pursue hiring me without giving them an explanation. So I have trouble getting my heart into the idea of being a pharmacy technician again. That doesn’t mean that I’m not still trying to get a job as one, I just haven’t had any luck because ultimately the calls go to the supervisor.

But this is turning into a rambling. Overall, happiness is my starting point, or at least doing something about my depression. For the first time in almost two years I’m going to have decent insurance so I set up a doctor appointment and will hopefully get something for the depression. 

Unfortunately the appointment isn’t until the 22^nd, but knowing I have the appointment has eased my mind a bit. And at least this will give me a chance to lose a few pounds so I’m not grimacing when I step on the scale at the doctors’ office.

Prelude to My Revolution

I’m starting a revolution. I’m not going to overthrow the government or anything crazy like that, not that we don’t need that here, I’m just not the one to get that done.

My Revolution has a lot to do with the way that I’m going to live and with how I’m going to be raising my children. I’m hoping that some people will read about what I’m doing and it will catch on.

One of the big things I’m starting with is Image. The images that are thrown at me and my children disgust me. Image has become everything and the worst part is that so much of what we see is altered. It drives me crazy to see these images are what my daughters will grow up seeing and eventually discover attempt to emulate. So, while I can’t hide the magazines on the store shelves what I can do is start to expose them to images that are realistic, positive and attainable.

That is going to start with me. I’m not going to just get skinny, I’m going to get healthy and getting thin will come with that. I know it will help me to set a better example for them. Right now I have an obnoxious lack of energy and I think it’s starting to influence laziness in my eight year old. I want to make sure that doesn’t continue.

I’m planning on doing more research and putting more details out there about exactly what I’m doing, which is why this is just the Prelude.

But the majority of it starts tomorrow. I’m not going to say ‘New Year, New Me,’ I just want to be able to remember exactly when it was that it all began.