Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Random Crap

So, my transition back into Seattle life was not so smooth.  I very much enjoyed the lack of obligation, other than to wake up before noon so I could visit with mom and dad.  And then there's the three hour drive to and from the airport, which just gives me way too much time to think. 

And fester.

By the time I got home, I was just irked.  At all kinds of things that I shouldn't have been irked at.  But Todd and I had a healthy, adult discussion over dinner on Thursday night and he understood my concerns (or was terrified of me, I don't know) so all is good.

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I had my monthly doctor's appointment and blood draw this morning.  Haven't gotten the results back but Dr. D assures me that his nurse will call me with the results.  No more waiting around for a week. 

The blood draw also went much better, as I refused to go to the mean, incompetent lady that hurt me last night.  She called my name (Raychell!?  Raychell?!) and I politely said, "I will wait for Ashante."  So there.

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While I love the food down in the Cafe, it bugs me that they feel the need to put red peppers on the roasted vegetables.  I LOVE the vegetables.  But with the red pepper flakes on them, I can't eat them.  They're way too hot.  Red pepper flakes should be something you add over at the condiments bar.  Right?

**********

I'm still eating relatively gluten free.  My stomach doesn't seem to be as upset as often, so I guess it's doing some good.  I eat cheese, but just mostly on mexican food.  I use dairy milk in my coffee, which isn't a daily thing anymore, but I like almond milk on my cereal and oatmeal. 

It's the little changes.

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Hmm.  There's really not much else to tell you.

I'll work on that.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Visiting the Folks, Day 4

Up at 10:30am  Because I told mom to wake me.

Moving slow.  I don't have to leave until 1:30pm.  There's the three hour drive to Pittsburgh to catch my 6:55pm flight home.

So I shower, pluck my eyebrows, pack my stuff.

Mom and I run down to the Goody Basket to pick up some fresh made rolls.  Look at us!  Leaving the house two days in a row!

Then it's time to leave.  Sniff.  There's lots of hugs, and a few choked back tears.  I always think it's the last time I'm going to see them.  Goober refuses to come say goodbye.  He is not happy with me.

I stop halfway to Pittsburg to pee and buy coffee.  It's a really long drive.  Too long.

And as soon as I get to the airport, it starts snowing.  Beautiful.

I have an hour until I board, so I plop down at the TGIFridays across from my gate and order a glass of Pinot Gris and log onto work. 

And it is totally not my fault that the flatbread I ordered was a smidge burnt so the waitress felt the need to compensate me with a free glass of wine, which I couldn't turn down because that would have been rude, right?

However, my new lightweight status made it challenging to make sure I had all of my belongings and made it to the correct gate.  But mission accomplished!

And I slept the whole way to Minneapolis.  Which was wonderful.

At Minneapolis, I found my gate, and wouldn't you know it, there was wine bar right next to it.  They had a Viognier!  Well, how could I not?  I had an hour and a half to kill.

Time to board, and thank goodness, the middle seat was empty for the entire flight.  So I snoozed all the way to Seattle.  Where I landed at a little after 11pm, and Todd picked me up and I was in bed by 12:30am. 

And up at 7:30am to dash off to work, after picking up a big ass latte.

I live a crazy life.  I know.

At least I have a short week.  I think I can make it a mere two days.  Hopefully.  Maybe.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Visiting the Folks, Day 3

Up at 10:30am.  Going back to work on Thursday is going to be a rude awakening.

Standard breakfast.

And then!  Time to leave the house!  I shower, mom gets dressed and off we go!

Stopped at the Goody Basket to get some sweets (oh my gawd the chocolate no bake cookies.  oy...), then head to the local grocery store for dinner fixins.  I'm making fajitas with refried beans mexican rice.  Taco Tuesday!  Except dad won't eat mexican food unless he has pico de gallo.  So, of course, that's the first thing we need to get.  But Shop-n-Save does not have pico de gallo.  I'm pretty sure Shop-n-Save doesn't know what pico de gallo is.  Okay, no worries.  We can make it! 

But Shop-N-Save doesn't have cilantro either.  Oh, for the love of puppies!  I may have rethink this whole vacation cottage thing.

So off to Kroger, 20 minutes away, to get pico de gallo.  But they don't have any either, but they do have cilantro, so okay fine, we'll make the pico de gallo. 

We pick up a few other things (wine!) then head back to Belington to drop off some clothes at the thrift shop, then pick up some prescriptions.  And then back home to start dinner.

And wow, was it an adventure.  I was in charge of slicing up the strip steak and cooking it.  Ug.  Everything else was easy.  Especially since mom offered to make the pico de gallo.  Oh, I love that woman.  She started chopping, but that got tedious so we tried the chop feature on the blender.  Which is a joke, by the way.  *whirrrr* shake the stuff up *whirrrr* shake the stuff up *whirrr*  Things got half chopped, half pureed.  But woohoo!  We've got pico de gallo. 

But wait!  Gotta chop the cilantro!  Mom has never worked with cilantro.  I told her to rinse it, then go outside and shake the hell out of it.  And she did. It was cute.  Then I told her scissors would probably be easier than using a knife to chop it.  So she sits down at the table, makes that first cut, and doesn't stop bitching about the smell until we're sitting down to dinner and we've put the pico far away from her.

She and dad both loved Taco Tuesday.  I don't think you realize how big of a deal this is.  Rarely can I ever make anything that they 1) heard of, 2) approve of, 3) actually will eat or 4) actually like.  So the fact that mom was so full she was sick to her stomach - BOOYA!

As I pat myself on the back, I clean up dinner, then mom sweeps up, then pour myself a glass of Zinfandel and have a no-bake cookie (yum) and now I sit, watching TV with mom and surfing.  This will continue until about 10pm, and then I'll go to bed.  I do love visiting the folks.

**********

Pic(s) of the day:

Mama's Pico de Gallo

Fajita meat & peppers, rice and beans.


Monday, March 18, 2013

Visiting the Folks, Day 2

Slept until 10:45am.  It's a slippery slope here in the country.

Standard breakfast of oatmeal, raisins and walnuts.  And green tea.

I take down the shower curtain and liner in the spare bathroom and wash them.  It's been a while.

There's talk of working on copying some CDs, but then dad says he's going to watch "Life of Pi".  I read the book - it took more than six months to get through it, and once I was done, I was furious.  What the hell was the point?!  I was slightly curious about the movie.  Slightly.  Just because of the tiger.  And mom wanted to see it, and it was thundering and raining outside, so why not?

Oy.  It was much better than the book, but still left me with "What the hell?"  Mom and dad also found it very slow ("When are they going to get lost in the ocean and where the hell's the tiger?!") but they enjoyed it.  Except when the animals kind of kill each other.

But it was good bonding with the folks.

Then there was some cuddling with Goober and random surfing on the net and dinner prep.

I just heated up some leftover veggies from last night and made the very stupid decision to heat up mom and dad's left over pasta alfredo.  Gluten and dairy.  And boy, my tummy was not happy two hours later.  Man.

Then I curl up on the couch to watch the new season of Dancing with the Stars (kill me) with mom.  But because of the gluten and dairy (I think) I accidentally fell asleep for an hour. 

But luckily I catch the last half hour of DWTS (I love Jacoby Jones) and then we watch Castle.

And then holy crap, I'm tired, so I go call Todd and then go to bed.

**********

Pic of the day:



This is where I'm going to put my little vacation cottage.  Just to the right of the curve in the dirt drive.  I may have to fill in some of the hole there on the right, but that's easy enough.  There will be a porch, maybe even a loft. I figure if Todd gets famous making movies, he's going to be traveling a lot and I probably won't want to go on every trip, so I'll just go stay in my little cottage on Pisswilly Ranch.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Visiting the Folks, Day 1

Slept until 10am.  And it was beautiful.

But out of bed at 10:03 because I felt bad.

Mom and dad were eating breakfast, and I may or may not have been force fed a piece a bacon.  Or two.  But other than that, I had green tea and oatmeal with raisins and walnuts.  So there.

Pet the cat, watch TV, surf the net.  All afternoon.

Dinner! Pasta alfredo and baked beans (for ma and pa) and quinoa and roasted veggies for me.  We split some chicken and I had a roll.  Yummy.

Then there's clean up and now, a glass of wine with my mama to celebrate St. Patty's Day.  Can't go through a St. Patty's Day without consuming some form of alcohol, right?  And the only whiskey dad has is Gentleman Jack.  Mmmm.
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Pic(s) of the day:

Self portrait with mom's new camera.

Trying to look sexy while mom takes the self portrait

Maybe if I look up, my jowels won't be so prominent.

Okay, may I need to look up a little higher?






Screw it, let's just hide the jowels.

Visiting the Folks, Travel

So, Friday night/Saturday morning was just traveling.  I flew out at 10:15pm*, got into Philly at 6:30am, waited around for almost three hours because the flight was delayed, finally flew out at 9:00am.  Got to Pittsburgh at 10:15am,waited in line at Enterprise for almost 30 minutes, finally got my rental car (a new while Beetle) and headed out. 

And stopped at the first Starbucks that showed up on my map.  Venti non-fat latte.  Yeah baby.

Back on the freeway for two hours, then I hit Kroger to stock up on Raechelle friendly food - rice cakes, rice crackers, smoothie makings, oatmeal, juice, fruit.  Ya know - not cake and cinnamon rolls.

Finally got to mom and dad's at 3pm.  The next few hours were spent catching up on Aunt Jeannie's graveside service and Janie's memorial.

And then dinnertime!  Chef salad.  I think mom is trying to make me happy. 

Then smoothie time (or cake and ice cream time for mom and dad) and then bed.  Whew.  But first a phone call to my hubby, who was playing online, so we didn't chat long.  Which fine because at this point, it was extremely hard to keep my eyes open.

*Okay, the flight.  It sucked.  Big time.

And I think it was the pizza that we had for dinner.  We got a gluten free crust, but I think it was still way too much cheese.  My stomach was absolutely miserable the during the entire flight.  I couldn't sleep at all, and I felt so bad that I had to have the girls beside me (because of course, I was in the window seat) wake up and move so I could go back to the bathroom, numerous times. 

Miserable.

By the time I got on the second flight at Philly, things were much better.  Thank goodness.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Not A Good Day

I can't really determine why it's not a good day.  Could be kid crap (kid crap is very challenging right now).  Could be the gloomy weather.  Could be the lack of fruits and veggies in my body.  Could be the gluten, sugar and caffeine in my body.  Could be that I keep biting the same freakin' place on my lip and it's just pissing me off.

Who knows?

After Saturday, I was convinced my mood was a gluten reaction.  But today, I'm not so sure.  It might be the caffeine.  Maybe I'll try going off that again?  Or I could just say screw it and make it easy and just go back on the cleanse and stay there.  I don't remember feeling this grrr in the last month.

I've also noticed that my digestion is just as bad as before the cleanse.  I won't go into detail but, trust me, it's not good.  It's "normal" for me, but it's not good.

I've also started weaning my prednisone a bit more - 10 mgs one day, 5 mgs the next day.  I know there's less in my system because last night I got on a huge sneezing fit.  Which sucked.  I've gotten used to not sneezing and sniffling.  Now that my immune system is actually starting to function again, here come the allergies.  Wonderful.

There is a bright side to my week though.  I'm flying to West Virginia on a red eye Friday night.  My sister bought me a ticket.  Gawd bless her.  I get to hang with folks until next Wednesday, and elated doesn't even begin to describe how happy I am. 

If I can just make it through this week.

I make no guarantees.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Post Cleanse Update - Day 1

Actually, The Cleanse really ended last night with dinner.  We went out.  And it was good. 

We made good choices, and incorporated dairy back into the diet.  And booze.  Which was also good.  (actually, I incorporated booze on Thursday night, at happy hour with my co-workers, cause what's one more day?)

Todd and I both felt pretty good today - no major side effects.  Our tummies felt okay.  Then I went to brunch at Amy's. 

Oy.

On the way I treated myself to a non-fat latte.  So good.  Amy had quiche, coffee cake and fruit.  I had all three things.  I was hyper because of the caffeine, and feeling pretty damn good.  It's a beautiful day here, it's 50 degrees, we've got a big evening planned.  Everything was looking dandy.

But then I got a call to help with the big event tonight, which I was not planning for.  And I thought I could help, but Kayleigh's at a Rainbow thing and needs picked up around 4pm and Tyler rescheduled his appointment this afternoon to end at 4pm, all of which means I could not be available this afternoon to help with tonight.

So, my heart rate started to rise.

Then the father of the person who is planning tonight called and asked for help, as well.  Which puts more pressure on me, and again, I have to say I can't help as much as I'd like because the kids' schedule, which makes my heart rate rise even more.

And then Tyler asked for help looking for something in his bachelor pad and I very stupidly agreed to go out there and help look, which flat out pushed me over the edge.  Lets just say, he's a teenage boy.  'Nuff said.

The afternoon fell apart soon afterward.

This was an hour ago and my blood pressure is STILL elevated.  I am STILL worked up about it.  And my happy go lucky it's a beautiful day mood is freakin' shot.

So, I'm thinking it's the caffeine.  It's probably not the eggs or the dairy.  Gotta be the caffeine.

Good to know.

I may need to give up lattes.

Crap.

**********

Speaking of happy hour with the co-workers, this time was much better.

I felt better about myself, mostly because I was a little more dressed up (in a loose fitting dress and my boots) and so I was a bit more talkative and social.  I had a raspberry lemondrop so I had something to sip.  I told some jokes, got some laughs.  I was much more comfortable in my own skin.  And I had the opportunity to tell them, I'm not used to be the old married mother in my work group.  I was always the young party animal.  I can still party, though!  You just wait until my liver stops rebelling!

That got a laugh.

So yes.  A better happy hour this time.  Thank goodness.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Oh, NOW It Gets Difficult!

The Cleanse ends on Friday.  Well, after Friday, so I guess Saturday.  Friday is the very last day of cleansing.

And I'm finding that this last week is the most difficult of all.

I've already gone through the official detox.  I've already given up caffeine, alcohol, dairy and bread for a whopping 25 days.  What good is another three days going to do?  What can't I just have a cup of coffee (with almond milk!) RIGHT NOW?

Luckily, I see Dr. O, my naturopath, on Thursday, so I have something to keep me on track for another couple of days.

But I'm already thinking about the bottle of wine I'm going to celebrate with Saturday night.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Weekend Update

I'm worried that I may have regressed a bit.  I was up at 8:30am yesterday, and went to breakfast with Stephanie.  That afternoon, I took a two and a half hour nap.  This bothers me.  I've been doing so well without naps.  I thought I was getting my energy back and feeling good, but then I fall asleep for two hours.  And then went back to bed at 9pm.  Huh.

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Speaking of breakfast, I did pretty good.  I haven't really eaten out since I've been on the cleanse, and breakfast seems to be the hardest meal of all to figure out.  But when Steph and I went out, and I had the Greek hobo - pile o' potatoes with spinach, olives and tomatoes (left off the feta cheese) and instead of toast or an english muffin, I had a side of fruit.  Easy!  Oh, and herbal tea, rather than coffee.  Which I think hurt most of all.

I'm also not going to tell you where we ate, because midway through our meal, we spotted a cute, little gray mouse under our table, drinking the puddle of water that was left over from when Steph spilled her ice water.  The guy next to us told us we were the calmest women he'd ever seen upon spotting a mouse.  Why would I freak out?  It's a tiny mouse.  Give us some credit, jackass.  A nice patron came over with a napkin and gently wrapped the mouse up in it and took it outside.  And then we very discreetly told our server about our guest.  She was mortified, but still didn't give us a mouse discount on the check.  Hmph.

**********

On Saturday, I took the day to myself and toodled around Target and Barnes & Noble.  Just because I could.  Todd went to Emerald City Comicon for most of the day, even though he wasn't feeling very well, and since we didn't have a booth this year or anything to promote, I didn't need to go.  Thank gawd.  Rumor has it, they were going to hit 75,000 people this year.  Ug.  Way too many people for my taste.

So I spent most of the day toodling.  Then I took Kayleigh to get her ears pierces (for the third time - finally!) and then we ran to the grocery store, and then I rested my eyes for a bit.  I didn't NAP, I just snuggled with Tom and rested my eyes.  And maybe drooled for a minute.  Okay, so maybe it was a quick nap.  But not a two hour one like Sunday.

That evening, Trish came over for a girls night.  And Breaking Dawn Part II

I am not ashamed.

We were supposed to see this in November when it came out, but Trish's pregnancy and the holidays foiled our plan.  We've see all of the other movies in the theater.  Because we are dedicated like that.  But alas, as fate would have it, we had to wrap up the series at home, on my couch, in our jammies, with munchies.  Which was really okay.  Except for the lack of wine.

And, again, I am not ashamed to say that I loved it.  I just kind of liked the other movies, because really?  They're horrible.  And yes, Breaking Dawn is just as cheesy and stupid, but I really liked the fact that Bella actually showed some emotion in this one.  She got mad!  She ripped the head off some vampires!

I even got a little choked at the end, as they listed the entire cast of all four movies, and showed their photos, and had a pretty song playing that's still stuck in my head. 

Okay, maybe I'm a little ashamed that I watched it again on Sunday, in between breakfast and napping.  And that I made Todd watch it, too.

**********

So only one week left on The Cleanse!  We're back to eating everything we could at the beginning (including nuts, alternative milks and free range chicken and turkey (we can have free range lamb too, but ew.  Ha!  Get it?  Ewe.)) so this week should go by pretty quickly.  We had plans to go to Kim-n-Tim-Milo's for dinner on Saturday, but we've had to reschedule.

Oh, so can I just share something with you?

Kim called a couple of weeks ago, to say hi, offer her support and to invite us over one night during The Cleanse.  She said they would really like to cook dinner for us and give us a night off.  They're vegetarians and pretty healthy eaters, so following the dietary guidelines would be no hardship for them.

How freakin' sweet is that?

Well, we couldn't find a night during the actual cleanse that would work, so we settled on March 9, the day after The Cleanse ends.  But we'd still eat cleanse worthy foods.  And maybe have a glass of wine.  And Tim was going to make a pie.  A chocolate pie.  Oh yeah.

We've now had to reschedule but that's okay.  I think Todd and I are going to stick with eating this way for a while.  Hell, I already bought a $8 loaf of gluten free bread - gotta eat all that!

Oh, so I think for dinner Saturday, Todd and I may treat ourselves to going out and having a glass of wine.  And we still have Valentine's Day cupcakes from the Crazy Aussie in our freezer, so that can be dessert. 

And on Sunday we will be sick as dogs because our systems won't know what to do with all that sugar.  Hee.