Week of Crazy

Well, I have gone through some pretty terrible stress in the past week. With everything going on, I just don't know where my head is these days.

Friday
I'm pretty sure Friday had a lot going on, but really all I can remember is one thing: Mini Book Club. A few of the ladies from my knitting group got together at our last potluck and decided to start a mini book club that will meet here and there to discuss a book we've been reading. The really big reason I'm mentioning this is that it's a very good book. I've never really been one to read books in the adolescent fiction genre, but honestly I didn't think that this matched up with my original concept of "adolescent fiction". I seem to mentally equate the term with Twilight, which I know is erroneous, but the author actually uses some great vocabulary and doesn't have me wanting to gouge my eyes out with a spoon with inanity of writing. The book is Sabriel by Garth Nix. We were supposed to read the first five chapters for our meeting and I sort of inadvertently read the entire book. I know! I'm bad! It was a great book, though. Check it out.

Another book I'm reading is The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin. That is the third in a trilogy a good friend suggested to me a while back and I waited forever for this book to come out. It is amazing, though. Just absolutley amazing. I really enjoy the writing and the Universe is very unique and unlike anything I've ever really read before.  If you're interested, read the trilogy. They are phenomenal.

Saturday

I weighed in and met my 10% goal. Huzzah! I have an awful lot of pride for that and am looking forward to doing well in the future! I got my 10% medallion but it broke on my keychain because I wouldn't stop fiddling with it. I'm hoping to talk to my leader on Saturday to see if I can't get a new one. But... yay! 10%! That, according to my mother, is 97 sticks of butter. I think I'm going to have to start putting my weight loss in terms of sticks of butter. It's just amusing.

Then, I went up to Austin for our Disablot. It was a lot of fun and I was very happy to see everyone. It has been too long. The kids were very entertaining and I endjoyed seeing them. We were asked to bring an item that we felt represents someone we believe is one of our disir.  I brought my great-great grandmother's practice violin.  According to my great-grandmother, Beatrice the Younger or "Bebe" (and this may be shaky, as she suffered dementia near the end), this violin is the one that Beatrice the Elder played when she met her husband, Frank.  Sort of an interesting story and rather weird to hold that same violin in my hands, many years later.  Anyway, the violin was given to me when I was starting to play in the orchestra in middle school.  It has since been reduced to storage state, with strings loosened or taken off altogether.  It is in need of a new chin rest since the fastener for the original finally gave up the gost a few years ago, at which point my parents decided to retire it and get me a new violin.  I have since stopped playing, but I would really enjoy getting back into it again.  Music is something that has literally created my family, in many ways, and I have many fond memories of my great-grandmother Bebe and music, as it was one of her many creative passions. Anyway, I thought that this particular instrument was a rather huge piece of my family history and I am sure my cohorts are well aware of how much regard I have for my great-grandmother, maybe it was time to go back a teensy bit further and go into that bit of family history.  Family history is certainly not something I am lacking, per se. The rest of the gathering was wonderful and Jenn made a fantastic stew. Very tasty stuff, I must admit.

I ended up staying overnight due to the just... blahness... of not wanting to drive all the way home afterward. I mean, really, who can blame me?  Fun people, great atmosphere, interesting discussion as opposed to two hours of driving home? Decision made fairly easily. I must say, also, that they have some crazy comfortable recliners. Really. Anyway, it was good that I stayed because this meant I could partake in the interesting late-evening activities. The night involved mead and a lot of interesting discussion about runes. I have never been particularly interested in the runes for divinatory purposes, though, so I did not have much to say on the subject.  However, the meanings behind them are very fascinating and I was very interested to learn more about them. More reading is in order, of course, but I'm quick to point out that that seems to be the case for all of my knowledge about Heathenry, and I'm hoping that there will never be a point at which I say otherwise.

Sunday
Well, a good part about Sunday is... that I woke up. That was very good. The recliner was good to sleep in and rather comfortable, so there was no problem with that. We had pancakes for breakfast and it was really great to just sit and have breakfast with my peeps, you know? Yep. We had a bit of amusement trying to rouse some of the folks who stayed up a bit later than we did. I would say we were only marginally more wise, but the margins are very slim on that one. Anyway, it was soon time to go home. I was not excited about the trip, but it wasn't so horrible.

The interesting times really began when I got home. My sister and her fiance were leaving to go horseback riding and my little brother was rather upset about the entire thing. So, I talked to him and we decided to go bowling with my friend, Chris. It was good and we had tons of fun. I even won the first game. Can you believe it? If you've ever been bowling with me, the answer to that should be a resounding "no". Anyway, it did happen. I swear it. Dax got very upset at the end because he didn't win. He gets very upset and down on himself. It just has a lot to do with all of the things that have been going on lately. Anyway, we did go home later and he calmed down quite a bit. It was pretty fun, all in all.

However, right before I was going to go to bed... my mom's dog decided to pick a fight with our new porch cat, named Sage. I have the feeling that she's some sort of Maine Coon mix because she is just absolutely ginormous. Here is a picture for reference:

Anyway, the stupid dog got a scratch on his eyeball so my sister and I went to take him to the vet. He was fine, but there were hours of waiting just to see him have a cone put on his head and given eyedrops. However, the wait was very amusing! There were some interesting signs in the examination room. I have an example.

I have no idea if it was the exhaustion or what, but for some reason this was absolutely amusing. Anyway, we had quite a bit of complaining to do before we had someone finally see the dog and we got his silly cone put on at about 1:45 am. Ugh.



Monday

Nothing happened. I was sick. I did do an awesome marathon of Bones, though.

Tuesday

Well, I was miraculously better that morning but decided to stay home, anyway. I have quite a bit of interesting fun times when I am sick and don't realize it, so I decided to stay home. I'm glad that I did, because my dad very crankily went off to the emergency room complaining of a stomach ache and lo and behold! Appendicitis. My sister caused mild panic when she translated this as a ruptured appendix, but he did have surgery and everything is fine. He came home yesterday and is doing very well. I just hope he doesn't decide to go running around all willy-nilly while he's home on "vacation". Bah.

I have a lot going on in the next few days and, because this week has been a week from hell itself, I have not been very good about exercising. Ugh. I'm going to have to work a bit harder at it next week, but I'm trying to do well. Really. We'll see how it goes. The Internet connection at the house has been fixed, so I am going to hopefully be able to update as things happen. Hopefully.

Approaching 10%

Well, I know it's been a long time since I have posted. Things are a little funky with the Internet connection at my house. We are in the process of replacing our router and crossing our fingers that that was the problem.

A lot has been going on, but the biggest thing is my weigh-in on Saturday. I stopped by the meetings location on the way out to knit night because I was terrible and slept in too late to make it to the meeting. The lady there was very nice and was very encouraging and celebrated because... I lost 3.8 lbs last week. Yep. Scary thing, isn't it? I think whatever was making them stick finally just gave in. It makes me very hopeful.

I am only 0.2 lbs from my 10% goal. So, next week I will be 90% of the person I was in July 2011. One tenth of me just gone. That's crazy! I had been very good and on-track and I remember how frustrating it was to fall off the wagon. This is the first time I've been below the weight I was at in October before my knee surgery. Finally on track and feeling great. So, wish me luck for the rest of this week. I've got to lose at least 0.2!

Weight Watchers Weigh-In

Today I went in for my weigh-in. I unfortunately gained 0.2 lbs. It took a month for me to work up the courage to go back in and I paid for it. I have been struggling and have not been very motivated to keep up with the plan in the past month or so.

I can attribute this to a few different things. The most apparent is the lack of structure in my life. When I first started weight watchers, I was working in an office environment with set lunch times and considerably less stress in many ways.

Another is the lack of family support. My mom and I started weight watchers together in July and she has has a lot of trouble staying on plan, as well. My sister and her boyfriend have also moved in and they have little concern for their weight and tend to eat a lot of junk food, so I have had more opportunity to eat things I should not be.

Another problem I have been having is lack of motivation and creativity to cook dinner. There are a lot of different recipes I know, but none is them sound very good lately. This also causes me to eat out a lot more than I should. With all of these factors, I have been going over my points rather often. The weekly extra 49 are there for extra eating, not to be used on a routine basis as I have been.

There are a number of things I need to start doing to help keep myself motivated to push onward.

1. Roll with the lack of structure. Pack food for when I am out of the house. This will help me out a lot when I am at school or work. I get tired of sandwiches so getting more creative with lunch is going to be essential. One of the things I have purchased in the past and really enjoyed are the tuna or chicken salad kits that come with the necessary ingredients to mix up your own salad (mayo and relish) and crackers. I get the Sunkist brand for tuna and Harvest Creek for chicken. They are really good and only 6 points plus for the whole kit. Not too shabby.

2. Better snacking. I have not been fabulous about eating good snacks and this shows up in my healthy checks. I I don't get nearly enough fruits or vegetables. Instead of eating my sister's Oreos, I am going to try to go for fruits and vegetables. I love fruit and many vegetables so there's no reason to not enjoy them as a snack for no points as opposed to points-heavy snacks that don't fulfill any real nutritious need.

3. Ask for my family's support. My sister and I take turns with cooking and she tends to cook a lot more heavy, fatty foods. I know that I have been coming off as a snob when I ask her to avoid cooking with a lot of fat or butter. I need to have a sit down with the whole family and explain that I want to have dinner and eat with them, too. It doesn't have to be perfect, but a little give and take is necessary in this scenario. Also, I probably need to take more time to cook myself. At least when I cook I know what's going on and how to count everything up.

4. Encourage my mom. Having her do well on the plan will help me. She has been encouraging me to go back to the meetings and now I need to encourage her, too. She has wanted to go back and I news to encourage her. She was going to go with me this week but she took my little brother out of town to go to an indoor water park. We will see how she does.

5. Get good ideas for cooking! I how subscribed to a number of great recipe twitter feeds over the past few days. I'll be sure to post about anything interesting I try so that I can keep track of different successes and failures accordingly.

With all of these tools, I think I will be well armed in the struggle to get back on track and work hard to do better. I was very successful in weight watchers before and can be again if I set my mind to it. Life changes, circumstances change. It's necessary to roll with those changes and not use them as an excuse to not do well. I'll be posting about this topic much more often, now. I know I will have a lot of success to share.

Spinach/Tomato/Mushroom Chicken

So, tonight I cooked dinner. It turned out amazing and fabulous, as always. *snerk*


The idea initially originated with my sister saying, "You should bake some chicken with lots of garlic and spinach". Challenge accepted.... but I didn't want to leave it at that. So, I got 8 oz of sliced mushrooms from the store... pre-sliced because I am a lazy, lazy woman. LAZY. I got two roma tomatoes and chopped them, which was NOT lazy. It balances out.  I didn't put all of the roma tomatoes in with it, maybe only one and a half. The other half of the tomato went in with green beans. Huzzah. Anyway, there is also spinach. Not the crazy Popeye canned stuff, but the leafy fresh stuff.

Ingredients assembled! Away! I had intended to drizzle all of this with olive oil... but we were out so my dad had this interesting dipping olive oil, sort of like what they give you at Carino's, except purchased from a store and apparently outrageously expensive. So, I used it... and it was good. I have no idea what seasonings were in it, but I am going to shamelessly yoink my success from its clutches and laugh in its face.

So, you put the oil on the cookie sheet/roasting pan thing. Enough to coat. Put down a veritable bed of spinach. Season with garlic powder, minced garlic, paprika, and whatever the hell was in the dipping oil. Arrange chicken. Season again. Smatter the aforementioned tomatoes and mushrooms all over in a pretty sort of assembly.

Did I mention you should have preheated the oven? Yes. To 400 degrees. Place into oven. Cook for twenty minutes. Flip chicken breasts over, which is actually pretty hard because it has spinach stuck to it. Cook another twenty minutes or until done. Huzzah. You are finished. Serve on shameless wild rice in a box and nom until you can nom no more.

According to weight watchers, this has... three points for the chicken breast and I'm going to say 1 or 2 for the oil. Not too shabby. The rice itself probably only has about 5. I also served this with a teensy amount of green beans mixed with the tomato and some onion cooked in the microwave... because I'm fancy like that.