AIP for me

[SaraRuns]

    on the keys.  Children - they can really test your patience.  Glad the super got your toilet working again.  My parents had a toilet that was so powerful, you could actually feel the suction if you stood close by.  We often joked about it being able to flush a small child.

 

Glad your eating is better and it looks like you have narrowed down to one vice - chips.  They are evil little critters.  

 

Glad you have the vacation in Maine to look forward to, it sounds wonderful.

 

Like LadyM, we either donate to Goodwill or Purple Heart (they pick up).  We take the tax deduction.  My husband always wants to sell stuff, I just don't think it is worth the investment.  My son's stuff used to all get passed down to his cousins.  But now he wears stuff longer and most of it is pretty beat up.  So anything beat up we toss, and everything else gets donated around December (because that is when we are motivated because of the tax write-off).

 

I need to pick up some salmon, it has been months!

[pjena]

I agree with M - Serenity, now!  I'm sorry about the crud and the keys.  Ugh!  Feel better!

 

I'm with Sara - stuff goes to Goodwill.  I don't think selling stuff is worth the time, either.  Just get rid of it!  That's my motto.  I need to start boxing up my kitchen, laundry room, hall closet, mudroom and bathroom for the remodel.  I intend to donate a ton of stuff.  Only stuff I use and love will go back into the new space.

 

Derval made me laugh!

[Beets]

Lol. Small child indeed.

This is from Tuesday (time flies!) but I typed it into a text file and want to post it. I guess I should just type here but I always think it's easier to type in another app in case I need to add food or edit. Making things harder than they need to be, as usual.

Tues:

M2: brisket, salad greens, cilantro mayo, black coffee

S: tarot and sweet pot chips, chocolate in the car

M3: brisket, bell peppers dipped in cilantro mayo, banana chips

All in all not a terrible day for a six hour solo (adult wise) trip with two kids and two dogs involving a dog handoff to the parents at a random gas station on 84. (Parents were coming home from ME.)

MIL doesn't like my barky dog to stay here since she isn't supposed to have dogs in her condo. And my older dog is back to barely able to walk so I didn't want to leave her with my parents.

Parents were good. My mom is eating almost paleo which is completely shocking to me. But she is seeing a nutritionist affiliated with her chiropractor for her IBS. I guess the IBS is so bad she decided she could go without sugar. She is taking some herbal supplements that apparently kill her sugar cravings. (?? I didn't recognize the names of any of them.)

Not my approach but I'm really proud of my mom. Though she still claims she doesn't like veggies. When I suggested to my dad (who cooks--problem in itself there) he make roasted veg with EVOO and salt he said, "your mother doesn't like olive oil."

I mean, what??!??

Anyway. Proud of her nonetheless. And my dad just had his annual week on the sailboat. (It's a thing where you pay to crew a schooner.) He was looking happy, relaxed and bearded despite ignoring ervuthig he's supposed to be doing for his diabetes.

Parents! They are pretty great though for meeting me at a sweaty shade-less gas station on the highway for a dog handoff.

We are in NH. I made it.

[Beets]

So much for my plan to log this week! Solo travel--or solo parent, totally different from true solo travel, which is my heaven--exhausts me. Then I get here and gab with my MIL till 12pm.

My daughter has was appeared to be a MRSA infection on her knee. I spent almost all of yesterday finding an urgent care center and then driving all over southern NH finding a drug store that had the med I wanted for her. (We dealt with MRSA a few years ago, foul plague that it is. And there was only one topical med that worked on my son. I wanted to avoid the systemic nuclear option oral antibiotics usually prescribed.)

My mom said it was as if I was competing in the Iditarod.

My son was also being a nightmare but I told him is take him to eat in Manchester, my husband's hometown, when we went to the Rite Aid there in the third leg of our wild goose chase. There is a diner sort of place there that's a fam favorite. I had a frappe. ("Milkshake" to the rest of the free world.)

I had fries too but I didn't indulge in fried scallops or clams though I was really working the "special and worth it" angle in my mind.

After driving further from Portsmouth to Concord and finally getting the $138 tube of ointment I drove home along a misty, dark, single lane highway. I was exhausted, stayed up late gabbing again and woke up feeling hungover.

Today I took my son for breakfast. Had lobster Benedict, sans English muffin. It was a let down and not worth the egg white gas pains. I think the béarnaise came from a jar.

Now I'm a ravounous dairy and sugar hunting fiend. Need a head a cabbage, STAT.

But we did, after breakfast, have a lovely drive back through my favorite part of Portsmouth--a tiny road winds through the old Federal and salt box style houses perched on granitic hillocks of a few tiny islands. Straight out of Melleville or Hawthorne.

So, yeah, need cabbage. Need protein. Need water.

I have done some exercising. So, yay me.

And I realized at some point that I am not going to totally let my guard down and eat all the crap while I'm here. It was like I could let my shoulders drop and relax a bit.

[Physibeth]

Oh Frappe's...I've made so many in my lifetime. I worked at Blake's when I was in High School. That isn't where you went was it? I'm thinking it may have been Red Arrow? Or am I wrong on both accounts. I'll be in Manch-Vegas for my 20th HS reunion and Thanksgiving this year.

[LadyM]

MRSA? Ugh! You have been through the ringer, friend. You definitely deserve a head of cabbage. I hope you got at least one!

[Derval]

Bloody hell I thought mrsa only happened in hospital! Poor you, hugs.

[pjena]

I'm so sorry!  Ugh!  Hang in there.

[SaraRuns]

Sorry about the MRSA!  But I'm glad you can relax and let the eating happen.  Hope you are doing well!

[Beets]

Bethany, we were at the Pilgrim? Puritan? I always forget you are from Manchester!

 

Been so long! I intended to have two super clean weeks before our week in ME, which turned into one, which turned into three days, etc. I was in NH the week before my super clean week. We had a lot going on and I let myself get exhausted. Eh. It's over now. I did OK, just not exactly what I wanted to do. 

 

Our vacation was wonderful. Much needed. Amazing perfect weather. We were steps from the beach, which was magical. We played cards and gazed at the ocean and I read and read and read. Whoopee! Seems now like a dream. I hardly even used my phone, just my Kindle for reading. Really a perfect vacation and we are all still feeling the benefits.  

 

In the early days I was obsessing about the belly that I'd hoped to disappear before we went up there. I was pretty small, at a weight I haven't been in over a decade. But I wasn't QUITE in the same shape I'd been in for my birthday and I was obsessing over that. (I also intended weeks of dedicated working out but I let dog stuff and kid stuff, traveling to NH, heat, summer intrude on my plans.)

 

By the third or fourth day I wasn't obsessing so much. I also was using cream in my coffee and eating a lot of, you guessed it!, chips and chocolate. Wine at night, while we played cribbage in the cool salty air. (I had to wear a sweatshirt, wool long johns at night)

 

We went out to dinner and I had decided at some point to eat fried clams, breaking my no wheat since end of
March streak. But it's Maine! You are practically required to eat fried sea food. Not really. The lobster stew (lobster, cream, butter, maybe sherry, lobster shell broth) was also amazing.

 

My fried clams felt ok. The next day--slippery slope--I ate some Congdon's Doughnuts. This is a famous ME institution and there is a Congdon's in one of our favorite books, One Morning in MAine, same writer/characters as Blueberries for Sal. I HAD to try one. These made me feel awful but I kept eating them.

 

Enter days of clawing out of the hole. School started last week. I may have been more stressed than my son. I was really worried about getting him there on time. This weekend I got together with some college friends. I ate one of her brownie ice cream sandwiche after a few glasses of wine. Ooops. Felt terrible all weekend. Mostly the wine, I imagine. My weight is up five or six pounds but I know a lot of this is dairy, wheat and the bites of Chinese food I had for a first day of school celebration. (The celebration meal that gave my son bloody diarrhea so he missed the second day of school. Good times!)

 

This morning I decided to get back on track. My brother's wedding is in two weeks. I want to feel good. No summer vacation excuses. That means not piling on myself with guilt but focusing on template meals and filling my plate w veggies. 

 

Hope you all are doing well. 

[SaraRuns]

I am glad to hear you had a wonderful vacation.  I did lots of reading on my week away also.

 

Sounds like the school year is a good time to get on track with eating.  I know we are starting to get into a routine, which seems impossible in the summer.

 

Nice to hear from you!

[pjena]

I'm so glad you had a nice vacation!  I'm in the same too busy and stressed about school starting but need to get back on track boat.  Just remember to take care of yourself! 

[Physibeth]

Glad you had such an enjoyable vacation and sounds like you are in the right headspace to get back on track. Be gentle and good to yourself. Puritan...yes familiar with that establishment. I think it became more of the local high school hang out after I graduated so my brother and sister have been there more.

[Beets]

Bethany, my BIL--in his late 40s--worked at the Puritan when he was a teenager so it's been there awhile. But perhaps not as the cool hang out. It's the Puritan in front and the Back Room in the back.  

 

Love your new photo, btw. 

 

Thanks guys. Vacation was dreamy. Back to reality. But it was great to spend time with the kids away from the blah blah ruts we get into at home. I noticed that as soon as we got home I started getting all jammed up about something with the kids. It was really helpful for me to have that calm place I can--I hope--keep going back to in my mind. 

 

But, yes, back to school, back to routines. As my mom said school can be a new beginning for parents, too. Even if they aren't in school. I'm thinking of making more schedules for myself. I have spent 40 years resisting schedules and routines but in my old age I realize that they would be just as helpful for me as for the kids. 

[SaraRuns]

Good luck with your new beginning, whatever you decide to make of that.  

[Beets]

Been doing better. Read last night about Chris Kresser's 14Four program. The idea is to focus equally on diet, movement, sleep and stress. I have to find the details. (Just googled and only found the blog post transcript where I read about it, and an animation studio site featuring a giant robot with a gun.) Maybe it hasn't been revealed to the public yet.

 

But it sounds good for me. I'm craving the simplicity of a whole, but when I imagine the fall I see a string of things wehre I don't want to be whole-ing. (Trip to ME with my very good friend to visit old college friends where we'll eat at our favorite lobster shack, go to a nice dinner in Portland and another friend's 10th anniversary party; Halloween and perhaps the Halloween party for grownups I've wanted to have for 15 years; Thanksgiving.) Yes I could  easily enjoy 30-friendly Thanksgiving food, I don't need to eat pies or bread stuffing. But I really enjoy having a glass of Beaujolais with my turkey. It's a ritual I anticipate and enjoy and I don't feel like being an ascetic on Thanksgiving.

 

Anyhoo. 14 days is way more doable and while, no, it won't carry all of the benefits of 30 days it will help me reset and feel good. Plus I love the idea of making the "other stuff" just as much of a priority as the eating. I know that "whole" is about the whole9 but if pressed I couldn't name all nine!

 

This week I was attacked by yellow jackets and pondered putting my dog to sleep. The yellow jackets were painful! The dog situation is just really really sad. 

[pjena]

I like that idea - focus equally on stress and sleep as much as food and exercise. I know I need to do that!  Let us know if you find more.

 

I'm sorry about the yellow jackets and the dog!  Tough week!

[SaraRuns]

Sorry about the yellow jackets, ouch!  As for the dog, I'm sorry.  My sister just put down her dog, and it is very sad.

 

I think if a 14 day sounds good to you, go for it!  You'll get more benefit from 14 days, then none.  And focusing on 4 factors allows you to really be mindful of each one.

[LadyM]

Simpler is always better, I think. At this point for me I just think of returning to the template as a win when I'm feeling off track. Doesn't have to be a Whole anything. But sometimes the dedicated structure and commitment to a timeframe can be supportive too. Whatever you decided, I hope it's working for you!

 

Also thinking of you and your grief about your dog. That's so very hard.

[Beets]

Hi all! Long time no chat.

Since I've been gone my dog died (we did put her to sleep), my brother got married, I went to Maine with my friend and saw a lot of old friends and ate a bunch of amazing food.

I've also been feeling horrible and my psoriasis is flaring up. Too much to go over in a post. Suffice it to say, I'm motivated to be back on track and feel simple and calm about food.

I keep--as always!--getting jammed up around what "program" to follow. I've been trying to just eat on template but that isn't working for me, I'm too far off course.

Not sure what to do but getting back here should help. It was this time last year that I let things go really haywire and that made me feel terrible for many months. I do t have to do that again. It's cool enough to cook so I have no excuses!

[LadyM]

Welcome back, Beets! You always do so great with W30. What's giving you the wandering eye to other programs?

[SaraRuns]

Nice to "see" you!  I'm sorry to hear about your dog and congrats to your brother.

 

What are your current food thoughts?

[pjena]

I'm really sorry about your dog.  That's hard.