So unhappy

The title tells it all. I’ve been under a black cloud that still hasn’t cleared. This time of year is the second anniversary of my husband’s stroke, and usually any sort of hope for the future evaporates about now. It has lifted before and I expect it will lift again, but I am just in a dark place.

Two years ago I was at work when my cell phone rang in the late afternoon with an unfamiliar number. I tend not to answer calls I don’t recognize, but this one I did. An ICU nurse asked if I knew my husband had been discovered in the parking lot of our condo complex and had suffered a major stroke. This was the first I heard of any problems. I had chatted with my husband on the phone about 11 a.m. and the ambulance got him to the hospital around 11:45, I discovered later. I left work, picked up our daughter and headed to ICU.

My husband was in a coma with a breathing tube down his throat and various machines beeping out his vital signs. We sat by his bedside until late in the evening. He didn’t move except for rise and fall caused by the respirator. The doctors wouldn’t have a diagnosis until the next day.

We did some grocery shopping after the hospital and I lost it in the soup aisle of all places. I had just developed a recipe Tom really liked that used 2 kinds of soups and I automatically reached for the soups, until I realized I wouldn’t need them.

The next day, the neurologist said he’s never seen so much damage in a brain and have the patient survive. He said there was virtually no chance he would come out of his coma. I knew Tom didn’t want to live like this, as we had discussed many times. A “Breaking Bad” character is in a wheelchair and can only communicate by ringing a bell. Both of us agreed we didn’t want to be like that. I made the difficult decision to remove life support. We got two ministers to perform the last rites, and I drew some comfort from their words. Around noon, the technician started removing tubes and wires. The technician said sometimes the patients expire right away or linger for a time.

Tom lingered on, and relatives from his side of the family gathered in a sort of wake, with so much laughing and joking that Tom’s roommate requested another room. Everyone left by nightfall and I was alone with Tom. Another doctor came in to check his vital signs and announced that Tom was waking up. He ordered restoration of fluids and nutrition.

My hope rose with the doctor’s orders, and even more so when Tom woke up. He underwent lots of physical and speech therapy in the hospital until his medical team decided that he should move to a rehabilitation facility. He did, on Mother’s Day 2010, so that day’s ruined for me.

Tom’s condition didn’t improve much, and for two years he’s been pretty much where he is now: unable to speak, eat, walk, or get out of bed. I see him every evening on the way home from work and on the weekends. Most days he falls asleep before I leave; sometimes I think he doesn’t know who I am.

Tom’s still here, but he’s not the man I fell in love with and married. I’ll stay by his side for the rest of his life, because that’s what I said I’d do in the wedding vows. This is the “… or for worse” part, and boy is it the worst. I am so jealous of older couples because I don’t have that anymore. I miss having those private jokes. Having someone know me sometimes better than myself.

I don’t have a great ending to this posting, except make sure you and your partner get that blood pressure checked and keep it in normal range. I don’t want anyone else sentenced to the half-life I have. The life you save may be your own.

See you next time.

Feeling full, but boy has my head been hungry

I've been following my medical team’s advice to eat more solid food instead of the cottage cheese I've been consuming. I switched my lunch to a meat and cheese roll-up. One serving of deli meat is 2 ounces, which is 2 slices, the way this meat is cut. I layer 1 slice of meat, 1 slice of cheese (lower-fat provolone), 1 slide of meat, 1 slice of cheese. I roll it up and microwave for a minute or so. I eat it by slicing off little pinwheels, less than 1/4-inch wide and chew the heck out of it. The meat-cheese combo makes a filling lunch; in fact I couldn't finish mine today. OK, the piece was about an eighth of an inch wide, but I still couldn't fit it in.

While my stomach has been filled, however, my head has been playing crazy games. It kept telling me that I was hungry, and sometimes I ate even though I was full. And I paid for that with a dash to the bathroom. It even happened to me a few times at work last week.

I think the hunger is tied to some anxiety I’ve been going through. We’re trying to adopt a dog and the process includes a home visit. I’m not much of a housekeeper, and became even less so after my husband’s stroke, so we had a lot of work last week to get our condo ready.

While the front rooms of the condo are in reasonable shape, my bedroom was a disaster zone. I found a kitchen trash bag worth of lost socks under my bed, and almost as many wash cloths and towels. I filled a 20-20-20-inch box with books from the bedroom floor, plus a large storage bin, and I still have many left. My library bookstore will get a BIG donation soon. I had stacks of stuff that I hadn’t gone through in ages, and hauled out 6 garbage bags of trash. We had 8 paper shopping bags worth of clothes for Goodwill, and that doesn’t include the ones that were just too crappy to give away. I found a coffeemaker I forgot I had. This experience has saved me having my life profiled on “Hoarders.”

The effect of this cleaning has been to clear my head. For the first time in years, I can enter my bedroom without stepping on books and dancing around piles. My head feels clearer, and my lunch filled me up today.

We don’t know yet if we’re getting the dog, but there will be plenty of room for her.

See you next time.

Ooh, a piece of candy …

I accidentally broke my no-candy pledge.

My daughter offered a taste of a KitKat bar that’s sold only in Japan, Sakura Maccha Latte, which I believe is some variation of green tea, that she bought at a Japanese market near Los Angeles. It looks like a KitKat, but it’s green where it should be brown. She offered, I ate. It wasn’t until much later that she remarked that I’d broken my candy pledge. I think I said a curse word, but that was it. The candy consumption did not start a binge or a depression spiral. Just had a piece of candy. And I haven’t had any since.

I wish the rest of my life were so simple. I think the next pledge I’ll have to take will ban cookies. I just can’t leave them alone. My daughter doesn’t really eat them, or she eats ones I don’t like. Yes, there are actually cookies I don’t like. But sometimes I’ll eat even them.

The key to all this would be to eat more protein, such as a morning shake. But it’s been so cool in the morning, it’s hard to drink something cold. And I don’t want to get up earlier. Right now it takes about 20 minutes from getting out of bed to getting out the door, including feeding the rodents (the cats wake me up at 5:30 for food and I stupidly feed them then) and making coffee.

But in the end, when push comes to shove, insert your favorite cliché here, I’m the only one who can do something about me. I’m quite easy when it comes to situations having control over me. Sure, many things are beyond my control, but what goes into my mouth is all mine.

See you next time.

Back above the weather

Last week I didn’t feel 100% but thought it was the added work from the holidays and my usual lack of sleep. But during my regular meeting with my pulmonary doctor, I discovered I have a respiratory infection, for which he prescribed an antibiotic and short-term asthma drugs.

After a few days on the medications I’m feeling much better. So this is what it’s like to breathe without coughing! I can sleep through the night without getting up to empty my lungs (and trigger the cats into thinking it’s morning and they need to be fed).

I tend to try to resolve my problems without seeking help. Maybe that stems from hanging out with the smart kids and feeling embarrassed to seek clarification when I didn’t understand something. Nowadays, I’ll search for solutions on the Internet and try to fix something myself. That often works, as when my daughter dropped her iPod touch in a puddle and it stopped working. A little scurrying around the Internet found a solution: hold down 2 buttons for 10 seconds or so, and the device reset and turned on.

But I’ve had respiratory problems my whole life, so it didn’t occur to me that anything was more wrong than usual. Note to self: wheezing and coughing up stuff isn’t normal.

As for eating, it’s been hit and miss. I’ve gone periods when I haven’t eating anything, or have consumed only low-fat, sugar-free lattes. And I’ve eaten some things that shouldn’t be on an eating plan for losing weight. I’m not going to beat myself up for that. Sometimes you have to do whatever will get you through a busy day. I haven’t weighed myself in several days, so when I finally get on the scale, I’ll either be disappointed or delighted. I can never be perfect, but at least I won’t get crazy.

See you tomorrow.

Back to normalish

Got sleep last night. It was still difficult waking up, but at least I got a good 7 hours. I might still be in bed if my daughter didn’t have our puppy jump on the bed and attack me awake.

The plan tonight is to get at least 7 hours. We’ll see.

I’ve often read of the link between not getting enough sleep and obesity. There’s probably some chemical reason, but I think we also self-treat by fueling our bodies in hopes of making us feel more awake. I believe I felt that effect during my sleepless day. I was so hungry yesterday that I ate too much, and felt worse for it. I tried to eat a breakfast burrito, but it came back up before I got to work. Lunch was OK, but I was hungry on the way home and got a couple of tacos. Same result. I was out of plastic bags in the car and had to pull over to take care of the pressure. I hate when that happens. As a result, today I have a sore throat and I bit my lip, so it’s swollen.

Oh, moderation, why are you so hard to practice? But I suppose if I could master that, I wouldn’t be in the predicament I’m in these days.

The result of my horrid couple of days is that I still lost some weight. I’m down 91.1 pounds. I’d rather lose a couple of ounces a day than go through what I did the past couple days. But a loss is a loss.

See you tomorrow.

Resetting the clock

I generally don’t get quite enough sleep. I often don’t get home from work until almost 9, sometimes later, and it takes me at least a few hours just to get chores done. I catch up on sleep on the weekend.

But last week, I had to be out of the house unusually early on Friday and Saturday. By Saturday night I was bushed, and I fell asleep several times on the couch while watching TV. I looked forward to Sunday, when I could finally sleep in.

I woke up Sunday in the dark, and the clock ready 5:10. I thought, “5:10 in the morning, not so bad, I can sleep a few more hours.” Then I remembered that I had gotten up around 9 a.m. to feed the cats, so it couldn’t possibly be 5:10 a.m. I checked the clock and saw that it was indeed 5:10 p.m., the latest I’ve ever slept. I got up to start my day with the newspaper and coffee.

I did my usual Sunday errands and added a few more trips because I was WIDE AWAKE. I was WIDE AWAKE at 2 a.m. and realized that I’d never get to sleep in time to wake at a decent hour for work, so I stayed up. I got to work about three hours earlier than I usually do, and boy did I get a great parking space. I’m still awake now about 20 hours later. Thanks to lots of strong coffee, I should be able to last until this evening. And I know I will sleep tonight.

I keep forgetting I’m not 20 years old anymore. This body doesn’t recover from lack of sleep like it used to, even though I’m 90 pounds lighter than I was two years ago. But I’ve never been good at moderation. I mean, that’s why I needed the weight-loss surgery.

See you tomorrow.

You’d think I’d know better by now

I had a real hankering for doughnuts today. I love doughnuts, almost as much as Homer Simpson does. But doughnuts and I don’t get along. Since my surgery, they’ve been a no-no because they’re so calorie dense, plus they get stuck.

Despite that, I grabbed a couple of doughnuts on the way to work. I had a doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning—nothing serious, just medication refills and routine blood work—so I didn’t have time for even coffee when I left the house. I even forgot my cell phone and had to stop at home on the way to work. After the doctor’s appointment, I bought my doughnuts and started nibbling in the car. I got an apple fritter and a chocolate old-fashioned, plus the counter girl tossed in a couple of holes. I ate the holes and started on the fritter. Before long, I’ve got that awful pressure in the chest. I hoped I could hold out until I could pull off the freeway, but this wasn’t going to wait. I grabbed the nearest bag and let the stuck doughnuts come back up. As it happened, I had grabbed the bag with the rest of the doughnuts in it, so I returned what I had eaten and ruined the rest.

I can only imagine that eating doughnuts is somehow associated with a simpler time of my life, but I can’t really remember when eating doughnuts corresponded with a good time. Perhaps I was seeking the comfort that binge eating used to confer—at least for a short time. Work has been busier lately and errands have kept me from home until almost 10 every night this week. I see some tasks in the future that have to get done. Next time, instead of doughnuts, I should get a bigger Starbucks drink. At least there’s calcium-rich milk in it.

I get food amnesia sometimes. I have never been able to eat a doughnut since my surgery. I don’t know why I thought I would do it today. The doughnuts only cost a couple bucks, but made me feel awful for several hours. Note to self: leave the doughnuts to Homer.

At least it’s warming up

Mad props to those of you who live in cold climates. We had a cold spell the past few days and I thought I was going to freeze to death. Thankfully, it’s warmer today.

I was OK last night going to see my husband. The nursing home is warm. But then I had to get gas for the car and stand in the breezy cold for 5 minutes or so while I pumped. Could not warm up after that. Shivered while watching TV, and turned up the heater. I even put my nightgown and sweatpants in the dryer to warm them, plus a towel to warm up the sheets. And I even had a real dinner last night: katsu pork leftover from Saturday dinner. Breaded pork cutlets that I softened up with port gravy, accompanied by stewed mushrooms and artichoke hearts. Went down easy and stayed down.

I always get cold when I lose a layer or two of body fat. These days, I’m making an effort to eat everything I’m supposed to, to keep the motor running. Had a protein shake on the way to work this morning. Lunch was cottage cheese with bacon and sunflower seeds. Midafternoon snack was Greek yogurt and for the drive home I’ll have cheese. Dinner will be the rest of the leftover pork. I’m really hankering for a gooey chocolate dessert, but I don’t think I could eat a small enough piece to not mess up my eating plan.

I finally warmed up last night a few hours before the alarm went off. That’s when my cat Kevin came in and informed me that I could feed him now. I told him that if he won’t sleep with me, he’ll have to wait for his food. Wait, that came out wrong.

See you tomorrow.

I’ll stop this slide right now

I missed a work meeting today. I thought it was in the afternoon, but it was early-ish in the morning. Luckily, I was forgiven, but I was angry at myself.

Lately I’ve been late to many things and forgetful of others. I periodically slide into ditziness and I hate when that happens.

Because of my lap-band, it’s harder to get ditzy on my eating. Oh, it’s possible to gain weight with the band, and I’ve done it. There are certain foods that aren’t that good for you that will go down easy, like candy and ice cream. They’re called “sliders,” and not those cute little hamburgers. But luckily I can’t do the bulk as I’ve done in my binging past. I won’t be downing whole cheesecakes in an evening or finish off a package of cookies.

I’ve gotten a little sloppy in my eating. Lately I’ve been tired when I get up, so I’ve skipped my breakfast protein shake in favor of coffee and held off eating until lunch. I’ve had my regular lunch and then I’ve been hungry the rest of the day and maybe snacked on some sunflower seeds, or made a dinner of brie and blue cheese on crackers. I don’t think I’ve been getting enough protein, and when that happens, no matter how little you eat, you still don’t lose weight.

Well, one of the reasons I started this blog was to confess my “sins” and keep on the straight and narrow. Readers, forgive me, for I have strayed.

Starting tomorrow, it’s back to the shakes for breakfast, no matter how cold it is in the morning. (Note: I’m a native Southern Californian, so my cold is a Midwesterner’s brisk. When it gets down to the 40s, we panic.) That’s why cars have heaters. And when I’m at work, I can have all the coffee I can drink.

There, I’ve put it out there. Now I just gotta do it.

See you tomorrow.

Back to my life

I took a tiny break because for once I had nothing to say. No revelations, no problems, just a life that’s going smoothly. Conflict is the engine that drives stories, and I had none going on.  And boy did I feel guilty that I didn't write something.

At least there’s no conflict in regards to my eating. We do have an animal situation. We’re fostering a kitten for an animal-rescue group. The kitten, a feral, was trapped and neutered, and is now undergoing socialization with humans. So far, she’s in a cage in the bathroom in the master bedroom and our two cats want nothing to do with her. In fact, our boy cat, Kevin, has become aggressive toward our girl cat, Charlotte. Luckily, she can climb the cat tree faster and higher and escapes. He’s usually the mellow one, and he’s been hissing and growling at her. He usually sleeps on my bed, but now he won’t even go into the bedroom. Both the cats are on diets, so I’m sure that hasn’t helped the situation. Don’t tell my daughter, but I gave them a little extra food last night when she was on a sleepover.

I guess that’s what’s gotten me in trouble all these years: using food as the answer to everything. Food is always an easy answer: cheap, plentiful, and it doesn’t talk back. Except it lingers WAY too long on the body and is reluctant to leave. Come to think of it, food is a terrible answer. I’m never eating food again. Oops. If only it were that easy.

See you tomorrow.

Holy moly, 90 pounds

Stepped on my scale this morning and got a nice surprise: a new low weight, 189.4. I even stepped off and back on, to confirm the number. Down 2 pounds from yesterday. This means I’ve lost 90.1 pounds and have 59.4 to go.

I don’t think I could life 90 pounds without help. How was I walking around with all that weight? The answer: not very well. I was taking the maximum dose of a couple of diabetes medications and they were barely keeping my blood sugar in good ranges. Now I’ve been able to cut out both of them. I still take blood pressure medications, but I’m going to look into eliminating those at my next doctor’s visit. We live halfway up a hill, and I have to park at the bottom and make that walk every day. At my top weight, it used to take me the longest time, and I’d have to stop a couple of times to catch my breath. At one point, a neighbor even stopped his car and asked me if I was OK. Now, I don’t run up the hill, but I can make it in pretty good time, without stopping.

I’m lucky in that the tightness of my band is exactly right. I’m in the green zone. I can eat what I need and not be ravenously hungry, as I’ve felt in the past. I’m making sure that I’m following the rules: no liquids with meals, and waiting a half-hour after eating before resuming drinking. Sometimes I’m counting the seconds until me next cup of coffee, but that’s my new reality.

I want to remember this feeling for when I’m tempted to overdo foods that get me in trouble, like chocolate. Oh, I’ll have my sugar-free mochas, but I’m deliberately walking the other way from the giant bag of Ghirardelli chocolates someone has placed atop the filing cabinets. It’s hard for me to eat just one, so I won’t eat any, at least today.

And tomorrow, if I eat one or more, the world won’t end. I’ll just have to work harder to get past it. That’s what I love about weight-loss surgery: I’m not sweating out the weekly weigh-ins that can determine how the rest of my week will be.

I hope the rest of your week is good. See you tomorrow.

A little pizza misery

The great pizza experiment is over and results were not good.

The Atkins mix numbers.

I made a crust with the Atkins All-Purpose Baking Mix. The directions call for 2 cups of baking mix, 1 1/8 cup of water, 3 tablespoons of oil, plus baking powder, Splenda, and salt. I mixed it in my daughter’s KitchenAid stand mixer. So far so good. I pinched off about a quarter of the dough for my pizza. The recipe makes 8 servings, so I decided I’d have 2. I could always save the leftovers.

First you make the crust and roll it out for the pans. It bakes for 10 minutes, then you remove it, add the toppings, and return to the oven for 10-15 minutes. I made one big pizza for my daughter with pesto and cheese. I made mine with a little tomato pizza sauce, cheese, and low-fat Italian salami.

The crust bakes up rather puffy, but still thin enough for pizza, although I prefer a thinner, New York style over a thick Chicago style.

Pizza from the oven and sliced in half.

The result was a not-bad-looking pizza, I cut mine in quarters and ate 2 slices.  The crust had a slightly sweet, eggy flavor, a bit on the dry side. I could envision it as a syrup-covered waffle or pancake, for which there are recipes on the back of the package.

Unfortunately, it didn’t sit well in my stomach and I had a mad dash to the bathroom and thoroughly lost every bit of it.

Looks like I won’t be making pizza from this mix again. My daughter enjoyed her pizza and consumed a few slices with no problems.

A lot of weight-loss surgery people make pizzas on low-carb tortilla or flatbread. I tried making a grilled-turkey sandwich on one once and it didn’t agree with me. Perhaps all the moist pizza ingredients will make the difference. It’s not that I need pizza, but now and then I get a real jonesing for a slice.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing next week; probably at least a few days. I’m firming up my Thanksgiving menu and will probably write about that at least. But if you’re taking an Internet vacation next week, I hope you have a nice Thanksgiving with a minimum of episodes of getting stuck.

See you next week.

A refreshing day without drama

For once I got up at a decent time today and was able to spend time on the couch with a big cup of coffee while my daughter harassed the animals. For once it was nice to drive to work and not fall asleep at stoplights because you’re not awake yet.

Charlotte and Kevin don't know they're going on a diet.
My daughter shot this picture on her cell phone.

We’ve decided our bigger cat, Kevin, needs to cut back on the eating. When we first got him several months ago, we kept him in the bathroom for a few days to get him acclimated to the scents in the house and our first cat, Charlotte. After we let him roam the house, we kept his bowl in the bathroom so he would know what food was his. He follows whoever goes in there and begs, and if his bowl is empty, we fill it. Well, he was getting his bowl filled a few times a day, and eating all of it. We’ve noticed he can’t climb the cat tree so easily, so now he’s allowed only a half-cup of food per day until he’s back to his climbing weight. And while he’s dieting, perhaps our other cat can lose a little of the chub she developed after being spayed last year.

It’s easy to think that you’re loving someone by feeding them. I love to watch people enjoying what I’ve cooked. Even if I just scoop it from a canister to a cat dish.  

Tonight I’m trying a new recipe for the humans in the house. I have a bag of Atkins All Purpose Baking Mix, a low-carb, high-protein version of Bisquick. I plan to make a pizza crust, and top it with tomato sauce, cheese and light Italian salami. The pizza makes 8 servings, and each serving of crust has 20g of protein and only 5g net carbs. I’ve been hankering for pizza for a while but didn’t want the heavy crust. Well, I want it, but I don’t want to waste the calories on bread that could have gone to protein. If it turns out pretty, I’ll post a picture.

See you tomorrow.

What a difference a day makes

Woke up today feeling 100 percent better than the weekend. It wasn't the big fluffy cat leaning on me. Didn’t get extra sleep or better food. In fact, I ate the last sliver of cheesecake. I think part of my better mood is due to several people posting me encouraging messages here and on my Facebook. I was feeling very alone, and you folks came through. Thanks, everyone.

I have partially solved my morning shake dilemma. I found Hershey’s sugar-free chocolate syrup at the supermarket. I don’t often look at sugar-free sweets because while they doesn’t have sugar, they do have other stuff that has lots of calories, plus they can have a laxative effect. However, this chocolate syrup has only 16 calories in 2 tablespoons. I added that much to my morning vanilla shake and omigod it was finally something I wouldn’t mind drinking. Even thickened it up a bit. It takes me most of my 40-minute morning drive to drink it all. I’m usually not very hungry in the morning, and my band seems tighter so it’s harder to eat. On the weekends, I slack off with sugar-free lattes all morning.

This afternoon at lunch, I actually measured out what I was eating, and my eye-balled amount was 3/4 of a cup of cottage cheese, about what I’d figured. I’ve been eating Alta Dena 2%, and it has 15g of protein per half-cup, so that’s about 22g of protein.

 I have decided to cut back on the pistachios and goat cheese. While they aren’t as fat-laden as a lot of other foods, it’s easy to overdo them. I eat enough cheese as it is, and even the act of shelling the pistachios doesn’t use up the energy their calories generate. So for now, bye-bye!

See you tomorrow.

Sort of a meltdown, but I’m better now

Saturday turned out to be a harder day than I expected. As I’ve written a few times, it was my 23rd wedding anniversary, but my husband is in a nursing home and can’t speak, eat, or walk, so any celebration is low-key.

My day started with my weight up almost 2.5 pounds, for no apparent reason. Well, I’m sure there was a reason, but I just didn’t know it. I went to my Romance Writers of America meeting feeling fat and unsuccessful. I did perk up when I chatted with longtime friends, and I’m in charge of coffee and that operation went smoothly. Then, our president asked if anyone had a laptop, and I raised my hand. Our speaker brought the wrong connection for her Mac to the projector and couldn’t give her PowerPoint. Not only did I have a PC, but I also have PowerPoint, so the meeting was sort of saved. I felt good about that.

When I got home, though, that’s when the blues settled in. Tom and I have been together since 1984 and have had some wonderful times on our anniversary. On our 10th, we were able to return to the same San Francisco Fairmont Hotel room where we had our honeymoon, plus we got second-row seats to “Phantom of the Opera,” and while we were waiting for a cab to the theater, a limo pulls up and Tony Bennett steps out. After the show we celebrated in the bathtub with a Merlot bottled the same year we got married. Other anniversaries have been memorable dinners in cool restaurants and pricey champagne that we decided didn’t taste much better than the $12 Korbel we usually drank.

A lot of that ended with my husband’s stroke in April 2010. He seems to remember some things, and he usually understands me when I ask him yes/no questions. He still enjoys watching football on TV—thank you, Green Bay Packers for kicking butt! But the best part of our relationship was the banter and joking, and now he can’t even speak.

I visited him the evening of our anniversary and became sadder as time went on. He fell asleep just before I left.

I wanted to hold my own celebration. I wanted a tiny chocolate cake and a split of champagne. I found neither, so I settled on 4 slices of various flavors of cheesecake. I ate 3 of them in front of the TV in my pajamas, and saved one for breakfast. Wow, flashback to my binging days. I think I consumed about 600 calories of cheesecake. Plus the last of my pistachio and goat cheese stash. I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge, but I didn’t want to open it for just one glass. I went to bed feeling pretty low. My daughter was on a sleepover, so it was just me and the critters, and they didn’t have a shoulder to cry on.

I woke up the next day feeling different. The sun was shining, and my canary was singing his heart out. I hopped on the scale, and not only did I lose what I’d gained, but I hit a new low. And suddenly I was in better cheer. I left the cheesecake in the fridge and made a big nonfat latte to accompany the weekend paper.

I have resigned to the fact that certain things won’t change. I still love my husband, and I do get the sense that he loves me. We still own our memories. And I lost weight! How great is that?

See you tomorrow. 

Running on empty

So some idiot (me) forgot to set the alarm clock last night and woke up late. Not as late as I’ve slept in at times. I can sleep 12 hours if I have nowhere to go. I jumped out of bed, threw on my clothes, grabbed my lunch, and ran to the car. No time to make a shake this morning, but I did grab a sugar-free, fat-free latte. Only later did I realize that if I had time to grab the latte, I had time to make a shake. Duh!

Of course that shoved my day off kilter. To compensate, I had lunch promptly at noon. I finally opened the Trader Joe’s tapas cheese sampler of three Spanish cheeses I can’t pronounce, accompanied by low-fat salami. Quite tasty. The cheese is very bold, and I like a full-flavored cheese. But I only managed 2 triangles of cheese and 2 salami slices before everything got stuck. No need to tell you what happened next.

While my food consumption hasn’t been ideal today, I’m glad that nothing inappropriate to losing weight has passed my lips. I’ll just hold off snack time with lots of coffee.

This weekend has me setting up the coffee for my writers group and putting it all away, including hauling big containers into the garage. That’s always good for burning off calories.

Saturday is also my wedding anniversary, and I’ll be spending that at my husband’s bedside in the nursing home. I had hoped to sneak in some champagne, but lately he’s been having some stomach issues, so I don’t want to risk it. Twenty-three years ago we had a kick-ass honeymoon in San Francisco, and we’ll remember that.

See you next week.

My kitchen is looking like a café

I now have more syrup than Starbucks. It’s true. I found a new source for Torani sugar-free syrup and went a little crazy. These syrups are great for many things, including making my morning protein shake a little more tolerable, and for flavoring my Tassimo lattes and cappuccinos.

Cost Plus World Market usually carries a pretty decent selection, and sometimes they’re on sale for less than $6 a bottle. Over the past few months I’ve purchased chocolate, French vanilla, pumpkin spice, caramel, raspberry, hazelnut, cinnamon-brown sugar, peppermint, and English toffee. And each one has a pump installed, just like the coffeehouses. Recently I added peach and lime, but haven’t used them in shakes or lattes yet.

I use the chocolate syrup a lot because, well, it’s chocolate. I bought a 3-pack at Amazon and it’s almost gone.

Torani’s site showed me that the bottles are available at Smart & Final, and there’s one just down the street. I stopped in after work and was amazed to find the sugar-free syrup available in just about every flavor Torani offers. Not only that, but if you buy 6 bottles, they’re only $3.99 each. I picked up more chocolate and raspberry, plus coffee, almond, mango, and black cherry.

I put the coffee flavor to work in my morning shake. Four pumps (1 ounce), plus about a tablespoon of instant espresso in my 50g protein vanilla shake gave it a nice latte flavor. I have some rum extract used for baking, and I think a few drops of that might give the shake a Kahlua flavor. I have a mango-peach flavored protein powder that will be augmented by my mango and peach syrups in coming days.

I make my own sugar-free pumpkin lattes that you can’t get at Starbucks. An ounce of syrup, a double latte, a dollop of whipped cream, and a sprinkling of pumpkin pie spice.

I make a similar one with chocolate instead, and I sprinkle grated baker’s chocolate on top. Another great topping is one from Trader Joe’s that has sugar crystals, coffee beans, and chocolate in a container that grinds it over your drink.

My daughter pours a little half-and-half and a little syrup into a glass and tops it with sparking water to make Italian-style sodas like they serve at the Old Spaghetti Factory.  

I will be quite the mad scientist in the kitchen as I perfect my morning shake recipes. And you can bet that I’ll write about them.

See you tomorrow.

Sometimes you just have to get dirty

My bathroom sink was stopped up for a couple of days. What I really needed to do was remove the trap and clean it out, but that seemed too hard. I have all the tools, but I’d have to clean out the cabinet, find a bucket, unhook the trap, and clean. I wanted to fix it without getting dirty.

So first I tried the plunger. All I got was air shooting through the overflow holes and the water just taunting me with its stillness.

Next up, I snapped off a long piece from a plastic clothes hanger. The stiff plastic slid down the drain, but when it hit the bend in the sink trap, it stopped.

Another stoppage remedy I’ve heard of is pouring baking soda down the drain, then pouring in vinegar. The chemical reaction is supposed to loosen up clogs and dissolve them down the drain. So into the kitchen for our industrial size baking soda. I poured about a cup down the drain, which was now full of baking soda. I suspect it’s not supposed to have that much. Then I went for the vinegar, and saw that I have all kinds of fancy vinegars—balsamic, rice, wine—that no way was I going to pour down the sink. I discovered a bottle of cleaning vinegar I got a Target some time ago. I had expected the cleaning vinegar to be extra strength, but in fact it’s weaker than the stuff for cooking. I poured the whole bottle down the drain and got a spectacular foam show, but the sink was as stuck as ever—actually worse, because it had all that baking soda in it.

I gave up that night in favor of buying a sink snake. On the way home from work the next day, I stopped in Target and realized that Target shoppers never have complicated stopped-up sinks, because Target carries as many sink snakes as it does cold-blooded ones—none. I did find a liquid drain cleaner that came with a puny toothed strip to jam down the drain to catch the clog. I’ve used these before and they work great. This one, though, went as far as the bend in the trap and stopped. I poured in the glop and waited the half-hour for it to work. It released a few bubbles, but the water level remained the same.

By now it was almost 9 p.m. and I wanted to get to Lowes before it closed at 9:30. We drove to Lowes to discover that it now closed at 9 and was locked up tight. That sent us to the 24-hour Walmart where we bought both a toothed strip—this one longer, harder, and straighter—and a quasi-snake with a brush on the end.

In the end, neither tool worked, and I had to clean out the cabinet, dissemble the sink trap and clear it out. I found tweezers, hair clips, elastic bands, and some nasty unidentified junk in there. They were stuck so firmly that even a plumbers snake probably wouldn’t have dislodged it.  I ended up wasting time and money for a problem that could have been cleared up the day before. As a bonus, I now have a clean cabinet and a new mesh guard to keep the tweezers and hair clips out of the drain.

So next time I’m encounter a problem, I’m going to think of how I can solve it right then, maybe getting a little dirty, but without driving all over and shopping past my bedtime.

See you tomorrow.