OK?

Part of this journey to a healthier life certainly includes being healthier mentally. For it all to be okay, my head has to be okay. I have to find balance between the physical, mental and spiritual. I haven't posted a weigh loss update in a while because I have once again let my eating get out of control. I made a lot of changed over the last year and most of those changes are still in place. At home I do avoid overly processed "convenience" foods, most of the food I eat is whole and real foods. But the scale has been steadily creeping up because I keep trying to comfort myself with ice cream and chocolate chip cookies. Mostly late at night too which makes it even worse for me. I know food, not even ice cream is going to fix anything, but I keep eating it like it is the balm needed to soothe my soul.

Lots going on, but it basically boils down to just a couple of things. My faith is broken. Not just broken, but shattered into a million tiny pieces. A part of me misses it, but a part that keeps growing doesn't even care any more. And that bothers me. A little bit. It's not the first time I have had a crisis in my faith before, but it is the first time that I feel broken beyond repair. I know all the answers that my faith wielding friends would give me but I don't want to hear them and I know they don't want to hear my response. 

I am grieving children that I don't have and will never have. I want to be a mom more than I want to take my next breath. Ever since I was a tiny child I wanted to be a mom. But my arms are empty and my heart is broken. How do you get past this?

Lessons Learned, the Hard Way

I learned three very important lessons yesterday.

1) I am not a buff 20 year old man

2) when you go to Lowes and ask for help and two helpful associates are there discussing what you need, and they are talking about concrete and whether you need the 60 or the 80, they are not talking about grades of concrete.

3) Even though I am fairly intelligent, my stubbornness often surpasses my intelligence.

I have been having a problem with gravel migrating in my driveway. I just went out and bought 5 bags of gravel to fill the holes a couple of weeks ago and already my driveway feels like I am driving down an old dirt road. So I go to my helpful Lowes that is close to my house and ask for help. The first guy gave me a suggestion but since he was fairly new he suggested we ask someone else just to make sure. He walked with me to find the gentleman that he thought would best be able to answer my question. The three of us stood there for a bit with them asking and me answering questions. They determined that mixing some concrete in with the gravel would help it hold better. They discussed back and forth if I needed the "60" or the "80" package. The younger guy went with me and picked up a bag of "60" and added it to my cart on top of the two bags of gravel and the eight pieces of plywood that were already in my cart. Young, buff 20 year old picked up that bag of concrete like I pick up the three pound bags of cat food I sometimes buy. I go to pay for my items and the cashier scanned it in the cart. I get to the car and bend over to pick up my bag of concrete and oh, the pain. Those suckers are heavy!! 

I knew as soon as I did it that I hurt myself and that I should have asked for help.

I swear that I thought they were discussing the "60" and "80" like those numbers meant some grade of concrete, not the weight of the bags of concrete. And that young guy? When he picked it up off the ground, it looked like it took no effort at all. Live and learn.

Here is where the stubbornness comes in. Even when I realized it was too heavy for me, I still loaded everything into my car and came home and finished my projects. And today I am paying for it, and I mean really paying for it.

Kip started building a compost bin for me and built the frame. I do compost everything that I can and had dug down deeper than the frame, but I still needed some type of sides on it. When I first started composting back when I still lived at home with my parents, my Dad built my compost bin using discarded pallets. This one has the same dimensions, it is a 48x 48 cube, but with no sides, I was having trouble turning the compost. When I was at Lowes, I found some lumber that was the length I needed, so I got enough of them to build my sides. I am pretty happy with the results. 

After the day was done, I had repaired the holes in my driveway, built up the sides to my compost bin, trimmed the hedges along our fence line and turned my compost. 

Vanilla Extract

It interesting, since I have been eating more and more real foods I have found out how easy some things are to make. For instance, here is the vanilla extract I made. Simple as pie too, vanilla beans and vodka. I let it sit for about eight weeks before I started using it. the color is actually a little richer than it looks in this photo, I had it sitting on the counter when I was making a cake this afternoon and thought it looked pretty with the sun hitting it. 

You can kind of see my little kitchen herbs there in the window too. I have been working on redoing the kitchen and every thing is red and yellow. I found dome little tin buckets in the right colors and planted some herbs in them. They look cute sitting there in the window and just adds another pop of color to the kitchen.

Green Eggs and Ham Bento

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

I had already made our bentos when the schools decided to dismiss early. We are in for some bad weather and since the storms are supposed to hit around dismissal time, school got out early. Since I had already made them, I went to Samantha's house and ate with her there. She was thrilled with her green eggs. I made deviled eggs the way I normally do plus I added some chopped spinach to make them green. The ham is rolled up and then there are some mini toasts to go with the ham. The bottom tier has some cherry tomatoes that I halved and the added some fresh mozzarella and put them on an umbrella pick. The fruit salad is strawberries, bananas, apple slices and red grapes.

Chicken Salad Lunch

I made this lunch for myself using my Laptop Lunches bento box. It was a pretty simply lunch, just some chicken salad that I made with some grapes and almonds in it, along with a roll and some cucumber spears. I also had an orange in my lunch box too. I usually try to remember to toss some fruit in my lunch box, just in case lunch wasn't enough, but with that ginormous roll, that wasn't a problem with this lunch. 

I am getting much better at packing lunches. I struggled with lunches more than anything else when I started eliminating fast foods and highly processed frozen lunches. I do get bored with eating the same thing over and over again, so variety is a must for me. Kip doesn't mind eating the same foods as often as I do. I save the leftovers from dinner and go ahead and put them in either this bento or one of my Easy Lunchboxes and I am ready to go. It is almost as convenient as grabbing a frozen meal. I also save money and have much less food waste than I did before.