FAT

There's nothing like a vacation in the mountains for relaxing and enjoying the scenery.

Hold, please, while I download the ol' vaycay photos....

Huh. 

There is a reason that my commitment to fitness is renewed at this time every year:  vacation photos.  In this year's crop of pictures, it looks like the current me ATE the me of last year.  And I was no dainty flower last year.

Sigh.

On the plus side, I have already been attending classes in the pool at the Y since the beginning of August.  (Water = Happy Place = Exercise that I will do voluntarily, even if I am the only one in the pool that doesn't have blue hair and a helmet perm.)  And I am back on the old diet wagon.  Again.

Sigh.

Goal for this time next year?  To be fit enough to hike Uncompahgre next summer.

See you at the top!

Feeding Anger

I just ate a handful of peanut butter pretzels because I am mad at my husband.

Yeah, that'll teach him.

Resolution 2009

I guess it wouldn't be the New Year without resolutions. I've got all the usual suspects lined up: lose weight, exercise more, be a better wife and mother. I've made some or all of these resolutions for as far back as I can remember. And yet, here I am weighing in at almost as much as I did when Q was born(!). As a matter of fact, the only resolution I have ever kept was one I made 13 years ago to take vitamins.

So what is different this year? I have enlisted help. My friend Dana over at Cherry Soup is sponsoring The New Me Challenge 2009. I have signed up and I think that the support of bloggy friends will help keep me on track. Health management through shame? I like it! I am planning on checking in on Mondays with a diet/exercise/weight loss report. I hope to lose the 60 pounds that inspired me to start this blog, but I would be quite pleased with even half of that (that would put me back at my wedding weight. Not slim, but much healthier).

I am not proud. I will take whatever help I can get. Weight Watchers for sure. I am not opposed to supplements. I have a few in mind, but I'll take suggestions if anyone has any. I saw an infomercial (I know!) for something called a Full Bar that made sense to me. Or maybe I'll just eat less and exercise more. That would certainly be revolutionary!

I'll start on Monday. Because, you know, all diets start on Monday. At my house, anyway.

Busted

I'm on the phone with my dad the other night. The doorbell rings and I exclaim, "Ooh! That's the pizza guy." To which my dad replied, "What are you doing ordering a pizza?" Ouch.

I have fallen off the wagon. I have fallen off so thoroughly that I can't even find the wagon (or, you know, the scale) to get back on. Blah. And all those doctor appointments? Started with the super fun visit to the weighs-heavier-than-any-other-scale-in-the-universe scale.

I will get back at it. I will do a weight report as soon as I locate a scale.

Headless Chicken, Anyone?

So tomorrow is the big Baby Shower day. I had done all I could do remotely, so today I loaded up the offspring and drove to Ginormousville to gather up the rest. Thank god for my mom-in-law. She corralled the kids and shooed me off on the hunt. I left the house around 3:00 and thought I would be back in time for dinner. I walked in at - wait for it... 11:30.

My list of errands were pretty standard: paper plates, cups, napkins and plastic cutlery; booze for the sangria*; fruit for the sangria and iced tea; and the stuff to make the diaper cake centerpiece. I figured I would hit the craft store, liquor store, baby store and grocery store and be done. Silly me! You see, my problem is that I have these very specific ideas of how I want thing to turn out, so if the stores don't have exactly what I want, I have to add another store to my list to check for it there.

The craft store was disappointing. They had literally no party plates and depressingly few baby accessories that weren't either overly pink or downright tacky. They redeemed themselves slightly by having cute ribbon for the diaper cake, but I still had to add another craft store to my list.

Next I had to drive all the way to the outer suburbs to pick up a hard to find book, then back into town to the baby store. They had diapers and goodies for the diaper cake, but no party supplies. From there, I headed over to the mother ship: Target.

Target has historically had really cute paper goods, but apparently I was at the crappiest Target ever. They had only a few baby shower designs and only one that didn't make me gag outright. The rub here is that Chica loves a pretty cocktail napkin and all of these were ho-hum at best. Finally, I took the best of what they had to offer and headed on to the next destination.

The liquor store was the only stop of the day that was straight forward. Other than the clerk that laughed at me for mispronouncing Cointreau, that part was painless. Then off to another craft store and then another in pursuit of the perfect paper plate. Finally, I crossed town (again) to go to a party store and was able to find cutlery and napkins in an appropriate color.

By now it was 7:30. I called the awesome mom-in-law and she had to kids fed and on the way to the tub. I considered running back to the house to help, but they would have already been in bed by the time I could get there. So I grabbed some dinner (oh, Chipotle, how I adore thee! Diet fail.) and was able to meet up with a friend for coffee. We chatted until Starbuck's kicked us out, only to realize that I still needed fruit and tea from the grocery store.

When I got to the store, citrus was strangely scarce. They had lemons, but no oranges or peaches. I finally found some pitiful pre-bagged Texas oranges and compromised with frozen peaches. The tea, instant I'll admit, was similarly hard to find. Usually, I make the tea with two parts peach ice tea and one part lemon ice tea. No lemon tea. Sigh. Finally I dragged myself home. Whew!

So all I have left to do is to make the sangria and the tea and create an entire diaper cake. Piece of cake!

*Totally Awesome White Zin Sangria

1 750 ml bottle White Zin
1/2 cup peach schnappes
2 tablespoons tripplesec
1 lemon - thinly sliced
1 orange - thinly sliced
1 peach - sliced
10 oz. Club Soda

Mix alcohol and fruit in a large container. Chill for at least half an hour. Add soda just before serving. Serve over frozen peaches instead of ice so that the sangria wouldn't get watered down.

New Addition

Well, we have a new member of the family. No, I'm not pregnant. And I did not risk divorce by bringing another dog into the house. My husband brought home his new Jeep yesterday. It is a lovely dark green (not to be confused with the hideous baby-poo green that is also available), hard top, 4-door Rubicon. He managed to find one with only one undesired whistle/bell: the mega sound and navigational system, complete with Sirius satellite radio. After less than 24 hours, he is already talking about adding Sirius service to the monthly budget. Funny, when I said that I wanted those same features in my next car, he laughed himself silly. But after less than a day with them in his new car, they have become necessities!

He has spent every spare minute since returning home with the Jeep surfing the internet for off-roading accessories. I call it Jeep p*rn. And like many men with their, ahem, visual aides he wants me to look and be enthusiastic. He's all, "What do you think of this bumper?" And I go, "Oooh, baby. That bumper is so big." Then he says, "What do you think of this (insert unintelligible part here)?" to which I reply, "Any way you want it, baby." And so on. Snore. Are we done yet?

A very cool side benny of the Jeep homecoming is that my mom-in-law (love!) came into town to help with transportation issues and stayed to sit with the monsters kids so T and I could have an actual DATE! Without kids! Like a couple!

We went to the local Japanese steakhouse where we discovered the reason that everything tastes so good there is because the chef used at least a pound of butter in cooking our meal. Who knew the Japanese took cooking lessons from Paula Deen? Over-cooked shrimp aside, everything was delicious, if not diet friendly. Afterwards, we drove around town like a couple of teenagers (they roll up the sidewalks at 9 pm here in Small Town) and messed around with the new cool sound system. We topped off the festivities (in for a penny, in for a pound!) with ice cream.

You would think that after such a nice evening out that we would return home to do the thing that loving married couples do when someone else has put the children to bed. And we did. We went to bed early. To sleep off all of the butter.

(Belated) Weigh In

Blah. Up .3 pounds this week. Do you think it had something to do with staying home with sick babies and not going to the gym? Or maybe the Blizzard that T brought home to me and I snarfed like it was a new religion?

At least I made it back into the gym today. Another new water aerobics instructor. She was even better than the last one - who was awesome! After class I had to tell Q that I was sorry that I couldn't pick him up, as my arms were flippers. Couldn't he walk himself out to the car? An load himself up? And drive it home? Maybe not.

Weighing In

So is it "starve a fever, feed a cold" or "feed a fever, starve a cold?" Just to be safe, I have been following the "feed a fever, feed a cold" philosophy since I came down with this viral circus - sore throat! Drainage! Coughing! Fever! And mucus, mucus, mucus! You would think that feeling so rotten, I wouldn't be interested in eating.

You would be wrong.

Actually, it's not that I was eating all the time, just that I was eating the same garbage I was feeding the kids. If you could nuke it or make a sandwich out of it, we were there. A fair bit of fast food, too. And while Wendy's makes a mean salad, I'm pretty sure the Frosty on the side isn't helping matters (though it did feel good on my scratchy throat).

I avoided the scale altogether last week. Bad Weight Watchers member, no cookie for you! I reluctantly dragged myself onto it this morning. Conditions were only fair, but I got on anyway. The news wasn't as bad as I had feared. I am up .4 pounds. Considering all the crap I have stuffed in my maw in the last two weeks, it is a miracle that I didn't gain more. Hell, I probably have .4 pounds of junk in my lungs. Once I hack it all up I'll be on the right track again. (Can you get activity points for coughing? How about nose blowing? Jeez, I'm ready to be well again!)

B-I-N-G-E and Binge-o was her name-o

I struggle with depression. This galls me because I think of myself as a basically happy person. I'm happily married. I have two great kids. I have the luxury of staying home with my children - even if I don't always love it. The first bout was a pretty cut and dried case of post-partum depression after Z was born. Zoloft worked like magic from almost the minute I started taking it. I got off of it when Z was about nine months old. It was rough for a few weeks, but then I got to be my old self again.

Somewhere around this time is when my mom got the official diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. She had been getting more and more forgetful, so the only real surprise was how quickly it was progressing. At Thanksgiving, she was pleasantly dotty, by Christmas she had tanked. At this point I am seven months pregnant with Q, fully into the cocktail of crazy that is pregnancy hormones and the situation with my mom was the straw that broke the camel's back. My particular brand of depression manifests itself with an irrational desire to kill my husband. So once I started plotting his death, I knew it was time to talk to my doctor. Turns out that depression during pregnancy is a thing. Something like 10% of pregnant women have this problem. Taking the Zoloft presents less of a risk than a depressed mama, so I got back on it. Again it worked like magic.

Q's first birthday came and went and my symptoms didn't appear to be waning. My OB/GYN referred me to a shrink because my depression could no longer be characterized as post-partum. Big love to Dr. A! She let me know that I was one uncontrolled episode of depression away from lifetime membership in Club Crazy. She added Wellbutrin to my anti-depressant arsenal and I finally started to feel like myself again. T and the kids released a collectively held breath and we got on with things.

My mom continued to deteriorate and by summer she required more care than my father could give her on his own. We made the brutal decision to move her into an Alzheimer's unit. Then I would go for a visit and I'd be on the roller coaster again. Dr. A and I started scheduling my appointments to shorty follow trips to see my folks. In the year after my mom went to "her new place" as Z calls it, I have put on 25 pounds. Better living through chemistry? Bah! That's for sissies. Better living through Hostess! Then you can be depressed and fat!

So all of this is an excessive lead in to this act of idiocy: I made it to my dad's house without my meds. I tried to get a partial scrip to hold me over, but crappy state insurance and the mouth breathers at MegaMart were agin' me. They wanted to charge me $500! Apparently, my insurance card doesn't talk to my prescription card any more. But that's a whole other rant. So I gritted my teeth and hoped for the best.

The best didn't happen. Mom doesn't have good days any more, but before the Ike evacuation she had been having less awful days. Not so for my visit. Each visit was sadder than the one before, culminating with us dancing to the music on the radio and me bawling my eyes out. Though she had no idea who I was, she didn't want to let me go and was clearly feeling very sad. Brutal.

The kids and I left for home shortly after. I have had car trips across Europe that took less time. Two hours in, we stop to fill up and Z knocks over the DVD player, killing it dead. So here we are looking at a minimum of seven more hours in the car with no entertainment. I got stuck behind some huge farming implement going 50 mph in a 70 mph zone. For hours. I was like the thirteenth car back behind some machine the size of my first house. Z finally gave up and went to sleep, but Q decided that this would be a good time to randomly shriek until an icepick through my ear would have been sweet relief. Figured out that a blown fuse was the culprit in the non-functional movie player, so I stopped and bought a package at a gas station. They were the wrong ones. Stop at two more stations before I find the right ones. Systematically try - and blow - every one of them. Give up on movie. Feed children crap and try to keep moving, arriving home at 10:30.

And the cherry on the sh!t sundae that was my day? Aunt Flo paid me a visit after a two-and-a-half year absence. Joy.

It's enough to make you start drinking. Or if you are me, binging. I fell off the diet wagon in a big (mac) way. Gardetto's? You bet. Big Mac Combo? Only if you get a shake, too! Cookies? Bring it! Throw in some Zebra Cakes and it would be a full on reunion. Blah. I dread weighing in. I am my own worst enemy.