Begin at the Beginning? Maybe not....

"Begin at the beginning.  And when you come to the end, stop."

So I've figured out my problem.  My problem is I always want to talk to people the same way I blog.  I want to begin at the beginning of my story and tell how I progressed and how my thought process altered and then show where I am now.

The problem with that method is that my first sentence is often in direct contradiction to where I am now.  So then when I'm at a party and talking, people hear my first sentence and are like, "Whoa, that's not right."

Then they get this look on their face like, "I'm not happy with what you're saying." 

OR WORSE, they interrupt me and say, "You really think that?"

And I'm all, "No! Wait! let me finish!" and I get all flustered.

And sometiems they are all,"I'm done listening," and I don't ever get to explain my story. Or worse, in trying to defend my story, I make some gross generalization that I'm way too smart to actually believe myself and totally cut the ground right out from myself.

I need to start at the end and then go back to the beginning.  Important information first.

Maybe I should blog that way too.  Important information first and then fill in the back story.  Maybe you all read my first sentence and are like, "Leaving now." and never finish it to find out how I learned something.

Come back, I promise I'm smarter now.

Just Eat It

I have reasons to make a change:

**I feel nauseous after I eat. 

**My mom had cancer when she was 37 and I am turning 34 next month.

**I'm struggling with low energy & dramatic mood swings.

**My kids need to eat more vegetables.

**I'd like to lose weight.

I have history: I grew up eating healthy.  

**Whole Wheat:  My dad made me eat cracked wheat mush nearly every day for breakfast whether I wanted to or not (on Saturdays mom made whole wheat pancakes.)   Any kind of baked goods, my mom made with 100% whole wheat flour that she ground in her electric wheat mill.  Bread, rolls, pasta, cookies- all 100% whole wheat. 

**No Sugar:  Mom only used honey for sweetening things like cookies.  When she made pancakes, she would make a little syrup on the stove boiling honey & water together.

**Lots of vegetables:  Most of what we ate either came from the garden or it was a kind of dried legume.  When we had meat, it was  a small part of the meal--a little hamburger in gravy to go over mashed potatoes.  The only time I ever saw a chunk of meat on the table was Thanksgiving Day and Christmas day.  Those days we had roast turkey, although one year, I remember going to Grandma Bennion's house and she had made some kind of a baked brisket.  It was so good. On the menu for dinner at the Hansen house depended on the season.

Early spring: Asparagus soup or Broccoli soup; lettuce
Late spring: boiled potatoes with cream sauce & peas; steamed green beans; milk; cantaloupe

Summer: tomato & cucumber salad; mashed potatoes; corn on the cob; milk;  or garlic & parmesan cheese coleslaw; watermelon

Fall: split pea soup; bread & butter; milk;

Winter: home-canned tomatoes poured over rice & homemade cheese; milk

The eating healthy train is derailed:

Then I left home to go to college.  I ate the cafeteria and reveled in the glorious bounty of meat and gravy, white flour pasta, cookies, pudding, and cake. 

I gained 10 pounds.

Then I went to basic training for the army.  I ate in the Dining Facility. Everything they gave me, I ate.  I was so worried about having enough fuel to work with.  I didn't eat syrup on my pancakes though--I couldn't stomach that much sugar in the morning.  I would pour the strawberry yogurt we got on my pancakes in place of syrup.  Saved me time anyway.

I gained 10 more pounds.  But to be fair, a lot of it was probably muscle since I went from not being able to do a single pushup to being able to pump out 42 in 2 minutes. 

Back on track for a little while:

When I got back to college, I suddenly couldn't stomach the cafeteria food anymore.  Eating made me feel nauseous. I still had to eat at the cafeteria (since I was living in the dorms) but I switched to omelets for breakfast and bagels & salad for lunch and dinner.  I just could not bring myself to eat all those meaty, gravy, fatty foods.  I lost 15 pounds, but I've felt guilty about it for a long time--that I "starved" myself skinny. 

Then about 3 weeks ago, I realized:  I didn't starve myself at all.  I just went back to eating like I did at home as a girl, or as close to it as I could at the cafeteria.  I chose to eat what didn't make me feel sick: vegetables.  The salads I ate were not just a bit of wimpy lettuce--the glorious thing about a cafeteria salad bar is all the chopped vegetables you want, and you don't have to be the one who chopped them.  My salads were a plateful of lettuce and broccoli and cauliflower and cucumbers and mushrooms and green peppers with chopped boiled egg and sunflower seeds and cherry tomatoes and baby carrots drenched in ranch dressing and cheddar cheese.  There is nothing starving about that!

Marriage (in other words, keeping the Man happy):

About 2 weeks after our marriage, the Man of the House asked me, "When are we going to have meat for dinner?"

I was confused.  "What are you talking about?  I made chicken soup this week, pizza, hamburger gravy and mashed potatoes. All those things have meat."

He said, "No I mean a chunk of meat." 

I did not know how to cook a chunk of meat.  But I had The Joy of Cooking and 2 Relief Society cookbooks full of cream of mushroom soup casserole recipes. I learned how to cook pot roast, country fried steak, pork chops, and 5 kinds of chicken.  After 2 weeks of eating a chunk of meat every day, I decided our budget couldn't handle that much meat.  Surely people didn't eat like this all the time?

But a fundamental shift had occurred in my thinking.  I no longer thought, "What am I cooking for dinner?"  I thought "What meat am I cooking for dinner?"  If there wasn't meat in it, the Man of the House insisted that it wasn't a "hearty" meal. 

I did manage over time to shift some of his opinions.  I made homemade cinnamon & raisin swirled bread and gradually, week by week, increase the amount of whole wheat flour in it until he liked to eat whole wheat bread.  He insisted that there wasn't a difference between margerine and butter.  I only used butter.   A month later at his mom's house, he put margerine on his bread, took a bite and made an icky face.  "What's this?"  he asked me.  "Oh, that's margerine," I said, probably a little too smugly.

I reduced the amount of meat I cooked as much as I could, using only 1/4lb of hamburger per quart of spaghetti sauce and making things like stir fry that had lots of veggies.  But my thinking was still, "What meat am I cooking for dinner?"  

I've blamed the weight I've put on in the last 13 years on 6 pregnancies, but I think it had a lot to do with all the meat and all the desserts my husband wanted me to cook and my inability to not eat just one serving of said dessert. 

Everybody is ready for a change:

The Man of the House has gradually come to his own realization about eating healthy.  He knows that the less processed a food is, the better for us it is.  He likes to eat spinach, kale, and bok choy.  And now, he is wanting to feel healthier too.

The Change: 4 changes for 3 weeks: 

**Green Drinks.  The plan is for the adults to drink 1 quart of green drink and for the kids to drink 1 cup to a pint of green drink every day.  Here is my recipe for now:

2 1/2 cups water
6 cups kale or spinach or beet greens (I'm working up the courage to try comfrey)
1/2 tsp truvia
1/8 of a lemon (peel & all)
2-3 cups frozen fruit
1-2 small apples (sometimes)

Blended in my wimpy Walmart special blender.

I won't go into all the reasons why this is good for you.  Suffice to say, we are getting more raw veggies than we were before by a long shot.  Kale & spinach are both packed with all kinds of nutrients. 

I bought The Green Smoothie Diet by Robyn Openshaw .  Much of what she said about how you should eat reminded me of what I grew up eating.  It was good to have facts to show the Man of the House and the more I read about the nutrients in raw food, the more I realized how much I had been worrying about cancer.   Now I know what to do about it.

**Less Cow milk.  Being the daughter of a dairy man, I grew up on the gospel of milk.  But after I read the research, I decided milk might not be the best thing for me.  I stopped drinking milk ( I was drinking a gallon a week- more than twice what the rest of the family put together drinks) and realized that nauseous feeling I had all the time was caused by the cow milk.  I'm considering getting a goat, to see if raw goat milk would sit better, but until then, no milk is better than processed milk.

**I have shifted my planning mindset back to "What vegetables and fruit are we having for dinner."  We aren't going vegetarian or anything, but my focus is on the vegetables.

**I'm cooking with olive oil and coconut oil and a little butter.  No more soybean based vegetable oil.


I also plan on  eating **Less Sugar, but I didn't manage that one yet.  I've realized that  I'm addicted to sugar.

Results:

 After 3 weeks of green smoothies (although I didn't make them every day- more like 3 times a week), only drinking 1-2 cups of milk per week, and using coconut oil instead of soybased oil:

I feel so much better!  I don't feel nauseous all the time and my mood swings have dramatically evened out.  (I think the Man of the House is massively relieved.)  Also, by the way,

I LOST 4 POUNDS.  That might sound like a little thing, but I haven't been able to lose more than 1/2 pound in a week for the last 12 years, and I had to carefully count my calories and exercise until I was red in the face and sweating buckets to do it.   

I lost this 4 pounds (more than 1 pound a week) without suffering; without exercising, without spending hours planning meals and counting calories, without feeling hungry, and I ate more sugar than I should have.  Like I'm talking about a whole bag of mellow cream pumpkins and 2 bags of Lindt chocolate truffles.  (sorry for not sharing, Dear Husband.)  Then there was Julia's birthday cake and after school cookies and etc. etc. etc. Just think what might happen if I did not eat sugar and exercised a couple times a week!


Now I'm 38 pounds away from what I weighed when I was married and suddenly it doesn't seem like a hard thing, but a possible thing that those pounds could go away.

Hurray for Green Drinks!!

One Lovely Blog

Rules

Seven lovely things about me: 

1. My favorite bird is the cardinal.  

2. I am not even close to the best piano player in anywhere, but I enjoy my own playing to anyone else's because I get the joy of creation and the joy of listening at the same time.

3. The best thing in life is family game night at Mom's house. 

4. The habit that that keeps surfacing when I least expect it is when I tell someone I have a goal and my head says to me, "Yeah but you never do what you say you're going to do."  I've really got to teach that voice in my head that if she can't say something nice, she shouldn't say nothin' at all.

5. Best breakfast I ever had was at a bed & breakfast in Eureka Springs.  It was the fluffiest oven pancake ever, covered in fresh strawberries.  The cook offered seconds and nobody else had seconds, so I didn't either. I really regret that choice.  

6. The most embarrassing thing ever:  

When I was in 8th grade Social Studies class, the teacher was talking about laws and what do we do if they are unfair.  I had just watched Les Miserables and raised my hand.  "I know about an unfair law," I said and began with the guy who was sentenced to prison for 5 years for stealing a loaf of bread and how he finally escaped 19 years later.  I was so engrossed in the story that I kept going and by and by I realized it, I had been talking like FOREVER.  The teacher and the entire class were silent and staring at me.  I had described the entire story to the end, but suddenly I couldn't remember the end because I was so horrified that I had been talking for so long and everyone was looking at me.  I'm not sure how I managed to end it and shut up, but that horror stayed with me so strongly that I HATED the thought of Les Miserables for the next 10 years.  

That teacher was my favorite teacher and I invited her to my wedding reception.  She came and talking to me, found out that I had majored in Elementary Education in college.  She said, "I always thought you would be a lawyer.  I can't remember why I thought that."  

Dun Dun Dun.  I know why.  

It's because she watched a little freckle-faced 8th grader full of fire and indignation rant at the thought of injustice and she thought that kid in pigtail braids might grow up and do something about it.  

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”

~Marianne Williamson, Return to Love

As a lovely blogger, I would like to nominate Carly The Evans Express.  She shares her family and her struggles and successes and I love reading her tiny adventures whenever she posts.  She is also a rockin' kickboxer.

Part 3 of 4

She said the man in the gaberdine suit was a spy.

So, every great blog must have a breathtakingly thrilling story of when the blogger (or bloggess) had a brush with greatness.  It isn't just a blog thing either.  Every red-blooded American has to have a chance to meet fame.

Now I have not spoken to a country music legend, nor have I ever had Will Wheaton send me a picture of himself collating paper, nor has James Garner ever kissed me in front of an elevator.  (Oh how I wish that last one were true.  If I ever did meet James Garner in front of an elevator, I would probably freeze with my eyes huge--like his own personal garden statue--or worse, stare at my feet until he left---which is why he didn't kiss me when we didn't meet in front of an elevator because I didn't jump up and down and gush, "Oh my gosh I LOVE you!!!" before staring at him with saucer eyes until he was forced to take action.

My close encounter with celebrity kind was not so close, though it was thrilling for me and my 3 Mary Kay sister consultants.

About 3 1/2 years ago, I drove up to St.Louis for a Mary Kay conference and stayed with 2 friends in the Renaissance St. Louis Airport Hotel.  As we entered the lobby, we were detoured around to the side of the check in desk because George Clooney was there and they were filming a scene for his movie Up in the Air.

For a good 45 minutes, we got to watch them reshoot this scene where George (who I fell in love with during the movie One Fine Day) cuts in front of a lady in line at the check in desk because he is a member of the premier club and can.  We were very giddy--but quietly giddy because we didn't want to be kicked out.

I watched Up in the Air when it came out on DVD and the scene we watched for nearly an hour took less than 5 seconds in the movie.  I kept rewinding it thinking-- "Is that it?"  Poor actress, you hardly got to see her face and they edited out her one line --which might have been a good thing, since it was only a 2 word line and one of the words started with F.

I watched the commentary and the director mentioned us.  He said, all self important, "That's right, a few hundred Mary Kay ladies showed up at the hotel for some convention or other while we were filming.  I've never seen so many pink velour leisure suits in my life."   This was a dirty lie.  None of us were wearing velour leisure suits, we were wearing business suits and none of them were pink, although there was many much pink rolly luggage.  Not funny, Mr. Director.  Not funny at all.

Despite having a liar for a director, it was a pretty good movie.  

So that was my chance to bask in the glow of Hollywood.  It was brief, but satisfying, and I don't have to explain to my husband why I kissed James Garner when I was 18.

Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental. ~Ogden Nash

It has been 9 years since I went to a dentist in a big(ish) city. 9 years ago, that dentist made so many jokes at my expense that I was embarrassed and humiliated. Today I made myself go because that was the responsible adult thing to do. Pumpkin Pie was due for a cleaning anyway, so we both went.

By the time I got to the office, I was dizzy with fear.

Half an hour later, we were both happy and all was well. Hooray for small town dentists who are nice and laid back.

We both had a baby tooth that needed pulled. (Well in my case, it was the root of a baby tooth that never dissolved and had worked it's way out like a strange little tooth.) And I still have my zero cavities for life record!

True to Family Tradition, we celebrated with icecream...and rootbeer !
Cups provided by our friendly good neighbor

Baby Dumpling didn't get any. She doesn't feel too bad about it. When she starts getting teeth, she'll be singing a different tune. As Mark Twain said, "Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething."

Speaking of tunes, to help us all brush more thoroughly, we now brush while a song plays on the CD player. That way, we ensure we have brushed for 3+ minutes. Our brushing theme song is only the greatest song on the planet for happy dancing:

Eyebrows

Okay. It seems that the 1st Lieutenant who sometimes resides in my house took MY camera with him to his State Emergency Tornado Cleanup Duty. Thus I can provide no pictures of the murderously short summer haircuts. (Which looked better in the light of day next morning, thankfully.) So if I wish to blog, I must content myself with blogging about something for which I already have pictures.

That means I have to tell a story on myself.

Sigh. Here Goes....

As you will note in the following picture, some people in my family have great eyebrows. Some people meaning all of my sisters.

Don't they look fabulous? p.s. this little pouf hairstyle is the one that earned me the polygamous hair comment from a friend. My sometimes resident 1LT reluctantly admitted upon questioning that it seemed a little old fashioned. I said, "But so & so wears her hair like that." He laughed and said, "Yeh, she does." Apparently that was not good defense on my part. dang't

So about a year ago, I decided that kempt brows would help with making me look more like I cared how I look (You can always tell a cheerleader/soccer mom by her thin eyebrows, even if she has no makeup, a messy ponytail and sweats on. You can also tell her by how skinny and tan she is, but I have limits. No offense intended to any of my readers who are skinny or like to tan a lot. I still love you, my skin just genetically will not tan. Plus I fear cancer.)

anyway...
I got my brows waxed for my birthday. After that I tried to keep them up myself. Last summer, while in Dallas for Mary Kay Seminar, I sat down in front of one of those lighted magnifying mirrors. It was amazing. I could see every little hair. I got a little carried away and perhaps overplucked a bit. (alot) In my defense, I think I had low blood sugar and it affected my judgement.

exhibit A:

Several months later it was again my birthday and I mentioned that perhaps I would go have my brows waxed.

My sometimes resident 1LT said, "Just don't go to the place you went last time. They gave you old lady eyebrows."

me (!!!! no way am I admitting I did that to myself!!!)

"Was it that bad? You didn't say anything at the time."

Him: "Well, you really couldn't do anything about it, so no point in making you feel bad."

Me: "Don't worry, I won't go back there." (note to self: Never pick up tweezers without having eaten something first. ever.)

I'd like to interject here that he said it all very nicely and picked just the right time to tell me when I could appreciate his advice and not have my feelings hurt. I really was glad to have been warned away from making the same mistake twice. So don't be hating the 1LT.

I think I'm doing better as the first pic in this post and the following one show.

Meh, I don't know. My eyebrows are still more round than angled. The thing is, I have round eyebrows. Just do. No getting around it. ha ha... around it ... round eyebrows... whew! I should get some sleep.

The thing is, I can't sleep tonight. It's one of those nights where I keep thinking of all the ways I fell short today and what a terrible selfish mother / friend I am. Sigh. I just have to do better tomorrow and be grateful that most of my friends are the really forgiving type. You know, the kind who always look at dumb things you do or say and think of the most positive wonderful reason why you did/said that. The kind who know I meant well even if it all came out horribly wrong.

I love you guys.

You help me to have hope that I can be better.

Thanks.

True Confessions

Once upon a time, there was a mommy who agreed to carve a jack-o-lantern for her childrens for Halloween.

Carving the pumpkin went pretty smoothly, even the part where she made the childrens scoop out the slimy seeds.

But then the mother realized that she didn't have any tea light size candles to put in the pumpkin's head and light up his face.

After searching around, she found a half-burned up pillar candle (blueberry scented). The only problem was, as many pillar candles do, this one had burned down inside itself so there were high walls of wax shielding the flame from the pumpkin's face, so no light could be seen.

So the mother decided to trim the walls off and expose the flame.

She did blow out the candle and pour off the hot melted bit.

She found a knife to trim with. *****Note: this candle was not made of that soft glowy see-through-ish kind of wax. It was a speckldy,hard, parafin-ish type of candle.

The mother began sawing on the candle. She did think, "hmm, I shouldn't cut towards myself with this knife." But the mother couldn't figure out a cutting angle that wasn't towards herself, so she just kept on and hoped for the best.

The tricksy knife slipped and stabbed the mother, right in the fleshy palm of her hand.

It was a very burning feeling. The mother took a quick peek at the wound. Luckily it wasn't very deep into her hand--just about an 1/8 inch under the surface, but about 1/2 inch wide and 1/2 inch long. She washed it, packed it with Triple Antibiotic Ointment and covered it with a band-aide.

The childrens had to be satisfied with a non-light up jack-o-lantern. But the mother made a delish-i-ous treat to distract them. So they forgot the whole thing.

The pillar candle was vengefully thrown in the trash.

The Mother was too embarassed to tell her husband about the stabbing, because she had been using a knife in a foolish manner.

So she never told him.

She didn't wash any dishes for about a week. Luckily, she had just washed them all recently, so the pile up didn't seem much out of place, and the husband made no comments.

After about a four days, the wound healed shut and not even a scar remained to mark the spot.

The mother cannot even remember for sure which hand was stabbed.

The mother does not let dishes pile up like that on a regular basis any more, so must be careful not to stab herself again, lest someone notice.

The childrens are older now and might tattle on her too.