work/mom

I never wanted to be a working mom.
The plan was to stay home with  my kids after they were born--after all, I am their momma and I should be the one raising them, right?

For the first year and a half of Jameson's life, I was fortunate enough to be able to do this. England has an awesome maternity allowance scheme that meant I got paid for nine months while hanging out with my babe. Amazing.
When October/November of last year rolled around, I got a part-time holiday job at Lush and loved it--I worked 15-20ish hours a week, walked there, and didn't ever have to work very late. It gave Jameson some time with Papa or Ah-ma and Yeh-yeh and it was fine. I made some friends and got some much-needed independence.

However, once we moved back to America, Hubs and I both knew that the situation was going to have to change. Moving transatlantically is expensive, and we did it twice. It meant that we both had to work, no matter how much I didn't want to.
Now, the incredible upsides to our situation are many: my parents or sisters are able to watch Jameson while Hubs and I are both working, and if I have to leave him, who better than with his own family?
Also, my office is extremely relaxed and very willing to work with me on scheduling. Everyone here loves my little family and they know how important they are to me.
Hubs and I work opposite schedules, and although this can be tough in the marriage department, it's easier in the childcare one. He gets to stay home with Jameson while I'm at work, then my family has him for an hour or so until I get home and take over. So really, J's got at least one parent with him for most of the day.
Finally, my working has taught Jameson some much-needed independence and strengthened the bond between Hubs and himself. He is now perfectly okay with waving goodbye, saying "Love you, momma" and heading out the back door to play. He knows I'm coming back, and he knows he's with people that care.

So. There is a lot of good in this situation.

But. But, but, but.

Every day, my heart hurts to be away from my kiddo and it makes me want to cry a little when I get home and watch him do something I've never seen before, but everyone else has. Or when he talks in his own little gibberish-y language and Hubs automatically knows what he's saying while I'm sitting in the dark.
I never wanted to do this work-away-from-home thing. That's why I wanted to be a writer--so I could be at home with my kids and still contribute. And even though I know this situation is (probably) somewhat temporary, it's still hard. I feel like I'm running a race, and I'm running out of endurance. I'm experiencing that split feeling that so many working moms talk about--like you aren't doing a great job at work or at home because there is just too much going on in both places. Not to mention that trying to take care of myself has fallen to the bottom of the pile, because any time I am at home, I am thinking about how I need to be with my family.

I have no resolutions or answers for any of this, other than to just keep going. I'm still "technically" part-time, even though I work nearly 31 hours a week. (Tack on my commute, and it's probably almost 40.)
I am so fortunate to even be able to work, and to have a job, so please don't think I am unaware of this. I just feel torn in half sometimes, and it's an uncomfortable state that I'm learning to live in.

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may 4

"It is easy to die for Christ.

It is harder to live for him.

 

Dying takes only an hour or two,

but to live for Christ means to die daily.

Only during the few years of this life are we given the privilege of serving each other and Christ...

 

We shall have heaven forever, but only a short time for service here, and therefore we must not waste the opportunity."

-Sadhu Sundar Singh

 

 

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may 3

things that are gross:

-bare, dirty feet.
-eggs. and chicken. (while pregnant).
-old ladies that dress like skanks.
-skin that has been tanned so much it looks like leather.
-my toenails.
-the smell when you open the garbage can.
-fast food. (the chemicals. sick.)
-staying inside when it's sunny and warm out.
-any sort of bait-and-switch.
-drivers on the freeway during rush hour.
-warm, soggy cereal.
-gluten-free food that tastes like sawdust.
-my acne surfacing because of pregnancy and poor food choices.
-throwing up after looking at:
-lunchmeat
-the first thirteen weeks of pregnancy.

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may 2

I almost forgot today. Wouldn't that be typical. Failing on day 2. Ah well. I'm here.

I'm supposed to talk to you about something I'm good at or have a lot of knowledge about.
I don't even know what to pick. There are things that I'm good at that I feel like no one really needs an instruction manual on, or anything like that so writing out thoughts about it would be kind of redundant.

Let's talk about reading, because I'm staring at a book that I'm halfway through and currently contemplating just how on earth I'm going to get through the rest of it.
For as long as I can remember, books have been one of my great loves.
I know that everyone says this, but it's actually true for me. My parents went through a phase where they were worried about how social I was going to be, since I preferred to hang out inside and read a book rather than talk to people. Taking a book away became a very effective punishment.
Oh, and once, I had an $80 library fine. That's how much I love books.

As I've become an adult (and more specifically, a mother), I don't have as much time to just read as I used to. This has led to me paring down my selections pretty harshly, and I do something that I never used to do--stop reading a book halfway through and give it back if it's just not doing it for me. I used to have this strict, "Finish everything you start" rule, but I don't have that luxury anymore and if I'm not in it by the third chapter, I'm giving it up. It kind of makes me sad to have to be so harsh sometimes, but there you go.

I'll read anything if it peaks my interests, and I think it's one of the best ways to become well-informed about the world and the things in it. When I was a kid, I used to just browse the shelves at the library by sections, until I found a topic that sounded interesting, and then I'd check out a bunch of books about it. I'll still do that sometimes now, just to see what I find.

Anyway. That's enough.
This has been like pulling teeth to write, but I did it, so score one for discipline.

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May 1

Born a chubby little girl around Christmas time in 1988. Spent the first 18 years of my life  living in Salt Lake City, Utah, surrounded by mountains I didn't appreciate until I left and so many family members that we always had food bursting out of houses during our holidays.

In third grade, Mom decided to try something called "homeschooling". I just knew that it meant I got to stay home and learn about what I wanted, instead of sitting in a classroom and being bored for half of the day. My education consisted of strange things like running around the house to figure out how quickly the Earth, Mars, and Pluto revolved around the sun, preparing and hosting a medieval feast, complete with faux pig's head, and dissecting a worm on the kitchen counter.

I left for college at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago when I was barely 18. It was January, and we took a 40-hour train ride to get there. I met my husband within two weeks of arriving, and got engaged five months after that. We got married ten months later and moved into the tiniest apartment you ever did see, in the ghetto-est of neighborhoods. Some of my best memories involve that little studio.

Two years later, we moved to England, I gave birth to our first child, and 2 1/2 years after that, we moved back to Utah and found out that we're going to have a second child sooner than expected.
And that is that.

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this time around.

Being pregnant with baby #2 is a completely different experience than with baby #1.

I was so excited and anxious the first time around, reading everything I could get my hands on in order to try and understand what was happening inside my body, writing little love letters to that bean in my belly and making sure I was taking care of myself as much as I possibly could.

This time around, bebe was a complete and unexpected surprise and (brutal honesty coming up here) I didn't want to be pregnant again. Jameson has reached new heights of toddlerhood and I am exhausted--so when I found out I was going to have to do all of this over again, while continuing to manage the screaming caveman that runs around our place, I kind of wanted to cry. My nausea has been off the charts this time, lasting all day and making it hard to eat ANYTHING, let alone a healthy paleo diet that consists of lots of eggs and vegetables, two things I can't even look at right now. I am even more tired than I used to be (how is that possible?!) and I am getting fat.

It's been hard, friends. It's been really, really hard. I have struggled with wanting this pregnancy and WANTING to want this pregnancy. I have close friends who would give their left foot to be pregnant right now and I start to wonder why God would bless me with this when I was so not ready or even wanting it yet. I also think that, because I've been struggling with all of this, it's made it even harder to soldier on--because soldiering on wasn't something I had planned on. When we got pregnant with Jameson, I was ready and willing to be hunched over a toilet all day and able to sleep whenever I needed it. I don't really have that luxury this time around--I've got an office job that requires me to be at my desk, not sleeping underneath it or camping out in the bathroom. I've already got an outside kid that needs his mom as soon as she gets home and a husband whose face I barely remember because we only see each other when we lay down to go to sleep at night.

I've been trying to find ways to connect with this bebe, trying to get myself into a place where I was handling all of this a little better and really trying to be excited. I scheduled an ultrasound at nine weeks, hoping that seeing my little baby would help. Instead I found out that I'm two weeks behind and was only about seven weeks along--giving me an extra two weeks of misery before my wanting to throw up on everything goes away (we hope). The light at the end of the tunnel finally came when I went in for my first midwife appointment and she found the heartbeat with the Doppler. It was a moment of clarity--a realization that there is a baby growing inside of me who I will love just as much as Jameson by the time they are born. Another baby that I get to hold and smell and be a momma too, just like I did once before. Another person that came from Hubs and I, and is a tangible example of how I've found someone to love me through anything.

This is starting to make it all worth it. Even though I still hate eggs.

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It's true.

Baby #2 is coming!

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back.

Had you come up to me five years ago and asked me whether or not I thought I would be living in Utah anytime in the future, I probably would have laughed at you in that way I do and then said, "No. Not even."

God is funny like that sometimes.

I was driving to work today, and it was such a simple thing, seeing all of the "North to Salt Lake" freeway signs, but it was such a bizarre moment of realization when reality just slaps you in the face. I wake up to the mountains that I've missed for years every morning.
I drive the roads that got me through tears of triumph and tears of despair.
I see people who's faces have been missing from my vision for years.
I live in the place that was home for so long.

I just can't decide if it is home.

I think it's the closest thing to home that I've found so far. I'm just not sure that it's home all the way.
Then again, this is the woman with a divided heart speaking now--it seems that everywhere I've lived, I've left pieces of my heart and gathered up new facets of what "home" actually means.

For the moment, I'm more peaceful than I've ever been. I have yet to feel the restlessness that used to haunt me wherever we were, and I'm grateful for that.
But there have been snippets of moments where I catch myself remembering where I've been, and dreaming about where we'll go--the countries we'll see and the people we'll meet and the food we'll eat and I know, deep down: there is no such place as home.

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isolation.

Jameson didn't cry when I left the house for work this morning.

I know this is progress.
I'm glad my child wasn't left screaming and banging the door down after I walked out of it.
But at the same time, I had this strange, heart-wrenching moment of realization that he doesn't need me as much as he used to. Cue sadness.

Being a momma is the most contradictory, difficult, and completely illogical thing I have ever, EVER done.

I mean, I am happy that my kid didn't cry when I left this morning, but also kind of broken-hearted about it. How does that even add up or make sense?
Or how about those moments when I am so bone-tired, and Jameson just wants a little bit more of me than I think I can give him and I am overwhelmed with how much I love him, but also how much he drives me crazy.

I think the difficulty lies in making peace with the feelings.

It's easy to feel guilt over feeling 1200 different ways about your children--all at the same time.
It's easy to look at yourself and think, "If I were a better mom, I wouldn't be exasperated right now--I'd just be so thankful that I even have a child, not to mention the fact that he is healthy and smart and has food to eat." and then we dig ourselves into a hole with all of the ways we SHOULD be feeling piled up on top of the guilt for the things that we ARE feeling.

When did motherhood become so cut and dried and black and white?
When did it become easy to look around and see how we are supposed to be and all of the areas that we're failing in, instead of noticing the things we have managed to accomplish--like growing a tiny human INSIDE OF OUR BODIES, and then keeping said human alive and teaching them some semblance of manners, even if they don't always get it?

Motherhood is too hard to do alone, but we isolate ourselves anyway.
That is ridiculous, and it makes me sad.
People need people. We were never meant to be alone.
Period.

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a long time coming.

A month is a long time to be gone. I know.

The homemade mayo incident wreaked havoc with my keyboard, and then I moved to another country, bought a car and got a job.

Jameson's got more teeth than I can even count now, and they all seem to be coming it at night, which means less sleeping and more crying.

But we're good. We're doing okay.

I'm currently working at a law office as a receptionist. The people are great, the hours work well for mine and Hubs work schedules and I am happy to feel like I've got things to do. Oh, and I'm getting paid for it, so that's nice. Hubs is a waiter at a restaurant, and he's so handsomely charming that I know his tips are going to be crazy.

We bought an old Honda that only has 160k miles on it, and I'm starting to get used to her. There's always that thing with old cars--you have to get to know them before you feel like they're yours.

I've seen more sun in four weeks than I did in two years and it's amazing how happy that makes me. Even though it's snowed the last three days, I don't even care as long as the sky goes  back to being blue and the sun comes out for at least a little while.

Jameson loves "puuuppy" and "meow", and he especially enjoys chasing them around the house. They love him too, but they're a little less free with their affections. His Aunties are his favorite, and Grandpa has a special place in his heart. He loves Grandma too, but he knows that when she's around it means that Momma's gone to work, so he doesn't like to be happy with her as  much.

Life is simple, but it's good. It's good to work, and be with family, and have a small routine.
We are blessed, and this reminds us to be happy. Which we are.

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tomorrow.

This is it. (Again).

We're doing this whole "uproot your life" thing one more time and are currently less than 24 hours away from boarding a big old jet plane that's going to take us to America and our new adventure.

I feel like I should have more to say, but I think I'm just tired from all the packing, cleaning, throwing away, general madness that we've had going on. I wish I had a nice artsy picture of our suitcases for you like I did last time, but, alas I do not.

Our timing is a little better this time around, I think, since we were scrambling to get everything packed and ready the morning that we were leaving two years ago, whereas now, we're ordering Indian food and just cleaning the last few corners. Hopefully we can get a decent amount of sleep tonight, since we've got a good 24 hours of traveling ahead of us.

Pray for this little family, if you think about it. The flight won't be quite so easy, seeing as how that little bean baby that was in my belly is now a full-grown toddler that doesn't like to sit still. Also, we've got three flights before we're in that blessed place I call "home" and it's going to be lots of work getting there.

Catch you on the flipside, England.

See you tomorrow, America!

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the end of [round two]

If there is anyone still left reading this, I'm sure you're wondering where the last five days or so of food logs went.
The short answer is that my whole30 turned into a whole25.
You can judge and shake your head and leave it there, if you'd like. However, if you want to moral of the whole thing, feel free to stay awhile.

Friday was Day 25.
We went into London to meet up with a dear friend of Hubs who was one of the groomsmen in our wedding. He had come to London on a business trip and changed his flight to stay an extra day just to hang out with us. So, so cool.
Now, I have my list of "go-to" places when I'm in London, and I am not for one second making excuses for myself when I tell you what I am about to tell you. What I am saying is that I am learning about balance and priorities.
We had Jameson with us for the day, and by the time he'd finished napping in said friend's hotel room, and we got ourselves out into the city, it was already late afternoon. None of us had really had anything much to eat since breakfast and we were walking everywhere and it was COLD.
Jameson was miserable, I was miserable, everyone was miserable.
Plans were to head to the Aquarium and find a place to eat around there--except that none of my "approved" places were really in the vicinity. So, by the time we got to Westminster and bought Aquarium tickets, it was 3:30, Jameson was screaming from frozen fingers and an empty belly and I realized that it would do more harm than good to drag everyone to a tube station just so I could order plain chicken and a salad. Which means that we walked into a pub, and I ordered a hamburger (an effort to find the thing best option) which ended up being one of those frozen-patties-of-something-awful, and I broke a whole30 on craptastic food.

But you know what?

I don't feel bad about it.

I'd spent the last three weeks controlling, controlling, controlling EVERYTHING that went into my mouth--giving myself anxiety about too many carbs, eating too late at night, should I snack on fruit, is my body still burning fat, etc. But when it came time to decide between myself and my family, there wasn't a choice. I had this brainwave of realization that there has to be an element of balance to everything we do. It was more important to get Jameson out of the cold and some sort of food into him than it was to stick to my rigid principles "just because". So I made a conscious choice to eat off-plan, and I was absolutely fine with it.
Was I sad? Yeah, a little, because I don't like not-finishing things.
But did I regret it? Nope. And that was kind of surprising.

If I'm honest, my one big concern was how everyone else was going to take it.
I'd gotten so many people on this Whole30 wagon that I didn't want to "fail" and have them all look at me and say, "Well, if she does it, we might as well do it too."
But part of this balance is realizing that I am not responsible for anyone else and their experience with this. It is not my job to worry and obsess over other people and their diet. Should I answer questions and be supportive and encouraging?
Yes. Absolutely.
Do I need to lie in bed at night, heart-pounding, and adrenaline rushing as I think about how this bad experience they're having is somehow my fault and I need to find a way to fix it?
No. No way.

I feel like it's also important to note that this was my second whole30--I've done this before, whole hog, for 30 days completely. So that also contributed to my "okay-ness" with cutting it short. I already know (because I finished the first one and did the reintroduction) that I don't handle dairy or gluten well, that grains leave me massively bloated, and that I have a sugar dragon bigger than Smaug if I'm not careful. So I wasn't losing out on that part of the experience--learning what is and isn't okay for my body, because I'd had that already.

This was a hard round, you guys. I came into it expecting so much more victory than I felt like I got.
But maybe that was the point.
It's possible to take a good thing and make it a less-good thing by obsessing and worrying over it so much, that it then becomes a monster eating up your life rather than something to complement and enhance your life.
I need balance.
I need to remember that making a less-healthy food choice does not make me a bad person or a failure.
I need to remember that there is no ideal for my body--because it's mine, and I'm the only one that really knows what healthy feels like inside of it.
I need to remember that everything is a choice and I can choose whatever I want--more healthy or less healthy--and be okay with those choices.
I need to be okay with the fact that sometimes I'm going to order a pizza and drink a soda and eat some really good ice cream because my husband had his wisdom teeth out that afternoon and I need to take a break from overthinking everything (read: what I did last night).
I need to be okay with then eating fairly strict Paleo after that and knowing that it's not because I made a less-healthy choice the night before, but because I know that it's going to make me feel better than that pizza did.

So, there's a lot here.
I'm still working through it all and processing.
I'm learning how to live in the tension between too-much and not-enough.
Sadly, I'm pretty sure that it's something I'm going to have to live in for the rest of my life. But the good news is that I've done it, I know I can do it, and I want to do it--more than I want to self-medicate with pie--and that is the important part.

Talk to me.
How was your whole30? If you haven't tried it--will you? If you have--are you done with the "paleo" bandwagon forever?

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Days 21, 22, &23 [round two]

Day 21
Meal 1: 2 eggs, 2 sausages, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: Leftover garbage stir-fry, leftover chocolate chili w/spinach, 2 sweet potatoes w/almond butter and cinnamon

Snack: Apple w/almond butter

Meal 3: Zucchini stew, sweet potato w/almond butter, herbal tea

Day 22
Meal 1: 2 sausages, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: Pork chop, 2 eggs, 2 sweet potatoes w/almond butter

Snack: Apple w/almond butter

Meal 3: 3 sausages, 2 eggs, 2 bacon, 1 bell pepper

Day 23
Meal 1: 2 sausages, 2 eggs, 1 bell pepper, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: 1 garlic-lemon chicken leg, 2 bacon, 3 sweet potatoes w/almond butter and coconut milk

Meal 3: Nando's 1/2 chicken, side salad w/balsamic & olive oil, berries w/coconut milk, 1 sweet potato

I'm a bottomless pit lately, guys.
I don't know what's up.

I feel kind of funky hormonally, like I don't know what's coming (you know...THAT time of the month. I'm sure you all wanted to know that). But seriously, it's like everything is all out of whack, and I know that it's probably got something to do with still breastfeeding Jameson, but it's annoying because I can't tell if I need to cut myself some slack or just man up and deal with things.

I'm realizing I do not eat enough vegetables and I need to be more intentional about it.
I'm one of those Groundhog day eaters--I can eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch with a bit of variety at dinner and be happy. I like what I like, I like my routine.
The problem is that my routine, as of late, has not had enough vegetables in it and this needs to change. Part of next week's prep is going to be me spending a ton of time chopping, peeling, and steaming vegetables to just have ready to throw in with a meal.

As always, I'm still concerned with how much I'm eating/snacking at night, but I feel like stressing out about it is just compounding everything and making it worse. So...I'm going to try to not freak out about it anymore. Yeah, I eat a lot of sweet potatoes. Yeah, sometimes berries and coconut milk tastes like dessert and I eat it because I want that. Yeah, my goal for this whole30 was to work on my emotional issues with food.
But. But but but.
This month has been emotional for a lot of reasons not relating to food and I still need to remember that this is a journey--I will never get to a "perfect" place in my eating habits. They're going to change and shift and flux depending on where I am and the circumstances I find myself in. And that's okay. Because it's not about the food, it's about me. It's about how I feel about myself and my body and that's what I need to work on, not whether or not eating a sweet potato at 9 p.m. is going to make me fat.

So, the goals for this last week of strictness?
--More vegetables. Prep containers of veggies to add on as a side to my meals to help fill myself up and get more nutrients in.
--More sleep. Bed by 10 p.m. or as close as I can get it. Not enough sleep throws my hormones out of whack and this doesn't help anyone.
--Three workouts. I need to start enjoying what my body is capable again and part of this is getting physically active. I've got time for three workouts this week. Done.

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days 20 & 21 [round two]

Day 20
Meal 1: 2 sausages, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Snack: Banana

Meal 2: 1 1/2 pork chops, 1 sweet potato

Snack: Orange

Meal 3: 2 sausages, 2 eggs

Snack: Apple

I did a really bad job at eating vegetables today, but it was a Sunday and the snow fell thick and heavy and all I wanted to do was stay warm and snuggly in my apartment with my guys and not think about things too much, so that is what I did. I also ate that apple at like 10:30 p.m. because I was FaceTiming with my bff, and just decided to eat it. I ended up staying up til 1 a.m., so my body had time to use that sucker up before I went to sleep.

Every day is practice at me stepping back from controlling everything and just being who I am. Snacks and all.

Day 21
Meal 1: 1 1/2 sausages, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: Garbage stir-fry w/1 egg, 1/2 avocado, handful olives, 1 sweet potato

Snack: Banana

Meal 3: Bowl of chocolate chili w/handful spinach, 1 sweet potato

There is a decent amount of snow today and I am kicking myself for not making sure that Jameson had some form of snow boot or something, because now we're trapped inside and this spells bad news for my absolutely physically active 18-month-old toddler. Seriously, if he doesn't get out, he doesn't sleep which means that I don't sleep and this means that my anxiety ratchets up a few notches.
Dang snow. Dang country that doesn't know how to deal with snow.

Dinner was amazeballs. I am not even joking. I halved the recipe this time, but next time around I might just double it so that I can freeze the leftovers because it is that good. I threw a giant handful of spinach in the bottom of my bowl to make sure I got some veggies in there as well and it was so tasty. Seriously. Chocolate in my chili, I will eat you any day. 

I'm eating two sweet potatoes today because I can, and because the groceries came and the sweet potatoes that I ordered ended up being little mini sweet potatoes, so I'm justifying it. Plus my vegetable consumption has been way too low the last few days, so I'm trying to remedy that.

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day 19 [round two]

Day 19
Meal 1: 1 sausage, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: Leftover garbage stir-fry, 1 fried egg, 1 sweet potato

Snack: apple

Meal 3: 3 bowls zucchini stew, 1 frozen banana blended w/coconut milk & coconut butter

The sugar dragon was roaring in full-force today, and I decided that I just had to be lenient and cut myself some slack--so I did that whole "blend a frozen banana to make fake ice cream" thing and tried to let that be sufficient. It did actually taste really good, and I blended up two but only ate one, so at least I know I've got some form of willpower.

I was reading this article the other day about perfectionism and key traits of being a perfectionist, and it was scary just how much stood out. I mean, it's something that I joke about and use in job interviews ("Tell us about a weakness of yours...") but sometimes it can be so true that it's damaging. In fact, one of the main things that stood out to me was the paragraph where the author talked about how perfectionists always feel guilty about everything, because they're not measuring up in anything--cleaned the house but neglected your kid? Guilt.
Cooked dinner but left the kitchen a mess? Guilt.
Played with your kid but snapped at your husband? Guilt.
Following the whole30 rules but still have wicked cravings for pizza and five sweet potatoes a day? Guilt.

I've found that I have a hard time resting in the tension of being an imperfect person and saved by a perfect God. I don't know how to deal with this--it's too much for me. It doesn't fit into my exact, 90-degree-corners, square box that I like to organize and line things up in. It's messy and inexact and means that I have to be messing up in some area of my life at all times and I HATE THAT.
Romans 7 has been my heart cry for years, especially verses 24 and 25.:

"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Sometimes I forget that I serve a God who doesn't mind mess, and chaos, and disorder, as long as I am loving Him first. I forget that He doesn't sit there and look at the state of my house, and the contents of my meals, and the crafts I (don't) plan for my kid and judge me on my success in these areas. I forget that the only things that matters is what I do with this messy life and who I live it for--am I going to live in a perpetual state of guilt because there's crayon on my carpet and I just want to eat cheese? Or am I going to suck it up and get outside of myself and embrace this wide, beautiful world and tell them how much Jesus loves them in spite of their own mess?

God, I want it to be the latter. 

Help it to be the latter.  

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day 18 [round two]

Day 18
Meal 1: 2 sausages, 3 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Post-Wo: 1 fried egg

Meal 2: Garbage stir-fry, 1 fried egg, 1 sweet potato, apple

Meal 3: 3 fried chicken legs, brussel sprouts, 3/4 orange, herbal tea

Do you know what is a really craptastic thing to do to someone on a whole30?
Ask them to bake cookies that they have to roll out and stick their thumb in, but can't eat (or even lick their fingers from). Pure, unadulterated torture.

This round two has been hard, guys. Hard in a weird way. I feel like it's getting harder as it goes on, which is pretty much the opposite way it went the first time around. I'm annoyed. I don't get why I have to have such a twisted relationship with food, and even though I know that it's a symptom of a deeper, underlying issue having to do with perfection and thinking I won't ever measure up, it's exhausting to try and fight all the time.

It's strange because I feel like "following the rules" has gotten easier--I'm better at cooking, I know what ingredients to go for, I've got plenty of recipes and go-to meals, I can order for myself when we go out and not eat the rogue cheesecake sitting there--but I cannot get over the desire I have to eat 4 sweet potatoes at 10 p.m. and how much I have to analyze it.

Whatever.

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days 15, 16, & 17 [round two]

Day 15
Meal 1: 1 1/2 sausages, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Snack: Apple and almonds

Meal 2: Leftover Zucchini Stew, 1 sweet potato

Meal 3: 2 bowls beef stew

Today was good. Went to go see Les Mis and I cried. More than once. Would you believe it if I told you that I'd never actually heard what happened in the story until today?
I know. Travesty.

Day 16
Meal 1: 2 sausages, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: Leftover beef stew, 1 sausage, 2 eggs, 1 sweet potato

Meal 3: Cottage Pie (Well-Fed), apple

Hubs worked a graveyard tonight, so it was just me, the couch, and Teen Mom.
I'm so classy sometimes.

Also, I finished the second season of 'Dr. Who' and wanted to throw my remote at the tv. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!

Day 17
Meal 1: 2 sausages, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: Plain rump steak, 1/2 grilled tomato, 1 grilled mushroom, large salad w/balsamic and olive oil, 1/2 avocado

Snack: Apple

Meal 3: 2 chicken legs/thighs, brussel sprouts, 3/4 sweet potato

Went out for lunch with a friend and managed to stay compliant, even with a bowl full of fries/chips sitting in front of me. I was actually really impressed with myself though, because even though I REALLY wanted them, eating them was just not an option.

Can I just talk about how the country is expecting a "major" snowstorm tomorrow with a grand total of 5-10 centimeters of snow forecast to fall? And also how annoying it is that everything will close and I will be left with a cranky Jameson cooped up in our tiny apartment because no one in this country has heard of salt trucks and snow tires?
Sometimes I just want to be like, "It's just FROZEN WATER. It is not going to make your car roll over and kill you because it's blowing across the road."
Oh well. We'll see what happens.

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day 14 [round two]

Day 14
Meal 1: 2 sausages, 2 eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, coffee w/creamer (brought to me in bed my the amazing Hubs. My first breakfast in peace in weeks!)

Meal 2: 2 bowls zucchini soup, 1 sweet potato

Snack: 1 apple

Meal 3: Roasted chicken, carrots

Snack: Apple w/almond butter

Not a bad day today.
Took Jameson out in the rain because we think we've figured out that he needs to run around outside for awhile in order to sleep at night. And when the choice is between wandering in the rain for a few hours, or sitting awake at 2 in the morning praying for sleep, we chose rain.

Hubs has been a little crazy about the packing lately, but I know the stress is starting to wear on him, so I spent a good portion of the night sorting through boxes and taking pictures down. The walls are now empty, the bookshelf is littered with a few knick-knacky remains and I've gone down sentimental memory lane reading through all the cards and letters from nearly six years ago, when Hubs and I first met.

Ah, love.

Also, in case you're on the edge of your seats wondering, I'm officially a Who-vian. (My awesome-ness and enviability just went through the roof, I know). I finished the first season, cried at the end of it and fist-pumped whilst sitting by myself in the living room. Amazing.

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day 13 [round two]

Day 13
Meal 1: 1 1/2 sausages, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: Nando's mixed leaf salad w/plain chicken and olive oil/balsamic

Snack: 1 sweet potato

Meal 3: Leftover Tex-Mex carnitas salad, 1 bowl berries w/coconut milk

Snack: 2 apples w/too much almond butter.

Okay, the snacking and extra food is going overboard. I've got to get this under control.
I think maybe part of it is that I know that people are reading this and going through their first whole30, so I'm afraid that they'll look at these entries and be like, "Well she ate five sweet potatoes at midnight, so why can't I?" and then that makes me panic and eat more.

The issues with this are, obviously, I need to get over myself and let people just DO their whole30 without worrying if I'm influencing them negatively. And I need to get this emotional eating/snacking/cravings under control. I had this issue the first time around--the stress about the timing of my eating, how much I ate, what I ate, etc. (I like strict rules and guidelines, as if the whole30 rules aren't strict enough--I want times, and measured amounts, people! Heck, just give me a menu and tell me what to eat!) I posted about it on the forum and the response that stuck out to me the most was a wonderful person who said something like, "Stressing about this is going to take away a lot of the positive impacts that eating this way is trying to give you. Can you stop worrying about amounts and times, and just eat. good. food. for awhile?"

That felt so freeing, someone giving me permission to just eat and not worry about if I should or shouldn't eat something, whether I was going to have too many carbs from this or that, was this just a craving or was I really hungry (I mean, I felt pretty hungry!) But for some reason, when I decided I'd go for round two, I thought to myself, "Okay, now you have to deal with those emotional ties you have with food. No more 'free eating', this round is about getting your mind under control." Except that seems to have backfired, because I'm now even MORE anal retentive about what I'm putting in my mouth and when and it's causing stress and so I'm eating my stress. Awesome.

I don't know what the answer is yet. I can't say, "Yes, okay I'm going to eat what what I want when I want" because then I literally would be eating like four sweet potatoes a day, especially right before I went to bed. But I also can't keep trying to lock myself into this mental extreme because it's stressing me out and ruining everything I'm trying to accomplish.

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day 12 [round two]

Day 12
Meal 1: 1 1/2 sausages, 2 eggs, coffee w/creamer

Meal 2: Leftover zucchini stew, salad w/olive oil and balsamic, 1 sweet potato

Snack: Apple w/almond butter, grapes

Meal 3: Tex-Mex carnitas w/lettuce and tomatoes, 1/2 avocado, berries w/coconut milk, herbal tea, 1 sweet potato (about 1 1/2 hours after dinner)

Dudes. I'm hungry lately.
I'm kind of worried about all the food I'm consuming. I mean, I'm trying to deal with all of these mental food issues I've got going on and so sorting through whether something is a craving or not has become a beast. Especially with the sweet potatoes. They're still slaying me.

To be really honest, I'm kind of worried that I'm eating too much and I won't burn off any more excess fat that I've got hanging around. I KNOW that this is not why I'm doing the whole30, and I've lectured so many people about not focusing on the scale, but I guess when it's been a huge factor in your life for the past twenty years, it's not something you're going to overcome in three months of "eating awareness".
I am happier with the way I look, but not happy, full stop. And I know it shouldn't matter, and I should just appreciate how much work my body does for me and enjoy feeding it good food (which I do), but, alas. There is always a "but" waiting around.

Hubs has been manically running around trying to get things sorted for the move, but I feel like we're kind of in a weird time space right now--things are coming up quickly, but we're not quite at the point of packing everything up and living out of suitcases or sleeping on air mattresses. We still need the stuff in the kitchen to cook with and the couch to sit on, etc. I hate this tension--I wish we were just THERE already. In the meantime, I am trying to spend my time enjoying England and the place I'm at, because I know I'll miss it soon, and it will take me by surprise and I want to be prepared for that.

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