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Tuesday, September 2, 2014

A little normalcy

So last month, my dear boyfriend was told that his days of working from home were over. Not just for him, but for his whole team. He's been working from home since around 2005-2006, somewhere in there, because his job required quite a bit of travel. The travel has been less and less over the past few years [minus the basically 6 months he spent over in Europe a couple of years ago], and finally the powers that be decided it was time for all of them to come back into the office.

Now when I would tell most people that he worked from home, they would usually exclaim, "Oh, how nice for the both of you! You get to spend all of that time together since you don't work!"

Pfft.

PFFT, I SAY.

Don't get me wrong, I love the guy. But when you're with someone basically 24/7, things can get kind of ... well, sometimes it blows. I'll just be upfront about that. If you're one of those "OMG Schmoopsie and I do EVERYTHING together and I cry when he goes to the bathroom" kind of girls, more power to ya. I'm not one of those girls.

Plus, I have to admit, his working from home took a toll on his health. Mine, too. Too many McDonald lunches. Too much sitting around. Too many naps. Too many days in sweatpants and stretchy shorts that let you gain a pound or two [or forty] and you don't really notice.

When he told me he'd be going back to the office on September 2nd, I was shamefully excited. I started looking for dinner ideas. I thought about how I would clean the house. I thought about how getting out of the house daily would help him, too.

I might have taken advantage of my future plans in the past couple of weeks. I sat around. I played games. I didn't cook or clean or anything if I could help it. Things were going to change, and I wanted to wallow in the slothiness that had become our life.

Today when I woke up, the house was quiet. I got up, watched 2 hours of Gilmore Girls while I had breakfast [slow scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast], I tried on some jeans that I'd bought last year that didn't fit. They fit now. I don't know why they do, but they do. I put on a cute top, put my hair up, put on makeup. I went out to the grocery stores to buy items for the next few meals.

I feel calm. It feels so normal. Right now, I have potatoes cooling before I chop up veggies to make potato salad. I have some beautiful steaks just waiting to be seasoned and grilled when he comes home. The house is still kinda messy, but it's nice to know that tomorrow as I have dinner in the slow cooker, I can take my time cleaning it up. When he comes home tonight, we'll have dinner and actually have something to talk about. Oh, that's the other thing about his working from home. We had nothing big to talk about except the cat because both of us had seen and done the same things all day long. No bueno.

Yogurt for lunch today, since tonight's meal is big. And no pics, so here, shake it off.





Sunday, March 30, 2014

A Brief Freedom From Fat And Other Stuff

Yeah, I know. I haven't been here in a while. We'll skip the obligatory "This is why I wasn't here" stuff because I'm here now and that's what counts.


So sometimes I forget I'm fat.

No, no. Not in the "Hell yeah, everyone's looking at me because I look damn good with my four foot wide ass in these booty shorts." Trust me. I'll never be THAT girl.

Some mornings in that little dreamy spot between asleep and awake, I'm not fat. I make plans to leap out of bed, dance around the bedroom, paint my toenails, go for a run, do some shopping therapy for new dresses at Old Navy, bounce around the house and clean it... all of those things.

But when you're very overweight, those are just plans you have most of the time. You don't bounce or leap. Your knees and ankles wouldn't have it. You don't always dance around because you're tired. Cheap shopping therapy is out unless you want accessories because nothing really fits. You drag yourself out of bed and do the minimum of what you need to do because doing more can make you more tired, or hurt you.

I'm not looking for pity. Oh believe me, I realize that I've mostly done this to myself. Yeah, I do have some issues that makes weight loss really hard [let's face it, I worked out at the gym, had weekly personal training sessions, and ate right for a year and only lost 10 pounds in the altogether], but I'm not dumb enough to put all of the responsibility on a few health issues when I know very well that I sit too much and eat crap sometimes.

Today, though, I didn't think about being fat. Not really.

A few days ago, one of my Facebook friends posted a little article about magnesium deficiency. She's a registered nurse, but is "medium crunchy" in that she posts things about how to make yourself feel better naturally if possible rather than immediately going the pharmaceutical route.

I read the article. Then I read it again. A lot of it clicked with me. The insomnia, the irritability, the depression. I hadn't told anyone, but I honestly haven't been doing so great in the past few months. I haven't been sad all of the time, but I haven't been happy iether. I've mostly just been numb when I'm not angry. Then I headed to Google and on Wellness Mama's blog, she discussed it more in depth.

And I was shocked.

Out of the list of 26 symptoms that you might have if you are magnesium deficient, I had 19.

On her page, she mentioned the product Natural Calm. I skipped over to Amazon and took a look at the reviews. Out of just over 800 reviews, 600+ people gave five stars! I looked up several other review sites online for the product and the reviews were all just glowing. I really really wanted to get some! Luckily for me, our local Sprouts carries it and for $5 less than on Amazon.

I'll admit, though. I was a skeptic. I didn't think it would work. I mean, c'mon. I have all these issues! They can't be just related to me needing magnesium. A simple fix like this? No way. Nuh uh. Maybe it works for other people but it won't work for me.

But I tried it anyway. After all, why not? Then I would be able to say that I tried and it wasn't that so something else is making me crazy and sick.

I followed some of what other reviewers said to do. Just 1/4 of a teaspoon in some warm water at night. Magnesium is a laxative if taken in a bigger amount [think Milk of Magnesia] so I didn't want a big blow out or anything.

The first night I did it, I slept like a baby. I woke up and I didn't feel like I wanted to kill someone right away.

That night, I made my little mixture and went to bed. When I woke up, I didn't actively feel like death.

Last night, I took my little mixture. I had trouble falling asleep because of the coffee I'd had at 8pm but still, when I got to sleep, I slept well.

Today I was able to forget about my fat for a while. I cleaned the kitchen a bit, and the living room. I vacuumed. I cleaned out my cat's litter box and scrubbed her water dispenser and her food dish. I sang and danced all afternoon in the house. I opened all the curtains to let the sunshine in. I didn't even think about food. I felt good. I felt happy. I didn't feel like this massive, depressed, overly anxious, superfat person that I've felt like for months. I mostly felt like me again.

Of course, tonight I'm paying a bit for my little "Fat freedom." My feet hurt and my body is tired. But it's good, you know? It feels good.

I'll keep taking my Natural Calm. I'll keep seeing if there's some kind of improvement. If this was one of the fixes that I needed in my life, $20 is an awfully small price to pay for it.

And it hasn't given me the runs. So you know...there's that.