There’s a post over at The Thousand Teeth about my visit to the neurologist, in case anyone is interested. 🙂 If you’re not interested, then here, have a picture of a weird flower:
Category: health
Happy Mother’s Day!
Since it’s Mother’s Day, I didn’t get up and do my exercising right away. I got up, threw on clothes, and took my family over to wish my mom a happy day & give her our presents (a book full of prompts for her life story and a pink bromeliad). She suggested that we go to Einstein’s Bros. for bagels, so we took her up on it. I had a whole wheat bagel with onion & chive schmear and a cup of coffee (450 calories). 
After we played a while in the backyard, we had lunch: leftover pizza (380 calories for 2 slices, I didn’t finish my entire portion, though).
Nick had to work today, so the kids and I played in the backyard a while, then did some shopping for my mother’s day gift (jewelry from the $1 jewelry store), and watched Battle for Terra on Netflix. We had a little snack: sweet tarts and Reese’s mini eggs. I had a small serving (8 sweet tarts= 60 calories and 1 Reese’s mini egg = 21 calories).
Then Nick came back and took the kids to the grocery store while I did my exercising. Today I didn’t follow a video. I got some medium strength tube bands and did 10 reps each of the chest/arm exercises. After they came back, a friend of David’s showed up unexpectedly, so I took another walk (I don’t get why D’s friends keep appearing out of nowhere uninvited) to calm down, about 30 minutes.
Dinner was beef & barley soup, bread, and a bit of cheese, with some wine for the grown-ups. I don’t have calorie totals for this particular meal, but based on some internet research of similar soups, I’d guess it was around 250 calories for the soup, another 100 for the wine, 100 for the bread, and about 50 for the cheese. After dinner I had a tiny little serving (measured on our food scale) of ice cream for another 250 calories.
So all in all, I was a bit high today, but I did do 2 bouts of exercise instead of one (that “calm down” walk was a planned one, just made more frenetic by my lack-of-calmness.)
Day 7 fell on the Sabbath and my parents were in town. We got up, walked over there (the short way), and had what passes as breakfast at my mom’s house: store bought sweet rolls. Checked the calorie count and ate just one (220 calories). Also had a banana and a cup of coffee.
Took a long walk with my mom just before lunch, slower than I’d have liked, but still we were out and about. Lunch was a turkey bacon, cheddar, and toast sandwich (total calories: 350).
Snack at church was a glass of artificially sweetened lemonade (0 calorie), a handful of popcorn (55 calories), and a devilled egg (approximately 65, which is pleasantly low).
Dinner after a long day of walking around doing hospitality (putting out snacks, cleaning tables, sweeping floors, washing, drying, and putting away dishes, etc) and waiting for kids to finish filming their program was pizza & salad & more 0-cal lemonade. I ate two full pieces of pizza (380 calories) and a small salad (50 calories) and a mini cupcake (80 calories) and a mini brownie (100 calories). (Most calorie amounts approximated from Calorie King.)
I felt like I’d indulged a bit, but looking at the numbers I am very cheered. So actually, all in all, not a bad day at all.
Day 6 I got up and tried to do my 10 minute Dance Solutions video. I have several problems with it: 1) There’s no instruction, just dancing. 2) I am trying to lose weight, which means that I cannot see all my muscles, so I have no idea which ones are moving. 3) I can’t dance. So after several minutes I gave up trying to figure out what she was doing and spent the remainder of my time bouncing around energetically whichever way I could. I figured that cardio was cardio at this point. My heart was beating super fast, my arms & legs were flailing around, it was all good. I also ended up walking back and forth to my parents house a few times (and mostly took the long way ’round).
Food: I had another one of my less-than-inspiring-at-this-point breakfasts. Skipped morning snack because I knew I was meeting my parents for lunch. Lunch was at a place called The Purple Pig. I should have realized that this would mean less-than-stellarly-healthy, but I did expect there to be some sort of salad option. Alas, no. Even the safe-sounding new potatoes turned out to be cooked mush with a pound of butter in it. I ate the brisket sandwich (surprisingly small compared to my parents food) and some of the broccoli rice casserole (I farmed out the rest under the flag of “You don’t have any of this, try some!”) and since everyone agreed the potatoes were bad, I didn’t feel bad leaving them on the plate. So I didn’t really do too terribly badly. Skipped afternoon snack as well, since we were doing Mother’s Day Celebration dinner.
We went out to BJ’s Brewhouse and Grill. Even though I’d declared it my “cheat” night, I still wanted to not go too overboard, so I chose off the “under 575 calories” menu and had a yummy chicken pesto flatbread with a side salad. After dinner I had a Klondike bar (only 220 calories, much less than regular ice cream, strangely).
Day five was when I fell apart.
I got up, couldn’t find the exercise video I wanted, so had to do a different one. It was for the balance ball, an upper body workout, and really, it did go okay, but my head was down towards the ground a lot, which made my headache (day 5 of headaches, day 5 of fitness. a coincidence?) so much worse. Surprisingly, as the day wore on what I missed the most of my workout was the cardio part.
Breakfast was fine: another variation of oatmeal, fruit, and tea. Snack was unexpectedly a mini muffin at Greg’s MDO (muffins for moms, whee). Lunch was a small portion of a low-calorie version of mac-&-cheese with some yummy herbed zucchini. Dinner was pasta & sauce leftovers.
Everything was all right to that point, but after the crazy day I had (nothing went right. nothing. And then the kids brought other kids home, which I’d forgotten entirely) I really wanted a beer after dinner. So I had one. And then I wanted just a few Reece’s Pieces, so I had some of those, too. And then another high calorie bit of junk before bed. Like I said, after days of denial of things I really wanted, I caved.
I was going to allow myself a cheat night for Mother’s Day and I’ll just have to think of this one as this week’s cheat and Mother’s Day as next week’s cheat come a bit early, right? Tomorrow is, as they say, another day, so I’ll just have to start over and be good again.
Day Four was my last day of the week with my Nancy Marmorat video. Today’s focused on the "butt-ox" (I can’t help but giggle when she says it like that; it sounds like some ugly beast, silly, but true). I like to refer to it as the "booty" instead. 😉
Foodwise: breakfast was at my friend’s house and she’d made yummy sausage rolls. I had two of those, some grapes, and half a banana, encompassing both breakfast and snack times (we were there all morning). Lunch was leftover sausage & polenta & green beans. After-school snack was pistachio pudding (oh, and I was wrong earlier this week: we use 1% milk, so it’s even fewer calories). Dinner was beans & cornbread & pickles (Wednesday night is vegetarian night at our house).
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I usually drink black tea at breakfast, green tea at lunch, then water at all other times. Sometimes I drink extra tea, but my rule is that I have to drink another half glass of water with my tea to rule out any dehydration that might come from it. (And that’s what keeps me from drinking too much tea)
If you come to my house this week, you’ll see a whole lot of little blue post-it notes around on the walls like this:
If you are a guest here, please ignore these signs, as they are for family only. 
Nick and the kids have been asking for things they could do that would help me out, but by the time they ask, I’m usually in that lost-from-words state of exhaustion and frustration where I literally cannot think of a single thing that they could do for me. So one day when I was alone, I got to thinking “Wouldn’t it be great if they could ask me right now? I could come up with an awesome list!” So I started putting up notes right where activities could be done, so when we’re in the kitchen and Nick wants to know how to help, I can point at the wall and he’ll take out the compost or when the kids are in their room looking for a “help mama” chore to complete their lists they can look to their closets (which normally need things tidied up before they can close).
(I noticed last night that there were bizarre things in the sink from the dinner Nick had made, but I was too tired to mention them. By the time I got up this morning they were out of there. From my list to an empty sink. WHOOP!)
Day Three I had the same kid-in-my-bed situation, so I put off exercising until that small window of time between taking big kids to school & Greg to MDO. Greg burst in on me at some point with a "What are you doing that for?!" The look on his face was priceless.
I got in some extra exercise today as well, in the form of walking up and down all the bleachers three times fast and walking to the car and back (at the very end of the parking lot from the stadium) a few times. I also had to dig some holes for the azaleas we got from church (I dug the 3 easy ones; Nick did the harder ones later).
Food-wise: Breakfast was a different oatmeal, a different fruit, and a different kind of turkey bacon (did you know they make one that tastes just like regular Canadian bacon?! I was so happy to find that out.) 
Lunch was very difficult, as I was stuck at Track & Field Day over at the Rose Stadium…without cash. I don’t know where it went, I just know I didn’t have it. A very nice family brought me a meal, unexpectedly, so I ate it: hamburger, fries, and a coke. So yummy. Fortunately I’d skipped morning snack (no time for that lately) and then skipped afternoon snack as well to make up for all those calories. Dinner was sausage, polenta, & green beans, all of which I ate reasonable sized portions of (double the green beans in proportion to the polenta).
Day Two was all about your partnership with God. It reminded us not only to avoid unhealthy foods, but to remember that you can ask God to help you with that part of the journey. That God is always protecting you and to try to remember that when you’re faced with unhealthy choices of all kinds.
So today I got up and had a stumbling block right away: a kid in my bed. I exercise behind the closed door of my bedroom because I find exercising to be super-embarrassing. So this was hard: do I wake up the little one to exercise or put it off hoping I’d find willpower later? Well, I ended up letting him sleep a while longer and then trying to transfer him to his bed, but he woke up anyway. I left him out on the couch with his brothers and went off to do my exercising.
In terms of exercise, I’m currently doing Nancy Marmorat’s video series on low-impact exercises. There’s one dealing with different groups of muscles each day of the week for four days, using simple items like towels and one pound weights. Yesterday worked on the stomach area and today worked the chest and shoulders (plus a warm up and several minutes of cardio). Then I’m doing balance ball exercises from physical therapy the last official exercise day of the week. I’m hoping to also walk the other two days, but I’m not going hinge all my plans on those two little walks.
Eating wise, I did okay most of the day. Breakfast looked like this:
(oatmeal, an orange, a slice of turkey bacon, and some green tea)
We skipped midmorning snack entirely. Lunch was some baked potato with very carefully measured sour cream and butter and a whole lot of chives (yum!) for only 400 calories of goodness.
Afternoon snack was chocolate pudding made with 2% milk (only 140 calories a serving for a 1/2 cup of yum).
Dinner was pasta & sauce with broccoli. I tried to eat more broccoli than p&s. And then I had a small piece of birthday cake (which I found to be totally reasonable given the skipped snack earlier).
Wednesday the 20th was David’s birthday, the big 10! He was very excited to be a double digits kid, finally! 
His brothers gave him lots of extra love. We baked pound cake cupcakes (I recommend a double batch for the future) with chocolate buttercream frosting for his class. Now for a quick story about my son’s fabulousness: I called the school that morning to double-check the number of kids in David’s class. The vice-principal looked it up and told me 18 kids including David. I wrote it down. I said “So with the teacher, that makes 19.” “YES.” So we had two cupcakes that came out extra crispy, and Gregory and I each tried one, so that had us down to 20. We left one behind for Nick to taste. We got to the school, ate lunch with the kids, and as we were eating I was counting kids. I kept coming up with 20. Twenty kids. I asked David if I was right. He said yes, there were 20 kids in his class, counting the deaf ed kid and the new kid. 20. I had 19 cupcakes. The teacher wasn’t with us in the cafeteria so I gave her cupcake away, but that still left us one cupcake short. David and I looked at his special cupcake, the one with the shiny holder and sprinkles. He picked it up, carried it to his newest friend, and said “I’ll get more cake tonight. You have it.” *beam* I was so proud. 
That afternoon we had a double playdate with David’s best friend and Ben’s best friend. Greg’s friend had to drop out at the last minute. After dinner we had another pound cake, sans frosting as per David’s request. 
The rest of us had ours with sliced strawberries. 🙂
Thursday the 21st was my birthday, the big 35. I was a little less than enthusiastic to start the day, but the kids had left me a trail of homemade birthday cards to follow out to the kitchen. Nick brought me flowers, my favorite kind of red-and-yellow tulips. 
One of my friends met me at MDO and her and her kids serenaded me with “Happy Birthday!” I got to order a really cheap Kindle someone I knew was selling for my gift (my other gift plan had been something more extravagant that wouldn’t have been available until after Mother’s Day, so this was cheaper and better). Some friends met me for lunch at my favorite little French cafe/bakery and we spent a long time laughing and talking. I sped over to the kids school and helped out with Ben’s class’s spring party. 
Nick picked up Greg for me, as he’d gotten part of the afternoon off for Good Friday (I don’t know why they got part of Thursday off, I really don’t). We had a pack meeting for scouts that night, so I got to get happy birthday’d by some of them while they learned to put tents up the right way. 
Then we came home and had special ravioli, wine, and yummy parmesan zucchini and more pound cake for dessert (I didn’t have time to make another cake just for me, which was just as well since we had extra cake in the house).
Friday the 22nd was Good Friday. Nick’s church doesn’t celebrate it in any way, but we always have a family bbq at our house that day. This year we were having it much later in the day due to bad weather make-up days. We worked on cleaning up the house in the morning, then went over to a friends house for Greg’s playdate in the afternoon while Nick stayed home and cooked. Greg and his friend K and S got to play in the sprinklers and in the sandbox while we moms did our toenails in preparation for Easter open-toed shoes. Haha. More on that later. 
It was a bit awkward because the house next door was having an Easter Egg Hunt in their yard with kids that our kids knew, so there was a lot of standing-at-the-fence-staring-into-the-other-yard for both sets of kids, with one set wishing they were wet and the other wishing they were egg hunting and us moms just cringing a bit because of some weird war-of-silence the two neighbors have going on. I hate those kinds of things and try not to get involved at all, but it’s hard when it affects the kids. Anyways, they had fun, nonetheless, and much wetness was had. 🙂 I changed Greg’s clothes and took him home and started decorating for the bbq. People started arriving and the kids started playing and everything went really well. 
The food was good and there was lots of it. 
Nick made my favorite lemon blueberry pie for dessert, but the kids had ice cream instead. It was a really good day.
Saturday the 23rd we got up and Nick made us a quick breakfast before the kids and I left for College Station. On the way to the car, Ben stepped on the back of my shoe. I kept going forward, but my toes did not, as they were stuck in the shoe. It hurt a lot, but we were in a hurry, as my sister was just in CS for a limited time and we were already running late. So we drove to CS and my foot swelled and turned purple while we were in the car. There wasn’t anything I could do for it besides take off my shoe. Got to my parents house, hobbled inside, put ice on it and kept it up all weekend as much as possible. 
The kids dyed eggs & threw confetti eggs with their aunt & grandparents; I took photos but kept my toe away from people. 
We watched The Kings Speech and ate a mini-Thanksgiving dinner (my mom’s been obsessed with that since we did T-giving at April’s house this year). April left after dinner & instead of going out to watch the Doctor Who season premiere with friends, I sat with my foot up & kept icing it. I couldn’t sleep because of the pain, so I stayed up late talking with my dad, the only upside of the whole foot pain episode. 
The next morning I tried to figure out how to go to church with shoes on. I tried, I really did, but ended up barefoot. 
My parents church is really casual most of the time, so no one said a thing. There was beautiful music (most of the Brazos Valley Chorale was in the choir & their director is the music director for church). Greg spent time in the little kids classroom, but Ben had to stay with us. He wasn’t happy about it, so he curled up under his chair and went to sleep. 
After the service was over the kids went on an egg hunt. We brought the eggs home, but discovered that they were full of ants, so we took them outside and threw out all the chocolate candy, as they were the ones filled with ants (why they would fill eggs with chocolate on an outdoor hunt in the fire ant capital of Texas, I don’t know). 
Anyway, we had leftovers for lunch and then my friend S brought baby S over to visit. Baby S is getting bigger and bolder and cuter! 🙂 Love her! 
And then it was time to leave, but not before stopping off at my other friend’s house to happily hand off all the baby/toddler/family books we’d outgrown, since they are just about to grow into them. 🙂 (Sadly I hadn’t brought down the little boy clothes another friend needed, because I thought they were out-of-town, but they weren’t! and now I’ll have to mail them after all.) We made a billion stops on the way home, much to the unhappiness of my toe, which by then I was convinced was broken, so we ended up getting home just in time for bed.
Monday the 25th was the Last Day of Unleavened Bread. We had two church services and a potluck in between. I wore my flattest shoes and still limped around. In the morning I played clarinet with the ensemble (which included a couple different people from the week before), and also played a piano duet with my mother-in-law for offertory. After the ordination of some deacons & deaconnesses (who know Nick’s church had deaconnesses? Not me.), the kids sang a couple songs with the kids choir. 
People afterward kept coming up and asking when Nick and his dad would sprout some musical ability and join us up on stage. It was pretty funny. 🙂 
After potluck(there was lots of brisket. Hmm. I wonder where that came from?) I played with the ensemble again. By the end of the day I thought my foot my fall off on its own, so I called the doctor and set up an appointment for the next day.
Tuesday I got up, got the kids ready in record time, and took them over to my parents house here in town. My dad loaded the kids back up in my van after second breakfast and drove them to their various schools while my mom drove me to my MRI. Remember that? I’ve still been having that numbness and tingling off and on and off and on, though never as bad as it had been that one Saturday. We went up to the hospital, got some more bloodwork drawn, had an IV installed, and went off to wait. They did the first MRI without contrast and the second one with contrast. A nurse took a very detailed history of my issues before I left for the radiologist to look over. We went straight from there to my primary care physician’s office, where I had three x-rays of my foot taken, just to make sure that nothing else was damaged besides my toe. To my surprise, nothing was broken, just very badly sprained. I was told to a) wear tennis shoes from now on, and b) never, ever wear high heels again because my feet are very susceptible to injury. Pretty much what I expected as far as instructions went. Then he asked about the MRI and told me that he expected answers within the next day or two. The rest of the day went by fast. I put my tennis shoes on and my toe immediately felt better (not 100% but quite a lot). I picked up kids, hung out at my parents house for a bit, then took kids to piano lessons.
Wednesday the 27th we had nothing much going on. My parents left town and Greg and I were on our own for the day. We did some cleaning and played. Big kids came home and it was more of the same.
Thursday the 28th I woke up exhausted and stayed that way. After I got all the kids to school I declared it rest day and spent some time catching up on the internet and some TV. I perked up enough to hit a close-by estate sale in a house I’d always wanted to see inside, just for a little bit, before picking kids up. We had a fairly normal afternoon and evening.
Friday was super-extra-long in itself, so we’re moving it off to tomorrow. 🙂
Lisa Holcomb 