Halloween

So I've been in a little bit of a funk lately and I was having a hard time figuring out why.  I mean everything is going pretty darn well, nothing too much to complain about.  I finally figured it out today, I've been having an issue with Halloween.  Not with the holiday itself, but with my relationship to it. You see, Halloween has long been my favorite holiday, I decorate every year and I always dress up.  But this year as I pulled out the decorations a sense of dread came over me, I couldn't explain it.  Then it hit me this morning!  As I was contemplating dressing up (this is really late for me to get on the costuming), I realized that thanks to being laid off on Halloween last year I now associate Halloween with that.  Thanks a lot!  So I'm going to do what I can this Halloween to overcome those feelings, it starts with the fact that I have Halloween off, so that's a good start to the day.  Then I am going to make pumpkin lattes and pumpkin pancakes for breakfast.  I'm going to dress up, it won't be the most elaborate of costumes, but I think I can pull something fun off!  Also, we have some friend's coming over to hang out while we pass out candy, so you can't go wrong there.  Lastly, I plan on watching my favorite Halloween movies all week, Hocus Pocus, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Sweeny Todd, Corpse Bride and my all time most favorite movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas!

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that we can't let other people tell us how we're going to feel about things.  We need to find the things we once found appealing and exploit the crap out of those so that we can overcome the bad stigma events or people had attached to those things we once loved.  And just for a little fun, here's some pictures of my Bearded Lady Costume from last year!


Here i am with my Knitches, whom I miss dearly!


And a close of of the magnificence of the hand knit beard!

Lastly, here's Steve and I at Comikaze last year where he went as Jayne Cobb/Wolverene and I went as Raphael:

2 months later

Here I am, 2 months later and I was going to start off with an apology for being gone for so long, but the truth is, I've started a few posts recently, but none of them felt sincere enough.  Most of them were about my journey on Ideal Protein, but the truth is,I've hated this process and it's been really hard.  I didn't want to write that, I wanted to write about recipes and my great weight loss, which it has been great, but I wasn't excited about it at all.  I know that comes through in my writing so I didn't want to subject you all to that.  The truth is that I've been somewhat depressed the last little while.  I was having a really hard time finding a job, but now it looks like I'm in the clear for that, we'll find out later this week.  I also really underestimated how different it would be moving to a small area.  I've felt very isolated recently, but I think a lot of that has to do with this diet also.  I mean, it's hard to want to hang out with people when you can't drink, can't eat the food everyone else is eating and are tired all the time.  I'm sorry that this is turning into a bit of a whiny post, but I've decided that instead of trying to have posts about a specific part of my life I'd rather have honest posts about what's going on and how I'm feeling about everything.

I'm down almost 40 lbs and 2 sizes and yet I don't feel much better about how I look or feel.  Usually at this point in my weight loss I have way more energy, I'm able to run faster, jump higher and all that, but on Ideal Protein I'm not.  If I do more than just a normal days worth of activity I'm beat for about 2 days.  I feel like I could sleep all the time and I'm super sick of it.  I'm done with this diet at the end of August so only 13 days to go, but man am I ready for it to be over!  This has been an incredibly long 3 months and I feel bad that we were on this diet for the entire time Chris was here, hopefully next summer we'll be more fun!  I think I'm going to sign off now, but I'm vowing to post more often, whatever it's about, and to post more pictures.

Ideal Protein Week 2

So I've made it through the first 2 weeks of Ideal protein.  I'm down 11.3 lbs and that feels amazing.  I'm also down 1.25" in my chest, and 1" in my waist so I'm not complaining about that!  It hasn't been too hard to stick to, but I think it helps that my Mom, Dad and Steve are all doing this diet as well.  Breakfasts have basically been some kind of drink, vanilla, cappuccino, orange, that kind of thing, we've been trying to switch up lunch a bit,  the pasta isn't bad with one of the soups used as a sauce, and the "chicken patty" isn't too bad over salad, but our favorite lunch has been the chili. When I make it I add lots of zucchini, cabbage and raw onion to it and then we stir in some salsa to add some heat, delicious!  The thing that has kept me going through this all is the dinners, my Mom and I have been able to get really inventive with the dinners, stir fries, soups, big salads, below are a couple pics of the things we've been enjoying.






The munchkin comes in today at 2:30, and I can't wait, it will be so awesome having him here this summer!  I think that's it for me for now.

Ideal Protein

So I've been gone for a while.  The job I started shortly after moving here didn't work out.  I was working way too many hours and I was super stressed, sounds like when we lived in Cali.  The difference here is that I don't need to work that many hours to survive, so I quit.  It's given me a great chance to help my Mom out with some things and we're looking at starting a business locally together.  I love that we live in a place now where that is a viable option and not something to add on top of working a million hours a week.  I'll keep you all updated on all of that as it progresses.

Those of you who have known me for any length of time, or read the blog for any length of time, know that I have struggled with my weight and consequently my body image for the majority of my life.  I was always a somewhat chubby kid and that just continued to progress as I got older until, at the biggest of my life, I weighed 260 lbs.  I was wearing a size 22-24 and I was very unhappy.  I managed to take and keep off 25 lbs since December of 2011 when I had to make a decision before I ended up not being able to walk up the 3 flights to my office at that time.  I'm proud of the fact that I've kept that weight off, but the fact of the matter is that I'm still about 100 lbs overweight.  That's nothing to sneeze at kids, that's pretty major.  Over a lifetime of dieting I've realized a few things about myself:
1. I have minimal self control abilities which has a lot to do with:
2. I have amazing rationalization capabilities, this is why things like Weight Watchers don't work well for me long term, if I have points left at the end of the day I would be just as likely to eat something healthy like popcorn as I was to eat a snickers bar.
3. I am somewhat impatient with diet results, this is why juicing was so appealing to me, but that's not a good long term diet for me.
4. I do really well with regimented eating plans, like juicing, Jenny Craig, that type of thing.

All of this came into play when my cousin, who's husband is a chiropractor and struggles with weight as well, mentioned the Ideal Protein diet to my Mom and I.  Now, I'm not one who normally gets behind diets where you have to eat a lot of processed food, but after talking to my cousin, who feels the same way, I felt a lot better about the ingredients and the fact that they have you take lots of supplements and you eat 4 cups of veggies a day and as much lettuce as you want.  So that brings us to bringing this up to Steve and my Dad, who were both on board and we started today.  It's a different experience, but a good one all in all.

About the food, it feels a little bit like when you were a kid and you'd go to the space center and get astronaut food.  It all comes in little metallic bags which you open up and either mix with cold water or boil or mix with cold water and then heat.  You do get 2 cups of veg with lunch and 2 cups with dinner along with 6-8 oz of animal protein.  The food isn't amazing, except of course for the veg, but I'm using this as more of a type of medicine rather than a lifestyle, which it isn't meant to be.  Once I get down to my goal weight I'll reintroduce complex carbs to take my body out of ketosis, and at that point I'm thinking I'll want to do a clean eating diet.  We'll see.  I'm hoping to update everyone on my progress and to that end here are some before pics, not the prettiest pics I've ever taken but I'd really like to be able to see the difference as I go along, I find that's a huge help for me.

Snow day

Well I'm home today, I had to cover someone's shift last night so I only worked a half day today. It's been nice too, there's some major snow coming down and I'm hanging out with my parents and their wood burning stove helping my mom do some organizing.

In other news, we found a super cute house to rent while we look for a house to buy. It's a 2 bedroom 1 bath house right off of Broadway which is the main street in Cottonwood Falls. I have a job as a dietary manager at a retirement home and I'm really enjoying it, we're a little under staffed at the moment, but we're working to fix that.

Steve's here now and that's made a huge difference, man I was missing him. I've also started a knitting group, I'm teaching 5 women to knit and there is one lady who comes who already knew how to knit and that's been great too. I'm about 45% done with my January sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitters Almanac, my goal is to knit my way through it this year and so far I'm a little behind, but not too bad. That's it for now, time for a nice warm lunch.

I made it!

Sorry this post didn't come sooner, I attempted to post it from my phone and it still says it's posting 2 days later.  I did make it to Kansas Friday evening around 6 PM.  It was a beautiful drive in, Western Kansas is a little monotonous, but I got to see Greensburg, the town that was devastated by tornado and is rebuilding using ecofriendly building practices.  That was pretty cool.  The sunset was gorgeous and Tink did really well, I let her out of her kennel because she was not a happy camper.  She spent the majority of the time under the passenger seat and would pop up to check our progress from time to time.  I'm really glad to be here, everything's been great.  We got a couple inches of snow last night and it is beautiful, fluffy, dry snow, my favorite kind.  I'm heading out to the house we're housesitting at today to get the lay of the land.  From what I hear it's beautiful, I can't wait!  I'll post more soon...

Bound to Happen

So I knew it was bound to happen, even with GPS it was bound to happen. This morning when I left my hotel I stopped for coffee and gas, after I was done I put my parents address into my GPS and followed the directions, I didn't think to check them very closely until the signs on the highway starting giving mileage for Las Vegas, that's when I looked closer. My GPS was going to take me through Denver. In January. In a VW rabbit. So I turned around and picked up I-40 like I knew I should have from the beginning and I'm only an hour and a half off what I was expecting. The plus side to this? Gorgeous sunrise. I may not have as many updates today add I'm going to try to stop less so I can make up some time.

Apple Turkey

I made it to Albuquerque right before 7 local time tonight. Sunset was gorgeous and the drive was super easy. Tink was great the entire drive, she basically slept the entire time we were on the highway and only got slightly upset when I had to turn off to get gas, but even then she was fine. She's super happy to be exploring the room though. So that's it for today now I'm just hanging out watching TV cuddling my kitty.

Oh and the Apple Turkey thing? That's how my Grandpa got my Dad to remember the name.

Winslow

I've made it to Winslow, Az. It's been a gorgeous drive and only about 3 more hours and I'll be done for the day. Arizona is a weird landscape, I always forget when I haven't been in a while, but the plateaus out of completely flat vistas is something to behold. On my drive through Flagstaff there was done snow on the sides of the road, that always adds to the beauty of the area.

Arizona

I drive over the state border of Arizona right at 9 this morning, not too much to report, but it sure is an alien landscape.

Sunrise and wind farms

I've made it to Indio, got to see a beautiful sunrise and the always awesome wind farms.

Chchch Changes

So I think it's pretty well documented that I suck at sticking to blogging with any regularity. Part of the reason for that is that I didn't feel like there was much to update people on and part of that is that most of the people that I want to update on my life I either see or talk to on a regular basis. Well boys and girls, as the title of this post suggests that's all changing today.
Why is that changing you ask? This morning I am packing up the car complete with kitty and moving to Kansas.
But what about Steve? Are you leaving him behind? Well, yes, but only until later in the month when he is driving out to join me.
There were a lot of factors that went into this decision. California is a very expensive place to live and the taxes are very high. We'd come to realize that we would never be homeowners if we stayed out here and the quality of life hasn't been great for us. My Dad and I have had a great many conversations over the years regarding the difference between working to live and living to work. Steve's job had him working on average 70 hours per week including some off duty time, all for a job he couldn't stand. I was commuting 25 miles each way to work usually averaging 40 hours per week at a job that I was hired to work 30, including of after hours work. Then it was cemented for us, on October 31, 2013 I was laid off from my job, that's right, on Halloween. We had always managed to get by before, but now who knew. As some of you know my parents moved to Kansas about 4 years ago, we fell just love with it they did when visited last fall, and so seemed like a perfect meeting of circumstances.
So here I am driving off into the sunrise (can't be sunset I'm going east) in search of a new adventure. We are going to miss our friends dearly and there's really no getting around that. I'm really hoping some of you decide to come visit us, you're all more than welcome anytime. I'm going to post some update stuff as I drive through 6 states in 2 days like a crazy old cat lady with Tink by my side.