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:

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.

Major Changes!

Sorry it’s been forever, there have been many changes a foot here!  Least of which is that I’ve been at football practices 5 days a week for the last 4 weeks.  That’s right, the munchkin started tackle football, he’s doing pretty well, though he does have some problems with talking.  I know hard to believe that a kid I’ve helped raise would have a problem with talking too much. So the other major deal is that I got a new job, some of you know that I was not very happy at my old job as it was not very fulfilling and property management has never been a big passion of mine, so when a friend of mine told me about an opening for an office manager at Arts & Services for Disabled, Inc, a company that provides art and music therapy for developmentally disabled adults, I jumped at the chance.  Good thing I did too, since I had gone to school for music and special education this seemed to be a great fit and they offered me the job in my interview. After having worked here a week I can say that the biggest difference is the amount of compassion and love that exudes from everyone.  I mean take my boss, she makes it a point to make sure that all of her employees feel like they are appreciated and supported.  I can say that this is not something I felt at my last job and through a series of conversations with the hubby, Steve I've realized that I really was in a downward spiral of depression at that job.  It's lifted incredibly quickly and I'm starting to see parts of my personality that I was not fond of fall away and the parts that I thought I'd lost coming to the forefront.  I've lost my anxiety and anger/frustration that was starting to become a part of my everyday life.  I feel like the patience I had when I was younger is coming back and I am free of a huge weight that I wasn't aware I was carrying.  Part of this awesome new job was a pay cut, but that was due to the fact that I'm now working 30 hours a week rather than 40, getting me home at 3:30 rather than 4:30, which is awesome, also I'm not on call 24 hours a day, so I've found that when I'm working on a project I'm free to devote all of my attention to that project and that's made a huge difference.

So because of all this, I've had a lot more time to create.  So I'm going to follow this up with individual posts on my progress for the 28 for 28 project.  It's looking like I may actually get to finish this project which is super exciting and I wasn't sure it was going to happen.  I'm really enjoying all the creating I'm getting to do and a side benefit of coming out of my depression is that I'm starting to consider lots of bright colors again and obnoxious color pairings.  I'm looking at making things that let my personality shine through, I don't feel like I need to hide that part of me anymore.  I'm also looking at doing some art quilting, and some more fine art type of stuff, I also think I'm going to start our Halloween quilt soon, I'll post what I'm going to be doing with that later too when I get all my fabrics together.  I think that's all for now, I just wanted to update you all on the goings on in my life!