Questions and odds and ends

That elimination diet I got bored of blogging about? I made it all the way down to water and it has completely changed my diet. I've stopped snacking and still haven't had soda. In case you were wondering. that's an odd and end.

I've become preoccupied with trying to figure out exactly what my path was down the stairs. This started when I realized that all of my bruises were on my right side. I also knocked some pictures off the wall and have a hazy memory of actually taking a step or two. Maybe. But my bruises surprised me because I had this image of being on my left. Maybe because I broke my left wrist. That falls under "questions".

Cady has started at Sudbury. She is loving it. I stopped by the other day and loved seeing her there. There are more little kids than I thought. I had this terrible image of her following/being rebuffed by D and A and their friends all day but that isn't happening. I knew it wouldn't but I like to worry. This is neither an odd, an end nor a question but this blog is supposed to be about Sudbury after all so I thought I would throw it in.

The story of me falling down the stairs

I often have trouble sleeping, I usually wake up at 3 and can't get back to sleep. This morning that happened except it was 5:30 but really dark. I hemmed and hawed and then decided to get up and get some work done (play on Facebook) before I went to work.

Normally we have a hall light on but the kids were sleeping at my MIL's. I could see the end of the hall from the faint light of the nitelite in the boys' room. I didn't turn the hall light on because our door was open and didn't want it to bother Ray. I took a step into the TV room and my foot went down. I thought "That's funny. i don't remember there being a step here." My other foot was on it's way, and my brain shrieked "oh fuck! the stairs!"

My mind turned a rectangular darkness of an unlit room into a descending diagonal darkness of an unlit staircase as I fell down. I know I was thinking "I'm falling. I'm falling. I'm falling down the stairs." and my face and arms were banging and banging away until I got to the bottom. It happened very quickly and very slowly. When I got to the bottom I knew I had to scream to wake Ray up but when I did scream it didn't seem loud enough but when I said "Ray I fell down the stairs!" it sounded like a scream. He was dazed but turned on the light and came rushing down. He helped me turn over and I said "Call 911". As he was on the phone I got myself up and staggered over to the couch. My left arm hurt when I moved and my head was in a world of pain. He brought me boo boo kitty for the worst bump and kept saying I would be ok. I said "You don't know that!" I couldn't believe that I might have killed myself all because I didn't turn on the light.

I broke my left wrist, I have two black eyes plus scrapes and lumps on my face and a big contusion on my right shoulder. We were back from the ER by 10 am. I am thoroughly exhausted but can't go to sleep. The kids are home, and even with three lights on I'm worried about them up in the middle of the night. I'm worried about me in the middle of the night. I'm worried that the staircase will suck one of us down and this time we won't be so lucky.

I know this isn't a typical post but I wanted to get it out of my head so I can get some sleep.

Day 5

Bye bye eggs and dairy. I drink a lot of milk. and it's tomato season so I have been eating fresh mozzarella like nobody's business. Oh well.

I noticed a couple of things today: I haven't been waking up hungry. Usually the first thing I want in the morning is too eat. I also am noting true hunger. Not the light headed crankiness that I feel and view as hunger. My hunger is a different sensation and one that is so infrequent normally, compared to my other food cues, that I almost had to stop and identify it.

I also thought about abundance today. At dinnertime, I was standing at the open fridge and saying "No,no no" to just about everything in it. I have been eating the same stuff over and over: peanut butter and carrots, peanut butter and apples, breadsticks, corn, tomatoes. I didn't want any of it. I started poking through some more and made myself a nice little salad and found some zucchini Ray had sauteed. This made me think how easy it is for us. When I'm hungry, I just grab some crackers or if I'm out a bag of crap and munch munch munch. I don't think about what I'm going to cook or eat. I can have whatever I want and I almost invariably pick the worst but easiest option. But when my choices are limited I've become more creative and stretched myself. Maybe food shouldn't be easy. Maybe I should always put the thought, time and consideration into my meals as I have the past few days.

Day 4

Meat was not a problem. Trying to eat food without additives in this culture is incredibly difficult. Especially if you find yourself out and starving. I ended up eating a half a bag of carrots with Finn.

Quitting soda is almost as hard as quitting smoking. Not the internal craving but the external cues. That shit is everywhere. Everywhere, dammit! Saying no to myself makes it easier for me to say no to the kids though. I would cave and give them garbage all the time because I wanted it myself.

This experiment is so much about small victories. I was making corn muffins for Finn this morning and took a bit of batter. A couple of moments later I realized what I had done and started down the "I already had one so one more won't hurt" path. I stood there looking at the empty batter bowl (one of the joys of my eating life is empty batter bowls, as a child my spatula wielding aunt was my sworn enemy, there was nothing worse than hanging around the kitchen as my grandmother made brownies and see all those glorious leftovers for me and my sister, we would draw a line down the middle of the bowl with a finger for fairness sake, only to have my aunt come in and ruin it with that wood handled white plastic top spatula saying "ma, look how much you're leaving") thinking, how badly do I want this? I seriously stood at the kitchen sink for a good long while, trying to decide if I should indulge in a bit of scraping. I finally decided to skip it and then make a point to see if I felt like I had missed something or felt deprived. Of course I didn't.

On the other hand, later in the day I had a screaming headache again and I did take some excedrin. It seemed better to take that than to suffer all night and feel discouraged and talk myself into taking more liberties. I think the little swipes and nibbles are more damaging in the long run because you don't think about their cumulative effect.

Day three

On the surface, today would not appear to be very successful and yet I feel wildly successful. Today I was supposed to give up refined sugars and flours. Plus, I needed to pay more attention to additives. The first problem was at breakfast because almost every single thing had additives or refined sugar or refined flour or some combo of the three. I finally ate half a bagel feeling that at least it didn't have additives or preservatives. I had meant to bring lunch with me to a friend's house. Forgot it, she had pasta so that's what I had. but a small bowl. Then I had some panzanella bread with Ray. Again i rationalized this as no additives. then I had a small bowl of ice cream (because I have to give up dairy on friday) with no additives but, oops, sugar. That's the bad news. The good news is no soda AND I didn't resort to an excedrin. I drank tons and tons of water. When I had said bowl of ice cream I picked out the bits of chocolate chip cookie dough. I felt like I was continuing to make better if not great choices.

Tomorrow I give up meat. Which is why I had a delightful, if bunless, hamburger for dinner tonight.

I also ate a bunch of watermelon and salad and tomato by the way. It wasn't just a carb struggle all day long.

My experiment

Since I bought the store my health and diet have gone straight to hell. It is most evident in my weight but I get no sleep, no exercise and I just don't feel well. My friend Nina does this spring cleanse every year and gave me a copy of the routine she follows. The way it works is that you eliminate a different aspect of your diet until you are down to water which you drink for two days and then start reintroducing foods again. I have never done anything like this before. No juice fasts, nothing. But I'm going to give this a whirl and hopefully update my progress daily.

Why am I doing this? Because I want to clean the slate. I feel like I'm cleaning out a closet and then putting it back together with only the stuff the really want and love. Hopefully the foods that I really want and love will be wholesome.

Today was day one. Actually day two because day one is eat a normal diet. On day two I eliminate caffeine, alcohol, any drugs(except prescription) and additives. Alcohol and drugs are not an issue. Caffeine is a big one because I usually drink 1-3 sodas per day. I made it through today without having one. Woo hoo!! At 5 pm I had an evil headache so I opted to take an excedrin which I guess is a drug and it does have a small amount of caffeine. I probably consumed some additives in the chipwich I had at the pool. I was so focused on not buying a soda that it didn't occur to me to opt out of other snacks too. All in all I'm going to give myself a grade of 90 for the day. I didn't eliminate these items 100% but I was incredibly mindful and did not use the small setbacks as an excuse to sabotage myself before I started.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to eliminate all refined sugars and flours. Uh oh! there goes half my pantry.

Hellooooo.....

Well I had just forgotten all about this. Because I am busy busy busy. Those boxes of books don't move themselves down perilously narrow stairs, you know.

My blog is just like my diary. Every other entry is an apology for not writing more often. I always wonder who I'm apologizing to in my diary. Scholars studying it for hints of future greatness?

Anyhoo, I'll just quickly fill you in on the past 5 months. Des and Amelia are having a great year. Very few complaints about staff or boredom this year. They have been working on a movie called "Magic Number 7" that has something to do with time travel, and for the sake of continuity, needs a lot snow to film. Amelia became certified to work in the school store. I think she may be the youngest kid certified. Des tried to but it didn't work out. He took it surprisingly well. I guess they are growing up and able to take knocks a bit better. I can't believe they'll be 8 next month.

Cady, who I worried about having a crappy year because she was going to school with a bunch of 2 and 3 year olds has ended up having a wonderful time. Everyday the little kids take a nap and she spends one to two hours with the Paula, her teacher, doing whatever interests her. So now she's reading. That has lit a fire under Amelia's ass. Every time she sees Cady reading with us, she comes trotting by with a book of her own to read. It's really funny. Des seems abashed that Cady and his 5 year old cousin are both reading but it hasn't provided enough of an impetus to get him going. And I'm ok with that too.

Finn. Well, Finn is 3 and all the good and bad that comes along with it. I feel like we are at mile 25 in the marathon of early childhood. He's potty trained. He almost sleeps through the night. Is just about finished nursing. Can mostly dress himself. We are so close!! Then maybe I will get my sanity back.

The store is covering it's bills. which is great. But I can't pay myself yet which is to be expected. I love it though.

Lots of great stuff happening at school which I may or may not get around to talking about. for now though, I'm going to watch the Oscars.

Toodles.