The End of the Day

I had a pretty good day today, despite an entire week of Youngest having nothing but trouble at school and home. It has been a long week, and I will admit when Husband told me Wednesday that he was taking Friday off to take me to work, hang out there, and "where ever you go, I go" I was pissed. I like my routine. I like being alone when I can.

But as this morning unfolded and I resigned myself to the fact that I have a man that actually likes to spend time with ME, I got over it and was glad to have him around. He got to meet the people I work with, we had a great lunch together, did a little Christmas shopping, and came home for a nap before the kids got home. Though I don't like being smothered, I like being liked, so it all worked out. Another example of me needing to think it through before reacting. Thank goodness Husband is onto my weirdness and can deal with it. I love him.

I weighed in this morning at 145.5. Lowest yet. My goal is 142 so I am close. I ate well all day though I took the day off from working out or weights. 6 days of working out is about all I can do.  I have a lot of eating out ahead of me but thankfully it is with people that are watching their weight, too, so there is no need to go overboard to impress anyone.

My May 2012 5k run music consists of the following (it is really diverse! Artist, song):
Better Than Ezra: Rewind
Usher: Yeah
Pistol Annies: Hell on Heels
Hot Chelle Rae: Whatever
Better Than Ezra: Hung The Moon
Mary J Blige: Family Affair
Better Than Ezra: This Time of Year
The Band Perry: If I Die Young
Foster the People: Pumped up Kicks
Miranda Lambert: Baggage Claim
Kenny Chesney: Ain't Back Yet
Better Than Ezra: Summer House
Maroon 5: Never Gonna Leave this Bed
Better Than Ezra: Porcelain
Kenny Chesney: Somewhere with you
Adele: Rolling in the Deep
Joe Nichols: Gimme that Girl
Better than Ezra: Desperately Wanting

Why so much Better than Ezra from the late 90's? I just found the cd's again and this time of year always makes me reflect on the past. A lot of these songs bring great memories from college and after.

I don't work at the caterer this weekend and I do not have to do my last two hours of training. They are ready to put me on a job but it will be the end of the month. And that is fine with me. The boys are out of school next Fri for two weeks but I still have to work the week before Christmas. Need to find someone to watch the boys Weds (Neighbor K, check your email! I sent you a request to watch Youngest). I still have a couple more things to get for Christmas, but I am close to being done. I think we are going to my mom in laws Christmas Eve day for a bit. That will be nice for all of us.

I get to sleep in tomorrow and Sunday but I also have a lot of stuff I want to knock out this weekend. The boys are growing out of all their pants!!

I have an experiment in place with the kids, though they don't know it. I am not going to buy any pretzels or crackers for them to munch on, but have apples and carrot sticks ready for them. I got Husband on board with me for a week to see how it goes,  and so far, Youngest ate two apples and Middle ate one. I figure if they don't have the processed stuff to eat, they will go for the fruit or veggie. Youngest even ate the chicken I baked in the oven. It seems what people tell me IS true: if they are hungry enough, they will eat it.

Have a great weekend. My first week being 42 has been hard being a mom but as a woman, I am close to my goal and feeling stronger than ever. Ladies, pick up the weights. It will change your body. I can't wait to get my 12 lb weights for Christmas!

Have a great weekend.

Cat

Purging recipes

I like to read. A lot. So it is no surprise that I would go to the library and check out 9 cookbooks at a time. I also like to tear out recipes from magazines, download them off the internet, and share with friends. I have quite a thick file of such recipes and I decided to go through them yesterday and ditch the ones that would not be a healthy choice for myself of my family.

That ditch consisted of 90% of my recipes!

I am excited to get into my library cookbooks and have all ready gotten half way through one of them, "5 Meals for $5. How to feed 5 people 5 meals for $5-$8 or less". By Jaci Rae. I have seen a lot of potential meals, though some are not so healthy ( I am trying to stay away from anything that takes two or more cans of condensed soup). But I have earmarked several pages that look like contenders and can't wait to try some of her recipes.

Some of the other cookbooks I picked up from the library are:

Feeding the whole family: Cooking with whole foods, by Cynthia Lair

The Autism Cookbook, by Susan K. Delaine

The $5 dinner mom cookbook, by Erin Chase

The Best Life Diet cookbook, Bob Greene (I believe he is owned by Oprah)

Semi-Homecooking, Sandra Lee (she violates my condensed soup rule a lot, but I am willing to have a look)

While looking at these recipes, I have the kids more in mind than myself or Husband. We are trying to stick to more Paleo eating (he's more on board since he has put on some weight over Thanksgiving) and though it is costly to buy meat/poultry, when I look at buying the ingredients in these meals, I think it is a wash. If I could just get the kids on board to Paleo eating...I have gotten rid of quite a few processed foods, but sometimes I miss the convenience of heating up some chicken "nuggets".

I will let you know if I find any recipes worth sharing.

Happy Hump Day!

Cat

Time to think

Husband that snores + little dog that snores + Youngest waking up every hour last night + threat of basement flooding from all the rain = lots of time for me to think about things all night!!

I thought a lot about Christmas and what it means to me. Though I like to work myself into a frenzy about Thanksgiving, Christmas is more of a calm event for me. I enjoy just close family, staying in pj's all day, napping, cooking whatever anyone wants. We usually walk around the neighborhood in the evening and check out everyone's light displays and just enjoy some lazy time together.  I am really looking forward to that this year. Daughter will be at her dad's so we get to do Christmas again when she comes. Bonus Christmas for everyone!

We used to have a big New Year's eve party with all of our neighbors and kids. I have fond memories of toddlers in footie pajama's asleep on the floor while the parents counted down to midnight. But then friend's moved away, our kids got older and had New Year's plans of their own, and everyone got strapped for cash. I miss those get together's but I know things change.

What is your favorite thing about Christmas? Do you bake up a storm and have the kids help decorate? I have never done this but may give it a try this year. I know my kids will SAY they will help but when it comes down to it, it will be just me doing it. Though maybe if there are chocolate chips involved they would help out. They do enjoy a good can of frosting, too!

I hope this time of year you can find some calm in all the chaos. Put on some footie pajamas and sit by the tree with your kids. My kids put the Thomas the Train set around our tree and then made a town out of Lego's. Complete with an axe murderer and someone trying to run across the tracks, headless...hmm....need to stop buying those Lego Knight sets!!

Have a good Tuesday!

Cat

This is a short one

I am fortunate that the last few years on my birthday I have been able to say "This is the best shape I have been in in a long time". This birthday was no exception. It makes me look forward to how I will feel and look in another year. This is the year of strength, less complaining and NO excuses. I know what I am capable of and pushing myself, in many aspects of my life, will get me to where I want to be.

 I had a great birthday weekend, ending with a great dinner at my girlfriend's house with 5 out of my 6 closest friends (we missed you Beanie Weenie!!). They are really a wonderful mix of personalities and humor. I am blessed.

It has rained non stop for over 24 hours here. Makes me want to nap all day but I worked out and ate well today. Off to a great start for my 43rd year on the planet!!

Have a great evening everyone. Thank you again for the birthday wishes!!

Cat

My Birthday-recap

I want to send a sincere thanks to everyone that sent me Birthday wishes. I feel overwhelmingly happy to have soo many good friends. It is a little scary to think some of these people knew me in grade school and on from there. That is a LONG time to have been a friend. I applaud your persistence! I just wanted to recap some special and silly moments of my day.


I got up at 6am to get ready to be at my catering job at 8am. I checked my FB page first thing this morning and openly cried at one birthday post I had. It was from Husband's nephew, who is in South Korea in the Army. It was a simple "Happy Birthday, Aunt Cathy" but it brought me to tears. Here is a 19 year old kid who is enduring flooding, being away from family for a year and he is wishing me, someone he barely knows, a Happy Birthday. And he called me Aunt. Seriously? Love that boy.


So from there I gathered myself together and got to work. This is the busiest time of year for the company so there were a lot of people I didn't know and several new people there, like me. So the mood was light, and everyone was doing their thing. I washed a lot of pans and stuff, they were going thru them so fast that I would wash the same thing several times because they were using the things so much. But after a bit of that, Nice Chef had a "project" for me: Slicing 300 POUNDS of potatoes (they were all ready peeled, but I now wonder who did THAT??).  As we were carrying the 100 lb totes of potatoes out of the walk in fridge, Nice Chef tells me I will be slicing all of these by hand. "Ok!" I say enthusiastically. He starts cracking up and tells me that we have an automated slicer and I don't have to do it by hand. I am an idiot. But can I tell you? I LOVE the potato slicer!! It is like a Play-doh machine where you put the Doh in, press the handle down and shapes come out. Same principal. I had so much fun! Plus I was in the middle of the kitchen so I got to talk to everyone. It is soo much fun to be around people that like to talk about food all day long. Ahhh.....burp....


I stayed at work a half hour too long (that's how much I like it!) and when I got home, I was welcomed to a clean house, Birthday decorations and a cake. We opened presents and the kids and Tom ate cake. We all know I don't like cake, it is for everyone else. But that is ok because I ate what I wanted today and didn't work out at all.


From there it was on to Middle child's first basketball game. He scored the first two baskets of the game and played really well for a kid who has never played organized basketball. But what I was most impressed with was his sportsmanship. He was playing against his friend M and M came up to him when he got there and said "You are going to LOSE". Son didn't say anything but I was a little annoyed so I said "Those are BIG words for a little boy". He is like a head shorter than Son. So he was trying to get Son to respond but Son kept saying "We'll see". M didn't score at all but at the end of the game Son made a point to go over and tell him good game but then he added "see who won?". And Son was really supportive of his teammates when they didn't do well. I was really proud of him and I really look forward to his games.


I took a nap in the afternoon and Husband took Daughter to her school function. I made a pretty good Pasole in the crockpot (Mexican soup), downloaded some music and now I must share what I got for my bday:

My new running shoes to go with the new music I downloaded.


Brace yourselves for this:

Mom got me this for my birthday, The conversation went like this:


Me: A blue starfish?
Mom: Your bathroom is blue and you like seashells.
Me: Okayyyy...


This will be someone's White Elephant present this holiday season.


I also got new underwear. You don't need to see that. I need SOME secrets :)


Seriously, I thank you ALL for my Birthday wishes. It HAS been a day about ME, it has felt good, and we are all really need to be over it. Tomorrow I will sleep in and get back to reality. And that's the way I want it.


Cat

Pay attention

Our kids are told, all the time, to "pay attention". Most of our complaints about our kids are about their lack of paying attention.

Question: do you pay attention to YOU? Do you pay attention to what YOU need? Not your kids, not your spouse, YOU?

The first answer to this hit me as I was trying on running shoes at Kohl's today. I was going to sign up for the 10k again in May 2012 because my friend is doing it and because I was going to RUN the whole thing this time around. As I was trying on lots of pairs of shoes, I had THE moment. The moment of, "Why are you doing this? You don't like to run long distances, you like to run a couple miles and be done. Why can't this be recreational and not a race?".

I didn't know what to say to myself. Aren't I supposed to like running since I did the 10k earlier this year? My Husband considers me a runner, what he doesn't know is: I run on the weekends to get out of the house for awhile and listen to my recently downloaded music. NOT because I like to run.

I bought some new running shoes (super cheap. Thanks Kohl's) with the intention of signing up for the 5k of that May race, the one I did years ago for the first time. I can enjoy myself and be part of the running experience. Win win.

My second answer of "Are you paying attention?" came later in the day. As I was on the way to pick up Daughter, there was a HUGE crash on the highway. It looked like one car or van had flipped, caught on fire, all the windows were smashed out and all their stuff was strewn over the highway. All I could see was flashing lights and debris. Had THEY been paying attention? I don't know. Did someone run into them? I don't know. It scares me because I travel that stretch of highway endlessley and always count my lucky stars that I have not been in an accident.

Off to the library. I drop off some dvd's. Pick up some new ones and walk right out in front of a car driven by like a 15 year old. He had no intention of stopping so it is good that I have no balance, stumbled and fell backwards. Ouch.

I am off to pick up daughter. I park in my usual spot and as I am pulling out, almost hit another car.

Eish, what a day.

Maybe we should pay more attention and just stand still sometimes.

Cat

Irrational things we say to our kids

My kids ask me for things endlessley: can I have something to eat, drink, wear, shoot, duct tape, etc. These questions used to get very tiresome when the kids were little as they would persist and wear me down until they got what they wanted.

Enter the irrational things I would say just to get them to stop asking me for things.

Son: Can I have some more juice?

Me: No! And you are not getting any more the rest of this month!!

Son: Can I have some more waffles?

Me: No! Do you know there are kids out there that have never even HAD a frozen waffle??

When they were young, they would listen and be a little fearful that this may have been the last glass of juice they will ever have.

They have grown up and are asking follow up questions. Here was tonight's exchange:

Both son's: Can we play "charge" in the front room? (This is running into each other at top speed with only pillows to cushion their force)

Me: Yes but if either of you gets hurt there is no Chirstmas for either of you!

When they were younger they would have decided against playing charge in case either one got hurt.

Not anymore.

The rest of the exchange went as follows:

Oldest Son (he knows there is no "Santa"): Do you really think Santa would stop making our toys just because we got hurt playing together?

Me: nothing, silence

Oldest son: I really don't think Santa would ruin ou favorite day over a minor injury..

Youngest: Santa wouldn't do that to us, we have been good all year!

Me: Grumble and walk away.

Gone are the days of the irrational statement just to get out of doing more stuff for them or being there for them if they get hurt.

Crap.
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Cat