Wild-Heart.net

Why not? That’s what we’ll be doing later today. We planned this with friends almost a year in advance. While getting together with family and extended family to celebrate the official holiday is great, we got to talking about how nice it would be to have a Thanksgiving Dinner with just friends with no worries about dressing up the children or worrying about who you or your spouse might offend because we all know as much as we love our families and enjoy spending time with them, they are more easily offended than our close friends are. And gods love him, but I think when we get together with Joseph’s family he lives to say offensive things that he knows will make his mother cringe and twitch so I spend our family get togethers holding my breath hoping my children don’t act like they were raised by wolves and that Joseph doesn’t alienate his mother any further than he already has.

I’m bringing the Bob Andy pie and Pumpkin pie and the stuffing. My back and hips are currently protesting a great deal. I think it was the prep work for the stuffing that did it. I’ve yet to find in any grocery store down here, unseasoned stuffing. You know, the dried bread cubes? Everything is always pre-seasoned. That means I end up having to toast the bread and cut the cubes myself along with the other goodies that go into recipe. Too much time on my feet.

Any who… I hope y’all are enjoying your Sunday.

This week was a bit of a downer on the weight loss front. I only managed to drop 2 lbs. Not bad I suppose considering this was “that week of the month.” Since several have asked how I’ve managed to drop over 40 lbs since this past February I suppose I’ll fill you in.

I’ve sort of been following the Slim Fast diet plan. When I sort of, I mean that I have to modify the shakes or they taste horrible. Well the Cappuccino one is alright but the rest suck. Shortly after starting on the 2 shakes and a sensible supper plan they came out with the Slim Fast Optima variety which is supposed to help control hunger longer. I have no clue how it does this but it does quiet well. But I still have to bulk up the shakes. I usually keep a can of the French Vanilla powder and a can of the Milk Chocolate powder on hand. I use the 8 oz. of skim milk but then I’ll add frozen fruit or ice into the blender with the milk and powder. Sometimes adding a tablespoon of instant cappuccino mix makes it a really heavenly treat. When I get hungry during the day I usually make some popcorn. But not the microwave variety. I want to control the amount of sodium and fat that goes into it so I pop it in a pan on the stove and it’s generally the afternoon snack for all of the boys and myself with them eating far more of it than I do.

When I first started on the Slim Fast plan, I had a lot of people snicker and tell me, “Oh boy, you’re going to be running to the bathroom a lot!” But as a person who’s lived with severe IBS for the last 20 years, this diet seems to have done a great deal to keep that under control. I think it’s because I’m finally getting the dietary requirements that I need and my body isn’t having to struggle to digest what it’s taking in. That and lots of water. As an added bonus, my blood pressure, while it still tends to go sky high during moments of intense stress, has stabilized to a reasonable  123/76 which any medical professional will tell you is outstanding for a person with diastolic heart failure. Even my pulse has settled down to the low 90’s and upper 80’s. I attribute that to medication changes, though.

So there you have it. That’s how I’m doing it and it seems to be working.

• My nest is half empty pushing my anxiety level to new levels. Some may think that the years in which I did not have physical custody of my bio-boys was fun and easy. Little do they know me. It left me with an irrational fear of being separated from both my bio-boys and my bonus-boy.
• Baby Boy continues to struggle for stability. Friday I finally had an opportunity to speak with our family psychiatrist about this without him being present. The consensus being, severe early onset of schizoaffective with the major problem being, due to his previous hospitalizations, he tries very hard to maintain a facade of not letting anyone know when he is struggling with the auditory and visual hallucinations resulting in an increase of stress to maintain that control which triggers the mania aspects. The doctor said that he has one of the most severe cases of early onset he has seen yet also shows the most uncanny willpower to mask it and attempt to control it that he has ever seen. We also discussed this being the last time we try a different atypical anti psychotic. If this med combo doesn’t work, it’s time to pull out the “big guns” of the older and more potent schizophrenic medications.
• Had a lumbar MRI six weeks ago which revealed degenerative disc disease with two discs being fused with calcification spreading up the back of the spine and one disc bulging. This explains the lower body neuropathy and neurological symptoms but not the tremors in the upper extremities and decreasing fine motor skills. Waiting for a referral to a neurologist to make sure it’s just the fibromyalgia and not something else co-occurring.
• On Memorial Day I made the best smoked/grilled chicken ever. I also ended up with heat exhaustion from being outside all afternoon in the sun and the heat from the grill.
• Joseph is on vacation this week. The goal is to finish painting the interior of our town-home. The kitchen is half done. I’ll attempt finishing it tomorrow while Joseph works on patching holes throughout the rest of the house. When we’re done, the property manager claims new sub flooring, carpet and linoleum will be soon to follow.
• Father in-law and his significant other will be visiting a week from Sunday. We haven’t seen them since our wedding. It always throws me off guard. Joseph is a carbon copy of his father… only taller. His father also has the most unsettling way of looking a person straight in the eyes in a way that leaves one feeling that your soul has been left completely visible to him… It’s Joseph with age and wisdom. Lord, what a future Joseph and I have if Joseph also gains that much of his father in years to come.
• My last living grandparent is failing. She had the beginning stages of renal failure and was refusing to eat. She seems to have improved a great deal and I’ve been told that she’s came out of the renal failure. Her birthday is Sunday. I have to try and find a good time to call her this week. She keeps asking my parents, “When is my girl going to call me? She’s long overdue to call.” Thing is, having Nate home full time since his last hospitalization has left me with little time for luxuries such as long phone calls. And Grandma always talks with me for a very long time, always at least an hour and a half. Thank the gods for unlimited long distance!
• Boy #1 is now 5′ 9″ and only 15 years old. He just might grow into thoe size 12 feet someday.
• Boy #2 is now 14 and lord help my sanity. His personality is that of a great-uncle that while living, lived to keep drama going in the family. He carries a giant spoon with which to stir the pot at will.
• I’m a horrible mother of sons. While I enjoy them more the older they become, and the teen years aren’t quite as horrible as I had feared, the voice changes that boys go through is akin to nails down a chalkboard. There are days that I dread waking up as I know it will be followed by Boy #2’s forever changing and croaking and screeching voice.
• My mother will be here for my birthday this year. She will be arriving two days prior. She wants to meet Joseph’s family that lives here in GA and has suggested that my birthday should be the day. I’m more inclined to simply leave her to supervise the children and take a night away from home in a local hotel. Alas, between my mother’s wish and those of my neighbors & friends it will likely be that I play hostess for my own backyard birthday party.
• Bonus Boy is insistent that he wants to be here for the entirety of my mother’s visit and has begged Joseph to please ask his mother if he may stay with us the entire 12 days instead of just the 7 in the middle. I won’t hold my breath for that one.
• Sunday, the boys and I watched an older movie that has long been a favorite of Boy #1’s which he hadn’t seen a few years, 8 Seconds, the story of bull rider Lane Frost’s life. Boys #1 & 2 and I followed it with an older Julia Roberts movie, Something To Talk About, simply because, while it’s set in The South, it reminds us so much of life “back home.” Not to mention Robert Duvall reminds us so much of my Dad.
• Boy #2 has enrolled in Time4Learning for the summer with his goal being to complete 7th grade curriculum this summer and then take a grade placement test when school starts back in August. If he completes this goal, having seen Georgia’s mandated curriculum requirements for 8th grade public schools, he just might end up placed in 9th grade… There is that much of a disparity and that much lacking Georgia public school curriculum.
• Boy #1 wants to try to get accepted into National Guard Youth Challenge as soon as he turns 16 in January. I’ve been working with one of their mentoring coordinators to find a qualified mentor here in Macon that is willing to at least meet him so we can get the ball rolling. Last week, I dreamed of his wedding. It was unsettling to say the least but reassuring just the same. He later told me that when he is done with NGYC his goal is to join the Marines. Which made the fact that in the dream he was in full Marine dress uniform for his wedding, a bit more unnerving.
• I wish I was more tolerant of having two teenagers with two different musical preferences in my home. Honestly, I have to hand it to my parents. They rarely complained when my sister had her music blaring from one side of the house and I had mine baring from the other. In their shoes I would have gone completely insane.
• I think I’m finally getting sleepy. I’ll attempt something more interesting and upbeat tomorrow.

Ciao for now.~

So. Joe and I have this on-going sort of debate.

I am convinced that if spew tastes like cheesecake, we could easily solve world peace. Or at the very least he would be a very happy man and I could lose a whole lot of weight. Think about it.

Cheesecake.

Joe refuses to speculate if he would take a daily supplement in capsule form that would make his spew taste like cheesecake.

Spew should taste like cheesecake. I’m not suggesting that spew should take on the consistency of cheesecake. That’s just down right nasty. Absolutely disgusting. I’m just saying that instead of it tasting the way it really does, it should taste like cheesecake.

Maybe even a supplement to make it taste like strawberry cheesecake. That would kick so much ass.

When I win the lottery, I am going to employ a food chemist and tackle this. It could change the world.