I'm Blessed. And So Are You.

Well, it's day two of Jackson without meds. As of right now, I have to say that the diet isn't working. He's off the wall and completely out of control. I'm not sure if he's just eaten something he shouldn't have had or what. I'm not going to give up, but it's going to take a little detective work and a lot of patience, I'm afraid.

I'm so busy this month, I feel like I'm drowning. I haven't had enough time to spend with my kids, I'm letting my house slide. I haven't cooked a decent meal in over a week and I have laundry piled to the ceiling. Brooklyn has given up naps, but she still needs them. I should have said no to being in this play, but it's too late now. I still need to get one costume before Wednesday. I'm making plans to meet with Michelle and Mimi because Kendra was so kind and got us tickets to Oprah's show.

I need to find a way to clone myself so I can make sure the kids practice their instruments, read, do their homework, and get to baseball practice on time and at the right field so we're not standing around amid a bunch of Orioles waiting for other Red Sox to show up. Not that that's ever happened or anything. Ahem.

I haven't had time alone with Joe in forever. Perhaps that's why he knocked 4 holes in the freaking family room ceiling while I was out of town. I guess he didn't remember that brief conversastion where I said, "I don't want lights in the ceiling, and even if I did, we have a lot of other stuff that's higher on the To Do list."

Brooklyn's walking around in a shirt, diaper, snowboots and a backpack while eating leftover pancakes from lunch right now and you know what? I don't have the energy to try and find where she took off her pants. Whatever.

I believe I'm finally done with the book now. I think I may be done with the articles I've written. Maybe. I hope. I'm down to only 50 pieces of mail in my box at the moment.

As busy as I am, I know I can always come here and read your comments and feel a little bit better. Like this one I just got this afternoon....

Dawn! I have been such a big fan of your website for many months now. I used to love how long your blogs would be and how hilarious they were. Then, you started sharing less and less with us because of your book deal, which makes me a tad angry since without us, the readers, you really wouldn't have a book deal. I was so excited to get your book but because this blog has become really boring and seems like such a big time waste for you, I am going to stop reading your blog and won't buy your book. Something has happened to you. You are not funny anymore and seem angry for having to type a paragraph for your readers. You have also said in the past that you exaggerate on a lot of your posts, which makes me think that your household is not as chaotic as you make it seem. You have time to fly every other week, rehearsals, two blogs and your book? Something smells fishy and I think a lot of your fans understand this now....it is sad. I used to be a huge fan, sorry you gave up on us.

LR


Well, LR, I want to thank you for following my instructions on sending me hate mail. There's nothing worse than hate mail containing misspelled words. In the future, so you know, you can just leave. You don't need to inform me of your decision or ask permission, okay. Enjoy not reading my blog and not getting my book. God bless.

Actually, the things that always makes me feel better when I get just a bit too busy are my kids...

One day while the kids were on spring break, Lexi and Clay got up early and made everyone lunch. At 6:30 in the morning. There they were, preparing half a dozen indentical plates, assembly-style. I'm really more of a "coffee for breakfast" kind of person, but how sweet were they?

It's times like that, even though there was peanut butter smeared on every inch of countertop and pretzel crumbs on the floor, that I smile and know that everything in my life is worthwhile. I'm where I'm supposed to be right now. But like everyone else, I'm only human. I regularly get overwhelmed and have a hard time keeping up.

We've all been there. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has taken her child to baseball practice at the wrong field or the wrong time. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has spent an hour looking for my car keys only to find them in the refrigerator. I'm positive I'm not the only person with laundry piled up on the floor, or a baby walking around in a shirt and snow boots saying, "TOTALLY WICKED!" repeatedly. Okay, well maybe I'm on my own with that last one. But my point is - when things seem overwhelming and hectic and you find yourself living in a playland pit of all the balls you've dropped this week, just remember to take a moment and relax. Take a breath and smile and know that you're blessed.

Only Three Weeks to a Healthier, Happier You (aka - a bunch of lies)

Why is it so hard to change bad habits? I know what I need to do. I know how to make healthy food choices. I know that exercise is important. I know these things. But do I DO them? Nope. Why is that? Why don't I make the changes I know I need to make in order to accomplish my goals? Why is it so darn difficult?

Tonight I had a meeting and I didn't get out of there until 7:30. I was planning on getting a salad for dinner. I was looking forward to eating a big salad. I really craved a salad. But when 7:30 rolled around and I started eyeing the tin of cat food that was sitting on a nearby desk, thinking that I was hungry enough to go for a little Fancy Feast (I mean, it's FANCY and it's a FEAST. How bad could it be?), I started rethinking my salad idea. By the time I got to the drive-thru, I was so hungry that I ordered a lard sandwich with extra butter and a side of gravy, an order of fries, and of course, the requisite Diet Coke. I mean, I was hungry, people! Who wants to take the time to chew on field greens when they're emaciated? I want a cow! (And I don't even like beef!)

Another time I eat garbage is when I'm overwhelmed. I work well under pressure. I like being busy. When my calendar is full of commitments, I buckle down, organize everything and get cracking. No problem, right? But I've found there's a fine line between busy and overwhelmed. When I start to cross that line, I shut down. I no longer prioritize and take care of business. I can no longer break projects into smaller chunks and get it done. I sit there like a deer caught in the headlights, not knowing what to do. So I do nothing at all. I don't know where to start, so I don't start at all. Instead, I reach for the pretzles, or chips, or ice cream, or nachos, or cookies. OK, fine - I reach for all of the above. Hey, I keep busy that way, right? Well, my mouth is busy anyway.

I read somewhere that it takes 3 weeks to break a habit. It does make sense, I suppose. It takes time to retrain our brains. If only we could replace a negative behavior with a more positive one for 3 weeks (only 21 days!), it might just become more natural to us. If we could just replace that half hour of TV in the evening with a brisk walk around the neighborhhood, maybe after 3 weeks, we'd start to look forward to our evening walk instead of Seinfeld reruns. Maybe if we could manage to reach for celery sticks instead of cookies every day for 3 weeks, we'd naturally gravitate toward the vegetables without thinking too much about the cookies. I'm not saying that it would become "easy" to make the healthy choices, but maybe it would become a little easiER. Perhaps?

Who's with me? Who wants to try to ditch a negative behavior and replace it with a healthier one for a mere 3 weeks? I'm going to give it a try. Starting tomorrow, of course. There's a piece of cheesecake calling my name right now.

Or I could just follow Brooklyn's diet...

For breakfast, I could eat a piece of string cheese left in my high chair from yesterday's lunch.


For lunch, I'll throw my chicken fingers on the floor, I'll push my corn off my plate, and I'll use my fry as a spoon to scoop up and eat 2 1/2 cups of ketchup.


Mmmm ketchup.


After I've had my fill of ketchup, I'll eat chocolate sauce until it drips from my face.

For an afternoon snack, I'll eat 2 M&Ms I found on the sidewalk.

Then, for dinner, I'll look at my plate and scream, "I don't wan' it!" repeatedly until someone takes it away from me.

And for dessert, I'll follow Joe around until he breaks down and gives me bites of his ice cream.

She Called!!!

Guess who called me today! Savannah's health teacher!!! I kid you not! I was at the hospital waiting for my kids to go back to surgery and my cell phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Mrs. Meehan?"
"Yes."
"Hi. This is Mrs. M., Savannah's health teacher."

This is the part where I thought, well it's a good thing I'm in the hospital because I think I just went into cardiac arrest.

"Oh yes. Umm, about Savannah's menu... I really usually cook decent meals. Honestly. Other than those Cheez-Its I got Savannah and some flavored tea, I don't keep foods with artificial ingredients in the house. I make almost everything from scratch. Usually. Honestly. I know it seems like I'm a derelict and I only feed my kids Skittles, Dr. Pepper, and boxed, frozen nuggets made from 1% chicken parts and 99% sawdust, but I swear I only feed them that stuff on odd numbered days. The other days, I cook real meals containing actual food. I swear! The more I ramble, the more I notice the absolute silence on the other end. The more silence, the more I ramble. I'm just fun that way. I continued prattling, I mean, I don't make them eat liver or anything too gross, but I force feed them vegetables. Well, not Brussel sprouts because, well because they're icky and they look like little brains. I know I write about cookies a lot, but we really don't eat cookies for every meal. Well, sometimes I do, but I make sure the kids don't. Because I want to keep them all for myself care about the kids' nutritional needs."

Before her ears started bleeding, Mrs. M interrupted and said, "Mrs. Meehan, I was just calling to let you know that Savannah is a great kid."

I impressed her with my highly articulate reply, "Huh?"

"I was going to write you a note, but I decided to give you a call instead. I've paired the kids up to take notes and work together. Savannah's partner struggles a bit and Savannah has been really nice to her and has taken time to help her. I just wanted to let you know."

"Ohhh. Oh well, very good. Very well then. You can just ignore my inane ramblings."

Seriously though, I was so happy to hear that my daughter was being nice and helpful. It's always good to know that something has sunken in and the kids can behave in public. Sometimes I wonder if anything I say gets through to them, ya know? And how nice that her teacher took the time to call and let me know! And even better yet, she closed with this, "As far as the diet goes, believe me, I know what it's like to do the whole fast food drive-thru thing on the way to dropping my son off at his sporting event. I just want the kids to be aware of what they're eating and to think about the decisions they make when it comes to food. If they repeatedly make unhealthy choices, they'll end up looking like you it'll catch up to them eventually.

And the kids' surgery went very well today. They were in and out in no time. Clay was loopy and goofy as they took him back to surgery. He was giggling so hysterically that the nurse asked, "Did anesthesia come and give him a shot?" Um, nope. He's just a goofball. As always, having surgery done in a children's hospital sure makes you thankful for healthy kids. Say a prayer for all those kiddos who are in the hospital for more than a simple ear tube surgery.

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Edited to add the following:
I keep forgetting to mention this! If any fellow blogger out there in Blogland has a couple minutes to spare, go here and fill out this survey about mom bloggers. Bobbie Sue is trying to finish up her PhD and needs your help gathering information about how blogging might have helped you transition to motherhood. Please take a minute to help her out in her research.

So, What's For Dinner?

I looked over at Savannah who was writing something in a notebook. "Whatcha writing? Is that homework?"
"Yeah. We're supposed to write down everything we eat for the week."
"Ohhh. Is that for health class?"
"Yep."
"You're making up stuff, right?"
"Huh?" Savannah looked up at me, confused.
"You're not writing down what we have really eaten for dinner this week, are you?"
"Yes," she answered innocently.

Crap! Why did I ever teach my kids that lying is bad?! I obviously never thought that one through. I glanced at her paper. Listed almost every day for breakfast was "a handful of Cheez-Its". Yeah, that's nutritious. Nothing gets your day started like highly processed, fake cheese flavored crackers. Vitamins? Nope. Minerals? Nah. Fiber? Not really. Protein? Notsomuch. Partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil with TBHQ, yellow #5, yellow #6, and monosodium glutamate? Check!

I continued past Savannah's nutrition packed breakfasts to dinner. I've had a less than stellar week in the cooking department. Her list read...
nachos
chicken pot pie
double cheeseburger from McDonalds
grilled cheese sandwich
pizza
taquitos
lasagna

Oh yeah, that looks great. I envisioned Savannah's health teacher being so shocked and appalled by Savannah's menu that she'd soon be sending me a packet filled with 5 pounds of nutrition information including menus, charts of vitamins and minerals needed to support development, and a BMI calculator. I was sure she'd soon be calling me to discuss the importance of the food pyramid (which, by the way, did not exist when I was a kid. We didn't have any pyramid. We had the bread group. Cookies and cakes were part of this group. We had the dairy group. This included milkshakes. We had the fruit and veggie group which included French fries and strawberry-banana smoothies. And finally we had the meat group which contained cheeseburgers.).

"So you don't want to write baked salmon, steamed asparagus with a lemon drizzle, herbed new potatoes and a cup of fresh pineapple for dessert? OK. OK. It's ok. How about we just add some details then? It's not really lying if you're just adding details, right? Here we go..."

Nachos: made with low fat corn tortillas, fat free beans, low fat cheddar, tons of lettuce and tomatoes and NO greasy beef, sour cream or high fat cheese

Pizza: made with a whole wheat crust, fresh plum tomatoes and basil, and a sprinkle of part skim parmigiana cheese and NOT sausage and greasy pepperoni

Lasagna: made with whole grain pasta, lean ground turkey, ricotta, and spinach and NOT Italian sausage and 6 pounds of cheese

Double cheeseburger from McDonald's: made with, umm, made with, hmmm, ok, I got nothin' here.

Every time one of my kids has brought this particular project home from school, it's been a fast food/quick-what-can-I-throw-in-the-oven kind of week. Every time! Why don't teachers give us a head's up and let us know that every bite our kids eat is going to be analyzed so we have time to stock up on healthy foods that we never ordinarily keep in the house be prepared?!

Oh and I thought I had a most wonderful idea for curbing my late night sweet tooth attacks! My plan was to make myself a cup of wonderful, sweet dessert tea in the evening when I got a craving to munch on something sweet. So, tonight I put my plan in action. Mmmm Sweet Coconut Chai Tea with a little milk and sugar. It's like a dessert, right? I sat down and inhaled the spicy, coconutty aroma and felt the steam on my face. I took a sip of the rich, creamy goodness. And then I decided that the tea would go much better with a cookie. So much for that plan.

Have a Cookie, Honey

Wow! Almost 200 comments on my last post. Maybe I should rip apart another diet plan tonight. ;)

Oh yeah - I had started to read a comment from the person who had originally written about Alli and Brooklyn jumped on my lap and it got deleted. I'm sorry. It wasn't deleted on purpose and now it's bugging me because I really wanted to read it!

Actually, I think there are a lot of good, healthy, eating plans out there. I think any number of them can work for you IF you stick to them. That's the hard part. I absolutely believe that frame of mind is the most important factor in obtaining successful results. I did Weight Watchers after I had my third child and lost about 40 pounds. I've tried it several times since and I didn't lose much of anything any of those times. The difference? I wasn't committed to it those times. Plain and simple. I don't remember where I read this before, but it was about the difference between losing weight and quitting drinking or smoking. You can quit cold turkey and stop drinking or smoking altogether. You never have to have another drop of alcohol or another cigarette. You can't do that with food. You have to eat every day to live. Can you imagine an alcoholic trying to quit and yet having to take three small drinks every day? I'm not saying that losing weight is harder than quitting drinking or smoking or anything else, but after reading that, I saw weight loss in a different light. It can be a really, really hard thing for some people.

There's no one ideal diet that works for all. I think you have to do what works for you, find what motivates you, and stick to it. (Easy for me to say, huh?)

Then there are the constant challenges. My kids love to watch The Food Network. It's killing me this week.
My husband, bless his heart, offered me a cookie last night.
"Do you want a cookie, Hon?" he asked pleasantly.
At this point, I shot laser beams of death from my eyes into his skull. It slowly dawned on him that offering me a cookie was probably not one of his better ideas.
And then there are the commercials. Oh the commercials. Come to Arby's for our French dip. Have a hot, delicious cheeseburger here at McDonalds. Try our new menu at Fridays.

Seriously, is it just me or are there a million food commercials on in the evening designed to make you run to the kitchen and grab the quickest, most calorie-laden food? And speaking of commercials, why, oh why do there have to be erectile dysfunction, herpes, and other such commercials on in the evening when my kids are watching TV? My six year old was sitting next to me watching TV tonight when a tampon commercial came on.
"What is that, Mommy? Is that like lipstick?" she inquired.
To which I answered, "Go brush your teeth, Sweetie."

Pizza Anyone?

Day two on Weight Watchers and I'm not dead yet. I guess that's a good sign. I should start looking like a super model any day now. (Hey, whatever motivates you, right?)

So, I was reading your comments about different diets (or eating plans or whatever you want to call it) and I came across one that mentioned a product, a pill, called Alli. Have you guys heard of this? I was curious so I checked out their website and read the following statements. Seriously, word for word, these statements were on their official website.

What are treatment effects?
alli™ works by preventing the absorption of some of the fat you eat. The fat passes out of your body, so you may have bowel changes, known as "treatment effects". You may get:

gas with oily spotting
loose stools
more frequent stools that may be hard to control

The excess fat that passes out of your body is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza. Eating a low-fat diet lowers the chance of these bowel changes. Limit fat intake in your meals to an average of 15 grams.

Start trimming fat from your diet now, even before you begin taking alli. Then pick a day to begin taking alli, such as a weekend day so you can stay close to home if you experience a "treatment effect". Make the timing work for you. If you're getting ready to travel or attend a social event, hold off on starting with alli until the event is over

You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any "treatment effects", it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work

You may not usually get gassy, but it's a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens

Can I have a show of hands of everyone who wants to take a pill that will make you poop uncontrollably and will make you have "oily gas" that looks like the grease on top of a pizza?!! I think that visual alone is enough to make me stop eating for good.

And tell me, if you have to eat a very low fat diet while using this pill to avoid an oily gassy crapathon, then why bother taking the pill at all? If you're eating a healthful lowfat diet, then you don't need some stupid pill. Just my opinion, but seriously who, who, WHO would purposely take a pill that would make everyday seem like you're getting ready for a colonoscopy? I think I'd rather stay fat and not have to bring a change of pants with me everywhere I went.

Diet starts Monday. Again.

So I got on the scale for the first time in a month and I came to the shocking realization that I'd gained slightly less than a metric ton. I have no idea how this happened. My diet is exemplary. Today, for example, I had two cups of cream with a little coffee for flavor and a donut which was stale so I'm pretty sure it doesn't count. At church, we celebrated a birthday with cake after worship service. I think the cake was blessed and holy cake can't have that many calories. Of course I had to finish my son's slice as well. Waste not, want not. For lunch I had a peanut butter sandwich, about 70 pretzels (but they were the little skinny stick kind so they don't count) and half my weight in chocolate. The chocolate didn't even taste very good, and if you don't enjoy the food you're eating, you don't have to count those calories. I had a big, fat cheeseburger for dinner along with enough fries to keep Idaho in business, but I ate that while standing up and doing dishes because I was in a hurry to leave and play chauffeur to my daughter and everyone knows that food consumed while standing doesn't count. Plus I washed it all down with a Diet Coke which negates the calories in the cheeseburger, so really I think I should be losing weight.

On the menu for tomorrow is water for breakfast, lettuce for lunch, and a Tic Tac for dinner. Now I'm off to search for a snack. I've already looked in my fridge twice, but perhaps the food fairies have come and left something good to snack on while I was writing this. Hey, it's not Monday yet.