Friday, July 22, 2011

A Finland State of Mind

This time last year, I was dealing with Ephraim's fourth surgery and preparing for our family trip to Finland. I've mostly repressed the whole surgery thing. I've been thinking about the trip a lot. I didn't really write about it much. I meant to. It was a mixed bag as trips go. Some of it was absolutely fantastic. But some of it wasn't.
For example, eating blueberries and lox and crusty fresh bread was great. Taking a boat to the island zoo was great. Having Kinneret stung by a bee for the first time on Shabbat in a campground in Helsinki - less good. Managing to pull the stinger out and giving her Children's Advil and having her calm down pretty quickly and her breathing remain even for the next several hours - better.
The worst moment was in Russia. (Remember, we flew into St. Petersburg, spent an overnight there, took the train to Joensuu, spent a week there, took the train to Helsinki, spent a week there, took the train back to St. Petersburg, spent three days there, and took a flight back to Israel) We had two strollers. We'd loaded our luggage on one, and Kinneret in the other. Ephraim was on my back. We walked several blocks looking for a taxi, going over several large curbs. One of the wheels popped off of the stroller that the luggage was on, and everything spilled into the street. We hailed a taxi and told him to take us to the hotel. He took us to what was clearly the wrong address, dumped our stuff out on the sidewalk, demanded his money, and pulled away. I cried.
People came out of the apartment building we'd been dumped in front of and asked what help we needed. One lady spoke some English. She helped us call the hotel we were supposed to be staying at, and the hotel sent a taxi to pick us up. The taxi came and took us all the way to the hotel. We managed the rest of the trip with the backpack carrier and the stroller.
We never did get that stroller fixed, though we did bring it back to Israel.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the trip a lot, thinking about blueberries and thinking about swimming in icy water and living in a little cabin. I miss Finland. I miss three weeks of undivided family time. I even miss cooking in a tiny little travel cooker and eating sandwiches for most of my meals. I miss the adventure. I can't wait for our next family adventure. I know it won't be next year in Lublin (EJC 2012), but maybe the year after... In the meantime, I'll be in a Finland state of mind.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Mind the Jap

Today I woke up and had coffee and went to my Tai Chi class.
Then I stopped at the fruit stand for fruit and the mall for a yogurt drink.
Then I played on Twitter and blogs and Facebook for a few hours (ok, so that was actually working)
Then the maid came and cleaned the house.
I picked up my kids and took them out for chocolate milk.
Then my husband came home and took us out to dinner.
On the way home, we stopped and bought me two new hats.

I feel like such a JAP :)

Food
Breakfast: Coffee + yogurt drink
snack: coffee
lunch: lentil soup, peach
snack: fireball, coffee,
dinner: hummus with meat, 2 pitas, salad, apple-water drink.
after: fireball

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Doggy Potassium

So Poofy's kidneys are functioning well. His potassium is high. For now, I was told to try to keep him from eating anything that's not his dog food. There's the possibility of putting him on low potassium food. We'll see.

Today was a medium day. Overall, I think it was decent. The coffee is starting to get out of control...

Breakfast: 2 cups coffee,
Snack: fireball
Lunch: coffee, 1 slim-fast shake (vanilla)
snack: coffee,
snack: celery, 1 cracker
dinner: 1 chicken neck, 3 bowls lentil soup with lentils, celery, carrots, onions, and soup nuts (about 1/4 cup total of soup nuts)
snack: 1 apple

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Passed Test, Blood Test, Diet

So today's big news is that I took my written (theory) driving test and passed it. It took two tries, but I have the official pass on that, which means I just have lessons and a road test and then I can get my license. This would be a big move toward my feeling like an adult, so it's good to feel like the process is moving along.

I took Poofy to the vet today, and he got a shot of tranquilizer so he could have a blood test. I'm expecting to find out that he has chronic renal failure... which is both good news and bad news. Animals can live for years with it - that's the good news. The bad news is that his peeing on the floor is likely to get worse rather than better. I'm currently taking him out 5-6 times a day and he's still having accidents. It's not a nice situation.

On the diet front, today was a decent day. Here's the food:
breakfast - 2 coffees and a slim-fast (chocolate)
snack - coffee & peach
snack - fireball
dinner - 2 chicken breasts & 1.5 cups of rice
snack - neviot + raspberry vanilla flavored water.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Another day.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm addicted to coffee. I used to limit to one cup a day, and now it's crept up to three and sometimes four cups a day. I've also discovered that if my posts aren't posted to Facebook, nobody sees them. Since Facebook is now glitching and not allowing me to post anything, I guess I'll go back to having the notes function import my blog. It worked before.

Today's food:
Breakfast: coffee & slim-fast shake (vanilla)
snack: coffee
snack: coffee, 1.5 nectarines, 3 squares chocolate
dinner: 1 smoked beef sandwich (not quite corned beef) on light bread, w/ ketchup, many pickles,
after: fireball

One, Two, Skip a Few...

When I was a kid, there was this thing we used to say - "I can count to 100 really fast. One, two, skip a few, 99, 100." So I'm skipping a few days and talking about being back on track.

Thursday night was a really fun night out with my siblings and parents for my parents' 45th anniversary. It was also all-you-can-eat. For my mouth, it was just shy of heaven. For my diet, complete disaster. I gained a whole kilo since I last wrote. Seriously.

Today, on the other hand, was better.
pre-breakfast: coffee
breakfast: slim-fast (chocolate)
snacks: coffee, fireball, 1 bite of peach, 1/2 a passiflora, more coffee, yet more coffee
dinner: 3 veggie burgers (100 cal each), big bowl of mixed frozen veggies, microwaved, with about 1 tbs Italian dressing
snack: diet ice cream sandwich (54 calories), fireball

I know that's actually unbalanced and messed up and I'm drinking entirely too much coffee, but I'm pretty sure I kept it under 1200 calories, and I'm not starving, so it's a success.

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Wednesday

Today was a somewhat better day. I'm tired, so I'm going to go straight into the food.

breakfast: coffee + slim fast shake (vanilla)
snack: slimfast bar (peanut butter crunch)
snack- banana
lunch: chocolate slimfast shake
snack: peach
snack: coffee + 5 small pieces of chocolate
dinner: 4 slices light bread, 1/3 avocado, pastrama (4.5% fat) - about 2/3 of a package, one bowl tomato soup
after: fireball

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Tuesday.

So I had this brilliant plan of getting up at 5am to go walking. Of course, at 3am, Ephraim soaked through his diaper and the whole bed had to be changed. So at 5am, I couldn't move at all. But I did exercise tonight. I walked for 40 minutes and then did my tai chi stretches. I'm listening to Outliers now, which I'm finding really interesting, and way fewer people get killed or beaten up than in Under the Dome, which is what I listened to previously... btw, if anyone local has a copy of Influence, I'm supposed to read that too. Turns out, it's not available in audio. I did a little better with the night time binge, but I have to improve further.

Breakfast: coffee, slim-fast chocolate
snack: slim fast bar (mint chocolate), coffee
lunch: 2 peaches
snack: 3 zucchinis with salt
dinner: 2.5 chicken breasts, 1/2 cup of rice

Monday, July 04, 2011

Monday.

So I seem to lose my drive later in the day. I'm not quite sure why this is. Today, I did great in the morning, even turning down fresh bread and butter that looked amazing. Then, as I was making dinner, I gobbled down the meat/veggie/tomato sauce and then I ate a ton of pasta. I have to get the evenings under control again. On the exercise front, I had a breakfast with a group of Twitter friends and then I walked home, which took about 30 minutes at a reasonable pace, so I got a little bit of exercise. I'm really trying to convince myself to wake up at 5 to go walking in the mornings...
Here's the food:

Breakfast: coffee, muesli yogurt
snack: slim-fast bar, coffee
lunch: coffee, 2 peaches
snack: 3 apricots
dinner: a lot of pasta with meat & vegetable sauce (sauce had fresh tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, and lots of beef)

And as a bonus, here are my kids taking a bath in new bathing suits. (They don't usually take baths in bathing suits, but they wanted to put them on b/c they were new, so I let them wear them in the bath, and then I said... aha! finally I can take pictures of them in the bath!)


Sunday, July 03, 2011

I'm ba-ack

I'd decided to stop posting all my food, but then a few things happened.
1. I didn't lose any weight. In fact, I gained back about half a kilo.
2. I started to lose motivation for the diet.
3. And this was the most surprising part, people told me they miss my daily food posts. I found this absolutely shocking. I was really grateful for all the support people gave me, and I was really happy to be inspiring people to lose weight, but finding out that people actually liked reading about what food I eat daily was.... well, unexpected. 

So I'm back. And I'm on slim-fast. And today was a not great day.

Breakfast: coffee + slimfast shake (vanilla)
Snack: slim-fast bar (mint chocolate), coffee
lunch: apple w/ 1 tablespoon peanut butter
Snack:  3 apricots and half a peach.
Dinner: 5 mini veggie hot dogs and an entire quiche....
yes, an entire quiche, which contained: 1 full container of mushrooms, 1 very small head of celery, 1 onion, 3 eggs, 1 container of 3% cottage cheese, some oil, some butter, some flour (about 4 tablespoons) and 3 slices of yellow cheese. Can we say "disaster?"
After: fireball.

I think the problems are 1. I missed my second shake. 2. Yaakov and Shlomo didn't come home, so no one else ate any of the quiche. I'm having problems with limiting servings. still. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.