Getting A Life

Various and sundry or, An Update

I apologize profusely that I have not been writing regularly. I’ve been feeling very blocked lately and it’s been something of an effort to even write in my personal blog and I’m not doing very well with that either. This represents me making a conscious effort to put something here today that is more substantive than bragging about my Google ranking or reporting how much I weigh. Hopefully the logjam will be removed soon.

Site design and content issues
I really, really need to work on these. The logo looks amateurish and the pages are outdated and the latter don’t really say what I want them to say at this point, either. I am not sure when I will be able to concentrate on working on this stuff so if the appearance of this blog annoys you, your patience will be greatly appreciated. I haven’t gotten any complaints yet, including links from other blogs saying stuff like “Wow, get a load of how much this blog sucks,” but maybe my readers are just polite.

Health issues
I still have no self-control about what I eat. OK, that’s not entirely true. I have some control, but not enough. Some days I keep my eating fairly low-carb, and others I don’t. It doesn’t help that I feel like I’m being sort of swept along with someone else’s day, like I live only to wait until they get off work and then according to their dictates. Even my grocery shopping hinges entirely on them and I’m kind of sick of it. But this is one of those aggravations I just have to live with for now, and I don’t think it entirely explains why I can’t seem to stay on plan, even a half-assed plan.

Housing issues
Still sort of apartment-hunting, although I feel as blocked about that as I do about blogging. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get a place, which makes it really dumb that I’m not trying hard enough, which guarantees I won’t get a place. However, rumors that landlords are tightening their standards around here are not helping my mood any. Yet one more reason to roll my eyes every time I hear someone complaining because they bought too much house and now they have to rent because the bank foreclosed. You’re taking my potential home, dude–I can’t buy a house at all. Cry me a river.

Money issues
I have at least caught up my cell phone bill and still have $300 in the account of the $400 I got last Wednesday, and most of the $100 decrease was due to catching up the cell phone*. I need to plow through and catch up as much else as I possibly can today, and somehow manage it without spending all my laundry money. Sigh.

I just checked out a whole bunch of library books about starting and running a home-based business. I remarked to my little girl’s dad that I don’t know why anyone buys chintzy e-books off the Internet that tell them maybe one-millionth of what they need to know for a tenth of their rent money when they can just go to the library for free. He reminded me that our library system probably ranks in the top ten of United States public libraries and maybe even in the top five. Still, there’s interlibrary loan. And of course, just because we check out books doesn’t mean we’ll learn from them. It’ll be interesting to see if I find the time to glean anything useful from these books before I have to return them.

Meanwhile I also job-hunt but… yeah. Still hung up about putting my daughter in preschool. I think at this point that if I do it, it’ll be Waldorf because at least they won’t treat her like a miniature computer on legs. And the only reason I’d do it is at least she could be around kids and get a lot of playtime in, and not be hung up on the TV all day. It wouldn’t be because I thought it was her only option for getting an education, like so many parents seem to think. But it’s my absolute last option, and I’ll hold out as long as I can. I’m also hung up about not being employable. It doesn’t really matter at this point whose fault it is; I’d be just as unemployable after four years’ unemployment due to disability as I am after four years opting to stay out after years of job-hopping and impulsive behavior. (I.e., quitting at the drop of a hat because I didn’t like working somewhere.) What matters is whether I’d be able to pick up the slack if something happened to my little girl’s dad. Yes, she’d be entitled to Social Security**, but it wouldn’t kick in immediately and we could be evicted in the meantime.

There’s also the point that I still need to pay off my debt and start working feverishly to ensure that I’m not destitute in retirement. Hello? McFly? *knocks own head*

Relationship issues
Something… interesting is happening. I do not wish to label it for fear that all is not as it seems, but there’s also the point that the last time I was this mistrustful about this particular person, I lost him for thirteen and a half years. So I’m trying to be patient and hang loose and just wait to see what happens. I’m better at this than I was even five years ago, so I suppose there is something to be said for extreme relationship adversity when it forges you and makes you stronger. But I’m still not totally OK with the way things are going. We’ll just have to see how they play out.

I do know that he called a week or two ago and my little girl’s dad was here and didn’t even tell me the phone rang (it was one call out of many, so ultimately it didn’t hurt anything, but still), and my little girl’s dad has said a few other things that make me wonder what his take is on this whole situation. So I may get to deal with ugliness soon. On top of that I had a mean jealous streak about five miles wide in the immediate aftermath of his and my breakup, exacerbated by post-partum depression and worry that he was going to abandon our daughter like he abandoned me. It meant that every time I saw a woman being friendly to him online, I got snarly at him about it. I’m pretty sure I’m going to hear about this any day now, even though the situation is different. (And it really is. That’s the sad part.)

It makes me think there is some wisdom after all to setting up a certain distance between unmarried parents so that each can have their own life. Although if things had gone sanely and smoothly during the pregnancy and after, even if they had still resulted in him and me not being together, I think I would feel a lot better about the traditional visitation routine. But my daughter was too young for that kind of thing anyway. Babies and toddlers need to be with their mothers, assuming no abuse or neglect is going on. They’re not ready to visit with an absent dad for more than a few hours here and there until they’re at least three years old. Still, she’s three now.

And yet I hate it when she’s not here. I feel completely wrong and lost and don’t know what to do with myself. I mean, I do find things to do, like clean house, but the place is empty and I feel empty too. And I’m hardly going to send her off just so I can date or whatever. So it’ll be interesting figuring this out.

OK, I guess I had more to say than I thought. Let’s hope it is not another week before I post again.

—–
*My cell phone is my primary phone and I have no landline. In fact I had my original landline number ported to my cell phone and completely switched over back in 2006. It would be a better deal to have a bare-bones landline and DSL rather than a cell phone and cable Internet–assuming I didn’t use much long distance. These days, unfortunately, I have to use long distance if I want to talk to anyone besides my little girl’s dad, because most of my loved ones and some of my best friends are not online regularly or don’t write well. So as long as most of my conversations take place on nights and weekends, I think I’m still saving money.

**Oh, but Social Security is just a failed retirement program and we should replace it with the stock market. Whatevs. *eyeroll*

Body to-do list

I have been ruminating for several days about specific steps I need to take to make progress in a few areas of my life, and right now I seem to be obsessing most about health, fitness, and appearance. There are reasons for that I won’t go into here except to say that I am also doing this for myself, ha ha (no, seriously, I am, and you could say that my own outlook is the biggest reason for this), but I’m feeling more driven than usual to address these areas of my life.

I’m still low-carbing, although I am not following strict Atkins. Some things I have been reading about how human beings might have originally eaten and about the health and ecological costs of grain agriculture lead me to believe it doesn’t really matter how much carbohydrate I re-introduce into my life, anyway, and I’m not convinced that staying in ketosis would be a bad thing in the long run–nor keeping my intake below 40g net carbs most days, for that matter. As revolutionary as Dr. Atkins was for his time, I think he still subscribed overly much to mainstream attitudes about diet and health. I won’t go any farther than that, but that’s where I’m at where he and the diet are concerned. In any case, I think I’ve finally driven the point home for myself that I should not ever eat a high-carb diet again.

I need exercise. Desperately. I’m realizing that my body is crying out to move but I’m not precisely sure how to go about that other than walking; I still have a residual attitude problem about having to work hard physically at seemingly pointless activities. Specifically, I still hate push-ups. I learned recently that the much-vaunted bodyweight exercises promoted by some bodybuilders are nothing more than exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, and similar which those of us who did phys ed in grade school or went into the military have done and are familiar with. I hated them then and I hate them now, but unless I can get around to affording a gym or even my own set of free weights and a bench, they’re what I have. So now I get to talk myself into them.

I do, however, want to acquire the new Callanetics videos. One of them has cardio elements to it and there is some debate in hardcore exercise circles about whether cardio really is good for you, but I think it would help me with cardio endurance even if it served no other good purpose, so I’m going to get it anyway. I have a couple of dance videos in the meantime and we’ll see how that goes or if I keep avoiding them because I feel like a huge klutz when I’m following them. In any case they won’t sculpt things for me like the Callanetics exercises will, and that’s what I’m mostly after.

And clothes. Man. I hate seeing photos of myself because I used to dress sort of nicely some of the time, and I never do anymore, and I always wear these huge t-shirts that look like tents on me, and the pants aren’t much better. I need a few bras; I haven’t worn one in years and I don’t have the silhouette, as it were, to be going around without it. I also need shoes; I’ve got one pair that isn’t worn the heck out and I would like another pair of sneakers as well as a couple pairs of dressier shoes (but not heels, please!) and perhaps a pair of boots. And the clothes. Dear God. I did mention the clothes, yes? Good. From now on I am imposing a moratorium on myself against any more t-shirts for a while. When I get done losing this weight I’ll reconsider, and then only if it’s something novelty like some weird thing I find on CafePress or Zazzle, or maybe Northern Sun. I’ve been looking at plus-size catalogs and have decided I like tunics best, which is like a fancy t-shirt, but there’s more shape to it and they come in prettier colors. I also suddenly like A-line dresses, which I thought I could get a few shorter ones and wear them over leggings, perhaps with lace edging. And I’ll figure out other stuff. And I need to figure out how to do all this and not go broke. I already know where to find cheaper bras that will suffice until I have to get a different size; when I’m done losing weight I’ll get some really good ones that will last me several years.

I’m way behind on grooming, too. I’m lucky if I wash my face and brush my hair most days. That’s got to change. My skin is trashed because I don’t bathe every day; if I got in the shower every day and used the loofah, my pores wouldn’t get so clogged by keratin. My hair gets greasy and then it’s hide it under stupid hats. I haven’t shaved in years, and part of me doesn’t quite care, but I might start again just for a change of habit. Anyway it helps me feel a bit less freakish. And oh God, do I ever need a haircut. I want something about shoulder-length or slightly longer that’s more flattering to my face and that I don’t have to wear off my neck all the time because it’s too hot. I’ve looked good in layers in the past and as I think they’re currently in style, I may do that again.

If I were going to establish some sort of order in which to do these things it might look something like this:

1. Weight loss: ongoing
2. Exercise: Will be ongoing
3. Bathe more often & shave: Will be ongoing, I hope
4. Bras
5. Haircut
6. Shoes
7. New wardrobe

Although I could at least start getting some basic items for #7 all along if I can get the money together to do so.

Oh, and I also need to deal with health concerns, and I’m not sure how I will go about doing that yet. I intend to apply for Medicaid again soon because there is a Healthy Families program here in Ohio for which I think I qualify but it would be a stopgap in case I got hurt or seriously sick, so I don’t wind up bankrupt over medical bills. I don’t think it would work very well for maintenance healthcare. I’ll see what else I can manage, and at least I might have someone now who can periodically watch my child during the day so I can get these things done.

It might be interesting to label this a Body Project and see how far I can get with it, complete with photos. I need to do some kind of series project to keep people reading, anyway.

Fun with BzzAgent

I recently joined BzzAgent for some reason I don’t recall, and it looks like fun. Right now I am not rated very highly yet, but I have access to their FrogPond feature where they ask you to visit websites and give your opinion of them.

Well, I ran across this nutrition website. Seeing a link for new diabetics, I investigated. I was not very impressed. My summary of the site back at FrogPond:

Honestly, I would rather use the USDA nutritional database than this site; the only way they could improve it is if they would make it more user-friendly. This site buys into the same old stuff about fat being bad for you, weight loss being about calories in versus calories out (generally untrue–depending on my diet composition, as a 226-pound, 5′6″ tall woman, I can eat as much as 2900 calories a day and lose weight, without exercising), and calories being more important than carbohydrates for diabetes control. The latter is particularly egregious since there is scads of good research out there indicating that cutting grains, starchy vegetables, and sugars to the bare minimum in a diabetic diet and upping fat intake is key to good blood sugar control without drugs, particularly in early diabetes. These folks have access to even more research studies than I do, and there is no excuse.

It’s a pretty site, but I need substance as well–good, honest substance that doesn’t buy into hype. People’s lives literally depend on it, with this particular subject matter.

I mean, why do experts do that? When they have access to good information and they completely ignore it even though that means people will die badly, how do you justify that?

So this has been my evening…

First there was this…

I miss sushi rolls like crazy, even though I have found I can eat some rice through the day and not knock myself out of ketosis–why risk it? So sashimi is an acceptable substitute, and how! I got this while I was picking up shirataki noodles at the Japanese grocery, which is what my little girl and her dad and I all went there to get in the first place. When I read about these noodles Friday night on Sugar-Free Sheila’s website, I knew I had to try them. We haven’t opened them yet, as we’re all kind of moping around because my little girl has caught a cold or something, but we probably will later on today. Too bad; they probably would have gone well with the squishy fish. Oh, and my daughter loves sashimi now, which is hilarious, because she wouldn’t touch the fish in the center of my sushi rolls in the past.

Anyway, then I went on to this:

Disregard the toys in the background. I only just rearranged this section of my living room yesterday and already it is disappearing under a three-year-old’s clutter.

However, the computer screen in the background is of interest. That’s GnuCash running on my computer; you can see the lines in the “ledger” onscreen.

I just got done doing a massive catch-up of my financial tracking for the month of May; I’d seriously fallen behind on everything, and in particular my cash. Probably explains how I shot through most of $400 without actually paying any of my regular household bills. I am feeling really stupid right now. And this just points up the necessity of tracking your spending DAILY before you overshoot and wind up broke with people threatening to shut things off. Not that that is happening yet, but I need to get my butt moving on catching up.

At least the single biggest category was groceries and not, say, pig snout futures. I also have to give myself kudos about my cash balance because I knew I’d be off and it turned out I was only fifty-two cents short. However, I have no idea what the heck I did in inputting my checking account stuff into GnuCash because it’s seriously misbalanced, and I know I have the correct balance in my register (rather than drive myself nuts, I finally just adjusted up for that eight cents so it matches the balance on my credit union’s website now). But my brains are just about run out of my ears, so I’ll figure that one out later. It doesn’t help that GnuCash’s one major flaw seems to be the difficulty involved in entering split transactions. Grumble.

Oh, and one more thing: I got mentioned at Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb! AAAAGH! I feel like some famous person just came over to my apartment and it’s… well… it looks like it does now. Um… hi? *waves*

I love being proven right.

In the process of reading about low-carb dieting, I recalled some of what I learned in high school honors biology about glucose metabolism. It helped me put together what else I was reading in the same vein about prediabetes/Syndrome X, diabetes, and obesity. Along with this I remembered what I’d been told all my life, that bodyfat is just a way of storing excess energy in case of famine.

All these factors came together in my mind and the lightbulb came on. I thought, Why is obesity being blamed for disease? Fat is just energy storage. Why would it make us sick when it’s there to save our lives?

I decided that the reason obesity has been statistically correlated with things like heart disease and cancer must be that it is sometimes a symptom of health conditions that themselves lead to heart disease and cancer. I felt my position was bolstered, too, by the strong connection between diabetes and heart disease and also diabetes and obesity, and by the fact that cancer cells need more glucose than normal cells do. (This has been a long-understood fact, although researchers did not understand why–do a search for cancer cells and glucose on Google and all sorts of stuff pops up.) Well, it’s like having a severe allergic reaction. Itching in itself doesn’t kill you, but might be a sign of something else that will. Think along those lines.

So anyway, it turns out that two years ago, research emerged that proved me right: diabetes, not obesity, causes death. Score another one for allopathic Western medical practice and its longstanding tradition of treating symptoms instead of disease!

Now, before any Fat Acceptance folks come along and start crowing (if you haven’t seen this already), this doesn’t exactly let you off the hook, because you’ve been telling fat people for years that nobody ever needs to change their dietary habits if they’re fat. Fat people should be able to eat whatever they want no matter what, you proclaim. *bzzt* Wrong! Their obesity still isn’t the central problem, but someone who is overweight NEEDS to get a health workup to discover the cause(s) of their obesity. It’s not as simple as “get up off the couch and get some exercise”–something is going on. If their obesity is related to insulin resistance, which is what leads to type 2 diabetes, they need to change their eating habits permanently. That’s not saying fat people are bad, it’s saying diabetes is bad and should be prevented where necessary. You aren’t the one who’s going to need the dialysis, the seeing-eye dog and the foot amputations, so go preach to your bathroom mirror.

Now here’s one more area in which the medical community needs to get a clue: they’ve discovered that some cancer cells immediately die when deprived of glucose. Now they’re saying they need to develop drugs to take advantage of this, but that the drugs can’t cross the blood-brain barrier, because “the central nervous system… needs glucose to function properly.” Oh, really? This ranks right up there with the medical community’s efforts to come up with a satiety drug when all you have to do to feel full is eat enough fat and cut back your sugars and starches. Now they want to drug a cancer to starve it when low-carb eating is a possible alternative. Can we stop re-inventing the wheel now, please? Because it’s rolling over entirely too many people.

Low-carbing progress

I weighed in this morning and was at 226. It is not Wednesday so I’m not going to categorize this as an official weigh-in. I’ve been having some… interesting symptoms, so it may be hormones. If it is it’ll go away in another few days–I may show a net loss by the middle of next week. Also, I’m still in ketosis so I must be doing something right. I also have not been eating as much as I could or should have from day to day, so another possibility is my body’s going “OMG STARVATION!” and holding on to my stores… who knows. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, last night, I had pizza. And that’s not why I gained. *laugh* I tried this cauliflower pizza crust, and if you can get fat on cauliflower, shoot, I give up. And it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. My little girl’s dad said it made him think of quiche. It did hold together well enough to pick the pizza up but I think it would have done better still had I used my pizza pan with the holes in it. We’ll do that next time. I’m a little worried the crust will “leak” through the holes as I’m spreading it out on the pan but I don’t know that it will be much of a problem.

But… Pizza! I can have pizza! How cool is that? And I don’t have to make it out of a hamburger crust or use that weird wheat gluten stuff, either! (Which is just as well, because too much wheat seems to make my daughter nutso!)

I’ve begun contemplating scheduling out what kind of a dinner we have every night of the week and it is not unreasonable to anticipate a Pizza Night now.

On top of that, I found Sugar-Free Sheila via Cleochatra’s site yesterday (thanks, sweetie!). I had been wanting to do something yummy with canned pumpkin and heavy cream and Splenda but wasn’t looking forward to the experimentation because I’m already running around broke and don’t want to potentially waste food. Well, she’s already done it, only with cream cheese. Oh heck yeah. And a whole lot of other interesting things as well.

I will look nothing like her when I get done with my weight loss phase. My skin’s been stretched out like whoa by two pregnancies and a sudden, huge amount of weight gain after my second child’s birth. (They say exclusive nursing helps you lose weight–yeah, right! Only if you are not a hormonal mutant like me. Not that you shouldn’t do it anyway, I’m kind of strong-minded about the subject, but that’s another matter.) So I’ll probably wind up bearing a vague resemblance to a Shar Pei puppy. Not as hairy, though.

That bothers me. I don’t need to be the cute blonde in a bikini but I’d like to be the cute thirtysomething brunette in the altogether when the situation calls for it. So I’m going to see what I can do just with muscle toning and a little bodybuilding (not now, but hopefully soon) and whether getting into better shape that way will compensate. I’m sure it will help somewhat, I just don’t know right now how much difference it will make. I’ll have to lose the weight and see what’s left over.

And if being in shape isn’t enough, I have another option–I can get the stretched parts of my skin removed. That is going to be the absolute last option. MRSA is becoming a serious issue in hospitals, possibly killing more people annually than AIDS does. Surgery can be botched. I would probably wind up taking on debt to do it since it’s usually not covered by insurance. So I have to seriously think about whether it is really worth stoking my vanity with so much at risk.

And it’s possible my answer will be No. In that case looking like a melting mutant may make a fantastic screening device for the people in my life or coming into my life: if you think I’m gross because I started taking care of myself and lost a lot of weight, if I embarrass you or I’m a turnoff, then I don’t have time for your garbage because you wouldn’t have liked me fat either–and even if you would have, I was unhealthier then, so you don’t like me healthy either. That’s what I would have to think because, speaking from very recent experience, it’s kind of painful to hang around feeling rejected, and I don’t want to waste half my life going through that again. and again. and again. You know, I already have, almost. That’s a shame.

I’m still young, though. It could be that I’ll come through this all right, only looking slightly “off.” We’ll just have to see. The question isn’t holding me back from continuing with this, that’s for sure!

My first Revol-oopsie Rolls!

…Or Oopsie Rolls for short.

I started low-carbing yesterday, am in ketosis today, and decided to try these just to see if I could do them, because having a bread substitute that does not require wheat gluten or soy is A Good Thing™. Here’s a closeup of one roll:

They smell eggy coming out of the oven, maybe what a quiche would smell like if it didn’t have all that other crap in it, but they taste nice and the texture is good. Mine are flatter than they’re supposed to turn out. I’m not sure if I didn’t mix the yolk and whites enough or if I just didn’t get the egg whites into stiff enough peaks when I was beating them to begin with. I’m guessing probably the latter.

My little girl thinks they’re OK but they may be a bit too weird for her, even with jelly on top. So that was my one teensy-weensy cheat already today, but also the last one. We have Ezekiel bread in the fridge–I buy it for her because it’s from sprouted seeds, which makes the proteins a little bit different and thus less irritating (so I hear)–so she can have that instead. Ezekiel bread’s slightly lower-carb than regular bread and I think it is also supposed to be lower on the glycemic index, but I still can’t spare the carbs right now.

Sob… I miss my macadamia nut butter. The only place in town I’ve found it where it was just straight macadamia was at Sunflower and they folded. *sob* There’s one other place I will look because I don’t believe I thought to look for it the last several times I was there, and then I will have to think of something else for non-meat sandwiches because I am NOT eating soynut butter. *shudder* I’m not real big on cashew butter, so the macadamia and cashew thing is Right Out. I mostly eat the mac nut butter for the extra fat it provides, anyway.

Oh yeah, did I mention I am in ketosis? Yay! That didn’t take long. Guess my body just needed the break.

Some progress, some setbacks, some tentative plans

Well, I survived my first day back low-carbing. I even got a handheld mixer so that I could make oopsie rolls (see The Lighter Side of Low-Carb in my blogroll for details), so that I don’t have the excuse that I miss bread. Hahaha. I always seem to have eggs and cream cheese around and we discovered a sale on cream of tartar at Kroger a while back (a big deal, as it’s usually pretty pricey), so I’m set. I am not in ketosis yet and I have no idea when it will happen; if I hit the three-day mark and the ketostix aren’t changing color, I’ll move more in the direction of a “fat fast” to see if I can kick things into gear. I have macadamia nuts, cream cheese, eggs, and mayo, and I can get avocados cheap. Bring it.

I will also be on the lookout for frozen cauliflower, and possibly stocking up on zucchini at the end of the summer because it can be frozen and both make good pizza crusts and all manner of other things. Veggie pizza crusts? Yes, and far healthier than the wheat variety.

My spending, though… is entirely too far out of control. It’s been so bad I am afraid to tabulate everything up into GnuCash. I already know I started out with $400 on Wednesday and now am down to below $200, actually closer to $100. Not a one of my regular bills has been paid yet. I didn’t even put any of it into my checking account yet. WTH? I know I am living close to the bone, I know I have a moving day coming up soon, and here we are. Some of it was buying fast food. Some of it was the sushi I got Saturday, knowing I would be low-carbing yesterday. And some of it was supplies to deal with the stupid cat’s peeing on my carpet. And it doesn’t help that my little girl’s dad has not taken us grocerying, nor that now he has to replace his passenger-side front car window because one of the downstairs neighbor’s idiot friends broke it. (That’s our guess based on events Saturday night, but I’d also guess we have a 99.9 percent chance of being correct.) But the whole situation is just making me nuts. I can do better than this, so what happened?

However, I got a piece of mail from Chase Friday or Saturday inviting me to start a checking account with them for a $100 bonus. And I may just take them up on it. I am also supposedly going to get a $200-plus refund from the IRS from 2004. (Now all of a sudden I’m incredibly paranoid that I actually did file that year but didn’t print out the return. I’d been doing them through H&R Block’s free online service for a few years there. Aaaaargh…) But the thing is that both of those would be extra money. I am not supposed to be looking forward to possibly getting them now to make up my stupid shortfall.

And it just goes to show that conventional wisdom does not always apply. Some of us find it far too easy to spend money whether it’s cash or plastic. Not to be totally flippant, I’m just trying not to spiral into beating myself up unproductively.

I’m still poking around, as I always do, trying to figure out increasing my income. eBay is still pretty much a wash. I need to find books through the library to figure out how to do it better if I’m going to try and make it a decent income stream. I found a great one at Barnes & Noble but couldn’t justify the price. Trying to get it used might be a mistake as well because eBay is constantly changing how they do things. We’ll see.

I might start making art trading cards out of some of my photos and selling them on eBay or Etsy. If they’re meant to be sold they are technically referred to as ACEOs or Art Cards, Editions and Originals–ATCs are supposed to be for trading only. Anyway, I found a photofinisher that does wallets in 2.5″x3.5″ instead of 2″x3″, and for dirt cheap. I can pick them up at Target, so I’m going to try that pretty soon. Worst case scenario, I’m out less than five bucks. Best case scenario, I can have a lot of fun and make some decent money while I’m at it.

Otherwise, there are several places around tha intarwebs that I’ve picked up a few cents here, a few cents there, and I need to buckle down over the next several weeks, get each account up to the minimum dispersal balance, get my money out of them, and shut them down. It is just too much time and energy sucked up for too little reward. Amazon’s MTurk program is one example; Helium is another. I simply do not have the time to sit around typing and clicking and hoping to be paid well, only to find I earned pocket change.

As for a certain person that I wasn’t sure I wanted to communicate with again, I’m thinking we’ll try a phone call, if he’s still amenable, and we’ll see what happens from there. I have misgivings about being anything but a long-distance old Army buddy to him, but if that is all there is and it goes well, I would rather have one more person in the world wishing me well than one fewer. And if I had lived by that philosophy all along I might be a much happier person today.

Gearing up for weight loss and healthier eating

The Tuttle Park recreation center is noted, at least in my mind, for its soda machine that sells 20oz bottles for a dollar–a pretty good deal around here, if you’re going to buy a twenty-ounce bottle of soda. There’s just one problem: they have regular Mountain Dew but not Diet Dew, and I despise Diet Pepsi, the one diet soda in that machine. So I grabbed a regular Dew yesterday while we were at the park, then nursed it for a while because:

1. I am still not used to drinking large quantities of what pretty much constitutes fizzy sugar syrup. I was afraid it would make me sick on top of the migraine.

2. I don’t like the taste of corn syrup nearly as much as I once tolerated it. The Splenda/Nutrasweet/Ace-K sweetener combination that PepsiCo now uses for their Diet Mountain Dew is, as far as I’m concerned, a massive improvement over the regular label.

3. I’ve been reading low-carb blogs and diabetes articles again over the last couple of days and am now massively paranoid that I’m going to destroy my health with this stuff. With good cause, of course–the dangers of excessive carb consumption are way understated by most “experts,” and carb overconsumption has already left me a wreck–but still.

I mean, I drank it anyway, but it took me several hours. I suppose it could have been worse. I think what helped was that all I had for dinner was a burger patty with cheese and then a steak after that–virtually no carbs at all. I also woke up without a headache, so it all worked out in the end, but I don’t ever want to do that again.

I weighed myself this morning (I’ll do a separate weigh-in post) and was pleasantly surprised that the past several weeks of excessive fast food and the occasional ice cream or milkshake had not completely blown me out of the water. On the other hand, who knows? Maybe it’s a down-tick because Aunt Flo just came for a visit last week, or maybe I’m in the beginning stages of that “unexplained weight loss” they talk about as a symptom of diabetes. I really have no idea what is going on and I can’t afford a glucose-tolerance test, so I’m just going to have to approach this with all possible explanations in mind.

So I’m upping the ol’ fat intake and starting to cut the carbs to finish out this week, and I guess I’ll probably go into Atkins Induction this weekend. I say “I guess” because I suppose it’ll depend on how well I stand up to stupid temptations. I do way too much rationalizing and not enough looking out for my own welfare. My recent experience with Eddy tells me I have the potential to seriously turn this around, because even a year ago I would have kept obsessing over him and let him lead me around by the nose for a while and now I’ve cut that short before it began, so I have more hope for the outcome of this new weight-loss attempt than I would have had otherwise.

I at least want my gut to go away. Is that so much to ask? Sigh.

Meanwhile I have another challenge to deal with: my daughter is becoming entirely too fond of junk herself. Popsicles are her especial weakness. If I don’t watch it she’s going to wind up struggling someday just like me.

A child her age needs high-calorie, nutrient-dense food because she has a small tummy that fills quickly. She also needs fat in her diet because her nervous system is still developing. It amazes me that nutritional “experts” want little kids to eat like small adults. Never mind that the diet they recommend for adults isn’t so healthy either.

I read recently that a daycare center in the UK was found to be malnourishing the children in its care because they were feeding the children too many fruits and vegetables! You wouldn’t think it’d be possible, but if you think about it, that’s a lot of bulk for too few calories. While fruits and veggies are fantastic sources of micronutrients (i.e., vitamins and minerals), they’re a terrible source of the macronutrients we need to maintain our bodies–they are generally low in fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Considering that many of the micronutrients you find in plant foods are also found in more nutrient-dense foods (i.e., meat, eggs, full-fat dairy), little kids need more bang for the buck with each bite they take.

So I am trying to figure this out. I don’t think that feeding my child a lower-carb, higher-fat diet would cause weight loss; I think it only causes weight loss in people with excess bodyfat. If you don’t have extra weight to lose, all it’s going to do is allow you to maintain your body in a healthy way–the whole point of eating food in the first place.

The irony is that a lot of the time she doesn’t want the junk food. Even when we go to a fast food place because she wants to “climb” (i.e., play on the playground equipment), I don’t think she ever finishes her meal, and sometimes she barely touches it. If I fix something at home that is more or less whole foods and relatively low-carb, however, she tends to eat it up as long as she is in the mood for the specific foods I give her. Her weakness seems to involve sweet treats, especially anything involving ice cream or popsicles, and sometimes cookies.

So I need to figure out a hack for that which would let her enjoy her favorite treats occasionally without blowing her out of the water nutritionally. I already have a nifty little ice cream maker where you stick a metal insert in the freezer and then throw in the ingredients when it’s cold; that would be a big help. I could just throw in heavy cream and berries and bam, she’ll have something good. I think I also want to find one of those Tupperware popsicle-making sets and put it to use, perhaps freezing berry smoothie for her.

I also need to do a meal plan for myself and her because I’m not going to be able to sustain this in the long run if I have to keep flying by the seat of my pants to figure out what’s for dinner. If I keep it simple I’ll also keep it cheaper, as well. The not knowing what’s for dinner bit is exactly why we wind up eating so much fast food. It has to stop.

Well, she’s asking for a popsicle so let me go wrangle with her about that. Yay.

Saving money on soda

I have been a soda/cola addict for most of my adult life. It’s largely the caffeine, although there is also something about the fizzy that makes certain meals, such as pizza, just not taste right without it.

I have also been disturbed to discover that my cat will stick her paws in my glass if I’m drinking water, but will generally leave it alone if it’s bubbling. Go figure.

Also, if I get some caffeine every day, I tend to avoid migraines. If I’ve gone without long enough to have gotten over the withdrawal headaches and then try to live a normal life, though–bam!

Residually from my low-carbing this last go-round, I switched to diet soda and stayed there. My beverage of choice these days is Mountain Dew. I found out something interesting: if I get the regular Kroger label equivalent, that tastes better than the name brand regular Dew. However, if I switch to diet, the name brand tastes better. Why? One substantial difference: the name brand uses a combination sucralose/acesulfame-K/aspartame sweetening approach, while the store brand uses ace-K and aspartame and leaves out the sucralose (also called Splenda).

Huge difference. You wouldn’t think so, and God knows I’ve tried drinking the store brand to be a good trooper and save the money, but I can barely choke it down. I find that Nutrasweet/aspartame works better in darker colas where the overall flavor is stronger; not so great in lighter sodas like I drink.

The other thing I found with the diet Dew is that there are three different potassium compounds in the formulation: one a sweetener, the other two most likely preservatives. However, they’re somewhat usable by my body, so that when I was low-carbing in the Induction phase and went without soda for a few days and didn’t supplement potassium by any other means, I was more likely to get leg cramps. When I figured it out, a little light bulb went on in my head and I went out and got potassium tablets–and was amused at the thought of Mountain Dew as a dietary supplement!

I do have green tea and coffee around as other sources of caffeine. However, I have trouble brewing green tea properly; it usually turns out too dark and too bitter. Need to work on that one. I have lots of coffee (every time a special flavor or the store-brand organic is on clearance, my little girl’s dad gets it for me), but if I drink too much coffee too close together and haven’t eaten enough, I feel sick afterward. I am not sure whether it’s the caffeine content or something else in the coffee, but as much as I like coffee, this issue is really starting to turn me off to it.

So… soda it is. So the game is to figure out how to get it most cheaply without gagging on it.

The obvious issue is you don’t want to habitually buy soda in 20-ounce bottles. In that instance all you are paying for is the convenience, because the price is outrageous. You literally can pay more for a 20oz bottle of Diet Dew than you can for the two-liter size. It’s disgusting. I do still buy them occasionally, because I find that you can’t port soda around in a sealable cup without the lid popping off (I learned that one the hard way), and meanwhile the screw-on seal of a 20oz bottle works better to keep the air in. And unlike a fountain drink cup, you can stick a 20oz bottle in a purse, backpack, or diaper bag and tote it around and it doesn’t leak. Plus sometimes I am just caught out somewhere without a drink and craving a soda.

The solution to that, obviously, is to keep a 20oz bottle around and wash it regularly, then fill it with soda before I go out and, if I drink it all, refill the bottle at a water fountain. I sort of knew that, but haven’t implemented it yet. So I will try to get into the habit. If I’m going to make it work long-term, though, I probably should get a bottle-washer. That, or find some other kind of drinking bottle or mug that has a screw-on top and a wider mouth for easier washing.

Two-liter bottles work very well pricewise. Unfortunately the name brand sodas are not always on sale. However, when they are it is a big help. In the past two weeks Kroger had a ten for $10 sale on Pepsi two-liters. Yay! More recently, UDF seems to be carrying them 3 for $4, but I’ve seen that one a lot so I don’t know how great of a deal it is. They do occasionally have better sales, though.

It just occurred to me a couple days ago that maybe what I ought to do is start mixing half and half. It seems like the Kroger two-liters would taste a lot better if I blended them with the name brand, and then I’d save money anyway! I typically drink the stuff out of my Tupperware shaker cup, minus the lid and insert, so it’s easy to measure what I pour. Hm. I’ll have to try that one and see if it drops my soda expenditure any. I do worry that my spending will expand to fit the amount of money I save.

I have no idea what kind of savings one might expect from cans, as I don’t habitually buy them. Let’s see. Say I get a twelve-can box of Mountain Dew. How many ounces are in a two-liter? *checks a calculator site* OK. A can is twelve ounces, and that’s 144oz per box. That comes out to just over 4.25 liters, or two-and-a-quarter two-liter bottles. So if I was to compare two-liters to twelve-packs, the twelve-pack would have to cost less than two bottles to be worth the price. I don’t have any prices right in front of me so I can’t say right now how they compare.

I’m going to guess the cans are more expensive, though, given the amount of packaging. However, there is also the point you can turn in aluminum cans for money, since Ohio doesn’t do bottle deposits on a statewide level*. So I would have to visit a recycler on a regular basis and calculate what I got back for my aluminum to justify getting soda in cans, if I could at all.

Yesterday I went to UDF because I was thirsty–we’d been running around all afternoon and I hadn’t had a drink since brunch**. I decided to stock up on two-liters while I was there. I also wanted something smaller that I could drink right then. My little girl’s dad suggested a fountain drink instead of bottled. Sure enough, 20 ounces was 99 cents!

He went in after I came back to the car and returned with an obscenely large drink, also for 99 cents. But I wasn’t out to show off or to get the maximum amount of soda; I just wanted something to tide me over before I got home. Sometimes it is about more than getting the most for your money.

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*I know of one local dairy that sells its milk through grocery co-ops which refunds a bottle deposit if you return their bottles to the store. But that’s on a local-business level.

**Nothing fancy, just I hadn’t had breakfast and the meal we ate should have been lunch, hence brunch.