Menu for the Week of 4/29/19

So, in my quest to get my fasting blood sugar numbers not to look high, I'm trying to negotiate changes to my diet and getting in more exercise in the day. I don't know what I can do to lower my stress levels, because that is the primary reason why my numbers are high. But I have been trying things like eating my bed time snack earlier and having a smaller snack. It hasn't been working that great. So I don't know what to do. I'm half tempted to go the keto route but I have been warned by my doctor that it is a terrible idea, so I'm not going to. I'm just not sure how to fix this.

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: school me: english muffin ham, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: pizza & chips Me: pizza & chicken	steak, salad mashed potatoes
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	pizza meat pie salad bread sticks
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	pasta & meatballs w/ salad
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	cashew chicken & 'rice'
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	sandwiches

Menu for the week of 4/22/19

I'm finally getting organized enough to start posting menus again. Yay!

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: Donuts me: english muffin ham, coffee	Kids: mac & cheese Hubby: pizza & chips Me: pizza & chicken	hamburgers & cheese burger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	pizza meat pie salad bread sticks
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	pulled pork coleslaw
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	breakfast for dinner
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	steak, mixed veggies & mashed potatoes

Wait, wut?

I must be going places because someone ripped off a copy of an earlier version of Rose Petals that I put up in PDF format and has it posted on a book piracy site. I am annoyed with this development. At first I was amused, but now I am irritated. I've been telling my readers that they don't want to go with the pirated copy because it may be missing things and have malware attached to it. Because some piracy sites do shady shit.

It's been a hell of a week. The kids have been on spring break and bouncing around like chipmunks on crack. When ever the weather was decent enough for them to be outside, they were and they ran around a lot. I took them to the park twice. It's been busy. I haven't had much time for my stuff like blogging. Camp NaNoWriMo is stalled because I haven't had time to write. I'm at 25k on a project that I have come to detest but I am going to continue to work on until it is finished this way I have the satisfaction of burning the damn thing when it is completed. (Ok, maybe I won't burn it. But I'm not happy with it right now which is making working on it harder.)

The local-ish pagan group that I associate with are holding an Ostara celebration. I wish I could go but it is Sunday night and I'd have to be driving after dark to get home so that Beloved could have the car to get to work Monday. Never mind the fact that the kids are still on break from school Monday and will probably be up at the crack of dawn despite the blackout curtains on their window.

I wanted to do something special for Ostara but things keep falling through. I wanted to do a little ritual with the kids for the full moon tonight and that didn't happen because tonight was just a wee bit chaotic. I feel like things are just stacked against me on trying to educate my kids in the pagan ways. We've got people at school talking about Jesus and such. I can't make out if it is kids or teachers. It's just frustrating because I don't want them to be ignorant about the over culture but I want them to have a broader base to grow from in a spiritual sense.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I haven't much local support for it because I live two hours away from my pagan friends with families. The nearest Unitarian Universalist Church is twenty minutes away in a town that I am not familiar with or an hour away in the heart of the city. Either way puts me into a bit of anxiety because I'm getting worse about going to unfamiliar places alone. And even though they're UU churches, that doesn't mean they're necessarily going to be pagan friendly. Especially the weird brand of paganism that I've got going on.

Diabetic friendly pizza meatloaf (gluten free)

I admit, this was inspired by the South Beach Diet's 'Pizza meat pie' recipe. It had elements to it that were just not going to work in my household. Stuff like mushrooms that I can't get my kids to eat at all, because they're a vegetable.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
2 eggs
1 c almond flour
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp italian seasoning
1/4 c pizza sauce divided in half
1/2 c shredded mozzarella

Step one, mix together beef, eggs, almond flour, garlic, and italian seasoning until uniform. Add 1/2 of the pizza sauce and continue to mix until uniform. Pat into a loaf shape and place on a jelly roll pan. Carefully coat the top with the other half of the pizza sauce. Then top with the shredded mozzarella. Bake at 350 deg F for 45 minutes or until it reads as well done for beef with a meat thermometer.

Serves 4. Goes well with a nice green salad. The carb load in the original recipe that used breadcrumbs was 18 carbs per slice. I think this comes out closer to fifteen.

How do I 'girl' properly?

My face was really itchy. So, I decided I was going to scrub it and make it really clean, followed by moisturizing everything. Now my face is bright red and even more itchy. I don't think I had a reaction to anything. But maybe I am wrong. The soap I used was a gentle soap for babies. The scrub I used is one that I've never had a reaction to before. And the lotion is one that I have never had a reaction to.

I don't know if this is just my skin is mad at me for the fact that I scrubbed it or if I'm having a reaction to something. I don't know much about skincare. Honestly, I'm really ignorant about it. I'm even more ignorant about makeup. Because my skin reacts to just about everything, I can't use most products. So, I never really learned how to do this stuff.

Here I am trying to figure it out on my own and I think I just made a mess of it all. At least I am not breaking out into hives or anything. Maybe the itchy feeling is the same one that I get when my skin is really dry and I put moisturizer on it. I'm going to go with that thought for now. Because anything else is just going to be upsetting on some level because I feel like I failed at basic 'girl' behavior.

Insert title here.

I am moderately depressed. This is an improvement over where I was at a few weeks ago. I am displeased with the fact that my doctor confirmed that my symptoms are perimenopause. I just turned 40 in November. I am early for this to be happening. I thought I had a little more time before it happened. I have somewhere around seven years of this crap to look forward to. I feel generally miserable and moody. Because hormones.

I am hoping that this will improve. According to my doctor, these things go in something of a cycle. Because I don't have enough shit with cycles going on in my life. I've been told to track my symptoms. I'm just tired of logging everything. I do a lot of mood tracking because of my bipolar. I log my food and my blood sugar levels because of the diabetes. I log my exercise habits because of the diabetes. I keep a daily journal of things to do and things that need to be done because I have kids with stuff going on in their lives.

I'm exhausted from this. And now I have something new to log and track. I'm so tired of this. But I can't stop because if I do, bad things will happen. I'll forget something important and things will go sideways. I'll have no idea why my blood sugar is high or forget to monitor it. So, I have to keep logging every damn thing.

I'd prefer to be filling up notebooks with stories and poems. It's been hard to write because I feel so down about it all. And I feel like I'm a fraud when it comes to writing. Because I haven't had the spoons to push marketing my work. Because I have been struggling to have the spoons to blog about anything at all. Because all it seems to be is my doing therapy oriented writing all the time.

I know someone somewhere will read this and feel a burst of triumphant whatever. They'll be happy that I'm miserable right now. To that person, go fuck yourself with a chainsaw.

Fiber ramblings: Fire Colored Hats.

The spinning guild has found another hospital looking for preemie hats. I am excited. I have made a little over a half dozen already. Beloved saw the fire colored wool roving that I picked up at the last guild session and asked me if I was going to be using it to make hats. If I could, I would, but they want acrylic yarn to make it as hypoallergenic as possible. This sent me on a quest to pick out yarn with the same colorway in it.

Lo and behold, I found it at a craft store up in the city. The teeny-tiny hats for babies with heads approximately the size of lemons worked up to look like they had flames on them. The hats for babies with heads approximately the size of large apples worked up with a weird stripe to them. I have a pound of this yarn to use up. I believe that I am going to play around with some patterns to hopefully find something else that lets the color way play out for a more of a flame effect.

My spinning has been stalled of late. I just haven't been inspired to work on the fiber that I have going right now. I want to finish it before I move on to something else. I am bored, unfortunately. So, it just sits there in its plastic bucket giving me a guilty feeling every time I look at it.