Never Ever Shop Hungry

How many times have I read the advice to never shop when you're hungry? I guess the people writing that don't work full-time and never find themselves needing to stop at the store on their way home from work when they haven't eaten since lunch. Or, I'm just making excuses for what turned into a disaster of a grocery run.


All I wanted to do was pick up a few things for dinner tomorrow night because we're having friends over to grill out. First I spied the sushi bar and picked up some spring rolls and some California rolls. I figured these would be dinner. Next I hit up the produce section for some yummy Pink Lady apples and strawberries. My plan was to make strawberry shortcake for dessert tomorrow night so I stopped by the baked goods for an angel food cake. BIG MISTAKE. Right by the cakes were the special of the week - super good looking brownies dusted with powdered sugar, just how I like them. Ohhhhh, I wanted them so much and I decided to put them in my basket just in case I decided to buy them. Next it was on to the spices, then the dairy case for some Reddi Whip. Back in the day I was known for sometimes consuming almost an entire can of Reddi Whip by just putting it on a spoon and eating it. Next to the Reddi Whip were all the pre-made dips and I thought maybe I should pick one out for an easy appetizer. I settled a new cheese pretzel dip. Now that I had the pretzel dip I needed, you guessed it, pretzels. But, did I just buy pretzel sticks? Nope, I bought pretzel sticks and some garlic bread and cheese pretzel chunks. At this point I know I'm way off track and I need to get out of the store quickly before I buy any more "bad" foods. On my way to the checkout though I see cold Cokes and I think about how good a Coke would be with the pretzels so yep, I grab one. Ugh.

This is what my day looked like:

I had leftover asparagus frittata for breakfast along with some Cherub tomatoes.




Then, for lunch, I had a pita stuffed with turkey, broccoli slaw and slathered with a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese and spicy brown mustard.



On the way home from work and the store I snacked on this:

Despite my "snack" I was still hungry and decided to still eat the sushi for dinner. It was very good.

After dinner all I could think about were the pretzel chunks and that Coke.

I'm embarrassed to even admit what happened next. I had yet another one of these:



Now I'm off to drink a gallon of water because for some reason I think that will help me not feel so bloated and sick from eating all the junk I had tonight.

Wish me a better day tomorrow.

Monday, Monday

Ahhh, it's Monday again. The days seem to go slow but the weeks, months and even years seem to fly by. I look back on the last few years and think of everything that has happened - I finally met the right man, got married, bought a house, got pregnant, fixed-up the house, had wonderful SB, found out we may never be able to have another child, did tons of Clomid cycles, did two IUIs and one IVF, got pregnant again and had wonderful QT. The one seeming constant in all this has been my battle to eat better and lose weight. I weighed 40 pounds less on my wedding day than I do today. In the year and a half prior to the wedding I ate primarily a very low carb diet. That ended on my honeymoon and the weight quickly came back. I'm finding my current approach of just trying to pick healthier foods a bit easier to handle, but I'm also not seeing any super great weight loss. Do you think that can be attributed to my straying from the course a few too many times?????

Here's what I packed for breakfast. I simply love the thicker Greek yogurts and have found Fage to be my favorite. I've begun buying plain and adding just a touch of my own vanilla extract to it. This morning I also decided to add some raspberries and Kashi Crunch cereal.



This is what it looks like sitting on my desk with my morning coffee.



I went for convenience for lunch and had Lean Cuisine Szechuan Shrimp. I was a little leery of getting a frozen meal that contained shrimp but I really liked this and will definitely be eating it again.

Traffic was bad on my way home so I snacked on a Pink Lady apple and a piece of reduced calorie cheese. I like my Pink Ladies but I am longing for the fall when the mighty Honeycrisp will be back in season.

When I got home I found the husband and QT cooking chicken sausages for dinner. I had my sausage on half a Flatout wrap smothered with a Laughing Cow cheese wedge. Risking a bad Coumadin level reading next week I went ahead and added some broccoli to my wrap. Some days I still can't believe that I actually have to restrict my intake of veggies high in vitamin K. What kind of sick joke is that?

After dinner I snacked on some yummy Jell-o and a bowl of almonds, raisins and dried cranberries (yet another Coumadin no-no). Almonds are a healthy snack but it is very hard for me to stop eating them once I start and thus the need to ration them out.

I'll be heading to bed soon and saying goodbye to another Monday. Who knows what the rest of the week will bring, or the rest of month, or the rest of the year. Here's to hoping it's only good things.

Fabulous Frittata

Doesn't she look like she's thinking "oh no, mommy is going to cook again?" I love the idea of big, family, Sunday morning breakfasts so I got motivated and decided to make a frittata.








I thinly sliced a potato and cut up a bunch of asparagus. I added water to the potatoes, brought it to a boil and let it boil for around 5 minutes at which time I added the asparagus and let that cook for another 2ish minutes.




I drained it and added it to a bowl filled with four eggs, four egg whites, 3 tbl of mozzarella cheese, a quarter teaspoon of baking powder and a touch of salt. Then I chopped an onion and let that cook for a few minutes to soften them up.

One the onions were soft I added the egg mixture, covered it and let it cook until it was almost totally set.

While it was cooking, SB showed up and helped me make my morning cup of coffee. He's such a good helper.

Next we turned on the Ipod and danced.

Once the eggs were almost set I added 1 tbl of mozzarella cheese to the top and then put the skillet in a 500 degree oven for 5 minutes, until the eggs were totally set and the cheese had melted.

SB wanted pancakes so I made these.

The husband played with the kids while I finished up making breakfast for the clan.

One fourth of the frittata is a serving and it was quite filling, and pretty tasty as well. I think next time perhaps I would add a little mustard powder or maybe tomatoes.

Five minutes later -

For lunch I stuffed a pita with turkey breast, broccoli slaw and added a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese and Gulden's spicy brown mustard. Gulden's spicy brown is my absolute most favorite mustard. If you haven't tried it stop reading right now and rush to the store and get some. Seriously. While at the store, do not get suckered into buying clementines (like I did) because it really isn't the season for them so they are far too expensive and not as good as they are in the winter.

Mid-afternoon I was hungry so I toasted a multi-grain sandwich thin and topped it with cottage cheese mixed with fresh basil and then I topped with sliced tomato. Just about anything can be made better with tomato.



No pics of dinner because I gave in to temptation and went out for bbq chicken pizza. In my own defense, I stuck to two pieces. However, let us never speak of the raspberry sundae or the mozzarella sticks that went along with it..............

Pictures!

I just watched the Brewer's make a great comeback to win in the bottom of the ninth while eating Smartpop sprayed with a little bit of cooking spray so that the parm cheese would stick. I try and not drink too much soda but every so often I get a craving so I had a Diet Dr. Pepper. The little pills are my Coumadin so not really a treat but necessary. Oh, and no, the sippy cup is not for me, it's SB's and I am just too lazy to get them off the counter.




Expect to see more pictures in future posts. I found some time today while SB napped to make a run over to Target. I intended to buy baby goods, you know, formula and diapers, but then I spied a fairly inexpensive, thin, digital camera. My camera is awesome but it is also huge so it's cumbersome to carry along to snap quick pics. Now with my new little camera I can just snap a pic of what I'm eating.

I also picked up this at Target:



It's an Archer Farms California salad and when eaten with only half the dressing it really isn't too big of a blow to my daily calorie count. It has wonderful goat cheese, walnuts, grapes, chicken and an awesome poppy seed dressing. This was a great lunch.

Dinner is normally pretty touch and go at our house. It takes a lot of planning, shopping, money and time to make dinner more nights than not and I'll admit to not planning, shopping, and taking the time enough to cook. Tonight I did manage to make dinner while the husband and SB were outside watering our garden.

I used these ingredients to make a light pasta salad:

Spinach - 3 cups
Feta cheese - 4 ounces G
Grape tomatoes - the entire container, I think it's 16oz
Rotini pasta - 1/2 the box (which makes 4 servings)



While I cooked QT just hung out in her Bumbo sucking her fingers. Yummy!

In order to keep things light I simply added some of the pasta water to the spinach, tomatoes and feta.



And this was the end result:



It was very good. Fresh and light but the husband and I both agreed that it was missing something, perhaps chicken.

I've Lost All Patience

Lately I have not been the person I want to be. From the time I was 15 until into my 20s I worked at a retail shoe store and so I am intimately aware of how crappy service jobs can be. Normally I am overly kind to service industry employees, forgiving mistakes, offering to help where I can, always asking how they are doing, saying thank-you, etc. So, what's changed? Well, I am frustrated over my repeated recent dealings with customer service people. It started with an awful experience with the folks at AT&T and has since spread to representatives of three separate insurance companies, the receptionist at my doctor's office and now the receptionist at my dentist's office. I have lost all patience with having to either push buttons through 18 prompts, or worse, talking into a phone to no-one, just to talk to a representative who then just asks me to repeat all the information I just entered. I have lost all patience with listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, all four seasons worth, while on hold. I have lost all patience with insurance companies denying claims they should cover, paying claims they shouldn't and then expecting me to fix the problems for them. The last time I checked I do not work for the insurance companies and call me crazy but mistakes they make are mistakes they should fix, not me.

When confronted with all these frustrations my reactions of late are less than nice. So, what is the answer? How do you deal with all the constant small frustrations and still remain kind and considerate?

Pins and Needles

I've decided to return to having acupuncture treatments in the hopes, slim as they may be, of having my cycles return to something resembling normal. I can remember that after I had SB my body seemed very out of whack and although my cycles returned within about 8 weeks of having him, they were shorter than prior to having him. Now after having QT things seem more out of whack then ever. The treatment today was very relaxing and it was very nice and fun to see my acupuncturist again and catch up with her. It's always fun when I get to brag about how great QT and SB are.

Today was a very good eating day. I had Lean Pockets for breakfast that had eggs, ham and cheese along with, of course, coffee. For lunch I had the new sandwich thins topped with cottage cheese, basil and tomato. Later I had some fruit snacks, a clementine and some ak-mak crackers with a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese. For dinner I had a pita stuffed with turkey breast and broccoli slaw. Technically, I am supposed to be really limiting my intake of broccoli due to it's high vitamin K content which can contribute to blood clotting but I was in a reckless mood. Oh, and I finally got a good Coumadin level this week so I figured maybe I have some wiggle room.

Ignorance is Bliss

Ahhhh, if only I could live in blissful ignorance of politics.

So, let me see if I understand our great President......he is warning me that my insurance premiums are going to go up over the next ten years. Funny how he doesn't mention how much my taxes will go up over the next ten years to pay for his great insurance scam. Oh, and of course he promises that I can keep the plan and doctor that I have but riddle me this, why would my employer continue to offer a private plan when they could just tell me to go get on the government plan for "free"?

If something sounds too good to be true it probably is.

Yummy!

This morning for breakfast I had the most wonderful oatmeal. It was McCann's Irish Steel Cut Oats, the quick cooking variety, cooked with half of a chopped banana, one tablespoon of natural peanut butter stirred in and topped with a few butterscotch chips and toffee bits. Then for lunch I mixed a can of light tuna with a Laughing Cow cheese wedge and it was just like using mayo but with way less calories and fat. I have no idea why I didn't think of doing that sooner.

Now I am pondering what to have for dinner. I really, really, really feel like going out but my wallet says otherwise. I could probably get the husband to spring for dinner but I have zero control over my eating when I'm out so it would be best if I cooked something at home.

My Boyfriend's Back

Long before I met the husband, long before I even thought about having a husband, back when I was a mere 6 years old, I met a wonderful boy who went on to become my best friend. He is the brother I never had and the man I would probably of married had he not been well, uninterested in women. Anyway, when the husband and I began dating we both used to joke about my "other boyfriend" and once we got married it evolved into my "other husband." Having a back-up for the husband is wonderful and that is why although I was very happy when my other husband found a boyfriend of his very own, I was also a little sad. We all know what happens when a friend meets a new man, you see them less and less. And so it went until the other day when my other husband informed me that his relationship was ending. I wish it wasn't happening as I really want only good things and happiness for my other husband but there is that small part of me that is super excited because I have my boyfriend back.

My Friend Fertility Friend

Has it really happened??? This morning my temperature was a whopping 96.6 and Fertility Friend placed lovely dashed cross hairs on my chart and has determined that I ovulated on Friday. Now, I'm not so certain that I agree but I am feeling somewhat hopeful. I'm not quite certain why any of this even matters since we are not trying to conceive given the proven instances of birth defects in mothers taking Coumadin and yet somehow it does matter to me. Perhaps this is the result of spending the last three years either trying to make a baby or being pregnant and now my mind refuses to just rest and not think of either. Or, perhaps it is because I'm still worrying that some doctor will tell me that we can't use estrogen during our frozen embryo transfer cycle and that I will have to rely solely on a natural cycle - which I haven't had since having QT. And, I suppose, a big part of me just wants the comfort of knowing that my body is working the way it is supposed to. After having SB I was breast feeding and despite that my cycle returned to "normal" at around 8 weeks post partum. I am now I think 16 weeks past having QT and have only had a few episodes of spotting so light if I had blinked I would have missed them. I did ask the perinatologist about my missing period and she said there was nothing to worry about so long as I wasn't having any hot flashes. Well, thank goodness I'm not since she then said she would suspect early menopause. I have enough to worry about without adding that in! Actually, I am having what could be the opposite of hot flashes in that my body temperature is quite low, as in below 96 degrees most mornings. The doctor could not shed any light onto why my temp would be so low but she did say to give my body at least six months to get back to normal. It's been four so I suppose I can be patient and give it two more (but I'm hoping I don't have to wait that long).

It's Like Crack

SB is in a phase where he likes to make associations. So, if he sees a picture and says it's a crab but I say no, it's a lobster he'll say "but it's like a crab."

I am currently on a break from eating better because I just couldn't resist this:






It's Quaker snack mix in baked cheddar flavor and although I know it's not crack all I have to say is but it's like crack. Quite addictive.

1 in 20,000

Apparently I have just won the genetic lottery. A mere one in every 20,000 people have a protein s deficiency and I am one of those people. Normally winning something would be quite exciting but it isn't really so exciting to find out that you are genetically predisposed to forming blood clots.

Thankfully, the doctor I saw today said that this should not stop us from trying for a third child. She even said that using fertility drugs during a frozen embryo transfer cycle would be okay so long as I was doing daily injections of Lovenox and wearing compression stockings. That doesn't sound like the most fun but I could manage.

Scarier than all the talk about possible pregnancy complications and giving myself more shots in my stomach for what could amount to a full year was her telling me that I should be taking precautions even when doing something simple like taking a car ride of longer than two hours. She feels that I should be making certain that I'm moving around every hour or so during work hours, stopping for walking breaks if in the car for longer than an hour and she even said if I have to take a plane anywhere that I should consider doing Lovenox injections prior to boarding the plane, in addition to wearing the compression stockings. Her telling me all this sounded to me as though she was basically saying that I will almost certainly get another clot at some point in my lifetime. This just isn't something I want to have to worry about the rest of my life.

Another thing I wish I didn't even have to think about is trying to lose weight. I managed to lose ten pounds in just two weeks but making good choices is hard. Planning what to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks takes time not to mention the additional time spent grocery shopping, cooking and packaging things up. It's hard to work full time, raise two children, keep up with everything around the house and eat right.

My goal right now is just about tomorrow since I've decided small steps are best. So, I will eat better tomorrow, make some real progress on a project at work and do some laundry to get SB ready for his big trip to grandma and grandpa's house.

Making Better Choices

Maybe it's a little too soon for me to feeling this confident in my new eating better plan, however, I feel the need to brag just a little that I have now lost ten pounds all without "real" dieting. Instead of following a strict or complicated diet plan I am simply trying to make better choices. Breakfast and lunch are both around 300 calories, two snacks a day around 100 calories each and a dinner of around 400 calories. I don't weigh food or measure exact amounts but instead have been guesstimating and it seems to help take the pressure off. Also, since I could lose weight and eat more than the roughly 1,200 calories I've allotted myself, I have built in room to eat a treat now and again. Right now I'm just feeling really good about everything and am not even missing things like chips. Hopefully that will last.

Last week I had 13 vials of blood drawn from my arm in an attempt to discover if I have any genetic predisposition to forming blood clots. Unbeknown to me, these tests cost somewhere the area of $2,500. I was shocked to say the very least. I also was a little surprised when two of the tests can back with abnormal results as this entire time I was assuming that the blood clot was purely a result of my pregnancy. My ob/gyn has referred me to a perinatologist who he says will be better able to advise me on the possibility and/or risks associated with any future fertility treatments and pregnancies. I'm really hoping for good news.