September update

I've been trying to update Ye Olde Blogge here for the past couple of days, and every single time I lose my writing mojo and decide I have nothing to tell you. So I am just going to list off some random stuff that's been going on around here and hope for the best, alright? Yeah.

1. I started reading Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches but got bored eight chapters in and stopped. My God, this is going to be the most fascinating blog update ever!
2. My dog recently started lifting his leg to pee. (I bring you only the very best in entertainment.) I don't know why he is doing this all of a sudden now. Is it a 2-year milestone, or something? We had him neutered when he was 6 months old and I always assumed that was why he peed like a girl dog, only now he doesn't. Hmm.
3. I spent an embarrassingly large amount of time this morning Googling "how to cook frozen mussels". I don't actually HAVE any frozen mussels, but I've seen them in the store and I've always wondered how that works. And now I know that in order to freeze mussels, you have to cook them first. So, frozen mussels are already cooked, and they probably won't kill you, and now YOU don't have to Google that. You're welcome.
4. Speaking of food, I've lately become a person who drinks vinegar. I know. That is a thing, apparently? A thing that I do now. But I'm telling you, a tablespoon of that coconut white balsamic vinegar I bought on my birthday mixed with sparkling water over ice is freaking DELICIOUS. It is! For real!
5. We recently started C on Lexapro, which is a SSRI which might kill him maybe. But if it doesn't kill him, it might save his life. I said once upon a time that I would never put my under-18 child on psychotropic drugs, AND YET it has become so incredibly obvious that his crippling anxiety is the key to virtually everything in his world that isn't working right now. He is 16 years old, he is the size of an adult, he has the body mass of an adult. These drugs help SO MANY people who end up NOT killing themselves. We are monitoring him super closely -- now that he's not going to school I am with him virtually all day, every day -- and he is seeing his doctor once every 2 - 3 weeks. P, C and I firmly believe the possible benefits outweigh the possible risks. But holy hell. This parenting shit is hard, you guys. 
6. I am in therapy too now. So that is a good thing, and probably long overdue.
7. In addition to my beloved Jillian Michaels exercise DVDs (OMG, I just started doing her new one, Killer Abs, and it is incredible) I am also walking the dog again, because it's cool enough in the mornings to do that now. Much like me, the dog is less of a hellbeast when he gets his exercise every day. So that too is a good thing.
8. Except the air is thick right now with horrible noxious pollen and mold spores and whatnot, so while the dog and I are slightly lower on the hellbeast scale these days, we both are snorting and snuffling and wheezing our way through life, which is JUST DELIGHTFUL. I am carrying about a gallon of Afrin nasal spray around in my sinuses right now, and I know this because I can feel it sloshing back and forth whenever I move my head. Bleargh.
9. On the plus side, if we can just get the temperature to scootch down by 10 - 15 degrees or so it will officially be Hot Toddy Season. And hot toddies cure everything. That is a medical fact.
10. Until then, I'll just keep huffing sriracha.

Things I did on my birthday

ATE the Big Lebowski burger from Big Daddy's, a whole mess of fried pickles, one or two giant french fries and a cup of red velvet/cake batter froyo (with sprinkles)(and chocolate chips).

DRANK a giant coconut milk latte, a pint of Thirsty Goat Amber, half a bottle of honeydew-hibiscus Hint and a very dirty vodka martini.

TASTED several varieties of olive oil, several more varieties of balsamic vinegar, some honey powder and a spice mix that tasted exactly like fried chicken.

BOUGHT two pairs of thrifted jeans, some barbecue spice rub, za'atar seasoning, mesquite and applewood-smoked peppercorns, and a bottle of coconut-infused white balsamic vinegar.

WORE skinny jeans (!!) and a pair of cute flats I found in the bottom of my closet and had totally forgotten I owned.

ENJOYED the amazing weather, the company of my parental units, the incredibly sweet birthday wishes from P and C and H, a whole heaping bunch of lovely Facebook greetings and the knowledge that I get to celebrate again on Saturday. With cake!

I am a lucky girl.

O hai

When last we spoke about C and school, things were not going well at all. I'm happy to tell you things are much better now, mostly because C is no longer IN school. Well, he is, but he doesn't actually GO THERE anymore. Physically, you know. Now school comes to him in the form of a Homebound Education teacher. She brings him his lessons and assignments, takes completed assignments back to school to be graded, and spends four hours a week with him here at the house making sure he understands everything and helping out where he doesn't.

She is fantastic and since we finalized the decision to move him into this program, C has been happier and less stressed than I've seen him in months. Big ups to our school administrators, who floated this as a possible solution when it was something we didn't even know existed. C met with the Homebound teacher before we got started, just to make sure her voice didn't trigger his misophonia, and everything has been way swell. So, yay!

We've also been doing yet more medication adjustments with C. We've stopped the Intuniv because it wasn't really having any effect at all. And we've been weaning him off the Trileptal to see if maybe that was making his anxiety/sensitivity worse. I do think he's much better now anxiety-wise (though not misophonia-wise), but it's hard to tell if that's from the medication changes or the school environment changes or the fact that some of his therapy modalities have also been adjusted during the past couple of weeks. We have another meeting with the doc who monitors his meds next week so we'll see where to go from there.

Meanwhile I am...

... reading Scott Kenemore's Zombie, Ohio which is so much fun. Guy comes to after a car crash, has amnesia, discovers he's in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, gradually realizes he is PART of the zombie apocalypse, and hijinks ensue. I haven't read a lot of zombie fiction but I can't imagine there's much out there that's more compelling and fun and oddly poignant than this book.

... watching Top Chef Masters and OMG, if Lorena Garcia wins I'm going to burn down a Taco Bell. (Not really.)(But seriously, how annoying is she?!) I am all in for Chris Cosentino to win this thing so, you know, he'd better. In other watching news, Sons of Anarchy is back! But holy cow, the season premier was horrifying. I'm not sure I'll be able to watch this season if it's going to be like that, much as I love this show. I might not be in the right headspace for it right now.

... listening to this song, because C was singing it the other day and now it's stuck in my head on an endless loop. MAKEITSTOP.

... drinking pumpkin lattes.

But not from Starbucks.
... eating apples. Finally.

... feeling so much better now that it's fall. Or almost fall. Or quasi-fall-like. Look, it's September, okay? My pumpkin-shaped basket full of cinnamon-scented pinecones is on the table, it's been cool enough to wear jeans on at least two recent occasions, and my reverse seasonal affective disorder is going away. I'm calling it close enough.

Achievement unlocked

I did not realize how much I expected to fail at this whole weight loss thing until I actually succeeded. Somehow in the craziness of this past week, I managed to get within half a pound of my goal weight. And since I feel like I've spent much of the past seven or eight days dodging both horseshoes AND hand grenades, I'm calling it close enough.

I really, honestly cannot believe this whole thing actually worked. Let's get the "before" pictures out of the way and I'll tell you why.

Those two photos on the left were taken in June 2010. I realize they are not terrible, but look closely at my midsection and I think we can all agree that I appear just a WEE little bit pregnant there. Let's call it 5 months. At the time those photos were taken, I was running anywhere from 5 to 15 miles a week. I was actively training for a 5K, in fact. My blood pressure, cholesterol and resting heart rate were all fantastic. My mitral valve had quit regurgitating. I was technically at a healthy weight for my height, according to all the charts. My pant size was in the single digits (barely). But my abdomen and upper thigh area, they were not making me happy.

That lovely lingerie pajama shot on the right was taken on Christmas 2011. I had gained around 10 pounds since the beach photos were taken. I realize the photo quality is poor, but you can tell that I was all lumpy-bumpy-soft. Squishy tum, rolls on my back, thick upper arms, despite not really being HUGE in the grand scheme of things. I had quit running several months before but I was walking rather a lot. I was now edging past the upper limit of a clinically acceptable weight for height. My health was still okay but since I, like most of the rest of you, get older every year, my knees, ankles and feet had begun to complain on a daily basis.

I thought this was simply the price of getting older. I was a woman in my mid-40s who'd given birth twice. A certain amount of "middle-aged spread" was to be expected, right? I have long since made peace with getting older; I like the authority that age brings. I don't mind being called "ma'am". I've come to terms with the fact that most of the professionals I deal with these days were born after I graduated high school. I put on my big girl pants and then went out and bought slightly BIGGER big girl pants, figuring oh well, I am THIS size now. That's okay. That's just what happens.

Then I went bra shopping and found out that I had become a bra size not really found in nature (or at the mall). Worse, while I was able to find bras that fit (at one of those hardcore expensive lingerie shops where they meticulously measure and fit you for everything), I was squishing out the backs of them. Not in a That Bra Is Too Small way, more in a That Back Is SO SQUISHY way. Standing there in front of a 3-way mirror in jeans and an assortment of underpinnings while a 23-year-old size 2 fussed about helping me adjust straps and hooks and tuck in my back fat, something broke in me. I was no longer willing to accept my middle-aged spread. I knew exactly how I'd gotten it (mindless snacking and cocktail drinking before bed) and I became determined to get rid of it.

And, well, I did. Here are the "after" photos, taken yesterday.

When I posted these photos to Facebook, several friends asked me how I did it. I am happy to tell you EXACTLY what I did, keeping in mind that I am no expert on weight loss or fitness or ... anything, really. And also that I had no medical reason to have gained the weight or to have had trouble taking it off. And that, you know, I had less than 20 pounds to lose. This is what worked for me under those specific conditions:

1. I joined SparkPeople and used the free tools there to come up with the number of calories I should be eating and how much I should be exercising every day in order to lose the weight by my target date (which isn't for a couple of weeks yet). My rate of weight loss ended up being less than a pound a week. So, you know, I wasn't starving or anything.
2. I used the SparkPeople nutrition counter to log EVERYTHING I ate and drank. I did this for about a month, at which point I felt like I had a handle on how many calories were in the things I ate most often, what my serving sizes should be, and which of the things I ate most often were better choices than the others.
3. I bought Jillian Michaels's 30 Day Shred DVD (okay, I dug it out of the drawer where it had been hiding since I bought it a year or so before) and I ACTUALLY DID IT. It was very, very hard at first. I had never been so sore or sweated so much in my life. I had to do the modified versions of pretty much all of the exercises. I felt stupid and slow and unfit and out of shape and a little bit maybe like I was dying. I thought, "There is no way. This is for younger, more fit people. I can't do this." But I kept trying and pretty soon, I WAS DOING IT. I was even doing some of the advanced versions of the exercises! After putting in the full 30 days (not all in a row; I usually took weekends off) I realized to my astonishment that not only was I well on my way to losing the pounds I wanted to lose, but my body was starting to change shape. That had never, ever happened and I did not anticipate it at all.
4. I continued eating sensibly and after I finished the 30 Day Shred, I started alternating weeks of doing Jillian's Ripped in 30 and 6 Week Six Pack DVDs. I not only went down a couple of pant sizes, I went down a shirt size! And, er, probably a couple of bra sizes, too. After finishing Ripped in 30 and 6 Week Six Pack, I started alternating No More Trouble Zones and Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism.

And that's kind of where I am now. The only exercise I've done has come from these DVDs. They take less than an hour per day and only require light dumbells (I alternate between 2, 3 and 5 lbs. depending on what I'm doing, but you could get by with just a pair of 3-pounders) and a yoga mat if your floors are hard. Right now, with all the stress and crazy busy school stuff and the fact that I'm moving into maintenance mode, I'm only working out 3-4 days per week. I'm still watching what I eat, though. Turns out that part was not as hard as I thought it would be. I think it helps a lot that I don't really have a sweet tooth -- I'm more of a crunchy/salty/umami kind of girl.

I have become such a huge believer in weight and resistance training during the course of this thing. Like I said, I was hoping to lose weight, but I did not at all expect that my body would change shape so dramatically. I figured maybe I'd go from looking 5 months pregnant to looking 4 months pregnant, but hello, I DO NOT LOOK PREGNANT ANYMORE! My thighs are smaller, my hips and bust are smaller, I have lost nearly 4 inches off my waist. My jiggly back rolls are gone, and my upper arms are noticeably firmer. This is something that running/cardio alone was never able to do for me.

So yeah. Yay me! I am proud of myself.

Now if only I could take charge of my mental/emotional health the way I have my physical health. I guess that should top my list of goals for autumn, eh?

This is not a sponsored post. All products/services mentioned were purchased by me with my own money. I received no compensation of any kind apart from a SMOKIN' HOT BOD. Heh.