Happy November

So hey! How was your Halloween, everyone? I think H outdid herself with this year's pumpkins but apart from that Halloween was sort of a non-entity around here. I forgot that it was even happening until sometime late last week, when I was grocery shopping and wondered what was up with all the giant bags of candy. D'oh!

I blame it on having teenagers. Mine are now officially old enough to feel self-conscious about trick-or-treating, and thank God for that. No more combing through piles of crap at Goodwill and Party City weeks in advance looking for costume components that won't make my girl child look like she's going as a kinderwhore for Halloween, and no more trying to wash fake blood out of my boy child's clothes = fine by me. Now H walks around the neighborhood -- NOT trick-or-treating -- in some cobbled-together costume (fully clothed, I'm happy to say) with friends and C hands out the candy while I stay locked in my bedroom with a cocktail, my TiFaux and the dog. It's really better for everyone that way.

I haven't quite decided whether I'm doing NaBloPoMo this year. Last year it rendered me even more boring than usual, so. Maybe. Maybe not.

My parents gave me 10 pounds of sweet potatoes

Only two updates (so far) (including this one) in October? I'm sorry. That's terrible. The trip, you know. And the aftermath of the trip. And the stuff preceding the trip. Not necessarily in that order.

Son C is now taking 10 mg of Lexapro. If miracles exist, I think this drug is as close as we're going to get. It has been AMAZING for him. His base level of anxiety has decreased by several degrees of magnitude, and yes I do know what that expression means, and no I am not exaggerating. In the past couple of weeks he's been able to attend a marching band exhibition in a big stadium with tons of people (he was a spectator, not a participant), go for a bike ride with a friend on some trails near our house, and go to an open mic night at another friend's church, which included riding an hour there and back in a car with this friend's family. These are things that would have been impossible for him a couple of months ago when his anxiety was so crippling that even leaving the house for therapy appointments was a massive ordeal.

When his anxiety is low, his misophonia is so much easier for him to deal with. I still would never eat or drink or chew gum around him, but I can talk to him now. His father can talk to him, sometimes, a little bit. His sister still can't talk to him but he CAN stand to be in the same room with her most days. This is HUGE, both for him and for our family. I am stunned and amazed and so very, very grateful. I am so glad we found something that works for him and I pray that it continues to work.

In other news, it's definitely fall here now. It still doesn't look like fall, but all my sneezing and wheezing and the fact that I need to run the heater in my car while taking the girls (H and her friend; we carpool) to school in the morning tells me it's so. We turn the clocks back this weekend and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I can't see to drive in the dark and this gets worse every year, which makes driving the kids to after-school activities in the winter sort of interesting from a possible sudden death standpoint.

I'm in a reading slump right now; ordinarily I'd be reading spooky stuff this time of year but I'm just not in the mood, so I'm re-reading Louise Penny's Still Life, the first Chief Inspector Gamache book. It takes place near Canadian Thanksgiving so it's relatively seasonal. 'Twill do, 'twill serve. I've got A Fatal Grace, which takes place around Christmas, all queued up for December.

New seasons of some of "my" shows started up while I was out of town, most notably The Walking Dead and American Horror Story. Thank goodness for DVRs and online episodes. I've been catching up this week and so far I'm liking both okay. As far as The Walking Dead is concerned, I'm glad that little shit Carl is finally making himself useful re: zombie fighting and I still kind of hope Lori dies in childbirth (I'm terrible, I know). American Horror Story isn't quite the same without that fabulous creepy old house, but I do like the new storyline and I think it's clever the way they've used some of the actors from the first season as completely new characters in the second season. And also I have a pervy old lady crush on Evan Peters. So yeah. I think I'm in.

I worked out this morning for the first time in three weeks. That's going to hurt later. I've somehow managed to maintain my weight loss for the past month-plus through diet alone, pretty much, but now that it's getting colder and darker I'm craving comfort food and that never ends well. I've cut back a lot on grain and refined sugar but I haven't gone full Paleo because that didn't end well either, so while I think I have Thanksgiving under control I'm not sure what to do about Christmas cookies. Because Mama definitely needs some Christmas cookies, y'all.

I've been looking back at my trip photos and realizing that with Hurricane Sandy slamming into the east coast, all of those lovely colorful leaves I drove through in the mountains will be history soon if they aren't already. I fervently hope that all my friends and family in the path of the storm and all the lovely people I met in my travels stay safe and whole and well.

And you, too. Wherever you are.

I've been everywhere

I've been off on a bit of a solo adventure this past week, driving alone from Texas to Ohio by way of Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky to meet up with my brother and parents and visit some extended family.

  

 

And then on the way home, I decided to take the scenic route. I drove through West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama before finally crossing through Mississippi and Louisiana again, and then home to Texas.

I drove through 12 states and slept in five of them.

I saw my parents and brother, four cousins, six first cousins once-removed, all my uncles, all but one of my aunts, and my last remaining grandparent.

I saw autumn leaves for the first time in 12 years.

I drove through the Appalachian Mountains.

I crossed the Mississippi River twice.

(Ditto the Ohio River.)

I shopped at Tamarack in West Virginia.

I climbed the tower at Big Walker Lookout in Virginia.

I ate pulled pork with four different sauces at Tom's Barbecue in Greenville, SC.

I put more than 3,000 miles on my car.

I finished reading The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch and liked it very much.

I drank many tiny plastic bottles of wine.

For 5.5 of the eight days I was gone I was completely alone with my thoughts. I didn't have to worry about what anyone else wanted or needed. I didn't have to make anyone's dinner. I didn't have to clean up any messes I didn't make. I didn't have any appointments to keep.

I had a lot of fun.

HOWEVER...

I missed my kids and husband. And even the stupid dog.

I missed the water pressure in my shower at home.

I missed my bed. And my pillow.

I even missed my own cooking.

I learned that while I am a total antisocial misfit loner and proud of it, some things are just more fun when shared with one's favorite people.

And I am SO GLAD to be home. Where my people are.

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.

Typed while hyperventilating into a paper bag

Hey so this first week of school, it is not going well for my boy C. Not well at all. His misophonia has become enormous and all-consuming and so has the anxiety associated therewith. We have added a new medication (Intuniv ER, for those of you playing along at home) and a new therapy modality (cognitive behavioral therapy, WHO HAS BINGO?) and I am sort of wishing I had a time machine so I could skip ahead 20 years or so and see how this all turns out. I like to imagine I would see my kid healthy, happy, gainfully employed, surrounded by friends who love him, married to his soulmate and raising my adorable grandchildren. And maybe there's a dog. And a home studio for his music. And a guest room for when P and I come to visit. (A double bed is fine. Nothing fancy.) Let's all hold that image in our minds and manifest it into reality, eh wot?

The good news is, the staff at his school could not be more fantastic. They are implementing loads of accommodations and reviewing all sorts of possible options and we really could not ask for more amazing allies in all this. People ask us all the time whether we like this school; I think there is some stigma associated with the fact that it's the oldest high school in our district and is located in not the most high-dollar neighborhood in our district. But we freaking LOVE this school and we feel very lucky that fate (er, and some deliberate real estate choices on our part) put us here. I shudder to think how some schools might handle this very real and serious disorder that very few people have even heard of while it manifests in a kid who doesn't even have an IEP. (He does have a 504 plan, though. That has helped A LOT.)

The bad news, besides the fact that nothing we've tried so far has really worked all that well, is that we can't have a sit-down with all the people involved in trying to puzzle out a solution to this problem until next week because all of our schedules are crazy because it's the first week of school. The waiting is the hardest part. (No it's not. The misophonia is the hardest part.)

The more good news is that H loves most/all of her classes and she's making new friends and I think she kind of gets a kick out of the fact that she's in high school now. The more bad news is that I was counting on her riding the bus to and from school since she and C can't ride in a car together (her breathing triggers his misophonia) and apparently her bus driver makes Nurse Ratched look like Sister Bertrille and so that riding the bus thing is not happening. She's been getting a ride with a friend's mom every day and I feel kind of weird about it because I don't know this mom very well, so I haven't really explained to her what the deal is with me not being able to reciprocate on the whole car pool thing. I asked H to explain it and she said she would but who knows whether that will happen. Meanwhile I think maybe we should chip in for gas every week? Or bake them some cookies? Or buy them a new car? What is the protocol here?

And not to make it all about me or anything (™ my mom) but in the midst of all this I've somehow managed to get within about a pound and a half of my goal weight. That stress diet works a treat, but I can't honestly say I recommend it.

So. How are things with all of you? We should catch up sometime.

Dog days

August has not been the most relaxing month ever here in Misophonia Land and full-day summer band did not go as well for C as expected. We made accommodations, we tweaked (and are still tweaking) meds, we made many many phone calls and sent many many emails and, you know, we all survived.

This is our last week of summer here; school starts one week from today. Band is only a few hours in the evening all this week, and in the meantime there are textbooks to pick up and lockers to be assigned and ID card photos to be taken and new therapists to meet. H has "fish camp", the crash course in all things high school that is presented to incoming freshmen, this week and she could not be more excited.

It's finally hit me that I will have TWO in high school this year; both kids at the same school again for the first time in two years. And they won't be at different schools EVER again until C graduates (please God) in two years and goes off to college (please oh please oh please) or stays here for college (that would be perfectly okay, too).

Anyhoo, this last official week of summer seems like as good a time as any to check in with those summer goals I set way back when, eh? Let's go!

1. Lose 17 pounds. I've lost 14. Not bad, eh? I was hoping to lose the 17 by my birthday, which is one month from today. Not sure I'll get there at the rate I've been going, particularly this month with all the stress-snacking and stress-cocktail-drinking, but we'll see. (Also one month from today: the 20 year anniversary of my engagement to P. Best birthday ever!)

2. Read more. Books I've read since the last time I updated you on the progress of my summer goals:  Judith Arnold's Goodbye to All That (light and fun; good beach read), Ben Rehder's Buck Fever (very fun; takes place near where I live; first in a series), Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (LOVED; extremely dark and twisted and hilarious), Ben H. Winters's The Last Policeman (also LOVED and very much looking forward to more from this author), Carrie Regan's Rumors of Savages (super fun mindless romp; again, a good beach/airplane read). Right now I'm reading Valya Dudycz Lupescu's The Silence of Trees, which is gorgeous and heartbreaking and strangely cathartic, at least for me. It's not often that a work of fiction helps me sort out some of my own emotional junk, but this one has. Go figure.

3. Make peace with the whole shorts thing and quit worrying about how I look in them. Who wears short shorts? I WEAR SHORT SHORTS.

4. Quit buying coffee mugs already (also cute drinking glasses)(also BPA-free reusable plastic cups with lids and straws). I am happy to tell you I have not bought a single drinking vessel in the entire month of August. Er, so far.

5. Shop at the Farmer's Market every week. Um, no. They open at 8:30 a.m. in the summer! All the good stuff is gone by 8:35! How am I supposed to sleep late AND get a workout in? (I like to think I make up for not shopping the summer market all that often by shopping the winter market like crazy, when all they have is kale, kale and more kale and I more or less have the whole market to myself. Yeah. That's the ticket.)

6. Eradicate hornworms from the face of the Earth. I found one on the remains of my Patio tomato plant the other day. Yeesh. I really need to pull out those tomatoes; they've been done producing for ages now.

Alrighty! Time to knuckle down, get busy, and try not to freak out about school starting next week. Yeah. Good luck with that, me.

Unwinding the despair spiral

Hello, I had hoped to tell you this week that our August is starting out AWESOME, that C is loving the heck out of summer band and doing great on the new meds and that everything is super hunky-dory and we are all excited about school starting later this month.

But you know what they say about hope. It's the thing with feathers that gets shot right out of the sky with a 12-gauge, or something. I'm pretty sure that's how that goes, yes? I never was a big Dickinson fan. (If you giggled when you read that last sentence, you are totally in my tribe.)

Somehow summer band has kicked C's misophonia into high gear. I've spoken with his doctor and we're going to tweak his meds to see if they are part of the problem. We've also spoken with the band director and will be putting some accommodations in place. We will deal with this. We will, we will. And I will step away from googling "distance learning for high school credit", "homeschool marching band", "distance learning for college degree", "legitimate work at home opportunities" and "house for sale with garage apartment". There, I have totally set myself up for ALL THE SPAM COMMENTS IN THE WORLD.

But hey, let's not talk about all that. Nor about the dream I keep having where thousands of tiny objects are spilling out of containers and I have to sort and count them all and put them back where they belong, nor that dream I had about the tornadoes, nor the fact that C and I arrived home from an aborted attempt to get through summer band this afternoon to discover that the dog had been Very Ill Indeed in our absence. All over my favorite rug. Yeah.

Let's talk about some things that are good. Okay? Can we do that? I'm going to. I think maybe I need to.

Here are some things I am enjoying these days, in no particular order:

1. Avocados. I seriously cannot get enough of them right now.
2. Level 2 of Jillian Michaels's 6 Week Six-Pack DVD. Holy cheezits, that is the hardest workout I have ever done. I freaking love it.
3. La Croix flavored sparkling water. I have only just discovered this product (much like Columbus discovered America) and I am hooked. No calories, no sweeteners of any kind, no caffeine, but less boring than plain water.
4. The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. A large asteroid is six months away from colliding with the earth, world economies and infrastructure are collapsing, people are killing themselves left and right, but police detective Henry Palace is just trying to do his job. Loved this book; it was quirky and weird and actually kind of sweet.
5. Clothes shopping. I have not only gone down 2 pant sizes (well, 2.5 now, which is awkward), I've gone down a shirt size as well. I no longer hate trying on clothes, which is good, because I no longer can buy clothes without trying them on.
6. Breaking Bad. It's back, and I am so happy. Except this is the last season, which makes me sad. But this is the happy list, so I'll just say that if they were to spin off a series of just Jesse and Mike hanging out in cars being badass, I would totally watch and enjoy that.
7. Popcorn. The old-fashioned kind, popped in coconut oil on the stovetop and sprinkled with a bit of seasoned salt. I'm getting pretty much all my carbs in popcorn form these days.
8. Big Bang Theory. I am very late to this party and I know everyone else is kind of over it, but somehow this show has become my comfort TV viewing.
9. "Why Am I The One" by Fun. It's not a particularly happy song, but it makes me happy. Go figure.
10. The sun is moving south. I can see it happening. This means fall is coming and my reverse seasonal affective disorder is GOING AWAY. Real soon now. I just know it.

Well, I've had so many interruptions that it's taken me about 5 hours to write this, so hey! I think it's time to publish. Talk to you later.