To everyone who is a mother, a foster-mother, a de facto “mom” or a mother’s child…
Happy Mother’s Day!
For ages I’ve felt like there was an ominous cloud over me, and I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me. Today, for the first time in a long while, I woke up without it. Maybe that’s just a fluke…or the cloud was just a fluke! But I woke up with a boost of psychological and emotional energy. Physically, though, I feel more than usually wiped, so I don’t know what’s going on there. Maybe sleep deprivation, maybe pollen (I never used to have allergies, but in recent years I’ve noticed that when the allergens are bad, I experience a certain malaise), maybe some bad food choices yesterday. I was so elated about the book signing afternoon, I “splurged” and had ice cream.
In the past, I wouldn’t expect that to be an issue, but I’ve really purified my diet in the past month. I have a terrible chocolate jones–it’s really my only “addiction” or vice, and it’s very limited. But when the going gets tough–really tough–I start popping the Hershey’s Kisses. While annef was sick, I was eating more and more of them. I had cut way, way back, almost to nothing, after I left Dracu-job. But now my intake was getting high again. Meanwhile, I had ramped my exercising way up, and then cut out just about all junk food by eliminating corn syrup, transfats and refined grains from my diet. Alas, Hershey’s Kisses (and potato chips!) are innocent of any of those nasties. But I wanted to lose some weight, and no matter how hard I exercised, I just couldn’t seem to lose an ounce.
After annef passed away, I got a grip and cut the chocolate down to less than one eighth of what I had been eating: four Kisses per day, max. Now I am losing weight! Slowly, but definitely. (Mind you, I weigh the same that I did when I was 17, and I’m in much better shape than I was then–in fact, I’m in the best shape of my life. But I was too fat at 17. 🙁 ) So, if I eat ice cream, my whole body now goes, “huh? WTF are we supposed to do with this??” because I’ve cut back so far on both chocolate and sugar.
Oh, well, I only bought a little pint, not a gallon tub! It’s hard to find ice cream without corn syrup, too. And I can’t eat any of the fancy “mix in” flavors because the chips, sauces, cookie pieces, or whatever are bound to have white flour, transfats and/or corn syrup. Of course, Ben & Jerry’s can’t make plain old chocolate. It has to be “Fair Trade Chocolate”. *laugh* It’s good, though!
I was amazed that my Blogcritics review was posted by the editors last night–usually it takes about a day, especially on weekends. This morning, the review showed up in my Yahoo news filters. See, that’s a major reason I want to contribute a lot to Blogcritics: not only do they get 50K unique hits per day, but they’re indexed by all the search engines very fast. http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/05/10/224920.php if anyone wants to read my opinion of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s The Saint-Germain Memoirs.
I was also amazed when I went to the compost pile late last night and realized that the grass I planted is all sprouting! It’s still so thin and light green, it showed up better in the flashlight beam than in broad daylight. I was about to despair–it’s supposed to show up in seven days and it’s been two full weeks for the east side patch. I thought maybe I didn’t cover the seed enough, or it had gotten dry, or there was too much rain, or it had been too cold. Evidently, none of the above! It’s coming up like gangbusters! Which is terrific, because I bought a huge bag of grass seed and I have lots more places I want to re-seed.
I better get some work done! Ideas…I woke up with ideas! 🙂 It’s a stunningly gorgeous day here–crystal clear blue sky, bright sun, and the violets are blooming. It’s still on the cool side, though. Oh, Happy Whit Sunday/Pentecost to those who observe that day!