Thursday 18 November to Sunday 21 November 2010

Why One Should Never Think One Has It All Under Control, or "Stuff Happens":  Finally our new windows are done and the general stress level should have been going down in our household.  We got some new bamboo blinds for the back door. They have some "safety" features that came undone, and one of the pulleys at the top came unsnapped. Mr. Handsome-and-Handy went to fix it, and the pulley snapped back out and shot right into his eye! Ack!!! Nothing got stuck, but his eye got injured. I hopped on the phone and got him right in to see his doctor. He had to see the eye doctor, and it turns out he's got some swelling, bleeding around the iris, and scratching on the cornea.  It was more serious than I think either of us originally thought. He had a follow-up appointment on Friday, and there was some improvement, and they'll take another look at it on Tuesday.

So until the doctor says so, we're stuck with things like "no driving," "limit car travel" (thank goodness we didn't have travel plans for Thanksgiving!), "no reading," and "lots of rest - no heavy exertion." Which has led to the unusual situation of the normally industrious Mr. Handsome-and-Handy planted on a couch watching TV (and resting the injured eye as much as possible), eating snacks & drinking beer & such, and trying to not perish from boredom...while I ended up doing all the stuff he normally does during the week.  As most of you already know, we're truly "opposite family," in that I work outside the home and he does everything else. Having to do his stuff, too, has shown me how spoiled I've gotten by this arrangement. Poor guy has to get popped in the eye to get a break around here...well, it would be more of a break if it were pain-free and free from fear for his eyesight.  We're all a bit strung out over it.  I sure would appreciate any prayers/good thoughts/and the like for him.

So anyway, it's meant less online time and blog time, and my "part time job" of self-care has taken somewhat of a back seat to family care.  My weekend feeding and exercise were not stellar, but I have met my challenge team's goals of at least 3 fruits or veggies per day each day, and I did at least 30 minutes of exercise during the past 3 of 5 days. (Not to mention the incidental exercise of laundry, grocery shopping, and impromptu kickball games in the front yard.) I plan to get my exercise in the evening for the next few days, but am aiming for simply "minimum daily requirement."  I need to do some strength exercises tonight or tomorrow night to make my goal of 2 "strength days" next week. I missed my long run/walk, though, and I'm bummed about that.

Thursday 18 November

Breakfast:  1/2 English muffin, tomato + cheddar omelette, 2 mugs of the usual coffee.

Lunch:  Green salad with herbed feta cheese and Tuscan dressing and an apple.  Yes, someone made a Trader Joes stop on the way in - I drove past after my gas station stop, and noticed that they opened at 8 a.m., not 9 a.m. like I always thought!

Dessert:  20 grams of Green & Black's.

Afternoon snack:  Plain 2% Greek-style yogurt with 7 blackberries and 5 grapes.

And some plain almonds and unpictured yet worthy 1x1 cookie square things (1/2 carb serving).

2 sugar-free Jolly Ranchers before driving home.

Dinner: Steak with steak sauce, cauliflower with olive oil + lemon pepper + garlic powder

And some mac nuts before popping in a sugar-free mint lifesaver.

Before bedtime, my stomach was grumbling.  I had some more macadamia nuts.

Friday 19 November

I'm going to try to reconstruct from memory here...it was off-camera most of the day:

Breakfast:  1/2 light English muffin with almond butter and sugar-free jam, 2 mugs of the usual coffee.

Mid-morning snack:  Dish of macadamia nuts

Lunch:  We went out after Mr. H&H's appointment to "The Carvery," a Hoffbrau-inspired cafeteria style eatery.  Or, as we dubbed it, soul food for Northern European Americans.  He got a roast beef sandwich and clam chowder and carrot cake; I got the turkey leg dinner and ate about 1/2 cup of stuffing and about 3/4 of the turkey leg meat and gave the rest to the Mr..  I also got a side of veggies, more of a garnish really in proportion to the rest of the food (although it probably was about 1/2 a cup).  I did partake of a few bites of carrot cake.

Dinner:  Kind of snacky, since I wasn't super hungry and we had another appointment in the evening.  I can't remember exactly what I ate.  I know I had a cup of carrots after we got home from an evening appointment, and I'm pretty sure my "fruit/veggie" item was an apple with cheese.  I'm sure I ate some nuts, too.  Oh, and all of the cheese off of 2 pieces and end-crust (with butter) off one piece of leftover pizza.

Saturday 20 & Sunday 21 November

Completely off-camera.  We had our usual Saturday morning breakfast with bacon and eggs and pancakes.  I really liked my Lori-inspired pancakes today!  I took 1/4 cup of flax meal + 1/2 scoop of vanilla whey protein powder  + 1 egg + about 1/8 cup of regular pancake batter + 1/4 tsp baking powder + splash of almond milk + 1 drop of orange extract + 4 chopped raw cranberries.  To my delight, the cranberries cooked up and added a nice tart flavor to the pancakes, and the pancakes themselves cooked up very well.  Dinner was, if I recall, rather snacky - I think I just made some basic salad and apples with almond butter for me - since Thing 2 had a swimming birthday party in the evening and they had pizza after the swim.  (And this really tasty variation on a caesar salad: romaine lettuce, caesar salad dressing, chicken, avocado chunks, and I think it was cotija cheese, although any dry, sharp cheese would be really good on this.  I had this salad + stripped a piece of pizza.)

On Sunday, the kids had donuts and we had eggs + chorizo.  Later in the day I had apple and a really huge chopped salad with lettuce, tomato, carrot, celery, yellow bell peppers, broccoli, shredded cheddar, and chopped salami.  For dinner, kids had broccoli and "lunch items" (little frozen burger for Thing 2 and PBJ for Thing 1) and I made chili with 1/2 cup of canned chili, 1/2 cup of salsa, a dash of mustard, and some diced cheddar cheese.  (Mr. H&H got to go to his brother's house for a change of scene...his brother recovering from a herniated disk, so they're quite a pair these days.)

Of course, interspersed in there was some gratuitous snackage, like "meat doggies" and nuts and such.  But I did make a point of eating my veggies, so it wasn't a total wash.  I also got in the pool at the party on Saturday evening (more of a rec swim than a workout, but I did as much treading water as possible to keep moving) and got on the exercise bike on Sunday.  We had quite a bit of rain and wind and even a little hail from the storm that moved through and dropped a sprinkle of snow on Debby. :-)  Which kind of wrecked havoc with outdoor stuff, but we all did enjoy a nice game of kickball with one of the neighbor kids.  (I'm a little nervous about playing baseball in the front yard with the new windows....)

Any Harry Potter fans?  How was the movie?  I'm one of the nuts that would go to the midnight book store events (er, for books 5-7, anyway...went the Amazon route for books 1-4) and stay up all night reading them.  I'm not sure, though, when I'll be getting to see the movie.  (Kind of hard to get amped up for part 1 of 2....)