Supermarket Fury

Going to the supermarket. Christ, is there anything worse? They just get bigger and bigger and when I finally leave I’ve lost 3 hours and wonder if I’ve been abducted by aliens. I know, I know. I’m lucky to have a supermarket to go to. Nonetheless. I feel like I am there every single day of my godless life. And you can’t just go in and buy the one thing you actually need, or at least I can’t, there are always half a dozen other things. Ooh, that’s on sale! Ooh, that’ll be good for dinner! Ooh, my favorite piece of junk food that is not at all good for me but I like to eat anyway! So, even though all I freaking needed was a loaf of bread that I can buy for 40 pence- I end up leaving with £35 worth of groceries. Granted, I buy a lot of reduced stuff that can be frozen and used for future meals, so I save money in the long run. I’m trying to bring my family round to trying the paleo diet, which I gather is just meat and veg and the money I’d save by shopping at the green grocer and the butcher and never setting foot in a supermarket makes me giddy with possibilities, I might finally be able to fix my sons bike! Lo and behold my family likes their carbs, thank you very much, so I may have to employ the use of stealth when making the switch. Though there is always the possibility of the old “I’m paying for the groceries, if you don’t like what I’m buying, get a job and buy your own.” That tends to stop the whining in it’s tracks…

What annoyed me recently (well, ok, a month ago) at the supermarket was the cashier. Usually they just ring the stuff up and make small talk (occasionally with me, usually with a colleague or the customer in front who won’t pick up their damn bags and GO already) but this one decided she needed to comment about what we were buying. Grrr. We’d gone in for only a few items but I’d come across quite a few sale items, of course. So we had three boxes of ice cream bars at 50 pence each for the kids, an apple tart that I thought would be a nice dessert one night for £1. Two boxes of my favorite cornettos, 2 for £2. And some other bits and bobs. Yes, there was a bit of junk. I joked about it to my husband. Yet this cashier decided she need to tell me all about weight watchers. And how half her grocery shopping is always vegetables. I tried to keep things light, and said something about how it’ll be nice when the kids go back to school and arent clamoring for ice cream all the time. To which she replied “Well that’s when you tell them they can have a piece of fruit!”

Sorry, guys. Kids with fat mommies aren't allowed ice cream!

This annoyed me. I didn’t say anything to her, other than just a “Oh, I do!” but the sheer audacity pissed me off. Why pass judgement on my purchases? I have three slim, healthy, active children. One of which prefers to snack on carrots more than anything else, and two who love salad and always have seconds. They arent allowed to drink soda, fast food is a rare treat and all their regular meals are homemade. They get told “If you’re that hungry, have a carrot or a piece of fruit” six times a day. The only one who eats to much junk in my household is me. And clearly I am an adult and perfectly capable of deciding for myself what and how much I eat. I have one child who hates fruit and veg and would prefer to eat junk all day. I don’t allow this. His favorite breakfast item is cereal, which I rarely buy. He has to eat more healthy food. If he doesnt eat his carrots at dinner, he gets no dessert, etc.

I suppose people just like to feel superior and I shouldn’t be offended, but it seems to illustrate once again that fat people are fair game for ridicule. I know I’m fat, I promise I’m not stupid and I really don’t need a lecture from the cashier on the value of eating vegetables. Neither do I need random people assuming that since I am fat, I am a simpleton incapable of appropriate parenting, especially as how the 6 year old next door is never without a can of coke and a packet of sweets, though his mom is thin as a rail. Shockingly enough, I don’t sit around eating junk and watching daytime telly all day, either.

So what I’d like to say to that cashier is this: “Look bitch, it’s the middle of August, the kids are off school and if I want to give them some damn ice cream, I will. And, by virtue of not being stupid, I know exactly how to lose weight when and if I choose to, so I really don’t need you to lecture me about weight watchers and fucking vegetables.”

Black Forest Cupcakes

I love most things cherry, and though I’m not great on chocolate by itself, when you combine it with cherry, it becomes one of my very favorite things. So, when I saw the recipe for black forest cupcakes in Eat Me, I just had to try it.

Though the illustration of the cupcakes looked divine, I was concerned when I read the recipe. It uses cocoa powder, of which I am not a big fan in baking. But, although I usually know I will not be happy with the results, I try to at least give these recipes a fair shake if I think they may be worth it. This one used golden syrup in addition to golden sugar, which I knew would make it sweeter and perhaps do a better job of countering the cocoas acidity.

These cupcakes were my birthday treat and the baby and I enjoyed making them. Toward the end of their baking time I needed to dash off to Olivia’s cross country championship and they werent quite done so instructed the husband to turn the oven off and let them sit while I was gone. This usually works well, but I was gone a fair while and by the time I had returned, they were pretty overcooked and had gone hard. Nevertheless, I finished them off with the cherry filling and whipped cream.

I have to say at this point that I don’t blame the recipe for how they turned out, I overcooked them and as a rule I don’t like cocoa flavoured baked goods anyway. So, when I say they tasted awful, I do so with the knowledge that I am entirely to blame. I ate one, my kids ate all the rest. I was dissapointed but because I love anything black forest I was determined to try again. The second time around I used a completely different recipe for the cupcakes, a trusty stand by that I’ve adapted to suit my tastes. This recipe uses melted dark(plain) chocolate in place of cocoa powder. The cupcakes turned out perfect, moist in the middle, but nice and cakelike on the outsides. I also adapted the Eat Me cherry filling to my own taste, and it soaked in lusciously with the moist cupcake centres. Instead of faffing around piping the whipped cream on top, I just spooned it on and they looked like wonderful domes, with sprinkled chocolate crunch pieces on top.

These were perfect, like manna from heaven. Sheer deliciousness and I had to restrain myself from eating more than one at a sitting. Twelve cupcakes between 5 people can only last so long though, they were gone by breakfast the next morning.

Oh, sweet sweet schwarzwälder kirschtorte. How I love thee.

So, I credit the Eat Me recipe with the inspiration, and I can’t wait to try all the other fantastic looking recipes in the book. In particular, I’m eyeing the pastel macaroons for a Sunday High Tea I’m planning for my daughter and her closest friends.

Lemon Fingers

A lovely friend sent me Eat Me, a brilliant book chock full of cupcake recipes, for my birthday. I, of course, want to try everything in it! I started off with Lemon Fingers.  These were a lot of fun to make, but I had never made anything like it before so it took some fiddling, and experimenting with different piping tools, including a contraption involving a tin can courtesy of the husband,  to get them just right.

In the end I discovered a cookie maker I bought or was given years ago and had never used. You know, the kind that consists of a long metal tube and a handle for pumping the batter/frosting out of. Usually with a little metal plate on the end with a design on it, so you can make star cookies and the like. When we had managed to put it together and get the right tube on it for the fingers, it worked a treat. The fingers were buttery and light, in fact a bit to light, if I put just a teeny to much pressure on them while spreading the frosting on, they’d crack. The children didn’t mind of course, the baby especially loved getting the broken bits.

These lemon fingers were light and lemony and absolutely delicious. Perfect for a spring picnic in a field bursting with wildflowers and butterflies. As luck would have it, I think we have one of those around here somewhere, actually… So, I suppose I’d better get planning.

Ectopic heartbeat

It started with me doing nothing. Sitting on the couch, watching tv, I imagine. Suddenly, a drop. Literally, it felt as if something in my chest had just dropped. This was followed by that funny butterfly feeling you sometimes get in your stomach, but in my chest and accompanied by a swiftly rising panic. The kind you get when a very specific thought flashes through your brain- “I can’t breathe.” Then, a monster thump, almost like being kicked in the chest, and it was gone. The butterflies, the pressure on my chest that made me think I couldn’t breathe, the panic. Everything was fine, again. Except, I was bewildered, worried.

The next day, another one. Sitting on the couch, studying this time. The next day, lying in bed. The next day, two. Then the day after that,  late in the evening, walking around the shop picking up last minute items for my sons food tech class in the morning, they began again, this time coming thick and fast, only 1-3 minutes between them. I started to feel as if I couldn’t breathe even between attacks, the lights of the shop became very bright, the environment taking on a surreal feeling, I felt lightheaded, almost dizzy, panic rising that I would collapse, that it actually was some sort of bizarre heart attack, even yes, that I would die. In fucking Asda.

My husband asked if he should take me to the hospital. I reluctantly nodded. We paid for the groceries. “Please don’t let me die in Asda. Please, for fuck sake, don’t die in Asda.” Then walked to the car. “Should we call an ambulance instead? Am I freaking out for nothing?”  During the drive, they became more regular, coming every 3 minutes. Thankfully, we live close to a hospital.

At the emergency room, I only had to wait a few minutes to be called to the counter. She asked what the problem was and I told her. She did not immediately turn white or shout for a doctor. Therefore, I decided I must be fine and asked my husband to take me home. He said no. (Bastard.) She did have me sit in the wheelchair though. (The wheelchair is special, it means you will be whisked away imminently instead of sitting back down in the waiting room and waiting for someone to get back from break and see you) Sure, enough within 3 minutes I had been whisked away into the triage unit, told to take my top off, and strapped to an ECG machine. At which point, the episodes, which had been going strong, stopped completely.  They took blood, did another *normal* ECG. Then, another normal ECG. I told them they were still coming, even when I wasn’t hooked up. So, they hooked me up to a continuos monitoring device. I lay there for an hour, listening to a man a few beds over screaming in pain and begging not to be touched. A nurse said to another, “Bed 7 isn’t due until 10 to 2:00, so best to just let him sleep. Best to be careful when you do though, he’s unpredictable, might make a grab for you, might be good to have security with you.” I drifted in and out of sleep, occasionally jerking awake as my heart kept dropping on and off the grid.

Eventually I woke to find a doctor standing above me. My bloods had come back normal, bar a slightly high white cell count. He could see the events on the monitor, a spike, which immediately spiked again, 1/2 as much, and levelled out, before returning to normal. He started by telling me I have a condition called Ventricular Ectopic.   The best way to explain, I suppose, is simply by saying that normally there is one area of your heart that gives the command to beat when the chambers fill with blood.  Sometimes another part of the heart gets a bit fed up with always having to do what the first one says, and decides that SHE will give the command, except she has no idea what she’s doing and the command is to early, and there isn’t enough blood to pump out yet. The part of your heart that is supposed to give the signal just carries on as normal.  So, the screwy beat is compensated for. When I noted that it sounded scary, he assured me it was normal and benign. I had two more while he spoke and he showed them to me on the monitor. He explained there really isn’t anything to do to get rid of them, that maybe eventually I will stop being aware of them, but if not, then yes I could spend the rest of my life with it.

I did a little googling and discovered that the condition is know as an “ectopic heartbeat”, and is fairly common. Some people seem terrified by it, and spend their lives trying to find some sort of cure for it.  Apparently it can be controlled using drugs for other heart conditions, but it seems unnecessary. Having said that, I think those same people are the ones who have hundreds or thousands of ectopic heartbeats a day, though, so I don’t really blame them.

It’s been a bit hard to get used to it. When it’s a quiet day, ectopic heartbeat wise, then I barely think about it. When they happen but are small, I barely register them. But when they are big, when they happen in a string, then it is frightening. I think “What if they are wrong? What if it’s actually something serious?”  But, I force myself to breath, and they go and all is well again.

My only real fear is that combined with another heart condition, they can lead to “sudden death”, so I’d like to minimise my risk of heart attack as much as possible. But, I think I’ve got a few more years before I really need to worry about that, all the more reason to lose the weight, though, right?

Things I really should be doing.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas I just completely lost all my productivity mo-jo. Going to bed post midnight, getting the kids to school late, not bothering with even basic housework, not doing any real studying. It’s gotten better since Christmas, but I’m still not back up to full productivity. Most of it to due with some heavy personal issues that have been ongoing since Feb. 2010, they came to a head right before Christmas and the fall out from that is still ongoing.  Some days and even weeks I do great, and others, it all falls down completely.  But, getting there.

In the meantime- a list of things I should be doing every day, but  still not quite getting around to yet.

• dishes. Nobody in this house likes washing dishes. So unless I really lay down the law and suffer the shitty attitudes and crappy washing job thats results from annoyed adolescents being forced to  do dishes, I just wait until I can’t stand it/there are no more clean dishes/the kitchen has become a health hazard and just wash the damn things myself.

• going over my 4 year olds phonics lessons nightly. I had been great about this, unfortunately it is one of the things that has fallen to the wayside. When I did it with him this morning, I was afraid he would have fallen behind, but I was wrong. He has actually improved and can read actual words now. Yey for school. Of course, he’d probably be even better if I was doing the extra work with him, but whatever, my 4 year old can read, thats what I choose to focus on.

• Listening to my big kids read aloud 15 minutes a day. Also something I had been very good at which fell by the wayside. They had been about halfway through The Secret Garden and Of Mice and Men when it did, however and those are both such great books, I really want to get them back into it. Especially my son who really can’t bear reading and in whom I’m strongarming trying to instill a love an appreciation for it.

• tidying. I don’t understand why I’m so bad at it. I think I see it only as a huge job encompassing the whole house, and that scares me off to the point where I do nothing. I know it can be broken up into 15 minute chunks and a lot can be done in that time frame, but that just hasn’t really become my mindset yet, I guess. So, I continue to just *helplessly* watch the mess pile up around me.

• coping with my emotions better. I’ve written recently about comfort eating and how badly it has affected me. I desperately need to get it under control but am really struggling. The last two weeks have been extremely stressful and very emotionally demanding. I went from doing wonderfully on my £30 a week grocery challenge to just obliterating it by buying trifles, fruit tarts, choux buns,cheesecakes,cookies,ice cream,etc. Not just one of each mind you. I think in the last two weeks I have bought 6 trifles. Yes, these have been shared with my family, but a. I normally wouldn’t have bought any at all, and b. I ate a fair amount of each one. I bought multiple fruit tarts, 2 in a pack, more than once I ate both at one sitting.   This is not normal, and when things are not so emotionally taxing I am fine and don’t feel the need to buy/eat  any of these things! But when things start to crack, I just feel so powerless and anxious, and thats when I start to comfort eat.  I bought a book months ago called “Life is Hard, Food is Easy” based on a recommendation from a friend. The book was on backorder for months and by the time I got it, things had improved, I was no longer comfort eating and…well.. I put it on the bookshelf and told myself I didn’t need it.  I guess I’ll be pulling it off the book shelf and reading it now. I suppose I really need to truly admit to myself that this is a problem, but that’s very hard. I’m at a point in my life where I feel like I need to be in control, and the prospect of admitting there is something going on that I can’t control scares the shit out of me. In fact it makes me want to go curl up on the couch with a bucket of strawberry trifle.

So there you have it, my list of shame. I’m trying to get back on board the productivity bandwagon, so hopefully I will have some good news to report, soon.

*puff puff*

 A disclaimer: my apologies for apalling spelling over the course of the next week or so, while I’m waiting for my interent to be fixed and am forced to use library computers, backspacing, deleting and correcting seems to take about ten minutes with these computers and by the time I’ve notived I’ve made a  mistake it’s usually about two sentences later, not a problem on my mac but I’m afraid all that backspacing will make the keyboard blow up!

Ok, on with the show. So, as I’ve previously lamented in other incredibly well written and entertaining posts, I gained a bit of weight last year. Ok, a lot of weight. For the most part I take it on the chin, thats what I get for existing on energy drinsk and cherry jaffa cakes for three months, right? So, I’ve got this horrible double chin, a large gut, you know, all that pretty stuff that gets included in the getting fat package.

What annoys me the most, actually, is how out of shape I feel. I’m not a lazy person, I take the stairs and walk across parking lots and for awhile I was jogging three times a week. I hate sitting and doing nothing.  I’ve noticed it more the last two weeks as I’ve been coming to the library to study, the study rooms are on the 3rd floor and there are quite a few flights of stairs to get up here, this hasnt ever bothered me before, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used the lift over the last 2 years that I’ve come here regularly, and that’s usually because the baby begs to.  But, the last two weeks? It’s a nightmare. I used to jog up the stairs- why walk?  I try to still, but it’s impossible, I’m puffed out after two flights. Even when I walk, I’m out of breath by the time I get to the top and I have to walk into the area puffing like a 30 year pack a  day smoker with a hole in their throat. It’s ridiculous.

I don’t understand how people can bear it. I know that it’s hard to keep the motivation, and even harder when the issue is food and it’s not like you can just stop eating, is it? But, people, I’m at the point where I can’t even walk up the stairs without feeling like I’ve just a run a marathon, it’s crazy.                                              

I’m not going to go on a diet, or make some crazy weight loss commitments, but I am becoming so aware of how being fat is affecting my body, and I can’t stand it. I know what my problem is, it’s comfort eating combined with a sweet tooth. I don’t need to eat smaller portions, or even healthier meals (I do both already), but I have got to get this comfort eating issue under control.  It’s like a drug really, which is disconcerting. I’ve done drugs, crazy addictive drugs, I’ve seen addicts, I’ve lost friends to drugs, I have been there and done that and it didn’t turn me into an addict. I smoked for years, but I never became addicted. I feel amost as if it is a personal, I get through all of that without addiction getting its claws into me and now I’m fighting what may in fact be an addiction to carbohydrates? WTF? That’s preposterous, right?  

Yet, here I am. Struggling with it, feeling like I can’t control it,  like when I’m crying and the world seems like such a damn desert of pain, I have to eat something, a pie, cookies, pastries, bread, I just have to eat it.  It sounds disgusting, pathetic, ridiculous, and maybe it is, it feels that way to me, but maybe thats what addiction is? I don’t know, it’s sad and it makes me ache for those facing musch more destructive addictions, and makes me feel as if I’m being melodramatic comparing eating cakes to being a junkie, but when you’re at that point, staring into the dessert section and trying to decide between the trifle, the cheesecake, the chocolate sponge, and the strawberry tart, and only making that decision because you know it would be to expensive and would look weird to buy all of them, even though you would eat them all, want them all because you think that is the only thing in the world that will make the damn tears stop, the pain stop, the heartache stop.

That sounds like a real addiction to me. Though,  I don’t know what my plan of action is, if any, but I do know I’m not going to sit back and let it destroy my life.

Wow, Thanks, Kid. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said.

I love my morning wake up calls. Even the 5am ones, promise. I love them because they come with a cuddle from Rafe, a kiss and always laughter. If that’s not the best way possible to start a morning, I don’t know what is. But, I must admit that, beauty wise, early morning is not my best time. Bed head and tangled clothes, sleep in my eyes. It’s not pretty.   Lately, Rafe is fascinated with my stomach. I won’t lie, it’s pretty big. I did gain  2 stone in 2010, after all, and if you’ve read my blog before chances are you’ll be familiar with my weight loss efforts even before that.

I don’t get upset, of course. He’s only 4 and at that age it’s all about stating facts. At 5am I don’t harbour any illusions about being skinny. And you know, it’s kind of nice to have that sort of fresh certainty. It’s not a judgement, it’s a fact. He doesnt care if I have a big belly or a little one, and it’s such a non issue, it simply wouldn’t occur to him that his comments might be hurtful.

The rest of my family are so lovely and sweet however that they will rush to my aid, assure me I’m not “fat”, I’m beautiful and they love me. Which is nice, but of course, I am fat. Denying that does not teach them the right lessons and it does get a bit tiresome. I am an adult, and as much as other things get me down, and yes even my weight sometimes, it is not what defines me. I’ve had three kids, I’ve got a sweet tooth and when things are bad I comfort eat. I think it’d be more of shock if I wasn’t fat! That doesn’t mean I like strangers commenting on it, or people telling me how I should be eating,etc. But,  I assume that I will not be fat my entire life and there are plenty of years left in my life to do something about it, years when I’m not trying to raise three young kids, deal with money issues and resuscitate a dead marriage.

So, I find Rafe’s observations about my belly charming and amusing. “You could have a baby in there, Mommy!” (puts ear to my belly to listen)  “Or TWO babies and LOTS of daddies!!!”  (Ok, seriously it’s not that big!!)  They remind me of my daughter who, when I was pregnant with Rafe, commented “You look like you ate about 1000 taco’s mommy!”  (We were having taco’s for dinner) And we just sat around the dinner table and laughed when she said that, because it was so cute and so funny.

I get down about my weight, sure. I’d love to be skinny. But, it’s more important to have perspective, right?  And if nothing else, my kids make sure I’ve got perspective by the truck load. Well, that and fat, of course.