Last Wednesday Im Sorry!!!

I didnt realize it has been since Wednesday that I last blogged! Oops!  Sorry for my absence, we had a super busy week.

Thursday started off with my Mom and Oma coming for a few days from Canada, for Mothers Day and my housewarming party.  And since theyre internet and computer Nazis, I wasnt able to get on here that much.  Friday we got up early to bring the kids to school, as I had TWO Mothers day events that day.  One was in the morning, and one was at noon.  In between, I managed to drive them around the city to see the sights a bit, and we also did a quick trip to Trader Joes.  Then it was off to the school again, and after that, we spent the afternoon at Costco.   Saturday we were up at 7:30 and go-go-go ALL day.  We didnt really settle down until almost 10 PM.  We did food prep all morning, and then the party was all afternoon.  However, some friends came late and didnt leave till 9:30PM.  Thats perfectly ok though, we had a lot of fun with them, and drank and played scrabble.

As yesterday was Mothers Day, the kids and I did stuff together.  We went out for lunch, and then did a bit of shopping.  We had a really long day too, as my mothers day gift to myself was this:

Her name is Athena, Butterball for short! haha.  She is 7 weeks old and just a joy!  I also got her to keep Braddock company, who is our 7 year old black lab.  We all love her to bits, even Braddock!  except the cats, theyre keeping away from her. I bought all the pets some extra treats, and were giving Braddock extra love so he doesnt feel left out.  I kept with the Greek theme for names (except for Braddock, we did this after he came along), because Barry always insisted we do "distinguished" names for our pets, nothing stupid like Shadow, Rover, that kind of thing.  He was always adamant about that.  So I kept up with it in his memory.  Athena is also AKC registered, and has champion bloodlines.  I may or may not breed her, I have to think about it for awhile.

In other news, with the excitement of Athena, I forgot what day it was today.  Its the 10th.  I even surpassed 11:11AM.  7 months ago I became a widow, and I forgot! I am shocked, guilty and relieved all at the same time.  It is the first time I have forgotten.  I dont even know what else to say, except Im shocked I forgot.  This can only be a good thing though, as we go through the healing process.  But I actually forgot! wow.

I had a rough morning yesterday without him, as we had another holiday without Barry.  I cried as soon as I woke up, realizing that Ill never hear him say "Happy Mothers Day" to me anymore, Ill never get those deliveries from Pro Flowers or 1800Flowers anymore.  I cried and cried at breakfast with the kids, and my mom and oma.  I was better the rest of the day though, thankfully.  Yes, I do have my kids which are such a gift from him...but as much as i love them, they dont replace him, it doesnt make me feel that much better.  Flame me if you like for saying that, but I cant be happy just because I have the kids from him.  Because they dont replace him.  le sigh.

Well, time for me to be puppy mommy and put Athena outside again.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Mothers Day!

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Time To Give Credit Where Its Due

I was pondering this morning, and realized I havent done a thank you post since Thanksgiving I think. A LOT has changed in our lives since then, and I just feel that maybe its time for me to say thank you again to all the important friends I have in my life.

I wanted to do individual thank yous to everyone, and even wrote out paragraphs to everyone, but I found it was just too much to write, and too emotional to do so. So I will make a list, and hopefully theyre all reading this...and if not, they know how I feel. A thousand hugs and thank yous could not express my happiness at having you all in my life. I love all of you!!

*Jason and Lindsay

*Sara

*Rebecca

*Christy

*Johanna

*Mimi, Monica, Connie and all the other ladies from Mops that came and helped me clean and unpack

*All of my awesome twitter friends, especially Rachel who ran the London Marathon, and ran a mile in Barrys memory. That made me cry. And Ian too, who is a fellow widowed single parent, and knows what its like.

In other news, yesterday I took the spawn to a summer camp orientation/interview. Its through the Jamie Moyer foundation, and is called Camp Erin. Its geared specifically towards children that have, or are, experienced a significant loss in their life like that of a parent or sibling. Its a bit of a lengthy application process, and we wont find out for a good month, but I am pretty confident that the three olders will get in. It is just for a weekend in June, two nights only, but they will have so much fun.

Yesterday as I was driving them there, I got a little teary eyed. Thinking to myself, why do I have to do this? Bring my kids to a summer camp for Grieving Kids? WTF? how is that even fair to us? It isnt FAIR. Not one bit. I dont see why my kids have to grow up without their daddy, why they have to go to a summer camp because their daddy is dead.

And then I got a little angry at Barry. Because if he hadnt died, I wouldnt be in this situation. I wouldnt have had to take the kids out of school early to drive 45 minutes to Tacoma so they could have this opportunity. Its all his fault. I know he tried his damnedest to stay a live, I know that b/c I saw the look in his eyes, but he STILL DIED! He LEFT us. He put us in this situation, and I am so mad about it. I cant do anything about my life because he died, and no matter how much I want to go back and change what happened, I cant. Its infuriating, heart breaking, maddening. I hate this. And for the rest of our lives, we are going to have to deal with this heartbreak. Sometimes I just want to yell and scream at him for leaving us, and I have done that already. Maybe I need to do it again. Or get some aggression out again, something like that.

Barry knows Im angry, and I think hes OK with that. I know he didnt want to leave us, and if he were in my situation, Id expect him to be angry too. Anger is a perfectly normal part of grief, and I need people to know that sometimes Im going to fucking hate Barrys guts because of what he did to us. Right now Im angry and sad because I dont want us to be in this situation.

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WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO

Okay, so I dropped off the face of the blogosphere about nine months ago.  I started this blog back in February of 2009, which was over three years ago.  I used the blog as a place to record my personal stats, which I was very into at the time, and as a storehouse for all the great articles I was finding in my main area of interest, which was, and still is, nutrition.  Low Carb High Fat nutrition, to be precise.  And then, without an explanation, I disappeared, and no one knew where I was, just like my old friend, You-Know-Who:

(I would watch that show just to hear them sing!  Im really dating myself now!)

Everyone has had the following experience:  Someone says something snarky (or downright mean) to you out of the blue, and you are so taken aback that you can think of nothing clever to say.  Later, when it is much too late, you think of the perfectly scalding comeback that would have put that person in their place and elevated you to “most clever person ever”.  I had one of those experiences back in August 2011 when a random stumbler stumbled across my blog and called me and my blog, well, stupid.

The comment posted by this anonymous person went something like this, as best as I can remember:  “Your blog is so lame!  Who cares about all your stuff?  Why don’t you get a life?” and more along those lines.  I posted back something like:  “Oh, yeah?”  I know.  Not the height of cleverness.  After I posted that brilliant response, I deleted both his (I don’t know why, but I always assumed it was a guy) and my comments so that no one else but me and that guy would see them. He never returned and it was a good thing, because I spent the next three days coming up with the most scathing comebacks I could think of, and I’m glad I never got the chance to use them.  I did not want to go on record tearing some stranger a new one as if I cared about what he said.  But I did care, and shortly after that, I stopped blogging.  To you, Guy that Commented:  I assume you will never read this, but you got your way.  I realized that no one cared about all my stuff and I got a life.  Not that I didn’t already have one, but you know what I mean…

I’m not sure what motivates a person to make a comment like Guy did.  I tried to imagine myself visiting someone’s blog about, say, restoring classic cars, and leaving this comment:  “Your blog is stupid!  I don’t care about cars and neither should you!  It’s a stupid hobby and a waste of money!  You need to get out of the garage and get a life!”  Nope, I don’t see me doing that.  Because, at heart and on the surface, I’m a pretty nice guy.

Anyway, the stats I posted nine months ago were the last ones I recorded here, right before I stole away into the night like Carmen Sandiego.  Not only did I stop recording them here, but I stopped in the real world, too.  No more weighing and measuring of food, no more tracking of fat grams or any other kind of grams and no more weighing and measuring of my own body.  Oh, I would hop on the scale every now and then (every few weeks, if I was looking fat), but those times were few and far between.  My tape measure stayed in the drawer and my digital kitchen scale stayed in the cabinet.

I feel pretty confident that I am only talking to myself here, because any people who were following my blog have long since given up on me, I’ll bet.  But if anyone is reading, the answer to “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (aka Rebecca Latham)?” is that I just hit the wall and could not stand having to micro-manage my food and activities for one more second!  Being the anal retentive, perfectionist, obsessive compulsive person that I am (that last one has never been diagnosed), it was a hard thing to give up.  My charts would be incomplete and I would not be able to look back to a certain date after August 24, 2011 and know what my thigh measured that morning or how many grams of carbs I had eaten that day and what percentage they had been of my total calories!!!  Oh, the agony! 

Long story short, I got over it, and I am much happier now.  I have been sticking, mostly, to the low carb lifestyle.  I have had times that I have gone completely off of it, like during the holidays, but it is now my default way of eating and I always come back to it.  Over the past few months, I realized that I was getting too far away from what I knew to be the best for me and my chubby body and my chubby hubby.  I was starting to do things like grabbing a bag of Peanut M&Ms when I was out and about and a little hungry, and ordering and eating a pizza (crust and all!) when I was too tired to cook.  Lately, I put on about five pounds, and decided to get really serious about low carbing it again.  Just to see where I was starting at, I dusted off the ol’ tape measure and measured neck, waist and hips, and found out that I was almost EXACTLY where I was, body-size-wise, back in August, within an eighth of an inch.

Here is what I learned (again, pretty sure Im just talking to myself to solidify things in my mind and convictions) after my nine months off:  Whether I obsess over it or not, it looks like this is the weight my body wants to be.  All the many months and years I spent tracking everything and trying desperately to shed some more body fat were a waste of time and effort.  I mean, hey!  I did not track for the last nine months, and no harm done!

Having said that, I have made a new commitment to get really serious about low carbing and high fatting it again.  I have decided that I am not going to eat candy and chips (did I forget to mention the Doritos that I was having with more and more frequency?) and I am not going to grab cookies at the bank (yes, my bank has a cookie jar and there are bowls of candy on every flat surface accessible to customers).  For the past week or so, I am doing what I know is right and eating protein, fat and some veggies, no fruit save a few berries now and then, and drinking only water, tea and homemade lemonade sweetened with a little liquid Stevia.  I am not measuring my food.  I am eating what appears to be a reasonable amount.  After all the measuring all these years, I guess I should have a handle on what that means without having to get out the dusty digital scale!

If I never decrease my weight from here on out, I am resolving to be content with that.  In clothes, I look pretty good, and no one sees my secret love handles but me and my husband, and he’s not complaining.  I have dropped a couple of pounds in the past week or so, and that’s nice.

I have spent the last several days shoring myself up with reading great nutrition articles on the internet and catching up with all my favorite low carb bloggers that I have ignored for nine months and finding a few new ones, too.  I am rereading “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” by Volek and Phinney (two of my faves, who chose me to be a success story in “The New Atkins For A New You”, for which I will always be grateful), which was a gift from Karen Norris, my ol’ Atkins pal.

I will post again when I feel like I want to write something down in font, or when I find a great bit of information that I don’t want to lose track of.

Onward and Downward, as I always say, but even Onward and Straight Ahead can be a good thing!

(By the way, I have gotten back into quilting as a business, so if you want to visit my other blog on that subject and see photographs of my quilts, you can click here.

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