In the belly of the Death Star

I have been a bad blogger. 

I’ve basically been in survival mode for so long, any kind of additional contact with the outside world has been enough to send me into a tailspin. In the last four months, I’ve dealt with a move, the realization that we were going to move before my husband got a job, the prospect of both of us moving back in with my parents temporarily until the renters vacated our house- and then getting the house back, and realizing that the renters had trashed it, so we would be having to do massive reno to it (out of our savings, with no money coming in, and no sure way of getting money from the renters, OMG OMG we’re all gonna die)before we could get back into it. On top of that, illness, catch-as-catch- can eating, emotional, hormonal and medical nightmares, (I’ll spare you) seemingly infinite amounts of what can only be called bad luck, and crazy-insane amounts of stress. 

It was like the world’s most depressing, lengthy Russian novel- a forced march to the end, and it was my life. It seemed like every day, there was a lower level to be reached on my personal Downward Spiral of Doom.  I couldn’t deal with anything that wasn’t absolutely essential to day-to-day survival. And telling people what I was going through made my heart quail within me. I am not good at asking for help. I am usually that person who is there for others. I despise being needy or flaky, and for awhile there, I was both.  

 My husband, who is usually my rock, was in survival mode right along with me, going through all the same stuff. Discussing the status quo sparked huge, horrible arguments, and toward the end, it had been like being in the garbage bay in the belly of The Death Star- That scene where there’s something with tentacles under the water, AND the walls are closing in, except we were too paralyzed to do anything about it. The thought of writing about this process, day by day, was mind-numbing. Who wants to read about this crap? We were obviously cursed. There was nothing to do but get eaten or drowned or crushed quietly. 

But then, you know, the sun came out. We managed to make some progress on the house- found the world’s most awesome and reasonably priced contractor. We are going to end up doing a lot of the work ourselves, but that’s the only way it can get done, so we are doing it. We scraped the “cottage cheese” off the ceilings and are capable of painting and taping drywall and installing laminate and stuff like that, and hey, we have the time. We will finally have something close to the house we envisioned when we moved into it 10 years ago. So I suppose (and hope) that what was initially a horrible situation has turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise, in the form of giving us some much needed opportunities to attain some forward momentum. 

Accepting and admitting that the last few months have been a nightmare is oddly, one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I want to own these trials and tribulations, and make them something that I chose, or the result of crappy decisions I made. The reality is, in some cases, this is true. But the worst of it is just a shining example of “sometimes crappy things happen to good people”.  I have to stop beating myself up over feeling sorry for myself, because it’s completely counter-productive.  I feel like it’s a story I read: something that happened to somebody else.  

 I finally put it all together for a few of my closest friends. I could only bring myself to talk about it if I didn’t make eye contact with anyone, because if I saw the sympathetic expression on anybody’s face, I would totally have lost it. Of course, they were furious with me, for not asking for help while I fought a crazy three/four front war. They’ve all volunteered to come help us paint.  And as horrible as it was to convey what we were going through, I feel like it was a crucial step in helping me to move past it. 

SG and I got up early and went for a walk yesterday AM with the doggies. (I’ve got the sunburn to prove it! Holy crap, I have turned into Dracula.) And slowly but surely, we are adapting. Cooking in someone else’s kitchen is not easy, but I am getting the hang of it. My father, a noted squash-hater of many, many years, agreed to try my spaghetti squash with bison and vodka sauce last night. He ended up eating a big bowlful of it, and pronounced it “delicious”. I am so proud!

At the bottom of it all, I am lucky. I have incredibly supportive family, parents, and in-laws. Having friends again since I moved back home makes my heart light up with joy. I missed the friendliness of my hometown so very much. SG has several job interviews coming up, after months of applying for jobs and never getting so much as a call back. I am finally able to have a productive day that doesn’t involve a nervous breakdown. I know we are on the brink of something- if there’s anything to karma, it’s something good. Fingers crossed.  

Look out weekend!

One of the best benefits of moving back to my hometown is, of course, friends.

Last night, the plan was to go see a preview of the first episode of Downton Abbey before it officially airs tonight on PBS: I am shamelessly addicted to this show, and it seems like they have amped the things I love about it up this time around: a lot of back-and-forth snarky humor and wit.

Two of my friends and I assembled in front of the Tower Theatre, and watched a one hour preview of this season in style. There was an option to pay $60 to support PBS, where you attended a traditional English "high tea" beforehand, but knowing that I would be confronted with inedible (to me) tea cakes and cookies and tiny sandwiches ruled that out!

So we went out for steaks and martinis after, instead, which much more delicious and was actually cheaper. Win/win!

In other news, I renewed our pact to clean up our act on Friday night. We hit Trader Joe's, and I finally replenished our supplies of "good" food. We went out and walked the dogs and rode bikes yesterday morning as well. Unfortunately, I was a little late. SG has been congested for a day or so, and asked that we go back home early during the walk early yesterday. Despite lots of pumpkin soup with bone broth and tea, he is now super sick: phlegmy and lethargic and coughing. I am hoping he sleeps it off, and am keeping him tucked up in bed. 

Okey dokey!

Well...we finally have some closure. The house inspection was today. We met up with both the property manager and the insurance adjuster. Going through the cabinets, we found a bracket for an industrial fire extinguisher, as well as extreme heat damage under all the stove burners. Further indication that our house was being used for a catering business, which violated the terms of the lease.

I feel like I am coming out of my post-holiday funk: Finally! SG keeps talking about joining a gym. Believe it or not, after 4 years away, our old gym membership is still "holding", so we may just see if they can cut us a deal for us to reactivate. Gym visits would add a lot of much-needed structure to our days here, while everything gets straightened out.

SG has been feeling "off." I suspect the culprits are the appetizer meatballs leftover from the party. His face is puffed up, and he has bags under his eyes and is sniffling. I have only had one or two, and I am a little off, but not struggling as much as he is. It's time to start tightening things back up again. I can tell there's a definite difference in how we feel: just sluggish and tired. (Of course, some of that might be stress, but food isn't helping!)

We went out to dinner last night, and my Mother-In-Law asked if there was a Paleo cookbook I would recommend. So we dropped off our copy of Practical Paleo for her to look at today: something I am very excited about!

I am also getting ready to look out in the freezer at the meat we brought with us. I need to start cooking- I miss it. I can't keep making the excuse that we are in someone else's kitchen. So it looks like we will be getting back on track as much as possible soon. I can't wait. 

Motivation, or lack thereof

I feel like I am the only person not jumping on some kind of new diet or detox bandwagon today.

Part of it is that I am still dealing with a borrowed kitchen, and considering the house situation, will probably be doing that for at least another month. And part of it is, unfortunately, that my parents have a huge New Year's party every year, and as we are staying with them, there are a metric ton of party leftovers. Gluten is simply not happening, but there are a ton of chicken wings and meatballs, which I would typically be dubious of: and I just can't bring myself to know or care what's in them. Fruit. Sushi from a Costco Tray- and dolmas with actual rice inside.

I have to go shopping, but there is zero room in the fridge. I am trying to convince myself that it could be a million times worse: I am not shoveling down the pies and chocolates and banana bread. But oh man, I miss having my own space.

Tomorrow, SG applies for a job he's spent a long time waiting for. Fingers and toes crossed! I am hoping that karma kicks in.

In the meantime, we are putting our lives back together, starting with the house. Hopefully, once I start renovating that, maybe I can renovate my eating habits! We contacted our homeowner's insurance for an inspection, and were advised that what happened to us should be filed under "vandalism."

The opinion of the property manager and the cleaning team that did our estimate is that the renters were running a full-scale catering business out of our tiny residential kitchen. Which is, of course, against the terms of the lease: breakage of the appliances due to misuse should have been on them, but of course, how would we have known? So we paid for all those replacements and repairs, and are dealing with the aftermath as well. I am hoping we can get at least some of the money back, plus more to repair the additional damage. We are currently living on savings until SG gets a job, so this is basically the worst possible time to do an overhaul like this. We are both doing our best to stay positive. DON'T PANIC should be written in large, friendly letters on my forehead.

Today we went and started pricing appliances. Countertops. Cabinets. So we will be prepared. I have sticker shock. SG is a lot more lavish than I am, I know I can get by with a lot of sweat equity and minimal upgrades- and at least I will be busy! I have time to paint and clean and rip out carpet and scrape ceilings. At least I would feel like I am accomplishing something! SG keeps talking about contractors. (Note: SG is insane. Lovable, but completely unreasonable.)  ;)

We meet with the property manager tomorrow, to compare notes and lists of all the damage. The inspection is Friday. I am hoping most of this is covered, one way or another. I am also hoping to get out and move- get some real exercise. We have been doing lots of walking- the ambling kind, looking at slabs of stone and wandering through home improvement warehouses and lumberyards- but that's not doing it. Perhaps tomorrow I will take the new bike out for a spin. I got lovely new baskets- front and back!- as well as a helmet and lights for Christmas. All that awesomeness should definitely not stay cooped up in a garage for long!

So, guess what one of my resolutions was?

I seriously would like to kick 2012 in the nuts.  Man, do I love writing, and I missed it so, but for a long time there, there was just not ONE POSITIVE THING going on in my life. I mean: my marriage is good. Paleo eating could have been better- also a heck of a lot worse, but it's always a positive. But man oh man, that feeling: it was kind of like starring in my own personal Hunger Games/Truman show. "How much can one woman take? Tune in next week for the plague of locusts!

And I am glad I am through it. My husband got out of a horrible business situation, we moved, a lot of loose ends got tied up, a lot of decisions got made. The end result is that things are better, and we are moving forward.

The bad news is that there was an extended period of time where both SG and I were in what we call "survival mode". It took everything we had just to get up and face our hellish, every day reality. Time spend with each other was on auto pilot- there was a lot of mindless time on the TV. If we were computers, as soon as we got done with whatever tasks we had, we would have basically been on screensaver mode.  

I decided that 2013 would be my "lucky 13"- a year of change and the fruition of goals we have been working on for years now. A lot of pain and sacrifice has gone into getting here. Considering that the last day of 2012 involved two big poop sandwiches: one was a health scare with someone dear to me (everyone is OK, it was just terrifying at the time!) and then the news that the renters had moved out of our house early.

Initially, we were thrilled, and then we saw it. I wasn't really a fan of the place, but we put a lot of TLC and love into it- landscaping, stripping wallpaper, painting.  We knew we would need to replace the cheap carpets and paint before we moved back into it. The property management company had given us some forewarning, but still: it was FILTHY. It smells like mildew and grease in there, and there's splatters all over the kitchen, and kid scribblings on every flat surface everywhere else. Our feet stuck to the kitchen floor, and tiles are missing in spots. The cabinets are warped, drawers are broken. Water damage in both bathrooms. I tried to open the fireplace surround, it was filled with cobwebs, and the door came off in my hand. The stove and range we paid top dollar to replace a year ago has all the enamel scraped off the top of it, around the burners. The dishwasher has a vertical crack in the door.  It is, to put it bluntly, a mess.

So we are making lemons out of lemonade: fixing what can be fixed, replacing what can't be, and moving forward. 

Birthday Musings and Fruit Pizza!

My birthday is coming up, and EVERY YEAR, it is a battle. My family associates my birthday with Thanksgiving, and as such, my birthday cake was always a much-beloved part of the festivities.

Traditionally, the birthday cake was always the same. "Champagne Dream Cake", from Eddie's Bakery. It totally looks like something a six-year-old stripper would want to jump out of (and then face-plant into).  But it was cloaked in whipped cream, with light frothy cake and a dense custard filling. And then crowned with white chocolate curls (dyed pink) and icing birthday decor on top of that. It was delicious. There are pictures of me smashing a tiny version, the year I turned one. As I got a little older, it became more and more inappropriate, but the dream cake tradition soldiered on. The year I turned 21, there were blobby buttercream pink elephants celebrating on top with plastic champagne bottles, amid the curls of chocolate.

Three years ago, I asked that they please respect my wishes, and not get dream cake, and it was like someone had died. We got a dense, gluten-free chocolate torte from Whole Foods. We all ate one obligatory slice apiece, and then it sat there, unloved, the rest of the holiday weekend.

This year, the big day is actually ON Thanksgiving. Mom called, and started asking about gluten-free cakes. I asked her to please not worry about it, I would make my own, and she started talking about all the wonderful gluten-free flours on the market, and bakeries that are out there. I stubbornly insisted that I would prefer to make my own cake. Like last year.

Yeah. Last year, I used a coconut flour recipe. It was beautifully decorated, and it was good, but eating it was like eating a log. Heavy doesn't even begin to describe it.

So I heard the worry in my mother's voice when I said I was going to do this again.

I decided to go in another direction. Another of my favorite desserts was always fruit pizza, and it seemed like a great compromise, if not exactly cake. So I have been looking around for organic, seasonal fruit, and scouring blogs for recipes that looked good.

The result?

I used a sweetened coconut flour base, cream cheese frosting, and a lightly sweetened glaze on top. I am really excited, and proud of the way it came out. It's a fairly complicated, multi-step recipe, but all the actual techniques are really simple. If you want to use a small round pizza pan, you can cut these recipes all in half. (Or make two!)

Here's the scoop:

Crust: (Adapted from The Coconut Mama's Coconut Flour Pie Crust Recipe)

Ingredients-
1 c. salted butter, melted (preferably Kerrygold or similar)
2 Eggs
1/4 Tsp. Sea Salt
1.5 Cup Coconut Flour
2 TB Maple syrup

Instructions-
1)Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium bowl beat everything EXCEPT coconut flour together with a fork. Gradually incorporate coconut flour.

2)Gather the dough into a ball, then pat evenly onto a standard cookie sheet. Use a fork to make a fluted pattern around the edges of the pan. While you have your fork, prick 6-8 holes in the flattened dough, just for kicks.

3) Bake 9 minutes. Remove, allow to cool.

While crust is baking, make the Cream Cheese Frosting (Adapted from Elana's Pantry.)

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients-
¾ c. heavy cream
1 package cream cheese (it helps to have this in a warm spot for an hour beforehand, it makes mixing much easier)
¼ c. Maple syrup
1 Tb.vanilla extract

  
Instructions-
1) Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. I used a hand blender.

2) Throw it in the fridge to cool.

If you really want to get fancy, you can use a glaze. This is helpful if you aren't going to eat your creation right away, and it gives everything a beautiful, finished "sheen". The one I used is simple: just three ingredients.

Fruit Pizza Glaze

Ingredients-
1/2 c. water.
2 tsp. arrowroot powder
1 Tb maple syrup

Instructions-
1) Pour water into your teeniest saucepan, and bring to a boil.

2)Mix arrowroot and maple syrup together in a smallish bowl until arrowroot is completely incorporated.

3)Pour boiling water into arrowroot mixture. Stir until all combined. Allow to cool.

While everything is cooling, you have time to prep your fruit. I used raspberries, satsumas (seedless) strawberries, kiwi fruit, and pomegranate seeds. I wanted blueberries, but couldn't find organic. If you want to use fruits that brown (like apples, pears, bananas) you will probably want to use lemon juice on them first. I avoided that, because this is already a little complicated!

Wash, stem and peel anything that needs it. Slice your fruit- a mandoline helps, but I did it all by hand. This will probably take awhile.

OK! Last part! This is where it all comes together.

1) Apply Cream Cheese Frosting to cooled crust layer. The best technique seems to be to put a glop in the middle, then push it outwards, being careful not to cover the pretty fluting at the edges.

2) Arrange fruit slices on top of cream cheese frosting. You can use as much or as little as you want: I just tried not to put similar colors next to each other, overlapped a little,and did concentric squares-starting at the outside and moving in, to keep things fairly even.

3)Apply your glaze, using a brush- I used a silicone basting brush, it went well. Then I sprinkled some pomegranate seeds on top to make it look a little more carefree.

Into the fridge with that beast! And may the Force be with you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,

Lady Grok 

Operation Move It- Week 2

I took "before" pictures last night. I am still traumatized. I think I may have looked better before my "before"- if that makes sense. Deflating quickly isn't the most flattering thing when you're going to show some skin.

I already said this on Facebook, but hey, I am gonna say it again. Measurements are the way to go. The scale- particularly when you bump up exercise- can pretty much be a lying ho. 

I weigh myself daily, but only count the result I get on Monday AM. So for the week, results are as follows:

Down 1 lb.  Lost an inch in my hips, ribcage, and bust, and 1.5 inches in my waist. Woohoo! Also down 1/2 inch each on upper arms, biceps, and thighs. That's...well, pretty phenomenal.

I told my acupuncturist, and he said it was probably just water loss, and then I punched him in the face stuck my tongue out at him. And he said my tongue looks better, which in acupuncture speak, is good, but coming from him, means I am practically one step away from immortality, because the most I have ever been able to get out of him is a grudging, "not bad".

Anyway. I am trying to follow the exercise schedule detailed by Mark. I am dialed in with sprints, I am dialed in with "fun" (Zumba! Walking! Bike rides! etc.) But weight training is, and I suspect will always be, my Achilles heel. It does not help that I belong to Gold's Gym, and there are always huge sweaty guys on the weight machines.  And I am not so secretly afraid of looking stupid. Our home is tiny, with zero backyard. So that nullifies a lot of options.

I looked up Mark's list of W.O.W.'s. There are a couple that are in my realm of possibility. Most of them are pretty "manly" though. For example, one involves pushing a car around- I think I would rupture something if I tried to push anything other than a SmartCar! I also threw some stuff onto Pinterest to look at later- convict conditioning (ie, body weight exercises) and Shovelglove stuff. I actually have my own sledge (named Towanda) around here somewhere. And I downloaded a book,  You Are Your Own Gym, which is highly recommended on Amazon- more body weight exercises, AND apps for both Android and iPhone if you choose to do that.

According to my schedule, tomorrow is a "Lift Heavy Things" day. So I had better figure things out fast! Today was already not "perfect". I was supposed to go to the gym and get back on the elliptical, but I ran out of time (since I am now trying to religiously eat breakfast) and realized I wouldn't be able to get a good session in between finishing my meal and the acupuncture appointment. And I am not supposed to exercise for 6-8 hours after the appointment. So I ended up with 40 minutes before I had to leave- I was already in my gym clothes, so I set out to run/walk intervals through the marsh behind our house. While it wasn't what I wanted to do, it was still hard work!

The whole "No 'Poo" experiment is still going strong. I am really happy with it, and am getting into a routine. I also decided to try cassia, which is like clear henna: it's a natural, monthly hair treatment. I smooshed it into my hair tonight and let it sit for an hour, and I am really pleased with the results! Lots of body and shine. It also seems to have defined the waves in my hair quite a bit.