Six out of seven.

Quote

We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same.
- Carlos Castenada, mystic and author (1925-1998)

Note to self:

Next time I want to start eating raw again (and cooked food sounds way more delicious than fruit)

Half-raw soup:

2 Tomato

1/2 jalapeno (incl seeds)

1 clove garlic

2T cilantro

1/2 sweet pepper

2c Veggie juice

in blender. Then stir in 1 ear raw corn. Nom.

Christmas

On Thursday morning we left for Eugene and met up with my sister at her place. She and I drug our feet to complete the task at hand. Out mother's Christmas present would be one of horrible pain to us and (hopefully) great joy to her. We had decided to wait in line with the little kiddies at the mall . . . to sit on Santa's lap. It is something that our mom had us do year after year, until I was old enough to leave. We both hated every moment, but we also know that every moment hated by us was also cherished by our mother. So, the Christmas present evolved and we took our positions cautiously perched on each of Santa's knees. Next up was an infant held in his arms while a mommy (likely younger than us) was desperate to get a smile from her child to no avail. Luckily, the "elf" handed an envelope to us and we were on our way.

The only glitch in my brilliant plan is that we parked on the wrong side of the mall. By the time we exited the wing of the mall devoted to Santa's festivities, I was ready to remove my beloved shimmery grey wedges adorned with large gems on the toes. On second though . . . safer to risk a raw blister than walk barefoot through the mall (no need for diseases and such on Christmas).

Returning to the car, the three of us were ready for some coffee. Luckily, Oregon is littered with drive-thru coffee stands and we were quickly on our way to Keizer with caffeine in our veins.

Because of the unpredicted traffic delay on Thanksgiving, we were prepared to allow for extra travel time on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. No traffic. No rain. We arrived almost an hour early. Our hosts were so gracious to offer snacks and a movie to pass the time while they got ready and finished the last of the dinner preparations.

Christmas Eve dinner has been hosted in the same room for generations. My grandparents had a home on a farm boasting orchards full of filberts and onions. They raised my father and his siblings, Denise and Terry, in that house. Since then, it has been transformed into a modern delicacy if a home. But honestly, I would prefer the wavy glass in its windows, the orange curtains, rough decorations and truly raw sense of how it was when I was younger.

I hadn't been to the place in over a decade. The best guess we all had was my age was 12 when I last visited. It is almost surreal that now, twelve years later, I now live on the same side of the country as my family and have the privilege to partake in their traditions . . . it's as if I never left.

Another Christmas Eve tradition is the White Elephant gift exchange, though not the usually dorky and undesirable gifts most think of. It was truly a fun half-hour of unwrapping and stealing of actually decent items. When my turn came around, I stole a fifth of Vodka and four mixers (highly uncharacteristic of my family) and was quite content . . . until my sister's turn. She had the nerve to steal it from ME!! She should have known that she would be sharing :)

After the evening came to a conclusion, we headed back to my Grandparents' house to stay in the guest bedroom. Dima was reading my new book (yeah yeah, I bought Twilight on eBay out of curiousity) and I was restless, so I hunted the closets and drawers for alternate material to occupy my time until drifting off to sleep.

Much to my surprise, the first album I extracted from the nightstand was my parents' wedding album. It almost gave me chills. But it was so beautiful to see what my mother and what my father looked like when they were my age. And they really did look like they were in love, as far as the photos would tell me. More albums followed. My great-grandparents' album was extremely fascinating, and not in an amusing way . . . it was addicting. I wanted to stare at each old photo like it would be erased forever if I didn't memorize every detail. The third album offered photos of my dad when he was a youngster. He and his siblings were like little cherubs. Fluffy faced and perfect. A moment in time, probably when he was 8 years old, but still beautiful.

Dima was still reading my copy of Twilight and I was still restless, so I turned out the lights and forced myself to sleep. Before I realized my eyes had opened, I was reading page after page. I am not a reader. Never even considered picking up a book for any reason other than to throw it at someone in the past several years. But I decided to read this one. I had seen the movie, as well as the second film, but only because my friend from high school played a role in the series that I took notice. The movies were entertaining and I wanted to know the real story, by reading the books.

I spent most of the morning curled up on my grandparents' couch rudely dedicated to the characters in the book. Lunch was scheduled for noon or shortly thereafter, so we headed over to Denise's house.

The rest will be finished later. I'm tired and it's late.

Monday

Nothing interesting to say . . . just happy and in a good mood. That's all :)

Naivity is a fault?

That's all.

Poop Box

My garden is going to kick tushy.
At the moment the outdoor raised bed resembles a sandbox full of composted horse shit.

I have some uber cheap "greenhouses" from Wal-Mart: each tray holds 72 pods and there is a cover to keep it warm inside and then take it off to give it sunlight during the day. $6 each. Dude! I have the following sprouts: Kale, Broccoli, Tomatoes, Squash, Lettuce, and Onion growing in 12 pods each. So cool I went and bought another one and planted: Romaine, Cilantro, Spinach, Cherry Tomatoes, and two others I forgot.
Got 20 bare-root Strawberry plants to start tomorrow, that's exciting.
A couple potted plants that I'm introducing to the outside and hopefully planting in the next few days. They are Big Boy tomatoes, Cauliflower, Banana Peppers, Hot Peppers, and something else I think.

Once it warms up better, I am doing rows of corn. Just gotta figure out how to deer proof that, cause they're all over the place.

Hello Friday

Wouldn't it be nice to have a real weekend? That would make today a God-send. But alas, my vocabulary does not include words such as weekend, lounge around, TGIF, etc.

Yours truly,
Groucho the Weekendless Grump.

Bum (and not the good kind)

I suck at keeping up with this stuff. Lazy bum.

We went to a horse show recently and it went well - no wins but the horses were good and it made for a nice start to the show year. Next one is in our backyard at the Raleigh fairgrounds, probably only taking one horse. That will be fun I hope!

Still not sleeping well. Argh. One day, I will not have a drink and I will drift peacefully off to sleep. One day. For now I will continue to wrestle with my inner demons that insist I have that first glass of wine (fast forward three hours) pass out on the couch (fast forward again) not get taken to bed by *ahem* someone (fast forward to 3am) wake up at an unholy hour and dick around until it's time to work. All the coffee in the world doesn't make the day any more pleasant. And then it's 5pm again and time for another go at it.

Goodness gracious. I'm too young to be such a bum.

Good morning

I haven't blogged in forever. Lazy bones I guess.

Breakfast:

4 kiwis, peeled
2 ripe bananas
4 medjool dates, pitted

Blend and yummm!!

No mas Zebulon in 12 hours!!

It's going to be tricky. I am going to pick up horses, move all my shit out of the house, give my 30 days notice to both the landlord and my tenant . . . all at once. Hopefully nobody goes apeshit.
Our pasture is ready for horses, but not permanently. I still have to fix some posts, chop up brush, seed and secure the shelter. BUT it will contain my girls for now and I'm grateful for that.

I LOVE romaine. I chopped up some roma tomatoes, some onion and jalapeno, a sprinkle of flax seeds (for fat) and put in a leaf for a DIVINE burrito. Several more to follow!

Oopsies ratio

Nutritiondata.com is so cool. My ratio today was 67/3/3 and the other 27 % of calories came from alcohol. I had no idea!! Good to know. That is hugely significant and really not bueno!

Breakfast and lunch = total 15 bananas (1348 calories, 346g carbs, 5g fat, 17g protein)
Dinner = 2 ears raw corn (126 calories, 28g carbs, 2g fat, 5g protein)

With only my food intake, my ratio was 91/4/5.
Total 1474 calories.

The bottle of wine gave me 623 calories, 15 carbs, 0g fat, and 1g protein)
That threw my ratio to 94/3/3 (counting "alcohol" as carbs) or 27/67/3/3 (alcohol/carbs/fat/protein)
Total 2096 calories.

What is a good source of fat and protein that doesn't go off the deep end?
Maybe I'll just call it quits for tonight. Too many numbers! Let's pretend this ratio makes up for all the avocados (4!!) I have had since Monday. Oi.

Ps- I LOVE avocados. Set a pint of ice cream next to an avocado and I say fuck the luscious milkiness and let me indulge in the raw beauty of that gorgeous green thing. And those who know me understand my absurd devotion to my ice cream obsession. Alas, no more.

Banamanammanas

No more! Ahhhhhh!!!!!! I eated too many. Total today was 15.
Going to WalMart in a moment to stock up again and then painfully wait until they are ripe.
Very productive day and so beautiful outside! Absolutely gorgeous weather, taught some good lessons, did yardwork, cleaned up a bit, now if only I could become motivated enough to put away laundry . . . .
Nah.
Can't wait for tomorrow!!!!

Whoa!!!

My ratio so far today is 91/4/5 !! 920 calories - I gotta figure out how to eat more calories. Maybe need to up the quantities, but I get full :( Tomorrow morning I'm having 6 bananas for breakfast. That's all that I have ripe :(

I want to figure out how to incorporate some avocado with my dinner without throwing the fat ratio off the deep end. Just a little - but it's my favorite taste in the world so I want it and I have it so I'll eat it !!!

Nada mas amigos

My CSers are gone and the house is empty again. Guinness couldn't handle it much longer, but I like company.

The one in the army left this morning after staying only one night. We went to eat at the Tap Room (I had a big beautiful spinach salad with onions, tomato, and mushrooms and then grabbed some beer and watched TV on the computer. I thoroughly enjoyed free dinner and drinks.

The German one just had be drop him off on the side of the highway so he could hitchhike to Greensboro. It felt weird leaving him there! But he has my number if anything happens. Sounds like fun - I would love to do that if I wasn't a girl.

80/10/10

I decided to use the handy dandy calculator on nutritiondata.com to see what exactly I had eaten so far today.

3 small peaches
2 apples
huge kale salad with onions - dressing made of 1/2 jalapeno and a tomato in the blender
raw peanuts on top - small handful
pomegranate

It has been 819 calories - ratio 71/20/9 - I had no idea I was consuming so few calories. I need to step it up!
Now if I had omitted the peanuts - ratio would have been 85/8/7
That would have been uber easy to do, but I just felt like having some peanuts on my salad. Oops.

I wonder what I would have to eat to make the ratio look a little closer to how it should.
Unfortunately, I probably won't get to try since I have another CSer coming in for the night and more likely than not will want to go out to eat. I could do what I did last time and have a GIANT spinach salad (which I love) but I don't know - it depends where we go. Crossing my fingers.


..... edited to add:
I just ate four bananas and my calories went to 1239 and ratio to 79/14/7
Cool!! What should I eat with a tad more protein and no fat?

Snow Mist

Light snow mist. So not what I wanted to greet me this morning. For me, Tuesdays are like most people's Mondays. Today shall be no exception. Gotta decide what's for breakfast, cause I don't think we're going to Denny's. Maybe for lunch, it goes until 2pm. Sigh.

Oh, and Kitty Kat shit in the bedroom again last night. WTF? This is becoming a serious problem - even when Guinness is locked up she's too afraid to use the litter box? At least she pees down the drain in the sink. That is rather convenient as far as non-litterbox locations go.

Evening

Farmer's Market was awesome.
Sweet potatoes
Pink lady apples
Bananas for 59c a lb!
Cabbage
Onions
Kale & other greens
Beautiful tomatoes!
Peaches
Pomegranate
And my guilty pleasure - mixed nuts

I love supporting local farmers. Yum.
Can't wait for spring!!

And I was naughty - stopped by Wally World for a bottle of Sherry. Thought I would try something new and I have never had to drink so slowly, it's strong and yummy, but only 20% so I won't get drunk :) Perfect.

Tomorrow, apparently Dennys is giving away free breakfast from 6am - 2pm . . . so that's where I'll be tomorrow morning. I know, it's only a few dollars saved, but why the hell not. I can handle another dead (non-raw / cooked) meal, especially since I'll be working all day.

The thing I have the hardest time believing is no coffee in over a month! What?? I'm usually a coffee addict! And I don't even crave it - miss it a little - but not bad.

Just had some kickass sweet potato "fries" - just tossed the raw sliced SPs with some sea salt and cayenne pepper for an awesome snack. I know it isn't great to use seasonings and stuff, but I couldn't resist the extra kick.

Leftover Facepaint

I wanted more than anything in the whole world to sleep in today. Why oh why can't I ever sleep? Last night was fun, I splurged and ate everything at the Superbowl party. Now I feel like hell - and not from the beer - it's from all the horribly unhealthy food. I thought one night won't kill me, but it may as well have. Back to fruit for me. Won't do that again!

I have such a long list of things to do and no motivation to do them. Zebulon is a bust, the lady isn't going to pay me AGAIN this month, so I'm more than screwed. The horses have to come here asap. Come home Dima!!! I don't know how to work the chain saw :(

Hosting a CSer from Germany for a couple days. We went out to the Leesville Taproom and I had a GIANT bowl of spinach with tomatoes, dressed with lemon juice. Then we went to the Carolina Alehouse and I had the most amazing raw tuna steak (I know, not vegan, but it was so delicious) with a load of raw veggies. Today we're going to the farmers' market downtown and maybe hitting some museums. I don't know if any of them are interesting enough, but maybe we'll find a free one. Anything free is interesting.

Maybe I'll write more later. It seems like I've slacked down to once a week posts. For now, I'm going to watch episode 3 of the final season of L Word. So addicted!!!!

Fasting Day

Watching the L Word. My favoritest show ever, I'm so terribly sad it's the last season. Hope the spin off is good too!!

The past few days have been a little rough. I think a combination of things I let slide caused a bit of an avalanche. To start, I've been alone for a little while. The un-grounded half of my brain gets going faster than the logical half, which makes me teeter totter. Then a friend came for a few days who tends to be a less than stellar influence. I love her to death, but I feel like being around her gives me a right to be self-abusive. That is a long explanation, and really has nothing to do with her. Maybe more on that another time. The third thing is somehow forgetting to take my meds a couple days in a row. Not sure how that happened. Oh, an the absurd amount of alcohol every night didn't help either.
Normally, after a stint like that, I feel incredibly guilty and even more self-loathing. When I woke up this morning, I made the decision to make today (my day off from work) a cleansing day. I don't need to feel guilty, I had a lapse and it's okay, and now I'm going to have a better day. If I make it through the day, I might decide to have a better week.

I took a bunch of pictures recently, they're on my facebook. I'm done with MySpace, it's too much work to keep up with both.