delalana

It seems like this big, lots of people, indoor event in the same place where I swim is going to be a regular thing. There’s a craft show this Saturday. I’m thinking that if I want to keep swimming three times a week I’ll have to start going Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Partially thanks to meds, portion control continues to go well. It’s still weird being full to the point of really not wanting to eat after eating only a fraction of what I normally would, but it’s starting to get a little less weird. So I’m happy with that.

Thanks! Once I made a second sandwich (and didn’t burn it), I actually like it better than the carry out version. I’m going to call three wins for today: 1. My entire swim session except the warmup was paced. This is so much harder than just swimming at whatever speed I feel like. 2. When I wanted to emotionally eat and it was past dinner time, I at least thought about eating at home and looked through the fridge before picking something up. 3. My brain is having to put in some effort these days to come up with carry out that I can’t make at home or I haven’t already had recently. Today’s option should be pretty easy to source from a grocery store in the future.

I got all the cooking done today. For lunch, a chicken tenders melt with waffle fries: This is one of my frequent orders at Perkins and I don’t have an explicit recipe for it; just make a grilled cheese with chicken tenders, bacon, and pepper jack cheese. I have a tendency to overestimate the amount of ingredients I’ll need, which showed up here. One large chicken tender and one strip of bacon is plenty. For dinner, creamy spinach pasta: This is a recipe I’m particularly happy to have found as the local restaurant that I got this from took it off the menu a few months ago. Also, proof that I do occasionally eat things that aren’t deep fried chicken. And for dessert, a second shot at a cookie dough and Oreo concrete mixer: The secret to crunchy Oreos is to add them at the very end by hand so they don’t get pulverized by the mixer. The secret to avoiding the soupy consistency you can see in my picture is to freeze the mixing bowl and paddle for 15 or so minutes before whipping the ice cream. My freezer’s just a tad too full for that right now. Overall, the food was delicious and today’s productivity level was at a place I was happy with. The only takeout that’s on my frequent cravings list that I haven’t yet managed to replicate is buffalo chicken tenders from Culver’s. This one will be tricky because I don’t generally like buffalo, so I don’t really understand why I even like these chicken tenders. I gave it a shot with some freezer buffalo chicken tenders, but those were terrible. I don’t seem to like buffalo sauces (and the Culver’s version doesn’t have any), so whenever I get around to cooking again I’m going to try a spice rub and see if that turns out any better.

This week has been quiet. After everything last week, I’m not unhappy with that. I’ve gotten back to swimming and - I think - been eating out less. I haven’t lately had cravings for the things I’ve learned how to make at home, just the ones I haven’t found acceptable substitutes for, so I think that’s a sign I’m headed in the right direction on learning to make carry out at home. That said, aside from another pizza and some fajitas, I haven’t done much cooking this week. I’ve got plans for a couple more things that count as restaurant food replacements coming up, though. At least one of those should definitely happen this weekend. I continue to feel better in general than I did for the early part of summer. While I’m still tired pretty frequently, it’s no longer my main emotion and it’s a lot easier to focus on work these days. My meds got adjusted this week, which should also help. And my prescriber thinks that the one particularly worrying side effect was more due to the emotional shit show that has been the past few weeks than the meds, so hopefully that continues to decrease as well. My main goal over the next week will be to get my house in semi-decent shape before my parents show up. This should be doable if I space things out and don’t let myself procrastinate past 8pm. No matter how many times I swear I’ll do it, the thing (whatever it happens to be) never actually happens at 9:30.

It’s been a week. I babysat a kiddo for the first and second time in my life. It went well. My belly dancing class is returning to in person at the end of September. Normally, I’d be really excited about this, but I won’t be able to go. I’ve promised to be available as emergency child care for a few weeks in November for the kiddo I watched earlier this week. For very understandable health reasons, the kiddo’s parents would not be ok with me potentially coming into their house after spending time exercising and breathing heavily with a bunch of other people. And this fall would be a terrible time for me to catch covid for the same reason. So I’m sad that I’ll miss seeing everyone. But it’s worth it to be able to support that family when they need it. My cousin and I will both likely get to see our respective parents later this month. I think the last time that happened for either of us was Christmas and the coming winter means the opportunities for this will soon be limited. I miss my parents and my cousin has had so much going on this year that I know it’s been really hard not to be able to have her parents close by. I’m still liking my new therapist. For a purely objective data point, I’ve had two appointments in a row, which was never a point I managed to get to with the last therapist. With the busy and emotional week both food and exercise went off track, but I’m not particularly bothered by that. I did make pizza (and cheese bread) for dinner tonight instead of buying it, though. And to leave you with one last bit of irony, with everything that has been canceled for covid 19 safety reasons, apparently the one thing that must go on is the (indoors) longevity expo at the community center. I do not understand.

Thanks. I have 62 oz off pineapple juice leftover from making the Mac & cheese, so this is perfect

The first couple of months were great. I never went out, so I was never tempted by any restaurants. Then stress happened and I dealt with it with comfort food. Oh, well, I’m building back up now. Over the weekend I had an opportunity to try replicating a few of the things I tend to order over and over. The ones that were really simple (e.g. freezer to oven and done) were a bust. There was one recipe, though, that took a lot more prep, but turned out amazing. And it’s one of the most expensive things I order so yay to a 75% cost reduction! Also, restaurant serving sizes are gigantic. The pic above is about 2/3 of the recipe’s serving size. And two scoops of whipped ice cream is tiny next to a short concrete mixer (I think that’s the equivalent of a small blizzard at Dairy Queen). While I will eat the amount of food they put in front of me, I apparently do not need anywhere near that much to feel satisfied.

Another swimmer! Awesome (and welcome)! I’m right there with you on the mermaid reduction program. Goal #1 is swim and goal #2 is cut way down on the carry out. I’m glad to hear things are starting out well for you. How do you like the myswimpro app? I used to have hour long workouts I got off an organization’s website, but since covid cut my workouts down to 45 minutes I’ve gotten kind of lazy about actually keeping a decent pace when I swim.

Overall things feel a lot better than they did six weeks ago. I wouldn’t yet say that I’m in a place that’s entirely healthy either physically or mentally, but I’m a lot closer than I was and working on continuing in that direction. At this point, goals feel like a distinct possibility. 1. Cut way down on carry out. Preferably twice a week or less. This has become a big problem over the past couple months and I’m also getting annoyed at paying $20/meal. 2. Exercise at least 3x per week. This is pretty much holding steady with where I’ve been with swimming since the pool opened up. Bonus points if I can get a yoga habit going again. Thanks to the internet, I’ve found out how to make copies of most of the dishes I’ve been ordering over and over again. I’ll worry about the healthy part of things later. Lately the temptation for restaurant food has been really hard to resist, so I’m making this as easy as possible. And some other life updates. My new therapist already seems like a much better fit than the old one, so I’m very happy about that. The stressful thing that was coming up in my life in August isn’t actually happening until November. This isn’t technically a change, I just misunderstood the timeline. So no real emotional difference there.

Didn’t feel like swimming again today, so I took a break. Used the extra time to make chocolate chip cookies as my supply of chocolate baked goods was getting dangerously low.

Good progress was made today. I can handle anger productively (I took a walk) and I am getting a new therapist (who presumably won’t ask to reschedule every single appointment).

Today started off well, then broke down into anxiety about a few different things, some sensical, others less so. Now I’m just tired, which is better than where I was for a while. I made it to the pool, although I didn’t really feel like swimming by that point.I got in the pool anyways and I think it helped. Apparently the secret to getting myself to swim when I don’t feel like it is to just do long sets so I can say three of these and I’m done I got pizza for dinner, which was at least partially a stress response, but managed to put the decision off for an hour after I got home. Not perfect, but it seems like there’s at least some progress there. That wasn’t the cheeriest update, so here’s an amusing picture that perfectly summarizes the relationship between my two cats.

Thanks. We’ll see how things go... Today wasn’t bad, all things considered. I didn’t get much sleep last night, but was surprisingly awake (relatively speaking) nonetheless. I ate at home, even though I was in the vicinity of several restaurants right around dinner time and stayed under my calorie goal. It wasn’t even difficult. It was strange having one half of my brain saying “you are out, you are stressed, therefore you get Taco Bell”, but having whatever part controls my appetite being not even vaguely interested. But I’ll take it. I’m hoping and expecting that I’ll be able to get more sleep tonight (I’ve had 24 more hours to process the stressful thing). And I’ve got a timeslot booked at the pool tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to that.

That’s terrible. I hope your wife gets back to ok soon.

Thanks for saying that. I’m realizing that I was in a bit darker headspace yesterday than I was quite aware of at the time. I wish I could say I see things getting better but, given current family events, it looks like I’m headed into a stressful few weeks. It helps to be reminded that I don’t always need to shoot for wonderful. Right now baby steps - or no steps - are challenge enough.

Still here, time apparently just got away from me. Doing ok, I’ve been swimming regularly and I worked enough extra hours last week that I’ve got half a day off to take sometime next week. Mood has been largely stable and a good deal above where I was a few weeks ago. I’ll stay under a calorie goal today, provided I don’t mind going to bed a bit hungry (lunch was fairly highly caloric, but not the most filling and dinner and dessert were out of what was left for the day). To be honest, while I’m not eating out quite as much lately, I’m having trouble finding motivation to eat healthily in more than half day spurts. I know I need to if I want to be healthy, stave off diabetes and other related diseases in the future, ever do that triathlon I’ve had my eyes set on without feeling like running is going to murder my joints, swim faster than I can now. But I look at all this and my brain just says, “meh.” Sorry about the depressing turn there, I promise most of the day was better. Long distance sets on the pool are getting easier. Today it was just the last couple minutes of the second fifteen minute swim that I started feeling really tired. It’s nice to see some concrete, non-glacial progress there.

Things to think about... not quite sure what I want to do with them yet, but things to think about. I’ve decided - not for any particular reason - to work on building up continuous distance in the pool for the next little while. Not actually adding yardage to my workouts, just doing more long swims with no breaks. Today I got in two back to back sections of 15 minutes continuous swimming. It kind of got old around the 12 minute mark of the first one, but was able to push through the rest of it. I even got in a one minute sprint at the end of the second long swim (I do not expect this to continue. In general my sprints are not strong and I especially hate them at the end of a long swim. Or when the workout suddenly says sprint for five minutes.) Then I went home and crashed for a good hour and a half.

My gym released the live class schedule going forward (or at least for this week). The only really interesting one is a yoga class, but $5/class still isn't bad. I'm starting to get to the point where it feels like trying to deliberately eat healthier is doable with where my brain is at right now. But it also feels scary. I think that somewhat behind the scenes I'm jumping to an all or nothing conclusion where if things go off for a few days then it's terrible and I've irrevocably failed. And while I'm currently calmer in general than I have been for the past few weeks, I don't feel like I ever really got to the point of figuring out how to use something other than food to cope, particularly if the pool gets shut down again (case in point, the reason I had pizza for dinner tonight.) On the brighter side of things, I didn't have any issues focusing at work today. Last week especially there was a little too much staring off into space (or at my phone) for periods of time. And I made chili, so now I'm back to having a comfortable level of food in the fridge.

Thanks, it ended up coming out a little overdone on the edges, but not too bad and the filling was delicious. Shortly after I finished baking last night either the time or the Benadryl did its thing and I was able to get some sleep. As a rather inexplicable result, I was way more awake than usual today and had the most productive day I’ve had in a long time. I: - Caught up on dishes - Made pie - Made curry - Kayaked around the lake (and capsized the kayak where the water was one foot deep) - Spent some time with the cousins - Talked to my parents - Caught up on all the new dishes from making pie and curry And more good news is I’m getting tired again, so hopefully I can get to sleep at a more reasonable hour tonight.

I made curry! It came out pretty tasty, creamy and a little sweet. About medium-low level spicy* with about the middle range of spices the recipe suggests. * While my spice tolerance isn’t completely Minnesotan (i.e. very low), it has noticeably dropped since I moved here. I could easily see friends with a higher spice tolerance than mine doubling things and complaining that it’s still not spicy enough.

Insomnia hit hard (hi, 3:45am!), so I started on some of the cooking I had planned for yesterday, I made my first ever pie crust: (Many) mistakes were made, but I caught the only truly catastrophic one before it was too late (never bake anything without greasing the pan first.) I’m not usually this productive when I can’t sleep, but I’m also not usually still wide awake at hour 2. I’m still not feeling sleepy, unfortunately, so I think I’ll also add in some Benadryl and see if that can help things along. I’m noticing a pattern in that I have more trouble getting to sleep on the weekends, when I can sleep in. As much as I loathe the concept, I’m beginning to think I might have to start setting an alarm on the weekend... Tomorrow, at least, will be 10am, so I can at least (hopefully) get 6 hours of sleep.

My gym (not the same place I dance) is starting up live online classes next week on YouTube, so maybe I’ll like those better. (Gyms around here are allowed to open but, given that my gym’s main selling point is that it’s in the same building I work in, they’re most likely planning to stay virtual for a while yet.) Today seemed very short. By the time I got around to thinking about lunch it was already 4:30. So lunch was skipped, but I’m ok with that. Ideally, tomorrow I’ll kayak, swim, call my parents, cook once or twice, and visit my cousin. But that also sounds like a lot. So I’m at least going to try to go to bed early...ish (it’s already 11) so that a morning/pre late lunch kayak makes sense. I’ve already copped out of the last couple of times I said I was going to go, so I feel like I should actually do it for once.

Feeling better today. It took me an extra hour or so to fall asleep, but I slept in for half an hour, so now I’m... less tired than I was yesterday. I’ll take it. As of yesterday afternoon I’ve got too much work at my job for the next little bit, which is nice from a job security perspective (logically I probably really don’t need to be too worried in general, but having more concrete evidence of that fact is always reassuring.) As far as I know, there’s only one pending deadline, so I should be able to push things off as I need to without inconveniencing anyone. No particular plans for the weekend, but that’s hardly unusual these days. Might be a good opportunity to head out in the kayak now that our heat wave has broken.

Blegh. That’s more or less how I feel about today. Oh well, life moves on.

Today was alright. Now that I’ve been a few times, I’ve decided I don’t like the zoom belly dancing class. The whole social aspect is gone and doing drills all the time is not my favorite. So scratch that from the list of activities. I’ve got a trip to the pool coming up tomorrow, so looking forward to that. Food was pretty much on point today. Maybe a little more dessert than was necessarily warranted, but better - and easier - than it’s been lately.