First the boy was sick. Then DH and I caught whatever it was. Then we travelled to visit family for Thanksgiving. I’m still ill. Yuck. Crazy how even though I have very little appetite (and nearly no sense of taste), I still want to scarf down any number of things. In fact, I convince myself it’s OK to eat the high-calorie good-tasting stuff when I’m ill, because it’s the only thing I can motivate myself to eat — and I need some nourishment, right? I know it’s BS, but I still do it.

Well… week 3 at the same weight. That’s according to today’s weigh-in. I must say that interim weigh-ins this week seem to indicate that I’m actually coming closer to losing, so I’m trying to keep my chin up. More later this weekend…

A day in the life… I arrived yesterday morning at the day care, the boy in tow. He was pretty grumpy — not his usual smiling morning self. He’d had a pediatrician’s appointment the day before, where he got stuck with big needles (4 in number) for the usual immunization routine. That got him pretty cranky and teething woes also seem to be increasing in intensity lately. This means he pretty much wants to be held, and bounced, constantly, and even that doesn’t guarantee he’ll stop crying. (Pretty much the only guarantee is to nurse him, because he can’t cry when his mouth is full.)

So I was reluctant to hand him off, but included some Tylenol in the diaper bag, hopefully to be used only as a last resort. I had to fill out a form saying it was OK to dose him, much to the disapproval of the day care dad (DCD). (Thankfully, I agree we should avoid medication if at all possible so disapproval was actually great.)

As all this was going on, DCD was rummaging through the diaper bag to find the bottles we usually make up for the boy (filled with pumped milk). He came up empty. Aargh. We’d forgotten to pack the milk. Worse, we’d forgotten to pack bottles. We had formula at the day care as a back up, but now nothing to feed him with. We are terrible parents. (I should mention that this is DH’s job to pack the milk so there was a twinge of anger there, though we all make mistakes and it had been a hectic morning.) I was late to work.

Super mom springs into action. I realize our houseguest from the weekend is still at home, and planning to come into San Francisco later that morning. If she could bring the bottles (with milk), I could meet her — she was using public transportation — grab the precious cargo and drop it off at the day care. To make this happen, I have to call and call and call our home phone number, until she actually answers. (She has no cell phone and I can’t think of any other way to indicate to her that it’s me calling and that she should answer.) Thankfully, she does, after about five calls.

Then I have to map out a route that has her coming to a BART station near us. Of course, I have no clue what BART stations are nearby, or which have accessible parking. So I begin research. (Meanwhile, of course, I am supposed to be working, as well as pumping milk for the next day at day care.) A couple of hours later, I meet her at the BART station, she hands the bottles to me over the turnstiles, and I jet back to the day care. Mission accomplished. But my breasts are about to burst from lack of pumping and I have gotten very little work done. And all along the way there were obstacles — what if she didn’t answer the phone? what if I got lost going to the BART station? — that could have resulted in a much less pleasant outcome. Disaster averted. *Sigh*

——-
Stress like this isn’t great for my eating but I didn’t do too terribly bad — other than eating the leftover pizza we bought for the guest’s visit. Last night we hit the Berkeley Bowl (grocery store with tons of produce and healthy options) and I stocked up on whole grains. The boy seems in better spirits today. And all is right with the world…. until the next catastrophe.

I just spent a bunch of time writing a post and then it got lost due to the horrible spyware infecting DH’s computer (which I am using right now). What a disaster. Suffice it to say I am stressed, but this week’s weigh-in showed I haven’t gained (but haven’t lost either). So I’m working to get back on track.

Lots of child care issues are stressing me out, big-time, one of which being that DH is absolutely not pulling his weight when it comes to taking care of the boy. He had business-related reasons to be late home 3x this week, and now he’s off watching a sporting event. It’s not completely his fault, but it’s still really getting to me. The boy is a huge handful and, since he’s teething, he can be especially cranky at times. And of course I have work, too. Pretty stressful work, at times. I just need some ME time, some ALONE time, some OFF-DUTY time. And I don’t have any idea when I will be getting any. Deep breaths over here. Well, better go tend to the boy.

This cake may not look so tempting here, but it certainly was tempting during the little office birthday party… and now as it sits beckoning me from the kitchen. But I will resist. That’s more than I can say for my behavior over the last few days. We went out of town this past weekend, but were guests of one of my DH’s friends — a guy I’m not so sure how I feel about. This fellow is single, and his favorite subject is the girls he’s going out with. We get to hear about their ages (10 or more years younger than he is), their physical attributes (”nice titties” is a typical remark), and how far he gets with them, sexually. In other ways, he seems like a fairly nice guy, but I can’t help but feel alienated (on behalf of the boy, too) by constant talk like this. Not to mention that it exacerbates my own body insecurities. (It isn’t too supportive of my marriage, either.)

Anyway, in this sort of environment, I wasn’t feeling all that comfortable, and — as a guest — I didn’t have tons of control over what kind of food I was served. I could pass things up, but to do so meant I’d go hungry. So, I haven’t been doing great food-wise the last few days. Startlingly, it doesn’t seem to have caused me to gain weight (according to my personal scale) though it could be slowing losses. I did get a hike in, which was nice.

Now I’m back in my own kitchen — and some of last week’s stress is behind me — things are a bit better, mentally. I’m actually really looking forward to the WW meeting on Saturday. Not because I think I’m going to have a great weigh-in, but because I anticipate the motivation I’ll receive.

DietGirl posts today on what she calls a “minor identity crisis,” in which she begins to think that her whole life is about her flab. It can certainly seem that way, when one focuses so much time, energy and effort in that direction (in dispelling the flab, that is). But I’m happy to say that, as a frequent reader of DietGirl and DietGirl’s other blog, I know there’s much more to Shawna than fat (or the lack thereof). They say to writers to “write what you know,” and that’s what she’s been doing thus far. And she’ll be able to continue to do so as “lard busting” becomes a smaller part of her life in the future.

As for me, I’m also suffering from an identity crisis, but it’s a bit different. Over the past few years, things have changed for me… dramatically. I fell in love, I got married. I got pregnant. We lost the baby. I was very sad and depressed. I got pregnant again. We moved across the country. I had a baby. So in a fairly short period of time, I went from swinging single and living in Manhattan to being a married mom and living in a suburb (A very nice suburb that I love, but a suburb all the same) of San Francisco. Over that same period, I gained a lot of weight. Stress and depression contributed to it. I was also able to gain so much because I started at a low weight, after having lost a decent amount over a 6 month period or so. So who am I after all this?

I wrestled with this a bit when I switched over to the new site design. I had the opportunity to create a new “about me.” My old one rambled a lot about my past and my weight gain and loss. The new “me” talks about how I like to do triathlons and run and cycle (even though I honestly haven’t done that stuff in a while, due to pregnancy and weight gain). I actually don’t have any hobbies at the moment — unless you consider blogging and cooking dinner every night as hobbies. My son is my hobby, I guess. There’s really not enough time for me to do much else at the moment, and I’m trying to be at peace with that — because the last thing I need is to add more stress to my life. But, as the “about me” says, I do enjoy doing those things, and I will do them again — or some variation of them — because that really IS who I am. I love being active. I love being outdoors. With the help of Core, and with time — as the boy becomes more able to, say, ride with me on the bike or in a jog stroller — things will fall back into place. Oh, and did I forget? It’ll also take hard work sticking to this eating plan.

I’m skipping weigh in this week, which is probably a good thing, because we will be out of town and I’ve been too busy to find another meeting. Look forward to hiking on Saturday and Sunday, and to feeling a bit more like myself.

Well, it had to happen. I’ve had the worst worst day. Work stress has caught up with me, and I chomped down 2 bagels, a 1/4 muffin and part of a danish. I *hate* bagel day here at work, where they bring in more pastries than office folks could possibly eat for breakfast. My complaints for the day (in hopes that venting will help me stop the stress-related eating):

1. My company totally dropped the ball on getting me paid for my maternity leave. Today I discovered it was my responsibility to call the State and try to get paid for disability time. That’s a lot of money we’ve been doing without for the past 4 months and now we basically start from scratch in trying to get it.

2. Our car insurance company is threatening to cancel our policy if I can’t find my driver’s license information from Texas, where I was last licensed in something like 1998. Can’t they just buy it from some online database somewhere? (When I call Austin, it’s busy every time! And they don’t answer e-mails.)

3. I have a big work deadline tomorrow.

4. We are going away this weekend so all the chores we’d normally do then must be done now. On the chore subject, we have to get together a mountain of paperwork related to our marriage, etc. because we are meeting with the immigration people regarding DH’s green card on Monday. It’s great news this is finally happening, but the paperwork is a nightmare. We’re talking tax returns for the past 3 years, mortgage paperwork, bank statements, and other proof we’re really married — like the kid’s birth certificate.

5. There’s the possiblity of my working from home in future rather than coming into the office. But that just opens up the can of worms of my having to find another day care for the boy. And on the day care subject, his day care is closed next Friday for veteran’s day — which means I have to pay a babysitter, though I’ve already paid the regular full amount for day care. Then the Monday after, the boy’s got a doctor’s appointment, so I will have to have a babysitter that day, as well. (Maybe I could change the doctor’s appointment to Friday??) This is all assuming I can find a babysitter for the day.

Ok, signing off now and resuming the screaming. No more eating, though. Thanks for “listening,” folks. I needed that.