How I triumphed over the universe

Friday....

I took it into my head to do some gardening today.  I know you're not technically supposed to plant most things outside until Mother's Day, but this is as long as I could hold off.  I had my breakfast,

English muffin with an egg, deli turkey, and tomatoes plus an orange

and once I had seen Emily and Will off I started to get working in the garden.  I had help, of course.  She actually did a great job for awhile,

then she got bored and pretended to wash my car with a rock. 

Now I have something to match the unicorn damage on the other side.  Oh who am I kidding, my car is covered with scratches.  Strangely enough though, I don't think I am to blame for any of them.

Anyway, the weed problem in my front gardens had gotten so dire I decided to try the newspaper trick.  I weeded out the tallest ones, then laid newspaper over everything except for what I want to poke through and wet it all down so it wouldn't blow away.

Garden full 'o trash

Mulch makes everything look better.

Hey look!  A real garden!

I'm really hoping this will help with the weeding because ugh.  No one likes to weed.

I felt like I had more gardening in me, so I headed down to Thanksgiving Farm (where we do our CSA in the summer) and got some petunias and other pretty things to put in containers.

One of the great things about this place (other than their massive selection) is that Charlotte spends so much time here that she can basically just run free and I know she will be able to find her way back.  She usually behaves herself very well, and I've only had to purchase one item due to her breaking it in the years we've been coming here (a pretty sweet ceramic alligator pond decoration).

After that, lunch was definitely required.

Tuna salad sandwich with tomatoes and greens

Then it was back out to the garden.  At one point I realized I needed more mulch and decided to go get more at Lowes so I could just get this whole project finished today.  That's when I realized Maxx was missing :-(  I called, clapped, whistled, clanked the treat container, all to no avail.  Charlotte heard me searching at some point and told me that she had seen Maxx run out the front door and down the street.  I didn't know how this could've happened since I was out front the whole time but I heaved a big sigh and hopped in the car to go look for the jerk.  

After we didn't find him anywhere in the neighborhood, I decided just to go to Lowes anyway.  I called Animal Control and left a message letting them know that he was lost but had a microchip and hoped someone would come across him.  I hoped he didn't get hit by a car, but the vindictive part of me kinda also hoped that he'd have to spend some time locked in a pen at Animal Control because it would serve the escaping sonofab!tch right.

While at Lowes, I got a call from my mom saying she was on the way to Emily's school to pick her up because she had been injured on the monkey bars and the school couldn't get in touch with Will or I.  Zuh?  For awhile I was upset because I thought I had missed the call while I was on the phone with Animal  Control trying to track down my idiot dog, but it turned out neither Will nor I even had a missed call in our call logs.  I'm going to go ahead and blame the cyber attacks my mom claims were happening today, because I heard about other instances of land lines not being able to reach cell phones today too.  I charged out of Lowes without my mulch to go meet my mom and my injured daughter.

Anyway, thanks to Gemmy our drama queen made it home...

she was fine and probably could've stayed at school but it's tough to judge in cases like this, plus there was only an hour or so left in the school day and it was a Friday.  But with her over-dramatized neck injury a few weeks ago and now this she certainly is setting me up for one of those "My daughter actually WAS injured but I ignored it because she's cried wolf so many times before" incidences.

Oh, and when I got home I found Maxx in the garage.  That dog NEVER stops barking if he's not around people, but chose to remain perfectly silent while I was calling him and clapping and whistling and jangling the treat jar.  I maintain that he is a jerk.  Also I should've checked in the garage earlier.  Also Charlotte is a little liar.

My snack called for a bunch of things I didn't have (grapes, walnuts) so I just had this bowl of berries instead.

I was desperate to show the universe who was boss and finish my freakin' gardening project today despite all the stuff that was happening, so I loaded the kids in the car and drove to Giant to buy their last 4 bags of mulch.  I could've used some more, but my back was about done right around when the mulch ran out so it's all good.  Now our gardens look nice again for the first time in years!

The whole front garden used to look like that overgrown bit by the paper bag that I haven't gotten to yet

It looks like respectable people live here!

Once I finished the gardens I staggered inside and started on my dinner.  It called for the rest of the noodle salad leftover from the other day, which was awful after sitting in the fridge for a couple days.

Eww

 I also had my nut snack :-)

Almonds and pecans

 When poor Will got home ready to eat dinner right away and then start mowing, I realized I probably should've been working on preparing something already (oops) so I peeled my stiff body out of my chair and started steaming some frozen shrimp.  They actually cooked up quickly and well even though I dumped them into the pot straight out of the freezer.

I also gestured weakly towards the leftover quinoa and veggies in the fridge so he could round out his dinner.  I am a great wife.  But even though I had neglected to pick up the dog poop from the backyard or do anything other than throw some frozen shrimp in the direction of the stove, he gallantly poured me a beer and went out to do my chore for me.  I love that man!

The beer he brought me was an interesting Allagash that I had picked up at Dawson's Market in Rockville the last time I was down there.  Wild yeast and ageing in wine barrels made it very fruity, I enjoyed it very much!

Charlotte trying to charm me into giving her some beer

I also decided that since I had finished 7 full days of this Clean Eating menu plan, I deserved a treat!  My favorite dessert.

Chocolate chips, peanuts, raisins

The problem was, I also ended up eating an extra PB&J when Charlotte asked for one and then wandered away for awhile :-/  I couldn't resist.  It was really tasty and satisfying though, so I'm trying to look at it as a treat and not a failure.  It didn't send me into an uncontrollable binge or anything like that.

A Flying Dog Hefeweizen rounded out my eats for the day. 

 I enjoyed it while watching a movie with Will after the girls were in bed.  We started watching Prometheus, which we had from Netflix, but after about 15 minute the disc jammed and we couldn't get it to work :-(  We also had the new Spiderman so we started that instead.  I never even saw Peter Parker put on his Spiderman costume because it was super-boring and I just zonked.  I need to take over the Netflix list for awhile.

Crazy day, beer me

Thursday eats...

Today started at about a million miles an hour.  We don't bother to set an alarm anymore because we are usually awakened by our dogs vigilantly protecting our house from evil morning walkers or bouncy talkative children by 7 at the latest.  But some days all of our various awaken-ers sleep in, as was the case this morning.  I got out of bed at 7:21 and my husband mumbled that he had been up late dealing with work stuff and wanted to sleep in so I had to get everyone ready and to school on my own while trying to keep them quiet enough that he could continue to slumber in peace.  To make things more interesting, the dogs escaped through the gate Charlotte had THOUGHT she closed but was not actually all the way closed and latched so I had to strike out looking for Maxx in the middle of it all.  I located him rather easily this time by first looking for open garages, then following the shouts of "Jesus Christ!  Get me a leash!" coming from a neighbor's.  Luckily she and I get along and she wasn't mad at all, having several children and dogs herself.

I also realized we are getting dangerously close to Emily's birthday party and I haven't given out many invitations yet, so I furiously scribbled out about half of them and sent her off to school with them.

When I got home I dealt with a couple things and then was finally able to make my breakfast at about 9:30.

French toast strips with cinnamon.

Phew!  I was supposed to have cottage cheese with strawberries as well, but I didn't have either of those things.

The rest of the morning was a whirlwind of Jamberry-related work.  It was awesome but it actually felt like I was officially working from home, and I got to see how hard it is to take a customer call while your daughter is trying to pry open the back porch door with a rake and screaming at you at the top of her lungs to let her out.

The next thing I knew it was noon, so I made myself a salad, even though I was missing the greek yogurt and was 1/2 oz of salmon short.

The salmon, celery and carrots are hiding out under there

I also made up my afternoon snack to take with me when I headed out but I ended up eating the whole thing right after lunch.  Delayed gratification is NOT my strong suit.

Bananas, almond butter and sprouted whole wheat pita

My mom and sister came over to have lunch with Charlotte and I, and then we headed to my old alma mater to buy some plants at the school's plant sale.  I picked up some hanging baskets, vincas for my window boxes, phlox for my front garden and a lavender that smells even yummier than most lavenders smell.

While driving my sister home, I made her wait in the car while I ran into My Organic Market and picked up Emily from school.  When I got to her house I was weak with hunger so I barged into her kitchen and put together a snack of items that were supposed to be breakfast while my little monsters tore around in their backyard and terrorized her cats.  My sister and her husband are good sports.

Cottage cheese and strawberries

Dinner was supposed to be a tofu-broccoli stir fry, but since I don't agree with tofu I turned a vegetarian dish into the extreme opposite of a vegetarian dish.  Behold!  3-meat stir-fry!

I had chicken, pork and flank steak leftover from this week, so to use it up and to increase the volume of dinner to feed 4 people I tossed it all in there and served it over brown rice.  Mmmmmm.  Meaty.

As large as that plate of food was, I was hungry within half an hour so I had my snack of greek yogurt with prunes and pecans.

Shortly after THAT my stomach was still complaining and I was feeling irritable, so I told Will I needed a beer.  He helpfully produced this 9% monster Scotch Ale for us to split that was DELICIOUS and silenced my hunger while soothing my irritability as well.  Just what the doctor ordered :-)

Almost through week 1, and Bodypump release 85

Charlotte's intestinal upset progressed to barfing this morning :-(

Poor little lady

As I've mentioned before though, Charlotte is a champion barfer (unlike her sister who beats her chest and rends her garments and screams "Why God?  WHYYYYYY?" whenever she barfs) so other than knocking over a lookie-loo Emily on the way to get a bucket under Charlotte this morning it all happened without  much fuss.  She did fall asleep on the couch right afterward which meant I had to wait quite a while to use the blender to make my breakfast smoothie, but I survived.

A peach, almond milk, ice, flax seeds and vanilla whey protein

Once again trapped at home by my daughter's unpredictable gastro-intestinal system, I putzed around the internet, did some cleaning (including mounds of laundry soaked in my childrens' bodily fluids) and changed my Jamberries.

Inspired by my shirt and the warmer weather

I also did a little research on some upcoming trips I'd like to take (Jamberry conference in June, anniversary trip in early November) and was super-excited to discover that we have enough points on our credit card to cover flights and a large portion of the hotel/rental car costs.  I've said it before and I'll say it again...I LOVE traveling but having someone else foot the bill makes it even better :-)  

Charlotte felt a little better towards the afternoon so we went outside and enjoyed the warmth for a bit, but not as much as this guy did.

 Remy, on the other hand, prefers to lurk in the shadows.

Derp

My lunch was another serving of the pasta salad from last night over arugula with 4oz canned salmon on top.  I meant to make this big bowl 'o food last for awhile, but it was all gone by 11:30.

Afternoon snack:

Apple and 1 Tbsp almonds

When Will got home I high-fived him and ran out the door to go to Bodypump.  When I got there, I was sad that my friend Lauren wasn't teaching as usual (and never will again!!!!) but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I was attending the launch of Bodypump 85 at our gym.  Here are my thoughts on the new choreography, which you should probably just skip over if you don't take Bodypump classes yourself because it's kinda boring.

Warm-up: The song reminded me a lot of the "Raining Diamonds" warm-up from a couple releases ago.

Squats: Not bad, except for the 2 sets of 8 bottom half pulses that make it totally bad.  I really liked the music.

Chest: I liked the negatives, and it was tough but very do-able.  I will probably go up in weight soon for this track.  I liked the Muse song.

Back: When they announced that we would be doing wide-grip deadlifts I got a bit unreasonably nervous since Will was messing with his grip on deadlifts (though he was doing narrow grip) when the epic back break/injury of 2011 happened.  But all went well.  There are LOTS of power cleans/clean and presses but since that means there are correspondingly less bent-over rows I was totally fine with it.

Triceps: Weird not to do any nose busters/skull crushers/whatever you want to call them.  Hopefully I won't be out of practice by the time the next release comes out!  Decent track.

Biceps: Meh.  Didn't make an impression.  The song was ok and the choreography was basically what we always do.

Lunges: Holy Hell, not one but TWO sets of jump squats on the bench plus ending each lunge portion with 16 singles.  Let us never speak of this track again.

Shoulders: Too many push-ups (more than 8-16 counts as too many).  The ending was the same as ever, and I didn't like doing the chicken wing move (forget what it's called) between each mac raise because it felt like way too many but it was ok overall.

Abs: I really liked this one!  I really felt it, and I like when we use a weight for abs, it makes me feel like I'm getting more for my money.

Cool-down: Didn't really like the song and didn't even really get a good idea of how it was supposed to go because we were late and the Zumba class that comes in after us was getting antsy.

And OH MY GOD, I can't believe this was release 85.  I remember taking Bodypump when we were on release 66!  Craziness.

As I walked out of the gym I texted Will telling him to fire up the Foreman because I was QUITE ready for dinner.  I ate my way through this...

Quinoa, kale with garlic and green pepper, grilled pork chop

...then this, even though I meant to leave it for a later evening snack.

Lundberg wild rice cakes with almond butter and raisins

I'm kind of over this week of doing the Clean Eating menu plan...I know I took 2 days off in the middle there but it seems to be dragging out forever.  I know it's a good way to eat, and I'll probably still do week 2, but I would just like to be finished with this week for some reason.  I guess because I just want to be able to say I got through it.  It hasn't been easy (thus all the complaining) and I just want to get a week or two under my belt so I can get to the point where the days just slip by and I'm not watching the clock until my next snack and obsessing over every bite.  I get there whenever I hang in there long enough, but ugh, it's not fun in the meantime.

Rabbit food

Tuesday

Ugh.  My breakfast this morning called for Bok Choy.  Ever since our CSA BURIED us in Bok Choy a couple years ago I haven't been able to stand the stuff.  But I bravely purchased it and cooked it up.  I had thought my breakfast would end up being a fritatta with rice, but it actually had a much higher rice:egg ratio than I had expected, so it turned out to be fried rice.  The soy sauce the recipe called for might've been a clue I guess.  Not enough soy sauce though, none of these recipes call for enough salt.  Hot sauce helped, but yeesh.  Who wants to eat fried rice for breakfast?

After morning school drop-off I headed to Target to get some things, including a diary for Emily since she decided yesterday that she HAD to have a diary.  She says I can help her write about the things that happened up until she turned 5, and then she will take over and keep her diary until she's an adult.  I think that sounds like a fantastic idea :-)  Hopefully she's better at keeping her diary than her Mommy is at keeping her blog.

Thanks to Charlotte's iPhone camera skills, our trip to Target was nicely documented.

Plus approximately 3,452 more pictures much like these.

Thankfully though, she did not document the very end of our trip in which it turned out her tummy ache this morning had further-reaching repercussions than either of us had anticipated.  When she looked up at me and said tearfully "I peed in my pants" but well, yeah, it wasn't pee :-(  Thank GOD I had an old leftover pullup and some wipes in the car.  I was so prepared! That doesn't happen very often, so I'm still patting myself on the back for handling the hell out of that situation!  I'm trying to focus more on things I do well, but I can't help but feel that congratulating myself will result in my child's head spinning around while vomiting pea soup at Common Market tomorrow or some other such emergency I won't be prepared for.

Anyway, after that I scrapped the rest of my errand plans and took my little sicko home to give her some rest and "happy tummy food" like toast and an almond milk/rice/banana/whey smoothie.  Since I had to make almond milk anyway for her smoothie I had some in my coffee because it is SO good right after you make it when it's all foamy and thick.  Yum!

Lunchtime came, and I made up my slaw though I was out of apples and only had a little turkey :-(

I was still pretty hungry after lunch, and feeling depressed that today included so many raw veggies and so much yogurt, two of the things I KNOW are good for me but that I don't generally enjoy eating.  And Bok Choy to boot.  Today was not a tasty food day for me.  I made up my mind to stick with it though and ignore my body's signals that I was starving to death.  

But then!  I got to have a delightfully filling and satisfying afternoon snack!

#WhatTheHellCleanEating #Where'sTheProtein #RabbitFood

Can you tell I was in kind of a snit today?

I tried to busy myself and eventually got through to pick-up time, after which I swung by the grocery store and picked up a couple things I had run out of.  When I got home, I was able to cobble together a pretty decent snack from things I hadn't had enough of to include in their rightful places earlier in the day.

I finished putting together the pasta salad for dinner, and my eyeballs bugged as I realized how large a serving size was!

Serving bowl, not a cereal bowl

 I inhaled my pasta and realized that THIS is why the calorie count for today was still high even though I had felt hungry all day.  Maybe not the best division of food, but I forgave Clean Eating because GIANT PLATE OF PASTA!

The rest of dinner was still tasty, but it wasn't a giant plate of pasta so I hardly noticed it.

I had trouble getting exactly 4oz chicken, and yes, it did designate that I should have exactly 6 spears of asparagus

One day, I hope to be able to trust myself enough to eat intuitively without counting asparagus spears and ounces of meat.  But it is not this day.

My morning snack which I had after dinner was another boring pile of yogurt and fruit with almonds and nutmeg.  

And that was it for the day.  I watched EVEN more Downton Abbey, and then my husband came home and all was well with the world again :-)

I figure as long as I'm posting everything I'm eating anyway, I might as well participate in What I ate Wednesday!  So if you want to know what lots more people out on the internet are eating, here ya go :-)