Shunshine on my shouldersh…..

Yes, I meant to write shunshine.

If you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time….you must know that I am always striving to find a balance between living a creative life, being responsible for my family, and trying to find the humor in things.

Shortly after my wonderful visit to San Diego, I admittedly fell into a loathsome darkness….where I felt like everything I was doing with my life was going in the wrong direction (which it wasn’t) and that I had to disappear to feel better (which I didn’t).  I was just going through the motions.  It was one of my worst winter seasons thus far…which leads me to:

Feeling Good!!!

Shortly after I started my tried and true vitamin and healthy eating routine, the darkness lifted (which I knew it would) and my thoughts became clearer and brighter and funnier and way more optimistic and creative!  For the curious ones out there, I take a B complex, Vitamin D, a Probiotic, and an Omega 3.  I would say within 2 days I felt better and within a week I felt like I was back to my old self.

Of course the light and sunshine and warmer weather help it all out.

I have found that some people chalk the sadness and guilt to being a creative person….that’s just they way of a creative mind…I’m not so sure.

My mind is more clear and fast when I’m not feeling blue….more like a light, sky blue and less like an angry, drab gray-blue.

Happy thoughts

It’s interesting to see just how much we humans agonize over happiness.  Isn’t it?  We research it, we read about it, we make lists about it, we dream, goal-set, prioritize, flip-flop, argue about it, we buy colorful magazines that talk about it, we buy a lot of things for it actually, we blame, we start to loathe it sometimes, and then…sometimes, all of a sudden, it’s here!

Strange.  How a few days in the sunshine and a little break from the normal routine can re-spark that zest for life.  Puts it all in perspective…that life is short and every day is a step towards something better and greater.  I find that it helps me to make lists of things…

…so here’s my list of things that are currently filling me up:

*Cadbury chocolate Mini-Eggs…they come out for Easter time and they are  my favorite.

*A new clever book called One More Thing: Stories and other Stories by BJ Novak.  It’s a collection of short stories written with wit and humor…my favorite!  He was a writer for The Office and he wrote the children’s book, The Book with No Words.

*My good friend is having a baby at any moment!  Her due date is today!  I remember those last days of waiting were so strange and interesting and excruciating…but the wait is so worth it.  Good Luck to her!!

*Um…sunshine!  It’s 40 degrees here in the chilly Midwest.  That, my friends, is a heat wave.  I like to think I brought it back with me.  I’ll take credit where credit is due.

*Yellow tulips

*FlexJobs.com…which I haven’t officially signed up for because I have to pay a monthly fee, but basically you can find freelance/telecommuting jobs with legit companies.  Not scam companies.  I can tell you more as I find out, but why not write some blog posts for someone part-time and get paid?  Right?  Write?  Right?

*Coffee delivered to me by my husband while I type…yessssssssss

*Another book that I ordered that will arrive on Tuesday.  It’s called Do Cool Shit (Quit your day job, Start your own business, and Live happily ever after).  Pretty sweet eh?  By Miki Agrawal.  Not saying I’m ready to start my own business but I just really like books that break down overwhelming, larger than life events with witty, down to earth writing.  Yup.

*New work digs!  My job moved locations last week and we start in a new, fresh space tomorrow!  It’s so strange but also super great.  It’s great that we are growing and able to expand a little.  Yay!

*The sketch comedy class that I’m taking online through The Second City.  Let’s get weird, people.

What’s making you guys happy lately?

Yes

 

Life is better when you end dinner with dessert.  Or if you begin dinner with dessert…or if you have dessert in the middle of the day just because you want to.  Life is better with Creme Brulee.  Let’s face it, it just is.  No questions, hands down, absolutely better with a whole creme brulee all to yourself.

If I ask for candy…

Trick or treat?!? Brilliant!!

After having the candy hidden from me the other day, I realized that all I have to do is trick or treat in my own house.

It’s easy.

I just have to ask my six year old nicely for a piece of her candy. 

Then she says, ‘Sure, Butterfinger??’

And I say, ‘Yesssss!!! And Sweet-tarts too, please!!’

Boom.  Done. 

They hid the mofo candy!!

What. The. Fuck.

In an effort to distract me from my addiction to crack sugar, my husband has enlisted the children to hide their Halloween candy from me!

What. The. FUCK?  I was really looking forward to a little Baby Ruth wrapped in a Milky Way…with a vanilla flavored Tootsie Roll chaser.  God damn I love those vanilla Tootsie Rolls.  Why can’t they just sell those in a package by themselves.  No one wants the lemon ones.  No one (except for me…when it gets to the last of the candy and there’s nothing good left…then I want the lemon ones).

Hide the candy?  From their mom?

Could it be because I helped myself to all the Almond Joys and all of the Butterfingers yesterday?  Or maybe because I started in on the Smarties, M&M’s and Sweet-Tarts?  Perhaps it was the sugar induced fit of rage that followed?  I tore through the house like a tazmanian devil…a swirling tornado of milk chocolate aroma, candy wrappers and Skittle dust.  Maybe the last straw was waking up next to a bitchy, irrational, sour patch woman with a killer sugar hangover?

‘Throw away all the candy and all the junk food in the house!  I hate everything!!  I can’t control myself!!  Save yourselves!!’

I’m completely irrational and I plead with him to just try and help me out.  I talk all this game about eating healthy and detoxing from junk food because it makes me crazy (just a little but maniacal).  I ask for all this support and help in trying to keep it out of the house.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Just help me out, man!  Get this shit out of here.  Once that first grape Skittle touches my eager little taste buds…it’s over.  It’s over.  Game over.  Shut it down.

I guess he didn’t like it.  I guess it wasn’t sexy Halloween kitten enough.  I suppose I asked for it.  I suppose I have a little bit of a problem.  But am I a little bit irritated that he made a special phone call specifically to ask them to hide it before I got home…and that I can’t even have one little piece??  Because it’s hidden from me??

I’ll sniff it out.  Give me 8 minutes.

must. resist. the. candy.

It’s here.  The day after trick or treating.  The day when the candy bowls are overflowing with the best of the best.  I’m talking Snickers bars and Butterfingers and Skittles and Tootsie Pops.  Laffy Taffy and Peanut Butter M&M’s.

I die.

I must resist.  I must resist.  I must can’t resist.

Sorry kids!  Your mom is a sugar addict and once you go outside to play she will pilfer through your bowl for the best candy and demolish it.  Then she will allow you one single piece after dinner…and then once you are sleeping cozily in your beds, she will gorge on the rest of the chocolates and taffies and sour hard candies you worked so hard to collect.

Speaking of wheat…

I am, by no means, a wheat, gluten, or grain expert.  I didn’t write Wheat Belly and I didn’t write Grain Brain.  Hell, I didn’t even read either book yet.  From what I’ve read on various medical, health, and alternative health websites in the past few weeks, the mental and physical challenges from wheat and grains are real.  They are real for me.  Maybe I’ve made them up…to be real in my brain…because I need them to be real.

I don’t care.  I’ll try it.  I’ll try an elimination diet to see if I’m a non-celiac gluten sensitivity sufferer!!  In the name of science!!  I’m skeptical, as always, but I’ll try it.  I’ll try anything to feel a little more even keel…a little less roller coaster of emotions and energy levels.

I think the hardest part to digest (hahahaha, get it?? hahaa) in all this wheat/grain business is all the previous years of my life.  What if this really is the answer and the cure to my emotional instability and increasing forgetfulness?  It’s hard to think about all the struggles as a kid and teenager with anxiety and sadness.  It’s hard to comprehend that it could all have been solved had I been eating less whole wheat.  I mean, my mom worked at a natural bakery.  We ate so much bread.  So much good bread too…which it seems is a little worse in this whole grain game.  It’s a confusing thing.

I started on this whole research expedition because I had stanky farts for about a month.  All the other symptoms were there, I just connected the dots.  I’ve just resorted to the fact that I will always have those bumps on my arms…keratosis pilaris.  I’ve been struggling with the brain fog and lethargy for quite some time.  I’d researched about sugar, hormonal imbalances, candida overgrowth, adrenal fatigue before.  I’d made a significant effort to eliminate processed foods and sugar completely.  I was completely addicted.  Still am!  I cut out sugar for a long time to no avail.  Still addicted.  You better believe I had those Reese’s peanut butter cups after my wholesome dinner of zucchini and lentils tonight!!

How would my life’s path have been different had I eaten a completely different diet from childhood?  It’s a little too mind blowing to comprehend for me at this time.  Onward and forward.  I like vegetables and I like fruit.  No biggie, right?

Yeah, until there are bowls and bags of trick or treat candy haunting me from the kitchen!!  The Horror!!!

The brain drain grain game

Gas. Gas…led me to scour the internet for a cure to a rather stinky situation. 

What I found…and self diagnosed myself with…seemed suitable. 

Diet. 

The concept that nutrition having a significant role in overall health is, in my opinion, the only way to live.  Eat junk, feel like junk.  Eat well, feel well. As difficult as that can be when there’s croissants everywhere!! Duh.

What I didn’t know was that grains, and more importantly, wheat, are quite terrible for us.  For most of us, rather.  I’ve always been a firm believer in ‘everything in moderation,’ even though I have an excruciatingly difficult time saying no to sugar.  But bread? Even homemade, unprocessed bread? Pita? Crackers? Pasta? Those buttery croissants??

Could this be the answer?? To the gas?  Perhaps.  Perhaps it could also be the answer to the brain fog, mood swings, insatiable cravings, bumps on the back of my arms, stinging dry eyes, headaches, lethargy, aching joints and muscles, not-quite-right-but-nothing-wrong privates, forgetfulness, brain fog…oh yeah, and brain fog. 

Perhaps it could stop the brain degeneration which I fear is happening to my mother and which I fear will happen to me?? Could it be so simple? Just cut out wheat? Perhaps eventually all grains? But…I’ve never been a firm follower of the gluten-free fad.  Like, really, do carrots need to be labeled as gluten free?  I mean, come on.  Or the whole Paleo fad.  Why does it have to have this trendy hipster label?  ‘Clean eating.’  Everyone wants to call it something. 

It’s annoying.  I don’t want to call it something.  I know I don’t have full blown Celiac disease.  That is no joke, people.  I just want to have a little more homeostasis in my brain and body. 

Hey, I like a doughnut every now and again.

Here I thought sugar was the evil culprit, but it turns out the conspiracy against my sanity goes even further.  Wheat, as it turns out, has a morphine-like fix, which means you crave even more without ever feeling full or satisfied.  It also makes your blood sugar rise higher than after eating a candy bar…and I love candy bars.

Especially Snickers and Whatchamacallits.  Yum.  Oh, and Twix bars! 

Happy trails

Take that. I made my own trail mix, beeeotches!!  With everything that I like…especially the little chocolate covered sunflower seeds and roasted coconut flakes from Trader Joe’s.  I love that trading post…where I trade  money for yummy, mostly healthy treats.

Dang…I have a weakness for ‘healthy’ junk food.  I also have a weakness for junky junk food. It’s useless…just hand over the Oreos and no one gets hurt.

Three cheers for the geeks!!!

Oh yeah. 

Geeks.  Isn’t everyone a geek?  About something or another?  Yes. 

Check out my friend’s page, big sexy geek, where she shares her personal story of geekery and talks about being proud of who you are, inside and out.  Woot woot!!  She’s new to blogging too, so show her some love!

Who out there is a blogging geek?  I might look around the room to assess the situation…and then slowly and timidly raise my hand, reluctantly…finding that I would be the only one with a hand up.  Shit.

Am I?  Well…I do have a blog.  I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with it any longer.  I can’t say that I stay up all night reading other blogs either. 

I am a geek though.  Here’s what I like to geek out about:

Organization

Writing…not necessarily blogging.  There’s things I just can’t share with you, imaginary internet people.

Humor

Coffee

Pearl Jam (duh)

Simplifying my life of material things…trying to…but I do love the things I have!

Striving to be healthy and fit

Home improvement projects

Trying to be a good and fun mom…you see, it’s hard to teach the life lessons while also being fun.  It is.