A landmark event

My

Son

Will

Finally

Drink

Plain

Milk!

This means no more getting out the chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla flavored milks every 20 minutes when he wants more milk. This means no more dumping chocolate and strawberry milk on my carpet (of course the white vanilla milk never gets dumped out because, its, white). This means no more covering my counter in grainy powder when I get up in the middle of the night to make Brandons milk at 3AM. Most of all this means I no longer feel like an asshole parent letting their kid survive on sugar flavored sugar milk! Thank! Gosh!

Noticing a change

In earlier blogs I mentioned how whenever I started a diet I would think about food 24 hours a day. I said that it wasn't healthy that I always wanted to eat. So today when I began thinking of what to have for lunch I became frustrated with myself because it was so early. However then I looked at the clock and noticed it was actually 11:45. I was so impressed. I had managed to go nearly four hours without thinking about my next meal. It seems as though I have gotten myself on a schedule, which I think is something diet experts actually applaud. I eat breakfast at around 7:30 or 8:00 and have a snack around 10:00 at about noon I'm ready for lunch, with another snack following around 3:00. Then dinner falls right around 6:00 followed by some desert, which I guess is actually perfect because that way I'm not eating right before bed. I am truly proud of myself that I am learning to wean myself off of my food support system.

I've also noticed now that I'm paying attention to portions, that I really don't need a giant serving to get full. What I find interesting is that I had drastically cut my portions last time I dieted and it was something I stuck with even after I fell off the wagon (with the exception of ice cream, those portions always seem to get bigger)! This time around though I've cut my portion even more and it seems to be working better. I've found that eating one thing for my meal instead of 4 small things works better. Like now, I'm having a bowl of homemade, vegetarian, gluten free bean stoup (stole the word from Rachael Ray) and its so much more satisfying then having, say some soup, some chips and a salad.

Another big advance in my diet is that I have done so well at resisting "tasting" things. Yesterday we went to Costco and I only tried two of the 15 samples. I had about 8 Jelly Belly's, and about an ounce of some new fizzy energy drink. Here are the things I passed up:
*Buttermilk bread with butter
*White bread with jam
*Hamburgers
*Chicken nuggets
*Chocolate cake (it took every ounce of will power I had not to grab the bowl she was mixing and run away to a corner and suck the sticky mess down only to lick the bowl and walk away like nothing happened)
*Raviolis
*Pita chips with salsa
*Something at the end of the desert isle that I refused to go look at
*Mini Quesidillas
*Dried mango (okay I took one bite but only because I was so intrigued at the oddness of it)
and so on. Also please note, this was extra hard because bread is my favorite thing in the world and trying to be disciplined with not eating gluten is causing my hair to gray)


I was so very proud of myself considering I usually make two or three rounds to make sure I get a few samples of all of the things I love. Today I did not taste the new swirly Cheeto's I got for Brandon. I did not put cheese on my Mexican style stoup because I knew it was so spicy I probably wouldn't be able to taste the cheese anyway. I did not finish Brandon's half eaten yogurt telling myself it was okay because it was yogurt (I totally licked my fingers though, but I will be sure to document that .0184 calories in my journal). I did not eat the fried breakfast potatoes I made for my husband this morning (I tasted one half inch sliver for taste and I don't count that either since I usually make myself a whole plate full). I did not eat the mayo covered bun pieces my husband left behind at dinner last night (even though those are the best bites of the whole burger since there is no meat on them).

I'm making progress here. I bet ya'll are reading this stuff and laughing at me because you are all the worlds most healthy people who don't steal Cheetos off their sons plate, or secretly drink half of their chocolate milk, telling yourself your only doing it because they would spill if they had a full cup. I'm positive I'm the only one who hovers around the shrimp section at Costco waiting for the lady to just put the damn fresh baked cookies out. I know I'm being laughed at because I can't imagine that there are more then a handful of people out there who have as little will power as me. It's fine though. I'm used to people thinking I'm odd.

I guess I hope that my new good habits will rub off on at least one person and little buy little my generation can stop being made fun of because we are some kind of fat slobs the world has never seen before.

However all of my portion controlling and calorie counting has one good side effect. At the end of the day, when I have a few extra calories laying around, I don't feel bad about increasing the portion size of my nightly bowl of slow churned half calorie ice cream. Its nice to know now on bad days, I can rearrange my meals to make sure I have that sweet, melty goodness at the end of the day. Because really, if I couldn't have my ice cream, I would probably just shrivel up and die. And really who cares if is below freezing in my house, and I have to wear a hat and mittens just to eat my ice cream. Hat hair is totally worth it.

Oh shit....The next American Idol is living in my house

Sooooooooo. We are watching American Idol on Tivo right now. This shit is cracking me up.

First of all the guy who thinks he is AT LEAST as good as Freddie from Queen! Thank you, I haven't pissed in my pants laughing lately.

One of my favorites though was the girl who said her husband told her she was wasting her time. Now that is awesome if you ask me. The closest person to you tells you that you sound like an ass and you keep going.

Also, do they purposely not put a sign on the left door that says OTHER DOOR. I mean do they do it just for one last laugh as they humiliate the people more by watching them smack into the door.

I also love when Simon says "I'm not being rude but..." Gosh I would love to hear him be rude.

Anyway Brandon has been watching with us and it has made him start singing along. I wish I had a better video camera so I could capture the the laaaaaa ooooooooo ahhhhhhhhh my son has been singing. I must say, not being bias at all, that I think Brnadon is far better then almost everyone on this show.

In other news my house was clean yesterday for 8 hours. Know why? My son was over at grandma and papa's for 8 hours. Within 35 minutes of being home, every block my son owned was scattered about.

Yesterday Rob and I got to spend a bunch of time together. We went to Costco, the Asian Supermarket and Wal-Mart. I thought Rob was going to crumple up and die from having to go to three groceries stores with me. BUT! He didn't! He begrudgingly came along, whining the whole way. At Wal-Mart he tried to wander of the the electronics isle but I vetoed that instantly because I knew if I did that I would not have been allowed to leave the store with less then $5,908,983.88 in electronics.

Although he just got a whole new stereo system put in his car, including, subs, amps, speakers, decks, EQ's and so on. He somehow feels like there might be something left that he doesn't have. To be honest with myself he wouldn't have actually purchased anything for HIS car from Wal-Mart because he is as big of an electronic brand name whore as I am about purses, he still would have gotten ideas. My husbands ideas kill me. I don't know how to say no. I often find myself making deals with him that in the end, never seem to favor me. For instance:

"Yes dear, you can buy a fourth gun BUTONLY if you promise not to ask me about buying a fifth gun for an entire year."

I thought I was clever. Now though I watch him click click clicking away on his computer and I'm terrified he is looking at guns, and since I'm not there to shoot it down or tell him he can't spend that much, I fear he is over there looking at the biggest whopper all inclusive bad mamajama gun you ever did see. Dammit. This is my own fault. If he can't mention it I can' turn it down.

This Christmas after I gave in and let him buy not only his deck but his other four truck accessories, he swore he was done buying stuff for his truck. In fact he was so done, that he only needed new rims (to replace his that are 4 months old), to lower his truck, a new grill, some head lights, to match the tail lights he needs, a black Chevy logo, some winter wheels, a new paint job (because 2 years is far to old for paint), and some new door handles (because aren't Cool enough). Thats it. Then he will really for reals maybe almost possibly be done.

Just typing all of that makes me want to curl up in a ball because I'm the worlds worst at saying NO. Want an example of how bad I am? When I met my husband he had a brand new Grand Prix. He got bored with that and decided he wanted a tahoe. OOOkay we went down and bought the tahoe, and since we couldn't sell the Grand Prix we kept it and had three cars. But then he decided he wanted a truck about six months later. Soooooo we took his two cars and traded them in on a new truck. Yes we now had three cars rolled into one car payment. But wait theres more. He got sad and decided he wanted his tahoe back. Before I knew it he had a 2005 Tahoe sitting in my driveway with four cars rolled into one payment and a payment that if I mentioned would probably cause people to drag me outside and publicly tar and feather me. I will give you a hint though, its more then half of my house payment AND my house payment is more then a grand!

Where was I going with this post? Hmmm I think no where. All I know is now that I have a kid, plus a 28 year old kid and we are talking about having another kid, I think I might need someone drown me before I drown in trinkets for my boys. And seriously people if I have a girl, no, I don't even want to think about how bad that could be for me. Because I'm the most pinky pink frilly la la momma you have ever seen.

Soooo where I was going with this is that my son needs to hurry up and win American Idol so he can get rich and support him and his fathers trinket habit. I wouldn't complain if he tossed a Coach purse my way every now and then.

Rob's on his computer now, (yes his very own black apple lap top that cost more just because it was black, that he had to have , because he couldn't actually use my girly white laptop with the pink flower, and please, baby please, I won't bother you about wheels for 48 hours if you buy this for me to match my brand new black ipod that cost more money just because its black please baby please) and this is scaring me because I have a feeling he is on there searching for something black and shiny and expensive to bug me about. I'm just waiting for it. That look and the BABY with the stupid grin. So I say OH SHIT. I don't know what to do with myself.

*Side note, what the fuck is up with Apple charging a premium to own stuff in black. Just because I wanted the black Ipod I had to spend double, almost triple the amount as I would have spent on any other fucking color. Fucking Apple, its people like you who make my husbands heart beat fast with desire for trinkets to match his fucking black Tahoe. License plates BLKTOUT! Ugggggggggg someone shoot me now.

**Side note two. Sorry if this was the worlds worst post ever. I don't have a damn clue what I wanted to write. I blame this on the fact that I've only had a half of a cup of coffee and I need about 34 more cups until I'm sort of coherent.