Chocolate and that Jesus Guy

I have yeast issues.

Big ones.

I know - TMI and what the heck does that have to do with the above? I'm getting there.

I've had skin yeast infections ever since I stopped nursing my first born and my boobs sagged and created a nice hot, moist, dark environment for the little beasties to grow in; if you do the math, that's about 12 years.

12 years.

Finally, this last year, the worst symptom started (rectal itching) (and you thought the other was TMI). I'd had enough so when I went in for my annual, my nurse and I had a long chat. The long and short of it was that I had too much yeast in my system and my body couldn't fight it all off. I needed to remove sugar from my diet (GASP) (because apparently sugar not only feeds my soul but also the wee beasties) and take a butt load of probiotics. No pun intended. No sugar meant no candy, one serving of grains per day and one serving of fruit per day and NO CHOCOLATE. Be still my heart - I still have issues when I think about it.

This was toward the end of February. For some reason or another but which I cannot quite recall, I was fasting on February 28th and felt impressed that that was the time to start. Okay Lord, down the rabbit hole we go!

Within two days I started getting bad, daily headaches that I couldn't shake for several weeks.

So I did what any sane woman would do. I chopped off my hair. 8" whooshed to Locks of Love and my head felt pounds lighter.

But I still got headaches so I'm sticking with my "getting rid of sugar is E.V.I.L." diagnosis.

In the middle of March I got sick, really sick - fevers and headaches and overall yuckiness. Did you know (I'm sure it's just the placebo effect) that orange juice makes me feel so. much. better? It does. Did you know that orange juice is loaded with sugar? Yeah. Loaded. (But the headaches did go away so I'm sticking with my "orange juice makes me feel so. much. better." diagnosis.)

So I felt compelled to start the sugar free thing again; this was done with a purpose - to defeat the evil yeast - and I wanted to make sure that mission was accomplished. So I added another month. Which means that April 24th I get to eat sugar again. Which just happens to be Easter. Even though this was so not a Lent thing.

Needless to say, this has been a huge topic of conversation at our house as Mommy has different dinners than everyone else and Mommy doesn't get to eat ice cream or peanut butter pie or Eliza's first batch of "I made them all by myself (mostly)" cupcakes.

The other day we were discussing Easter at the table and my daughter (pay attention - this is the point of the whole sordid tale) said that she was looking forward to Easter because it was the day that we celebrated Mommy getting to eat chocolate.

Really.

All year we've been talking about Jesus. Talking about baptism (as she'll be 8 in November and eligible to be baptized). Reading the New Testament (we're in the Book of Acts). And yet, my daughter thinks that Easter is to celebrate the end of Mommy's temporary, never been done before, sugar fast.

I quickly corrected her and told her that Easter was the celebration of the atonement of Jesus, His crucifixion and suffering and His glorious resurrection and all the blessings that those events bring to us.

Eliza added, "And Mommy getting to eat chocolate."

Perhaps there is not a baptism in our future this year. . . .

Dinner Conversation

Background: My daughter's school class (lower El -1/2/3 combined of about 24 students) is putting on some plays this spring. Sadly, she doesn't get to be in the plays that feature the fog princess or the fairies. She gets to be a play about Anansi the Spider. Worse, she doesn't get to a narrator or Anansi or the Little Bush Deer; she gets to be a hippo. She only gets one line. There were tears over this people.

But this is not about that; this is about our conversation at Monday night's dinner.

Eliza: I want to be Anansi.
DH: You don't want to be one of those!
Me: She means A-nan-Si.
DH: Oh. I thought she said a Nazi.
Q: Yeah. I wouldn't want to be a Russian.
Me: The Nazis were from Germany, not Russia?
Q: Really?
DH: Yeah - ask Poppa; he lived there for awhile.
Me: Or Uncle Kenji - he was born there. Or me, I was made there. I've always wanted to get a t-shirt that said "Made in Germany" on the front.
Poppa (my dad): You want what?
Me: I want a t-shirt that says, "Made in Germany." I was.
Poppa: I'm not having this conversation.

Lent

I'm not Catholic, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I love the idea of Lent. (Mormonism just doesn't have enough rules of it's own, dontcha know.) I love the idea of sacrificing something to try and understand what Jesus sacrificed and a measure of His pain. I love the idea of giving up my "favorite sins" to know Him better and I love the idea of laying down something I love so that Easter Sunday is that much sweeter when I get to enjoy it again.

This year I actually prayed and pondered the matter (I have been known to randomly pull things out of my butt just to have something to give up, so this is definitely a step in the right direction.) and came to the conclusion that I really needed to give up TV altogether. Just for Lent. Completely excluding any time I spend with my kids watching TV. The real aim was to give up my evening TV time in hopes that I would spend more time studying scriptures, etc.

I also gave up reading anything other than my scriptures. No books. No magazines. And (as of today because I suddenly realized that they should probably be included) blogs. Again, with the intent that I would spend more time communing with God and strengthening those habits.

Everything was going well (excluding the blog reading, which I only recently realized) until I got sick. Fever, miserable, lie on the couch and not move sick. I'm sure that someone better than I would have used this time to really talk with God and praise Him even in her trials (I did do a bit of that) but I mainly watched a lot of TV. A lot. As in I acted more like my 12 year old when sick and completely used it as an excuse not to sleep and rest but to watch lots of TV and catch up on everything I hadn't been watching for the previous two weeks.

But everything's back on track.

Sorta.

I've learned that giving up TV while trying to exercise actually works as a deterrent to exercise as TV watching is that carrot that helps me win that daily battle over "to workout or not to workout," and since this seems counter to my improved health goals that God and I have been working on, I'm letting it slide.

I've learned that I rationalize. Sometimes, I rationalize a lot. I may be watching less TV as a whole, but I can promise you that my children are watching more in the evenings so that I can watch and have it be "allowed."

I'm trying to learn how to walk the line between following the commandments (and any extra odd covenants I make with God, like, oh, LENT) with exactness (thinking - the people of Ammon) and zeal and yet not being Pharisaical. It's hard to know where that line is because (as noted above) I am prone to rationalization and laziness and yet also at times (contradictorily) I am too hard on myself.

Let me know if you have it figured out.

Glory Be

Today has been a day of miracles.

My daughter, who was soo sick this morning that she couldn't go to school, was immediately healed upon learning that she would have to spend the day in bed.

The dentist while numbing a small area to replace a decaying filling (pun totally intended) managed to numb me clear up to my eyelid.

I just discovered that, after years of protesting, I do like eggplant parmesan. As in really like it. As in "I might even try to make it myself" like it.

It's been just an awesomely stunning day and it's not even noon!

Drama Mama

I have one daughter.

She has been a crash course in all things female; I swear she came out of the womb with a tiara and full on mani-pedi.

One thing I have noticed is about her is that she is a champion whiner. Seriously. I have two boys. They, believe you me, have done their share of whining. But Eliza - she takes it to a whole 'nother level.

Today she was sick.

Hoo boy.

I'm always uncertain how much to pamper and love and cuddle and how much to tough love.

She woke me up at 3:15am, crying because she was coughing so much she couldn't sleep. I patiently took her back to bed, propped her up on lots of pillows, got her tissue to blow her nose and laid down with her (no mean feat given that she sleeps on a twin bed and last night was her turn with our 70lb black lab), my head tucked at her side and my hip grinding into the floor. When she was safely contented, I told her I was moving to the front room couch and to come get me if she needed anything. She was maybe 10 minutes behind me.

I shared the couch with her but to say we actually slept would be to use that word improperly; sort of like using "slumber" in slumber party. She moaned and whined and complained and cried and would sleep fitfully. I felt bad for her too but at 4:30am, my reserves of patience are woefully low.

I sent her to bed early tonight and I'm wondering what tomorrow holds and how patient/impatient I should be with her. She is only 7. She really doesn't feel well. But my ears . . . .

Careful What You Wish For

Remember (it was soo long ago) when I was bemoaning my lack of humor? Apparently the universe (I'm not blaming this one on God) thought that I was complaining about a lack of fodder for humor, as the very next night, following a looooong, as long as only cub scout events can be, pack meeting, our car stranded us in the back of a store parking lot; the kinda stranded that involves lots of smoke billowing out of the engine compartment.

See, our car, being a paragon of all things reliable, has a slight radiator leak. I was constantly checking the coolant levels in the overflow tank. Apparently, as my mechanic father and mechanic husband had failed to tell me, I also needed to check the fluid level in the radiator itself.  Minor detail, I know.

Happily - I  have a cell phone. (Sure laugh, everyone has one but I've only had one for about a year and a half, this whole "OOooh look! I'm having an emergency and I have a phone of my own!" thing is new to me.) I called my dad - DH being sick in bed - and he walked me through the whole thing. Except I was trying to be as careful as possible while opening the radiator. I knew that the fluid would gush out like crazy and still - I was totally unprepared. The fluid gushed and the lid disappeared and it was dark out and I had to have the hood up to take care of radiator but the hood blocked any light we were getting from the parking lot light and it was almost 9pm and . . . . happily my dad decided to drive out and help us.

So we waited.

And waited.

I locked the doors and walked around to the front parking lot to find my dad because he doesn't have a cell phone and while I mentioned we were in the parking lot, I didn't tell him exactly where in that parking lot.

And waited.

And then, of course, the fact that I had been constipated (See?! the universe was clearly trying to hook me up with an Amy vibe!) decided to magically correct itself (Why is it that stress works as a laxative? How does that help?!) and I ended up walking rapidly through the huge store, butt tightly clenched to the bathrooms, which were, of course, clear on the other side of the store from where the car had chosen to break down.

Back to the car, and then we waited.

I checked my cell phone - it had been over 40 minutes and still no sign of my dad.

Long story short: we ended up waiting for 1.5 hours, my DH finally showed up, fixed the radiator and followed me home without further incidence, loading my children into their beds at about 10:30pm.

The upside: I now know to check the radiator itself; my daughter learned to dress for the weather and not the car; and all three kids got to stay up WAY past their bedtimes. On a school night.

Really, fun for all.

Unfortunately, along with the adventure, the universe forgot to send me Amy's mad skillz for humor which would have made this infinitely funnier. Although the poo issues was a nice touch.

A Day in My Life

Alarm goes off at 6am. I hit snooze as the thought of continued sleep sounds so much better than even a gentle Rodney Yee session of yoga.

My children wake up, one by one, to pee and then commence talking and making loud bumps doing heaven only knows what in their bedroom.

I get up and yell at them calmly tell them that I would like a few more minutes of sleep and that they should be in their beds, silently waiting for me to wake them.

I go back to bed, get comfortable only to hear the real alarm go off at 6:30am.

I get out of bed and abruptly flip on my children's light again calmly tell my children in a sing-song voice that it's morning and time to get up. I stomp off to the kitchen, not the least bit grumpy or feeling guilty that I chose sleep over stretching with Rodney. (Yes, we have a lightning rod on the house. Why do you ask?)

I make a delicious breakfast of eggs and pancakes (did you notice I didn't have to add any strike throughs there?) and feed my children (and the two dogs - one akita, one black lab) patiently waiting and drooling at the edge of the kitchen.

I sit on the couch and read my scriptures and pray (assuming the call of the couch doesn't lure me back to sleep) while, ahem, gently reminding my children to get ready for school. (Yes, I'm that good. Aren't you glad God doesn't grade on a curve? And yes, the irony of reading about the kindness of Jesus and the value He placed on children while I'm yelling and, perhaps, even at times using sarcasm to motivate my children is not lost on me.)

Around 7:29am I frantically pull my daughter's hair into some sort of do so it isn't in her face so that at 7:30am we can start family scripture study.

At 7:45am (five minutes late now), we have a prayer and I kick them out of the house. Then I sit on the couch and spend the next five or ten minutes involved in an intense inner dialogue about whether or not I really want to work out and how strenuous that work out should be.

Around 8:15am (I have to change clothes and what not), I actually start working out.

9:30am - I'm in the shower.

10:am  - I'm making my breakfast (tofu scramble anyone?) and my lunch (kale chips and a turkey-hummus sandwich). I also try to throw a load of laundry in the wash sometime during the morning.

10:30am (ish): I stroll into work and thank God, literally, for the benefits of being a bookkeeper for a small family business owned by the man who sired me (how mad could he ever get at his grown daughter?) and the man I'm sleeping with (how mad could he ever get at the one who puts out?) and then further milk their affections by playing games, reading blogs and checking email.  I did give up Facebook so that's one less thing.

11:15am: Walk home to pee. Change the laundry.

Somewhere in there I throw in a few hours of balancing books, finding money we didn't know we had to pay bills that we've known about for a little too long, sending out statements and paying taxes to one government or the other. If I'm feeling real virtuous, I might even walk the aforementioned doggies so my dad doesn't have to. I'm generous like that. (And there are usually one or two more trips home to pee. And change the laundry.)

3:00pm: I drive to town to pick up my three children from their various schools and head home. They have snack and I start frantically combing the kitchen for something that can be dinner within the next half hour. The rest evening is a whirl of karate, church activities, skating lessons, or staying home and folding all that laundry, depending on the day of the week.

9:00pm: Bed. So. Tired. I know people say that exercising gives you energy, but I think they lie. I could stay up MUCH later before I started working out.

The rest, as they say, is a matter of rinse and repeat, which never ceases to amaze me; that so many nothing, ordinary, routine days can add up to three children half grown, 13.5 years of marriage and my being middle aged. How did all this happen?!