#SNAP4AWeek

“Great acts are made up of small deeds.” Lao Tzu

Ok, so here is the deal...I have talked about how I have been helping my church feed lunch to kids who are part of the reduced or free lunch at school programs. My church also has a huge food bank and does a lot of work in the community. For a lot of those kids getting breakfast and lunch at school are the only meals that they get. Did you know that: “The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in over 101,000 public and non‐profit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provided nutritionally balanced, low‐cost or free lunches to more than 31 million children each school day in 2010. In 1998, Congress expanded the National School Lunch Program to include reimbursement for snacks served to children in afterschool educational and enrichment programs to include children through 18 years of age.”  http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/

In an effort to raise more awareness and relive some of my childhood experiences I am going to take part of the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program aka Food Stamps) Challenge. The Mazon Orginization set for the challenge. To learn more about this great orginization and this challenge please visit their website, www.mazon.org . I am going to only spend $31.50 for 7 days worth of food and drink. I am then going to write about my experience. Hopefully the pastor of my church and others can use my experience to raise awareness. There has been a lessening of donations over the last couple of months. There is so much that we take for granted in this life. I hope some of you get more involved because NO CHILD SHOULD EVER GO HUNGRY!!! Like ever!

I did all of my shopping today and was lucky to be able to do it all at one store, Sharp Shopper. It came to a total of $30.23. I also get farm eggs from a friend. Normally I get these eggs for free but it didn’t seem fair to my experience so I am giving her a $1.00 for them. It was pretty emotional and I agonized over my decisions. I was in the store for over an hour going back and forth. I also have a small hitch in my giddy up just to make it more interesting. I am a Gluten Free girl. Gluten Free bread and pasta is significantly more expensive than regular breads and pastas. I could have gotten a 16oz bag of pasta for .79 cents at Sharp Shopper. They do carry a GF option but it was $2.69 (less expensive than in other stores) which was out of my price range for this week. So brown rice and potatoes it is.  

Growing up, my family did benefit from the SNAP program for a brief period. My mom was so cool and brave she made it seem like it was Monopoly money. I never really understood what it meant until later on. My Mom was creative. We would have breakfast food for dinner a lot because it was cheaper than what you would regularly buy for dinner. She made it adventure, something exotic. We drank powdered milk and ate skillet eggs & macaroni (macaroni sautéed in butter then scrambled eggs were added to the pan).

Tomorrow morning is my first meal.

Food List:

2 Mangoes
2 Cucumbers
1 Zucchini
1 Banana
1 Head of Lettuce
2 Tomatoes
1 5lb Bag of Potatoes
1 Package of Mushrooms
1 Bag of Frozen Peas
1 Bag of Frozen Corn
1 Package of Frozen Chicken
1 Large Can of Tomatoes
1 Container of Hummus
1 Large Tin of Chicken
1 Jar of Apple Sauce
1 Package of Shredded Cheese
1 Tetra Pack of Chicken Broth (not pictured)
1 Bag of Brown Rice
1 Bag of Dried Black Beans
1 Box of Oatmeal (5 individual packets)
1 Jar of Pickles (not pictured)
1 Package of Pudding (4 pack)
2 Containers of Limeade
1 Onion (not pictured)
1 Dozen Eggs (not pictured)
1 Pesto Sauce/Salad Dressing Combo
1 Bag of Chips

Stars

The night is beautiful. It is filled with the promise of stars. They wink at me. Flirting. I want to sleep under them & feel their kiss.

Day of Pi and the Lame Update

Happy Pi Day to everyone!!! I have been extremely remiss in my blogging of late. Truly have been in a funk and working like a dog. Not a “real” salaried job but they have both been doing wonders for my soul. They have been getting me out of the house, out of my head, and making me happy. I have been “working” 6 days a week. So I mos’def’ have been a busy girl.

Update on the weight loss: Slow but good. LOL. I am down 17 pounds not as much as I had hoped at this point but life seems to be hitting a stride so fingers crossed that the losing trend will continue and hopefully at a wee bit of a faster rate.

I have started working on the book. This is what I am extremely excited about. I have an outline of the first chapter and need to get the flow onto paper. It is all in my head. I dream about it. If I could just take that and project it onto paper that would be brilliant…so from this blog to God’s ears.

I made an awesome dinner tonight. Salmon with Mango Marsala Sea Salt with Browned Butter on a bed of Spinach accompanied by Jasmine Rice with Golden Raisins, Black Beans, Sauteed Onions, and a hint of Mango. Let us not forget the bottle of wine…well, half bottle.

Tonight I am drinking my way to happy.

The Weight of Weight

Whelp, I finally decided to face reality on Thursday and did the unthinkable…I weighed myself. I am pissed at myself and I knew I would be. I have gained 35 pounds since I became jobless on March 23, 2011. Well, to be more precise probably since June because I did weigh myself when I first moved to VA in May and I actually had lost 5 pounds since March but that was probably because I was stressed out so much and sick all the time. I am comfortable at or below a certain weight and this isn’t it. I actually thought it was going to be more of a weight gain but 35 pounds was bad enough.

This is what happens when you have a job where you are always on the move from like 7:00am until 11:00pm or more sometimes. Then you factor in the 3 mile a day trail hike but now don’t do anything it becomes a recipe for disaster.  Also I was always stressed, nervous, and nauseous. I’d eat lunch and would promptly puke it back up. Not exactly healthy either but alas now I don’t do anything but read. Throw in some TV and you have 35 pounds. Let’s not forget the crappy self-esteem that was made so much worse by not having a job anymore.

When it comes to the food part of this puzzle it isn’t that I eat badly but I probably don’t eat enough. Sometimes I’ll go days and only eat one meal or than eat three meals a day and overdo it on those days. I would say my biggest downfalls are the soda and then the lovely beer. I had all ready started to correct the drinking issue. I have had only one beer in the last month and a half. On Wednesday I did crack out on a bottle of red wine and got blitzed knowing that I was going to weigh myself on Thursday. Then there is the soda which I love. I love its fizzy wonderfulness. To help with this ball and chain I started drinking diet cranberry juice. To sparkle that up a bit I started adding Sprite Zero…a half and half mix. Seems to be satisfying the soda monkey on my back, however, I have splurged when out at the movie. I get a small soda there but that is it. Also, back to chugging water since I realized I hadn’t been doing that as much I had while I lived on camp. I would carry around my nalgene everywhere and would drink at least two whole nalgenes full of water every day.  

I am sick of wearing “camp clothes” because they are the only ones that fit. Baggie cargo pants, t-shirts, and sweatshirts have been my uniform and I am so over it. I have lots of lovely clothes but they just don’t fit. I am not buying anything new!!! That’s for damn sure. I will get back into my favorite pair boot cut jeans and be able to wear my awesome pea coat before winter is over.

I’m going hard core…like Biggest Loser hard core (or close to it). I’m going to do what I can without a gym or a trainer since I cannot afford either of those. So, I am building up to that for one week then it is going to be balls out. On Thursday I ate 3 extremely healthy meals and worked out for 1 hour. On Friday I again ate 3 healthy meals, worked out for an hour in the morning, and an hour in the afternoon. Today is Saturday and I worked out for one hour and then walked a mile.

So this coming Thursday after keeping up this mild routine I will weigh myself in the morning and then increase the work out. I am going to try and maintain 2 - 1 hour workouts and 2-3 mile walk every day. That is the plan anyways. I will try to blog once every week about it…hopefully on Thursday s. I’m excited that I have my friend Gail to text about it. We are going to be sending each other positive text back and forth.

My hope is that I lose 40 pounds by the beginning of March. The first “goal” is 20lbs in 30 days. I hope that isn’t unrealistic. I’ll see where I land on the first weigh in I guess and then go from there.

The issue of weight is a weighty thing. I don't want it to become who I am. It is heavy on the body and twice as heavy on the soul.

The Plane, the Plane!

I went to see "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" today. As a person who has read the books three times each and seen the Swedish version...I liked it...like a lot. I thought they did a great job with the whole movie. I never once got mad at things that the filmmakers changed. Even the fairly big one with regards to Harriet which may be a problem for some people but I got it. I got that if they would have explored it like it was written the movie would have been 3 ½ hours instead of 2 ½. It still worked. This is unusual for me because normally I hate what filmmakers do to movies, especially when they change dumb shit. Actually, I didn’t even mind how the pressie was changed from the Elvis sign to a leather jacket. However, I do think they should have had Lisbeth clean her apartment at the end like in the book. To me that may have been such a small thing by some standards but I thought it was a huge moment.

Just like the books you absolutely fall in love with Lisbeth Salander or at least I did. Lisbeth is the ultimate antihero or so you think. Her life had been completely sucktastic but holy hell how amazing is she and how she deals with problems that arise in her life. I have a big HELLS YEAH for how she “takes care” of the social worker who rapes her. Women everywhere stand and rejoice. She is the hacker queen.

This may also surprise people but I have a total crush on her. I am a lover of boys, yep, I like the penis but there is something about the character Lisbeth. She lives on the outskirts of society and really makes no apologies for it. I don’t think she gives a shit what people think of her, not really. She knows she is perceived as strange and embraces it. Exploits it really. I know she sure as hell doesn’t trust anyone or at least not easily. Lisbeth doesn’t like people but who can blame her. People suck. I love how she wants to defend the weak and only investigates people who interest her. She is awkward and I love it. I thought Rooney Mara nailed it…maybe even more than Noomi Rapace. Ack!!! I can’t believe I said that but I think it might be true. I thought the look they gave Rooney came closer to what I envisioned in my head.

Another surprise for me is how much I liked Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist. I am not a huge Daniel Craig fan. I don’t hate him but I don’t get all gooey over him, well, until this movie. I was like “hellllooo”. I thought he did the fallen from grace snotty entitled well off journalist who turns into a “hunter of the killer of women” brilliantly. I believed it.

I also have a thing for Trent Reznor and thought the music was brilliant and laughed out loud when Lisbeth goes to visit her hacker friend and the dude is wearing a NIN t-shirt. I also laughed out loud when Martin played STYX’s “Come Sail Away” when he is going kill Mikael. Laws that was funny, however, I was the only one who laughed. Oh well. I also fell in love with the remake of the Bryan Ferry song during the credits. It was “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” and was in one of my most favorite movies the 1985 movie called “Legend”.

Sooooo...I recommend this movie. Oh and Martin's house is like Ikea porn.

You May Say I’m a Dreamer…

…annnndddd….I’m drunk and not just any kind of drunk but red wine drunk…yep, dangerous. Something very interesting happened this evening and it kind of surprised me but that is a story for another day.

I am a dreamer. A dreamer in every sense of the word from my non waking moments to the romantical idealist who is a visionary but for this post I am going with my non waking moments…to sleep, perchance to dream. Ok, so I don’t want to sleep the kind of sleep that Hamlet was talking about in his soliloquy. "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…Must give us pause." I mean can I be guaranteed that in death I would find peace. There is the rub. Hamlet was talking about taking his own life…granted it kind of was like death by cop because he thought he would die taking out his uncle for killing his dad but still so permanent. Oh what a tangled web. Then there is J.M. Barrie who said in Peter Pan “To die would be an awfully big adventure.” but I am more of a fan of Robin Williams’ take as Peter Banning in the movie Hook “Oh, no. To live…to live would be an awfully big adventure.”

Anyhooooo…I am a dreamer. I am that person that dreams all the time and almost always remembers the dream. I am also a repeat dreamer. From my earliest dreams I can remember dreaming the same dream over and over. An example is the one I had of my brother and sharks. I also had a recurring dream about my pre/kindergarten school…there were these crates and a dark sinister thing with many eyes.  Then there are my flying dreams and I don’t mean like Superman. I gather the wind and it pushes me gently off of the ground and I can hover. I’ve had those dreams for ever. Actually dreams about wind are also a popular theme with me. I have them were I can make the wind and cause it to swirl around me. I watch the leaves dance around me. I can see every part of them.

I also dream about people and sometimes of things to come with regards to them. I have dreamed about people who are no longer in this world. I dreamt of my father after he died. He was walking up Bordell Road in Farmers Valley in the quiet snow. He looked as he did about 15 years before he died…before he was ravaged by Alzheimer’s. He wasn’t wearing his glasses but he smiled at me and waved before he turned and walked up the road.

As a sufferer of insomnia I cherish my dreams since sometimes they come very few and far between.

Again: *Disclaimer* I wrote this while drinking red wine. I was also listening to David Garrett, Joshua Bell, and then some Robin Thicke. I also may go back and “edit” this post once I read it with sober eyes and brain. Bwhahaha!

Funktastic

In a serious funk that I can't get myself out of...must strive to undo this.