The December snows are gone. We had a couple of days in the 40s and 50s, along with heavy rain, that obliterated most of the snow that had fallen throughout our cold December. Yesterday, I ventured down to the beach to get one look at the place before the temperatures dropped back to freezing again overnight. The creek was running high and all along the beach great curtains of mist were rising. Underfoot, the build up of ice and snow was still holding on, except for the band closest to the water where it had broken up into six and eight foot tall boulders of dirty brown ice with crevasses and undercut caves and bare spots, closest to the water, where the stony beach shone through. I clambered down to the water's edge and looked for sea glass and pottery shards among the wave-polished rocks. The mists rose until all I could see was the little strip of beach around me and the walls of ice at my back that I'd have to climb back up to get home. It was an astounding sight.


This is normally a flat and stony beach. Every bit of that looks brown and rocky is, in fact, part of a giant 8 foot tall sheet of ice and snow that'd developed over the past month.

( More photos of beach stones, sea pottery, and sea glass finds. )

~*~
Yesterday, for New Year's Eve, we went to a party with a friend of mine at a play cafe where parents can eat (or drink good coffee) while the children are free to play in one of several adjacent toy-filled rooms. The play cafe was offering a breakfast buffet (including oatmeal and fruit salad and plenty of animal crackers) and we all celebrated the countdown with Elmo and Big Bird as it neared 12:00 (noon). There was a balloon drop and music and everything. It was a lot of fun for all of us.



Last night, we made salads and watched the first episode of Regency House Party together and went to Target to spend a gift card that my grandfather had given us for the holidays. (We bought Graeme a pair of dance pants for his ballet class, Daniel got a cover for his iPad, and I bought a 2011 calendar on clearance and the priced-crazy-cheap Bell, Book, and Candle, Persuasion, and The Princess Bride on DVD. It was great fun. I couldn't afford a witchy calendar this year but the one I found for so little is "Forces of Nature" photography and that's pretty inspiring all on its own. :)

~*~
Daniel and I have started back on our diets. They were interrupted back in July when I had my surgery and I've since gained back 6 pounds. Too many holiday meals and too much rampant junk-food eating. We're both still well below the starting weights we had in May, so we're making good progress.

We track our meals, down to the last calorie, on an iPhone app called Lose It! I'm looking to lose about two pounds a week, so it calculates the calories I'm allowed to eat each day based on my weigh-ins. So yesterday, I was allowed 1135 calories. Dropping from probably 3000-4000 calories a week, cold turkey, to 1100 is a bit painful. Every emotional, hormonal part of me starts to get snappy and defensive and angry. How dare I be restricted in what I eat? How dare I answer to anyone, even if that 'anyone' is me, about the cookies I'm wanting to have for dinner every night? I want bread with butter and an entire avocado and about four or five vegan cupcakes. I want to eat until I feel sick, overstuffed, distressingly over fed. I want to snack on something salty and then something sweet and then something salty and then something sweet until bedtime. Also, I'd like to drink something other than water. (Rachel, that makes us fat and sick and uncomfortable!) There are warring parts within me. And yet, that voice only lasts a week or two, in my experience, before I start to feel unified and peaceful and full and healthy. Shaking that voice of addiction is hard for me, though. Food *is* my vice and my crutch and my poison.

So yesterday, for example, I ate:

Breakfast (237 calories)
1/2 raw carrot
1 cup oatmeal (made with water) sprinkled with cinnamon
1/8 cup golden raisins

Lunch (195 calories)
1/2 cup cooked spaghetti
1/2 cup cooked spaghetti squash
1/4 cup green peas
1 spoonful Ciao Bella Blood Orange Sorbet

Dinner (203 calories)
2 cups raw spinach
1/4 of an avocado
1/4 cup raw broccoli slaw
2 Tablespoons fat-free low-calorie dressing
1.5 cups steamed broccoli w/ spices

Snacks (570 calories) <---these should be fruits and vegetables. Within a few days, I'll probably be choosing more filling snacks and fewer 'oh, please! just a little!' junk foods. Once the monster is quieter about my choices. ;)
1 cup of McDougall's vegan pilaf
1 ice cream bar
3 cookies <--this was my midnight snack that pushed me 60 calories over my target for the day.

So yes, that ought to keep me busy for the next six weeks or so. :) Then, I can figure out a middle ground of healthful maintenance.
~*~

So what has your New Year brought? :) Any fun events happening in your life?

We had a leisurely, wonderful four day weekend together here at home. We played board games, watched Graeme splash in park fountains, spent nap times watching movies (Batman Dark Night and Hot Tub Time Machine), and stuck wholeheartedly to our diets. On Saturday, we spent the day cruising around Evanston, looking at some of the neighborhoods with rental homes. We're in love with that town--it'll be so nice to get out of Chicago proper and finally have things like guest rooms and outdoor space! (Or, you know, a room for Graeme to call his own.)

In the last five weeks, I've lost 13 pounds. (Daniel's lost 20.) I started keeping track of my calorie consumption and, in a Black Month kinda way, it revealed all the ways I was deceiving myself or quietly sabotaging my health. I'd attributed my weight gain, lack of energy, and aches and pains as evidence of aging. What a farce! I just needed to eat less, move from processed foods and carb-loading to raw fruits and veggies, and become aware of my relationship with food and the consequences of my choices. Yes, I can eat that slice of bread--but four carrots would fill me up better for the same number of calories. I can indulge in a cupcake, but that means I may have to go hungry for hours before my next (small) meal. By having a budget that I stick to, every choice I make has a natural, predictable consequence. I can choose x but that means I can't later have y. I find all this so related to other consumptions/appetites of mine. If I go off-diet, eat something regrettable, it becomes a snowball of eating more. (Nothing makes me hungrier than eating something high-calorie--I just want more and more and more.) Likewise, when I don't shop, don't consume, I don't miss it. If I slip and buy something, though, it naturally leads to more and more and more. In the case of my food diet, I am knowing when to get 'away from the food', going places where I'm not tempted to eat. In my shopping, my affluenza, I need to stay away from the places where I am tempted to spend money on extraneous things I don't need for my survival. They are connected for me--so I'm finding it doubly worthwhile to work on it and acknowledge the reality of my consumption habits.