Almost positive...

don't you hate that phrase? "I'm almost positive". I'm pretty sure you can't be almost positive. You can be positive, you can be unsure, you can be fairly confident, but to say you're almost positive, still makes you negative, right? Let's put it on the number scale, shall we...?

-1...0...1...2... Okay, now positive is on one side of zero, and negative is on the other so if you're "almost positive" you're not. Ok? Case Closed.

the reason I bring it up, is my ob/gyn says she's "almost positive" I'm having a girl. Not positive, but almost. I take no comfort in this statement. I have three other children and each time I was told that the doctor was "almost positive" it was a girl. Yes, that's right, this is my 4th child...It's a deep sickness, I know. Why, yes, I am crazy, thank you for asking, but we've gotten off the point. Four pregnancies, four ultrasounds, four 'almost positives". Three labors, three deliveries (so far), 2 boys and a girl. You see my problem? Yes I want a girl, I would love another girl, and frankly, I would love a boy just as well, but what I really want is just to know. Just once. Just this one time I'd like the doctor to say "well, look at that, you're definately having a _____". I just really really want to know.

On that note...any ideas for a girl's name?

Peanut Butter Results

Okay, I tried the power butter. Yes, I know I said I wasn't hungry...stop yelling at me.

texture: weird. It has that oil on top like natural pb, which is fine, I just stirred it in, but it never got as thick as I expected. Instead of sticking to the roof of my mouth, when I took a bite it kind of spread out over my tongue like a little woolen blanket. It made that weird little muscle on the underside of my tongue uncomfortable, as it seeped underneath. Plus, the "lumps" are roasted flax, which give you the impression not of crunchy peanut bits, but of little ant bodies mixed in with every bite.

color: normal, but with little black flecks from the previously detailed "ant bodies"...

taste: amazingly...delicious. Really. I wouldn't lie to you. It would even give my full-fat Jiff a run for its money. And it has Omega 3 & 6, so no more flax oil shooters.

price: way too expensive in my opinion, but I'll have to look into the larger sizes to see if it's more economical

I know, I know, I can hear your cries..."wherever do we get this miracle of modern science?": well, fear not my friends, I would never leave you in the dark...you can find it here

Ba Humbug

Today I am mean. I'm mad at everyone for everything they've done, and most things that they neglected to do. I'm mad at the stupid boys at work for being their usual annoying immature selves, my husband for being a butt-head and golfing all day instead of getting the car registered and various other tasks he was assigned to accomplish, and myself for not coming up with a good excuse to get out of work early and enjoy the 70 degree day. Willing myself to lighten up, I made the yummiest free day chicken in the world...unfortunately I had eaten so many peanut butter eggs throughout the day, I could only finish 1/2. And speaking of peanut butter...has anyone tried "peanut power butter"? According to the manufacturer, they were able to increase the amount of protein (through pasteurized egg whites) from 15 grams per 2 oz. to 32 grams. Then, they lowered the overall fat content by de-fatting the pb and then adding flax seed oil and whole roasted flax seeds back in. I ordered some yesterday, and received it today. However I'm too full from the aforementioned pb eggs and bad for me chicken to try it yet...Taste test results to appear later. Side note: it better be freaking great for the amount of $$ they charge!

So bad for you that you really don't even want to know the stats, chicken:

Grill chicken breast on George Forman
brush with dijon mustard (mix in a tiny bit of flour so it's like a paste)
roll in frozen shredded hashbrowns
Fry in Crisco till brown and crispy

My uncle is dying. I should feel bad about this. I know I should. But I don't. Me...the one that gets picked on for having "soft feelings", cannot muster up one tiny bit of sorrow, and that freaks me out a little. Granted, the man is a horrible person, but being as he's a relative and all I feel like I should feel something. Anything. And I don't. My mother keeps sending me these guilt-filled emails that say "Not that you care, but..."; "just thought you should know that...not that you care". On and on and on, the emails just keep coming, and I keep thinking "gee mom, if you know that I don't care, why do you keep telling me?"

I don't even feel sorry for his wife, and frankly all his kids are grown and better off without him. I tried to muster up a little remorse for my grandmother, as it just seems unnatural for a parent to outlive a child, but the best I can come up with is a generic feeling of unease. Nothing close to the sorrow that I thought I could fabricate.

See, the man is inhuman. Years ago, when my godmother died, she left me (and my siblings) a good deal of money in her will. He was the executor, and as such, decided to take all the money and build himself a lovely lake house instead. When I called him on it, his response was "fuck you" as he slammed the phone down.

But the money is nothing.

When my cousin was 5, he married her mom. When she was 6, he started molesting her. When she was 12, her mother walked in and caught him on top of her. By the time she was 15, she had tried to kill herself 8 times, was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and had run away from home. Her mother blamed her for "flirting" and "asking for it", and never divorced him. Today, my cousin lives in California, is a recovering addict, and is the sweetest, funniest, most screwed up person I know. This much I know. The rest is speculation. He had one son that ended up in prison for molesting a 12 year old boy. I can't help but think it was a learned behavior. His other daughter was a coke addict by the time she was 16 and had a total of 5 abortions before she finally left the country and straightened up her life on another continent. I can't help but think she had some help getting screwed up.

So, goodbye Bob. And mom, you're wrong. It's not that I don't care, it's just that it doesn't make me sad. Not one little bit.

Doctor's visit

Okay, let me preface this by saying that I am insanely obsessive about my weight problem. There is not a day that 5 minutes passes that I'm not aware of this fat here, or that fat there. I know. Sick and wrong, but still. My personal opinion is that it all started back when I was little and was the same size as my sister that's three years older than me. Normally not a huge issue, I would venture to guess, but in my case I was living with a very petite mother and grandmother (neither of them, or my sister is over 5'4", and I'm 5'7.1/2"), so every morning my grandmother would start the day by saying "maybe you should skip breakfast, since the way you eat, you're going to be as big as a house". I was 7. Now, mind you, I was a gymnast that had practice 5-6 times a week, and frankly could have probably eaten 3 sides of beef daily and not put on an ounce of fat (looking back at pictures, I was very toned, and not at all in danger of being fat), but you believe what you're told when you're 7 and it affected me. Every time I opened the fridge, or sat down for a meal, I knew I was good for at least a 3 minute lecture on how much smaller my sister was and that nobody likes big fat girls. I can remember times when I was 8 or 9 that my grandmother would refuse to serve me the main meal that the family was eating, telling me I could just have the side vegetable, since I needed to lose weight anyway. I started stealing food from the pantry and hiding it in my closet or under my bed, or in the back of my drawers. Anything. Crackers, boxes of cake mix, dried pasta, anything. To this day, when I'm feeling incredibly stressed, I catch myself hiding food in my desk, or on the highest shelf in the kitchen, and on really bad days, I gourge. I hide in the bathroom or bedroom, and eat what ever I can find, as fast as I can. I've just never gotten past it. The first time my husband ever met my grandmother I told him that I would bet him $50, that the first thing she said to me would either be "you're too fat" or "your hair looks terrible"...we walked in the door, she took one look at me and said "you would think that you'd try to get a better haircut so that people wouldn't notice how fat you're getting". I was a size 8 at the time.

Anyway, back to my point...I know this about myself, and I know that on the rare occasions that I look at the scale I can easily freak myself out and send myself into a nasty self-hating binge and purge mode, so, as a general rule, I just don't look. Plus, I've read and re-read Why the Scale Lies, so I know better than to trust the judgement of my worth to a stupid little piece of metal and plastic. Unless I'm doing BFL, because then, of course, you have to know where you start, but, being as I'm pregnant right now, I just don't look. When I go to the office, and I step on the scale, I stand backwards, and I ask that the nurse just write down the figure and not tell me the bad news. My old doctor even knew this, and had the decency to never ever mention to me how much I was gaining. My new doctor, unfortunately, just doesn't get it. I walked in for my appointment yesterday and she said to me "gee, you're the 4th woman I've seen today that's gained between 6 and 8 pounds this month", obviously having no idea that her innocent comment was going to send me off the deep end. But here I am, treading water between the shores of "hey, I'm pregnant, and the baby needs solid nutrition to grow and be healthy" and "oh my god, my grandmother is right and I'm as big as a house". Yes, so far my rational mind is winning and I'm resisting the urge to starve, or binge and purge, but my whole heart hurts.

I spent the rest of the appointment (I had to be there an hour to have my glucose tolerance test), watching women in different stages of their pregnancy walk in and out, wondering why some are blessed to remain thin everywhere but that cute little ball of baby on their stomach, while others, like me, are destined to spread all over, and cursing myself for being in the wrong group.

Ever have one of those weeks? Mine has been about 7 weeks long. I've been trying to stay positive, poke fun at the negative, and all, but it's wearing me down folks. It's wearing me down.

It's not even so much that terrible things have been happening, it's just that everything is just so hard. No smooth sailing here. Nope, every single simple stupid thing in my life is taking 8 times longer than it should, because there's some little hangup, some little glitch in the system, some little mess that always steps in the path of my progress.

Makes a girl want to punch someone square in the eye. And believe you me there are plenty, and I mean plenty of viable options if I were to be looking for a deserving recipient.