Time Travel Day, Hormonal Parent Version

Hey, I forgot to tell you about something I saw yesterday. For real. In a person's house. This is a button on a real microwave. Maybe you have one, but I'd never seen this before.

"Is it done?" "Nope." "How much longer?" "I don't know. I just need to cook it a bit more." Beep.

Okay, so we "fell back" in the wee hours of this morning. It meant nothing, of course, to my younger child, who was up at 6:10 AM. I'm just glad it wasn't earlier. Last week, he was waking up that early on Daylight Saving Time, so I was scared today would be a 5 AM start. Grateful we dodged that bullet.

We had some breakfast and I was trying to make sure James got to sleep in, so we took off pretty early. We usually go to the later church service, but we were too early even for early service, so I stopped by the office to get something out of the mail hold, and Mal played in the on-demand yoga room. (Yeah, I know. Fancy.)

Then we went to early church, and I got to look through the left-overs from the holiday bazaar I missed yesterday becasue we were out having adventures. We made it through about 2/3 of the service before Mal was walking out the door (literally), so we got to the gym just as it was opening.

By the way, until you've lived with this kid for, oh, two years or so, let's not talk to me about "What do you mean, he just left church? You make him stay. You're the parent." Tell you what, YOU make him stay, and I'll be super grateful.

Anyhoo, he played at the gym for an hour and a half, and I had to keep forcing him to take breaks because he was crazy tired, wearing himself out, and having an absolute ball, but I was afraid he was going to hurt himself.

When we got home, I was tired and I had some chores I needed to get done (vacuuming up, cleaning out the litter boxes, and getting the trash ready for pick-up). Also, I was exhausted. So I did what any sane person would do and pulled out of the closet the four legs and giant, heavy, solid wood top of the amazing Crate and Barrell dining room table someone gave us several months ago. Hyper toddler and a chance of rain? Seemed like a perfect time to spray-paint stuff out on the patio, right?

My sweet husband jumped right in, trading spray-painting with kid-wrangling, and we got two coats on that puppy, then brought it in, put the legs on, and I got one coat of the chalkboard paint put on the top of it. It's supposed to dry for 4 hours before I put a second (and final) coat of the chalkboard paint, but I just read that that time is based on 50% humidity, and it's 95% humidity here now, so I have to wait until tomorrow. When James isn't here.

Oh, and we have a giant dining room table (leaf inserted, because we have to paint the whole thing, of course) in our entry way. Like, we have to crawl under it to get out of the apartment. I'll probably move it into the dining area (we don't use as a dining area) when I'm confident it's dry, after moving Mal's slide out onto the patio with the Sit-and-Spin, the sand box, and the water table.

Ugh.

But did I mention that the table was free?

Okay, so here's the deal. I need some inspiration or something. I've been doing this "monitoring caloric intake" since my birthday week, or just over 2 months. I know I've lost weight because my clothes fit better and some other personal stuff I'm not telling you. I don't have a scale. I don't care about that.

What I'm finding, though, is that I'm bored with counting the calories, and I'm eating very weird because of it. Like I typically have all of my calories taken by about 4 PM (which was 3 PM today). It's stupid. Once I can't have any more food, I can tell myself, "Sorry, you're done," and not eat. Mostly. But when I think, "I only have 350 calories left? But I'm hungry and that's not a lot of food! What can I eat? Oh. I'll eat this thing. Ugh. I'm just going to eat it now and get it over with so I can stop thinking about it."

That sounds ridiculous, but it's what I'm doing. I hate this whole thing, but I don't want to lose the progress I've made, and I wouldn't mind losing a bit more. But I am slowly eating more because I feel like I have to or I'm just grumpy and blehh. And I don't like how I'm obsessing over when I can eat next, and what I can fit in. I hate this being an on and off companion in my life, big time.

Finally, here's another thing. Most of today's mania was brought on by hormones. I forgot to mention that I did vacuum, including putting on the pet attachment and going after a bunch of chairs. And the cat condo. Plus the trash, litter box, sweeping, etc. Also my lethargy about and resentment of the calorie-counting. I really hope I'm about to go through menopause because this is getting exhausting. I have this thing now where I kind of start my "girl time" three days before I *really* start it, but that results in ten days of... dealing with this garbage. And this time, it's like I did the "get ready" start, then the real thing, then it tapered off, and now today it's a second real start, so who knows how long it will last (today makes it a week so far). Ugh.

Um. Hope you all had a great Sunday.