What's For Dinner?

Dang it. I really need to actually sit down and read the destruction manual on my camera (that I bought 2 years ago) as I did something with it and lately the picture quality has sucked.

Anyways. I've been working on variety in my meals. Not easy when you don't love cooking, especially not for just ones self. So the other day I came up with this. It's a shell less taco.

Basically I started off with some of the canned beef from Cos*tco and tried that first by itself but it was too dry after I microwaved it. So I took a can of the beef, added a small can of sauce and about half a packet of taco seasoning. Instant (sort of) shredded taco meat. I had made up a version of corn and black bean relish like stuff for myself which I then added to the beef and then threw on a couple of olives sliced up and some shredded cheese. And I had a taco without a shell. You know since I'm swearing off tortillas after a couple of bites of one made me sick for hours on end. It turned out really good though and I took the meat and divided it up into several small bowls and froze 3 of them. That way it doesn't take me all week to get through this and I'm not sick of it within the week. I did also have a bit of a mishap today with food. I felt pretty goofy about it. I was eating a cucumber slice and tossed a piece into my mouth and tried to talk or inhaled or something. I ended up swallowing the partial slice whole without chewing which then freaked me out. I was worried it was going to get caught in my pouch. It felt really funny for a while too but I think it was actually stuck in my esophagus because I kept trying to swallow to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling and finally I took a bite of something else and swallowed that and then felt better. I was so relieved that I didn't have to go to the ER to have them go down and get it or I figured my other option would have been syrup of ipecac to make myself puke.

Last night I was petting Sara and realized she was shedding a lot. So I worked on trying to get some of the hair off her. You would think that with as little hair as these two have they wouldn't shed much... You'd be wrong. This is a not so good picture of the hair that came off my cat. And her fascination with it.

And finally this was fun although it didn't work so well in the picture. I've never figured out how to take good pictures of myself in the mirror. The other night when I was going through clothes I decided to put on my biggest pair of pants I had from before surgery. They were a size 26. I've also decided to keep them to remind myself of where I was and where I'm going. This is just a little less than 3.5 months post op. If I let go they fall off.

Have I Mentioned?

That I hate making big decisions. I never know what to do and I worry that the decision I make will be the wrong decision and so on. Makes me a bit crazy. So I've been doing the back and forth on the whole bankruptcy thing. Upside is that it would cut my monthly payments in life half and give me enough money that I wouldn't feel like I'm struggling so damn much. Down side of course is that it screws my credit (although it's already pretty much screwed thanks to the house in Washington) and that I still have to pay everything off. So looking at debt management programs I could do helps me get everything paid off but the next 2 years are going to pretty much suck ass as far as my finances go. As in pretty much nothing left over after bills are paid (which is where I was at to begin with) and possibly needing to move yet again to somewhere cheaper which at this point basically would likely mean moving into some of the less desire able neighborhoods in Fresno. Not that I live in a desire able neighborhood but it's not horrible for the most part. I feel safe here although obviously I'm careful and don't leave stuff out and about since yes I've had things stolen from here. Then of course there is the overall cost of bankruptcy compared to debt management which is significant. But it goes back to the continuing on going struggle. Which I so sick of. All thanks to the uterus of doom pretty much since most of what I'm struggling to pay off is the accounts I used for IF. Oh and the windows on the house I'm about to lose. Hows that for fun? Then of course I get differing opinions. One person says it's so much better to not ever end up in Bankruptcy and then someone else says "I work for a collection agency and the DMP's are a joke and hurt your credit just as much and you're better off to just file the bankruptcy. So yes. To say I'm confused is putting it lightly.

Then to top it off I got a call from my little sister the other day. It's always so good to talk to her but somehow often leads me more stressed. Right now mom is giving her a hard time (gee, imagine that) and is making her life difficult. It's a situation that is so toxic sounding and I feel so strongly that she needs to get herself and her daughter out of mom's immediate range. One minute she will be talking and talk about moving away from there and then the next she's making excuses for mom and and explaining away her behavior. It's very hard for me to just sit back and let her live her life without my pushing.

So that's been my week. My brain is tired. There have been a few good moments too though. For instance the other day at work, one of the cute guys from surgery saw me in the cafeteria, noticed the weight loss and then came over later and had lunch with me. Nothing like that to give you a little case of perma-grin for the rest of the day and make you feel good.

Trying To Blog

My cat Luna though has other ideas. Ideas that include her being the center of attention because Um, hello! She's been alone all day. If I fail to pay her a sufficient amount of attention then she starts chewing on things, knocking the bulletin board off the wall and basically being a pest.

I'm down to 66 posts in my reader. Right now it's those of you with a lot of posts. Cause I can't start reading at the most recent and get part way through and then stop so if I'm going to read your posts I need to start at farthest out and read all 18 at once (Kristin) and so on. Yes I'm a little bit crazy. It's ok though. I seem to fit in pretty well with everyone around me and I'm still significantly less crazy than most of the patients I deal with.

Thank you all so much for your complements and kind words about my pics. I have to say I'm feeling great. Better than I have felt in a very long time. It's sort of nice to feel like I actually like myself. Between the weight loss and the counseling I'm doing pretty damn good.

As far as the food I cooked up? Most of it has been a success. Although not all of it. I made an egg salad stuff that I thought I would switch up a bit. Instead of just eggs, mayo and mustard I had decided to add a bit of bacon and some black olives. Then thought oooh, I could add some blue cheese and it would be like a cobb salad without the salad. Yeah. Pretty much tasted like shit. All of it ended up in the trash. My spaghetti sauce was another failure this time. See my usual recipe called for a little bit of sugar. Not a lot but some. I decided instead of using my usual brown sugar that I use I'd use the brown sugar/splenda mix? Didn't work. Turns out that is WAY sweeter than the regular brown sugar and I've added more tomato sauce and diced tomatoes and it's still not working. So. Back to the drawing board on that. This weekend I'm going to try to come up with some sort of use for some sugar free hot pepper jelly I got last week at the farmers market. I'll let you know how that goes. I've also purchased and rejected a couple more possible vanilla protein drinks. See vanilla is sort of my favorite flavor. But so far I don't like the vanilla protein drinks for the most part. I did get one last weekend that seems ok so I'll keep trying it and see how I do. Sucks because of course these things are expensive. I have been told I could return them but I'm not sure what I'm going to return them for.

Well, Luna has started whipping me in the face with her tail and drooling on my hand so I think maybe I should be done. I think she thinks she needs something.

Still Talking

So this is post number 800. Yes, I still talk a lot.

I've had a good but busy weekend. Friday night I went to the farmers market because I wanted some raspberries. I got a few other things as well such as tomatoes, zucchini, and green beans and all done in like 20 minutes. It was seriously way to freaking hot to spend much time there. Friday I was also looking at the fact that I seriously need to come up with some sort of meal plans. This last week I didn't really lose any weight as I didn't eat hardly anything. Therefore the old body says "oops, we might be starving, maybe we should keep these calories." It's been sort of hard. I get home from work and don't feel like fixing anything and I haven't had anything really easy to put on a plate and sit down and eat. Or at least not anything other than tuna salad, chicken salad, and egg salad which I'm sort of sick of. In the past on days that I didn't want to deal with fixing dinner I just stopped at whatever fast food place tickled my fancy that night. However that is no longer an option so I decided that I needed to get some serious shopping done and come up with ideas of foods that I could easily get ready. Saturday I went and ran some errands and went grocery shopping. I have been looking for recipes geared towards gastric bypass patients which has sort of been frustrating. I have gotten a lot of ideas for things I can modify to my own tastes from Eggface but I had went looking for a cook book last week. I didn't find one. I found a few informational books that had some recipes in them. I picked on book out that seemed to have the most recipes brought it home and got to looking and the recipes were almost all ridiculous. One recipe seriously called for 8 chicken breasts. It would take me a month to eat 8 chicken breasts. I'm guessing these are meant to be cooked for a family? Cause they are way more food than I need. I ended up buying several different kinds of meat and having the butcher cut the meat up into me size portions if they weren't already cut small. I brought those home and today borrowed my friends food saver and packaged all the individual pieces up separately. Most of them I packaged with either some kind of meat rub or marinade so that the meat will be pretty much pre-seasoned and all I have to do is take it out and cook it. I also made up a few things that I like but that are somewhat time consuming to prepare and I think (hope?) they will freeze well and plan on freezing them as well. I decided to try some of the bites that Shelly (eggface) has recipes for although mine are probably a bit boring to most people compared to hers. Once I leave out all the onions and all. I did 3 different kinds. I did ham and Swiss cheese, turkey bacon and Monterrey jack cheese and sausage and Mexican blend cheese with corn in it. They turned out pretty good. Taste pretty yummy too. Maybe I'm going back to the land of those who eat breakfast. I've spent most of the last 3 months drinking mine as it was easier. So tomorrow it's going to be egg bites.

They didn't however freeze as well with the food saver as when I vacuum sealed them it sort of sucked them flat.
So instead I just put those into regular zip lock freezer bags. I was later given the idea to freeze them first on a plate and then seal into bags. That likely would have worked better and I'll have to try that next time. I also made some spaghetti sauce. I did it a bit different this time. Usually I just use tomato sauce but since I'm not planning on actually eating this with spaghetti I wanted it to have a bit more substance. So I used diced tomatoes. I also didn't put any meat in this and will instead freeze it into packages and then serve it with meat balls for just sauce and meat balls.

I made some queso that I plan to pour into ice cube trays and freeze. This will come in handy with any of the eggs or meat that come back a bit dry, I can then add some of this to it to add some moisture. Plus I could make sort of taco things and use it it. Without the shell of course.

Then I made mini meat loafs. I keep seeing a lot of recipes using ground turkey for meat loaves and meat balls. Down side is that I really don't care much for ground turkey. I know it's lower in fat and such though so I had bought some and thought I would give it a try. Then someone suggested that I actually mix the ground beef (very lean) and ground turkey together to change it up a bit. I ended up doing that and it turned out pretty good. I made 2 different kinds of meat loaves and will freeze those and then vacuum seal them. These are barbecue meat loaf and my favorite cheese burger meat loaf. Yumm.

I also have turkey breast cutlets, pork chops, tri tip and salmon packaged away in various rubs and marinades. Basically I have enough meat items to last me probably a couple of months. Yay!!! Easy meals. All I have to do is add a vegetable.

Several of you have asked for recent pics again. I had some done at 8 weeks but they were really blurry and I deleted them before I remembered I didn't have any others. I did get some done at 12 weeks and while they still aren't great (I really need to teach others how to use my camera or have a second easy point and shoot camera) they are better so I'm posting my pics of myself at 12 weeks post op. For a look at my before pictures you can go here and now here are my 12 week post op pictures. Complete with new scrubs that actually fit.

So Behind

I'm so far behind on most everything right now. Ugg. I had a great weekend but didn't finish all the things I needed to get done. There are like 50 posts in my reader. The paperwork I was supposed to have finished for my lawyer isn't done. I didn't book my plane ticket to Washington. Hmm. The list goes on. Oh well. It's all still here. Tonight I really need to come home and do the paperwork for the lawyer. That's number 1 priority. As far as all that goes I am having to file a chapter 13 bankruptcy but the house won't come back to haunt me later and at least the bills will become more manageable. I hate doing it but I can't keep up any more. So that's the plan there.

I have tons of clothes that I want to list on ebay or craigs*list or something. I know clothes often don't sell very well but it would be nice if I could at least make a little bit off them. Many of them have only been worn once or even not at all. In trying on new stuff on Saturday I kept looking at so much of it and thinking "this will never fit, it's so small!" Yet, it did fit. And often it looked really good. I've always been in the habit of wearing my clothes big. Yes I was a size 24 or even a 26 at times but I also went even bigger on tops and stuff. It's like I was trying to cover up or hide myself. Nothing could be tight or snug. I've been still wearing a lot of those things even though I'm down 60 pounds and it took trying on stuff that actually fit properly and was the right size to see how the clothes that are baggy to hide me don't make me look better at all. Kind of a strange realization.

Well, I suppose I better hurry up and get my make up done and dressed so I can make it to work on time. Happy frickin Monday to me?

Oh My Aching Feet

I guess 5 or so hours of shopping (especially in cheap flip flops) will still wear me out. Me and my neighbor went shopping today after her husband went off to work. Had so much fun. It's amazing to me how much more fun it is when you can buy clothes that are cute, stylish and they fit too! I'm still in plus size stuff but not for long. Most everything I tried on today was 1x or 18/20. I did have to go 2x in one scrub shirt I bought that I knew ran small. I had a gift card for J*C*Penny that I had gotten for my birthday so I got 3 new tops and a dress. All are very cute. Then we went to the uniform store and I got 2 new outfits there. We also went to get our eyebrows etc threaded. Interesting experience. Sort of hurt. Especially the lip. But it feels extra nice now. Stops a Tra*der Jo's got me a few groceries and then to cos*tco where I got a few more things that I needed or wanted (like a new book or two). Now I've got plenty of stuff like chicken, fish and meat balls for eating. My new freezer is coming in very handy! I had looked around a lot at different options for freezers and what I wanted was way out of my range. I wanted either an apartment sized upright which was like $300 or the smallest upright which was $400. Then the other night I took one last look on Crai*gslist before buying the chest freezer I didn't really like but that was cheap. I found an apartment sized upright freezer for $50. It's like 3 foot high and PERFECT! It's working fabulous and has managed to freeze my ice cream bowl much quicker than the freezer in the fridge.

Since it's July in Central California it is of course hotter than f*ck. Hot enough that being outside sucks. I'm planning on spending the rest of the evening inside reading one of my new books. Hope everyone else is having a great weekend!

Oh How I Love 3 Day Weekends

And oh how I don't want to go back to work tomorrow. Oh well. I can't say that I've gotten a lot accomplished this weekend as it's been fairly unpleasant to go outside. Much too hot. I did sit out last night with my neighbors and tried to watch the fireworks. Didn't work so well but it was fun. I felt really bad for the poor frightened dog who went running by at one point dragging his leash behind him. Poor baby.

I finally made my protein ice cream yesterday. It turned out pretty good for a first attempt. I made chocolate peanut butter and it wasn't bad. A little runny but tasted fine. Problem however is that my freezer will not freeze the cylinder for the ice cream maker very well. I don't know if it's because it's a less than effective apartment refrigerator or if it's because it's beyond packed full. Even more so now. I got a bunch of cherries cheap at the grocery store yesterday and so last night I sat and watched a movie and pitted cherries. Once all 3 bags were pitted and the movie was over I bagged them all up and froze them. They are super yummy in my smoothies in the morning and I love having them. I really need a separate freezer. I wish I could find a small one cheap. I've been watching craig*s*list and they are all way to big.

Otherwise I've done laundry and enjoyed some good reading time. I've also cleaned up my spare bedroom a little. Not enough but some. I wish I had somewhere I could have a garage sale since I've now got so many clothes and such to get rid of. Oh and this afternoon I hopped on the scale just for the heck of it. I almost never do that during the day because I weigh more than 1st thing in the morning. Umm yeah. I was down like 6 pounds since last Wednesday. I guess maybe my coworker was right when she told me on Friday that I looked like I had lost weight since Monday.

OMG

So I'm sitting around on a Sunday surfing craigs*list. I don't know what I'm looking for although I could use a freezer. Instead I found this:

I have 155 brand new condoms, never been used. They are all Durex Performax, and they expire in 2014. I just got my girl pregnant so I don't need them anymore. Yay me.
These condoms are designed to make the male last longer. I'm only asking for 40 bucks for all 155 condoms. If you are interested you can call or text me at xxx-xxx-xxxx anytime.
Also if you can get me a job call me too. I need the job for my future child support payments. Happy 4th of July! If you call before 9 p.m. July 4th I will even throw in two more condoms for free.

I guess you can give the boy an A for creativity.

What A Week

Well last week was another crazy busy week. It seems like I am constantly on the go. Yet I got quite a bit accomplished as well so I guess it's all ok. I managed to find a home/buyer for my rubber stamping stuff and the person who got it all got a screaming deal on it. She loved it though and the stuff will actually get used instead of sitting here collecting dust and drying out. So that's stuff gone out of my spare room. I spent most of the money I was paid for that on some new scrubs. Or new to me. I bought a bunch of stuff off ebay and got some pretty good deals on most of it. All of the stuff I had is so big on me now it looks like I'm swimming in it and it was time to get some smaller stuff. Yesterday I took all the shirts and stuff that are too big and took them out of the closet. They will sort of sit around for a while as I plan to make myself a quilt out of them. I know I could give them away or sell many of them but there were so many of them that I just loved the prints so much and I hate to part with them. They feel like a part of my identity as a nurse. So I'll keep them and eventually get around to my project.

I also finally met with a lawyer on Friday regarding my financial situation. I got some information on what my options are. It looks like I probably won't be able to file chapter 7 bankruptcy and will have to go the chapter 13 route. Sucks but I suppose it's better than nothing. Plus I do still get to keep my car. That makes me feel better. From what they told me on the house, I'm actually better off to let it foreclose so I am letting myself or telling myself to quit worrying about that part of it. Or at least that is the goal.

This weekend I'm just enjoying my time off and the fact that I've got good AC since it's hot here again. I went yesterday and got an ice cream maker and today am going to try to make some protein ice cream that I see all the time on eggface's blog.

So that's been my week. Now I have a lot of blog reading to catch up on and some house work to do so I suppose I should get busy. Haha. I'll likely go sit down with my book again.