All kinds of changes

The past year has brought so many changes it could make one's head spin. Good thing I'm used to a chaotic life, and I learned to roll with the punches a long time ago.

In the past year, my husband has achieved his career goals of making it into the Warrant Officer corps in the Army. Life has gotten a whole lot less stressful for him, and by osmosis, for me. We had the initial six weeks of separation while he was in candidate school, and another 10 weeks for WOBC (Warrant Officer Basic Course for those that don't know the lingo). In between those classes, we had a long holiday visit from my in-laws, my daughter and her boyfriend moved into their own place, and we moved into on-post housing. All during a thirty day period. During that time, I sprained my right knee, and during the solitary move, dropped a table on my big toe on the left, effectively hobbling me for a good long while.

Before all of these lovely events though, Gerry and I talked about adoption. While researching the cost of adoption, and realizing we'd have to sell some major assets (like a car) to come even close to amassing what we'd need, we stumbled upon an alternative. We decided to apply for a foster care license.

Some of my family thinks I'm insane, and some of my family thinks I'm a super-hero. Gerry's family is over the moon with joy at the prospect of little grandchildren. Even though Gerry is "step dad" to my kids, they were already almost grown by the time we got together, so he was never really a father figure; more of a friend, and the guy that makes their mom happy. They have a hard time thinking of him as a step dad, much less his parents as grandparents.

But I digress. We waited until all of the Warrant Officer schooling was done before getting down to the foster care license process. We attended an orientation before he left for the first phase of school, and everything was put on hold until after the second phase. The ball is rolling now though, and we are both nervous and excited and a little bit terrified. Having children will change our relationship in ways neither of us can anticipate. My first marriage crumbled, in part due to the nature of working opposite shifts to minimize the amount of time my kids spent in day care. This time around, I don't have to work to stay afloat financially, and for the first time in my life, I can actually be a stay-at-home mom.

The paperwork, and legwork, involved in the licensing process borders on the obscene (although it's still nothing compared to a military security clearance form - hello twenty or more pages). There are twenty seven hours of required pre-licensing classes, a CPR/first aid course along with the blood-borne pathogen class, background check forms, fingerprinting, immunizations, a complete physical, and an astounding number of safety items to buy for the home. I didn't know there was such a thing as a portable fire escape ladder until we started this process. I'd guess, as of today, we're about half way through the process. We still have to have interviews with the licensor - both separately and together (not unlike the immigration interviews, now that I think of it).

We have a big empty house, and lots of love to give. Whether we end up fostering dozens of kids but adopting none, or get to adopt the first child we get, life won't be the same for us. And damn if I'm not looking forward to it.

Spring is ....not quite sprung.

It's April. Yay. It's the time of the year when the weather goes whacky, colds are inevitable, and spring cleaning is afoot. Sort of. We've completed our move and Gerry is back to work at his new unit. We accomplished this with no small amount of trepidation, but for the most part, it all worked out dandy.

My daughter and her boyfriend has moved in with us. That part is not so dandy. Her former boss, also my former boss, royally screwed her over, and probably laughed and rubbed his hands together while he did it. I won't go into ugly details here, but suffice it to say that if we had not ended up with a timely tax refund, they'd be living on the streets of Ruidoso with all of their crap stuffed into a suitcase and a laundry bag. I am not a happy camper, and given that the owners of the former place of employment subscribe to the religion of their homeland, I am sure that karma will revisit them and heap all the harshness on their heads that they deserve.

Onward to other happenings. My diet is going well, still low-carbing, and successfully I might add. I went to the doctor and had blood work done at the six month point, and all of my results came back normal. Blood sugar, cholesterol, the whole shebang. I've also lost about 25 pounds, but this seems inconsequential in comparison to getting my diabetes under control without medication.

I've spent some quality time with my friend, who is also my former supervisor from the evil empire that is Best Western. If nothing else good came from my year with those clowns, and nothing else did, I came away from the experience with a good friend. Fate sent her to Washington about six months ahead of me, and she lives about 5 minutes away, so we get together as often as we can. It's good to have a relationship outside of the internet friends I have, and I have a few of those too. Particularly one couple who lives a couple of hours away that we'll drive down to see this coming weekend. Another couple lives an hour in the other direction that I hope we'll see again soon as well.

All in all, I have a pretty good life. It's the kind of life that I cherish every moment of, because God knows that anything can change and throw a pound of sugar in the gas tank of life. As my daughter has so painfully discovered in the past couple of weeks.

Busy busy busy

So the holidays have come and gone, and all of our plans to spend them with family went out the window when we realized we'd have to have the leave time and money to make this move a month after Christmas (roughly). It's mid-January now and the time to head north is almost upon us! We are both so excited, it's hard to contain ourselves.

We found a house to rent, very close to a good friend in Washington, close to the post for ease of access for Gerry to get to work, pets allowed, and within our price range. Can't ask for more than that, can we? 

Besides the new place to live, I've begun a new eating lifestyle that...amazingly...I've stuck to with ease for the past three months. It's called the Ketogenic diet, and it's one that doctors have used for years to treat seizures in children. The Atkins diet was based on this, but I like this better because there's not some industry making money off of selling me products that are supposed to be good for me, but likely keep me dependent on their supply of food items. This is basically just a straight out low-carb, high-fat diet. I had blood work drawn three weeks into the diet and all of my numbers came back normal except for my hbA1C, and that's because it measures the spikes and dips in blood sugar over a 3 month period. I'm sure I fluctuated a ton before starting this diet.

Anyway, I haven't lost a whole ton of weight yet, but I know it's because I'm pretty sedentary. I need to get more exercise than I do and the weight will melt right off. But that's okay, because I already feel good, I've lost 14 pounds, and I'm not constantly hungry. There's no special foods to buy (unless you want to get creative), and I eat a lot of eggs, cheese, butter, steak, bacon, broccoli, asparagus, and cauliflower. I've ditched sugar, flour, root vegetables like onions and potatoes, and learned how to cook with things like almond flour and coconut oil. Snacks, if I get hungry and want one, consist of cheese, nuts, or a spoonful of peanut butter. I drink a lot of water, curing another issue I was having, because I was dehydrating myself before and this diet requires a lot of water to flush the ketones away.

I just want to say, because I don't feel deprived at all, I didn't even have the desire to cheat or go off the diet for the holidays. My Thanksgiving consisted of turkey, broccoli and cauliflower with home made cheese sauce, and a pumpkin dessert that had no sugar and about 5 grams of carbs total. For Christmas, we had a prime rib, shrimp scampi, and deviled eggs. I made another concoction for dessert that was something like a coconut cream pie dessert, minus the crust. I have stopped drinking years ago, so New Years Eve didn't have me wanting alcohol.

Overall, I think I'm doing very well, I'm happy, getting healthier, and still very much in love after eleven years. What more could a girl want? I wouldn't ask for anything more anyhow, as I'm already blessed enough. Let others have their wishes, mine have all come true.

On the move again

Such is the life of a military family. We are moving back to Fort Lewis in Washington in the next few months. I couldn't be happier about this, though. I have hated El Paso with a burning passion that I can't even explain. I've never hated anything so much as living in this desert town on the edge of Mexico. Within the next few months, I will be back where it rains. Where the trees and grass aren't brown and prickly. Where the wind doesn't blow ten pounds of dirt through your window sills to decorate the floors and furniture. Where I can open the window and enjoy a breeze at night when I go to sleep without dirt blowing in my face. It's beautiful outside at night in October in El Paso, but we still have the air conditioner running because if we open the window, we get dirt all over our bed.

We can't let the dogs outside for long in the summer for fear of something on the ground biting them. Tara had a spider bite last spring, most likely a brown recluse, that ate away at her flesh and left a gaping hole in her side for three months. In the fall, the dogs go outside to pee, five minutes, and they come limping back in and I have to pull a bunch of stickers out of the paws. You know, those stickers that stick to socks and pants if you walk in the woods. Woods smoods. Those stickers are part of our lawn, both front and back yard. We tried once...once...to take our dogs for a hike. Thought we'd find a park with some grass, or someplace with shade trees where we could hike. Franklin Mountains sounded promising. We went there, and found the only trees were squat cactus, and the mountain itself was literally rocks, with a path of smaller rocks bordered by rough weeds. We twisted our ankles every hundred or so feet, and the dogs kept losing their balance. We were hot, tired, sore, and sweaty inside of thirty minutes. So much for a morning hike.

So, have I made it clear yet, just how nasty living here is? I can't wait to leave!

The life of a perpetual dieter

So, I've been doing the yo-yo, gaining, losing, gaining, etc. for the past few years, but I think I've figured out the right way to go about permanent weight loss.

One thing I am good at is seeing patterns. So I began to see my eating patterns, what I was doing to myself, and why. I decided to try Atkins again. I'd done it before, years ago, but as I said, when you move a lot, you tend to toss your routines and habits out the window when it comes to road trip eating.

So about a month ago, I went on Atkins. It stuck for about a week. Lost 6 pounds in that week. Then on the 8th day, 3 pounds were back. So naturally I said, "Screw this!" and went back to my old ways.

BUT (there's always a big butt in there, right?) After going back to my old ways, it occurred to me that I'd felt pretty good while on the low carb diet. I wasn't plagued by lots of gas (apparently too many carbs make me gassy), my ankles hadn't swelled in a week, and I drank more water without even realizing it. Those are pretty good clues, aren't they? I thought so. I went back one more time.

I found a support site dedicated to ketogenic diets, and found all sorts of videos from doctors explaining why low carb is good for you. Two doctors in particular explained why and how this works in very simple to understand terms. One was Dr. Mary Vernon (a  former president of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians) and one was Dr. Eric Westman (current president of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians). Search for them on Youtube for some good explanations.

So anyway, I've been back on low carb for only 4 days this time. I've bypassed Atkins, because I think those bars and shakes they sell are probably not the best to include in a low carb diet. Since Dr. Atkins died, the brand is just a business with no personal investment. Someone is just making money off his name, and I'd rather not support that. But, I digress.

In the four days since I started again, I've lost four pounds, I'm actually eating less calories than before without measuring or weighing any food, I'm consuming a lot more fat than ever before and not dumping (those who have had gastric bypass don't need dumping explained). This is a big one, because I've been increasingly sensitive to dumping syndrome as the post-op years go by, and now I'm not dumping at all even though the fat I'm consuming has increased by a LOT.

The overall best part of this though, and this is what's going to keep me on this path towards a healthy weight; I'm not hungry. Let me just say that louder. I'M NOT HUNGRY. Not even a little, between meals. Every diet I've ever been on has left me feeling hungry, starving in fact, half way between meals. Breakfast at 7:30am? I'm hungry and craving ANYTHING by 10am. Snack at 10am? I'm starving by lunch time at 12. It continues through the day, and if I'm hungry, I eat. If I'm not hungry, I don't eat. Simple.

This way of life isn't for everyone. It's hard to break a lifetime of habits and "learning". Consider this though. The food pyramid recommends that 50% of your daily intake come from carbohydrates. FIFTY PERCENT. At the same time, the number of obese people in this country has skyrocketed. Mostly since the food pyramid was revised. The USDA can't recommend the same thing for every person in the country. We're all different. Keep looking for the way that is right for you.

I hate politics

WARNING: Rant incoming


Normally, I say I keep my opinions on politics to myself, discussing it only with my husband. There are too many people out there with differing opinions and ideas on how things should be done, and I dislike the idea of friends being alienated by those opinions. It also occurred to me that my posts here are sometimes about politics, so I guess I don't keep my opinions to myself as much as I thought.

With that, on to the rant.

The idea of moving to another country has become more and more appealing. Originally, I thought Canada (and that's still an option since my husband is a dual citizen), but I am very aware that the grass is not necessarily greener north of the border. Or anywhere, for that matter. Politics and power equals corruption and greed no matter where you live.

With the election season in full swing, and media outlets, social networks, and every nook and cranny of the country blasting their opinions for all to hear, I'm becoming embarrassed to be an American. I used to be very proud to be a natural born citizen of the United States. Now it feels more like I'm a member of a sideshow at a three-ring circus.

Romney is bad for this country. Republicans who are STILL reeling over the fact that a black man was elected president, are bad for this country. It's not like we're electing a dictator or a king who will have absolute rule for the next fifty years. I watch, and I listen, everyday...to people who will do anything, say anything, vote for anyone, just to get the black man out of the white house. They are willfully dragging our economy into the toilet just so they can say it's the president's fault. They try and rig elections, grind their boot-heels into the backs of the poor and elderly to keep them from voting, and try taking away what little the poor have.

AND they call themselves Christians! The hypocrisy is astounding! All of these so-called dyed-in-the-wool red states, are filled with poor folks, uneducated folks, hard working individuals that Romney considers worthless and  "not his job to worry about". And they'll stomp their way to the voting booth to vote for him, because he's a white guy, and for no other reason. Seniors will drag their tired bodies to the voting booth to vote for him, even though he and his running mate are boasting about GETTING RID OF SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE. HELLO! So many retirees didn't have jobs that allowed them to sock away multiple IRAs to live on into retirement. So many of them only have social security and nothing else to survive on. I just don't get it.

I did vote for Obama last election. And I felt he could have done some good if the scared white guys didn't decide to have a temper tantrum and make their priority getting him out next term, instead of working with him to fix the country.

I'm considering voting libertarian, or a write-in this time, simple because I don't think that the Republicans will work with him to fix things any more than last time. I might have voted for Ron Paul had he won the nomination, and I think, again, that the media did a butcher job on him to put Romney in the lead. Betcha they are regretting that now.

I may vote for Obama again, just to keep Romney out of office. It's a crappy reason to vote for someone, and I'm betting that will be the reason for a good chunk of Obama's votes this time around. I haven't decided yet who I'll vote for, but one thing is for sure. I WILL vote. And you should too.

Spontaneous travel plans

As I  write this, I sit in a hotel room in Virginia at 4:30am while my husband is at his morning PT routine. Just a few days ago, I sat in a hotel room in Ruidoso, New Mexico trying to keep my mind off of missing my husband so much while he was away at training. The lightning fast switch in locations is enough to make anyone's head spin, honestly.

As an aside, I would not have been able to do this, and come to Virginia on the spur-of-the-moment if we had any children. But not to dwell on that, I didn't come here out of selfishness or for frivolous reasons. My husband missed me. A lot. It was affecting his ability to concentrate and focus on school. It affected his sense of self-confidence, and mental resiliency. I missed him, too. A lot. I was sad and depressed, moping around the empty house, and debating going to sleep at 8pm just so the days would go by faster. I guess we both needed this.

Some might call us pathetic, but our love for each other has not diminished over the years. It has grown stronger, and when separations come, they are stressful and sometimes devastating. Since this particular separation was able to be circumvented, we did so. I paid for my own transportation out here, and the hotel room price is the same whether one person or two occupies it. Meals we either pay for ourselves, or we share one if the servings are big. There is no exploitation of the government credit card, we get to be together, and my husband can focus on school and aim for honor grad.

It's 3:15am back at home. My poor dogs are probably wondering where the hell I am (my neighbor is taking care of them), and I'm sitting here hunched over a laptop in a hotel room two time zones away. Overall, I love my life and wouldn't trade a minute of it away.