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.