Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I’m cranky this afternoon.

I blame the lack of chocolate.

There is no opportunity for any either since the deli upstairs is now closed.

One more hour until I can go home. At least I am listening to a good book this week. It’s one of those books that you think about all the time when you can’t read it because you’re supposed to be working.

Why is it so impossible to get to a human?

You want your money? Then get a human to answer your phones.

I posted about this at my FB page, but I thought I’d post it here, too.

Starting today I’m counting calories. And I’m keeping a food journal - I’ve had this lovely little leather moleskin for years, but I’m a terrible journal keeper (I blog!) so I have never used it. I pulled it out of a drawer last night to be used as my food diary. Already I have marked down my current weight and goal weight. The number of calories allowed per day at this point (1716) and the foods I have consumed so far. I’ll add lunch in a little bit - Beau’s lovely daily salad with much less cheese, no hard-boiled egg, and with less croutons and dressing. Not no croutons/dressing - I’m not going to punish myself by eliminating all fun foods. That’s a diet killer for me. I’ll keep certain no-nos, but just cut way back on my intake of them.

For instance, I was told that 10 plain M&Ms are 1 WW point. I told Beau that if he bought a large bag of them (and hid them from me) and he portioned out 10-20 pieces per day with my lunch, then I’d be happy. And I’ll have to tell him to buy “light” dairy products from now on, too.

Oh, according to the WW points calculator, I’m allowed 26-28 points. I get 2 points for every nursing session - we’re down to only nursing once a day at this point so I get those extras, but I’ll try to keep it to 26 points when I know the WW values on my meals. I figure between the total calories and WW points I should start to get a handle on what I’m eating.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Now that I am no longer The Food Source™ for Molly Ann, it’s time to shed the extra 50-60 pounds I’m carrying around post-childbirth of two babies.

I’m motivated by the clothes that don’t fit.

I’m unmotivated by the food I like to eat.

There’s also our budget, which is tighter than tight. So while I’d love the accountability of paying for Weight Watchers meetings or their online stuff, we just cannot afford that. So I’m trying to figure out how to do WW without the meetings and without knowing how they value foods to their points system. I hate counting calories, frankly. I don’t want to think of every morsel that goes into my mouth as points. How tedious. I hated doing that when I had the gestational diabetes, too.

Add the complication that Beau is our primary cook, and it means I have to remind him how not to cook. So I’m on the hunt for low cal/low fat recipes that will still taste good and won’t break our bank. I’m hoping this blog will help - I already found a recipe that has potential for the pork chops we have thawing in the frig.

[LATER]: Yes, I know. Exercise. Not happening. No time. For real - there are no extra minutes in my days to work in exercise.

I present, you decide.

SaveAward.gov

We get weekly emails about it from the lead organization.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

I put together this casserole for my friend with the baby and kidney infection. It’s a great one, but I can’t make it for us until I figure out how to do it without milk products. But I am going to work on that, because it is delish.

Chicken Tortillas Casserole
Serves 6-8

4 cooked chicken breasts
1 onion, grated
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
2 cups any kind of salsa (I used roasted verde salsa this time)
1 cup milk
12-15 corn tortilla, cut into quarters
2-3 cups cheddar cheese, grated
2 cans green chilies, seeded/diced

1. Cut chicken into chunks. Set aside.

2. In a bowl, combine the onion, soups, salsa, and milk. Blend well.

3. In a large, lightly greased, casserole dish, layer half of the tortillas. Top with half of the chicken, half of the sauce, and half of the cheese. Sprinkle with 1 can of green chilies.

4. Repeat layers, ending with the cheese on top.

5. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours. You can refrigerate for longer, if you like.

6. Remove cover. Bake at 300 degrees for 1 full hour.

Friday, October 09, 2009

For those of you who pray I have a request for a friend in my small group. Here’s the story:

She just had her 3rd baby about 3-4 weeks ago. Everything seemed fine and then she started experiencing severe pain. She went to the ER where they determined she had the flu and sent her home. The next day the pain was worse so she went back to the ER where they determined she had some kind of kidney infection. She was checked in overnight but released the next day - given pain meds and antibiotics. The pain did not abate, so she went to her doctor (her hub is in the Navy, so she is being seen my military docs) again and this time was told there were two possibilities - a postpartum cyst or some other kind of blockage. She was scheduled for a renal scan on Monday - the results were inconclusive as to the type of blockage and the docs decided to wait 2 more weeks before deciding on surgery to fix the problem in order to see if it would correct with meds.

In the meantime, she’s trying to nurse her baby and had to pump/dump her milk Monday-Tuesday because of the radioactivity from her renal scan - she couldn’t even hold her baby for 48 hours. Then they had a scare when the baby started vomiting after going back to nursing - turns out that was just a reaction to the switching back and forth from formula to breastmilk.

To make matters worse, they are scheduled to move to Korea early next month. Their house is on the market and they have people coming through to look at random times. Her hub is on leave until he leaves, but he will be leaving in about 3 weeks. Her retired father has been with them to help, but he returns home today. And she is still in severe pain.

When I think about it all I have no idea how she’s keeping her sanity and doesn’t just melt into a puddle. Maybe she does, but she puts on a brave face when I see her.

Folks in our small group (ladies only) and their couples group have stepped up to provide meals for the past couple of weeks and for the forseable future. And we’re trying to figure out how to help in other areas - house cleaning, taking care of her older kids, etc.

So, there are so many things to pray for and it’s hard to know where to even start. I love that God already knows all of the troubles. But I admit it’s hard to understand why He’s allowing this at this time.

Anyway, please pray for her healing. That’s the crux of it all. If she does have surgery, it will mean that she does not go with her hub to Korea because it will involve a follow-up surgery than cannot be done there.

Father, please heal her. Please take away whatever is it that is causing the blockage. Please take away her pain and restore her body. Thank you that she is able to still provide the nourishment her baby needs. Thank you for the way You have provided for their needs through the friends at church. Thank you for hearing our cries of petition.

Thanks for praying, friends. I’ll try to update when there’s new news.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

I have a Twitter account, but I don’t use it much.

However, I discovered the awesome power of Twitter as advertising tool for my shop. Now I need to find the balance between spamming my followers and gently reminding them that there’s pretty stuff they can buy.

Follow my business on Twitter - BeadonaWire.

Today is my mother’s birthday.

I have the best mom a gal could have - she’s the ultimate Proverbs 31 woman and also a good friend.

Mom, I hope you have a blessed day today!

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

I have two friends who are currently on bed rest in the latter weeks of their pregnancies.

One is not local, which is a shame, because I’d love to visit her. She has nearly 2 year old triplets and is expecting baby #4 in December. She’s on bed rest at home, which I’m sure is easier and harder since she’s probably tempted to help when she can’t.

The other is local. She is expecting twins and it is her first pregnancy - she’s due in December, as well. She’s in the same hospital that I was when I was on bed rest, which is great because I’m obviously really familiar with the joint. So I went to visit her on my lunch hour yesterday, taking Panera with me and got the bonus of seeing her mom (who was my bridesmaid in my wedding), too. The bummer is that with H1N1 fears, the hospital is really cracking down on visitors - with two 2-hour slots for visitors. And then I heard that they may start clamping that down to family only, which will really stink because I planned to visit her a couple of times week on my lunch hour as I could work it in. Fortunately for her, she has a laptop (which I didn’t, sadly) and her hubby brought in a DVD player to attach to her TV.

Both are doing well, just trying to keep their babies in until the 34-37 week window, of course.

Anyway, being there really took me back to those weeks when I was living in that hospital waiting for Jesse - missing my baby showers and Christmas; spending our 1st anniversary in Labor & Delivery because I was bleeding and contracting; developing a kidney stone; and then the scary and glorious night when my baby boy finally made his arrival into this crazy world. For me, God’s grace and the many visitors kept me sane and in good spirits. I know that the Lord is providing grace to both of my friends - they are both well prayed over by Godly families and friends. And I pray that God will allow for the visitors that they both need to help the tedium of the days pass as they wait for the time to deliver their babies.

Monday, October 05, 2009

Both of the kids’ blogs have updates, including Molly Ann’s latest stats from the 6 month well check.

Ticklish Giggles

Whiny Complaints

Friday was a day off for me. Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours to get things done on the weekend. When you take away Saturday because of an out-of-town trip, then it means having to take a day off from work to make it up. Not that I had a problem with taking a day off - especially after the craziness of the end of the fiscal year. Add that Friday was going to be a really boring day at work because I couldn’t do anything until the financial systems were back up and it just made sense to take the day for myself.

So I spent the day running errands, working on jewelry, doing laundry, and preparing for our day trip on Saturday.

Saturday we hit the road shortly after lunch to go meet up with Beau’s Sis and her daughter’s family in Maryland before we all headed to Pennsylvania for Beau’s niece’s engagement party at his brother’s home. While in MD, there was a swap of baby/toddler clothes between me and Beau’s eldest niece (the one who had her baby boy 3 weeks prior to Molly Ann’s arrival). I took the boy baby clothes her baby had outgrown to give to my friend who is expecting twins. I gave her 24 mo/2T things that Jesse had outgrown for the future. Oh, and she also passed down things her nearly 5 year old boy had outgrown to give to Jesse. Confused?

We got to PA just about 10-15 minutes “late” for the party. Beau’s niece and her fiancé had rented a bus for their DC area friends. The bus beat us to the party, so by the time we got there it looked like things had been in full swing for a while. Beau’s Bro has a very cool backyard with a koi pond that has a large waterfall. He also created a little creek that flows down to what I call the lower yard where there’s a beautiful gazebo. They had a large tent set up down there, too. We never made it down to that part of the yard since Jesse was interested in the koi and pretty much hung around the pond for most of the evening.

Beau’s SIL is Korean and an awesome cook. She and her sister had been prepping food for this gig for the three days leading up to the party and it was fantastic. Beau’s bro smoked a couple turkeys and some salmon and also roasted a pig. We had Thai noodles, wonderful homemade pork spring rolls, California rolls, some kind of corn relish, and the smoked salmon on toast. And Beau’s Bro remembered that I drink Fresca, so he made sure to stock up on that for me. Isn’t that sweet? There was plenty of beer and other alcohol, but I didn’t imbibe.

Beau’s Bro had also hired two teenage girls to babysit - there were a lot more little ones than I expected - so Jesse hung out with them to watch Bolt for a while, too. I wore Molly Ann for most of the time in the mei-tai. Both kids did really well and charmed everyone.

At one point, Beau’s Sis and Beau were talking to another guest who happened to be a pediatric neurologist. He watched Jesse for a bit and remarked that he was pretty advanced verbally for a 2 year old. Beau clarified that Jesse is actually two and a half. “Oh, that makes a difference!” said the doctor with a bit of sarcasm. He said that he would classify Jesse as “off the charts” and possibly a genius - I think Beau said he mentioned the 150 IQ figure. “You basically have a professor in a toddler’s body, there,” he said. Beau’s Sis laughed that he does come by that honestly since Beau is a professor as is his grandfather. Of course we take that all with a large grain of salt, but also file it away for the future in case it does become an issue. As Beau said to the doctor, we just try to keep up with him. Beau’s Sis can clarify anything I may have gotten wrong here - I didn’t hear the conversation myself, but got it from Beau in the car on the way home.
Anyway, our goal departure time was 8pm. We actually left at 8:45pm, which was little too late judging from the meltdown we got from Jesse when I mistakenly removed his shoes for the ride home. We had to stop the car so that I could put them back on. Go figure. But we made it home in just over 2 hours, which was impressive since it’s normally a 3 hour drive. We found a shortcut on the way up that really did take time off of the drive.

Sunday was a quiet day at home. Beau and Jesse went to church so that Beau could help with parking. I stayed home with Molly Ann. I spent the afternoon working on jewelry for the open house later this month. I made several pairs of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.

And now we’re back to Monday. I’m working at home this morning, although not able to actually do work until the systems come back online. And then we take Molly Ann for her 6 month check up this afternoon. I’ll report on that at her blog later…

Happy Monday!

Friday, October 02, 2009

Awesomeness…

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I’ve signed up.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Almost daily I’ll get a phone call here at work from someone who does not know me personally. They will ask for me by my full name. My first name is pretty easy - Jennifer. However, people seem to have a problem pronouncing my last name. And the iterations are hilarious and sad.

I asked Beau if he encountered the butchering of his name and he laughed and said he did all the time and for his whole life.

So it’s something I’ll deal with for the rest of my life, I guess.

What’s silly is that it is pronounced exactly as it is spelled. It isn’t hard by any stretch. Any 4 year old learning to read with phonics would get it pretty quickly. (Jaynee, get CB to read my name, please. Don’t tell him it’s my name, just put the word in front of him and ask him to say it out loud. Report back how hard it was for him in the comments here. Thanks.) It makes me wonder how many adults we have out there who learned to read by the whole word method and can’t figure out how to pronounce my two syllable last name.