The Sandbox Writing Challenge #68 — Turn that frown upside down!

It’s time to get back to Calen’s current challenge. Yes, I am a few days late, but I’d already scheduled the older challenges a few days ahead and wanted them to play out. This prompt is from the Self Discovery Journal and is supposed to be a bit on the light-hearted side.

Have you done anything lately to make someone smile?

I think I saw my dad smile a few days ago when I made some homemade buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy. It’s rare that either my dad or my brother eats anything I cook, almost as though I might poison them. However, they did both eat the gravy and biscuits. Small wonder.

I can’t say I blame them, even if it does hurt my feelings. You see, I wasn’t allowed to help mother cook as a child or teenager. She never taught me how to make biscuits or gravy or any of her other recipes. She did teach both my sister and my brother. They both think they have a monopoly on mother’s recipes. However, my sister did send me all of them once and I did teach myself to make quite a few of them. Still, if I were to cook any of them, dad might eat some of it, but my brother definitely wouldn’t.

And now that I’ve gone and reminded myself of my unhappy childhood, I think I will go in search of something that will make ME smile.

The Daily Me (Journal) My Life – 12/16/16

Today’s prompt comes from 100 Inspirational Journal Prompts by Melissa Bolton @ The Mogul Mom

Three words to describe your life.

Chaotic, but not outwardly. This is an inner chaos that I deal with on a daily basis, minute by minute throughout my life. The result of decades dealing with mental illness. The chaos manifests as anxiety, OCD moments and the occasional bout of depression.

Uneventful. This is my outer life. Rarely does anything happen around me these days. I go through the same daily routines and only on rare occasions do I deviate from them. This deviation is usually one or two trips a month to the store, or an unplanned evening walk, or an early morning outing on the front porch.

Hopeful. Despite my sometimes negativity, I really do seek out positive reinforcements. I try to remain hopeful that my health will improve, that my writing will go well, and that I won’t have another major mental break.

 

My Daily Tarot – The Devil

12/16/16 – The Devil

The message of the Devil is a warning, a cautionary tale. The Devil is imperfect balance recklessly pursued. Anything in the extreme – eating, working, sexual activity, exercise – leads to an unbalanced life. Take head and moderate your behavior. Keep watch for obsessions in your life. Do not let any belief or practice overshadow all other aspects of your life or you responsibilities to yourself or others.

Be aware of being so afraid of pleasures out of fear of addiction that you repress or deny all desires, even healthy ones.

Curse ye, tarot! Get ye out of my head! Okay, enough of the archaic. But seriously, I’ve been thinking about my food obsessions lately and how to counter them. I am so addicted to carbs it is not even remotely amusing these days. Cookies, cake, bread, bagels, candy, potatoes, biscuits… I cannot get enough of them. Seriously, I can eat a bagel and an hour later I am into donuts or cake or eating a ton of Milky Ways. Then a short while later, I want pasta or french fries. I eat and eat and eat until I go to bed and I am never satiated. I also know this obsession is reeking havoc with my blood sugar levels. I don’t even take my readings anymore. I just take my meds the same each day and pray it is making some headway, but I know it isn’t. I also spent months (9!) on a Low Carb, Healthy Fats diet and was hardly ever hungry. In fact, I ate one meal per day. But I always missed carbs and eventually went off the diet. *sighs* I also know how healthy I felt eating just vegetables and meat with the healthy fats of coconut oil, butter and olive oil. I want to get back to that!

Want to know how I know I’ve done harm to my body by going back on carbs? I’ve lost muscle mass again in me arse and sitting is now painful. My joints also ache, especially my hips, which means sleeping on my sides is now painful as well. AND I have to pee, constantly. I know I am damaging my body. I know it! I am such an idiot sometimes.

So my goal is to go back to LCHF beginning on January 1st. No more carbs. Just healthy meat, fats and vegetables. Because of my current dental situation, I cannot eat raw vegetables and cooked ones are depleted of vitamins, so I plan on doing blended vegetables and eating more sauerkraut and kimchee, even if I have to make my own! I plan on making vegetables (mostly leafy greens) about 75% of my diet and keeping meat minimal, just enough to keep my muscle mass up. And lots of healthy fats!