Manic Monday

Eating well is definitely HARD- I cannot stress this enough. And my palate is doing an adjustment to all the new organic, low carb, natural flavors. Last night I made a pasta dish including:
ww pasta
chicken sausage
portabella mushrooms
yellow pepper
snow peas
tomato
spinach
I like everything except the chicken sausage. I'm not sure if it's the expectation of pork when I have sausage or the lack of fat and grease; probably a combination of both. I ate it and I also ate it for lunch today. I'm coming to terms with the fact that I will have to figure out how to enjoy my food all over again because these new tastes are foreign to me in such large quantities. I'll start taking pictures so that I can post the meals that I am making.

I joked with a girlfriend that I like my snacks more than I like my meals right now! I snack three times/day on anything from yogurt, almonds, tuna, apple slices, tangerines, carrots, hummus, etc. That's just this week- my dietitian gave me a crazy list of snacks.

Today it's back to the gym for the first time in over a month! Since I'm consuming less calories, I won't have to kill myself working out, which will be nice. I need to learn to enjoy my workouts again. I used to love working out in college. I also had a partner in crime to go with- shout out you know who you are! Colin likes to go, but our weekday schedules are so different. He gets home much later and by the time he gets to the gym I'm done or close to done with my workout. I know there are websites to find workout buddies, perhaps I'll try that.

I watched Catfish last night. A mockumentary? about a woman who makes up all these personas and meets this young man from NYC on the Internet and converses with him as an 8 yr old and a 19 yr old even though she's 40-something. I was really saddened by this because this woman had so little going on in her life in Northern Michigan that she had to make up this existence. It made me really sad to think about that people are so unhappy they make up an alternate universe to cope with life. That was how I saw that movie.

Meanwhile I go home to Cleveland next Friday. If you know me, you know I make this journey only once/year. One because that's all I can afford right now and two because for some many reasons it's just difficult for me to spend any mass amount of time at home. For one my grandmother doesn't know that much about my life and I'd like to keep it that way. She's fragile and I don't want to burden her with my craziness. It will be good to see her; I'll be home until the 30th and then leave for Michigan and be there until the 2nd. I'm not sure what I'll be doing in Cleveland. My one friend that I still converse with will not be home for the holidays so I am at a loss for who to hang out with and what to do. No matter, I'll only be there a few days, so I'll try to hang out with my brother. We've never been close, but in our adult life I'm making a small effort to change that. Cleveland is also hard because my Great Aunt Jean now lives there and she has severe dementia. It's sad and I live through this once already with my nana when I was growing up until my freshman year of high school. This is also part of why it's hard to go home - I feel so sad for them to live in a situation beyond their control. Is adult life really supposed to be that hard? I have to imagine not. ..I'll let that marinate for a while. Any feedback is welcome.

Song of the day: All I Do is Win, DJ Khaled