Fat Again

I was not going to write about my weight anymore, but here goes.

We just returned from a two week vacation to Arizona. I am sick and tired. No wonder. We traveled an average of six hours a day by car. We ate junk at weird hours. I haven't eaten a minnie mart hot dog in years. I ate four of them during our various trips. Along with canned chips and gelato in a nifty clear plastic container. I gained ten pounds in ten days. And now I can't quit eating this fake food. I am craving it. Ersatz protein bars, i.e. candy bars have become my breakfast fare as we had a bunch of them left over and I am too cheap to throw then out. Ditto microwave bacon. Bacon. I can't believe I am eating bacon let alone nuked bacon. And hamburgers, and onion rings, and peanut butter shakes, oh my. This is madness.

I feel like I am a thousand years old. I look like a million. No pun. I am so swollen up my shoes don't fit and I am beginning to worry about my socks. It is the salt. I mean it is the salt I am craving. I have given way to sugar and fat in my sojourn off the wagon but have maintained the low salt intake pretty well. Not anymore. I dreamed about jerky the other night. Maybe if I get sick enough I will return to healthy eating. I ate a hand full of lettuce this morning straight out of the bag. It was marvelous. I think I have turned a corner. Hope so.

Take care, Bea

Off Brand Beauty

I hate spending money on beauty potions. They never work, and then I have this full bottle of stuff I spent a fortune on and am too frugal to throw out. I try to pawn the mirace cures off on friends but they have their own drawers full of failures and are reluctant to take on mine. What to do? I have recently started using the unliked products "off brand".

The lemon lightener face cream that broke me out is wonderful as hand lotion before bed. Smells great and I am telling myself it is lightening the brown spots on my hands. The body wash that made me itch is doing double duty as hand soap at the kitchen sink. The progesterone cream that didn't do a darn thing hormone wise is a nice light face cream. I am shaving my legs with the conditioner that weighed down my fine hair. Our shoes are fresh scented as a result of an asthma producing spray body powder. (I go outside to spray the shoes). I still haven't found a use for the numerous unopened lip glosses a friend sends me every Christmas. Ditto the numerous vitamins and supplements that give me heartburn. I did get a friend to leave the house with the high potency Biotin that gave me diarrhea. Biotin in high doses is supposed to keep your hair from thinning. The blackhead remover strips also work dandy as hair remover stips if glued to the upper lip. The peroxide toothpaste the dentist forbade me to use seems to work as blemish cream. I dab it on the pimple before bedtime and next morning, no pimple. And yes hemorrhoid cream smeared under the eyes does relieve puffiness. These are just a few of my off brand uses. My most major faux pas was prescription exfoliation cream. Cost me a hundred bucks for one little tube. It peeled my sensitive skin down to the bone. Was awful. That tortuous pricey cream sat in my medicine chest taunting me for five years before I found a use for it. I use it on my dry cracked heels. Works like a charm. I have the feet of a thirty year old.

If anyone has any other ideas for off brand use I am interested.

Next time, my homemade skin care products.

As ever, Bea

P.S. I am using the tinted sunscreen that made my face oily on my legs as a concealer for spider veins.

Justice

I was listening to a show on EWTN about birth control and abortion. The whole show impressed me but the part that stood out was when the host asked the guest what he thought would be the result of the thousands of abortions performed in this country since Roe vs. Wade. The guest very simply said, "euthanasia". Baby Boomers will be systematically killed off by the few children they allowed to survive. Good grief. Very Old Testament, an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth.

The guest then went on to explain his reasoning, not enough young workers willing or able to support social security when all of us retire, not enough young workers to take care of us as we become infirm, a culture (creat/ed by us) that despises the non-productive and non-beautiful and last but not least a culture (also created by us) that approves expedient routine murder of the helpless.

I believe God is loving and forgiving. What I don't know, is He also just? This is going to keep me up nights.

Take care, Bea.

Faith Full

We have two cats. Both are rescue cats. Abby was younger when we rescued her. Still had two of her baby teeth. Maybe the age of rescue makes a difference. I don't know. She is certainly different from skittish old Whomper who was pregnant and starving when we found her thirteen years ago.

This morning I was having a crisis of faith. Does God love us? If He loves us why do we have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? Is it just to teach us a lesson? Seems kind of sadistic.

Back to the cats. It was freezing here this morning. I had the heat turned down so it was not only cold outside but cold inside. The cats were chilly. I opened the curtains to let in some sun. Our sofa is right smack dab if front of a big picture window. It warms up first and fast. Abby was huddled in her basket, obviously cold. I picked her up and laid her on the sofa. She stretched out, took and abbreviated bath and was soon fast asleep. Whomper was also crouched in her basket. I attempted to pick her up. She tried to get away. I caught hold of her tail. She yowled and tried to scratch me. I did get hold of her but it was a struggle. As I walked toward the warm sofa she attempted to climb over my shoulder. She scratched my chest in the process and eventually jumped off my back. I gave up at this point. She went and hid under the bed in the totally unheated bedroom. There she remained for two hours while Abby snored in the sun. Whomper did finally come out but by then the sun was gone.

What was the difference between the two cats? Faith. Abby believed I had nothing but good in store for her and reacted accordingly. Whomper could have been living the life of Riley for the past thirteen years. We have tried to give her all the good things we could think of, but she seldom gets to experience the goodness of the gifts because she is so fearful. She does not trust us. She has no faith we mean her well. Every interaction is interpreted by her as sadistic. So, she freezes.

No surprise here, I am like Whomper. I lack faith. Turns out you can and should ask for it. Not a familiar concept for me. I thought you sort of had to gin it up on your own. Like positive thinking. Not very effective.

From this day forward I am asking straight out, "Please give me greater faith."

Amen. Bea.

Time Again

Has been almost a year since I posted. I am probably talking to myself. Nothing unusual.

I am in the process of cleaning out my upstairs office. I have collected much stuff up there. One of the dusty boxes contains many, many photos. I spent last eve looking through them. Painful, very painful. I used to be happier. I was also fatter, thinner, fattest, thinnest, and fatter again. As I was viewing all those past images Honey Bunny looked over my shoulder and said, "cute." It was a picture of me at my fattest. What he saw was a smiling tan woman with her feet in the ocean. I saw a blob in pink hat. Must give us pause....

Since moving to our snowbound valley I have been hopeless. I have not been able to gin up any cheerful expectations of the future. Why?

Immaturity. The blob in the pink hat was younger. She looked at life through American, Protestant, baby boomer, rose colored glasses. The smiling older woman with her feet in the snow now is on the cusp of seeing life through different lenses. It makes all the difference.

Next time: Grow Me Up God. God bless us everyone, Bea.