Great Sunday :)

[altarflame]

It is so, so, SO GOOD to wake up with Grant right there in the bed too, along of course with Jake and Elise, who always join us in the middle of the night. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world snuggling up to his sleep-warmth and breathing him in. And then we're dozing and talking and dreaming and laughing about things and taking turns hugging whoever is not having their turn nursing. Curly smiles full of tiny teeth. Eventually larger children appear.

It is pretty novel to have found a church that has a Mass starting at 12:30. So that after all this there can be sweet showers and homemade blueberries pancakes before we head out the door for church. I have a feeling that once most of us are confirmed and having communion, and thus fasting in the hours before communion, we'll be interested in an earlier Mass so we can have breakfast afterward ;) For now this is rich.

And I weigh myself every morning when I get up. Eat to Live is perfect for me, it really is...it disallows almost every sort of cultural, celebratory, splurging or otherwise emotional eating I could do, leaving only nutrient dense healthy stuff that I eat...to live. I've been doing it for a week now and I started at 233 lbs. Which is NOT OK. So far it's gone...

Morning After Day 1 - 229.6
MAD2 - 228.6
MAD3 - 227.4
MAD4 - 227.0
MAD5 - 226.2
MAD6 - 225.8
MAD7 - 224.2

I am seriously considering staying on a modified version of it for the rest of my life. I feel GOOD.

So Mass - we were a few minutes late, and thus funneled into the Reconciliation Chapel where the Mass is projected on the wall until after the gospel reading and homily, at which point all the late people come on into the main sanctuary during the Profession of Faith. I've never really spent time in the Reconciliation Chapel at St Louis before, and it was good to contemplate - the big and rather grapic crucifix, the beautiful painting of Virgin and Child, the massive banners showing Old Testament scenes, the Stations of the Cross carved out of wood and hung along the walls...and the floor to ceiling stained glass windows in the back. I don't know what I think of them - they're very..."modern" in design? Not sure how to explain it.

The homily was about that whole thing where Jesus says if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off, or your foot, or if your eye causes you to sin pluck it out - because it's better to go through life missing that than to die with the hand, or the eye or whatever. And I was thinking how that is food for me. Cooking food, cooking shows, meal planning, writing about what I've cooked and taking pictures of our dinner and gorging myself constantly and...yeah. I
feel ready to just NOT go to restaurants anymore. NOT have cake on birthdays. All of it. Pluck it out. I had steel cut oats with bananas, flax, blueberries and raisins in them for breakfast, along with a couple of slices of blood orange. I had kale and bean soup for lunch with nutritional yeast sprinkled in it and some walnuts on the side. I'm having a bunch of raw vegetables for dinner and maybe a fruit for dessert. I DO NOT snack outside of mealtimes at all, period. If I didn't prepare for something and we're out or whatever, I'll starve until we get to the house or a grocery store. And this has been working out really well.

So. After Mass we hit Goodwill where I picked up a sweater I will use to make a variation of this doll, for Elise. She has many dolls but they are all too hard to sleep with comfortably so I'm hoping this can be a doll for bed for her.

Stopped off to talk to Oma/Teresa/mother in law and Robby/nephew. He gives me this "We talk on the internet now" meaningful look. I think about Robby more everyday. Ever since he came out, he's got a HARD road ahead of him...what with the CRAZILY HOMOPHOBIC Grant Sr and the MEAN kids at the redneck high school he was going to and all of it...it's really bad. This is on top of the whole "I have no real home and bounce around between 3 houses, my mother's never raised me, I'm now old enough to get it" thing :/ We've done a lot of AIM talking where I'm like, "I'm sorry I distanced myself from you so much when we were younger, I felt helpless and couldn't stand to get my heart broken after everything that happened with my little brother". And he's like, "I really look up to how you are with your kids, it's amazing how you have five and you always have time for them". This is when he's not purposely getting Elton John songs caught in my head maliciously O_o He's also got this virus that is the precursor to mono? So he has like no energy at all and all his shifting guardians thought he was just being a pita by not getting up in the morning and he was catching a lot of hell for it before someone took him to the doctor. Anyway, I've worked it out with Oma and him and they both think him doing Florida Virtual Schools K-12 program online is a good idea, and then I'll just take him to the (REALLY cool) youth group where Jake and Isaac go to AWANA, on Wednesday evenings, and to PATH with us on Thursday afternoons, and hopefully between the two he can be with some kids who aren't assholes sometimes.

I am so satisfied with this arrangement, I have been ACHING to do SOMETHING for Robby, but knowing I have limited resources to promise anybody outside of this household - this is perfect and he seems really grateful.

I really don't think he's a bad kid at all. But I think he could turn into one super easily. It's sort of a miracle he's as good as he is.

Now for my brother...*sigh* He's 19, you know? I feel like I send him postcards and it's kind of the best I can do at this point.


We got home and had leisurely lunch and Grant and I had this incredible, euphoric, I could die right now I'm so happy nap in each other's arms...sometimes I think my heart will burst when we're that close together.

Then Ananda and I took a bike ride. The weather was lovely. And without Aaron around we're kind of unlimited in where we can safely travel. We went all over - we found a crazily rich rural street that ended in someone who had their own golf course situated on their private property, many with their own groves. Some with security cameras wedged into avocado trees. We saw a peacock, and a horse. We also rode through the bank teller lines on our bikes, which I think Ananda thought was awesome. We went all the way to R.F. Orchids and then turned back because it would be dark soon...when I put it in Google Maps, it was about 4.6 miles round trip :)

And now we have our weekly Sunday chicken roasting for our always-super-late Sunday dinner and I don't know, man. But I think life is good.

Also - I got a call from our former nanny yesterday that she received a tweet about how Midwifery Today is looking for writers. And I think I could potentially write a lot of stuff for them. I am definitely close friends with one of the contributing writers and frequently profiled "birth celebrities" ;) We shall see.

Comments

[custard-kisses.livejournal.com]

We used to go to Saturday evening Mass a lot. That's the handy thing about bigger churches, they have so many mass times. Ours have about 3 morning sessions, 2 evening sessions and the Saturday Vigil.Works out well when you have kids doing Sunday morning sports, plenty of options.