"...trying to make ends meet you're a slave to money then you die..."

~Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve

No change I can change....

I get tired of constantly struggling to make those ends meet! Today I realized I need to pay over $300 for an exam I need for work. Now...they'll reimburse me IF and WHEN I pass the exam. Paying the money up front though, is HARD. I'm a single working mom. It's hard to scrap together money like that for something I can't feed myself, my cats or my kid.

I’ve been neglectful of you, dear blog!

But I haven’t forgotten you! I’ll try to write out a better post this evening!

“Crack that whip, give the past the slip..”

~Whip it by Devo

Back on the diet wagon! I only fell off….a little! I just had a “bed time” shake that consists of some strange (but yummy) ingredients. It fills me WAY up, satisfies my need for sweet and hopefully will help me with getting back into the swing of low-carbing it.

I need to seriously work on my will power. Why is dieting SO hard?

"I don't want to be the girl who has to fill the silence, the silence scares me cause it screams the truth...."

~Sober by Pink

There was a small symphony in my kitchen this morning. Music to my ears in fact. Have you ever stood in a completely silent kitchen, with a silent household and listened to the sounds of your breakfast cooking? The eggs sizzling softly, the butter underneath bubbling and evaporating up into the air in gentle wafting heat. The stove hums softly and the pans have their own soft vibrations....

So why am I waxing so poetically about this? Well yesterday I hit a pitfall in my diet. We had our office Christmas party and held out magnificently, eating chicken and green beans and avoiding the gorgeous desert table. I even ate two pieces of chicken because I needed both the protien and calories and didn't touch the crab and corn chowder. So what happened to me? My will power suddenly snapped when I walked into my mom's house to a pile of fresh baked Christmas cookies. Before I could even think about what I was doing, a peanut butter cookie was in my mouth. Which is bad enough. But it was immediately followed by a coconut macaroon. Then another peanut butter cookie. Then a giant plate of spaghetti. Then a piece of fruit cake (my grandpa makes it home made every year it and is REALY good). Then, in an effort to be completely honest with myself and whomever might be reading this blog, after dinner I had three more cookies.

I came home and sobbed. I sobbed for myself and for my mother who is also doing this diet and had not only baked but ate cookies all day long in her own moment of weakness. I went to bed feeling ashamed of myself and guilty.

I woke up feeling a new sort of passion to start over again and keep at it. So I fell off the horse. Great. Now I know how badly it hurts to fall. So I can get back on and try again right? I HAVE to. As I mentioned in another post, I have aproximately 150 pounds total to lose. I don't know when it happened, that I became "Morbidly obese" but it happened and now I have to do whatever I can to fix it. I do not want to be the woman who they have to take a wall out to get her out of the house. I do not want to have to succumb to bariatric surgery. I do not want to lose a limb to diabetes (which is rampant on both sides of my family tree). I do not want to be wedged into the airline seat, trying as hard as I can to fold myself into something smaller so the person next to me will quit rolling his eyes and mumbling under his breath about his luck in passenger/seat assignment. I want to be able to ride the rides with my son at Disney World without fear of the safety bars not closing over me.

So here we go again. My breakfast, eggs and sausage. Tea with splenda. 2.9 carbs total. Here we go again indeed.

" In the real-time world no one sees her at all..."

~Maniac by Michael Sembello

I am terribly self conscience about some things. One of them is people commenting or criticizing what I'm eating. Recently, I started on the Atkin's Diet in an effort to help my mother lose weight. Her doctor reccomended it, telling her that if she didn't loose weight she'd be dead in ten years (She has horrible asthma and scoliosis). So we started the diet together a month ago. Well, if you've ever looked at the REAL atkins diet, it involves a decent amount of fat. I've been doing it religiously.

And that's all well and good!

Until the comments started up at work.

"Wow, I wish *I* could eat like that!"
" Golly, Jen....cream? Really?"

Now, what I want to say is "Look turkey, just because I'm fat doesn't mean I'm stupid. I'm following this diet AS IT'S WRITTEN." But I don't say anything. Just nod and hurry up to shove my cream container back in the fridge, rushing off with my coffee in shame. Why is it anybody's business what I put into my body, healthy or unhealthy? I am making some hard core sacrifices to stick to this diet and I have some HARD CORE weight to lose. But that's my concern. Not theirs.

Okay, rant over. For anybody interested in know...I've lost 25 pounds so far this month. If you're REALLY interested....I have 125 more to lose. I wasn't kidding when I said 'hard core'. Wanna be my cheerleader?

"And my dreams it's never quiet as it seems never quiet as it seems..."

~Dreams by The Cranberries

So today I begin a new endeavor, a new blog and a new start. My reasons for starting yet another new blog has everything to do with needing the cathartic effect of posting my struggles online for a bunch of strangers to read over. I need to get it out there, to purge my triumphs and failures as I begin again with trying to make my life what I want it to be.

So what is it I want it to be? Well, I mostly live a simple life. I'm up in the wee hours of the morning everyday where I indulge in a hot bath and a book before getting ready for work. My commute is one hour each way so I spend a lot of the drive time dreaming up ideas, bits and pieces for stories, recipes I'd like to try, little bits of poetry that flit around my brain. At work I'm a "pediatric nurse case manager" for a small medicaide managed care organization. This means I spend 8 hours a day on the phone, trying to walk my members (or rather, their parents) through the pitfalls and hazards of the insurance process. Or to put it a different way, I spent 8 hours a day listening to people complain about their insurance company, whom I represent. I do love my job.I do it for the children, trying to make sure they get everything they need covered and taken care of. But it wears me out. I come each night, around 6:30 and usually fall onto the couch to spend the next several hours watching TV and chatting online with my longtime/long distance girlfriend. It's off to bed early and then up again the next day.

This is what I'd like to "adjust". There's no feasible way for me to be able to stop working. But I'd like to spend my free time in greater pursuits. I've recently started several art journals and I've been known to knit from time to time in the past. I'd like to expand upon that and pursue my artistics endeavors to higher ground. I've purchased the book "The Artists Way" by Julia Cameron recently and I want to start working through it more diligently and to blog about it, here. It's not the only art book I'm following but I'm hoping it will help me expand my spiritual art journey. I'll say it right now, before you all start laughing at the art that I post here: I AM A BEGINNER! I never had the pleasure of taking any art classes in school. I was a band nerd to the core! And while I still love music I find myself now wishing there had been room for fine arts in my education as well. But that is neither here nor there. No time to learn like the present, right? Everything I do is wildly experimental and purely for my own pursuit. It's art for the sake of "art". Be it writing, painting, *gulp* drawin, knitting or cooking (Yes cooking...I'm also dieting so cooking will definately be more creative) I intend to explore it, ponder it and savor every moment of it. I hope to share that journey with DAILY posts (Yes...daily) here for the amusement of anybody who cares to read and comment.

So..here goes nothing!