I Can't Stop Eating Cheese...

I’ve tried my fair share of “diets”. Paleo, Gluten-Free, Dairy Free, Ketogenic. I found that cutting Gluten & Dairy was the easiest way for me to lose weight, 5-6 years ago. Here’s the thing… I would like to lose weight. There is a number on the scale, that when I hit it, I start to notice I don’t feel the greatest… Let me preface this by saying… I’m large by any means, no I don’t have body dysmorphia, I’m not trying to lose 20-30 lbs… I mostly would like to tone up and feel better about myself.

Now at the ripe old age of 38… I’m realizing that losing weight is not as easy as it once was. For the past 2 months, I’ve been trying to do some form of intermittent fasting, and just being more aware of what I’m eating. Not so much snacking, waiting to eat, cutting out a lot of extra sugar. And the scale? It’s gone UP.

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL HELL? It’s almost like the harder I try, the more the weight hangs on. I’ve started riding my Peloton more, trying to do more strength training, getting good sleep, no alcohol, upping my water intake. Nothing. I know people try to tell you to trust the process, you’ll gain muscle and that might make the scale go up… The common lie is that “muscle weighs more than fat”. That’s not true. They weigh the same, but muscle is denser, so don’t worry about the scale, go off of measurements. I keep repeating this to myself… BUT I REALLY WANT TO SEE THE SCALE CHANGE!!!

In December, I asked Ryan for a HUME scale. Being the smart man he is, he told me he would not be buying me that for Christmas, because he would feel like a horrible husband. (He’s bought me a peloton bike for our anniversary in 2020, and the Peloton tread for my birthday in 2024. I promise I asked for both)

Not thinking that I was ridiculously out of shape, I stepped on the Hume scale a few weeks before Christmas and was sucker punched in the gut. If you’re unfamiliar with this scale, it sends electro pulses through your body measuring bone density, muscle mass, BMI, fat percentages, metabolic health, metabolic age and more, thus calculating out an “overall health score”. The number I saw was jarring. Metabolic age was way older than my actual age, all of my numbers were considered “HIGH”. It basically told me I was fat and ugly and sucked all the joy out of life. Clearly, this is not an ad for the scale… because I’m not quite 100% happy with it. Even though it does give good information.

Meanwhile, my husband, who is in the BEST SHAPE OF HIS LIFE, had the BMI and metabolic age of a MUCH YOUNGER MAN. Just call me a cougar, because I’m married to a 19 year old apparently.

All this to say, I want to lose weight, but I’m not willing to give up my reason for living. And that reason is bread and cheese. Gluten & Dairy. I don’t know how to function without it. It’s just so good.

I was going through an old sketch book from 2018 and this one made me laugh. I used to be able to grate cheese and not eat it. HOW? I just love cheese too much to give it up. I know it’s easier these days with all the “dairy free alternatives” but sooo much of that is processed beyond belief and makes you go… hmmm… should I really be eating this?

I can’t confirm this was the cause, but in 2023 I had an upper endoscopy that discovered stomach polyps and bleeding. Once I cut out the oat milk creamer and coffee, then added fermented foods I notice a difference and actually HEAL my stomach. So what’s worse? Dairy or fake dairy products.

I think I’m just trying to convince myself now that I can eat dairy and gluten, just in moderation. Everything in moderation. I’m praying that once this bathroom renovation is done, I’ll chill out a little, my cortisol will lower and maybe I’ll start seeing some changes.

Okay, until next time.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

I’ve talked about this at length over the years about my “if you give a mouse a cookie” situation with Ryan. If you give Ryan a house project, he’s going to want to do more projects before you can accomplish the one initial project.

Back in 2013, we moved into a 1950s, Mid-Century Modern home. It needed a lot of love and attention… but as newly weds in our mid 20’s we knew we had all the time and energy to get it done. I adored this little 1800 sq ft bi-level. I saw all the potential, loved its unique exterior, and wanted desperately to have the outside personality match the inside. (Even if the previous owner, decided it should be “tuscan villa inspired”.)

We took the keys in June, in the thick of Wedding season. Right away we got to work making my home office what we wanted. Ikea Cabinets, tantalizing teal walls, new lighting. As a Wedding photographer, I needed a nice, happy space to spend the majority of my days as I edited thousands of photos. By August, I was begging him to let me paint the living room. I had enough of the butter yellow walls… Something needed to change. “I just want to paint the Living room,” I told him, holding back tears. “Please, it’s killing my soul after living in apartments with white walls for the past 3 years… I need color.”

He stared at me for a few minutes, watching him process through all the things that need to be done before he gave me the green light to start painting.

“If we’re going to paint the walls, we should paint the ceiling first. If we are going to paint the ceiling, we should add the recessed lighting we want first, so we will need to cut a long strip across the ceiling in order to run the wiring. While we have the ceiling open, we should also run the lighting into the kitchen too. If we are going to do the lighting in the kitchen, we should fix the drain in the upstairs bathroom, while the ceiling is open. And If we are going to have all this stuff ripped up, we might as well rip up the carpet and change the flooring to hardwood like we wanted.”

Trusting the man I married, I said okay… Let’s do it. His brain works very different than mine, so I trusted that he knew what would be best. (Spoiler alert: he did, and usually does)

So on our first wedding anniversary, that’s what we did. We started by cutting a massive hole in our ceiling. In between photographing weddings, Ryan doing 3 home inspections per day, and the many trips to Traverse City… we tried to do the work necessary to make our vision a reality. While also not making ourselves broke in the process. Materials cost money, flooring is expensive, and new furniture to match our “mid-mod vibe” wasn’t cheap.

Doubt started to creep in, and somewhere around that time, we sold our old couch and other furniture while we paid cash for our new pieces and waited for their delivery.

We cut the hole. We fixed the drain. We added the lighting in the kitchen. We covered everything in plastic, making our house look like a Dexter Kill room. We ordered take out, grilled our dinners outside, always wore shoes in the house, as it was ripped up like this for MONTHS.

Somewhere around November, we discovered I was pregnant. That lit a fire for sure, especially because I was so sick those first few months of pregnancy, I was ZERO HELP. We starting paying my youngest brother to come over and help with the work, in order to expedite the process. Almost 4 months to the date, the Aquatint, by Sherwin Williams wall paint I had picked out for the living room finally went on the walls. While we waited for our new couch to be delivered, a queen size air mattress was how we watched TV in our living room.

By Christmas, we were feeling a little more normal, and could see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least at the end of the living/kitchen lighting and painting renovation tunnel. The custom couch we had picked out from a local furniture store and the Crate & Barrel entertainment center & coffee table had all been delivered. The lights were all in, the hole in the ceiling was closed up, the ceiling was painted, the drain in our upstairs shower was finally draining better. We felt like we could rest for a second, before we had to start the next project… A baby Nursery!

This was our FIRST big house renovation as a married couple. It tried us in many ways, but in the end, I learned to trust my husband and his beautiful mind. Where I see all the bright colors and fun decor choices, he sees the logistics and all the work that goes into that. Even if the process makes us both crazy, we are both so appreciative of each other and how well we work as a team. (even as I type this, he’s texting me photos of faucets and fixtures he likes and needs my stamp of artistic approval on).

Lesson: If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk to go with it. If you give Ryan a house project, he’s going to give you a coordinating project that needs to get done prior to the completion of the initial project… but it will all be worth it.

Still Distracted. And a House Update

I’m coming to realize that no matter how hard I try, if I don’t direct my focus to the right things, I’m going to always be DISTRACTED. Whether I’m being distracted by the noise of social media, the noise of podcasts, audiobooks, games on my phone, or the constant stream of anxious thoughts that flow through my brain on a daily basis… if I’m not directing my focus to that which I need to be prioritizing… I will get lost. When a thought crosses my mind while cleaning the kitchen and I pick up my phone to finish that thought, and black out and realize I was just sitting at the kitchen island perusing amazon instead of adding the item to my grocery list like I had intended. Sure, maybe my social media screen time has gone to zero, but Pinterest, text messages, email, amazon and mindless games have more than made up for it.

A little Life update: We have been thrust, face first, into a bathroom renovation. Sometime around October, we realized that the floor around our shower, in the primary on-suite bathroom, was starting to bow. We have lived in this house for over 4 years now, we are clean and responsible humans, not allowing massive amounts of water to pour on the floor after showers. Heck, Ryan is one of the cleanest people I know. (which is why I knew right away that I would marry that man, and raise babies with him.) Pretty sure I’m the messy one in this relationship, and even then I’m actually very clean. (Not neurotically so, but you know… it’s organized chaos).

Sorry, I digress. Back to the bathroom. We noticed that the granite slab that separates the shower from the vinyl flooring had a hairline crack in it. And overtime, water was slowly trickling down onto the subfloor and keeping it water logged, thus making it BOW. Well Shoot. With Christmas quickly approaching, family coming to visit and Ryan’s travel schedule for work… We just kept putting it off, knowing it was a ticking time bomb.

Boom.

About a month ago, we decided to tape off our bathroom, move everything out of there and start figuring out what the next steps would be to deal with this problem. Talked to home insurance adjusters, etc. As Ryan peeled back vinyl floor tiles to assess the damage, it became painfully obvious that we weren’t going to be able to simply replace the floor and be on our way. Ripping out subfloor, revealed a leaking shower drain, meaning we would need to rip out the tile in the shower.

And you know what that means. All the perfect pieces for an “If you give a mouse a cookie” situation. <if you’ve been around for any length of time, you’ll understand this reference> [or read this blog post] Could we rip out the shower, and replace it with the same brown tiles, and granite step and be on our way? Sure. This bathroom was only redone in 2017, so it wasn’t that old, we could probably find similar tile to match… but do we LIKE that tile? Not really. Tile costs money. And so begins our story…

If you’re going to replace tile, you might as well choOse tile you actually really like.

Let me preface this by saying, when we bought this house, I really liked the idea of having a tile bathroom with glass shower doors. When I saw the bathroom in question on the listing I said “That’s a nice bathroom. Not my personal style, or what I would pick, but really really nice.” And that’s how the past 4 years have gone. I love my bathroom, it’s bright, it’s clean and I feel like a complete spoiled brat to have it attached to my bedroom. After living in a house with only one full bathroom as a family of 5, moving to a home with 3.5 bathrooms felt like we won the lottery.

Welp. Here we are. The further we dug, the more we realized things were not done right. And if you know my husband… You know it needs to be done right. So welcome to my current anxiety spiral...

…The bathroom renovation I wasn’t mentally prepared to start. But as my sister in law reminded me, a kitchen renovation was thrust on us at our old house, and it resulted in an AMAZING kitchen in the end. A fridge leaked, turned a new kitchen floor into a mold and asbestos discovery, quarantined from our house/kitchen for months, everything was gutted, and over the course of a year we got a beautiful kitchen out of it. Honestly, the kitchen wasn’t finished until a few days before we listed it to sell… but minor details.

It’s amazing what a few new cabinets, new doors, hardware and paint can do to liven up a kitchen. Gosh I miss that kitchen. I almost miss the simplicity of life in Midland. I definitely miss being close to family. I miss the ease at which I could clean this whole house in a day. I miss the littleness of my babies when we lived here. Life was so different. Granted, it was towards the tail end of the ‘pandemic’ when we moved, and life was just… different like I said. I can’t help but look back at these photos and have my heart yearn to go back in time just for a little bit. If anything, just to be this younger mama, with squishy littles to snuggle.

Okay, until next time.

Adventures in Scrunchies, Saunas, Sneezes & Snail Mail

I’ve been sick. Not terribly sick, just an annoying sinus cold that has plagued one side of my face causing a steady stream of snot and tears, not to mention a thousand sneezes. Naturally, I’m the last to get it as I took care of all those in my house who had it before me. Making chicken noodle soup, tea and cleaning up piles of spent tissues. Now that I’m sick, everyone else has energy and I need peace and quiet. So for me, the last few days have looked like this… —> As I attempt to sweat all this out.

Not much has been going on over here, just the usual schedule <plus a sinus cold>. Piano Lessons, dance lessons, school work, working out, and home maintenance. These kids blow my mind daily with what they know and learn. They have a voracious appetite for books, math lessons, all things artistic and using their imaginations. Math & Artistic. When I was in college, going for my Bachelors in Art, so many of my classmates would talk about how much they hated math and how Artists DON’T like math because it uses the other side of the brain. As an artist & a fan of Math, I didn’t relate. Then I married a man who was artistic and proficient in Math, and we created three children, all artistic and enjoy the challenges numbers offer. Just over here making the world a little more interesting I guess.

I asked them all why they like math, and they each gave a very “THEM’ answer. Jonathan: “It’s all about problem solving!” Verona: “I just really like learning things, and getting to do ‘money math’.” Vivienne :”I like learning things by myself, and I can figure math out.” Independent kids with a love for learning. Cool. It’s almost like that’s the goal. Right?

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My in-laws gave my daughters a sewing machine for Christmas. A wonderfully nice and thoughtful gift. My mother in law is an extremely talented quilter and makes lots of amazing projects, and last fall she brought her machine and taught the girls how to make pillows. And they were obsessed! You could see their brains working with all the possibilities of things they could make.

I know how to sew. My mother always made us dresses and outfits and sewn things when we were kids, and my sister actually made BOTH of my prom dresses in high school, so I’ve been around a sewing machine my whole life. It was just never something I thought I had the patience to learn. In 2015, I decided to sew new cushion covers for our patio furniture. They aren’t perfect but they look great and did the job, and are still being used today! All this to say, I possess an underlying understanding and skills to figure out a sewing machine.

Well. Now we have our own. It has a permanent home in our homeschool room, at my desk where my old iMac used to reside. And like most things, I want to figure it out. Mainly, so I can teach the kids to use it, but also because I’m a maker. It’s just what I do.

Maybe I’ll make a whole other post about all the things I’ve attempted so far, but to understand me, you have to know I didn’t start with something small. I told the lady at hobby lobby that me and the girls were learning to sew, and she’s like “Oh did you try making scrunchies?” I told her no, and then showed her the bedside caddy I had made the day before, and said that maybe we should try to make some scrunchies as well.

Mission Accomplished. Verona now knows how to make them, and next I need to teach Viv. And Naturally, my children love to give, and my girls asked if they could make scrunchies for all their girl cousins. All our long scraps have been getting turned into scrunchies.

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Finally, my Lenten goal was to start writing letters to people in need of connection, looking to get away from the traps of their phones. I had posted something on my instagram on Tuesday, last week, before I signed off, saying to send me an email if you’re in need of some good ol’ fashioned snail mail. I haven’t gotten through all the emails yet, but I’m slowly getting letters written and posted! If you’re someone in need of prayer, encouragement or just connection, please email me at lettersofintention40@gmail.com and let me know your address, your name and what you’d like to write about, (prayers, encouragement, creativity, etc).

Alright, that’s all for now! Until next time!