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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

How 'bout some sugar.....

Have you ever just needed something so bad that you can’t get it off your mind? A craving where you will go crazy until you get what you need, a feeling of rage in your chest as you search for what you desire most?

Hopefully you have on some level experienced this (or you’ll think I’m totally insane and somehow feel as though you’re better than me, hey if that’s what you need to get through your day, then great! Yep you’re better than me, oh it doesn’t feel as good when I acknowledge it does it?), whether it be a drink, a smoke, a crush, or in my case sweet treats made from what I’m sure is pure poison. Yes I’m an addict, My name is Shauna and I’m a what…sugar holic? Well anyway I want sugar, I crave sugar, I know sugar is bad for me and well right now it feels OH SO GOOD! Isn’t that how all addictions work though, the things that are soooooo baaaadd feel sooooooo good!

I’ve struggled with this all my life, during my childhood food and sweets were on what my mom called a “get while the getting’s good” basis, which meant, you filled your plate when we had food and you gorged yourself, because there wasn’t a guarantee that we’d have it again anytime soon. So my sisters and I all gorged. We chowed down stuff that I hate to say now I wouldn’t even consider edible and wouldn’t let my daughters even touch let alone eat…yeah they remember sitting in the barn, eating expired Ho Ho’s, wow that sentence sounds so terribly wrong! Oh well it is what it is...the making’s of Shauna.

So we gorged, but to make it a full circle horrible situation we had other influences in our lives that told us that woman were only attractive if they were bone skinny. Sure my mom didn’t mean to make us feel like fatties, but imagine being a little girl, looking at your mother in the mirror, all 120 lbs of her and hearing her tell you how incredibly fat she is. Talk about confusion!

So we not only got the “Get while the Getting’s good” but “after you get you’re a fat cow who is good for nothing!” (My mom didn’t say that to us, just to herself….message received).

Enter eating disorders, anxiety, and horrible self esteem oh and just in time, puberty...yes thanks for that!

So yeah, yucky childhood when it comes to self restraint, you don’t need to read more about how screwed up I am, but what I am interested in is this: Why when sugar makes me feel so bad do I continue to indulge in it? I had a great run, quite a few months of absolutely no sugar, and felt just lovely; Positive, fit, emotionally stable, then Christmas comes and all those darn treats, just eyeballing me, calling my name, jumping into my hands, opening the lids…wow this is a horrible addiction.

I understand the physiological side, and the psychological side, yep I get all the “psy” words, and have a degree to prove that I understand, but that just makes it worse, I mean I do understand! I know my body gets a chemical rush from sugar, I understand that I crash and feel like crap, and yet still I WANT it, and that is driving me crazy!

So maybe it isn’t really about the sugar. I mean I do get it, I do understand, maybe for me and probably for most addicts it’s about something entirely different…

Control.

I’ve noticed that when I really go crazy with sugar my life seems out of control. My kids won’t sleep, I don’t have time to shower, I suddenly start having dreams that I’m in high school and can’t remember the combination to my locker, right as I’m going to be late for class, but oh my gosh I’m not wearing a bra!!! And the bra is in the locker and that boy is walking up to me and I forgot to put on deodorant...ok, you get the picture.

So I guess I just need to let some things go, to understand that I really don’t have control over anything, and to allow myself to have a little sugar every now and then, maybe I won’t binge if I loosen up, then again that’s like telling an alcoholic that there’s a one drink maximum.

Or maybe I just let it go. Who cares if I have this addiction, admitting it is half the battle. Is it really so bad that I binge on this stuff? If I keep myself at a healthy weight and in the jeans my husband likes does it matter?

Probably not, but the fact that I’ve spent 802 words so far going over this in my head tells me it does, and the fact that my daughter just told me she’s had too much sugar today tells me that I’m a little too vocal about my control issues. She’s 4, I’m glad she understands her bodies signals that she’s had enough, but I’m sad that I’ve brought this into her circle of understanding.

So yes I have a problem, I want to be perfect, I want my BMI to be a solid 22, I want my sugar intake under 20 grams per day, I want to be confident in a bikini again, I want to be confident walking around naked in front of my husband again, I want to sleep, I want to know if I’m moving in the next year, I want my boobs to be perky again (sans surgery), I want my cupboards organized, my car cleaned, the settling cracks in my house to go away, I want to know that there’s nothing wrong with my daughter even though her head is strangely shaped, I want it to stop raining, I want control damn it!

Well now that were clear on that…thanks for listening, I bet you wish you had a degree in psychology so you would have just made $150.00 listening to me rant.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Finding Forrester

No, this posting isn’t about the movie; it’s about my day in Portland on a trip to IKEA.

My friend Desi and I took the kids on a shopping trip to IKEA; I know what were we thinking huh? Crazy, but I had a hankering to get a laptop charging station that has been on my wish list for over a year and so Desi embarked on this journey with me. I followed her through traffic, a nightmare really, oh I hate freeways, I can’t stand aggressive motorists who merge without blinking (their eyes or their turn signals) I guess I’m just not confident enough for city life, indeed that’s why in the 9 months I lived in Salt Lake City I barely made it to the mall across the street from our apartment complex, let alone onto the one of what felt like millions of freeways there.

But this was different I was following Desi and I suppose that in my quest for freedom from the unending rain on the coast I needed to get out and do some retail therapy.

However on the way there I was almost sideswiped, I luckily slammed on my brakes and allowed the car to merge into the lane ahead of me, just in time to see her car rear-end Desi’s vehicle. I assumed after Desi got out and talked to the woman that we were going to pull off the road and discuss the event, exchange info and have a merry old time at IKEA, where indeed we would be sideswiped and rear-ended with fancy I kea shopping carts. I was wrong though, the woman in the Blue Subaru Forrester yelled at Desi and then drove off, calling out “so sue me!” as she drove off.

I was dumbfounded, as was Desi. The damage to Desi’s car wasn’t severe, however there was a concern that her backup sensor might not work properly and after all it’s the law to stop and at least exchange info, even if you don’t plan on the courtesy of an apology. And so Desi called her husband, an insurance agent, who told her to file a police report. We talked with the police, gave them her license plate number and a description including the ironic fact that her license plate stated “Share the road” on it.

So here’s the interesting part of this story, and hopefully we can all learn a little lesson from this. This woman in the Forrester will most likely be charged with a Hit and Run, and since she yelled at Desi who was not at fault and refused to give information she could also get Road Rage charges, all for a simple rear end accident that quite frankly Desi probably wouldn’t have been all that concerned about after making sure her sensor was intact. But since this woman was so rude and refused to cooperate we had to call the police and now the ball is rolling on something that seriously wasn’t that big of a deal.

So the moral, always be quick to apologize, always follow the rules of the road and give the other driver in an accident your information, indeed the lapse of judgment the Forrester had will prove to be a nightmare for her unforeseeable future. The other moral, is never, never yell “So sue me!” because frankly you never know who’ll take you up on that offer, especially if you just rear ended the car that is carrying their most valuable possessions in the world…mama bear will always get her revenge!

So Forrester, you may think you got away free and clear, indeed you had no way of knowing that I was part of Desi’s caravan and I had a clear view of not only the accident but of your license plate, so in the future, practice what you preach and “Share the Road.”

On a lighter note, we were only sideswiped once in IKEA, and I was rear ended only twice by someone’s shopping cart, but I was quick to forgive because each time I received a very apologetic “I’m so sorry” from the perpetrator. Oh I also got out of IKEA and only spent $165.00, got a ton of cool stuff, and am proud to say that my house is beginning to get more organized, one brilliant IKEA system at a time.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Adorable Terrorsits

I’m exhausted. Plain and simple, exhausted. I’m so tired I feel as though I could sleep for a week and still wake up feeling totally burnt out, cranky and on the verge of tears. The sad part is that I have no huge claim to this exhaustion; I haven’t just run a marathon, I haven’t just traveled the globe, I’m just a mom and a housewife. My days are spent doing everything for everyone else, even showering feels like work right now.

I know this sounds horrible, I know I sound totally pessimistic and well, like a whiny little bitch. I know that I need to just put on my big girl panties, deal with it and keep on trucking, but I wonder…do all new moms feel this way? Am I so totally chemically imbalanced? Is my post partum depression so bad that this isn’t normal? Or is it normal? Does every mom feel this way at one time or another?

Does anyone else not want to fall asleep because they know that within a few short hours they will be awoken by a crying child? Does anyone else get angry when they are awoken by a crying baby? I’m seriously asking… because I feel like the worst mom in the world.

I try to fill my daughters’ days with learning, reading, playing; I want to create an environment where exploration is celebrated. But as my 7 month old crawls around and forces me to get up once again to pull her away from trouble I get so very frustrated.

Yes motherhood is a lot of work, most days I wish I did have a job to go to, just to get a break, just to miss them, to escape the dishes, the laundry, the diapers for a few hours. I know a lot of my readers are probably thinking…HA! You think you have it bad! Or Stop complaining, at least you have a family and children. Don’t get me wrong I do feel blessed for my family, I do love them, I’m just spent. I just want to sleep, to take a bath by myself, to actually have time to shave my legs in the shower, to lie in my bed without one of three different people requiring something from me.

I guess I’m just selfish, somewhere between laundry and bedtime stories, I’ve lost myself.

I remember a time when I could look in the mirror and had time to pluck a stray eyebrow. I remember a time when the thought of going shopping wasn’t something that sent anxiety through my entire being. I remember a time when the phone rang I actually felt excited about answering it and having a wonderful uninterrupted conversation with a friend, but times have changed.

Now I don’t even look in the mirror, and when I do it’s followed by a feeling of loss as I evaluate my stretch marks and scars. I look at my tattoo that once represented my freedom and now can only be described as a bug that has been smeared on a windshield. (For anyone out there who hasn’t yet had children, even if your DR tells you that you can’t have kids, NEVER get a tattoo on your stomach!)

Most of all I remember a time when I smiled regularly, when I woke up excited about my day and the activities that I had planned, I remember going on vacation and not worrying about the one’s I left behind for the week. Now I wish I could go on vacation, but the thought of all the work that would have to be done in order to arrange childcare, dog care, house care, etc etc…well it’s not even worth it.

So what do I do, besides whine to my computer screen, praying someone will validate these feelings…begging “does ANYONE understand?”

I guess I do what I always do…I breathe, I force a smile, I pray….and I repeat, over and over and over, because sometimes that’s all I can do.

Now I would love to finish this but my baby has filled her diaper once again, I’m laughing at myself now because I’m actually excited about this, only a mom who has experienced a constipated baby will understand my joy at this moment in time.