...what I heard this noon when taking a stroll along a park around here. A flock of sparrows had been settling on the tips of one of the big- presently leafless- trees there, twittering their little hearts out at the hint of spring in the air. It was that kind of live, unfiltered experience you´ll never get from any computer program.
Being on a spending fast makes me a lot more conscious of such things than I used to be.
It´s all too easy to reduce one´s life to the hunt for more and more stuff, just paying attention to the next sale or the next item you want to have, or even to the work you have to do in order get the money to purchase the next whatever-it-is.
I have been so guilty of that one. There was a time in my life when whole seasons could pass without my paying attention to nature, apart from changing my wardrobe to match the changing temperatures, and I would have to look at a calendar to tell which season it was.
I spent my time at the office, and when I wasn´t there, I was shopping. When I decided what to do with a day off, it was always just the decision where I would go to shop on that day, or if I should stay home inside instead.. I have been, in that time, living near some spectacular sightseeing places I have never visited. What I knew instead was where to find the best bookstores, or where to shop for shoes or handbags.
Actually, I dreaded those days off because I didn´t know what to do with myself if I neither worked nor shopped. Where I work, I can, if I chose, take thirty days in a year off from work. They call that a holiday. Guess what, for at least ten years I forfeited those days off, preferring to keep working. To me, taking time off work was a sign of weakness. I thought only people who weren´t good and satisfied at their job took time off it, while I should be able to just keep on working at it indefinitely.
You can guess where that mindset took me. One day, my body simply gave out, and instead of taking my days off, I found myself on sick leave for several months in a row. What with medical copays and doctor´s orders to rest, going shopping was suddenly out of the question. Instead, I was more or less confined to a flat chock full of stuff I had dragged home, to the point of being completely cluttered. The only escapes were the regular visits to the doctor´s office, or short forays to the mall for the barest necessities like food and TP.
It was during one of those trips that I did, for the first time since I had moved into that city, hear a bird singing. I stood there, looking up and realizing that I was standing next to an enclosed park with trees, bushes, and flowers, and that the sky was blue, and it was summer. That day marked the point where I started to get better. I wasn´t allowed back to work for awhile yet, but I did make use of the free time I had by starting to tidy up and declutter my flat. As that was a first for me and I was living in a flat twice the size of what I have now, it wasn´t that much stuff that got weeded out at first, but it was a beginning. And it helped me when I finally decided to downsize to the flat I live in today.
The what-to-do-with-a-day-off problem has been hanging on a bit longer. Part of it was that mindset of my Granny´s, who was all her life extremely frugal and a firm believer that it was frivolous to leave the house if one didn´t have something serious to do outside of it, with sightseeing, museum visits, or vacations in general being classified as frivolous pursuits. Shopping, on the other hand, was a legitimate reason to leave the house. So, whenever I felt I had to go out of the house, I went shopping. I never even considered going out in my free time for any other reasons.
When I first fell in love with my now DH, that was actually a sore point between us. He would ask me what I wanted to do on the weekend, and I would say "go to .... and shop for...". DH, now, hates shopping. Even if it´s him who needs something, like a new pair of trousers, or shoes, getting him to shop is a bit like getting him to have a tooth pulled (just kidding, when I am shopping for clothes he´s a paragon of patience :)). Thus, the limited range of my suggestions wasn´t satisfying him at all. He wanted to go sightseeing, visit new places, see historical buildings, in short, to do things that definitely did not involve shopping and did not have, by the standards I had been brought up to, any redeeming value at all. There were some weekends where we almost ended up having a tiff when we were driving to a city and instead of hitting the shopping center of it he´d steer me to the next monument, or church, or castle, while I was all the time seething at being kept from taking at least a teensy look at the shops. Still, slowly, I found myself enjoying those excursions. I found out that I loved to discover new places, that being able to see a gothic cathedral in real life was better than seeing its photograph in a book.
And, after a while, I discovered that those experiences were making me a lot more happy than if I had spent the day shopping.
That discovery, for me, was the start of my personal road to minimalism.
Collecting memories instead of collecting stuff. Doing instead of buying something.
It´s quite sad that I had to learn that first.
But now that I have learnt it, I won´t allow myself to forget it again.
Julia
2012/02/29
2012/02/28
Maintenance in progress
To my chagrin, that´s all I can say about the way my weight has been developing this week. There were some crazy fluctuations going on, with the highest and lowest weight of those weeks just one day apart, and what they average out to is... a maintain, at a level about two pounds above the limit of obesity. Two. Lousy.Pounds. That have decided to stick on. The only thing I changed about my intake is that I have been upping my intake of liquids, namely unsweetened ginger tea of which I have been drinking at least half a liter to a liter a day, so, it´s entirely possible that this is just my body being rehydrated (I wasn´t very good about my fluid intake for awhile).
I could, of course, ask myself just why that arbitrary limit between overweight and obese is so important to me. That two-pound difference would, in all likelihood, not make any difference in the way I feel, or in the way my body functions. But it stands between me and what I have been aiming for, which gives it a far greater importance in my mind than the other pounds I have already recondensed. It also stands for the point where I will, perhaps, be able again to see a doctor without preparing myself in advance to receive a lecture on why I have to absolutely lose weight, even if what sent me there was a cold. .
And it´s something that is a definite part of my bucket list. If ever a postmortem should have to be done on my body, I don´t want the description of the subject to read "morbidly obese female".
The size acceptance people out there will probably claim that I am caving in to external pressures if I say so, but morbid obesity wasn´t a state I wilfully chose to enter, and I have never resigned myself to living there, even if my attempts at fleeing it were not successful until now. Yes, there is a lot of shame involved. Shame at not having kept myself from becoming that fat, and shame at having been unable to lose the excess weight for so long. Losing it, finally, means a redemption of sorts.
I know my life won´t be perfect just because I lost weight, but I do believe that getting rid of even one thing that makes you feel shame is good for your overall wellbeing.
So, I want to get rid of that label.
And this time around by golly I´ll do it.
Julia
I could, of course, ask myself just why that arbitrary limit between overweight and obese is so important to me. That two-pound difference would, in all likelihood, not make any difference in the way I feel, or in the way my body functions. But it stands between me and what I have been aiming for, which gives it a far greater importance in my mind than the other pounds I have already recondensed. It also stands for the point where I will, perhaps, be able again to see a doctor without preparing myself in advance to receive a lecture on why I have to absolutely lose weight, even if what sent me there was a cold. .
And it´s something that is a definite part of my bucket list. If ever a postmortem should have to be done on my body, I don´t want the description of the subject to read "morbidly obese female".
The size acceptance people out there will probably claim that I am caving in to external pressures if I say so, but morbid obesity wasn´t a state I wilfully chose to enter, and I have never resigned myself to living there, even if my attempts at fleeing it were not successful until now. Yes, there is a lot of shame involved. Shame at not having kept myself from becoming that fat, and shame at having been unable to lose the excess weight for so long. Losing it, finally, means a redemption of sorts.
I know my life won´t be perfect just because I lost weight, but I do believe that getting rid of even one thing that makes you feel shame is good for your overall wellbeing.
So, I want to get rid of that label.
And this time around by golly I´ll do it.
Julia
2012/02/27
Recipe Monday: Pasta with tuna sauce
..or, as our Italian friends call it "al tonno"!
I put a lot of veggies into the sauce for a really balanced meal.
First, you prepare and cut up the vegetables. Think onions, peas, carrots, bell peppers, celery- whatever catches your fancy and can be cut up in small pieces. I admit to being lazy and using pre-cut frozen vegetable mix and onion cubes.
Stir-fry these in a bit of olive oil until they begin to get tender. Add some olives, some diced peperoni if you have any (again, to taste- I guess jalapenos would be too hot), season with dried oregano, add some concentrated tomatoes (you can get these packaged in a tube) and a bit of water so the ingredients will mix well. Drain a can of water-packed tuna, add to the mix, and allow to simmer at a low temperature with the lid closed. Stir regularly in between to avoid the sauce sticking to the pot. Season with chili powder to taste.
In the meantime, cook a sufficient amount of pasta ( I prefer spirelli) to taste in a bigger pot. Drain, then mix with the sauce and serve.
For good measure, you can put a bit of grated parmesan cheese on top.
I use the pot the pasta was cooked in for mixing, so, I take one that´s big enough to hold both the cooked pasta and the sauce, with some room to spare.
The good thing about this is that you can stock all of the ingredients in your pantry and freezer, and preparing it with those frozen prepared veggies takes about twenty minutes. It tastes not at all fishy because of the oregano and chili powder, and can also be used for using up those last vegetables in the crisper.
If you don´t like to use tuna, a similar dish may be prepared with cubed pieces of chicken breast (fry them until done first, then add the veggies etc. into the same pot) or even with cubed bacon, or for the vegetarians out there with tofu or feta cheese (though you should add the latter only directly to the dishes when serving to avoid it sticking to the pots).
Enjoy!
Julia
I put a lot of veggies into the sauce for a really balanced meal.
First, you prepare and cut up the vegetables. Think onions, peas, carrots, bell peppers, celery- whatever catches your fancy and can be cut up in small pieces. I admit to being lazy and using pre-cut frozen vegetable mix and onion cubes.
Stir-fry these in a bit of olive oil until they begin to get tender. Add some olives, some diced peperoni if you have any (again, to taste- I guess jalapenos would be too hot), season with dried oregano, add some concentrated tomatoes (you can get these packaged in a tube) and a bit of water so the ingredients will mix well. Drain a can of water-packed tuna, add to the mix, and allow to simmer at a low temperature with the lid closed. Stir regularly in between to avoid the sauce sticking to the pot. Season with chili powder to taste.
In the meantime, cook a sufficient amount of pasta ( I prefer spirelli) to taste in a bigger pot. Drain, then mix with the sauce and serve.
For good measure, you can put a bit of grated parmesan cheese on top.
I use the pot the pasta was cooked in for mixing, so, I take one that´s big enough to hold both the cooked pasta and the sauce, with some room to spare.
The good thing about this is that you can stock all of the ingredients in your pantry and freezer, and preparing it with those frozen prepared veggies takes about twenty minutes. It tastes not at all fishy because of the oregano and chili powder, and can also be used for using up those last vegetables in the crisper.
If you don´t like to use tuna, a similar dish may be prepared with cubed pieces of chicken breast (fry them until done first, then add the veggies etc. into the same pot) or even with cubed bacon, or for the vegetarians out there with tofu or feta cheese (though you should add the latter only directly to the dishes when serving to avoid it sticking to the pots).
Enjoy!
Julia
2012/02/24
Say cheese!
Lent, to me, means 40 days of eating no meat. Poultry and fish are allowed. So are eggs and cheese. The problem for me is that at least the latter is very calorie-dense, which might make indulging too much a recipe for failing my present goal of having two more pounds gone till the middle of March. But, for the most time, I´m not that deeply into eating fish. Nor is DH who might just go on strike at repeat sightings of pollock or mackerel in my kitchen. My daily allotment of eggs is eaten at breakfast, and I must also- as last weekend´s gain painfully brought home- avoid those meatless but carbohydrate-rich fillers like pasta and potatoes. Which makes this whole lent thing a bit of a meal-planning balancing act for us two carnivores.
One thing I discovered at the grocery store may help there. It´s a package of dollar-sized (the coin kind you get at Las Vegas to operate the slot machines) breaded goat cheese pieces that you can bake in the oven. I had four of these little cheeses yesterday, putting them on an ovenproof platter along with an arrangement of broccoli and bell peppers, which I had doused with a bit of olive oil. The veggies were roasted nicely by the time the cheese was ready, and the whole arrangement on the platter looked definitely restaurant-worthy. As it was, DH and me were speculating about how much such a platter would cost if served at a restaurant. Four times the price of the ingredients for two home-made servings seemed to be a good guess, meaning the two of us would have spent eight times as much to eat the same thing in a restaurant.
I can, actually, get quite angry at people who claim that it´s impossible to eat cheaply. Yes, things have gotten more expensive overall, but the last time I looked, fresh or frozen produce still came a lot cheaper than those microwaveable meals, or fast food.
Of course, feeding one´s family on produce instead of fast-food burgers means you have to get off your bum and cook. People who never learned how to cook are at a decided disadvantage there. And the number of those is rising, even among the better educated.
In my eyes, it´s a crime for parents to have their children leaving home unable to prepare their own food. Apart from putting them at the mercy of Big Food for what they ingest, it also prevents them from realizing that it is possible to eat like a gourmet on a shoestring budget, if you know how to prepare those delicious things you get in a restaurant for yourself at home.
The ever rising number of people who don´t know how to cook coincides with a rise in the number of cooking shows on TV. I don´t think these are a good thing, because they are, well, shows which means that the cooks featured there will make everything appear like, well, a show. Someone who doesn´t know how to cook will look at displays of excellent knife skills chopping up onions, or at pancakes being turned over by flipping them in the air, and say, "I could never do that". The threshold to cross before starting to learn how to cook is thereby getting higher.
Guess what, cucumber salad made by slicing a cucumber slowly one slice at a time tastes just the same as if said cucumber had been cut up by a chef´s knife working like some fast-motion guillotine, cutting so fast it looks like that cucumber came apart all by itself. And for a novice cook, going slowly may prevent you from serving up an unplanned side dish of fingertips...
Yes, you may take a lot longer than they make it look on TV. They have pre-prepared ingredients backstage, did you know? And yes, you may end up burning instead of roasting your meat at the first try. But with time, you´ll learn. Just don´t say you can´t so you won´t. Try it. It is not rocket science. Generations of women in the Dark Ages when there were no restaurants around the corner have done it, with far more impractical appliances than what we have today. You can do it, too. And while you are at it, try to learn something aout your ingredients. Reading about kids who believe that milk is an artificially created product, or who aren´t able to identify even the most ordinary veggies, is just scary. Knowing which ingredients mix well and what seasonings to use with them is something that will enable you to make something out of any pantry.
There was actually one cooking show I liked, where they bought some especially ill-assorted ingredients, and the challenge for the cooks was to turn these into a proper meal within a time limit.
I thought that was the most realistic show they ever had, because it showed that with some creativity, you can turn even the last resort remnants of your pantry into a proper meal. And that´s what learning how to cook is about, too, because that way you will be able to feed your family tasty food even when grocery money is tight.
It is, after all, not what you spend on the ingredients that makes a good meal. It´s how you prepare them. A cheaper cut of meat done right will be better than the most expensive filet not properly prepared.
So dare to cook- it´s fun and frugal!
Julia
One thing I discovered at the grocery store may help there. It´s a package of dollar-sized (the coin kind you get at Las Vegas to operate the slot machines) breaded goat cheese pieces that you can bake in the oven. I had four of these little cheeses yesterday, putting them on an ovenproof platter along with an arrangement of broccoli and bell peppers, which I had doused with a bit of olive oil. The veggies were roasted nicely by the time the cheese was ready, and the whole arrangement on the platter looked definitely restaurant-worthy. As it was, DH and me were speculating about how much such a platter would cost if served at a restaurant. Four times the price of the ingredients for two home-made servings seemed to be a good guess, meaning the two of us would have spent eight times as much to eat the same thing in a restaurant.
I can, actually, get quite angry at people who claim that it´s impossible to eat cheaply. Yes, things have gotten more expensive overall, but the last time I looked, fresh or frozen produce still came a lot cheaper than those microwaveable meals, or fast food.
Of course, feeding one´s family on produce instead of fast-food burgers means you have to get off your bum and cook. People who never learned how to cook are at a decided disadvantage there. And the number of those is rising, even among the better educated.
In my eyes, it´s a crime for parents to have their children leaving home unable to prepare their own food. Apart from putting them at the mercy of Big Food for what they ingest, it also prevents them from realizing that it is possible to eat like a gourmet on a shoestring budget, if you know how to prepare those delicious things you get in a restaurant for yourself at home.
The ever rising number of people who don´t know how to cook coincides with a rise in the number of cooking shows on TV. I don´t think these are a good thing, because they are, well, shows which means that the cooks featured there will make everything appear like, well, a show. Someone who doesn´t know how to cook will look at displays of excellent knife skills chopping up onions, or at pancakes being turned over by flipping them in the air, and say, "I could never do that". The threshold to cross before starting to learn how to cook is thereby getting higher.
Guess what, cucumber salad made by slicing a cucumber slowly one slice at a time tastes just the same as if said cucumber had been cut up by a chef´s knife working like some fast-motion guillotine, cutting so fast it looks like that cucumber came apart all by itself. And for a novice cook, going slowly may prevent you from serving up an unplanned side dish of fingertips...
Yes, you may take a lot longer than they make it look on TV. They have pre-prepared ingredients backstage, did you know? And yes, you may end up burning instead of roasting your meat at the first try. But with time, you´ll learn. Just don´t say you can´t so you won´t. Try it. It is not rocket science. Generations of women in the Dark Ages when there were no restaurants around the corner have done it, with far more impractical appliances than what we have today. You can do it, too. And while you are at it, try to learn something aout your ingredients. Reading about kids who believe that milk is an artificially created product, or who aren´t able to identify even the most ordinary veggies, is just scary. Knowing which ingredients mix well and what seasonings to use with them is something that will enable you to make something out of any pantry.
There was actually one cooking show I liked, where they bought some especially ill-assorted ingredients, and the challenge for the cooks was to turn these into a proper meal within a time limit.
I thought that was the most realistic show they ever had, because it showed that with some creativity, you can turn even the last resort remnants of your pantry into a proper meal. And that´s what learning how to cook is about, too, because that way you will be able to feed your family tasty food even when grocery money is tight.
It is, after all, not what you spend on the ingredients that makes a good meal. It´s how you prepare them. A cheaper cut of meat done right will be better than the most expensive filet not properly prepared.
So dare to cook- it´s fun and frugal!
Julia
Still having beasties on board?
At least that´s what Google told me when I just tried to subscribe to an RSS feed, that my machine was generating automated queries (???). So, I´ll have to run the antivirus over everything again, which will take almost the whole night (my HD is that full :( ).
Success notice of the day: I am back at just 200 grams (that´s half a pound) over the lowest I had reached before Christmas, so, two pounds away from overweight!
I just hope this will send...
Julia
Success notice of the day: I am back at just 200 grams (that´s half a pound) over the lowest I had reached before Christmas, so, two pounds away from overweight!
I just hope this will send...
Julia
2012/02/23
Slow motion
For a couple of days, my beloved netbook has been driving me crazy because things were moving so slowly that it felt as if there were some kind of digital syrup clogging up the machine. I could- to pun on what I heard is an Indian greeting-almost say "ram ram" to every pixel appearing- before the next one appeared, that is. Yesterday, things came almost to a standstill. After fighting the settings for a whole day, uninstalling each and every program not absolutely needed, I managed to wrangle the most recent edition of the anti virus program I use on the machine, which I had intended to do anyway as the older one´s license was running out. Guess what, my little machine is back in working order.
What really has me p.o.´d is the nagging suspicion that the makers of that program have something inserted there which will slow down your machine should you chose to ignore the permanent reminders that your license is about to run out. I had been doing that for about two weeks because I wanted to use up every bit of time on my old license before installing the new version. Now, I had to give up on two whole days, but I have a working machine again. Oh well.
For the stainless steel pan dilemma, my parents called me yesterday asking me what present I´d like for my impending birthday.You can guess I had the description of a certain something on hand. I´ll see if I´ll get it. It would be free for me, and hopefully save me from being given something useless that is clutter from day one (they have been known to do that). As I have been flying circles around one of those pans for quite a while I think it´s a good application for a wish, if I have one free.
Of course, I will have to wait until my birthday to get it, which is something that I had, in the past, rarely done. If I saw something I liked, I had to have it, at once. Quite often, I carried the item home, stashed it away somewhere, and promptly forgot about it as fast I had seen it.
The only way to counteract this was to install a rule of never, ever, buying something at first sight. Only if I keep returning to something over a period of several weeks , or at the very least several days if it´s something cheap, will I buy it. I have found that these items, the ones where the decision to buy is fuelled by a desire going deeper than just the surface attraction of something glittery or pretty, the ones where the purchase has been thought about weighing the pros and cons, are the ones that, in the long run, give me the most satisfaction for my money. They are also the ones that get used instead of just cluttering up our flat.
Postponing my wishes is thus doubly useful. It´s frugal, and it keeps clutter out.
And seeing some pretty piece of bric-a-brac in a shop no longer means having to store that particular piece for the next years. I used to think I had to own such things in order to enjoy them. Today, I enjoy them when passing them by in a shop, I may have a good laugh at some particularly funny coffee mug, but I don´t have to take it home to enjoy it.
And not buying at first sight also keeps me from one of the more insidious shopping traps, namely, the trap of being in a foreign city not knowing when I´ll be back there. Quite often, I ended up spending more than I intended because I put myself in that "last chance to get this" mindset.
Actually, the internet helps a lot there. Knowing that I could order almost anything online, plus knowing that I could still do so after a waiting period, works wonders to take the urgency out of shopping. Nowadays, when I am window-shopping, I mostly use that as an opportunity to see what something looks like in real life so I won´t have to depend on an internet photo to decide whether to buy it.
This morning´s weigh in gave me quite a surprise because the whole gain of the weekend is off again, so, it definitely was water retention. Which gets me back to the fact that I had, over the weekend, eaten bread and potatoes. It seems my body is reacting ever more strongly to those, as everything else I ate were things I eat all the time without retaining several litres of water afterwards.
And today´s number is low enough that I can hope to reach the land of Just Overweight before my b-day yet.
Julia
What really has me p.o.´d is the nagging suspicion that the makers of that program have something inserted there which will slow down your machine should you chose to ignore the permanent reminders that your license is about to run out. I had been doing that for about two weeks because I wanted to use up every bit of time on my old license before installing the new version. Now, I had to give up on two whole days, but I have a working machine again. Oh well.
For the stainless steel pan dilemma, my parents called me yesterday asking me what present I´d like for my impending birthday.You can guess I had the description of a certain something on hand. I´ll see if I´ll get it. It would be free for me, and hopefully save me from being given something useless that is clutter from day one (they have been known to do that). As I have been flying circles around one of those pans for quite a while I think it´s a good application for a wish, if I have one free.
Of course, I will have to wait until my birthday to get it, which is something that I had, in the past, rarely done. If I saw something I liked, I had to have it, at once. Quite often, I carried the item home, stashed it away somewhere, and promptly forgot about it as fast I had seen it.
The only way to counteract this was to install a rule of never, ever, buying something at first sight. Only if I keep returning to something over a period of several weeks , or at the very least several days if it´s something cheap, will I buy it. I have found that these items, the ones where the decision to buy is fuelled by a desire going deeper than just the surface attraction of something glittery or pretty, the ones where the purchase has been thought about weighing the pros and cons, are the ones that, in the long run, give me the most satisfaction for my money. They are also the ones that get used instead of just cluttering up our flat.
Postponing my wishes is thus doubly useful. It´s frugal, and it keeps clutter out.
And seeing some pretty piece of bric-a-brac in a shop no longer means having to store that particular piece for the next years. I used to think I had to own such things in order to enjoy them. Today, I enjoy them when passing them by in a shop, I may have a good laugh at some particularly funny coffee mug, but I don´t have to take it home to enjoy it.
And not buying at first sight also keeps me from one of the more insidious shopping traps, namely, the trap of being in a foreign city not knowing when I´ll be back there. Quite often, I ended up spending more than I intended because I put myself in that "last chance to get this" mindset.
Actually, the internet helps a lot there. Knowing that I could order almost anything online, plus knowing that I could still do so after a waiting period, works wonders to take the urgency out of shopping. Nowadays, when I am window-shopping, I mostly use that as an opportunity to see what something looks like in real life so I won´t have to depend on an internet photo to decide whether to buy it.
This morning´s weigh in gave me quite a surprise because the whole gain of the weekend is off again, so, it definitely was water retention. Which gets me back to the fact that I had, over the weekend, eaten bread and potatoes. It seems my body is reacting ever more strongly to those, as everything else I ate were things I eat all the time without retaining several litres of water afterwards.
And today´s number is low enough that I can hope to reach the land of Just Overweight before my b-day yet.
Julia
2012/02/22
Lent(e)ment
If I remember correctly from my school times, that´s French for slowly. Which is exactly how things on the weight loss front are moving. The weekend´s five-pound (ugh) gain is coming off at a rate of a pound a day, which means it´s still somewhat over four pounds to the Promised Land of No Longer Obese.
With Lent beginning today, I have decided to stick to a meatless diet until Easter, which means plenty of fish and poultry instead.
It also means changing my breakfast habit from "bacon and eggs" to just eggs. As DH still will be eating meat, I prepare two portions of eggs every morning- one with and one without bacon.
That means I use two small pans, too. Yesterday, in preparation for this morning, I thought about what I needed today, and, being at work, went to look for a small stainless steel pan (no teflon coating) to use. Only when I stood in the mall in front of a display of small stainless steel pans, did I remember that I had bought one exactly like that- last year. Which, of course, is still perfectly serviceable. So, it was like "duh, I´m forgetful" and I had my lesson on where all those double items in my household must have come from. Remembering that I need something and completely forgetting I already have it.
Before starting on my shopping embargo, I would not have thought twice about buying another of those pans. I consider it a step forward that this time, I realized in time that I was about to spend money to re-buy something I already had.
Something else, unfortunately, seems to have gone completely missing, namely, the stainless steel pans with a larger diameter I used to have. I can remember taking them out of my pot rack after buying several teflon-coated pans. I had thought that they were in the cellar along with the extra china, but it looks like they got tossed along with some cheapo pots I used to have. While these weren´t exactly high-quality, I have read enough by now on the dangers of teflon and such to kick myself for buying a set of nonstick pans at all. So, if I really did declutter those steel pans, that would make them the one and only thing I really regret tossing out. Replacing them won´t be easy, nor cheap, as most shops around here seem to have nothing but nonstick pans any more, unless you are ready to pay half a fortune for some professional-quality pan. At least, I still have a single-portion-sized stainless pan which means I can do my fish frying without having to resort to the nonstick ones (for meat, I use my cast iron ones, but if you use these for fish, the smell will linger for a long time, and I don´t have a spare cast iron pan to dedicate to just frying fish). I´ll have to go through the cellar once more, perhaps I did yet keep those pans.
Until then, I´ll have to live with the results of my decisions. Doesn´t everyone.
Julia
With Lent beginning today, I have decided to stick to a meatless diet until Easter, which means plenty of fish and poultry instead.
It also means changing my breakfast habit from "bacon and eggs" to just eggs. As DH still will be eating meat, I prepare two portions of eggs every morning- one with and one without bacon.
That means I use two small pans, too. Yesterday, in preparation for this morning, I thought about what I needed today, and, being at work, went to look for a small stainless steel pan (no teflon coating) to use. Only when I stood in the mall in front of a display of small stainless steel pans, did I remember that I had bought one exactly like that- last year. Which, of course, is still perfectly serviceable. So, it was like "duh, I´m forgetful" and I had my lesson on where all those double items in my household must have come from. Remembering that I need something and completely forgetting I already have it.
Before starting on my shopping embargo, I would not have thought twice about buying another of those pans. I consider it a step forward that this time, I realized in time that I was about to spend money to re-buy something I already had.
Something else, unfortunately, seems to have gone completely missing, namely, the stainless steel pans with a larger diameter I used to have. I can remember taking them out of my pot rack after buying several teflon-coated pans. I had thought that they were in the cellar along with the extra china, but it looks like they got tossed along with some cheapo pots I used to have. While these weren´t exactly high-quality, I have read enough by now on the dangers of teflon and such to kick myself for buying a set of nonstick pans at all. So, if I really did declutter those steel pans, that would make them the one and only thing I really regret tossing out. Replacing them won´t be easy, nor cheap, as most shops around here seem to have nothing but nonstick pans any more, unless you are ready to pay half a fortune for some professional-quality pan. At least, I still have a single-portion-sized stainless pan which means I can do my fish frying without having to resort to the nonstick ones (for meat, I use my cast iron ones, but if you use these for fish, the smell will linger for a long time, and I don´t have a spare cast iron pan to dedicate to just frying fish). I´ll have to go through the cellar once more, perhaps I did yet keep those pans.
Until then, I´ll have to live with the results of my decisions. Doesn´t everyone.
Julia
2012/02/20
The best laid plans
...sometimes end up cut short by life. The last week, for me, was once more exemplary of that. First, I had to go out of town unexpectedly over the weekend. Then, on the day I had to catch a train to do so, a sudden influx of Very Urgent Work (the kind that cannot be postponed even by a single day) kept me glued to the office for so long that I almost ended up missing my train. And when I wanted to drive back home with DH on Sunday, the battery of our car -the same one that had been starting nicely after having stood in a sub-zero parking garage undriven for several weeks just two weeks ago- decided to quit working for good. So, it was calling for road assistance, and a new battery, which of course wasn´t planned for. That the mechanic told us it wasn´t possible to check in advance whether that kind of battery would die anytime soon was scarce comfort.
And today´s weigh-in, after just four days of having to eat standard european fare, had me up almost five pounds from last week. Most likely, that´s mostly water weight- I can see that because my hands and legs are swollen, and I definitely didn´t have enough calories to gain that much. Still, I hope it will come off as fast as it came on. I´ve been stuck above the limit of morbid obesity for far too long already, and sliding back to what I saw today is just mega frustrating.
Keep calm and carry on...
Julia
And today´s weigh-in, after just four days of having to eat standard european fare, had me up almost five pounds from last week. Most likely, that´s mostly water weight- I can see that because my hands and legs are swollen, and I definitely didn´t have enough calories to gain that much. Still, I hope it will come off as fast as it came on. I´ve been stuck above the limit of morbid obesity for far too long already, and sliding back to what I saw today is just mega frustrating.
Keep calm and carry on...
Julia
2012/02/15
Murphy was here
Seriously, have you ever noticed that the worst things happen at the most inconvenient times? Like, the door of my flat coming off its hinges just when we were about to drive off for a holiday? Or a TV set that expires right in the middle of Super Bowl? Or the exhaust of a car coming off in the middle of a lengthy trip?
It´s that kind of things that makes you go, "why is this always happening to ME?" and curse a certain Mr Murphy who by popular lore is supposed to be the legalistic genius behind the law that governs mishaps.
If anything can go wrong, it will, at the worst possible moment.
But is that really the case? In each and every of the above examples, the impending catastrophe could have been averted. That door had been hard to open for several days, I chose to ignore that instead of calling in a repair man. That TV set had had a somewhat flickering image for months, which, again, I chose to ignore. And the exhaust pipe on my car had been slowly rusting away, again, ignored by me.
The only part that was not predictable about the outcomes was just when desaster would strike.
It´s all too human to procrastinate about having something repaired, as long as it keeps functioning of sorts. Sometimes, we even hide behind the screen of frugality, as in "I don´t want to spend money on having this repaired right now".
And suddenly, what would have been a minor repair had we dealt with it at once becomes a major catastrophe that requires immediate and sometimes expensive action, upsetting our schedules and/or wiping out significant parts of our emergency funds.
Quite often, the human tendency to ignore anything unpleasant leads us to ignoring something unpleasant until it really hurts. Only when it really hurts do we finally start to take action. Sometimes, that means that it´s too late. Other times, it means having to deal with a big hassle instead of a small inconvenience.
And of these outcomes, it´s not Mister Murphy who is guilty. It´s the one who procrastinated.
Julia
It´s that kind of things that makes you go, "why is this always happening to ME?" and curse a certain Mr Murphy who by popular lore is supposed to be the legalistic genius behind the law that governs mishaps.
If anything can go wrong, it will, at the worst possible moment.
But is that really the case? In each and every of the above examples, the impending catastrophe could have been averted. That door had been hard to open for several days, I chose to ignore that instead of calling in a repair man. That TV set had had a somewhat flickering image for months, which, again, I chose to ignore. And the exhaust pipe on my car had been slowly rusting away, again, ignored by me.
The only part that was not predictable about the outcomes was just when desaster would strike.
It´s all too human to procrastinate about having something repaired, as long as it keeps functioning of sorts. Sometimes, we even hide behind the screen of frugality, as in "I don´t want to spend money on having this repaired right now".
And suddenly, what would have been a minor repair had we dealt with it at once becomes a major catastrophe that requires immediate and sometimes expensive action, upsetting our schedules and/or wiping out significant parts of our emergency funds.
Quite often, the human tendency to ignore anything unpleasant leads us to ignoring something unpleasant until it really hurts. Only when it really hurts do we finally start to take action. Sometimes, that means that it´s too late. Other times, it means having to deal with a big hassle instead of a small inconvenience.
And of these outcomes, it´s not Mister Murphy who is guilty. It´s the one who procrastinated.
Julia
2012/02/13
Customs clutter
At the house I grew up in, every day had a fixed rhythm that revolved around eating. Breakfst, lunch, as the day´s main meal, with some kind of dessert as a follow-up, afternoon coffee with some cake or cookies, dinner which meant bread, cheese, sausages, and the occasional salad. Like clockwork, these were eaten daily, always at the same time, and, of course, with the prerequisite utensils.
Breakfast meant egg cups and a salt shaker, plus, for the coffee, a sugar-bowl and creamer set to match the china being used. Dessert meant a set of glass bowls to serve the desserts in. Coffee time meant another sugar-bowl-and-creamer set, plus a cake plate, and dinner time meant yet another set of dishes, plus- you guessed it- another sugar bowl.
Can you tell there was more than one perfectionist roaming that house?
When I started buying my own china and glassware, it felt quite natural to me that the sets had to be complete, meaning they had to contain those sugar bowls and creamers, too.
For those china sets that did not come with their own ones, I bought some stainless steel sets.
In the end, I had about ten sets in total, plus another that DH brought into the household.
I was, thus, well-equipped for any coffee table or dinner table to be set in a visitor-worthy fashion.
But-
we never have visitors. At all.
And while I use milk in my coffee, neither of us ever uses real sugar. And for the milk, I prefer using one of the neutral containers that closes tightly and saves having to fill, refill and clean up several different creamers a day.
Which leaves those pretty creamers that match my china, largely unused, and the sugar bowls completely so.
Most of them, by now, live in the cellar, to the exception of some that are doing duty as little vases.
Now I don´t think that our coffee table, should I choose to set one, is any less civilized than what I grew up with. It´s just that we don´t need to keep things on hand because custom says we should have them. If we never use them, they are clutter.
Have you ever gone on ebay to look for replacement pieces for a china set? I did recently, and what surprised me most about what was offered there was the sheer number of...egg cups and sugar bowls. Ordinary plates or cups were a lot more rarely offered, which has led me to conclude that I am, obviously, not the only one who owns an unused stash of egg cups and sugar bowls.
And I am certain that there is plenty of that kind of clutter in other households, too, the kind that is created by wanting to have all of the paraphernalia to recreate the customs of our childhoods, even though our lifestyles, today, are radically different.
Another place I can see that is the linen closet. My grandmother owned plenty of real linen sheets and pillowcases, which were ironed, folded up, and lined up nicely in her immaculate linen closet (she stopped short of tying ribbons around them, however). Using them meant having to re-iron and re-fold them, which meant having to employ a laundry service because you had to use an ironing machine, because a hand-held iron simply wouldn´t straighten the fiber enough.
Some of those linens have ended up in my household. The only thing I ever used one of them for was to cover up furniture when painting the ceiling. Otherwise, they are simply too impractical to use. I very much prefer my jersey fitted sheets, thank you, that I can, after laudering them, roll up and put into a zippered container, which will of course never look as great as my grandma´s linen closet in all its glory, but it works for me and my lifestyle.
So, the most important thing to declutter in that context is expectations and outdated customs. Our lives are, and will continue to be, radically different from those of, say, our grandparents. Keeping the paraphernalia for long-outdated customs around even though we will never use them is just cluttering up our living space- and our vision of what we want our lives to be like.
Julia
Breakfast meant egg cups and a salt shaker, plus, for the coffee, a sugar-bowl and creamer set to match the china being used. Dessert meant a set of glass bowls to serve the desserts in. Coffee time meant another sugar-bowl-and-creamer set, plus a cake plate, and dinner time meant yet another set of dishes, plus- you guessed it- another sugar bowl.
Can you tell there was more than one perfectionist roaming that house?
When I started buying my own china and glassware, it felt quite natural to me that the sets had to be complete, meaning they had to contain those sugar bowls and creamers, too.
For those china sets that did not come with their own ones, I bought some stainless steel sets.
In the end, I had about ten sets in total, plus another that DH brought into the household.
I was, thus, well-equipped for any coffee table or dinner table to be set in a visitor-worthy fashion.
But-
we never have visitors. At all.
And while I use milk in my coffee, neither of us ever uses real sugar. And for the milk, I prefer using one of the neutral containers that closes tightly and saves having to fill, refill and clean up several different creamers a day.
Which leaves those pretty creamers that match my china, largely unused, and the sugar bowls completely so.
Most of them, by now, live in the cellar, to the exception of some that are doing duty as little vases.
Now I don´t think that our coffee table, should I choose to set one, is any less civilized than what I grew up with. It´s just that we don´t need to keep things on hand because custom says we should have them. If we never use them, they are clutter.
Have you ever gone on ebay to look for replacement pieces for a china set? I did recently, and what surprised me most about what was offered there was the sheer number of...egg cups and sugar bowls. Ordinary plates or cups were a lot more rarely offered, which has led me to conclude that I am, obviously, not the only one who owns an unused stash of egg cups and sugar bowls.
And I am certain that there is plenty of that kind of clutter in other households, too, the kind that is created by wanting to have all of the paraphernalia to recreate the customs of our childhoods, even though our lifestyles, today, are radically different.
Another place I can see that is the linen closet. My grandmother owned plenty of real linen sheets and pillowcases, which were ironed, folded up, and lined up nicely in her immaculate linen closet (she stopped short of tying ribbons around them, however). Using them meant having to re-iron and re-fold them, which meant having to employ a laundry service because you had to use an ironing machine, because a hand-held iron simply wouldn´t straighten the fiber enough.
Some of those linens have ended up in my household. The only thing I ever used one of them for was to cover up furniture when painting the ceiling. Otherwise, they are simply too impractical to use. I very much prefer my jersey fitted sheets, thank you, that I can, after laudering them, roll up and put into a zippered container, which will of course never look as great as my grandma´s linen closet in all its glory, but it works for me and my lifestyle.
So, the most important thing to declutter in that context is expectations and outdated customs. Our lives are, and will continue to be, radically different from those of, say, our grandparents. Keeping the paraphernalia for long-outdated customs around even though we will never use them is just cluttering up our living space- and our vision of what we want our lives to be like.
Julia
2012/02/09
Flakey view
Last winter, we were smothered in snow for over four months. This year, the white stuff did take its time arriving, as we are having the first heavy snowfall of the year right now. In February, no less. And it seems as if Father Frost were determined to drop the whole year´s stockpile on us at once. As long as we don´t have to use the car, that´s fine with me, but I sure hope they´ll have the roads cleared by the next time we have to drive to visit MIL Until then, I enjoy looking at the flaky white stuff falling down gently in front of my window.
As we have been, without using the car, pretty much housebound these days, I have had ample time to putter around in the kitchen.
Guess what, there was one more thing I decided to get rid of, namely, an electric knife that had been taking up the better part of one of my kitchen drawers. When I bought that thing, I intended it for cutting up roasts, the kicker being that the serrated edges on the knife were tearing up rather than cutting the meat, and besides, what it did, unfortunately, cut a lot faster than the meat was the surface of my cutting board. So, I stopped using it pretty fast, but I did what happens all too often when something I bought doesn´t work out the way I thought- I put it away into that drawer, where it stayed through several moves, unused.
Last year, I splurged on a set of really good Henckel´s chef´s knives, among them a carving knife that cuts through even a stubborn roast as if it were butter. The likelihood that I would ever use that blunt electric knife again has, therefore, dropped to something below zero, so, I finally decided I had better uses for the space it occupied. It´s currently in the recycling basket for electronics, awaiting the next trip to the recycling center.
The lesson in that? It´s not always better to have an electronic gadget for preparing ingredients. If a gadget doesn´t work properly, it´s absolutely permissible to dump it at once instead of carrying it- and the guilt about having wasted money on it- around for the next twenty years. Provided, of course, you get rid of it in an environmentally friendly way. And it sometimes pays to pay for quality. I´ve had several cheap knife sets over the years, but the ones I have now will probably be used for the entire rest of my culinary career.
On the same note, I´ve had several sets of cheap pots that broke down rather fast, losing their handles or getting warped bottoms. The oldest of the more expensive professional-quality stainless steel ones I bought after having that happen once too often have been with me for some twenty years now, and show no sign of the hard use I have subjected them to, apart of course some scratches and discolorations- it happens even when you are careful.
But, they still work, and hopefully will continue to do so for years to come.
If I were to calculate the cost-per-use factor for the cheap stuff versus the high-quality stuff, it would almost certainly be a lot higher for the cheap stuff, apart the fact that working with good-quality equipment in the kitchen also saves a lot of time and hassle over using cheap pots and knives.
It has, of course, taken me several years (and some lucky finds at special sales or special discount offers) to replace my cheapo stuff in the kitchen, but it´s definitely been worth it.
And by not going around replacing everything at once, I could work those things into our budget without creating any undue waves.
Today, I have the equipment I need for preparing us nutritious food- which also saves us plenty of medical copays because the better nourished our bodies are, the less they get sick.
And the price of dinner in a restaurant compared to having the exact same meal prepared at home is, even at the cheaper eateries, at least three times as high, plus, you can´t control what they put into your food in a restaurant.
So, I´m thankful to my Grandma who taught me how to cook. It´s healthy, and it´s frugal. What more can you wish for? And yes, even if I say so myself, it tastes as good or better than what you´d get in a restaurant. Just ask DH :).
Julia
As we have been, without using the car, pretty much housebound these days, I have had ample time to putter around in the kitchen.
Guess what, there was one more thing I decided to get rid of, namely, an electric knife that had been taking up the better part of one of my kitchen drawers. When I bought that thing, I intended it for cutting up roasts, the kicker being that the serrated edges on the knife were tearing up rather than cutting the meat, and besides, what it did, unfortunately, cut a lot faster than the meat was the surface of my cutting board. So, I stopped using it pretty fast, but I did what happens all too often when something I bought doesn´t work out the way I thought- I put it away into that drawer, where it stayed through several moves, unused.
Last year, I splurged on a set of really good Henckel´s chef´s knives, among them a carving knife that cuts through even a stubborn roast as if it were butter. The likelihood that I would ever use that blunt electric knife again has, therefore, dropped to something below zero, so, I finally decided I had better uses for the space it occupied. It´s currently in the recycling basket for electronics, awaiting the next trip to the recycling center.
The lesson in that? It´s not always better to have an electronic gadget for preparing ingredients. If a gadget doesn´t work properly, it´s absolutely permissible to dump it at once instead of carrying it- and the guilt about having wasted money on it- around for the next twenty years. Provided, of course, you get rid of it in an environmentally friendly way. And it sometimes pays to pay for quality. I´ve had several cheap knife sets over the years, but the ones I have now will probably be used for the entire rest of my culinary career.
On the same note, I´ve had several sets of cheap pots that broke down rather fast, losing their handles or getting warped bottoms. The oldest of the more expensive professional-quality stainless steel ones I bought after having that happen once too often have been with me for some twenty years now, and show no sign of the hard use I have subjected them to, apart of course some scratches and discolorations- it happens even when you are careful.
But, they still work, and hopefully will continue to do so for years to come.
If I were to calculate the cost-per-use factor for the cheap stuff versus the high-quality stuff, it would almost certainly be a lot higher for the cheap stuff, apart the fact that working with good-quality equipment in the kitchen also saves a lot of time and hassle over using cheap pots and knives.
It has, of course, taken me several years (and some lucky finds at special sales or special discount offers) to replace my cheapo stuff in the kitchen, but it´s definitely been worth it.
And by not going around replacing everything at once, I could work those things into our budget without creating any undue waves.
Today, I have the equipment I need for preparing us nutritious food- which also saves us plenty of medical copays because the better nourished our bodies are, the less they get sick.
And the price of dinner in a restaurant compared to having the exact same meal prepared at home is, even at the cheaper eateries, at least three times as high, plus, you can´t control what they put into your food in a restaurant.
So, I´m thankful to my Grandma who taught me how to cook. It´s healthy, and it´s frugal. What more can you wish for? And yes, even if I say so myself, it tastes as good or better than what you´d get in a restaurant. Just ask DH :).
Julia
2012/02/08
Woolen joymakers
That boundary of morbid obesity is still teasing me from less than three pounds´distance.
But there is one thing that makes me realize just how far I have come every morning, namely, my woolen pantyhose. I know, so not sexy, but it´s still in the tens centigrade below zero, and I´m using public transport to and from work, which means waiting at the tram stop for extended periods of time if there isn´t one coming up right when I arrive. With the greater part of my insulation layer recondensed, that means either shivering or putting on something warm underneath my jeans.
Now, for the last years, I had a definite problem there, because woolen pantyhose, hereabouts, is sold only up to a size 1XL. So, even the biggest pair on sale would only fit me by pulling and stretching it in directions these things aren´t made for, and even so, the panty part would reach only halfway up my bottom, and I had to keep pulling it up so as not to have them retreat into the nether parts of my pants legs. Usually, I preferred to freeze rather than subject myself to the ignominy of bunched-up hose at the lowest part of my pant seat. The existing pairs of warm hosiery were thus relegated to the back part of my stocking drawer.
This year, for the first time, those things fit. I can put them on as easily as I would a pair of nylon stockings, and they even stay up all day long without any retrieval maneuvres because the waist part is, well, at my waist.
Which reminds me every morning how far I have come, as does being able to put them on without wrestling with my legs and belly to reach my own feet. It´s a good kind of reminder because it would be all too easy to forget what it felt like to be too fat to put on pantyhose, what it felt like to become exhausted just by trying to close your own shoes. For several years, I wore open sandals without any stockings all summer because it was too difficult to put on stockings, or even proper shoes. Only by grabbing the lower part of my pants leg and pulling hard was I able at all to reach my feet, and even so, my legs kept slipping away from me. More than once, I ended up in a sweaty, crying, humiliated mess after having my slipaway feet tear up the last pair of hose or stockings I had. It was one of the bitterest lessons when being fat, that I had become too fat to dress myself properly.
I never want to go back to that place. But I mustn´t forget it either. It would be all too easy to take all those abilities that have come back with recondensing for granted. I don´t think anybody who never lost them could understand just how ridiculously happy such a small thing can make me- putting on hose when it´s cold.
Julia
But there is one thing that makes me realize just how far I have come every morning, namely, my woolen pantyhose. I know, so not sexy, but it´s still in the tens centigrade below zero, and I´m using public transport to and from work, which means waiting at the tram stop for extended periods of time if there isn´t one coming up right when I arrive. With the greater part of my insulation layer recondensed, that means either shivering or putting on something warm underneath my jeans.
Now, for the last years, I had a definite problem there, because woolen pantyhose, hereabouts, is sold only up to a size 1XL. So, even the biggest pair on sale would only fit me by pulling and stretching it in directions these things aren´t made for, and even so, the panty part would reach only halfway up my bottom, and I had to keep pulling it up so as not to have them retreat into the nether parts of my pants legs. Usually, I preferred to freeze rather than subject myself to the ignominy of bunched-up hose at the lowest part of my pant seat. The existing pairs of warm hosiery were thus relegated to the back part of my stocking drawer.
This year, for the first time, those things fit. I can put them on as easily as I would a pair of nylon stockings, and they even stay up all day long without any retrieval maneuvres because the waist part is, well, at my waist.
Which reminds me every morning how far I have come, as does being able to put them on without wrestling with my legs and belly to reach my own feet. It´s a good kind of reminder because it would be all too easy to forget what it felt like to be too fat to put on pantyhose, what it felt like to become exhausted just by trying to close your own shoes. For several years, I wore open sandals without any stockings all summer because it was too difficult to put on stockings, or even proper shoes. Only by grabbing the lower part of my pants leg and pulling hard was I able at all to reach my feet, and even so, my legs kept slipping away from me. More than once, I ended up in a sweaty, crying, humiliated mess after having my slipaway feet tear up the last pair of hose or stockings I had. It was one of the bitterest lessons when being fat, that I had become too fat to dress myself properly.
I never want to go back to that place. But I mustn´t forget it either. It would be all too easy to take all those abilities that have come back with recondensing for granted. I don´t think anybody who never lost them could understand just how ridiculously happy such a small thing can make me- putting on hose when it´s cold.
Julia
2012/02/07
Under pressure
Not only is it cold, the atmospheric pressure, too, is sky-high of late. Which for me means a whacking headache and dizziness to go with the shivering. I´m trying to avoid taking painkillers as long as possible, but still, I´m feeling rather lousy. I only hope I didn´t catch what my colleague already has- which means his work on top of mine because he´s home sick.
Weight´s going back down slowly from yesterday´s scale shock.
Guess I´ll be going home early today and get some shut-eye and a bunch of veggies. Maybe I´ll be back in working order tomorrow.
Julia
Weight´s going back down slowly from yesterday´s scale shock.
Guess I´ll be going home early today and get some shut-eye and a bunch of veggies. Maybe I´ll be back in working order tomorrow.
Julia
2012/02/06
Laurel, not hardy
Somebody once said that the wrong thing to do with one´s laurels was rest on them.
Another thing one shouldn´t do, it seems, is leaving them outside in winter. I had been trusting the information I had, namely, that the cherry laurel bush I have on my balcony, was winter-hardy and would not mind it if things got cold. What with the siberian cold that has been holding all of Europe in its grip these days, that seems to have been too optimistic. Yesterday I went out on the balcony to look after the plants, and the cherry laurel is frozen stiff. I brushed it with the edge of my coat, and immediately a couple of leaves came off, brittle as glass. So, if I´m lucky I´ll be able to cut it down in spring and allow it to grow back up from the roots, but most likely, it´s a goner. As for the buxus, it doesn´t yet show signs of advanced frostbite, but with temperatures dropping to something like twenty degrees centigrade below zero every night, that, too, may be deceiving.
It makes me glad that at least my two oleander bushes are well and warm inside, which was also what DH and myself were over the weekend.
The enforced rest has been doing both of us good, I think.
Unfortunately, it also meant being too close to the refrigerator, so, I allowed myself to be tempted by a package of vanilla-flavored yoghourt, and some rye bread with cheese and sausages. This morning, I got my just deserts for just desserts, to a tune of a four-pound gain in two days. Most of that, of course, would be water. Still, it means that these last weeks, on average, I have just been maintaining, and the limit of obesity is as far off as ever.
I wonder if the unusual vanilla-lust means that I am once more sabotaging myself. At every approaching milestone, my weight has been plateauing for several weeks, and I have found it difficult to stick to my plan. Once the milestone was past, things went smoothly until I approached the next one.
Which brings me back to the fact that just condensing off those pounds isn´t enough. I also have to think about what they mean for me, what unconscious motivation I could have to hang on to them. And I have to find something to motivate me instead of the threat of that now-past family celebration looming over me.
One great motivator, for me, is seeing my own reflection wearing something form-fitting and realizing I´m no longer The Blob. What with MIL´s fur parka, I have been looking like a giant furball on legs for some days now. It really is time it got warmer, and I could return to more shapely apparel. Then again, I know that just two years ago, I couldn´t even wear that parka because it wouldn´t close over my extra baggage, so, that furball look still means there´s less of me, even with that uptick over the weekend.
So, now that the vanilla stuff is gone, it´s back on plan. I only hope that means going on below that limit of obesity soon.
Even if I´ll have to redefine myself then.
It´s a strange feeling to be so close to the point where the one defining criterion I had for over ten years when describing myself will no longer apply. Perhaps that was the mistake, that I let my obesity become the most important thing about me in my own eyes. I was Julia, and I was morbidly obese.
I was -and am-also a loving wife, accomplished cook, good friend, able professional, music-lover, caring DIL.
The fact that I had to pause and think for a moment to list these up tells a lot about the way I have reduced myself for too long, as if the fact that I was fat cancelled out everything else about myself that might be positive. Talk about fat hatred. I didn´t need the external haters, I was doing too good a job of putting myself down. And now I have to find out about those parts of me that got smothered under layers of fat.
Like any archeological dig, that can only be done layer by layer.
But perhaps there´s some treasure to be found under all that debris, after all.
Julia
Another thing one shouldn´t do, it seems, is leaving them outside in winter. I had been trusting the information I had, namely, that the cherry laurel bush I have on my balcony, was winter-hardy and would not mind it if things got cold. What with the siberian cold that has been holding all of Europe in its grip these days, that seems to have been too optimistic. Yesterday I went out on the balcony to look after the plants, and the cherry laurel is frozen stiff. I brushed it with the edge of my coat, and immediately a couple of leaves came off, brittle as glass. So, if I´m lucky I´ll be able to cut it down in spring and allow it to grow back up from the roots, but most likely, it´s a goner. As for the buxus, it doesn´t yet show signs of advanced frostbite, but with temperatures dropping to something like twenty degrees centigrade below zero every night, that, too, may be deceiving.
It makes me glad that at least my two oleander bushes are well and warm inside, which was also what DH and myself were over the weekend.
The enforced rest has been doing both of us good, I think.
Unfortunately, it also meant being too close to the refrigerator, so, I allowed myself to be tempted by a package of vanilla-flavored yoghourt, and some rye bread with cheese and sausages. This morning, I got my just deserts for just desserts, to a tune of a four-pound gain in two days. Most of that, of course, would be water. Still, it means that these last weeks, on average, I have just been maintaining, and the limit of obesity is as far off as ever.
I wonder if the unusual vanilla-lust means that I am once more sabotaging myself. At every approaching milestone, my weight has been plateauing for several weeks, and I have found it difficult to stick to my plan. Once the milestone was past, things went smoothly until I approached the next one.
Which brings me back to the fact that just condensing off those pounds isn´t enough. I also have to think about what they mean for me, what unconscious motivation I could have to hang on to them. And I have to find something to motivate me instead of the threat of that now-past family celebration looming over me.
One great motivator, for me, is seeing my own reflection wearing something form-fitting and realizing I´m no longer The Blob. What with MIL´s fur parka, I have been looking like a giant furball on legs for some days now. It really is time it got warmer, and I could return to more shapely apparel. Then again, I know that just two years ago, I couldn´t even wear that parka because it wouldn´t close over my extra baggage, so, that furball look still means there´s less of me, even with that uptick over the weekend.
So, now that the vanilla stuff is gone, it´s back on plan. I only hope that means going on below that limit of obesity soon.
Even if I´ll have to redefine myself then.
It´s a strange feeling to be so close to the point where the one defining criterion I had for over ten years when describing myself will no longer apply. Perhaps that was the mistake, that I let my obesity become the most important thing about me in my own eyes. I was Julia, and I was morbidly obese.
I was -and am-also a loving wife, accomplished cook, good friend, able professional, music-lover, caring DIL.
The fact that I had to pause and think for a moment to list these up tells a lot about the way I have reduced myself for too long, as if the fact that I was fat cancelled out everything else about myself that might be positive. Talk about fat hatred. I didn´t need the external haters, I was doing too good a job of putting myself down. And now I have to find out about those parts of me that got smothered under layers of fat.
Like any archeological dig, that can only be done layer by layer.
But perhaps there´s some treasure to be found under all that debris, after all.
Julia
2012/02/03
Deep cold
Tonight, the temperatures hit a long-time low of eighteen degrees centigrade below zero. If you take into account the wind chill factor , it feels rather like 25 degrees below.
So, there´s the worry about our car battery dying from the cold- the parking lot we have is in an open-sided structure, so, the inside is as cold as it´s outside. Luckily, I don´t think we´ll need the car this weekend, unless something of a professional nature were to creep up. Weekend shopping will, for this weekend, be done by tram, which is quite feasible because our fridge is, happily, well-stocked.
Having to carry all of my purchases at once will, moreover, help me to stick to the essentials, so, it´s also frugal.
Speaking of frugality, in December I got a nice fat refund from the energy provider we use. Too fat to be true, I thought and had the calculation rechecked. Turned out there had been a mixup of gas meters, so, they had erroneously billed me the gas use of another flat that had stood empty half of the year. So, almost half the refund had to be returned.... What vexes me is that the mistake only became evident because of that big fat zero for the second half of the year´s use. Had the other flat not stood empty, I might have gone on paying somebody else´s gas bill indefinitely and never been the wiser for it.
The lesson from that is that you can´t just rely on your utility bills being correct. Find out the numbers of the meters connected to your flat, and watch how much you´re using.
Having a central heating system for just our flat was, for me, an important criterion when I was looking for a new flat, because that way, I decide when the heating gets turned on or off, and how high the temperature is set. No haggling with my landlord over heating costs, either. And definitely no paying for any other tenants who believe that the way to regulate room temperature is to heat the place all the way up and then leave the windows wide open.
Having your own closed-circuit heating system with a thermostat that can be set to automatically lower temperatures during the daytime when there´s nobody at home, and at bedtime, can save a lot of money there. As can lowering said thermostat by just one or two degrees. The drop in heating cost is several percent for every degree centigrade less, and besides, we could always wear a sweater or vest if it gets too cold.
After all, the epitome of wasting energy, as defined by some prankster, is "heating up your room in wintertime until it´s as warm as it was during the summer when we complained about the heat and switched the A/C on".
I´d rather wear season-appropriate clothes and save on the cost of heating and air condition.
Come to think of it, even a hundred years ago it would have been sheer luxury to have a room in winter that had temperatures above zero at all. Our grandparents all have stories of windows coated with a layer of ice from the inside, or water pipes frozen up, or washing from a bucket where you had to break the ice first.
Our forebears dealt with that by dressing warmer. Heating up your rooms to the point where you can sit around with just a t-shirt even though it´s freezing outside, to them, would have seemed preposterous.
So, while I dislike shivering as much as anybody else, I still believe that central heating, too, is a commodity that should be used but not overused.
The environment and my purse both agree.
Julia
So, there´s the worry about our car battery dying from the cold- the parking lot we have is in an open-sided structure, so, the inside is as cold as it´s outside. Luckily, I don´t think we´ll need the car this weekend, unless something of a professional nature were to creep up. Weekend shopping will, for this weekend, be done by tram, which is quite feasible because our fridge is, happily, well-stocked.
Having to carry all of my purchases at once will, moreover, help me to stick to the essentials, so, it´s also frugal.
Speaking of frugality, in December I got a nice fat refund from the energy provider we use. Too fat to be true, I thought and had the calculation rechecked. Turned out there had been a mixup of gas meters, so, they had erroneously billed me the gas use of another flat that had stood empty half of the year. So, almost half the refund had to be returned.... What vexes me is that the mistake only became evident because of that big fat zero for the second half of the year´s use. Had the other flat not stood empty, I might have gone on paying somebody else´s gas bill indefinitely and never been the wiser for it.
The lesson from that is that you can´t just rely on your utility bills being correct. Find out the numbers of the meters connected to your flat, and watch how much you´re using.
Having a central heating system for just our flat was, for me, an important criterion when I was looking for a new flat, because that way, I decide when the heating gets turned on or off, and how high the temperature is set. No haggling with my landlord over heating costs, either. And definitely no paying for any other tenants who believe that the way to regulate room temperature is to heat the place all the way up and then leave the windows wide open.
Having your own closed-circuit heating system with a thermostat that can be set to automatically lower temperatures during the daytime when there´s nobody at home, and at bedtime, can save a lot of money there. As can lowering said thermostat by just one or two degrees. The drop in heating cost is several percent for every degree centigrade less, and besides, we could always wear a sweater or vest if it gets too cold.
After all, the epitome of wasting energy, as defined by some prankster, is "heating up your room in wintertime until it´s as warm as it was during the summer when we complained about the heat and switched the A/C on".
I´d rather wear season-appropriate clothes and save on the cost of heating and air condition.
Come to think of it, even a hundred years ago it would have been sheer luxury to have a room in winter that had temperatures above zero at all. Our grandparents all have stories of windows coated with a layer of ice from the inside, or water pipes frozen up, or washing from a bucket where you had to break the ice first.
Our forebears dealt with that by dressing warmer. Heating up your rooms to the point where you can sit around with just a t-shirt even though it´s freezing outside, to them, would have seemed preposterous.
So, while I dislike shivering as much as anybody else, I still believe that central heating, too, is a commodity that should be used but not overused.
The environment and my purse both agree.
Julia
2012/02/02
Joe to the rescue
The job I have entails being on emergency alert duty 24/24 every second week (every week when my estimated colleague who usually does the other week is off on another holiday). The kind of emergencies I have to deal with are, luckily, all solvable by phone and mostly few and far between, but still...
Last night´s phone call had me awake and sitting at my kitchen table (that is doing double duty as a desk at night) some one hour and a half after going to sleep. So, right in the middle of a sleep cycle which meant going back to sleep after dealing with whatever it was proved a bit more difficult than had I been woken half an hour later.
So, I´m once more yawningly tired.
Thank God for the coffee cup- its contents are taking me through the day nicely. And, luckily, it seems that business, too, is a bit slower than usual, so, there aren´t that many clients to see me yawn...
Julia
Last night´s phone call had me awake and sitting at my kitchen table (that is doing double duty as a desk at night) some one hour and a half after going to sleep. So, right in the middle of a sleep cycle which meant going back to sleep after dealing with whatever it was proved a bit more difficult than had I been woken half an hour later.
So, I´m once more yawningly tired.
Thank God for the coffee cup- its contents are taking me through the day nicely. And, luckily, it seems that business, too, is a bit slower than usual, so, there aren´t that many clients to see me yawn...
Julia
Sales temptation
It´s cold outside. Cold enough to freeze some important parts off a brass monkey, as they say.
And the sweater problem still hasn´t been solved.
So, I have gone to work lately wearing a woolen vest over a turtleneck sweater, topping it off with MIL´s hand-me-down fur parka. Warm enough as it is, but the fur parka is a bit of a pain. For one, I can´t use my usual knapsack or anything with a shoulder strap with it so as not to break off the fur. So, I have to carry my netbook inside what is usually my overnighter bag that can be carried using one hand. If one is used to having one´s hands free, that´s quite a nuisance. Besides, the thing sheds worse than one of those hungarian shepherd dogs, so, my dark-blue woolen vest looks as if I´d recently acquired canine company.
So, the thing is somewhat impractical to wear. And it totally doesn´t match my usually simple style. Top that off with the fact that, cold or not, I´m right now the only person at the office wearing fur, and therefore drawing quite a bit of unwelcome attention to myself, I´d rather wear a simple down jacket or something like that. Except I don´t own one. The ones I had were decluttered when they became decidedly too big after condensing off a good part of excess weight, and the ones offered at the beginning of winter were too flimsily made to even think about them as a possible solution.
Enter the end-of-season sales. Fifty percent off all winter jackets. And they do have some jackets that are a lot better than the ones in December.
Then again, it´s February already, which means that the big cold will, probably, last no more than two months at the most before it gets warm enough to return to wearing my woolen coats.
And by the time winter returns, I fully intend to have gone on condensing myself by at least another dress size. More, if possible. Were I to buy myself a jacket now, it would probably be too big by next winter (at least I hope so), so, by buying now, I´d cheat myself out of the experience of buying a jacket in a smaller size and wear it next winter.
Then again, I might have to pay retail for next year´s jacket if I were to need it before it gets downmarked.
It´s d..d if you do and d...d if you don´t.
Or is it? Even if that fur parka is so darn inconvenient, it´s what I have now, and won´t have to pay for, either. So, from a point of frugality, the best solution would be to keep using it and stop whining about how uncomfortable it is. And practice a little gratitude considering that without that thing, I´d be a lot colder this winter.
Besides, I´d be able to use a really warm down jacket for maybe one or two months before it gets too warm to wear it. And that is a timespan during which I can stand the inconvenience of wearing that fur parka.
And for the next winter, I can always reconsider buying a down jacket.
Being in the process of recondensing myself means not knowing what size I´ll need next winter. Thus, it would be stupid to buy now.
For everyone who intends to be the same size next winter, there may be some real occasions to be had right now. But that´s something I don´t intend, so, I´ll wait and see which size I have to buy by next winter. And save myself from buying another garment that would end up on the decluttering stash barely worn.
After all, I have resolved that I would only buy the absolute necessities in garments while still in transition to my goal weight. Everything else would mean throwing out money. Even at half price.
Julia
And the sweater problem still hasn´t been solved.
So, I have gone to work lately wearing a woolen vest over a turtleneck sweater, topping it off with MIL´s hand-me-down fur parka. Warm enough as it is, but the fur parka is a bit of a pain. For one, I can´t use my usual knapsack or anything with a shoulder strap with it so as not to break off the fur. So, I have to carry my netbook inside what is usually my overnighter bag that can be carried using one hand. If one is used to having one´s hands free, that´s quite a nuisance. Besides, the thing sheds worse than one of those hungarian shepherd dogs, so, my dark-blue woolen vest looks as if I´d recently acquired canine company.
So, the thing is somewhat impractical to wear. And it totally doesn´t match my usually simple style. Top that off with the fact that, cold or not, I´m right now the only person at the office wearing fur, and therefore drawing quite a bit of unwelcome attention to myself, I´d rather wear a simple down jacket or something like that. Except I don´t own one. The ones I had were decluttered when they became decidedly too big after condensing off a good part of excess weight, and the ones offered at the beginning of winter were too flimsily made to even think about them as a possible solution.
Enter the end-of-season sales. Fifty percent off all winter jackets. And they do have some jackets that are a lot better than the ones in December.
Then again, it´s February already, which means that the big cold will, probably, last no more than two months at the most before it gets warm enough to return to wearing my woolen coats.
And by the time winter returns, I fully intend to have gone on condensing myself by at least another dress size. More, if possible. Were I to buy myself a jacket now, it would probably be too big by next winter (at least I hope so), so, by buying now, I´d cheat myself out of the experience of buying a jacket in a smaller size and wear it next winter.
Then again, I might have to pay retail for next year´s jacket if I were to need it before it gets downmarked.
It´s d..d if you do and d...d if you don´t.
Or is it? Even if that fur parka is so darn inconvenient, it´s what I have now, and won´t have to pay for, either. So, from a point of frugality, the best solution would be to keep using it and stop whining about how uncomfortable it is. And practice a little gratitude considering that without that thing, I´d be a lot colder this winter.
Besides, I´d be able to use a really warm down jacket for maybe one or two months before it gets too warm to wear it. And that is a timespan during which I can stand the inconvenience of wearing that fur parka.
And for the next winter, I can always reconsider buying a down jacket.
Being in the process of recondensing myself means not knowing what size I´ll need next winter. Thus, it would be stupid to buy now.
For everyone who intends to be the same size next winter, there may be some real occasions to be had right now. But that´s something I don´t intend, so, I´ll wait and see which size I have to buy by next winter. And save myself from buying another garment that would end up on the decluttering stash barely worn.
After all, I have resolved that I would only buy the absolute necessities in garments while still in transition to my goal weight. Everything else would mean throwing out money. Even at half price.
Julia
2012/02/01
Damages almost repaired
With today´s weigh-in, I´m less than a pound away from the point I had reached before Christmas and the obligations that came with it threw a monkey wrench into my eating habits.
The land of Just Overweight is beckoning-from less than a kilogram away, no less!
And I fully intend to go there and stay, as soon as possible.
Julia
The land of Just Overweight is beckoning-from less than a kilogram away, no less!
And I fully intend to go there and stay, as soon as possible.
Julia
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)