Tuesday, November 30, 2004

nutritional wasteland

I had the worst eating day today. Well, not the entire day, just the middle part of it: any day that involves a Cinnabon with extra frosting for lunch, followed later by a half a peanut butter and banana sandwich, is not going down in the records as a successful day, at least nutrition-wise.

Of course every time I eat junk like that I think, "Why am I feeding my cancer?" I know that cancer cells thrive on sugar. I know it's bad for me. Since my diagnosis I've been pretty stringent about avoiding sugar. Except for those candies during my RAI, but they were required, and besides -- I think that one Cinnabon had as many grams of sugar in it as all the candies I ate over those 3 days!

I don't eat all that much sugar, so that when I do indulge, I want it to be worthwhile. After dinner last night at Abuelo's, we both splurged and got the Mexican coffees -- DH got caramel, I got chocolate. They were basically huge cups of coffee piled with whipped cream and drizzled with syrups. Tasty, sure, but positively loaded with sugar. I doubt I'll order them again. I'd much rather eat flan if I'm going to splurge, dessert-wise.

DH's coffee, OTOH -- mmmmm. The man makes a seriously good cup of coffee. I'm drinking one now, and it's helping my throat which is feeling savaged from reading for about 40 minutes to DD and DS2 -- we polished off Little House in the Big Woods tonight, but then also read the 2 new Christmas books. DS2 loves "The Night Before Christmas" pop-up, it is just so cool. He was very patient waiting for me to finish DD's book, too.

The IL's took off this morning without any hassle whatsoever; DH came home to bring them to the airport. I would've driven but I'm not sure how my slightly radioactive state would register at the airport, and frankly I didn't want to get into any kind of hassles. It was just easier to let DH drive them. Even with the IL's leaving, or maybe because of it, I had a productive day -- dredged the counter (somehow, saying "cleaned off the counter" just doesn't convey the sense of it; it had gone so long that another archeological dig was in order), sent back the Coldwater Creek things that didn't fit and I changed my mind about giving as presents (see earlier references to "nothing that I have to wrap, pack, and ship myself"), went to Trader Joe's, returned those pants that didn't fit DS1 at the Gap, took DD to Build-a-Bear to spend her birthday gift certificate, and even let DS2 and DD play at the mall for a while before we had to go pick up DS2.

Dinner was clean-out-the-fridge; DH packed up the rest of the lasagna and put it in the freezer, and we ate and then disposed of all the rest of the leftovers, except my leftovers from Abuelo's last night, which, come to think of it, I should've eaten for lunch today... the last remaining vestige of Thanksgiving is the little bit of cranberry sauce that's left, which there was no reason to pitch. It will get eaten a bit here and there, and it should keep nicely for a while, anyway.

Now I have the sense of "back to normal": DS1 had to do his homework, and reading with the kids after supper. They all balked at having to eat (gasp!) vegetables with dinner -- I can't remember the last time that happened! Nonetheless, they survived. It's good to get back into the groove, if only for a few weeks before the Christmas holiday begins.

DH flirted briefly with the idea of us all going to his brother's house in Cleveland for Christmas. His motivation had something to do with a football bowl game that UConn will be playing on Dec 27 in Detroit; he thought it would be great to go to the game with his brother and Dad. Of course flying us all out there on Christmas would not be cheap, not to mention requiring substantial preparation for both travelers and hosts... and you can't really just show up with a family of 5 and say, "hey, put us up for a few days?" over Christmas when people usually have, you know, plans with their own (local) families... I think he would still like to go to the game, but the idea of us all going has been pretty well scotched at this point. (**whew**)

I admit to being slightly peeved at the idea that he wants to take off for a few days during the kids' (and his own) holiday, especially after he will have been working that 8AM-8PM shift for the two weeks prior, and barely seen anyone in the family as a result. I also realized today that I am for whatever reason extremely sensitive to criticism; when DH and I were talking about how unrealistic the trip really would be, I mentioned to him how tired I get, very suddenly it seems, and he went off on the mini-lecture: "You really need to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Especially for the next two weeks when I'm on that shift..." I was immediately furious with him for thinking that he needed to tell me that. What, I'm stupid and don't know it's going to be a stress, and I'll need my sleep especially? I really got quite angry, but rather than go into with him, I just said I needed to go and help DS1 with his homework, which was true anyway... avoided a blow-up.

Seriously... what he said was a tad patronizing, and not helpful, but my own response was disproportionate. Gotta watch that temper thing.

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