Amelia Sprout |

Zen and the Art of Snow Shoveling

By a. sprout | Published: February 22, 2013

Secret, I love shoveling snow. It is one of my favorite things to do. I don’t mean shoveling it in a rush so you can get out the door to work. I mean the kind of shoveling that you do when it is late at night, or early in the morning, when there is no one else around. I live in a huge city, next to a busy street, but when I am shoveling at night, it is peaceful. The zen of it really. It is methodical, relaxing, and a work out.

Tonight I shoveled after we caught the edge of a big storm. We don’t seem to have any of our own, we just get the edges of them. I took my time, got every little bit I could, trying to get the most exercise out of the deal. I shoveled the back sidewalk even though we don’t use it for anything but taking out the garbage right now. I shoveled the stairs, even the front ones we don’t use. I shoveled to find a little peace.

I am struggling and I don’t seem to know why. Perhaps it is the stress of M’s upcoming psych evals. Perhaps it is her being sick, not eating well, still being sick, and clearly struggling with her emotional well being. Perhaps it is work, and my upcoming trip. Whatever it is, I needed the snow. I needed to find a little relaxation in the scraping of plastic and metal on concrete, throw left, then throw right, balance in the mundane.

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I still haven’t eaten the Hagen Daz

By a. sprout | Published: February 2, 2013

That doesn’t mean that I didn’t take it out and fondle it once, or think about it a few times. I just didn’t get it out and actually eat it. It likely helps that I don’t think dairy would do much for my general crud, thank you again youngest child for being such a lovely germ carrier.

I am trying, and failing only part of the time, to eat healthier. It turns out that I can pack a great breakfast/lunch for work, but I still get the munchies in the afternoon and if I don’t pack something for that, I will eat all the things. For the record, credit card usable vending machines and a “healthy workplace initiative” do not go together.

So, I went shopping, bought a bunch of healthy snacks, packed them up to go to work, and then had a kid get sick. I have yet to see if they help, and here we are the weekend already, so I won’t find out until next week. I got baked cracker type things, some portioned jell-o type things, and I made baked apple chips. The apple chips were amazing. I got the general recipe off of the Weight Watchers site, then bastardized it to my will. So far I’ve made them twice, an at least double recipe, that fills my oven, and I have zero left. Everyone except A gobbles them up. Recipe below:

Apples, cored, sliced 1/8 in thick (I use my mandolin, proving it was worth it repeatedly even though it has to live in the basement)
Place apples on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper
Spring with a cinnamon and sugar mix, with some ground cardamom thrown in for good measure. Use good cinnamon, totally makes a difference. Go easy on the sugar, or skip it if you are using sweeter apple varieties.
Bake at 200 degrees for two hours until crispy and starting to brown

Now I’m trying to figure out what other fruit/veggies I can turn in to chips.

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It has been silly cold here again. I have to say, I sort of love it. This is Minnesota after all. I live here by choice, having tried out at least three other places before returning. You just smile, bundle up, and accept it. Bitching is best left alone, seeing as, in the words of many Scandinavian bachelor farmer Minnesotans, “It could be worse”. That isn’t saying however that you shouldn’t bundle up in bright shiny colors.

Personally, I wouldn’t be making it through the winter without the recycled cashmere cowl my sister-in-law got me last year. I don’t know why I lived without cashmere as long as I did. Silly me. I wonder if the thrift stores are too picked over to still find sweaters to recycle… hm.

My hair is growing out nicely I think. I may be due for some more shaping, but it is getting its curl back. I will miss the pixie. I could have kept that hair for a long time, but alas, my mother has to go and ruin things like it seems she does so much. Turns out your husband is not a fan of you and your mother looking too much alike. She got the same haircut as me, so I grow out the pixie. Looking for headband suggestions though. I can’t seem to figure out a way to sort through the “giant flower on baby” headbands on Etsy to find mature but funky ones for myself. We are nearly to that stage of the grow out and I am getting desperate.

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De-Clutter

By a. sprout | Published: January 28, 2013

Two boxes and one grocery bag. That is what I gathered up and took to ARC tonight. After bedtime, but before I pan grilled steak tips for my next two days lunches.

I’m so not kidding about my house being on the track to hoarders. I wish, so desperately, that I was. I guess though, it all makes sense. Cluttered head, cluttered house. I haven’t seen the floor of my laundry room since we got the new washer and dryer. I am stymied the whole kids grow and no longer need clothes thing. The too small clothes wallow in a giant pile (along with my too small/too large clothes) on a table in the laundry area.

I keep wishing for day off without kids. Just a day I tell myself, then it will all be better. I will magically undo months, years of crap in a single day. It never happens. There are other things to eat up my days. Sick kids, sick me. It never happens. And really, who am I kidding. This is going to take more than a day. So instead I feel defeated before I even begin, I sit on the couch, read things on my phone, already having given up. (oh crap, I do sound like an episode of hoarders don’t I)

So, just like lunches, like eating healthier I am trying to take it in small bites. A box, two boxes, a bag, a day. Bedtimes run long, with no time for the gym, but I can still “lose” something. A box, two boxes, a bag, every day.

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There is a pint of Hagen Daz in my freezer. It has been there for almost two weeks. It is there to prove a point. I will not let food rule me. I will not let myself give up. Some days I forget it is there. Not today.

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Sticker Charts for Adults

By a. sprout | Published: January 25, 2013

I feel the need to confront my weight loss, or lack there of. I said a bunch of shit, then I didn’t deliver. This really only matters to me. This isn’t anything I owe anyone else unless you count my family for the monthly deduction from my account for Weight Watchers and the Y.

For a month, maybe a month and a half, I ate uncontrollably. I had gone months without losing any weight, though really, that was my fault for not tracking, even though I was working out regularly. Then someone got the flu. Then Thanksgiving, then someone else, then me. Excuses really. I just felt out of control. I binged. I ate “all of the things.”

I can look back now and go “damn, I was really fucking stressed out”, but at the time, I just looked at myself and said “you fucking idiot, you slob, where is your goddamn self control”, none of which actually helped the situation.

Now, I’m less stressed. Now I can eat semi normally. I feel better, but the commitment to working out and eating better, well, there is room for improvement.

This whole ADHD realization thing has made me realize that routine will save my soul. So, I am on a mission for routine, and with it control. I get it now, why people who struggle with addiction need to hand things over to a higher power. Sometimes, you just need to let go. Realize you can’t pull it off wholly on your own. I need routine to be my higher power. I need routine so that I can regain control of the things that will never fit into a schedule. Gain control by losing free will, or something like that.

So, goals, routines, verbalizing so that I can make sure I’ve thought it all out. (well, not verbal, verbal, because internets and I will never video blog)