Going Back

It's been 2yrs and 9mos since I moved from San Diego back to Utah. I was raised in Utah but at 17 I moved to San Diego to go to design school and ended up staying for 11yrs. Up until I made the move back to Utah, all my adult years had been spent in my new California home which has led me to tell people many times that Utah is where I was raised but San Diego is where I grew up.

San Diego was mine. The life I had there, I built. I chose which grocery store I liked rather than just going where my mom had always shopped. I found the parks that spoke to me and discovered great places to eat. As time passed I found I had history all over the city. Driving down Rosecrans with a friend I could say, "This was where a drunk driver hit me and totaled my car while I was kind of living out of it when I was in college and between apartments." Or, "That's the apartment I lived in with the pot smoking roommate." And "Last time I was here I was pregnant with my son." I began to feel a sense of ownership for the city and in many ways I became someone new because of it's influence. I learned to be comfortable around a huge variety of people, I became sensitive to the subtle change in the air when summer turned to fall, I became a master of the freeways and didn't fear traveling on new streets to new places and I gained a new family in a much more intimate church setting than I had previously experienced. I felt unique in my surroundings and yet felt like I belonged. If I can get those two feelings somewhere then I'm hooked. San Diego had become my home. Then... the economy crashed.

I could write a whole post about all that happened next but the punch line is we had to leave and my heart was truly broken. When we arrived in Utah with our whole lives packed in a truck we were greeted by my dad. I fell into his arms sobbing. I was a child in mourning. I knew we had made the right choice but that knowledge did not ease the pain of leaving the life I had built and all the people and places I loved so dearly. I cried regularly for the next six months. I wanted to go back so badly but I knew that visiting, even if we could have afforded it, would sting painfully. I would have to leave all over again and it would be like tearing off a fresh scab.

Time went by. My life was a lot of hard work but many good memories were made. I began collecting a new history in my childhood home. I got a job and had new experiences and built a new life. I gradually felt good and found that I no longer said to my husband in bed at night, "I just want to go home." And though I finally felt good about my new life I was still afraid to go back, to visit what had been so important to me. What if it didn't feel like home anymore? What if it still did? What if people weren't as excited to see me as I hoped? (I'm an over thinker.) But this summer I decided it was time. So after 2yrs and 9mos I packed up my kids, our boogie boards and a suitcase full of swimsuits and off we went.

And here we are. We've been here for 4 days now and I've learned some things. We're staying with a friend in the apartment building we used to live in so one thing I learned is that my internal compass still wants to take me to my old door when I'm holding bags of groceries. If you've spent any time in San Diego you know there are a lot of planes taking off and landing pretty much constantly. I learned that I still don't notice them and thank goodness because only tourists take notice of the planes! I've forgotten the order of the freeway exits and connections. I've grown accustomed to bigger parking spaces. I learned my spanish will come back a little when I hear it a lot and I can still boogie board. But what I really learned is that I have a new home and I will be happy to go back to it when its time to go. Sure, I will miss living 2 miles from the ocean but I've gained a back yard. I will always miss the National City swap meet and the piles and piles of fabric there for only $1.00/yd but I no longer live on a street with two strip clubs a bar and a "massage" parlor. And I still miss walking the boardwalk at night but I certainly don't miss walking all the way across the parking lot with my arms full of groceries and through a locked outer door to get them to my front door. I've learned that I've become accustomed to a new way of life. I've moved on and thats okay.

San Diego, you are like my first love. When we parted I felt like my life had ended but now that time has passed and we've had some distance I can see that it was for the best... But lets make sure we still have a little fling now and then. ;)

Taking My Family Off Sugar.

I am a sugarholic, or was, I hope. The last month I was pregnant with my son I single handedly ate a batch of cupcakes every week! I have to have something sweet after every meal and I have no problem eating two cupcakes and a bowl of ice cream each night before bed.  My family is no different. My husband once ate an entire tub of Redvines in a single sitting because I was out of town and he was lonely. And my children, I guess like most children, consider Fruit Loops to be a well balanced breakfast. A typical day for them was frequently, sugar cereal for breakfast, a peanut butter (the regular kind with sugar) sandwich for lunch, Pizza or something akin to it for dinner and maybe some apple slices or baby carrots if I was lucky, then cinnamon sugar toast before bed. This diet so heavy on carbs and sugar and so light on nutrients and protein was very bothersome to me but with the care of my kids in the hands of relatives for most of each day there wasn't a whole lot to be done. But then, I quit my job...

I've always felt instinctively that sugar is bad for me but it just tastes SO good! Society, however, for my whole life has been freaking out about fat which I've honestly never been afraid of. But lately sugar is getting its day under the hot lamp in the interrogation room and its looking pretty guilty. I won't go into reasons, studies or science here because thats what Google is for but what I started hearing and reading was a lot more in line with how I've always felt, natural fats not as bad as we thought and processed foods especially high in sugar WAY worse than we thought. I got motivated.

In the months leading up to my last day of work I made plans in my head. My family was going to go off sugar. I informed them of the impending change and insisted on full cooperation. The children were offered rewards as incentive to do so and the husband was bombarded with logical arguments, science, and reasoning/ arguing skills to rival any high paid attorney. Ultimately I pulled the age card. (He is seven years older than me.) "Babe, you've got seven years on me and you're male. I don't want to lose you. (His dad had heart attacks pretty
young) Please be healthy...for me?" Enter the sweet pouty face that is his cryptonite. All were on board, maybe not enthusiastically but I had them committed.

Now heres the biggest thing I learned. If you want to get your family on a healthier diet, whatever it may be, here's the key: The Fast! You empty your house of ALL unacceptable foods to the extreme and you go on a week long, in our case sugar, fast. I got rid of almost all sugar for the first four days, I'm talking no fruit, no carrots, no corn, no cereal. I did have to keep a little bread in the form of, tortillas (limited) and rice, or my children would have starved. My children's food world was shut down and since they are pretty picky they got bored and hungry fast. After four days I brought in plain Cheerios and whole wheat bread, neither of which they would eat before, but now... you would have thought it was birthday cake and ice-cream. They were begging me for plain Cheerios and toast minus the cinnamon sugar! The wheat bread and plain Cheerios are a miracle in and of themselves but next I brought back fruit, but not the fruits they usually eat. We had a try new foods evening where my son learned he likes peaches and lunch meat (sugar and nitrate free) and my daughter learned she also likes peaches and cucumber.  Miracles I tell you! MIRACLES!

I know that had I just said, "We're not eating cereal with sugar any more." I would have had a revolt and all I would have heard about is how disgusting plain Cheerios and Wheat Chex are. Or had I said, "Vanilla yogurt is now replacing ice-cream in this family." There would have been tears. But by taking away pretty much everything, they were very excited to eat what I was willing to give back. I'm baking a lot now so that my family can still enjoy treats and after eating no sugar for awhile my cookies with almond meal, whole wheat flour and way less sugar taste great to us. I also make popsicles from plain yogurt and fruit and little baked "doughnuts" full of apple and spinach. I'm even baking my own crackers. There is just so much added sugar in everything out there! But by feeding my family this way, I know exactly what they are getting.

I gave my kids a rule of thumb that we want our foods that have sugar to have more fiber than sugar and now my son (age 10) reads boxes at the grocery store and if I'm honest I have to tell you that he gets pretty frustrated because very few processed foods fit this criteria. But my daughter (almost 5) says that she wants to eat this way forever and that she thinks the whole world should eat this way. I, of course, tend to agree. All in all my kids are happy, I feel GREAT, health wise and as a mom and my junk food cravings are virtually gone. I'm no longer a slave to Oreos and my unreasonable need to eat them an entire row at a time. This accomplishment alone makes me feel powerful. Home with my kids, eating healthy foods and enjoying summer, I couldn't be happier!

I told you if you actually want science to hit up Google but I do recommend a video called, Sugar: The Bitter Truth. Its a lecture by an endocrinologist and child obesity specialist.

A special thanks to my wonderful husband who accepted his wife's sudden and extreme lifestyle change. He's a keeper!

Dear Body...

My body is great, and amazing, and I really should stop hounding it so much. If my body can DO everything I want it to do then it should get to look how it wants to look. After all, when it comes to doing all the things a body does, it knows way more than me. I wouldn't have a clue how to keep my heart beating if that were left up to me as a consciousness to handle. And make a whole new person? I don't think so! How many cells need to divide each day? What week do I tell the fingernails to start forming? And thats not to say anything of figuring out how to get it out on my own! Yup, my body is smarter than me when it comes to itself so why do I keep trying to tell it how to look?

If my arms can curl 30lbs, (which they can't quite yet, I'm up to 20 with 30 being my goal) and I still have waggling underarms, then I think its my arms' prerogative. Those arms manage groceries, carry an almost five year old, work a garden, build forts and lift arbitrary amounts of weight for no real practical purpose other than I tell them to. "Now arms, please do all this AND look skinny while doing it, if you don't mind." I'm like that husband who comes home to a clean house, happy children and dinner on the table but can only see that his wife's hair isn't done!... Dear arms, I'm sorry. You are lovely and you are doing a great job!

And while I'm at it, I need to give my legs the same apology. Legs, you work very hard. You carry me wherever I want to go, you even jog sometimes even though we both hate it. I've sent you rappelling  over a cliff barefoot into icy water, hiking through miles of sand, there was a time when I made you dance 4-8 hours a day and I continue to stretch you into positions I'm sure you must find unreasonable. All this and we haven't even mentioned hair removal! If you need a little fat to keep you going then who am I to tell you otherwise? If you break out into little red bumps sometimes when I shave you, then I should cut you some slack. I mean, how much hair removal can two legs really take? And the fact that you bruise easily and are never without some sort of purple contusion, well, I'm sure thats not your fault and I know it doesn't help that I keep frequenting climbing gyms, canyons, workout equipment and sometimes just flat out walk you into things! Legs, you do everything I ask of you and the fact that you might not get a gig in a Nair commercial should have no bearing on our relationship.

So...
Dear Body,
If you can just keep on doing what you do, you know, like breathing and carrying around my sometimes undeserving spirit, I promise to be nicer to you. Please know that I appreciate you even when I don't show it because without you I'd be... well, dead, or a disembodied spirit, or maybe a cryogenically frozen brain, all of which are unappealing options. So thank you, I'm sorry and I promise to do better.

Love, Me