It's been a bad week

So DH's grandfather has been on a quick decline after his stroke.
Well he took a turn for the worst late last week and passed away on Tuesday this week.
They buried him the same day since it was on their land and hot so they didn't want his body to start smelling or anything.
We didn't even know they were planning on burying him until we pulled up to the land and saw the coffin and everyone around it.
We just went up there to be with family and weren't even told about it. :\
But anyway.... people were prepared for his death though so thankfully everyone seems to be ok.
Honestly... I'm relieved for my MiL. She's gone through SO much abuse taking care of him after he had his stroke.
He became depressed and verbally abusive and demanding and she along with FiL were the only ones taking care of him so they were the target of all his frustrations and abuse.
I know they're both sad obviously, but I know they also have this huge burden lifted off of them finally.
The only thing I worry about is MiL's hoarding. I've told DH that he and his siblings (especially his younger sister) need to keep an eye on that b/c now that MiL can go wherever she wants and buy whatever she wants again.... her hoarding is going to get out of hand again. The only reason it stayed in check was b/c of the grandfather moving back in to the house with them.

And to make the week worse.
The day after ( yesterday... wednesday), we woke up to our cat dying :(
He had been totally fine the day before. He did poop in our bathroom which wasn't normal, but he did like peeing in there on the bath mats so we really didn't think much of it. Seemed like normal progression. Like... well.... guess we're going to have him pooping in here now too. B/c he was still acting normal and eating as usual, meowing as usual. Just totally normal.
Then we woke up and he was breathing heavy and barely moving.
I stayed home while DH took him to the vet and the vet wasn't hopeful at all when she looked him over.
They put him in an oxygen chamber to see if it would help his breathing and it didn't.
They laid out an expensive treatment plan we could try, but it was mostly just to keep him pain free b/c the vet didn't think it would work to heal him.
DH called and we both agreed that it would just be best to put him to sleep :(
I know I've said horrible shit about that cat, but it's still sad that he died and so suddenly and unexpectedly. We really thought he was going to be one of those cats that lived well in to their 20's.
He was only 13 or 14yo... which I mean.. wasn't young or anything.
You just don't think your pet will die from heart failure (what the vet thinks it was). That's something you only think about with humans... not our little furry buddies.

So yeah, this week has sucked.

It's just been a shitty month too.
Couple Saturdays ago, we saw that someone had hit our van front bumper.
That week, the only 2 places I had been was to Zoe's school and to the doc's office when she got sick, but at the doc's office where I parked, no one could have hit the bumper.
DH also took the van to church too so some asshat either at the school or at church hit our van and didn't bother staying around to own up to their mistake.
And it wasn't a little dent either that maybe someone didn't know they did. They scraped against half the bumper and actually broke a hole in it. So they hit our car with a pretty good amount of force. They definitely knew they hit our car and still decided to drive off.
We just got the van back yesterday with the bumper fixed and $500 less dollars in our pocket :\

THEN our washing machine broke like 6 weeks ago and it's STILL not repaired. Oh, we had a repair guy come in and he said he knew what was wrong and they needed to order a part.
Week goes by and we heard nothing back so DH calls and...... the repair guy never called in the order for the part.
They do.... get the part in a week later. Confirmed got the part a week in after they finally ordered it... and we've been waiting ever since for fucking SOMEONE to come fix our shit. We've called multiple times too.

Also, I finally got some new fish from the local fish store. Put them in a quarantine tank with a cycled sponge filter. Do everything right and...... they all died AND had a really bad parasite too from the damn fish place we got them from. I don't normally quarantine but damn I'm glad I did this time.

Fucking assholes man........

Venting again! lol

I don't understand people who join a very specific diet group. Like... they had to have known at least a little about it to even search it out... and then go in and ask the most basic DUH questions.

I started OMAD. One meal a day. It's in the damn name. ONE MEAL A DAY. And that's it. Even just a quick search tells you all you need to know. You fast most of the day and have a 1 or 2 hour window to eat your meal. The meal can consist of a starter, main, dessert if you so choose. Then you fast again and eat ONE MEAL A DAY.
I can't count how many times, in this very specific group, newbies have come in asking
"So if I eat soandso in the morning and then eat a meal at night. Is that ok??"
Yeah sure, it's ok, but IT'S NOT OMAD... which is what the group is!!

And people not understand the whole NO CALORIES during the fasting period. Little bit of milk and cream and sugar in your coffee? Sure if you want, but it's going to break your fast b/c CALORIES.
Even had someone boast about sipping their bullet proof coffee during their fast. Depending on what you put in it, a BPC can have like 500 calories!

Just UGH frustrating! Like it takes 2 seconds to google information. OMAD is EASY to understand but people just gotta complicate shit or not do their own damn research and want someone to hold their hand and feed them information. LOOK UP YOUR OWN SHIT.

____

In other news.... lol

Kids are doing great!

Zoe lost her first tooth the other week. Tooth fairy gave her $11 for her first tooth. Tooth Fairy isn't giving that much for the ones after it though.
The tooth next to the lost one is also wiggling. So cute :)
She's doing well in school. Still need to work on her reading and math more though, but she's doing ok with both.

Oren is FINALLY potty trained completely. He'll still have some accidents at night, but no more during the day.
Ezra has started to want to use the potty too. Need to stop being lazy and get him in the habit of doing it more. He has actually peed in the potty too so yay :)

Signing Oren up for pre-school next school year too. Gonna be difficult only having Ezra in the house during the day with me. He's not going to know what to do all by himself.
I know Oren will love school though and hopefully it will help with his confidence and his need to run off and cry whenever he doesn't get his way.

DH and I are good. Still dieting. Going slow, but still going.
We are planning a cheat on the 26th when Avengers comes out. DH has already requested the day off. We're gonna drop Zoe off at school, go get some breakfast, drop the boys off, then swing back and get donuts, go see the movie, etc etc. Just have a big day of food we've been craving. Then get back to the diet the next day. :)
We're also wanting to take a beach trip in August before school starts. Going to be so expensive though. We don't want to go to the usual beach, BUT everywhere else is expensive if you want to be walking distance to the beach which is what we're wanting.
There is one place we're eyeballing that is on the beach though. It's gonna be hella expensive, but worth it? Hopefully? lol Still waiting to see if he gets the time off.

And yeah... just living our lives.... things are pretty good. I'm feeling a little stressed and tired, but that's normal.

Don't give me excuses

Joined a forum for my neighborhood. Just to get info on what might be going on etc.
Yesterday, we finally took the kids up to the neighborhood playground. Gorgeous day and kids had fun.
Now the way it's situated, you can see some this area from the main road that goes by the neighborhood. BUT there are a lot of blind spots. Perfect for folks wanting to do not so great things there.
Listen.. if you want to go shoot up... go for it. Fuck up your life... but how about not coming in to my neighborhood and doing it where kids play!
A red car came rolling in with 2 people. Couldn't see them b/c windows were slightly tinted, but you could see their outline.
Swings around and parks right in a spot that you can't see from the main road.
They roll their windows down a little, and didn't come out of their car for 20-30mins. After that, they left.
Now tell me... am I crazy to think that they were probably doing drugs??
Am I crazy to be PISSED OFF that these people chose this area where KIDS PLAY to do that shit???
So I posted my concern on the neighborhood site and here comes "know-it-all Sally" with her 1000 and 1 excuses for the totally innocent reasons someone could park there.
Like UBER drivers (b/c ubers often travel with a passenger already in their car??) or some other stupid shit, then laughed about people just smoking weed acting like I'm just some overreacting mom.
Nah.... I don't fucking assume the worst is happening. THIS instance it was obvious something wrong was going on and not just "haha just people smoking weed".
And all I asked was for more security cameras in the area. Ya know... more security to hopefully keep people like that away. Our HOA isn't that much thankfully, BUT there are a lot of houses in the neighborhood paying in to it which equals a lot of money. Where the hell is that money going??

Just ugh... yes I'm really fucking pissed off about this. Pissed off that some stupid bitch tried to brush off my concern as "no big deal. People use the spot for whatever all the time." Nah... excuse me, but that's not good enough. I'm not naive enough to think that we could keep all bad people out, but we sure as shit could deter them if we had more security cameras up.
There are 2 in that spot. One of them is pointed towards the playground, the other? Pointed at the broken basketball court that has no hoops b/c the folks in charge don't want "gangs" to congregate and play basketball there and mess up the hoops.
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH

What in the ever loving hell???

Ok.. so I joined a fasting group. Lots of posts where people are keeping themselves accountable by posting undie pics of themselves.
One post though... just hell to the no.
The woman is 5 months PREGNANT and wanting to fast. Not like... a day... I'm talking about extreme fasting b/c she wants to homebirth at a healthier weight.... after FIVE c-sections!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What in the ever loving fuck???
And people who obviously have NO clue how dangerous that is are cheering her on!!! Like... NO. FUCK NO!!
I've reported the post but apparently the admins of the group have no clue either.
I also joined a women's fasting group and when a pregnant woman talked about wanting to fast, they actually encouraged her NOT to thankfully.
But the other group is apparently full of just completely clueless people.
With the risk of getting kicked out of the group, I had to speak up and tell her what she was hoping for was completely dangerous and any midwife worth her shit would NOT be encouraging her to do it.
Just..... fucking really??? Are women that fucking desperate to push a damn baby out of their vaginas that they would risk DEATH of them AND their baby for it?? How fucking stupid can you fucking be??? She had to have been told by a doctor that it was dangerous, but I'm sure google and all that fucking bullshit WOO sites told her she knew better or some shit.
Just... I can't. I fucking can't.
If something goes wrong, she's going to be dead and leave behind at least 5 children and probably killing the baby she's pregnant with all b/c of some delusional fantasy birth in her head.

Diet stuff

So still dieting.
I've been kind of stuck at this weight. Around 178 give or take.
And FINALLY starting to come back down again.
The lowest I saw before was 175something and today it was 174.8 at the lowest.
So yay.
I think I'm going to try fasting though. I eat too much still and I need a healthier relationship with food. I need to get that thought oout of my head of wanting HUGE portions like I used to eat (and still eat sometimes). It's like if it's not this ginormous portion of whatever I'm eating, my brain thinks it's not going to be enough even though it is. And even if I get full, I'll still force myself to eat it b/c I think I need to. Just not a healthy food relationship and I think fasting will help. Nothing drastic or anything.
But yeah I'm still feeling pretty good for the most part.
More energy than I usually have, but at night after I eat dinner, I've been getting headaches, indigestion, and nausea. It was suggested that I probably have low stomach acid and to drink an apple cider vinegar concoction. Drank that today before eating and I hope it helps.

But.. things are going pretty good. Frustrated with my stomach still being huge, but I haven't given up.
I do plan on cheating this Saturday for Oren's birthday though. Like ALL OUT cheat and eat whatever the hell I want and then I'll try fasting Sunday and possibly monday too.
Just... anyone out there struggling with your weight.... Best advice and insight I can give right now...
Yes... dieting can be hard at times, but what's going to make you happier?? Eating some junk food that's just going to keep you fat? Or taking a year give or take to get healthier? That's it... a YEAR. How many times do we always say at the end of a year "Wow, it went by so quick!" Now say that at a healthier weight at the end of the year :) People have more willpower than they think they do. I know I have a lot more than I thought I did.

Kids are good. Attitude city up in here.

Zoe is 6 going on 16. Drama queen central. She's also in a super talkative phase and has to give me a play by play of everything lol. I know I should enjoy it while it lasts b/c preteens will hit and she won't want to talk to me at all.
She's doing great in school. Still struggles with some things, but working on it.

Oren's potty training is coming along. I think the pull ups were just too much like diapers. Putting him in just underwear seems to have done the trick. He still has accidents and we still make him use a pullup for bed, but he's getting better at using the potty on his own when he needs to go. So proud of him and he gets   so proud of himself when he poops in the potty by himself.

Ezra is still Ezra. Just a 2yo giant ball of pure energy. He's definitely going to be our little athlete. He is GO GO GO almost all the time. SO much energy and SO stubborn. But also loving and caring and sweet... when he wants to be lol.
He's my pickiest eater though and it drives me up the wall. Need to break him of it. My food tastes good child! EAT IT!

And yeeeah... that's really it. Nothing exciting really going on. Just living life. :)

Grief and drama queens and just me bitching

I'm going to sound like a bitch in this I'm sure.
First up..
SiL lost her baby. I think she was 18 weeks or so along. Maybe further? when she started spotting. She went in to get checked out and unfortunately baby didn't have a heartbeat :(
So so sad for them. SO frickin sad for them.

Now with that being said, it has been a little bit since it happened and SiL is just....she's just a giant attention whore. There.. I said it.
UGH that sounds terrible, but when she posts things like "Haha, smoking in my house and don't give AF!"
Like... really??? You do remember you have another child right??? That smoking in your home is going to stink up everything and expose your oldest to it... right???

Just ugh.. I can't with that. I'm so sad that they lost their little baby girl, but don't be a fucking dick while you grieve and expose your child to cig smoke. How about that.

And on to an even bigger drama queen.

One of my cousins. She's a GIANT SJW far leftist type. Nothing wrong with being leftist, but she's like FAR FAR leftist. Like the far right are horrible, so are the far left.
Yeah.. that's her.
Plus she's just annoying as shit.
She's REALLY fucking full of herself. Like... extremely full of herself.
She's a photographer and takes great photos, but also gets pissed off when Facebook takes down her nude photos. Then she starts ranting and raving about "FUCK WHOEVER IS REPORTING MY PHOTOS" then gets kind of schooled that no one gives a shit and it's probably just FB taking them down automatically b/c of whatever bot they're using. Then it's "Oh this means way Facebook! I'm going to just keep posting it! I'm going to quit if they don't allow my stuff!"

That's not even the worst of it. She vague posts all the damn time to get attention. She always posts shit like "Well my TRUE friends will XYZ and share" bullshit posts (same as SiL does too).

She's constantly trying to lose weight, then will post these like ginormous meals she just fixed herself.
And don't forget the selfies she constantly posts with the hashtags "Halfkorean! Halfasian!" in every single fucking one of them. Like... really??

I know this stuff sounds mild when I say it not, but it's constantly posted on facebook. CONSTANTLY and it gets tiring to see. I've already ignored her twice now for 30 days at a time and just ugh.

Then FiL is kind of your typical doofy ass parent that doesn't completely understand the internet but shares stuff anyway.
Constantly posts those bullshit for attention posts where it shows like some gorgeous cabin in the woods with a caption like "I bet you wouldn't live HERE for a year. Share if you would!" kind of stupid ass posts. Or will post a picture of a cute puppy with "I bet you won't share this picture!"
It's so damn cringy.
He even shared a post about how we don't support our veterans... and the photo was from the frickin movie Tropic Thunder... and no.. he didn't know it was from a movie. Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

I think I just need to ignore a lot of folks for a little bit b/c they're really annoying me lol.

Boring diet stuff

Day 3? 4? I don't even know of carnivore diet. All meat and animal products (cheese, eggs, dairy etc).
Feeling pretty good, but I think I need to limit dairy even more.
Had more than usual last night with dinner and now I'm up 3lbs.
Could just be normal day to day weight fluctuation though so next time I have more than usual dairy, I'll remember to check to see if I retain water the next day or not.
I don't have a ton of dairy anyway. 1 tablespoon or cream in my coffee and that's it.

Coming from a keto but mostly eating meat diet has been easy, but I'm also craving the keto desserts I used to fix.
I'm determined to stick to carnivore for a month though. It's going to be difficult, but I set out to do it and I'm going to.
Also giving up nightshades suuuuucks, b/c it would make going carnivore so much easier if I could have some hot sauce. No, that's not strict carn, but it would help to cut through some of the fat and just add flavor. Sigh.

I am extremely frustrated with my belly though. All other people that are at this weight? Nice bodies, smaller bellies.
Me? HUGE fucking belly that will not fucking go away!!!
I understand that my lower stomach pooch is going to take a while to disappear, but damn, this is infuriatingly frustrating. Maybe when I get to the 150's??? Maybe THEN my stomach will finally start to disappear???
If I could GET to the 150's that would be great, but my weight has been going up then going down, going up then going down the same 3lbs. Just frickin LOSE ALREADY!
I know the scale doesn't tell the whole story, but damn... when you still need to lose so much, it's still frustrating as shit to see the number stall.

I have my annual exam next month and it would be great to be well in to the 170's by then. Just hope I can get there finally.

Also started exercising again and I'm going to start pushing myself a bit harder. Still easy at first, but just increasing weight a little when doing certain exercises and whatnot.
My eventual fitness goal is to be able to do a pull up and pushup. I would love to be able to do either one of those... just one. And once I can do just one of both of those, I'll aim to get up to 5 each.
That's not going to happen for a long time though. I'm REALLY weak right now and need to lose more weight and build up my puny muscles.
I'll get there though.

That's what is different this time with this weight loss journey. I have absolutely no thought of quitting in my mind anymore. Not even a little bit. Oh I'll complain about weight fluctuations, stalls, my fat not disappearing like I want lol, but I'm in this. I'm NOT giving up this time.
I wish everyone could finally get to this point in their weight loss journeys b/c damn is it such a liberating feeling.
Yes, there is still that intimidation b/c for some of us, the weight comes off slow, but not constantly worrying about falling off the wagon or constantly wanting to cheat... weight lifted.
That's not to say I don't get cravings still though. Like krispy kreme donuts. Damn.... if I had a box of them, I'd eat every single one lol.
But NOW I know I can resist. It's not always on my mind. Sure... I would love one, but I know they're not going anywhere. Maybe for a planned cheat day, I'll have them, but  I'm good.

I just see so many people still struggling and honestly, I'm glad I'm not one of them anymore. I'm not struggling to stay on this diet.
I KNOW I will get to my goal. I HOPE it happens sooner rather than later of course, but I'm in this until the end. No more yo-yo dieting. No more giving up.

With all of that said though, I'm still trying to figure my body out.
Like, I know I retain water when my period shows up. I'll go up about 5lbs give or take. But that weight usually drops right back off after about 3 days.
After that though /shrugs I just haven't been paying that much attention to any pattern that could be happening lol. I probably should. That way if I do have cycles of retaining water, I'll be prepared for it instead of wondering if I'm doing something wrong with my diet.

What else...
Hoping this way of eating helps my sleep. I NEED restful sleep and I just don't get that most of the time. I toss and turn so much and don't get in to that deep restful healing sleep. Carnivore is supposed to help.
Also hoping it helps with mental clarity. I know the better sleep probably helps with that too.
Have so many ideas I want to do and get started on.

And yeah... just feeling really positive about most of this. Frustrated at my stupid stomach, but I know it will go down eventually. Just hoping it happens soon so I can stop looking like I'm pregnant already lol.

It's February!!

I'm sorry I don't post a lot here anymore.
There's really not much to post other than just every day life.

Lets see.. kids first..

Orens potty training is going slooooow. He's so stubborn about it and will not poop in the potty. I still have to tell him to pee in it too. He's getting better though and has started to go on his own. Just a couple of times, but it's still better than nothing. I think I'm just going to have to ditch the pull ups and go with only underwear. It's so gross when they poop in them, but I think that will get him to just use the potty.
He's good other than that though. Growing so fast.

Ezra is good too. The epitome of terrible twos though. Lord have mercy. He puts my stress level to a 10. Throws, tantrums, whines, cries, thinks he's the boss, picky as shit eater, etc.
He can be so sweet one minute and the next is a howler monkey demon from the pits of hell! lol

Zoe is good too. She's struggling a little in math in school, but bought some workbooks to help her. She gets bored very easily with it and wants to rush through everything so doesn't pay attention to the details.
Like with reading, instead of sounding out a word she doesn't know, she'll see something that looks like a word she already knows and will say that's what it is. If that makes sense.
She's super smart, just impatient.

DH and I are doing great.
Both sticking to our diets and doing well.
I'm down to 178.8 as of this morning. My weight has been fluctuating 2lbs. Up 2lbs and down 2lbs for the last month. It's frustrating as shit.
Decided to give up nightshades this month (tomatoes, peppers) b/c I'm certain I'm intolerant to them. Since those were the main veggies I was eating, decided to also try carnivore this month too.
Nothing but meat, eggs, and some dairy. Well... I'm 99% carnivore. I still drink diet soda, and I'm still using almond/cashew unsweetened milk in my morning coffee along with monk fruit sweetener.
So I'm definitely not doing it perfectly/strict, but I'm doing what is going to work for me.
I also started exercising again. Got a bad cold along with a bad period at the same time. Just completely drained me so I stopped exercising for a couple of weeks.
Just started back up and yep.. I still hate it. I don't mind doing the exercises, but it's just getting up to actually do it. I love being lazy!!
But... I don't want to be skinny fat and flabby so gotta get this going. I may never like exercising, but I know it's going to help me get healthier.
Along with losing weight, I'm just hoping going carnivore helps mental clarity. i always read about this benefit, and hoping that happens for myself. I really want to start creating/crafting more this year.
Have BIG ideas for Trunk or Treat that DH wants to participate in that I need to start right now.

DH is down about 60 or so pounds. He is VERY close to being under 200lbs now. His weight went up a little bit and has been stuck for a couple of weeks now. I know he's frustrated about it, but you gotta trust this process. Scale might be stuck, but he's exercising now and gaining muscle and I'm sure losing inches. He's not doing carnivore with me. well... not completely.

Anyway... we're both good and feeling good.
Hoping that my stomach will FINALLY start to shrink. I do still have about 55 or so pounds I want to lose and it feels like my stomach is going to be the last thing to go. I've lost 45lbs! 45!! And I've oNLY dropped 2 pant sizes. Yeah that's awesome, but damn.. there are others out there that are my same starting weight, same pounds lost or less and have dropped 4 sizes b/c their stomach disappeared.
Mine though??? NOPE!! Still there, still huge.. still making me look like I'm pregnant. Grrr

And not sure if I mentioned it... but SiL is having another girl. Aww :) Really happy to be getting another niece. Was hoping for a boy just so mine could have some boy cousins to play with but they'll be around some strong girl cousins that will give them a run for their money.

Happy New Year!!

2019 already. I hope everyone had a good 2018.
I'm gonna kick 2019's ass.

I NEED to reduce stress... which hasn't been going great so far, but I'm getting there.

I'm going to continue to lose weight. I've been keto now for 6m and down 40lbs. Still have 60 to do!

Starting exercise. I only started yesterday, but I need to do it. I'm going to have a lot of loose skin once the weight is off. I can either just be flabby, or at least be FIT under the flab lol.

Be more creative! I know that seems kind of small in comparison, but I used to be such a creative person before and I NEED to get back to being creative again. Even if it's just something small, I need to start back up with it again. Whether if it's just a drawing or something bigger.

I'm ready to kick this years ass.

I WILL reach my goals.