Just doodling again. Posted this on Facebook last week.

Taking first steps. But as I wrote on a Facebook status a while back…

“The first step is always the hardest, though I will admit that the second and third steps sting like a bitch too.”

It does.

Things have not been well in The House of Ren.

Without going into too much detail, I’ve sought out counseling to assist with some issues I have.

Ah, fuck it, let’s go into detail.

I’m seeing a shrink for the following reasons:

I’m angry. ALL. THE. TIME.

I’m sad. ALL. THE. TIME.

I love the world. ALL. THE. TIME.

I hate the world. ALL. THE. TIME.

I like myself. Well, occasionally.

I hate myself. ALL. THE. TIME.

Are we getting the gist yet? This has been me for several years and when I think about it, it’s been that way probably well before my husband was ever on the scene. The problem is that when any little bit of stress comes my way, all of the above escalates to new levels but then… it doesn’t really go back down again. Picture a thermometer if you will. The temperature has risen but the chemistry of the solution has somehow changed and while the temperature goes back down, it never really quite hits zero again.

It stays slightly warmer after each spike.

Being jobless has been the worst thing for me. I managed for the first five months and then I realised as I cleaned out one account of all the savings therein, I was in trouble. Big trouble. Not just for the money side of things but for the stress.

Literally, a volcano waiting to go off.

Well… I exploded – about ten times too many, much to the detriment of my marriage. My husband now sleeps in another room and I pretty much don’t sleep at all.

Oh, major plug for Bourjois Healthy Mix concealer (shade #52 if you please). It hides the circles masquerading as black eyes.

So I made the decision to see the doctor (that awful first step) then see the psychologist (second step – just as fucking painful).

I’d never been to see a psychologist before.

Yes, I’ve had my moments where I’ve called Lifeline to talk to someone (*anyone*) just to let this shit out but it’s a very different experience being in a room with a person you don’t know and telling them everything.

EVERYTHING.

Including why I immediately started laughing as soon as I walked into the office.

Because there IS an actual couch.

And there IS an actual armchair.

And my psychologist looks like a new-age hippy librarian in her patent red Mary Janes and purple stockings and pink cardigan and a top-knot of shaggy blonde hair.

I had to laugh. You would have too.

And yes, she uttered the words, “Tell me about your childhood” which also made me snicker. And then there were tears because my childhood was actually a bit crap.

All of it came out. All of it, all of it, all of it.

I paid $130 to sit on a blue couch and cry for an hour.

Anyway… All that said and done, it was interesting and I think beneficial. It was the first session so I am not really sure. I came out absolutely raw, in any case.

And I get to do it all again next week!

In the interim, I’ve taken up doodling. This weekend leading up to my appointment, I was freaking out a little bit. I needed something, anything, to focus on rather than my deteriorating mental state. So I grabbed my art pens and old sketch book from school and started to doodle.

I literally just went where my brain took me as I refused to think of anything but putting lines on paper. And pretty much suddenly the paper was all there was in the world and the only decision I needed to make was where to make the next line on the page. Just concentrating on putting all the energy I would otherwise be putting into emoting physically into the pen I was using.

When I finished and looked at it and thought that’s what my brain looks like right now. That’s a four-hour timelapse image of my mind. I know I will do more of these. I fancy having a series of “brain” pictures like this and then letting people guess what I was feeling as they look at each part of the picture.

If you’ve never tried it, give it a go. It’s cathartic and therapeutic in itself.

“Are you happy?” is such a diificult question
I always say yes, because I have friends
I laugh at jokes, I go out a lot and have fun
my life isn’t as bad as it could be, and I don’t
have terrible problems. It could be worse

but then, one night at 3am when I’m alone
still awake, lying in bed, thinking about life
I find myself crying my heart out
suddenly I’m convinced nobody likes me, or
nobody will ever like me. I feel horrible
and I question everything I had

and I don’t know if I was ever happy at all.
– SF
(Whoever SF is.)

So here’s a cat.

Cannot. Stop. Giggling.

“Weeeeeeee… plouf!”

With that in mind, I found and procured the biggest spaghetti squash I have EVER seen at my favourite grocers.

This baby cost $18. It is about 2.5kg of squashy goodness.

I have no idea how to cook it. Most of the recipes I’ve found tend to use the small ones and of course you boil/microwave/roast them pretty much whole. You can’t really do that with one that’s twice the size of a regular butternut pumpkin.

Anyway, while I try to figure that out, here’s my “Healthy Noms” theme for this week’s OHP.

This would be one of them.

My uterus is trying to scrape it’s way out of my body using a bent fork and a rusty coat-hanger, I am fairly sure of it.

Anyway, now that I’ve given you a WTMI insight into my life at the moment, let me entertain you with things I have stumbled across on the intarwebs…

In response to a Youtube video on how to make a smoothie:

A comment on a MyFitnessPal forum post about achieving that magical “feel good” moment and then inspiration for going harder:

And then there were these words:

And these words:

And kittens. Not funny but OMGSOCUTE!

Found on Tumblr. Who took this? I want to credit you.

I love pancakes.

I will eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and just because they’re pancakes if you’ll let me. They’re tasty comfort food either plain and hot off the stove or loaded with butter or maple syrup or just simple sugar and lemon.

Unfortunately they’re not the best for the food conscious and since I don’t really want to put on all of the weight that I’ve lost over the past two years (even though I’ve made a very good attempt at that over the last few weeks – eek!) I have to find alternatives.

So I’ve been seeing this “no carb” so-called pancake popping up all over Pinterest and a couple of other blogs that I read and I thought surely it was worth trying.

So, I did.

And I followed the general directions from Freckleberry Fit. (Which is a pretty awesome blog for interesting foodie things.)

Two ingredients are called for. Just two. Bananas and eggs. Apparently this makes pancakes.

I am already highly doubtful.

So I grab my ‘nanas and slice them up into a bowl.

At this point I am thinking porridge would be really lovely right now over all that banana goodness and I fight the temptation to not just pull out the oats and milk.

I successfully resist but mournfully start mashing at the bananas.

The original recipe says to whisk the eggs and banana together at this point until smoothish… and that it doesn’t matter if your bananas are a little lumpy.

A LITTLE lumpy? The above was the result after a few minutes of fork-mashing the bananas alone.

I am guessing that it would be easier with bananas that are a little more ripe than what I was using but I didn’t want to wait another couple of days for my bananas to be of adequate squishiness. But I was getting kind of annoyed at this point as it was taking way too much effort and time than I was willing to spend on this frivolous idea.

So I broke out the big guns…

The Blorky Machine, as the manbeast calls it (for the noise it makes). I blorkied the bananas into a lovely, mostly smooth puree.

If I had a baby, they’d be happy right now.

The baby, that is. Not the bananas. At this point I don’t think the bananas give any of the fucks about anything.

So then it was time to add the eggs. I beat the eggs separately and threw the lot into the bananas and I whisked away.

I-whisked-away-I-whisked-away…

Don’t know about you, but that still doesn’t look anything like pancake batter to me.

After everything was combined properly, I started spooning small ladle-full portions into my little frying pan. The recipe says it makes fifteen. With my little ladle I got ten. Close enough. I need to rejig the math for the calorie information.

And to my surprise, it sort of looked like pancakes as I was cooking them…

Well, I did say SORT OF.

And the freaky thing was it started to smell a bit like pancakes cooking… though that might have been some serious wishful thinking on my part…

But don’t forget…

…When the recipe says 45 seconds on each side, it really is ONLY 45 seconds on each side. This one got a little tan. I think it had more to do with the fact that the sugars in the banana were caramelising more than the pancake being burnt as it didn’t taste at all burnt.

But that brings me to the next point – and last photograph:

You maybe forgiven that these look very much like pancakes. They even smell a little like pancakes.

Unfortunately they are not pancakes, never will be pancakes and should never be tried as a substitute for pancakes.

I wish they were because I love pancakes.

Whilst they don’t taste horrible, they’re not really to my taste. Having said that, I ate a decent serve of them, just to be sure. The savoury of the eggs doesn’t really mesh with the sweetness of the bananas. I found myself either wanting to put cheese on them or sprinkle them with sugar, and indeed, they remind me a little of the taste of French toast without the sugar.

Try it – you might like it. If nothing else, they’d be an excellent recovery snack for after a workout. A nice little hit of protein and sodium.

The original recipe touts this as being 31 calories for each pancake. I’ll round mine up to 45 each and call them done for now.

And REAL pancakes will remain a very, very, VERY, occasionally-sometimes food.

FML.

UPDATE:  Just FYI, these actually taste rather nice once they’re chilled and with nothing on them. The hot egg/banana thing doesn’t work but the cold egg/banana thing does.  Weirdness.

Last night I set one.

See, I had a major case of the munchies and I belatedly realised that the munchies occur more often due to excess sugar I’ve consumed. And then I’m not just craving sugar  -  I am craving ANYTHING.

I ate a whole packet of cheese at midnight last night.

Gouda.

It was goodah.

Sorry, bad pun.

Fortunately it was just ten pre-sliced sandwich slices.

Anyway… I’m eating this cheese and I am actually mentally asking myself, “Ok, you’re eating cheese at midnight and your stomach is going to feel like lead and you’re not going to be able to sleep for another couple of hours… why did you want this cheese?”

And myself, still eating the cheese, says “I thought I was hungry. I knew as soon as I opened the fridge that I wasn’t really hungry. I just remembered what cheese tasted like and I wanted to taste it again…”

This is starting to sound like a dirty novel.

50 Shades of Cheese.

Actually… the real books could have been called that…

I digress.

So me asks myself, “So… you needed TEN slices of cheese to remember?”

And myself hangs her head in shame.

So me nods and says “You’re only eating because of the sugar thing and how it’s put you back in the habit of just constantly wanting something in your mouth”.

Ooooheerrr, back to the cheesy novel…

But you get the picture. I realised that I have let myself slide back into old habits. Emotional eating only achieves one thing – adding weight.  It does not make you feel better. It feels nice, sure, but so does a good orgasm – and neither of them last forever.

The really funny thing is that nothing I eat actually tastes all that freakin’ wonderful. I’m just… eating. (And eating and eating…)

So I made the conscious decision that today I was going to eat clean for one day. Or at least my version of clean which is only slightly less dirty.

The goal was to do JUST ONE DAY.

I did it.

My food consisted of a really yummy high fibre cereal (GoldenVale “Fruit & Fibre” from ALDI, it’s actually really yummy), a caesar wrap and a cup of tea from Muffin Break and dinner was a huge serve of pumpkin and broccoli, my two favourite veggies, ever.  I also had a couple pieces of fruit and some dried dates throughout the day but that’s natural sugar, not cakes and lollies.

I am WAY under my Weight Watchers points but I don’t care because right now, as I am typing this, I am full to bursting.

I was surprised that my cereal kept me really full for much of the morning, and it may have also been the distraction of being dragged along to the shops with my family but I wasn’t feeling actual hunger until about 12.30pm.  And once I’d had my wrap and tea, I was alright again.

And then I got hungry at 5.30pm for dinner and decided to cook at about 6pm.  To be honest, I was going to make my pumpkin frittata thing but the eggs were old and I got a case of the CBFs, so I steamed my pumpkin and broccoli. It was yum.

As a reward, tomorrow I am going to try to make oven-baked sweet potato chips and have them with some salsa for lunch.

Because tomorrow I am planning on a repeat of today.

Second goal – do it again and get a minimum of 5AP (Activity Points) for the day.

These are the most infantile of baby steps but I think it’s what I need.  At the moment it’s hard for me to see past the next hour, let alone the next day or week, given everything that’s been going on.

Anyway, that’s it.

Cheesits!

Ah hah!

That’s not something you want to see. Ever. EV-VER.

These ads are aimed at 18+. That generally means that your mother is at the very least 18 years older than you. Which makes her TOO OLD TO BE PLAYING WITH HER GIRLY PARTS.

At least according to sons and daughters all over the land.

That conversation was won by Abbey.

But hey, if you thought that was bad enough… my brother in-law, who has just discovered the joys of baking, sent me this…

A very rude elephant!

Anyway, my mother is getting flowers and chocolates and breakfast somewhere nice for Mothers Day.

AND NOTHING ELSE.

What’s your mum gettin’?

Actually, it seems like we’ve jumped over Autumn (or Fall, depending on where you come from) and gone straight into Winter. It’s crazy!

I miss the long, lingering afternoons. They don’t seem to have happened this year. It’s been HOT, HOT, HOT, HOT, COLD!

Anyway, with the winter comes the hearty foods. I don’t really get to partake in this stuff often but I live vicariously through Pinterest.

(Yes, I know I am posting this on a Thursday!)