Confessional

So I have been screwing up.  Despite the fact that I did exercise five days last week with the kids going back to school, my eating this week has been awful.  Stress makes me crazy.  A long time ago, when stress hit, I would manage it with a smoking vice.  Sadly, with the stress of the last several days, I have tried to go back to eating my stress.  The grim reality of that was apparent on the scale this morning, as I had gained two pounds.

No, maybe two pounds is not that big a deal, but with a goal of a size 14, to me, it is huge...and even worse, inexcusable.  I know firsthand the consequences of stress eating.  It results in pounds and I am not willing to revisit that particular place.  I spent enough time there and it was not a happy place, especially when being compared to where I am now.  I'm so much happier here and that magnet on my fridge is true: Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

So I am putting myself back in check or into a timeout or whatever I need to call it.  I've got exercise back on track, I think my stress is pretty under control finally, so now I go back to basics of Food 101.  I know what is good and what is bad.  I also know that the stress monster will again rear it's ugly head eventually and I need to come with a healthy way to combat it. My vices have never been healthy, so I need to explore this one.  How do you, my quiet readers, combat stress when it hits?  What helps you to cope?  What keeps you from the chocolate?

My kids are now on the same morning schedule now that Aaron has started high school, which results in a lot of bickering in the mornings.  The last three years they never saw each other in the mornings as JJ was not even awake when Aaron left.  Now though, they are both mine in the morning and they argue for the entire forty minutes they are in the kitchen together.  This morning it started again with JJ antagonizing Aaron who was trying to do his breakfast dishes, which resulted in lots of yelling.  Completely annoyed, I informed them that if this didn't stop in the mornings, they could come downstairs in shifts so they were never together in the kitchen.

This annoyed JJ so much that he grabbed his backpack and yelled "I'm leaving!!  And I'm not coming back!"

As he slammed out the screen door, I hollered after him, "Don't forget to tell the new people you move in with that you're a brat!"

Ya'll can go ahead and sign me up for that Mother of the Year thing whenever you're ready.