Mommy's day

Hello, loves! Told you I'd be back. I've adjusted to not blogging regularly quite well. My obsession with food, magically, is now almost gone! It's so lovely to just be able to eat normal food on ugly plates, without worrying about whether what I'm eating is attention-worthy. That just feeds my disorder and makes me think that I'm not worth it if my food isn't special enough. Don't get me wrong, I still love food! I always have and always will. But I want to just let my culinary creativity come naturally if it means a full recovery.

So today is Mother's Day. Is my mom the only mom who despises this holiday? She always tells my sister and I not to get her any gifts, and just treat her as well as we do every other day of the year. But of course I never listen to her! I love her for all the support, humor and advice she's given me over the years. Not just in my recovery, for the past 14 years she's been the only person I can trust with anything I want to say. I had to do something to recognize that. Since she loves to read, I made her a cloth bookmark embroidered with her initials and flowers. I also made her favorite breakfast in bed: Cinnamon raisin scones, scrambled eggs, and orange juice. No picture, because I didn't want to make her uncomfortable.

Lately I've been feeling very stressed and overwhelmed. I've been anxious all the time and can never get my mind to settle down so I can relax. There are always tons of thoughts and worries building up in my cranium so today I decided to do something about it!

I made two lists. The first is called "Things and People that Really Annoy Me". When I'm stressed I get overly emotional, so just about everything annoys me and weighs my mind down. In half an hour I came up with 58 things, wow! Next I wrote a list called "Major Stresses", which only has nine things on it. These are what were occupying my mind the most and made it impossible for me to quit worrying.

Then I went sort of crazy with my pens.. for the annoyance list I just ferociously scribbled all over the page until all those little problems were blacked out. I didn't need to think too much about it, because they were just useless bits that were clogging up my brain. I was a bit more thoughtful with the stresses list. For every item on it, I thought about what I could do to improve it so it didn't stress me out anymore. Then I scribbled it out. I came up with solutions for some of the problems. But for the rest of them, I just had to think, "That's out of my hands and I can't do anything about it." Too much of my ED came from trying to fix problems that weren't mine to fix. I'm going to just have to relax now and let everything that I can't control run it's course. Things will work out.

A HA, I'm not done yet! After the coloring party I just ripped the papers to shreds and chucked them in the recycling bin. As stupid as it sounds, I feel like I can actually breathe now, like the stress has just fallen out of my head. Seeing my problems spelled out in front of me, coming up with a solution to make myself feel better about them and destroying them might give me the relaxation I've needed for so long.

Okay okay, so I do have some food pictures. I'm sure most of you have heard of Katie's New Foods Challenge! But if you live in a cave and have not, definitely check it out! The new food I choose was edamame. I know, what kind of failure vegetarian has never tried edamame before? ME! But I finally picked some up a little while ago and I'm so glad I did! It has stellar nutritionals, with tons of protein and fiber. It's mighty tasty too! Sort of nutty. I made a lovely salad with cooked edamame, romaine, carrots, black beans, zuccchini, and cucumber. Yum yum yum.

And today I tried my first green smoothie! I've only been reading/commenting on blogs sporadically lately but noticed a definite trend in green monsters. I was skeptical, but today I made my own out of a banana, strawbs, ground flax (another new food for me), 2 handfuls of spinach, and a splash of milk. It was delicious, why didn't I try it before? I'll definitely make it again with different fruits.

Ooooh, well today's breakfast was too cute not to share! Those little Wholefoods chocolate graham bears had just escaped the peanut butter tsunami and were headed for the apricot lifeboats but...

Nope. The Kiki monster ate them. Along with the oatmeal ocean and PB tsunami.

Hmmm, I'm so used to saying "goodnight" to wrap up my posts but it's not even 6:00 yet! Alright then, ciao!